This Week In Techdirt History: April 14th - 20th

from the so-it-was dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2014, the world was dealing with the Heartbleed bug and turning its attention to the NSA's possible awareness of it — leading Obama to tell them to start revealing flaws but with no particular incentive to actually do so. It wasn't clear if the NSA had definitely known about and used Heartbleed, but there was nothing stopping them and people certainly weren't going to take their advice on dealing with it. Overall, the simple truth was that the government pays to undermine, not fix internet security. Meanwhile, the Guardian and the Washington Post won Pulitzers for their coverage of the Snowden leaks, which made a lot of folks angry including Rep. Peter King and CIA torture authorizer John Yoo.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2009, the BSA was using the spate of stories about Somali pirates to talk about software piracy in a stunningly tonedeaf fashion, NBC was crafting its plans to make Olympic coverage worse and more expensive, the Associated Press was admitting its attack on aggregators looks stupid to the "untrained eye" while failing to explain why it shouldn't look stupid to everyone else too, and a hilarious but frightening warrant application got a college student's computer seized in part for using "a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on". DMCA abuse was chugging along as usual, with an activist group using it to hide exposure of its astroturfing and a news station using it to cover up video of it embarrassingly falling for an April Fool's story. And long before the Snowden revelations, not only were we already seeing revelations about the NSA's abuse of power, we were already unsurprised.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2004, the internet was still beginning to embrace some of the innovations that define it today: location-based services were on the rise, with Google launching localized ads and mobile phone navigation systems threatening to oust expensive dedicated hardware (something also happening in other areas like event ticket handling), and more and more people were going online wirelessly in one way or another. Of course, along with this was the rise of some more problematic trends too, like patent hoarding houses and DRM. In California, the first two arrests were made under a new law banning all kinds of video cameras in movie theaters, while one state senator was seeking to completely ban Gmail (which was still new) for some reason — though at least the legislature shot down another ban on violent video game sales to minors.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: April 7th - 13th

from the it's-back! dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2014, former NSA and CIA boss Michael Hayden was getting pathetically aggressive, calling Dianne Feinstein too emotional to judge the CIA torture report (which we were only learning about via piecemeal leaks), and calling congressional staffers "sissies" while accusing Ron Wyden of not acting like a man. At the same time, Mike Rogers was still pushing his "Ed Snowden is a russian spy" angle, while Snowden himself was saying the NSA lied in its claim that he didn't raise concerns through proper channels, and telling the Council of Europe about how the agency spied on Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Meanwhile, Hollywood was piling on to the already-dead Megaupload with a far-reaching lawsuit that packed in multiple attacks on the internet in general, and was quickly followed by the RIAA filing a virtually identical suit of its own.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2009, Amanda Palmer was sharing insights into how her fans support her work while Trent Reznor was taking his business model experiments into the mobile space, and a new service was announced that would let musicians pre-fund their releases (and it's not around anymore — but two weeks later, Kickstarter would launch).

The Associated Press announced its plans to sue news aggregators, Fox fired a movie columnist for reviewing a leaked copy of Wolverine, old-industry guard like U2's manager and Andrew Lloyd Weber were out trashing the internet, and Hollywood's favorite lawmakers were preparing for the next big copyright expansion push.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2004, we saw the first court ruling to state that online content aggregation was legal, setting the stage for later tantrums like the AP's, and the outrage of some publishers today. Gmail was the new kid on the internet block and people weren't sure how they felt about it (or whether it violated EU data privacy laws), just as mathematicians weren't quite sure how they felt about proofs that rely on computer calculations — while some clueless analysts were very sure about how much they hated the "fad" of camera phones. Google and Yahoo both stopped accepting ads for online casinos, seemingly out of the blue until we learned of some nasty letters recently sent out by the DOJ.

