This Week In Techdirt History: May 22nd - 28th

from the looking-back dept

Sat, May 28th 2016 12:00pm — Mike Masnick

Five Years Ago

Our first inkling that that the NSA and the White House had reinterpreted the PATRIOT Act in secret came out as Senator Ron Wyden began sounding the alarm, that eventually resulted in Snowden leaking documents two years later. Of course, Wyden's warnings didn't stop the PATRIOT Act provisions from being renewed. That same week, Wyden also put a hold on the PROTECT IP bill, which was later known as the PIPA half of SOPA/PIPA. None of that really mattered since Homeland Security was already seizing web sites for copyright infringement... and for online poker.

It was the early days of copyright trolling in the US as one of the originators of the scheme, US Copyright Group, sued 24,583 people for sharing Hurt Locker. It was also an early legal loss for famed copyright troll John Steele, who went on to found Prenda Law.

Back on the privacy front we were explaining why "if you've got nothing to hide..." was such a dumb argument. The UK was dealing with another situation involving a ridiculous superinjunction designed to silence the press from mentioning Ryan Giggs, leading to the UK press figuring out ways to name him anyway, and that leading a judge to argue this proves why such press censorship is so important.

This was the beginning of Rakofsky v. the Internet, in which a young lawyer sued basically everyone who said anything mean about him (we were briefly almost included in that lawsuit, but due to a filing error, that never became official). A new report in the EU found that IP laws that were too strong were harming the EU economypushing for greater enforcementdemanding royalties for inspiring some of her popular songs.

Oh, and following on the push in Texas to pass a law banning the TSA from groping airline passengers, the Justice Dept threatened to block all flights out of Texas.

Ten Years Ago

Some things never change. Security researchers were afraid to report vulnerabilities because they were getting blamed for them. The RIAA was suing XM (pre-Sirius) over a useful little device called the Inno. Meanwhile, it's partners in the IFPI were cheering criminal charges brought against 3,500 file sharers in Germany. Someone was challenging the legality of the GPL, but it wasn't working. Telcos were happy to use regulations that helped them beat off competition, while complaining about regulations in all other contexts -- and we (rightly) expected that the fCC would do nothing about net neutrality. And the BSA was releasing its bogus stats. We were already worried about the NSA abusing surveillance data and misinterpreting results, since your book club might look like a terrorist group.

People were exploring who was really behind Nigerian 419 scams. Meanwhile people were noticing that MySpace was being used by scammers... and also noticing that MySpace was going out of style. An appeals court told Apple that bloggers are journalists too and wireless networks were battling it out in court over who could claim to have the best network. Wired unleashed the word crowdsourcing on the world and people were still freaking out about how kids could possibly survive the rise of digital technology.

Fifteen Years Ago

People were, as always since the internet began basically, worried about the future of media on the internet. The RIAA was being the RIAA and suing Aimster, a somewhat unique file sharing system, that insisted it was legal (courts eventually disagreed). Speaking of file sharing online, we mocked the idea that sharing TV shows online was a real issue, because at the time bandwidth wasn't fast enough to really matter. The great age of innovation was progressing as we were shocked by the idea of mobile check in for flights (and even just automated check in kiosks, that are now standard). Speaking of mobile internet, there was too much hype about the wireless web, because back then it truly sucked. Lots of other tech stuff sucked at the time as well, and someone argued that the world needed a "geek hero" to encourage kids to get into tech (anyone still think that's true?). Meanwhile, Webvan, the poster child for dotcom excess and failure began auctioning off its assets (if I remember correctly, healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente ended up buying a bunch of them), and dot commers still coming to terms with the original dot com bubble collapse were dealing with depression.

Eighty Years Ago:

Famed mathemetician/code breaker Alan Turing submitted his landmark paper "On Computable Numbers" to be published, arguably the first paper on "computer science." Kind of amazing how far we've come in well less than a century.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: history, look back

6 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 28 May 2016 @ 4:22pm

Speaking Of Attacks On The GPL ...
... have you heard Oracle’s wonderful argument that the recent verdict that Google’s use of Java APIs was fair use could mean the end of the GPL?

I’ve been trying to figure out where exactly the leap in the logic occurs, and I’ve narrowed it down to this part:

...because the Java APIs have been open, any use of them was justified and all licensing restrictions should be disregarded. In other words, if you offer your software on an open and free basis, any use is fair use.

In other words, “API use” is conflated with “any use”.

I wonder if their software is designed according to the same sort of logic...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 31 May 2016 @ 4:40am

"A new report in the EU found that IP laws that were too strong were harming the EU economypushing for greater enforcementdemanding royalties for inspiring some of her popular songs. "
Huh?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Electromotivegirl (profile), 31 May 2016 @ 4:50am

Blog seizure
I know why the blog was seized. It was done to exercise a prior restraint on speech about cointelpro . RIAA was just used to give them their bogus reason to keep the comments censored. The motivation was censoring speech that was trying to warn people about the level of spying going on and how it was being used to control dissent. This was before Snowden, so this warning would have raised questions. They were doing whatever they wanted and trying to justify it later, they screwed up big time, jumped the gun, and hid it . They thought they could justify it one way and then tried another to no avail. I hope someone can use this info to expose the real truth.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 31 May 2016 @ 5:53pm

Re:
I was confused too. Probably a copy-paste error.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Jen D, 1 Jun 2016 @ 1:21am

Re: Blog seizure
It wasn't a copy paste error. A blog was seized . On bogus copyright infringement charges, and court proceedings done in secret. At the time, the government was using prism for upstream surviellance. Directly tapping into the backbone of the Internet for access. In a blog people convey ideas through printed words. The government did not like the words , and didn't want people to see those ideas. RIAA was working so closely with government at the time, so they looked to them for a legal excuse to shut the speech down. RIAA said sure we will find you're copyright excuse, so shut it down. They never got the excuse right. The content of the speech was protected . It was about cointelpro, civil rights, and what the government was doing at the time. The spying and how they were tapping into the net, ect. What was written had a reference to a rap song, that the name alone could , could have been adjudicated possibly as not protected speech. The government didn't want people to hear this because it was before Snowden. So they shut it down figuring they could deem it unprotected speech , or part of a criminal copyright act. Shutting down speech before a judge can decide if it is legal, is called prior restraint. The Supreme Court and everything in the American legal system frowns upon prior restraint. It caused warning bells to go off because copyright law was being used to quell dissent , a fundamental no no in free America. Not to mention how the patriot act was overbroadly being used to tap into net. They didn't understand the law they were using to stop the speech. They were so used to interpreting and using the law to do whatever they wanted . You can bend things , but that would have completely broken the "free society" that we supposedly still have.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wendy Cockcroft, 1 Jun 2016 @ 2:36am

Re: Speaking Of Attacks On The GPL ...
That load of twaddle was written by Oracle's lawyer. As my American friends would say, go figure.
[ link to this | view in thread ]