This Week In Techdirt History: November 10th - 16th

from the do-you-recall dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2014, the amicus briefs were rolling in on Google's first attempt to get SCOTUS to hear the Oracle case. We were surprised when Obama called for real net neutrality, and not so surprised when the broadband industry and T-Mobile's CEO and the rest of the anti-net-neutrality brigade freaked out in response. Meanwhile, Techdirt got dragged into the Roca Labs affair when Roca bizarrely sued Marc Randazza largely over a post we wrote, just before it began issuing bogus DMCA notices to Google over PissedConsumer reviews. This was also the week we launched the Techdirt podcast.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2009, a Danish anti-piracy group was withdrawing all its lawsuits against individuals after it lost most of them, though this just spurred the IFPI to say it would start seizing computers to get more evidence. The UK was moving towards forcing ISPs to retain user data and kicking people off the internet, while Rupert Murdoch was audaciously claiming that fair use could be struck down entirely by the courts, and we took a look at how a lot of Murdoch's own websites contained aggregators just like the ones he was so angry about. Verizon started passing on RIAA letters to users, the MPAA got a town's public wi-fi shut down over one single unauthorized movie download, and we looked closer at Bluebeat's bizarre "psycho-acoustic simulation" copyright claim on Beatles songs.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2004, Monster Cable was establishing its reputation as a trademark monster, Blockbuster was making the questionable decision to buy more stores, and the entertainment industry just couldn't quite give up on self-destructing DVDs. The deluge of video ads on the web was just beginning, though it probably wasn't yet quite as annoying as AOL's very stupid TV commercials. The notion of selling instead of going public was becoming mainstream for tech startups, and Google's not-so-revolutionary IPO was not kickstarting the Dutch Auction trend many people expected. And lastly, this was the week Firefox officially hit version 1.0.

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Filed Under: history, look back