Our 2015 accomplishments!

Whether you’ve joined us as a Student or an Open Internet Defender we're stronger than ever thanks to support from individuals like you!

If you haven't become a Supporter, we need your support more than ever this year. Please consider joining our community of supporters by making a donation and help us continue to fulfill our mission to:

• Provide free and dramatically reduced fee one-to-one legal services to underserved creators and innovators that need specialized help with Internet, intellectual property, media, and technology law
• Defend the Open Internet and push for badly needed copyright reform.
• Create high quality legal educational materials and to educate the next generation of lawyers.

With your support we’ve done this and more in 2015 by:

• Launching our Fair Use App to provide filmmakers and video creators with a practical tool for learning more about copyright law.
• Bringing our legal knowledge to you at  San Diego City College, TwitchCon, CyberHive, SBEP Annual Community Outreach Meeting, Whittier Law School's Distinguished Speaker Series, and The National Association of Hispanic Journalists San Diego/Tijuana chapter.
• Assisting on our 1,500th legal matter and serving more than 500,000 people this year through the educational resources on our website.
• Releasing and providing critical updates to the following guides:
  • Best practices for avoiding defamation on social media
  • Disastrous disclaimers in the digital era: a how to guide on correctly implementing disclaimers in the age of digital media.
  • A Citizen's Legal Guide To Using Creative Commons Licenses
  • Best Practices For Creative Commons Attributions - How To Attribute Works You Reuse Under A Creative Commons License
  • Copyright FAQ: Do I need a licence to use a font?
• We helped secure critical exemptions that allow filmmakers to bypass encryption and technical protections measures for purposes of fair use.
• We were heavily cited in the FCC's historic Open Internet Order, and the Copyright Office's 1201 Anti-circumvention Exemptions Ruling!
• We joined coalitions to:
  • support critical protections for military whistleblowers,
  • demand Facebook fix its authentic name policy,
  • tell TPP Negotiators to stand up for creator and user safeguards,
  • prevent the expansion of the "20th century digital black hole,"
  • tell Presdient Obama to ensure you get to see the educational materials your tax dollars pay for,
• We were approved to provide the New Media Rights Internet and Media Law Clinic with California Western School of Law  year round to better train the next generation of lawyer to understand the needs of creators and entrepreneurs.

In 2016, with your support we plan to:

• Continuing to provide free and dramatically reduced fee one-to-one legal services to  400+ underserved creators and innovators.
• Releasing our first book aimed at helping creators and entrepreneurs better understand the legal issues they may encounter while innovating and creating.
• Sponsoring and organizing more than 12 workshops and community events throughout the San Diego region and throughout the United States about digital rights.
• Working on policy initiatives to encourage the FCC to adopt real Net Neutrality measures.