This was also the week that we saw the beginnings of a terrible idea that simply refuses to die, and rises like a zombie every now and then to this day: the WIPO broadcast treaty.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: February 3rd - 9th

from the back-then dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2014, the Snowden revelations continued with information like the NSA and FBI getting access to 40,000 Yahoo and Google accounts in the first half of 2013, and the GCHQ trying to hit Anonymous with a DDoS attack, while some new FOIA documents got us a closer look at how surveillance info is laundered via "parallel construction". Germany's Chaos Computer Club filed a criminal complaint against the German government over mass surveillance, while a Belgian prosecutor began looking into reports that the NSA and GCHQ hacked a well-known Belgian cryptographer. Meanwhile, Mike Rogers was trying to argue that Glenn Greenwald should be prosecuted for 'selling stolen material', Benjkamin Wittes was arguing that it's okay for the agency to deny spying on Americans, even if it does, and the DOJ was admitting that the NSA's phone record collection probably included congress.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2009, a researcher predicted that technology was going to render copyright completely obsolete within a year or so. This did not, of course, come true — but it's easy to see where it came from, even just given the copyright absurdity happening that very week. The EU was considering a draconian copyright proposal not unlike today's reform directive, the RIAA hired a new litigation boss with a history of 'misstating facts' in court while the DOJ was packing its ranks with entertainment and software industry lawyers, there was a proposal for new ACTA provisions that would criminalize non-commercial infringement, Blizzard successfully abused copyright to go after World Of Warcraft bots, and the Associated Press began demanding money for the photo that was the basis of Shepard Fairey's famous Obama poster.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2004, the EFF and other groups had noticed some dangerous corner-cutting in the RIAA's latest round of mass lawsuits, while the agency also appeared to be struggling to force its narrative about piracy onto the Morpheus/Grokster trial. The MyDoom virus was wreaking some havoc, causing Microsoft to set up an alternative website and, of course, causing antivirus companies to push massive damage estimates for reporters to uncritically repeat. One prediction piece about 3D printers may have jumped the gun slightly by saying they were closer than most people thought, but another was prescient in predicting that user-created video is the killer app for broadband, or at least wise to catch on to the fact that the internet is about connecting and communicating, not consuming a broadcast.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: January 20th - 26th

from the what-went-down dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2014, Dianne Feinstein was defending the NSA on the basis that they are so "professional", while ignoring declassified facts that contradicted some of her statements. Then the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board released an anticipated report that destroyed the arguments for bulk collections — and noted that the FISA court didn't even bother evaluating the legality of such collections until after the Snowden leaks. TV news stations, meanwhile, seemed intent on giving NSA defenders all the air time in the world, and though NSA critics got a bit of time too, sometimes they had to cut away due to critical events beyond their control... like the latest Justin Bieber news.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2009, as usual, the recording industry was engaged in multiple battles. The RIAA was considering trying to bribe ISPs into playing along with its copyright strikes program, while its British equivalent was convincing the UK government to force them to do so, and a bunch of labels were launching the first infringement lawsuit directly targeting an ISP in Ireland. But the biggest fight was the developing Joel Tenenbaum case, where the RIAA was so opposed to it being streamed online that they appealed the judge's order (supposedly out of fear that people might remix it to make them look bad, as if they needed any help with that) — and they even sought sanctions against Tenenbaum's lawyer.

Fifteen Years Ago

The Tenenbaum case was in response to the RIAA's mass lawsuit strategy, and the same week in 2004 was a prime example, with the agency suing 532 new John Does in the hopes of subpoenaing their information. Meanwhile, Kazaa was suing the industry in an audacious move of its own. Pepsi put a bunch of kids sued by the RIAA in a commercial for their limited time iTunes promotion, while Coca-Cola was struggling to keep its ill-fated music download service up and running (it was a weird time).

