Reply from EFF ON Brett comment on Barlow

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: cindy <cindy () eff org>
> Date: March 28, 2018 at 12:58:00 AM GMT+9
> To: Dave Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Reply from EFF ON Brett comment on Barlow
>
> Hi Dave,
>
> I’m sure your readers are all tired of this back-and-forth between Brett and EFF, so I’ll end it here, with a few 
> responsive facts. 
>
> First, though, since this all started because of Barlow, please invite your list to a Barlow Symposium that we’re 
> hosting with the Freedom of the Press Foundation on August 7 at the Internet Archive in San Francisco from 2-6.  We 
> have a terrific lineup of speakers, including Mitch Kapor, Joi Ito, Cory Doctorow and Ed Snowden, to celebrate 
> Barlow’s ideas that helped shaped the Internet. More information here, along with a terrific illustration of JPB by 
> our own Hugh D’Andrade.
>
> Now to briefly respond: 
>
> 1.  It's extraordinarily misleading to call "cy pres” settlements a donation from Google or anyone else.  They are 
> court-ordered payments — a kind of fine that a judge orders a company to pay because of wrongdoing. Cy pres awards 
> were affirmed as a tool in class action settlements here in California by the Supreme Court in 1986, before the 
> creation of the World Wide Web, and have been long used across the country long before tech privacy was even a thing. 
>  As the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals noted, cy pres is awarded to: “ensure the defendant does not walk away from 
> the litigation scot-free because of the infeasibility of distributing the proceeds of the settlement.”  EFF has been 
> chosen as a recipient because, as one court confirmed, it is "a global nonprofit whose mission is to defend consumer 
> civil liberties in the digital world, including digital consumer protection.”  (citations available on request).  
> Awards to EFF in digital privacy cases have been reviewed and upheld by the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Circuits as 
> well as district courts across the country. There's a reason why allegations that cy pres is some kind of "secret 
> slush fund" have never gotten much traction: they are wrong. 
>
> 2. As for those tobacco communications that Brett mentions, you can see in the article that they are from 1994, over 
> twenty four years ago when EFF was based in DC.  That’s hardly a fair criticism of how EFF operates now.  Again, for 
> those who want a clear look at our current financials, they are here. 2017 should be ready within a month or so, as 
> soon as our regularly scheduled independent audit is complete. 
>
> 3.  Brett links to a report about academics funded by Google by the oddly nontransparent Campaign for Transparency.  
> Oracle appears to be the chief funder behind it.  The report chiefly points out the that EFF often hosts Google 
> Fellows, who generally receive a small stipend from Google to spend a summer with us, but whose work we choose and 
> oversee.  This report has been roundly criticized as sloppy. I do agree that there is important work to be done in 
> tracking when academic research is driven by corporate money, but sadly this report was not it.  
>
> 4.  Most importantly, if you want to know what EFF really stands for and who it works for, look at what we do every 
> day.  You'll see us agreeing
> with Google when they do the right thing, and going after them when they do the wrong thing.  Same with Facebook, 
> Apple, and most other big
> companies.  We are uncompromising with our stand on digital freedom, and never play favorites.  We fight for the 
> users.  And if you follow our
> work, you'll see that to be true.
>
> Cindy
>
>
> ***********************************
> Cindy Cohn                            
> Executive Director                    
> Electronic Frontier Foundation
> 815 Eddy Street
> San Francisco, CA 94109
> (415) 436-9333 x108
> ----Cindy () eff org
> ---- www.eff.org
>  
> Join EFF! https://supporters.eff.org/donate 
>
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> ***********************************
> Cindy Cohn                            
> Executive Director                    
> Electronic Frontier Foundation
> 815 Eddy Street
> San Francisco, CA 94109
> (415) 436-9333 x108
> ----Cindy () eff org
> ---- www.eff.org
>  
> Join EFF! https://supporters.eff.org/donate 



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