This Week In Techdirt History: December 23rd - 29th

from the holidays-past dept

Sat, Dec 29th 2018 12:00pm — Leigh Beadon

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, the feds were begrudgingly loosening the reins on some secrecy in minimal ways, releasing a redacted version of their secret interpretation of the PATRIOT Act (which just a month ago they said could not be revealed) and declassifying some court filings in long-running cases against the NSA while still saying the state secrets mean the court should kill the cases. The 60 Minutes journalist who turned the show over to NSA propaganda was insulting all his critics while the show was giving even more airtime to lies from national security officials (and Rep. Mike Rogers was out doing his own anti-Snowden TV appearances). And we took a look at how if Snowden returned to the US to face trial, he wouldn't be able to make any kind of whistleblower defence — and noted that even though, in private, James Clapper was saying he wasn't worried about terrorists changing tactics following the leaks, in public we had four star generals screaming at reporters and NSA apologists calling for Snowden to be hanged.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, Warner Music decided to play hardball with YouTube by removing all its music from the platform — or so it seemed. Later reports suggested that Google took the material down in response to Warner's demands for more money, because record labels just didn't have the leverage they thought in this fight. Though they were still doing fairly well in their battle to shoot down or compromise every innovative new music startup. And though it was just the previous week that the RIAA had announced an end to its lawsuit strategy, they were caught still suing — and excused their way out of it by insisting they couldn't stop lawsuits that were already in motion. Plus, a closer look at the voluntary three-strikes system the agency was touting as a replacement for the lawsuits revealed that the whole thing was more about sidestepping due process than stopping what they were doing, so at least some ISPs were pushing back.

Fifteen Years Ago

And just as three-strikes were the replacement for lawsuits, so too were lawsuits the replacement for RIAA subpoenas this week in 2003. Following the previous week's court ruling for Verizon that the agency can't just subpoena ISPs for customer info (which differed from a recent ruling for Charter, who went back to court to get that fixed), the RIAA decided to start filing lots of John Doe lawsuits first, and boy did they not waste any time getting started. There had been a lot of twists and turns in internet law throughout the year, and some more good legal decisions we feared would lead to bad laws. But at least one good decision affirmed that "DVD Jon" did nothing wrong by creating and releasing DeCSS.

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

11 Comments

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

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

Anonymous Coward, 29 Dec 2018 @ 4:36pm

Nobody gives a fuck about this website. Close it down nerds.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Gary (profile), 29 Dec 2018 @ 6:39pm
  
  Re:
  Yes, please link to the super-cool website you run, thanks!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 29 Dec 2018 @ 7:23pm
  
  Re:
  Always a classic when someone manages to disprove their own point (such as it is) within the span of a sentence.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 29 Dec 2018 @ 7:29pm
  
  Re: Irony or stupidity?
  Except you bro... except you.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 29 Dec 2018 @ 10:34pm
  
  Re:
  How's that John Steele defense fund coming along, average_joe?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anonymous Coward, 30 Dec 2018 @ 2:56am
    
    Re: Re:
    What does this comment mean?
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - James Burkhardt (profile), 31 Dec 2018 @ 8:02am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Techdirt has several trolls, and while they abandoned their names/accounts long ago, they continue to post, and commentor's notice repeated behavior and modes of speech and continue to identify them. John Steele was a principle of Prenda Law. Average_Joe, or rather an AC identified as Average_Joe, pledged to set up a defense fund and beat the charges against John Steele. He's pointing out the lack of such a fund, and likely highlighting the actual fund that Techdirt has established to defend itself. Thus proving the lie of his statement, while shoving his face in past lies.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
      - Anonymous Coward, 31 Dec 2018 @ 5:39pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        To be fair, average_joe - or the AC he posts as - has never publicly declared the intention to have such a fund.
        
        It's simply a callback to the "Have you stopped beating your wife" questions he's so fond of using.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

Anonymous SuperHero, 30 Dec 2018 @ 6:58am

and no one cares about the OP
hey fu.ck face....mke may not always be rght but at least we can converse ....that is freedom ....if your against freedom go crawl back under the rock you came form and OH YA LA cant publish its news papers , ya better go back to your masters and bend over some more.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

i love pancakes, 30 Dec 2018 @ 6:59am

LA GOT PANCAKED
haha hehe hoho guess these shills at the top of the post better run seems someone has woke up da beast
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Jim, 2 Jan 2019 @ 6:40am

This was an excellent trek back in tech time. I really enjoyed all the launching points for research this page provided, thanks Mike.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]