From the FOIA Blog:
The Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA), the entity that basically oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac these days has issued these proposed FOIA rules for the FHFA. The proposed rules indicate that Fannie and Freddie records are now covered by the FOIA through requests to the FHFA.
Archive of entries posted on October 2008
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Records Now Subject to FOIA
The Sunlight Foundation Launches Open Senate Project with Majority Leader Reid’s Endorsement
From the Sunlight Foundation:
As part of its efforts to work with Congress on how to make itself more open in the Internet age, the Sunlight Foundation is launching The Open Senate Project. This bipartisan, collaborative initiative will study the Senate’s current information-sharing practices to recommend how to improve public access to the Senate’s work on [...]
From Australia – Labor’s web gag ‘worse than Iran’
From the Brisbane Times:
The Federal Government is attempting to silence critics of its controversial plan to censor the internet, which experts say will break the internet while doing little to stop people from accessing illegal material such as child pornography.
Internet providers and the government’s own tests have found that presently available filters are not capable [...]
Why Is the Government Keeping Key Documents About the Bailout Under Wraps?
From ProPublica:
The U.S. Treasury Department has decided against publicly releasing key details of the contract it awarded Bank of New York Mellon to keep the books for the government’s purchase of toxic securities. In a publicly released copy of the contract, the Treasury blacked out how much it will pay the bank for its role [...]
EPA Invites Comments on Information Access Strategy Draft
From SLA’s Public Policy blog:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established The National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information to ascertain from its customers and partners what kind of environmental information is needed and how it needs to be delivered. The Dialogue is to offer a variety of forums for participation: online and in-person [...]
SLA Granted Observer Status in WIPO
From SLA’s Public Policy blog:
SLA has been granted observer status to meetings of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). WIPO observer status grants SLA an important voice in intellectual property and provides an additional forum for advocacy.
In Defense of Piracy – Digital technology has made it easy to create new works from existing art, but copyright law has yet to catch up
From the Wall Street Journal:
Stanford law professor Larry Lessig has written an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal highlighting proposed copyright reforms to enable “remix”.
Google to appeal German copyright decisions
From CNet:
Google lost two copyright cases in Germany on Monday but the search company reportedly plans to appeal.
A German court ruled that Google violated the copyright of Michael Bernhard by displaying one of his photographs as a preview thumbnail, according to the Bloomberg news service.
Separately, a German court ruled in favor of Thomas Horn, who [...]
Major Library Partners Launch HathiTrust Shared Digital Repository
Press Release:
A group of the nation’s largest research libraries are collaborating to create a repository of their vast digital collections, including millions of books, organizers announced today. These holdings will be archived and preserved in a single repository called the HathiTrust. Materials in the public domain will be available for reading online.
Launched jointly by the [...]
Exclusive: Inside Account of U.S. Eavesdropping on Americans
From ABC News:
Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.