This Week In Techdirt History - September 18th - 24th
from the followups dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2011, the Pirate Party scored another big victory when it took 9% of the vote and a bunch of seats in parliament in Berlin. Their influence was badly needed across Europe, what with Italy proposing a one-strike law to ban people from the internet based on a single accusation of infringement (prompting questions about whether that was even legal in Europe), and the EU Commissioner straight-up asking big entertainment companies to step up their lobbying for more draconian copyright law.
Also this week in 2011: the now-tiresomely-ubiquitous "Keep Calm And Carry On" poster was at the height of its popularity, and the trademark battles were heating up.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2006, HP was still grappling with the massive spying scandal that hit it last week. First, more details came out that exposed even more elaborate spying and made the company look even worse, although it still wasn't clear whether or not California law actually made any of the activities illegal. Chairperson Patricia Dunn's pleas of ignorance began to fall apart when more documents suggested she was closely involved, and by the end of the week she resigned from the company only to be replaced by CEO Mark Hurd. But... additional leaked memos implicated him in the scandal too.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2001, Techdirt (and the world) was still reeling from the events of September 11th. The FBI was already moving to expand its wiretapping abilities, companies with poor taste were already moving to capitalize on the tragedy, scammers with even fewer morals were doing the same in their own way and, of course, the conspiracy theories were already flowing. Publishers of violent video games were delaying their launches, and after every store sold out of American flags it turned out they were pretty hard to find online in 2001.
Seventy Years Ago
The Cannes Film Festival is one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions in the world of film, and generally seen as a bastion of movie artistry and creativity in a Hollywood-dominated world. The first ever festival was supposed to happen in 1939, until a pesky global conflict got in the way — but the dream survived the war, and the long-delayed Cannes Film Festival debuted on September 20th, 1946.
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off topic like a mofo...
it is almost a 'secret executive signing statement' for various gummint agencies (in this case, the FDA) to manipulate the media coverage (propagandize, if you will) such that it is 100% favorable...
in this case, utilizing a 'technique' that i wonder is even legal -if legally binding- yet is apparently being adopted by more agencies, korporations, and large institutions...
in short, they get virtually ALL the major media players in whatever segment are covering that agency's issues, announcements, and pronouncements, and have them sign what amounts do a 'non-disclosure' agreement: the mediawhores (all one word, stupid spel czech, hhh) get an exclusive briefing ahead of the hoi polloi, etc; with only two minor, hardly-worth-mentioning concessions:
1. the media collectively don't release until a certain date as specified by the FDA/whoever;
2. they do NOT consult any other people other than the FDA's own people, NOR quote any other experts, etc in the article based on this 'insider info'...
minor stuff...
hardly worth mentioning...
only leaked by accident...
now is a molehill which won't become the media mountain it should, for the simple reason that the media won't report on their systemic failures most of all...
and back to chewing the soma cud in,
three,
two,
one...
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