The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a nonprofit digital civil liberties organization founded in 1990. It is the major civil liberties organization working on issues that intersect with stallman's concerns: digital-restrictions-management, software-patents-opposition, surveillance, and the right-to-read issues Stallman dramatized in right-to-read-essay.
The EFF was founded in response to early government overreach in computer crime cases. It has since become the leading advocacy organization for digital rights in the United States, working on issues including encryption policy, surveillance law, intellectual property, and free expression online.
The EFF's work on digital-restrictions-management and software-patents-opposition aligns closely with stallman's positions and those of the free-software-foundation. The EFF has litigated and lobbied against provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that Stallman regards as restrictions on software freedom and the four-freedoms.
Unlike the free-software-foundation, the EFF does not take a formal position on software-freedom-vs-open-source or require that software be licensed under copyleft terms. It is a broader civil liberties organization that overlaps with free software advocacy on specific issues rather than sharing Stallman's comprehensive philosophical framework.
larry-lessig and creative-commons emerged from the same milieu as the EFF and represent the extension of digital rights advocacy into intellectual property reform and alternative licensing.