One year ago today
Leaked NSA slide-deck claims that NSA has “direct access” to servers at Google, Apple, Facebook, Skype, Yahoo, and many others: The Guardian and The Washington Post have both been leaked a 41-slide NSA presentation on a program called PRISM, which — according to the slides — gives the spy agency (part of the US military) “direct access” to the servers of the biggest Internet companies in America, including Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo and Skype.
Five years ago today
Pirate Party takes two EuroParl seats! The Pirate Party, a Swedish copyright reform party that was inspired by The Pirate Bay, has won two seats in the European Parliamentary election.
Ten years ago today
First-ever look inside a WIPO treaty negotiation (day 1 of 3): I’m at the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, along with the largest-ever public-interest coalition in WIPO history, We’ve all come to oppose the Broadcast Treaty (which will make the Web illegal and require the world’s governments to mandate the design everything that can receive a signal, from a PC to a radio) and the proposed Database Treaty (which would let people who’d amassed public, uncopyrightable facts turn them into their exlusive property).