This Week In Techdirt History: April 12th - 18th
from the let's-reminisce dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2015, the White House was floating the idea of crypto backdoors while the Senate Intelligence Committee was finally deciding it should maybe keep a real eye on the Intelligence Community, and we learned that the Baltimore Police Department had asked the creators of The Wire to not include details about their cellphone surveillance tools. The lawsuits against the FCC's net neutrality rules were pouring in from the usual suspects while Republicans were rushing to kill the rules and Verizon was claiming that nobody really wants unlimited data. We also got a look at some emails from MPAA boss Chris Dodd, revealing the organization's real feelings about fair use (it's bad!) as well as its feelings about giving money to politicians involved in writing copyright law (it's good!)
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2010, Apple was exercising its control over the iPhone ecosystem, a book publisher was trying vainly to exercise control over people ordering books from abroad, and a Japanese newspaper was hoping to exercising control over whether people can link to its website. The TSA admitted that body scanners could save images, the RIAA insisted that musicians can't make money without them, and telcos still maintained that Google was getting a "free ride". This was also the week that an online publication won a Pulitzer for the first time, and the week that the Library of Congress announced it would begin storing tweets.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2005, we took a look at how tricky things were getting in the VoIP space because people were forgetting or ignoring the fact that voice is data. We were pleased to see IBM free up a bunch of patents, but wondered why the New York Times felt that this was so baffling it needed exhaustive explanation. A customer sued Comcast for handing their info over to the RIAA, muni broadband was doing better in some places than people thought, and Google quietly launched its pre-YouTube video offering. Meanwhile, we were shocked-not-shocked to learn things like that people prefer buying cars online and mobile carriers won't make money selling music.
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RIAA insisted Musicians needed them to make money?
So glad that was proven false, again and again and again...
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This week in Techdirt History, Chris Dodd's position on fair use was found to be: "I hate fair use and would really rather that thing didn't exist. It really grinds my corn that I have to be reminded one day, after my body is dust and maggots, that some copyright will expire. It pisses me off." Which was to absolutely no one's surprise.
What did come to readers' surprise, though, was the fact that some people thought that this was worth defending Dodd's reputation for. You know, just in case his ratings could fall below the "numbers don't go that low" category. Slonecker chipped in, of course, because he would, except that some one-time no-name throwaway tool called [MAF}(https://www.techdirt.com/user/markaf) already beat him to it, claiming that Dodd's correspondence from the Sony hack was a source of "unknown origin and unverified accuracy".
Not that Slonecker could be beat, because he was right back at it again, pointing out that Dodd demanding that movie studios spend the money that could be used to pay their grunt works instead be thrown at politicians to purchase more favorable laws - was not only business as usual, but completely legit. And a casual remark about the aerospace industry because... fuck knows.
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