This Week In Techdirt History: August 21st - 27th

from the earth-tremors dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, the mainstream press was waking up en masse to the fact that the patent system was terribly broken, with even the Wall Street Journal joining the fray. The patent system was, of course, getting in the way of health care, and attempts to convince Silicon Valley that software patents are great were unsurprisingly unsuccessful. Amidst all this the most notable patent battle going on was, of course, the one between Oracle and Google — and this was the week that we got our first whiff of the side-fight over API copyrights that would end up becoming so important.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2006, we had several early discussions about things that would grow to become major subjects of concern. There was the fact that content takedown laws were sneaking censorship into the traditionally censorship-proof internet; there was the RIAA following in DirecTV's footsteps and starting to automate the process of sending out mass copyright shakedown letters; and perhaps most perniciously, there was the quiet fallout of a Supreme Court ruling that told courts not to rush to issue injunctions over patent infringement: companies began exploiting the now-well-known "ITC Loophole" to route around the courts and ban a competitor's imports. Meanwhile, we all waited to see who would buy YouTube, and the platform's recent MySpace-esque branded offerings led us to incorrectly speculate that News Corp. might be the answer.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, Windows XP was beginning its takeover of the PC scene. Bluetooth was all the trendy rage, but some were declaring it dead on arrival while others defended it — not that the world's wireless visionaries really had any idea what to expect (except, perhaps, more wi-fi security breaches). Oh, and remember when computers only came with one little branded sticker on the outside, proudly declaring the Intel processor and nothing else? That all started to change this week when IBM adopted the same strategy and opened the floodgates.

One-Hundred And Twenty-Eight Years Ago

Adding machines have a history that dates back to the 17th century, but they didn't really become useful and popular until the late 1800s. One of the two main trailblazers was the machine patented by William Seward Burroughs on August 25th, 1888. His company would go on to become what we know today as Unisys — and his grandson would become an author who helped define the beat generation.

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