电子前沿基金会（Electronic Frontier Foundation，EFF）是美国在数码版权方面最知名的非营利组织。如果我告诉你，这个组织去年向外披露，它从谷歌公司（Google）那里获得了整整100万美元的资助——大约是该组织总收入的17%，有些人可能会大惊失色。因为电子前沿基金会称自己是一个“由会员资助”的组织。而且像大多数非营利组织一样，它也很珍惜身份独立、不参与商业争端和关注公众利益的光环和名声。

    事实上，谷歌去年的确把100万美元转到了电子前沿基金会的户头上。这笔钱并不属于企业捐赠，电子前沿基金会也不必把它报告成企业捐赠。而且假如电子前沿基金会今年又从Facebook那里获得了100万美元的话，这笔钱也同样不必报告成企业捐赠——而且Facebook也正打算掏这笔钱。这是因为谷歌和Facebook都成了集体诉讼案的被告，这两笔钱是奉法院之命支付的调解费。

    读者可能会想：“这笔钱当然不是捐赠！而且恰恰相反，这笔钱是因为有人针对他们提起诉讼，因此在法院强制下被迫支付给对方的费用。”其实这也不是故事的全貌。电子前沿基金会在相关案件的诉讼上并没有扮演任何角色，是谷歌和Facebook自己选择了EFF作为调解费的受益人。

    这笔一半是罚款、一半是自愿捐赠性质的费用被称为“近似罚金”（cy presawards，cy pres一词来自法语，意为“近似合理”——译注）。这种惩罚机制的理论是这样的：在判决中，原告律师与被告均同意，把赔偿款支付给实际受到侵害者没有可行性，因为分到每名受侵害者头上的金额太小了，无法保证这笔费用的分配。因此，原、被告均同意不向受侵害者群体做出赔偿，而是向慈善机构支付一定数额的金钱，以此作为次优选择。因为慈善机构间接地通过与本案有关的某些方式，促进了受侵害者群体的相关利益。

    谷歌和Facebook之所以要支付这笔钱，就是因为有人控告这两家公司涉嫌侵犯了用户的隐私权。在谷歌一案中，谷歌涉嫌在2010年2月布Google Buzz社交网络时暴露了用户的电子邮件。而Facebook则涉嫌在2011年2月推出所谓的“赞助故事”广告时，在没有获得用户明确许可的情况下，利用了用户（包括未成年人）的身份信息用于广告用途。在这两起官司中，还有21个其他的非营利机构也获得了、或即将或得近似罚金。不过电子前沿基金会仍然是其中最大的赢家，独自获得了1,610万美元罚金中的12%。（Google Buzz一案在2011年5月已尘埃落定，但Facebook一案直到今年6月才提交法庭，而且现在仍在受到不同意见者的挑战。）

    两起案件的原、被告双方均认为，向电子前沿基金会支付近似罚金是合理的，因为数码隐私问题恰好是这个基金会监督的问题之一。而且电子前沿基金会因为隐私和侵权问题斥责谷歌与Facebook的次数也着实不少了（虽说它从来没有针对这两家公司提起过诉讼），另外它也一直在声援网络隐私立法，而且它支持的隐私政策也一向是谷歌和Facebook所反对的。

    然而与此同时，在用户生成的侵权内容方面（比如盗版电影、照片或音乐），电子前沿基金会的态度通常与谷歌和Facebook是一致的，都不赞成版权所有人向传播方追究连带责任。可能就是因为这些原因，谷歌曾在2010年向电子前沿基金会纯粹自愿地捐赠了2.5万美金，在2011年又捐赠了1.8万美金。

    事实上，在谷歌与Facebook这两起案件中，至少一半以上获得近似罚金的非营利机构今年可能都或多或少地从谷歌和Facebook那里获得过一些捐赠，其中有些机构可能与这两家公司没有任何官司纠葛。比如民主与科技中心（the Center for Democracy and Technology，CDT）去年从Google Buzz一案中获得了50万美元的近似罚金，前年则从谷歌那里获得了34万美元的自愿捐助。现在它还有望从Facebook那里获得100万美元的近似罚金，而Facebook自从2009年起就是民主与科技中心在电子商务领域最大的捐助人之一。与此类似，斯坦福大学（Stanford University）互联网与社会中心（the Center for Internet and Society，CIS）也从Google Buzz一案中获得了50万美元的近似罚金，前年还从谷歌那里获得了40万美元的自愿捐赠（相当于当年CIS总收入的51%）。今年Facebook一案如果获批，CIS也将获得60万美元的近似罚金。

