This Week In Techdirt History: September 12th - 18th

from the way-back-when dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, Netflix was urging the FCC to crack down on broadband usage caps, Hollywood was struggling to keep its movie screeners secure (despite insisting that anti-piracy tech should be easy), and Paramount issued a DMCA takedown over an Ubuntu Linux torrent. Scientists were realizing that the recent ruling in Europe on infringement-by-linking was making science much more difficult, while the EU was barreling ahead with its absolutely ridiculous copyright proposal, and another bad EU ruling said that WiFi providers can be forced to require passwords if copyright holders demand it. The ACLU was launching a campaign to have President Obama pardon Ed Snowden, while the House Intelligence Committee was insisting that he doesn't qualify as a whistleblower. We also took a closer look at how corporate sovereignty provisions in trade deals are dangerous, while over 200 economics and law professors were urging Congress to reject such provisions. Also, this was the week that Prenda's Paul Hansmeier lost his law license.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, a new proposal in the UK would allow police to seize domain names without a court order, the US government was continuing to indict people for file sharing, the Authors Guild filed lawsuits against five universities for providing access to orphaned works, and Hotfile was fighting back against Warner Bros. with a countersuit for copyright misuse. Europe's recent retroactive copyright extension was leading to much well-deserved anger (considering it was costing the public a billion euros), while Canada was planning to reintroduce its terrible copyright plan. We also took a look at one of the starkest examples of the insanity of Hollywood accounting: the fact that the actor who played Darth Vader was still not getting paid because supposedly Return of the Jedi was still not profitable.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, record labels were being evasive about their own use of file sharing tech, Universal Music was publicly threatening to sue YouTube and MySpace, the USPTO was getting in on the game of brainwashing school kids about infringement, and we reiterated the arguments about why fashion copyright isn't necessary. Nearly a year after the original scandal, Sony's rootkit was still causing problems, while the company was trying to avoid having to pay out another settlement in Canada. The world's largest DVD manufacturer was bragging about yet another DRM scheme, and we noted how — after all the "significant blows" to piracy that had supposedly been happening — piracy still wasn't going down. Also this week, we saw a very early attempt by a Chinese car company at showing off a fully driverless vehicle.

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Filed Under: history, look back