This Week In Techdirt History: October 15th - 21st
from the more-copyright dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2012, we saw more copyright nonsense as South Park was sued over a character design and textbook publisher Pearson managed to take down 15-million student and teacher blogs with a single DMCA notice — but of course, being punished for a bad DMCA notice was and is almost impossible. As we approached the 30-year anniversary of the CD, we lamented the lack of music industry innovation, while the numbers continued to show that file sharers are also big media buyers. And Harvey Weinstein made an appearance on Techdirt — over an unhinged rant about piracy.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2007 things weren't much different, though perhaps even sillier, with one law firm trying to use copyright to claim you can't look at its website's source code, a bunch of media companies claiming it's infringement to skip commercials, Congress pushing for anti-P2P laws with claims that P2P promotes identity theft, and the RIAA launching its lawsuit against Usenet.com. Amidst all this, YouTube made a major announcement and ContentID was born.
Fifteen Years Ago
And guess what? More of the same this week in 2002 — but it was a week when more people were noticing the problems. Some were (rightly) worrying about the future of expanding DRM, and talking about copyright law as the new prohibition and a tool that lets corporations destroy America's cultural heritage, and asking if we really want to put the dinosaurs in charge of evolution. Copyright defenders were hitting back weakly, with arguments amounting to "trust me" and "shut up, Gary Shapiro, we don't like you".
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
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Twenty Years Ago
♫ It was twenty years ago today ♫ … ( Reprise )…
Up-To-Date October 12 - 18, 1997
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Isn't it ironic
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Isn't it ironic
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Isn't it ironic
Punishments based on accusations, without scrutiny or oversight, is precisely what drives anti-piracy enforcement.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
That was kinda my question a few weeks ago — when, with no more than half-a-minute of google, I added in a not-quite-random association from the top of memory.
Since then…
[ link to this | view in thread ]