This Week In Techdirt History: August 13th - 19th

from the so-it-went dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, while Amazon was realizing it had little choice but to get in on the patent portfolio buying game, Google was launching a prior art finder to help stop bad patents — though some worried it might be used by trolls to find targets. Meanwhile, Google also made the controversial decision to start filtering searches based on DMCA notices received by the site, but of course even this wasn't enough to satisfy the RIAA and MPAA.

Also this week in 2012, we launched the Techdirt Insider Shop!

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, the proliferation of DVRs and digital video made us ask if the concept of a "TV channel" still made any sense. Of course, the digital video side was still struggling, with all the official offerings pretty much sucking in the eyes of consumers, and with Google Video shutting down and eliminating videos people thought they had bought, and the P2P networks continuing to strive to go legit under the weight of lawsuits,and Universal Music thinking it can still release CDs in different countries at different times (okay that last one is music not video, but still). Given how amazingly well the copyright regime was going for the entertainment industries, is it any wonder the Senate was looking to impose the same thing on the fashion industry?

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, we saw one reporter fired for having a blog and another fired after a congressman got mad about an email. Not great.

And now, a brief world tour: South Korea was facing the same tensions over music sharing as the US; Europe was implementing its own version of the DMCA; Indian telecoms were trying to get instant messaging banned; Norway was struggling to find a judge who was tech-savvy enough to try the creator of DeCSS software; and in a story that is rather appropriate given current events, Russia charged an FBI agent with hacking.

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Filed Under: history, look back


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  1. icon
    That One Guy (profile), 19 Aug 2017 @ 3:33pm

    Good times

    Reading through the comments on the article pointing out the obvious(the AA's will never be satisfied) I couldn't help but laugh at the person repeatedly defending the idea that refusing to make something available for more customers to buy was a smart thing, and insisting that people who were willing but not allowed to buy were somehow demonstrating a sense of 'entitlement'.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Aug 2017 @ 4:37am

    Re: Good times

    Do what the RIAA doesn't want, get called a pirate.

    Do what the RIAA wants, get called a pirate.

    Consume RIAA products, get called a pirate.

    Don't consume RIAA products, get called a pirate.

    It's no wonder they've realized that the "moral" approach doesn't work, because clearly nobody was buying the argument after years of getting insulted.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    Bergman (profile), 20 Aug 2017 @ 5:45am

    Re: Good times

    Scarcity economics only truly works with goods that are actually rare. You might be able to pretend a very commonly available good is rare in your advertising, but once the general public becomes aware of the deception it falls apart.

    Intellectual property is almost unique in history in the way that it can be copied infinitely and everyone in the world can have one, ten or thousands. And while the AA's are desperate to conceal that fact, the genie is out of the bottle -- everyone knows digital copies are perfect copies.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anupam Kumar, 20 Aug 2017 @ 3:01pm

    A really informative article to know insights about patents, videos and blogs.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    dirtyindiannews, 13 Apr 2018 @ 4:35am

    thanks for the informative article. You have shared useful information in this article.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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