Tag Archive for: 22nd

This Week In Techdirt History: June 16th – 22nd

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Five Years Ago

This week in 2014, it was becoming increasingly clear that the government had no idea how to solve a problem like Snowden, and we all got to see more details about things like the NSA’s aggressive language about data collection, its gamification of spying, and the fact that it was accessing insane amounts of data directly from overseas cables. But some progress was made as the House overwhelmingly voted to take away one of the NSA’s spying tools, even as the administration declined to take an easy opportunity to end bulk phone data collection immediately.

Meanwhile, police in London made the hilarious claim that “The Tor” is 90% of the internet, the feud between John Oliver and Tom Wheeler moved into its second phase, Techdirt received its first right to be forgotten request, Prenda Law was hit with $ 12,000 in sanctions, and an appeals court ruled unequivocally that yes, Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2009, while one media analyst was calling Hulu “anti-Ameircan” for providing free content, and Blu-Ray was rolling out the ability to make inconvenient DRM-laden copies of discs, the recording industry was tying itself in knots in its fight for the Performance Rights act: arguing against the idea that digital radio is different from terrestrial despite that being an idea the RIAA itself originally promulgated, and calling for an FCC investigation of radio stations that were refusing to play songs from musicians who supported the Act even though their whole argument is that all this unpaid airplay constitutes piracy. But they got a big win in the ill-advised Jammie Thomas case, with Thomas ordered to pay a shocking $ 1.92 million by the jury — an insane number that raised big constitutional questions was of course quickly defended by all the usual RIAA mouthpieces.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2004, the big trend for online newspapers was the silly notion of registration walls, but at least that wasn’t quite as insane as their plan to get in on the music download store trend. People were still having all sorts of reactions to the spread of mobile phones, from the irritation with hearing private conversations to the standard fear about kids accessing porn and even in some places giving serious credence to fears about wireless signals causing illness. Perhaps the craziest example was in Ireland, where the government wanted to create a registry of all 3G phone buyers in case some turned out to be child pornographers.

Meanwhile, the MPAA was trying to come up with strained legal reasons that file sharing systems should be investigated, Universal’s vaunted price-drop for CDs was not going so smoothly, DirecTV stopped attempting to extort people who had purchased smart card readers in what seemed to be the result of EFF pressure but turned out to likely have been because of a forthcoming court order, and Cory Doctorow — in a fight that he sadly must continue (but thankfully does continue) to this day — made a thorough and impassioned argument against DRM to Microsoft.

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This Week In Techdirt History: December 16th – 22nd

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Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, NSA revelations continued to trickle out, such as the unsurprising fact that the agency had cracked standard mobile phone encryption, and that along with the GCHQ it was spying on UNICEF. But the backlash also started to come hard from all three branches of government: a judge ruled that bulk metadata collection is likely unconstitutional, the White House’s task force issued surveillance reform recommendations that were surprisingly much more substantial than we expected (though Marcy Wheeler — then and now one of the best reporters out there keeping a close eye on the feds — wondered if this was just to stall constitutional analysis), and seven members of the House Judiciary Committee demanded a DOJ investigation into James Clapper for lying to congress (though at least one representative called this a disgrace).

The NSA was in a generally unhappy place of course, and one reporter told the story of an official calling for reforms to the first amendment because of how mean the press was being to the agency — though they must not have been talking about CBS, which turned over an entire episode of 60 Minutes to NSA apologia and propaganda, or the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial board called Snowden a sociopath and opposed any rollback of NSA programs.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, Hasbro finally dropped its lawsuit against Scrabulous, ending a long and stupid saga. EMI was in a copyright pretzel, using Coldplay’s copyright to take down a mashup video that (misleadingly) compared the songs by Coldplay and Joe Satriani at the heart of a copyright lawsuit. The RIAA was still aggressively suing students, and record labels were caught disobeying a court order about how it could use student info it had acquired (by demanding money instead of only seeking injunctive relief), and then by the end of the week the RIAA had officially decided to abandon its mass lawsuit strategy — because it had negotiated secret three-strikes deals with various ISPs.