    在科技领域的版权问题上，电子前沿基金会、民主与科技中心和斯坦福大学的互联网与社会中心等组织都站在同一阵线上，与版权持有人展开混战。比如这三家非营利性机构都支持今年1月针对《禁止网络盗版法案》的断网抗议活动，而谷歌和Facebook也都反对这个法案。此外，在最近涉及谷歌的两起诉讼中，电子前沿基金会和民主与科技中心也分别向法庭递交了非当事人陈述意见，对谷歌表示支持。其中第一起诉讼是维亚康姆公司（Viacom）起诉谷歌的视频网站YouTube涉嫌侵犯版权；另一起是由语言课程公司Rosetta Stone状告谷歌拍卖其他公司的商标作为付费搜索的关键词，并且允许他人利用它的商标做广告。

    如果法院要求某个中立的个人向一家坚持与盗版侵权行为做斗争的慈善机构支付近似罚金的话，那么他的第一选择可能会是一家被谷歌和Facebook案中的诉讼各方彻底忽略了的机构——电子隐私信息中心（the Electronic Privacy Information Center，EPIC）。

    与谷歌和Facebook案中全部22个近似罚金的受益机构不同的是，电子隐私信息中心曾真刀真枪地针对谷歌和Facebook向美国联邦贸易委员会（the U.S. Federal Trade Commission）提起过诉讼，状告Google Buzz的侵权行为，以及Facebook涉嫌在未经用户许可的情况下，将用户身份信息用于广告用途等行为。正是在电子隐私信息中心的检举下，联盟贸易委员会针对两家公司采取了强制执行措施，两起诉讼最终以赔款和解告终。

    If the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the nation's preeminent digital rights nonprofit, had disclosed last year that it received a cool $1 million gift from Google -- about 17% of its total revenue -- some eyebrows might have been raised. The group typically describes itself as "member-supported" and, like most nonprofits, it treasures its above-the-commercial-fray, public-interest-group aura and reputation for independence.

    In fact, Google (GOOG) did transfer $1 million to the EFF last year, but the money did not have to be, and wasn't, reported as a corporate donation. And if, as currently planned, the EFF receives another $1 million this year from Facebook (FB), it won't have to report that as a donation either. That's because both transfers are formally court-ordered outlays being paid by those companies to settle class-action suits.

    "Well, of course those aren't donations!" the reader might interject. "They're the diametric opposite: involuntary, judicially mandated payments forced upon them by an adversary!" That's not the whole story either. These payments to the EFF are being made in suits the EFF played no role in bringing, and the defendants themselves -- Google and Facebook, in these instances -- helped select EFF to be their beneficiary.

    These weird, hybridized outlays -- part punitive fine, part voluntary donation -- are called cy presawards, meaning "as close as possible" (from the old Norman, cy pres comme possible). The theory behind them goes like this: In settling, the plaintiffs lawyers and the defendants agreed that awarding damages to actual class members would be impractical, because the sums owed each would be so tiny as to not warrant the expense of distribution. Accordingly, the parties agreed to pay the class nothing, but to pay a sum instead to charities that would serve as the next best thing, because the charities would theoretically promote the interests of class members in some indirect fashion pertinent to the lawsuit.

    These two awards to the EFF, for instance, stem from suits that alleged that Google and Facebook each violated their customers' privacy rights -- in Google's case, by exposing users' email contacts during its botched launch of its Google Buzz social network in February 2010 and, in Facebook's, by exploiting users' (including minors') identities and likenesses without express permission in its so-called "Sponsored Stories" ads in January 2011. In these two cases 21 other nonprofits also received, or stand to receive, money, though the EFF would be the biggest winner, taking in about 12% of the total $16.1 million doled out. (While the Google Buzz settlement was approved in May 2011, the Sponsored Stories settlement was just proposed in June, and is still being challenged by dissenters.)

    Giving cy pres money to the EFF makes sense, the parties in each case have argued, because digital privacy issues are one of the subjects the EFF monitors. It has not infrequently scolded (though never sued) Google and Facebook for privacy glitches and intrusions, and has advocated privacy legislation and policies that those companies oppose.

