This Week In Techdirt History: April 9th - 15th

from the memory-lane dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, Congress (apparently having learned nothing from SOPA) was pushing forward with CISPA, the new cybersecurity bill. In its original form it was really, really bad — then a new draft was released that was slightly better but still full of problems. Nevertheless, the House Intelligence Committee launched a new Twitter account to misleadingly plug the bill, and it was even supported by companies like Facebook along with a promise not to abuse it — though we challenged them to go a step further and withdraw support until it was fixed to prevent anyone from abusing it.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, the lacklustre response to the Windows Vista launch was sending ripple effects through the computer hardware industry, though it appeared to be a bad time for consumer electronics in general. Though while some were chattering about Microsoft's demise, cooler heads pointed out that might be going a bit too far.

Also this week in 2007: Perfect 10 reared its head with a shotgun spray of lawsuits, a court pointed out the should-have-been-obvious fact that the First Amendment applies on MySpace as much as it does anywhere else, and Techdirt was nominated for a Webby award.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, plenty of folks were busy hacking the iPod to do new things and helping chart the future of mobile devices — right at the same time that thumb keyboards were becoming all the rage in the wake of the popularity of the Blackberry. Google was still in its pre-IPO days and trying to pin down a business model, and this was long before it came into conflict with the Authors Guild which, at the time, was moaning about Amazon for showing used book prices next to new book listings. But we took a look at the other side of that equation and saw how empowering a used book selling platform can be.

One-Hundred And Twenty-Three Years Ago

We've all heard of the early "nickelodeon" movie houses where five cents in a machine let you enjoy a brief kinetoscope of a butler falling over or whatever. It was on April 14, 1894 that this started with the first paid exhibition of motion pictures at Andrew M. Holland's phonograph store in New York City.

Hide this

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


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.