The Internet's Private Cops: Defending Your Rights

Architecture and Background

Wendy Seltzer - The Internet's Private Cops: Defending Your Rights Against Corporate Vigilantes The Internet's Private Cops: Defending Your Rights Against Corporate Vigilantes It is not only governments that are engaged in surveillance of Internet activity. Increasingly, private actors, including corporations asserting intellectual property interests, are being given the power to police the network and demand user identities, in the name of enforcing their private interests. Even when the law does not give them the authority, some have been overzealous in sending legal threats claiming such rights.

Vulnerability Analysis

This presentation will examine the legal claims (such as DMCA, copyright, trespass) frequently raised by private parties, your rights in response, and ways to protect yourselves from these threats, including via the Chilling Effects website. Wendy Seltzer is a Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property and free speech issues. As a Fellow with Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, she founded and leads the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, helping Internet users to understand their rights in response to cease-and-desist threats.

Exploitation and Demonstrations

Prior to joining EFF, Wendy taught Internet Law as an Adjunct Professor at St. John's University School of Law and practiced intellectual property and technology litigation with Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel in New York. Wendy speaks frequently on copyright, trademark, open source, and the public interest online.

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

She has an A.B. from Harvard College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and occasionally takes a break from legal code to program (Perl).