    At the same time, the EFF is often an ally of Google and Facebook when it comes to staving off liability to rights holders over user-generated infringing content, like pirated movies, photos, or music. Perhaps for these reasons, for instance, Google gave EFF about $25,000 in conventional, purely voluntary donations in 2010, and about $18,000 more in 2011.

    In fact, at least half of the cy pres recipients in these cases would very likely be getting at least some donations from Google or Facebook this year, whether or not any suit had ever been lodged against them. For instance, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), which got $500,000 from the Google Buzz cy pres award in 2011, received $340,000 in voluntary contributions from Google the year before. It's now slated to receive $1 million from the proposed Facebook award, though Facebook has been listed as one of CDT's leading e-commerce benefactors since at least 2009. Similarly, the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford (CIS), which received $500,000 from the Google Buzz award, had collected $400,000 in voluntary contributions from Google the year before (which amounted to 51% of CIS's total revenue that year). This year CIS will collect $600,000 from Facebook's Sponsored Stories settlement, if approved.

    The EFF, CDT, and Stanford's CIS all reliably line up on the tech sector side in scrimmages with copyright holders. All three supported, for instance, the January Internet blackout protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act -- legislation opposed by both Google and Facebook. EFF and CDT also each submitted amicus briefs supporting Google in its two most important recent litigations: Viacom's suit against Google's YouTube unit for copyright infringement, and a suit by Rosetta Stone, the language course company, challenging Google's practices of auctioning off other companies' trademarks for use as paid-search keywords and allowing them to be used in ad text as well.

    Now if some neutral individual had been tasked with awarding money to a charity that was single mindedly devoted to fighting precisely the sorts of wrongs alleged in the Google Buzz and Sponsored Stories class actions, his first choice would probably have been one that the settling parties in each case passed over entirely: the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

    Unlike any of the 22 cy pres recipients jointly proposed by the parties in the two cases, EPIC actually filed complaints against Google and Facebook with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the Google Buzz launch and Facebook's use of members' identities and likenesses in ad campaigns without permission. Prompted by EPIC's complaints, the FTC brought enforcement actions against each company which culminated in consent decrees.

    那么，为什么这两起诉讼中的原、被告各方在决定向慈善机构支付近似罚金时，都不约而同地忽略了电子隐私信息中心呢？同时，这两起诉讼最后的确选择了不少非营利组织作为受益人，比如位于大长滩的基督教青年会（YCMA）、位于奥克兰的青年电台（Youth Radio）、布鲁金斯学会（Brookings Institute，经常获得谷歌的捐赠）和麦克阿瑟基金（MacArthur Foundation，经常获得Facebook的捐赠）等。但为什么大家很难把这些机构当成忠心守护老百姓数码隐私的守夜人呢？

    是不是因为电子隐私信息中心在抗击侵权行为时表现得太激进，导致这两起诉讼的被告反对向它支付罚金呢？Google Buzz一案的原告律师盖里•梅森表示，原、被告之间的调解谈判是保密的，因此拒绝对此发表评论。而Facebook一案中的两位原告律师则没有回电话。

    2011年3月的Google Buzz一案中，电子隐私信息中心和其他7个关注网络隐私问题的非营利机构共同发起抗议，反对原告律师和被告将他们排除在罚金受益人之外。同时声称，原、被告实际上将大部分罚金给了“收了谷歌的钱，帮谷歌搞游说或给谷歌做咨询”的机构。（EFF、CDT和CIS都否认他们与谷歌是这种关系。他们表示自己完全独立自主，并表示他们收到的任何企业捐赠都是“不受限制”的，也就是说没有任何附加条件。）

    2011年5月，圣荷塞联邦地方法院审判长詹姆斯•威尔同意了电子隐私信息中心的要求，将50万美元的罚金划拨给了它。【与此同时他自行决定，另拨出50万美元罚金，捐给圣克拉拉大学（Santa Clara University）的一个伦理中心，而威尔审判长本人恰好也是这所大学法学院的教师。】

