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

from the memory-palace dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, Paramount announced its intention to back down from its lawsuit against the fan film Axanar, though not before the filmmakers got their next filing in. The legal battles over the FBI's hacking tools and malware continued, while the Senate Intelligence Committee was expanding the bureau's NSL powers with a secret amendment.

This is also the week we first heard the rapidly-confirmed accusation that Peter Thiel was financing Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker, and started writing about how worrying the situation was.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, ICE kicked off round four of its domain seizures and we continued looking at why the whole program is unconsitutional and how the Justice Department was stalling to avoid lawsuits in response. Meanwhile, the Patriot Act renewal moved forward, with only eight Senators presenting an obstacle and Harry Reid procedurally routing around attempts to fix it, eventually leading to a successful renewal.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, a desperate attempt to declare open source licenses a violation of antitrust law predictably failed as the lawsuit was thrown out, while the RIAA's lawsuit against XM radio appeared to be generating publicity for the company's newest device, and TV networks and studios launched a new suit against Cablevision over its network-based DVR. People were beginning to predict the death of MySpace, Verizon was trying to claim that passing on info to credit agencies was a gift to consumers, and we noted how crime reporting would often pointlessly focus on Wi-Fi if it was even tangentially involved. Also, this appears to be the very first time we wrote about a newfangled buzzword: "crowdsourcing".

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Filed Under: history, look back


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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 May 2021 @ 6:59pm

    This is also the week we first heard the rapidly-confirmed accusation that Peter Thiel was financing Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker, and started writing about how worrying the situation was.

    Man, it's really been a while hasn't it? I can't wait for the five year anniversary of the Shiva incident so we can all remember how dumb Ayyadurai, antidirt and Hamilton were/are.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    bwburke94 (profile), 30 May 2021 @ 1:15am

    Typo: "This week in 20011"

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    Samuel Abram (profile), 30 May 2021 @ 3:20am

    Re:

    Yow. Agreed. Mr. Beadon, you should fix that, stat.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    Leigh Beadon (profile), 30 May 2021 @ 11:41am

    Re:

    fixed, thanks!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. icon
    charliebrown (profile), 31 May 2021 @ 6:11pm

    Re:

    I don't know, I have a feeling The Patriot Act will still be around and the government will still be Hollywood's lap dogs in the year 20011.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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