Last night, certain segments of Twitter were startled to see the Electronic Frontier Foundation publicizing a blog post with the title "Tea Party, Taxes and Why the Original Patriots Would've Revolted Against the Surveillance State." The EFF, with its focus on defending digital civil liberties, is usually seen as cosmopolitan and left-leaning, not conservative.

Hoping to encourage cooperative computing on the Web, the Electronic Frontier Foundation offered a $100,000 prize to anyone who could come up with a prime number with more than 10 million digits. A government-funded state university, UCLA, will claim the prize, rather than some promising amateur using distributed Web computing. UCLA researchers discovered a 13 million-digit prime number, using a dedicated network of 75 computers running Windows XP. The EFF's generous donation will increase UCLA's $1.5 billion endowment by .007 percent. (Photo by cleong)

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel has ruled that fair use — a complex set of exemptions to copyright meant to allow for commentary, criticism, and parody — must be taken into consideration before rightsholders request the removal of infringing content from websites like YouTube. The improper takedown suit was brought by Stephanie Lenz after Universal Music Group asked the popular video-sharing site to remove a clip of Lenz's then 13-month old son dancing to party-jam classic "Let's Go Crazy" by his purple majesty, the pied piper of Minneapolis, Prince. Lenz and her lawyers from the Electronic Frontier Foundation can now proceed with their case seeking damages against Universal for issuing an improper takedown request.

Three MIT students who'd been blocked by a judge from presenting their findings on "vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system" at this month's Defcon security conference are free to speak starting Friday. A U.S. District Court judge refused to extend the 10-day gag order issued against Zack Anderson (pictured), RJ Ryan, and Alessandro Chiesa just before the conference. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority had asked for a five-month restraining order to allow time to fix the vulnerabilities. San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation represented the students. (Photo by Zack Anderson)

You can fill this blank in yourself: Three students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were scheduled to present an analysis of "vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system" at the Defcon security conferences in Vegas. They were stopped at the last minute after the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority sued them for allegedly violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has chosen to represent the students. That's great news, if only because it involves the EFF standing up for something besides BitTorrent.

Michael Jordan, former CEO of CBS, has been tapped by Redlasso as an advisor, presumably to glad-hand the TV companies which sent the company a cease and desist letter last week. The startup has cobbled together a fair-use defense; the Electronic Frontier Foundation told Valleywag they're watching the case but declined to weigh in. But if Redlasso were going to fight the networks in court, it would have hired lawyers, not a dealmaker like Jordan. The company has been in talks with the networks for years. So what went wrong? Hulu.

With the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle successfully challenged an FBI request to secretly hand over information about the site's users. The FBI had sent Kahle a "national security letter" which requested personal information about a particular user and put Kahle under a gag order. Approximately 200,000 of the secret requests, which need no judicial approval, were issued between 2003 and 2006 after the NSL program was expanded by the Patriot Act. Kahle's case is one of only three the ACLU is aware of where NSL requests were successfully overturned in court. (Photo by David Silver)

Was there a single stereotype of this fogbound city missed in last night's party for the Electronic Frontier Foundation? Full-arm sleeve tattoos, white people with dreadlocks, Web poseurs, old guys in tie-dye shirts. Hands off the Internet — and off me, you dirty zippies! Capping off the party's self-congratulations, the world's most pretentious new chocolatier, Louis Rossetto, founder of Wired, catered the event. These aren't just chocolates, people — they're a Bengali typhoon of flavor.

It was only last week that Comcast was getting called the Antichrist for disrupting BitTorrent users on its network and preventing the Associated Press from downloading the Bible. Since then, Comcast has offered nothing but excuses. Now, Comcast might get sued.

• Reflecting on an interview with TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington, a Reddit co-founder says the site "isn't serious" — and no one inside the tech bubble understands that. [Raw Thought]

Let's catch up with the wide world of AOL privacy invasion news, the regular update on the private user records that AOL revealed to the public!

• The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs decides to actually be funny, writing a scathing review of last weekend's debaucherous Yelp party. Aw, Steve, let 'em have their fun. Weren't you ever young and loaded with millions in funding? [Fake Steve]

Hoo, that's a relief! I asked Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Jason Schultz to comment on Facebook's cease-and-desist against Gawker Media. (The EFF defends digital freedoms.) (And Jason's just speaking as an expert, not as our lawyer.) He says precedent's on Gawker's side:

Do something smart this week — or drink someone's free beer.

Valleywag friend and video star Irina Slutsky cruised the EFF's official SXSW party with videographer Eddie Codel last night for talk-show vlog Geek Entertainment TV. "It's what people think all tech conference parties are like" — full of barely suppressed sexual tension and cheeky robots. Here's her run-down of the nerdiest party at South By.