This Week In Techdirt History: September 19th - 25th

from the as-you-were dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, Donald Trump was doubling down on Ted Cruz's argument for blocking the transition of the IANA away from the commerce department (not the only stupid argument on the subject), but the Senate came to its senses and did not support the plan. The House Intelligence Committee released a list of "Snowden's Lies" that was almost entirely false, while the Washington Post was condemning Snowden and we wondered if it would give back its Pulitzer Prize, while Chelsea Manning was facing indefinite solitary confinement after a suicide attempt. The man arrested over KickassTorrents was being blocked from talking to his US attorney, while a former UMG executive was calling for the destruction of the DMCA. And we took a closer look at the more complex reasons for ridiculous bogus takedown demands in mass DMCA filings.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, Righthaven was failing to pay attorney fees ordered by the court and we looked at what would happen if the company declared bankruptcy. A lawyer was seeking to wipe out critical anonymous speech, the Authors Guild was trying to play "gotcha" with orphaned works instead of fixing the problem, and we looked at the entertainment industry's coordinated effort to blame third parties for piracy. In Italy, a proposed law would ban people from the internet based on a single accusation of infringement, leading an EU Parliament Member to ask the EU Commission what it would do if the law passed — while the Commissioner was busy asking big copyright to increase its lobbying efforts.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, Warner Music took the lead in signing deals with YouTube, while Microsoft was launching a YouTube copycat site (leading us to remember that, a few months prior, Bill Gates had explained why Microsoft would never try to do that). A Belgian court ordered Google to stop linking to news websites, prompting the company to fight back and hit a wall. Yahoo was timidly experimenting with DRM-free music, while the press was noticing how disappointing the early online video offerings from Apple and Amazon were. And, twenty years after the fact, The Knack noticed that their song My Sharona had been sampled by Run DMC and filed a very late lawsuit.

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Filed Under: history, look back