Cindy Cohn

Last updated
Cindy Cohn
Cindy Cohn in 2014 (cropped).jpg
Cindy Cohn photographed in Berkeley, California, in 2014
Born
United States
EducationBachelor of Arts/Science, The University of Iowa

Doctor of Jurisprudence, University of Michigan

London School of Economics

Cindy Cohn is an American civil liberties attorney specializing in Internet law. She represented Daniel J. Bernstein and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in Bernstein v. United States .

Contents

Education

She received her undergraduate degree at the University of Iowa and the London School of Economics and her Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of Michigan. [1]

Law Career

In 1997 Cohn was recognized by California Lawyer Magazine as one of the "Lawyers of the Year" for her work. After serving for 15 years as legal director and general counsel [2] for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, she became its executive director in 2015. [3] [4]

In addition to Bernstein, some of Cohn's significant cases include Hepting v. AT&T (class action against AT&T for collaborating with the National Security Agency program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications), In re Sony BMG Tech. litigation (class action against Sony BMG for placing dangerous digital rights management (DRM) on customers' computers), OPG v. Diebold (Diebold was held liable for sending out unfounded cease and desist notices to internet service providers (ISPs) in an effort to stop public discussion of the flaws in its electronic voting machines), and DVD CCA v. Bunner [5] (representing Andrew Bunner against the DVD Copy Control Association defending his right to republish a computer program that he found republished elsewhere on the Internet).[ citation needed ]

Awards and honors

In 2006 Cohn was named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by the National Law Journal . In November 2018, she was featured among "America's Top 50 Women In Tech" by Forbes . [6] Cohn also serves on the board of directors of the nonprofits Human Rights Advocates and the Verified Voting Foundation.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DeCSS</span> Free open-source program to decode DVDs with encryption

DeCSS is one of the first free computer programs capable of decrypting content on a commercially produced DVD video disc. Before the release of DeCSS free and open source operating systems could not play encrypted video DVDs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Gilmore (activist)</span> Internet activist

John Gilmore is one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Cypherpunks mailing list, and Cygnus Solutions. He created the alt.* hierarchy in Usenet and is a major contributor to the GNU Project.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jon Lech Johansen</span> Norwegian programmer (born 1983)

Jon Lech Johansen, also known as DVD Jon, is a Norwegian programmer who has worked on reverse engineering data formats. He wrote the DeCSS software, which decodes the Content Scramble System used for DVD licensing enforcement. Johansen is a self-trained software engineer, who quit high school during his first year to spend more time with the DeCSS case. He moved to the United States and worked as a software engineer from October 2005 until November 2006. He then moved to Norway but moved back to the United States in June 2007.

<i>Bernstein v. United States</i> 1990s legal case involving Snuffle encryption

Bernstein v. United States is a set of court cases brought by Daniel J. Bernstein challenging restrictions on the export of cryptography from the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Felten</span> American computer scientist (born 1963)

Edward William Felten is the Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where he was also the director of the Center for Information Technology Policy from 2007 to 2015 and from 2017 to 2019. On November 4, 2010, he was named Chief Technologist for the Federal Trade Commission, a position he officially assumed January 3, 2011. On May 11, 2015, he was named the Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer. In 2018, he was nominated to and began a term as Board Member of PCLOB.

Ripping is the extraction of digital content from a container, such as a CD, onto a new digital location. Originally, the term meant to rip music from Commodore 64 games. Later, the term was applied to ripping WAV or MP3 files from digital audio CDs, and after that to the extraction of contents from any storage media, including DVD and Blu-ray discs, as well as the extraction of video game sprites.

