The Electronic Frontier Foundation will use MacArthur funding to prepare for and attend industry meetings, and to educate the European public and European consumer groups about issues related to digital rights management and intellectual property.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an organization that was established in 1990 to defend civil rights and civil liberties in cyberspace. They have worked on a number of cases that have become landmarks in establishing a legal framework for the rights and standards in a digital environment, including a case that gave email the same legal protections as phone calls and another case that determined that computer code is protected speech under the First Amendment. They are currently involved in other legal cases involving trademark law and domain names, anonymity, peer-to-peer technologies, and Internet blocking.

About the Initiative on Intellectual Property and the Long-Term Protection of the Public Domain: Through the Initiative on Intellectual Property and the Long-Term Protection of the Public Domain, the Foundation seeks to contribute to an intellectual property regime in the digital era that balances the legitimate needs of both creators and the public. Grants support policy analysis, scholarly research, and participation in significant international forums where intellectual property policy is made. The Foundation will also support work designed to protect over the long term the public domain of information and ideas.

Other recipients of support through the Foundation's Initiative on Intellectual Property and the Long-Term Protection of the Public Domain include Creative Commons to develop and implement a new form of licensing for creative works and an intellectual property conservancy; Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society to explore the future of copyright in a digital environment; and the Center for the Study of Responsive Law to analyze the intellectual property restrictions being proposed in international agreements, such as the Hague Convention.

Grants for this initiative are made through the Foundation's General Program. Those seeking to make copyright as restrictive as possible are certainly well funded - this helps even things out a bit.