Our 2018 Accomplishments!

Whether you’ve joined us as a Student or 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 2018:

• Participated in the DuckDuckGo Privacy Challenge and raised $35,471, and received a $40,000 grant from the Rose Foundation to support our privacy work. Thank you to all of our supporters!
• Held free legal consultation sessions at Nest Cowork for startups seeking assistance with copyright, trademark, contract and other legal issues.
• Provided legal services to filmmakers and nonprofits seeking legal advice related to their social impact films and projects, including a film about the history of gay bars in San Diego, and a community storytelling series.
• Adapted and licensed our Fair Use App to the University of California system to help UC faculty and staff understand and leverage copyright and fair use in their projects.
• Spoke to Wired about the extent to which a person can own the rights to a persona from a copyright and right of publicity perspective, and to GamesBeat (the gaming division of VentureBeat) about what independent game developers can do to make sure they’re treated fairly by their studios.
• Teamed up with EFF and the Organization for Transformative Works to comment and testify in favor of DMCA Anti-circumvention exemptions that protect fair use before the US Copyright Office. The Office renewed and expanded important fair use exemptions for video creators based on our input.
• Reached our 1000th sale of our book Don’t Panic :) A Legal Guide (in plain English) for Small Businesses and Creative Professionals. The book is now adopted at colleges across the country including the Berklee College of Music.  You can get your copy of Don’t Panic today!
• Wrote about some of the highlights and potential implications of the new California Consumer Privacy Act in Forbes.
• Advocated for the protection of net neutrality by urging California legislators to enact state-based Net Neutrality protections.
• Launched two new consumer privacy guides. One is a guide for consumers to protect themselves from unwanted telemarketing, and the other is a best practices guide for small businesses.
• Released a new national list of Arts and IP Volunteer Lawyer Organizations for creators, entrepreneurs and other lawyers to help find other legal organizations working to fill the justice gap.
• Published a series of articles on Forbes about freelance contracts for creators.
• Brought our legal knowledge to the community with presentations and workshops at the 2018 Association of Healthcare Journalists annual meeting in Phoenix, the NLGJA 2018 National Convention in Palm Springs, the Practising Law Institute, the Alliance for Community Media National Conference, the San Diego Press Club, Vlog Summit 2018, SD Urban Beats, the SD Media Pros, San Diego State, San Diego City College, and San Diego Continuing Education.

In 2019 with your support, we plan to:

• Continue to provide free and dramatically reduced fee one-to-one legal services to 500+ underserved creators and innovators.
• Sponsor and organize various workshops, clinics, and community events throughout the San Diego region and the United States about privacy law, copyright law and digital rights.
• Work on policy initiatives including securing expanded exemptions to section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and fighting to preserve net neutrality.