The photography industry was trying to drag on the quality of camera phones, thus missing the point which is that people can do new things with them, like the early discovery that they could be bar-code scanners. And, in an event that seems worth noting given today's insane and chaotic news climate, this was around the time that dedicated "fact-checking" sites started popping up online.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: January 13th - 19th

from the so-it-went dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2014, as congress was preparing to give up its authority and fast-track agreements like the TPP, and the USTR was not even showing up for hearings on the subject, the EFF and others teamed up to launch Copyright Week, for which we featured daily posts about copyright. On Monday, we looked at the reasons why the USTR and Hollywood hate transparency; on Tuesday, we dug into the loss to culture from killing the public domain; on Wednesday, we pivoted to knowledge and learning with a post all about Open Access; on Thursday, we looked at how copyright can destroy property rights; and then on Friday we wrapped it up with a look at the importance of fair use.

Ten Years Ago

Copyright was also on our minds this week in 2009, especially since it turned out the RIAA's promise to stop suing file sharers was not so solid when they filed yet another new lawsuit. Less awful but still very disappointing was the discovery that Apple's much-vaunted removal of DRM from iTunes songs also meant they were watermarking all the files with your email address. We took another look at how friendly DRM is an oxymoron, how collection societies like ASCAP and BMI harm up-and-coming singers, and the long, fraught history of copyright and music in general. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court was asking the administration for input on copyright issues related to remote DVRs, and the judge for a case challenging the constitutionality of the RIAA's actions agreed to broadcast the trial live online.

Fifteen Years Ago

Sometimes it's eerie and depressing how little changes across these five-year jumps. In 2004, the RIAA was just in an ever-so-slightly different phase of its activities following the loss of its ability subpoena file sharer information after the Verizon case: it was just trying to get ISPs to do it voluntarily, and having a hard time getting any on board. Studies suggested that the war against file sharing was gaining little ground, as piracy appeared to be on the upswing again while moving deeper underground. Over at the MPAA, the situation was similar: having just been blocked by a judge from banning screener DVDs for award shows, the agency was drumming up concern over the copies that began to show up online, which they started slowly finding one by one. Meanwhile, some folks were suggesting ways to deal with video piracy by totally missing the point of online video.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the back-then dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2014, the NSA more or less admitted to spying on congress, garnering a stunning response from Rep. Peter King who apparently felt that they absolutely should be, and also that Rand Paul was a fearmonger for calling for James Clapper to be prosecuted. Meanwhile, as Obama's planned surveillance reform started looking more and more cosmetic and Dianne Feinstein let slip that her reform bill is mostly about protecting existing surveillance programs, we learned that congress hadn't requested a GAO report on the NSA in years. And the House Intelligence Committee was spreading its own FUD about the impact of Snowden's revelations, while Chuck Schumer was completely incorrectly claiming that Snowden could make his whistleblower case at trial.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2009, Apple announced its big change to the iTunes store: no more DRM, but only in exchange for giving variable MP3 pricing options to record labels. Though a good move overall, there were disappointing aspects, like the 30-cents per song fee to remove DRM from already-purchased tracks, or the fact that Apple was (and remains) still a big fan of DRM in lots of other places. Veoh won another DMCA safe harbor case, this time against Universal Music, while MP3Tunes was continuing its fight with EMI. The RIAA was dumping its anti-piracy monitoring partner, but only in order to hire a different one — and folks were struggling to actually find any ISPs that had agreed to the agency's three-strikes plan.

This was also the week that we saw the beginning of the end for Google China, with the Chinese government calling out search engines for failing to block content.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2004, fresh off the passage of the CAN-SPAM act, the new anti-spam law's impact was essentially nonexistent, nearly all spam was non-compliant even when from legitimate companies, and overall it seemed like the law was mostly designed to make Congress look good.

File sharing was on the decline, though not as much as payphones, while wi-fi was beginning its meteoric rise. While it looked like "DVD Jon" was off the hook for DeCSS, even in Norway, the RIAA was hiring ex-LEOs to bust down doors and scare unauthorized CD vendors, and a Belgian consumer group was suing the industry over CD DRM.