    近似罚金并不是由科技公司发明的。这个原则非常古老，经常用来解决信托法领域某个反复出现的问题。比如富兰克林•罗斯福总统1938年创立了畸型儿基金会（March of Dimes Foundation）。当时罗斯福明确表示，这个基金会要与小儿麻痹症做斗争。后来美国的小儿麻痹症得到了控制，该基金会希望征得公众的同意，转而与其它疾病进行抗争。法庭认为，畸型儿基金会的这种做法非常近似罗斯福总统的初衷，因而引用了近似罚金原则，同意了该基金会的请求，

    到了上世纪80年代，近似罚金原则（或者是像理查德•蒲士纳法官在2004年的一次裁定中所说的那样——“其它什么东西借其之名”）逐渐进入了集体诉讼案的调解操作中。有些批评人士认为，近似罚金可能变成合法的“行贿基金”，因为无论是法官、原告律师，甚至连被告人都可以利用这笔钱进一步做有利于自己的事。过去的10个月里，有三家联邦上诉法院都驳回了“近以罚金”调解申请，因为他们在研究后都认为，这些接收罚金的慈善机构几乎与案件中的利益受侵害方没有任何关系。

    在集体诉讼案的调解过程中，原告律师最关心的是如何拿到最多的律师费，而被告企业最关心的是如何掏最少的钱平息事态。因此原告律师与被告为了达成目标，可能会牺牲受侵害方的利益。集体诉讼公平中心（Center for Class Action Fairness）的西奥多•弗兰克律师写道，近似罚金“为了使原告律师实际上获得最大份额的代理费，而掩饰了被告真正的和解成本”，因而可能导致滥用。

    例如在Google Buzz一案中，从表面上来看，原告的代理律师获得了总罚金的四分之一作为代理费，也就是810万美元中的210万。这听起来还好，属于正常水平。不过批评人士们可能会抗议道，这笔钱里没有一分钱花到了实际受侵害者的身上，而接收了近似罚金的慈善机构可能以前已经或多或少地受到过被告的资助。如果真是这样，那么律师们的律师费可能的确过高了，因为他们为受侵害群体争得的利益实在太少了。

    在Facebook一案中，律师费过高的可能性更为明显。如果调解方案获批，那么原告律师会得到1,000万美元，非营利机构也能拿到1,000万美元，实际受侵害者一分钱也拿不到。光是在表面上看起来就很不公平。而且Facebook本来就是某些受益机构背后的金主，即便没有这起官司，Facebook也可能通过其他渠道对他们进行捐赠。因此原告律师们实际上有可能获得这笔调解费的一半以上，看起来更是不公平。

    在本案的诉讼文件上，原告律师强调，调解内容还包括一些禁制令，利益受到侵害的用户未来可能会从这些禁制令中获得好处。理由是Facebook已经同意修改服务协议的部分条款，让用户有机会选择“不参与”赞助广告。然后原告律师表示，对于受侵害的用户来说，这些条款更改的有效程度居然价值整整1.03亿美元，因为用户们“现在有机会控制相当于X个月的广告资产的使用权。（X所表示的数据仍然处于保密状态）。

    刚刚过去的7月，电子隐私信息中心以及代表反对调解结果的受侵害群体的代理律师分别质疑了Facebook一案调解结果的正当性。电子隐私信息中心和其他三家关注网络隐私的组织要求法院采取透明的、公开审请的程序，来确定近似罚金的受益人。不过法庭尚未受理这些投诉。部分原因是由于这些要求刚刚提交到法庭，负责此案的露西•科荷法官就自动调离了此案。虽然她没有透露具体原因，但根据公开报道显示，她和她丈夫与即将获得调解费的一些慈善组织存在某些联系。

    有些其它调解案的近似罚金也获得了法院的批准，尽管其中可能不乏类似、甚至更严重的利益冲突。科荷法官在这个当口上选择避嫌，也不失为一种进步。

    译者：朴成奎

    How, then, could the parties -- again and again -- have overlooked EPIC when doling out the cash? How, indeed, when so many of the groups that the parties did select—like the YMCA of Greater Long Beach, Youth Radio of Oakland, the Brookings Institute (a regular Google beneficiary), and the MacArthur Foundation (a regular Facebook beneficiary) -- are hardly thought of as digital privacy watchdogs?

