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

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

Sun, May 27th 2018 12:00pm — Leigh Beadon

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.

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

12 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 27 May 2018 @ 12:05pm

major Hollywood students

What are they students of, accounting?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ysth (profile), 27 May 2018 @ 4:54pm

Re:
Studios?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 27 May 2018 @ 5:36pm

Hey, whatever happened to funniest/most insightful comments of the week post?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 27 May 2018 @ 5:51pm

Re:
Memorial Day. Check in tomorrow.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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 thread ]
Leigh Beadon (profile), 27 May 2018 @ 9:10pm

Re:
Indeed. Thanks for catching! Fixed.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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 thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 28 May 2018 @ 12:25am

10 years later
The Hydra Bay still going strong.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 28 May 2018 @ 12:52am

Re: Re:
Ah. Did it just...not happen, on Kickstarter weeks, then?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 28 May 2018 @ 12:53am

Re: 10 years later
Not sure if happy, or spiteful.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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 thread ]
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 thread ]