EFF is suing Diebold on behalf of the Online Policy Group, who are being threatened with a bogus copyright action in retaliation for linking to a website that describes the technical failings of Diebold's voting machines.
"Diebold's blanket cease-and-desist notices are a blatant abuse of copyright law," said EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer. "Publication of the Diebold documents is clear fair use because of their importance to the public debate over the accuracy of electronic voting machines."
Diebold threatened not only the ISPs of direct publishers of the corporate documents, but also the ISPs of those who merely publish links to the documents. In one such instance, the ISP Online Policy Group (OPG) refused to comply with Diebold's demand that it prohibit Independent Media Network (IndyMedia) from linking to Diebold documents. Neither IndyMedia nor any other publisher hosted by OPG has yet published the Diebold documents directly.
"As an ISP committed to free speech, we are defending our users' right to link to information that's critical to the debate on the reliability of electronic voting machines," said OPG's Colocation Director David Weekly. "This case is an important step in defending free speech by helping protect small publishers and ISPs from frivolous legal threats by large corporations."
