This Week In Techdirt History: December 31st - January 6th

from the a-new-year dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, we kicked off the year by witnessing things start to go seriously wrong for a little law firm by the name of Prenda. Well, that and noting how, as usual, nothing at all was entering the public domain (a situation that looked like it could be extended thanks to the supreme court). The Megaupload case was mired in the courts and some companies were getting impatient. And we saw some pretty stunning DMCA nonsense with a takedown over a barely-customized default blog login page.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, Hollywood was getting a taste of trade negotiation problems, the RIAA was admitting some errors in the Jammie Thomas trial (while flubbing an opportunity for some not-awful PR), and RealNetworks (which was still around) was shutting down competitors. We couldn't help think the entertainment industry needed to learn from the folks making a living by selling public domain content on eBay.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003 (and the last few days of 2002), the internet was changing and growing: it appeared that criminals had really figured out to use it, and there was a debate over dropping the capital "I" at the beginning, and of course some time to mourn the death of the payphone. We saw the DMCA abused to take down an entire web host over one claim of infringement, and record labels try to claim that even 95 years is too short for copyright, while one author was trying to challenge the unusual copyright on Peter Pan, and the tech industry was gearing up to fight back against DRM. Also, we celebrated the 20th birthday of TCP/IP.

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


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread



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.