This Week In Techdirt History: June 20th - 26th
from the so-it-went dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2016, the Supreme Court was chipping away at the Fourth Amendment while the FBI was continuing to use its bad facial recognition database and getting away with problematic warrants and hacking — and congress was seeking to legalize more FBI abuses (in an attempt that narrowly failed). The DOJ was fighting against privacy advocates, and CIA director John Brennan was bizarrely claiming that only the US had encryption technology. We were also disappointed to see Twitch bring CFAA and trademark claims against bot operators.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2011, Righthaven was losing lawsuits left and right, and the CEO was not taking it well. Sony was fighting against PS3 modding and Microsoft was claiming it could use the DMCA to block competing Xbox accessories, while Universal launched a war on popular hip-hop sites and blogs, which even swept up 50 Cent's own website. A new court filing explained how ICE's domain seizures violate the First Amendment, while Senator Leahy was praising the agency's initiative. We also took a look back at the many things that people thought would kill the music industry in both the analog and digital eras.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2006, the NY Times was in the midst of one of its many paywall experiments while the LA Times was subjecting reporters to stifling web filters. Blockbuster was fighting against Netflix's patents while GoDaddy was sued over a patent on server auto-configuration. We wrote about how ISPs were screwing everyone, and how their cooperation with the NSA was boosting the encryption market. Meanwhile, social media sites were booming but struggling to figure out how to make money, and of course still facing a variety of vague freakouts.
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Re: Sony and PS3 Modding
Sony could've saved themselves a lot of trouble if they didn't abandon legitimate Linux builds on their consoles.
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It was terrible that the FBI used this bad technology. I even remember how the site was blocked for 50 cents, it's bad that such people influence such an industry and for further development. I hope that the state's view of various processes will be less intent and there will be freedom for citizens, workers, engineers. As an aerospace engineer at https://engre.co/, I am worried that this will affect my sphere as little as possible. I only hope for improvements from the state for engineers from different areas of work.
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Re: Not Spam!
I have no idea why this comment has been flagged. If you are reading my comment but can't see a comment by Alex Maddy, click the button to unhide it. It's not the best comment, but it is most certainly not spam, in my opinion!
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Re: Re: Not Spam!
Comments containing links are always suspected spam unless it's clear in the context of the conversation why they've been provided. In this case, nobody really cares where a particular commenter works unless it's entirely relevant to the conversation, and here the link appears to go to Ukrainian platform for other companies to bid on jobs, and give a lot of talk about how great Ukrainians are. You can't even browse the services offered without being asked to sign up an account. Even if the company were relevant, the commenter doesn't state their position there, so their opinion about how such things could affect business might be irrelevant - even if they were directly affected by FBI use of the tech they're complaining about, which seems unlikely for a platform so closely fixated on local business in Ukraine. The concerns stated are a little rambling, and don't seem to be completely relevant to the discussion except as to provide a framework to post the link.
Perhaps there's some kind of language barrier here, but the purpose of the comment seems to be mainly to drive traffic to the mentioned link, which is by definition spam. There's plenty of red flags here, so one has been provided for them.
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