from the that-was-that dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2018, Ajit Pai was trying to pretend that everybody supported repealing net neutrality, while ISP lobbyists were trying and then succeeding at derailing California’s own net neutrality law. Pai was also pushing for rule changes that would benefit Sinclair Broadcasting, while being under investigation for his relationship with the company. That wasn’t all: the FCC was also taking aim at line sharing rules in a bit to further hamstring broadband competition, while Spring and T-Mobile were telling the agency all about how their megamerger would create jobs.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2013, the fallout from the Snowden revelations continued. Dick Cheney was spinning a yarn about how NSA surveillance could have stopped 9/11, while the agency and its apologists were making very shaky claims about all the terrorist attacks that surveillance supposedly did prevent. Obama offered up a weak defense of the NSA spying on Charlie Rose, Lindsey Graham was defending the program by arguing about something entirely different, the agency boss was asking for blanket immunity for the companies that helped with the spying, and commentators were arguing that the press was committing a crime by reporting on the leaks.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2008, the Associated Press created a kerfuffle by trying to write its own fair use rules about how bloggers can quote its reporting, proposing the silly threshold of “four words are free, more than that costs money”. It tried to claim it was involved in a “conversation” with bloggers, but was caught quoting bloggers without permission itself, and then just tried to declare the whole thing done.
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