This Week In Techdirt History: April 1st - 7th

from the then-and-now dept

Five Years Ago

We saw a mix of court rulings this week in 2013, with Aereo winning a victory before its eventual defeat, ReDigi losing in its attempt to resell MP3s, and a judge granting a copyright troll the maximum statutory damages in a default case.

Meanwhile, the Prenda saga came to another apex with the second hearing before Judge Otis Wright. Prior to the day, Ken White from Popehat took a look at what the judge might do, and then he provided a tremendous writeup on the 12-minute hearing in which Team Prenda pleaded the fifth (a transcript of which would later be released). Then Ken closed things out by declaring Prenda a dead law-firm walking based on what he saw.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, the BBC was fighting back against ISP traffic shaping, and UK ISPs were fighting back against BPI demands that they do it — all while it looked like traffic filters didn't actually work anyway. Meanwhile, there was some confusion over whether a court had ruled that "making available" is or is not distribution for the purposes of copyright infringement, though another court was much clearer in declaring that it's not. And, in a historic moment for the history of music, the echoes of which still shape our world today, major record labels teamed up with MySpace. (/s)

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, though there was less war-related hacktivism going on than some people expected, it was increasingly clear that the Iraq War was profoundly impacting people's internet and news-reading habits — and could even be called "the killer app for broadband" with the way it appeared to be spurring adoption. (Even AOL wa shifting its focus!) Meanwhile, the government took one of its perennial swings at encryption by trying to criminalize it, while the ACLU was slightly expanding its mandate to get involved in the surveillance fight.

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Filed Under: history, look back