This Week In Techdirt History: April 3rd - 9th

from the phone-the-past dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, we saw a variety of attempts to define whole new forms of copyright infringement (and to fight back against them). The UK advertising agency was going after a CD jukebox maker for advertising that it is capable of making copies; a Greek site linking to legal videos from rightsholders was sued for infringement; it wasn't clear if Amazon would end up buying music licenses it shouldn't need; the MPAA unsurprisingly sued a streaming site that used connected DVD players; and an Italian court said Yahoo was liable for people finding infringing movies via its search.

But the big copyright battlefield was the COICA bill, which was drawing opposition from across the political spectrum (and that was being ignored by Senator Patrick Leahy). The House held preliminary hearings on piracy, but it devolved into a parade of strawmen and a "why can't Google just fix this?" party.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2006, Microsoft was making some bold claims about software piracy and defending the supposed need for proprietary security measures, while the software industry as a whole was trying to mislead China on the economics of piracy. The RIAA, which misses no opportunity to be a bully, was telling an MIT student he should drop out of school to pay a hefty infringement fine, while Streamcast was going to court to try to clear up some legal questions about filesharing — and we wondered if a country like Antigua could take on the US using free music.

This was also the week that Apple broke down one of the biggest divides in computing by deciding to support Windows on Apple computers.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001 it was the waning days of Napster, and some were comparing the P2P revolution with the early days of radio, though others were trying to paint a picture that P2P was dead. MLB was making its foray into payed audio streams of games and hitting some technical hiccups, while some people were realizing that charging for the streams was silly. An early trailblazer in something many schools have since done, MIT made all its course materials available online, while another trail was also being blazed in the world of online pizza ordering. And we all looked to the future of then-fresh Verizon, still referred to as Baby Bell by many.

Forty-Three Years Ago

It would take a long time after this notable date for mobile phones to become the ubiquitous devices they are today, but it was on April 3rd, 1973 that Motorola researcher Martin Cooper made the first phone call with a handheld mobile phone. The device in question weighed 1.1kg and offered 30 minutes of talk time on a ten-hour charge.

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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2016 @ 4:15pm

    1974 was forty-three years ago?

    Damn! I lost track of an entire year!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2016 @ 4:33pm

    Re:

    Damn! I lost track of an entire year!
    $ date -u -d '43 years ago'
    Mon Apr 9 23:32:59 UTC 1973

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    CharlieBrown, 9 Apr 2016 @ 5:48pm

    Ya...who?

    What? I missed that story! A court found Yahoo relevant enough in 2011 to be blamed for piracy and not Google?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 9 Apr 2016 @ 8:00pm

    Current Microsoft Ad Campaign

    Microsoft has been advertising a lot on Al Jazeera lately about its security services for businesses. Trouble is, the ad goes on about “stealing intellectual property”, which is an entirely separate issue altogether. Not that the ad bothers to make the distinction...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 9 Apr 2016 @ 8:06pm

    Little Nitpick

    Mike has previously said he has never personally pirated anything. Yet here he admits to listen to a stream without paying. Wonder if that counts as “piracy”? I’m sure I know what answer MLB would give...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    That One Guy (profile), 10 Apr 2016 @ 1:52am

    Re: Little Nitpick

    Depending on who you ask I'm sure you could find someone who claims that listening to radio without paying for the 'privilege' is piracy, walking out of the room when commercials come on is stealing, and reading to children without paying is no better than theft.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. icon
    Leigh Beadon (profile), 10 Apr 2016 @ 11:43am

    Re:

    Gah, shoulda said 1973. My bad!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. icon
    Leigh Beadon (profile), 10 Apr 2016 @ 11:44am

    Re: Current Microsoft Ad Campaign

    link to this | view in thread ]


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