This Week In Techdirt History: February 6th - 12th

from the what-went-down dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2017, in the wake of Trump's racist executive order banning people from seven countries from entering the US, pretty much the entire tech industry stood up in opposition. Meanwhile, Ajit Pai was getting quickly to work saying one thing and doing another (not unlike the broadband providers themselves. The FBI was revealed to have even more surveillance powers than we thought, and was also changing its FOIA policies to be even more hostile.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2012, more dominoes were falling on ACTA: the Romanian Prime Minister admitted he had no idea why Romania signed it, the Czech government suspended ratification, then Latvia did the same, and even Germany got cold feet — and soon the mainstream financial press was writing off ACTA as dead. Meanwhile, we took a look at who was still supporting SOPA and why, while Lamar Smith was defending another terrible internet bill, and the RIAA was just lashing out at everyone.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2007, we looked at the collateral damage from Viacom's wave of YouTube takedowns and a top NBC executive's hatred of the site, while one guy was claiming to own the Electric Slide and issuing DMCA notices on wedding videos. We also got a closer look at how little it takes for the RIAA to fire off a flimsy DMCA notice, while the RIAA was spending its time trying to tell people they should be paying more for CDs. Meanwhile, we took a look at just how completely bogus the MPAA's claims of a Canadian camcording epidemic were.

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Filed Under: history, look back