Meanwhile, more votes lost by Diebold machines in Ohio were discovered, which I mention because…

Fifteen Years Ago

…Why were Diebold machines still in use in 2008 anyway? This same week in 2003, the company’s problems were already pretty clear. California was considering banning them from selling voting machines at all, and it was revealed that they had employed at least five convicted felons in management positions. More and more people were calling for a paper trail for the electronic votes, which Diebold offered to add to its machines — at a ridiculous jacked-up price because, as internal memos revealed, they figured the customers had no choice but to pay.

This was also the week that the CAN SPAM bill was signed into law, effectively legalizing spam while not being particularly effective in restricting or controlling it. Google also quietly launched its book search feature, and this alongside some other recent launches was making more people realize that Google was going to be something much bigger and different than just a web search engine.

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This Week In Techdirt History: September 16th – 22nd

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Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, we learned that in addition to communications the NSA was keeping millions of credit card transaction records, and then we finally got a look at the secrett FISA court ruling that permitted bulk phone data collection, in which it was revealed that Verizon and AT&T never fought back. The court also made the untrue claim that all of congress already knew all the details, and of course we wondered why the ruling was ever secret to begin with. Meanwhile, Michael Hayden was making some crazy claims about terrorists using Gmail and the US’s right to spy on the internet it invented, while also making some childish prognostications about Ed Snowden’s likely future of alcoholism — though other defenders of the agency were sticking to the same tired talking points, plus the new euphemism that Snowden’s activities were “masked by his job duties”.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, Apple made the decision to block a competitive podcast app from the App Store, leading to significant backlash, while a court in Germany was getting in on similar action in its own way by banning VOIP on the iPhone at the behest of T-Mobile. NBC was bragging about its ability to lock down online Olympic footage, the movie industry was making yet another attempt to build the mythical “good” DRM, and the cops were continuing to bring in the RIAA to help with investigations where it would clearly be biased. There was a glimmer of light for online entertainment though: this was also the week that BandCamp launched, and its easy-to-build pages quickly became one of the best tools for musicians to distribute their work online.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, as file-sharers were going deeper underground, a study showed that most online copies of movies were coming from industry insiders — which perhaps explains the industry’s insane plan for self-destructing DVDs. While RIAA head Carey Sherman was struggling to defend the agency’s lawsuit strategy (and totally missing the point), the Senate was gearing up for hearings over the lawsuits, and considering a bill to close the DMCA’s special subpoena powers — also a major issue in the ongoing court battle between the RIAA and Verizon.

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This Week In Techdirt History: July 22nd – 28th

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Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, the congressional backlash against the NSA kicked into high gear with an amendment to end phone data collection from Rep. Justin Amash. Naturally the NSA’s defenders flipped out, Obama opposed the amendment by insulting congress, and Keith Alexander called an emergency briefing to lobby against it. After a heated debate, the amendment narrowly failed thanks to “no” votes from 217 representatives — including several democrats led by Nancy Pelosi because, hey, you might be in communication with terrorists, right?

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, we saw the first legal battle specifically over whether people sending DMCA notices must consider fair use, while the IFPI was taking down music that the creators wanted up, the MPAA was spouting doubletalk in its war against DVRs, and Viacom had to apologize for sending a bogus DMCA notice to YouTube after promising not to. Amidst all this, we saw the introduction of the Senate bill to create a copyright czar position (which Victoria Espinel would end up filling).

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, the RIAA’s lawsuit dragnet was sweeping up bewildered parents and grandparents. Some folks claimed there were protests in response, but this seemed pretty dubious — except online where some sites were blocking RIAA and MPAA IP addresses (Techdirt declined to participate, preferring they have access to our arguments against them). Meanwhile, movie studios got ready to launch a series of file-sharing guilt trip ads, a Spanish lawyer began following the RIAA lawsuit model, and software company SCO made the staggering claim that all Linux users are pirates.

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