from the what-was dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2016, transparency was below assault on many fronts. A North Carolina legislator who was a former police chief pushed through legislation to maintain physique digital camera footage out of the general public’s arms, whereas in the middle of two days we obtained two examples of cops making recordings disappear, and the Philadelphia police division responded to an open information request by releasing one doc: the journalist’s own request email. An Ohio court docket sanctioned a lawyer for sharing publicly-available court documents with journalists, whereas one other court docket secured a grand jury indictment in opposition to a newspaper writer for filing open records requests. The particulars about Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server confirmed several emails withheld from FOIA availability (as an appeals court docket stated e-mail saved on non-public servers is still subject to FOIA requests). And the FBI was vacuuming up native legislation enforcement paperwork in regards to the Orlando capturing to block open records requests. President Obama did signal a FOIA reform invoice… just in time for it to have no impact on his administration.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2011, a gaggle of legislation professors got here out against the PROTECT IP bill, whereas Hollywood was ramping up a smear marketing campaign in opposition to opponents of the bill, and one Senator removed himself as a co-sponsor (although the explanations had been unclear). PROTECT IP wasn’t the one dangerous piece of copyright laws both: an anti-streaming, anti-embedding invoice caught the attention of video game streamers who realized the way it might influence them, and a bunch of YouTubers began putting up videos to protest it.
But maybe most memorably, this was the week that the infamous Monkey Selfie fiasco kicked off.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2006, the recording business was losing its time suing international sites whereas the Associated Press was looking at piracy all over the world and largely missing the point. Attempts to get faculty college students onto particular music obtain platform swere a total flop, report labels had been turning to elaborate deluxe CDs to compete with piracy, and Australia was looking for to regulate YouTube.
But, as soon as once more most memorably, this was the week that Senator Ted Stevens delivered the infamous “series of tubes” line about the internet.
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