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

from the and-recent-history dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, mass anti-ACTA protests broke out across Europe as opposition to the bill continued to swell. Bulgaria joined the list of EU members halting ratification of the treaty and even the European Parliament's president spoke out against it. The EU official who resigned in protest of ACTA explained further what was wrong with it, the head of Mozilla called it a bad way to develop policy, Public Knowledge made a strong call for greater transparency in such agreements, and our own Glyn Moody offered a thorough debunking of the European Commission's list of supposed "myths" about ACTA as well as the idea that there's any meaningful transparency at all. Despite all this, the IFPI and other lobbyists stood by the agreement, even having the gall to claim that the public protests were silencing the democratic process.

Ten Years Ago

Things were pretty grim on the copyright front this week in 2007. The RIAA was making its first forays into voluntary enforcement deals with ISPs that would forward settlement letters, which would eventually morph into the now-dead six strikes program. The US entertainment industry was trying to get Canada condemned as a pirate haven while its Canadian counterpart was itself pushing for an iPod tax. Microsoft was introducing yet another DRM scheme even as one survey showed that even two-thirds of music industry executives thought ditching DRM would be a good idea. Hollywood was beginning a new crusade against Google, not over YouTube but over ads on P2P websites, and a jury sided with sample troll Bridgeport in yet another abuse of the George Clinton copyrights they own. There was, at least, one victory: an EFF-backed lawsuit forced a prolific DMCA abuser to rescind his baseless takedown notices.

Fifteen Years Ago

There was one event this week in 2002 so much more significant than the others that it deserves the sole focus this week. Today, CC licenses are an integral part of the world of digital content, but (because copyright is a disaster) such open and flexible licenses were not always so easy to employ no matter how much a creator might want to. But it was this week fifteen years ago that we first learned that Lawrence Lessig and a team of other people were working on a new project called Creative Commons to provide an alternative to copyright.

Two Days Ago

What, two days ago? Yes: this week, I'm using this space to remind everyone about the Techdirt Survival Fund that we launched on Friday along with our filings in the lawsuit we face. We're very grateful to everyone who has donated so far, and hope you continue to give generously and spread the word so we can continue our fight for free speech.

Techdirt is off tomorrow for President's Day. We'll be posting the weekly comment winners at noon, and back to our regular schedule on Tuesday!

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Filed Under: history, look back