New Chilling Effects Site Teaches Web Users About Online Rights

URLwire for Thursday, February 21, 2002
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New Site Teaches Web Users About Online Rights
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The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse is a joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, and University of San Francisco law school clinics.
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Go to the site

The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse will help you understand the protections intellectual property laws and the First Amendment give to your online activities. The Internet offers individuals new opportunities to express their views, parody politicians, celebrate their favorite movie stars, or criticize businesses.

Do you know your online rights? Have you received a letter asking you to remove information from a Web site or stop engaging in an activity? Are you concerned about liability for information that someone else posted to your online forum? If so, this site is for you.

"Chilling Effects" refers to the deterrent effect of legal threats or posturing, largely cease and desist letters independent of litigation, on lawful conduct. The Chilling Effects clearinghouse will catalogue cease and desist notices and present analyses of their claims to help recipients resist the chilling of legitimate activities (as well as understand when their activities are unlawful). The project's core, this database of letters and FAQ-style analyses is supplemented by legal backgrounders, news items, and pointers to statutes and caselaw. Periodic "weather reports" will sum up the legal climate for online activity.

The site will help you understand the protections intellectual property laws and the First Amendment give to your online activities. The Internet offers individuals new opportunities to express their views, parody politicians, celebrate their favorite movie stars, or criticize businesses. But not everyone feels the same. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some individuals and corporations are using intellectual property and other laws to silence online users. Certainly intellectual property rights should be respected -- and we hope this site will aid you in doing so -- but they shouldn't be misused to impede legitimate activity.

The project invites recipients and senders of cease and desist notices to send them to a central point for analysis, and to browse the website for background information and explanation of the laws they are charged with violating or enforcing. Clinical law students will prepare issue-spotting analyses of the letters in the question-and-answer style of FAQs, which we will post alongside the letters in an online database. The site aims to educate C&D recipients about their legal rights. Site visitors may search the database by subject area or keyword.

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