This Week In Techdirt History: July 12th - 18th

from the moore's-law dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2010, we had lots of followups on stories from last week and other recent developments. We took a closer look at the constitutional analysis of the huge copyright awards in the Tenenbaum case, and saw the first post-Bilski patent appeal reject a software patent. Meanwhile, UK newspapers were responding to Prince's bizarre anti-internet rant, and Larry Lessig was responding to ASCAP's anti-Creative Commons stance by challenging the boss to a debate.

The RIAA was up to all sorts of nonsense, too. Despite the recording industry being in freefall, the association's bosses were getting huge raises; perhaps that's no surprise from an organization with such wacky, self-serving accounting that even major label musicians rarely make money. Then again, some back-of-the-envelope math shows that the RIAA spent $17.6-million on lawsuits to get $391,000 in settlements. As for the voices in the crowd, they were mixed: though the composer who spent last week debating a teenager was sticking to his guns about filesharing, former Pink Floyd manager Peter Jenner was admitting that it can't be stopped; and at least one record label head was looking towards a future where artists and labels embark on joint ventures. The WSJ was highlighting the problems of 'permission culture', while more people were beginning to realize that copyright serves middlemen, not creators.

On the ACTA front, EU negotiators were presenting the deal to parliament... in secret to the point that even US intellectual property groups were getting nervous. The negotiators ignored their promises of transparency and made no move towards releasing a draft publicly, but of course that didn't matter because it was immediately leaked, teaching us a lot of interesting details. Brazil, meanwhile, was looking at copyright reform that would impose penalties for hindering fair use or the public domain, while we were looking at the possibility of Bolivia opting out of Berne and WIPO altogether.

Ten Years Ago

Hot on the heels of the Grokster ruling, this week in 2005 the recording industry was already pushing to expand (and abuse) the definition of inducement. It was also pushing the line that piracy is dominated by organized crime syndicates, who apparently still offer better service than the legal Napster foisted upon (and ignored by) university students. Perhaps they'd soon declare Amazon a syndicate too, what with it moving into the on-demand DVD printing world. In the Netherlands, at least, ISPs were saved from having to hand info over to the industry, though in Australia a judge decided that even linking to MP3s is illegal.

In a long-anticipated test of all sorts of internet law, the Internet Archive was sued after material from it was used as evidence in a lawsuit. Of course, Canada appeared to be considering a new law that would effectively ban the Internet Archive (not to mention Google) altogether.

Fifteen Years Ago

Five years before Napster was legal, crappy and being foisted upon students, it was in a nebulous zone between lawsuits. Musicians were complaining about it with a national advertising campaign, while its famed enemy Lars Ulrich was making his case to Congress — but both seemed to be missing the point. At the same time, despite all this and its legal woes, Napster's traffic was up.

Many people would say we still haven't totally figured out cellphone etiquette today, so you can imagine the conversation in 2000. To paraphrase an old saying, "we can put a living capsule into orbit, but we can't figure out how to use cellphones politely?" (Of course, regarding that, we were also realizing that living in space is dangerous in more ways than one.)

Also in 2000: people were grappling with the definition of the (now-chic) geek, searching for yourself online was still considered egotistical, cutting-edge gaming industry technology was being applied in lots of other places, and of course we had the obligatory concerns about internet dependancy.

Forty-Seven Years Ago

In the history of computing, it's impossible to deny the pivotal role that Intel has played. I'd estimate that about 99% of everything I've ever done on any kind of computer has involved an Intel chip, and that's true for a lot of people. Well, it was today in 1968 that Intel Corporation was founded in Mountain View, California.

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Filed Under: history, look back