This Week In Techdirt History: May 20th - 26th

from the same-as-it-ever-was dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, we watched plenty of copyright hysteria as a trade group insisted that accommodating the deaf and blind would mean "casting aside" copyright, a Swedish prosecutor tried to label the Pirate Bay's domain registrar as an "accomplice", and all the major Hollywood studios sent bogus DMCA notices over a documentary about said Bay. Meanwhile, we were watching the TPP negotiations over the contentious intellectual property chapter, a key legal fight over DMCA abuse (while the RIAA continued whining that safe harbors are broken), and the effort in Congress to fix the anti-circumvention provisions.

Ten Years Ago

Five years earlier in 2008, we were already talking about how far behind the mainstream media was when it came to the DMCA and DRM. We took a look at how the RIAA and MPAA helped make The Pirate Bay even more popular, while the MPAA was getting people to settle lawsuits over simply linking to content, and Hollywood was working hard on making sure set-top boxes suck.

This was also the week that we got our very first leaked glimpse at something that would become a huge topic in years to come: ACTA, which at the time we called The Pirate Bay Criminalization Treaty.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, worlds collided in an odd way as Roxio, the company that acquired the Napster name, made a deal to buy Pressplay, the music studios' crappy download service. Meanwhile, a Spanish site was claiming to offer legal music downloads, which as you can imagine the industry didn't quite see the same way. In the mean time, the music industry got into its head that a website listing out legal services was the key to ending piracy, while Disney was preparing to offer its own video-on-demand service, and Jack Valenti was busy rewriting history as usual. And, to bring us back around to the very first link in this history post, it was this week in 2003 that we first started hearing about the blind and deaf fighting back against the DMCA — something we optimistically thought might actually be effective, but that was giving the industry too much credit, apparently.

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Filed Under: history, look back


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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 May 2018 @ 12:05pm

    major Hollywood students

    What are they students of, accounting?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 May 2018 @ 5:36pm

    Hey, whatever happened to funniest/most insightful comments of the week post?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 27 May 2018 @ 5:51pm

      Re:

      Memorial Day. Check in tomorrow.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Leigh Beadon (profile), 27 May 2018 @ 9:09pm

      Re:

      Yup, we shifted things back one day for the long weekend, as we sometimes do! Comments post is coming tomorrow.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 28 May 2018 @ 12:52am

        Re: Re:

        Ah. Did it just...not happen, on Kickstarter weeks, then?

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • icon
          Leigh Beadon (profile), 28 May 2018 @ 8:54am

          Re: Re: Re:

          There were comment posts on all the Kickstarter weeks - but we did drop the history post on the last couple of saturdays, in favour of a KS promotion post.

          link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 May 2018 @ 10:17pm

    Thanks, I needed a laugh. Watching out_of_the_blue and average_joe piss their pants and shit in each other's because copyright might be threatened by blind people was hilarious five years ago, and it's hilarious now.

    The "concern troll" trying to draw attention to out_of_the_blue's ramblings and his "feared reputation" need only watch as everyone backtracks to when he bothered to write under his sad pseudonym and witnesses the insanity. Copyright's best and brightest.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 28 May 2018 @ 12:25am

    10 years later

    The Hydra Bay still going strong.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    yesreach (profile), 7 Jun 2020 @ 12:54pm

    History post

    Useful history post
    Now i understand about DMCA
    https://yesreach.blogspot.com/

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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