    Could it be that the defendants in each case blackballed EPIC precisely because it was too aggressively devoted to combatting the wrongs that allegedly harmed the class? Lead Google Buzz plaintiffs attorney Gary Mason declined to comment, explaining that settlement negotiations are confidential. Two lead plaintiffs attorneys in the Sponsored Stories case did not return calls.

    In the Google Buzz case in March 2011, EPIC and seven other privacy-focused nonprofits objected to their exclusion from the cy pres funds, protesting that the plaintiffs lawyers and Google had, in effect, arranged to give the majority of those funds "to organizations that are currently paid by Google to lobby for or to consult for the company." (The EFF, CDT, and CIS all reject that characterization of their relationship to Google. They aver, rather, their complete independence, and stress that any corporate donations they accept are "unrestricted" in nature—meaning that they come with no strings attached.)

    In May 2011, Chief Judge James Ware of the federal district court in San Jose granted EPIC's request, carving out a $500,000 tranche for it. (At the same time he spontaneously—without prompting from anyone—sliced off another $500,000 piece for an ethics center at Santa Clara University, a school where Judge Ware serves on the law school faculty.)

    Tech companies did not invent cy pres awards. The doctrine is ancient, having arisen to address a recurring problem in trusts law. For instance, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt set up the March of Dimes Foundation in 1938, he specified that it would fight polio. But once that disease was tamed, the foundation sought permission to fight other diseases. Invoking the cy pres doctrine, courts granted its request, finding that doing so would carry out Roosevelt's original intent as closely as possible.

    In the 1980s the cy pres doctrine—"or rather something parading in its name," as federal appeals court judge Richard Posner archly put it in a 2004 ruling—burrowed its way into the realm of class-action settlements. Critics have referred to cy pres awards as judicial "slush funds," since judges, plaintiffs lawyers, and—as the Google Buzz and Sponsored Stories cases suggest—even defendants can use them to further their own agendas. In the past ten months three federal appeals courts have struck down cy pres awards after concluding that they funded charities that had virtually nothing to do with the class members for whom the cases were ostensibly filed.

    The key recurring concern with any class action settlement is that plaintiffs attorneys, desiring to maximize their fees, and defendant corporations, eager to minimize total payout, will collude to achieve their goals at the expense of class members. Cy pres awards can be enlisted in that abusive process, attorney Theodore H. Frank of the Center for Class Action Fairness, has written, by "disguising the true cost of a settlement to the defendant to maximize the share of the actual recovery received by the plaintiffs attorneys."

    For instance, in the Google Buzz case, on the face of things the plaintiffs attorneys were receiving about one-quarter of the total award -- $2.1 million of an $8.1 million fund -- which sounds well within the normal range. Yet a critic might protest that none of this particular award went to the actual class members, while much of it went to charities the defendant probably would have funded to some degree anyway. If so, then the attorneys fees may have been excessive given how little the lawyers actually won for the class.

    In the Facebook class action, the potential for fee inflation is even more palpable. If the deal is approved, the plaintiffs attorneys get $10 million, the nonprofits get $10 million, and the class members get zilch, which does not look great even on its face. To the extent that some of the nonprofits are also regular beneficiaries of Facebook's largesse, and would likely have gotten at least some of their cy pres money even without any lawsuit, the attorneys would be getting more than half the cash generated by the settlement, which looks even worse.

    In court papers supporting the deal, the plaintiffs stress that the Facebook settlement also includes injunctive relief from which class members may benefit in the future, because Facebook has agreed to fiddle with some of the fine print in its terms-of-service agreements and to give its users opportunities to "opt-out" of the Sponsored Stories program. The plaintiffs then claim that these structural changes are effectively worth --are you sitting down? -- $103 million to the class, because class members will "now have the opportunity to control the use of what is essentially a [redacted]/month advertising asset." (The redacted figure remains under seal.)

    In July, EPIC and attorneys representing other objecting class members each challenged the adequacy of the Facebook settlement. Alternatively, EPIC and three other privacy groups have asked the court to redetermine cy pres recipients using transparent, open-application procedures. These objections have not yet been ruled upon, in part because, as soon as they were lodged, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh recused herself from the case. Though she did not state her reasons, she and her husband had ties to some of the charities that stood to gain from the settlement, according to published reports

    Since other cy pres awards have been upheld despite similar or worse apparent conflicts, Judge Koh's sensitivity was at least progress of a sort.