This Week In Techdirt History: November 28th - December 4th
from the from-whence-we-came dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2016, Trump's telecom adviser was saying he wanted to dismantle the FCC because broadband monopolies aren't real — while Trump was appointing a third anti-net neutrality advisor to his team, Wall Street was dreaming of megamergers under his administration, and AT&T was showing everyone what the death of net neutrality would look like. Meanwhile, folks were lining up to seek action from Obama in his final days, with congressional staffers who reined in 1970s surveillance calling on him to pardon Ed Snowden, Dianne Feinstein asking him to declassify the CIA torture report, and the Senate Intelligence Committee seeking the declassification of evidence of Russian election interference.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2011, the SOPA fight continued. The mainstream press started to step up in opposition, with the NY Times, LA Times and Wall Street Journal all publishing pieces against the bill. Another DNS provider came out against it, as did educators who were worried about its impact on education. On the other side, an ex-RIAA boss was ignoring all criticism and claiming complaints are just attempts to justify stealing, the MPAA was offering false concessions, NBC Universal was threatening partners to get their support, and a highly questionable "consumer" group released an extremely misleading report claiming the public liked SOPA. Meanwhile, at least one court was acting like it was already law.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2006, the explosion of online video was leading to all sorts of misplaced blame for various issues (including lock picking apparently) while Disney was complaining that notice-and-takedown was too burdensome and Google was trying to pay off big entertainment companies to leave YouTube alone. Legal questions around embedding infringing content were heating up as well. Meanwhile, the RIAA finally succeeded in getting the US to pressure Russia into shutting down Allofmp3, the UK decided against extending copyright terms, and an appeals court held up yet another ruling that states can't ban video games.
