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This Week In Techdirt History: April 26th - May 2nd

This Week In Techdirt History: April 26th - May 2nd

4 years ago
Anonymous $9CO2RSACsf

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200502/11401044424/this-week-techdirt-history-april-26th-may-2nd.shtml

This week in 2015, we learned more about one of the NSA's sweeping but useless surveillance programs, and about the stunning lack of oversight when the CIA wants to drone-strike people. But we weren't learning more about the TPP, since it was secret, even though President Obama was demanding critics explain what was wrong with the agreement they weren't allowed to see (just as a UN expert was saying that secret trade negotiations are a threat to human rights). Tom Friedman, meanwhile, was maybe going just a little overboard in advocating for the deal.

This week in 2010, the UK Labour Party was yet again caught apparently infringing on copyright with a campaign poster while also being the champions of the Digital Economy Bill and its draconian copyright rules. They claimed "innocent error" — a defense notably absent from their own law. In the US, a worrying bill was pushing to extend DMCA-style takedowns to "personal information", while Twitter was taking down a lot of tweets over bogus DMCA claims, and an appeals court upheld a hugely problematic ruling about who counts as a journalist.