Stardust William David Blumenfeld Doherty is the former executive director of the Verified Voting Foundation and VerifiedVoting.org and was the originator of the Election Incident Reporting System, used to detect over 40,000 problems with the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election and to ensure that all legally qualified voters would have the opportunity to vote.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic Frontiers Australia</span>

Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc. (EFA) is a non-profit Australian national non-government organisation representing Internet users concerned with online liberties and rights. It has been vocal on the issue of Internet censorship in Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Extended Copy Protection</span>

Extended Copy Protection (XCP) is a software package developed by the British company First 4 Internet and sold as a copy protection or digital rights management (DRM) scheme for Compact Discs. It was used on some CDs distributed by Sony BMG and sparked the 2005 Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal; in that context it is also known as the Sony rootkit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wendy Seltzer</span> American attorney

Wendy Seltzer is an American attorney and, as of January 2023, a staff member at Tucows where she is the Principal Identity Architect. She is known for her many years of work with the World Wide Web Consortium, where, among many roles, she was the chair of the Improving Web Advertising Business Group.

<i>Online Policy Group v. Diebold, Inc.</i>

Online Policy Group v. Diebold, Inc., 337 F. Supp. 2d 1195, was a lawsuit involving an archive of Diebold's internal company e-mails and Diebold's contested copyright claims over them. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Stanford Cyberlaw Clinic provided pro bono legal support for the non-profit ISP and the Swarthmore College students, respectively.

Sarah Beth Deutsch is an American attorney who was Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of the telecommunications company Verizon Communications until her retirement in 2015. Since leaving Verizon, she is a practicing attorney in the Washington, D.C., area handling copyright, trademark, privacy and internet policy issues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Godwin</span> American attorney and author

Michael Wayne Godwin is an American attorney and author. He was the first staff counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and he created the Internet adage Godwin's law and the notion of an Internet meme. From July 2007 to October 2010, he was general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation. In March 2011, he was elected to the Open Source Initiative board. Godwin has served as a contributing editor of Reason magazine since 1994. In April 2019, he was elected to the Internet Society board. From 2015 to 2020, he was general counsel and director of innovation policy at the R Street Institute. In August 2020, he and the Blackstone Law Group filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on behalf of the employees of TikTok, and worked there between June 2021 and June 2022. Since October 2022, he has worked as the policy and privacy lead at Anonym, a "privacy-safe advertising" startup.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1990 to promote Internet civil liberties.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit advocacy and legal organization based in the United States.

<i>DVD Copy Control Assn, Inc. v. Bunner</i>

DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. v. Bunner was a lawsuit that was filed by the DVD Copy Control Association in California, accusing Andrew Bunner and several others of misappropriation of trade secrets under California's implementation of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. The case went through several rounds of appeals and was last heard and decided in February 2004 by the California Court of Appeal for the Sixth District.

Lori Fena is an American internet activist, entrepreneur, and author, best known as the former director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation from 1995 to 1998 and author of "The Hundredth Window". Fena is currently the co-founder and VP of Business Development for Personal Digital Spaces and Founder and executive director of the Sustainable Information Economy.

<i>Jewel v. National Security Agency</i>

Jewel v. National Security Agency, 673 F.3d 902, was a class action lawsuit argued before the District Court for the Northern District of California and the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, filed by Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of American citizens who believed that they had been surveilled by the National Security Agency (NSA) without a warrant. The EFF alleged that the NSA's surveillance program was an "illegal and unconstitutional program of dragnet communications surveillance" and claimed violations of the Fourth Amendment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Eckersley (computer scientist)</span> Australian computer scientist (1978/1979–2022)

Peter Daniel Eckersley was an Australian computer scientist, computer security researcher and activist. From 2006 to 2018, he worked at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, including as chief computer scientist and head of AI policy. In 2018, he left the EFF to become director of research at the Partnership on AI, a position he held until 2020. In 2021, he co-founded the AI Objectives Institute.

References

  1. "Cindy Cohn". Forbes. Retrieved 2021-09-21.
  2. "Cindy Cohn". Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved 3 October 2014.
  3. "Cindy Cohn to become EFF's new executive director in 2015". Electronic Frontier Foundation. 5 November 2014. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
  4. "Cindy Cohn". Forbes. Retrieved 2021-09-21.
  5. Electronic Frontier Foundation (September 2005). "DVD-CCA v. Bunner and DVD-CCA v. Pavlovich". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Archived from the original on 25 July 2009. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
  6. "Cindy Cohn". Forbes .