Meanwhile, the world was getting ready for the hotly anticipated Google IPO, and just about every bank wanted in on the action.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: December 23rd - 29th

from the holidays-past dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, the feds were begrudgingly loosening the reins on some secrecy in minimal ways, releasing a redacted version of their secret interpretation of the PATRIOT Act (which just a month ago they said could not be revealed) and declassifying some court filings in long-running cases against the NSA while still saying the state secrets mean the court should kill the cases. The 60 Minutes journalist who turned the show over to NSA propaganda was insulting all his critics while the show was giving even more airtime to lies from national security officials (and Rep. Mike Rogers was out doing his own anti-Snowden TV appearances). And we took a look at how if Snowden returned to the US to face trial, he wouldn't be able to make any kind of whistleblower defence — and noted that even though, in private, James Clapper was saying he wasn't worried about terrorists changing tactics following the leaks, in public we had four star generals screaming at reporters and NSA apologists calling for Snowden to be hanged.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, Warner Music decided to play hardball with YouTube by removing all its music from the platform — or so it seemed. Later reports suggested that Google took the material down in response to Warner's demands for more money, because record labels just didn't have the leverage they thought in this fight. Though they were still doing fairly well in their battle to shoot down or compromise every innovative new music startup. And though it was just the previous week that the RIAA had announced an end to its lawsuit strategy, they were caught still suing — and excused their way out of it by insisting they couldn't stop lawsuits that were already in motion. Plus, a closer look at the voluntary three-strikes system the agency was touting as a replacement for the lawsuits revealed that the whole thing was more about sidestepping due process than stopping what they were doing, so at least some ISPs were pushing back.

Fifteen Years Ago

And just as three-strikes were the replacement for lawsuits, so too were lawsuits the replacement for RIAA subpoenas this week in 2003. Following the previous week's court ruling for Verizon that the agency can't just subpoena ISPs for customer info (which differed from a recent ruling for Charter, who went back to court to get that fixed), the RIAA decided to start filing lots of John Doe lawsuits first, and boy did they not waste any time getting started. There had been a lot of twists and turns in internet law throughout the year, and some more good legal decisions we feared would lead to bad laws. But at least one good decision affirmed that "DVD Jon" did nothing wrong by creating and releasing DeCSS.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: December 16th - 22nd

from the as-i-recall dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, NSA revelations continued to trickle out, such as the unsurprising fact that the agency had cracked standard mobile phone encryption, and that along with the GCHQ it was spying on UNICEF. But the backlash also started to come hard from all three branches of government: a judge ruled that bulk metadata collection is likely unconstitutional, the White House's task force issued surveillance reform recommendations that were surprisingly much more substantial than we expected (though Marcy Wheeler — then and now one of the best reporters out there keeping a close eye on the feds — wondered if this was just to stall constitutional analysis), and seven members of the House Judiciary Committee demanded a DOJ investigation into James Clapper for lying to congress (though at least one representative called this a disgrace).

The NSA was in a generally unhappy place of course, and one reporter told the story of an official calling for reforms to the first amendment because of how mean the press was being to the agency — though they must not have been talking about CBS, which turned over an entire episode of 60 Minutes to NSA apologia and propaganda, or the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial board called Snowden a sociopath and opposed any rollback of NSA programs.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, Hasbro finally dropped its lawsuit against Scrabulous, ending a long and stupid saga. EMI was in a copyright pretzel, using Coldplay's copyright to take down a mashup video that (misleadingly) compared the songs by Coldplay and Joe Satriani at the heart of a copyright lawsuit. The RIAA was still aggressively suing students, and record labels were caught disobeying a court order about how it could use student info it had acquired (by demanding money instead of only seeking injunctive relief), and then by the end of the week the RIAA had officially decided to abandon its mass lawsuit strategy — because it had negotiated secret three-strikes deals with various ISPs.

Meanwhile, more votes lost by Diebold machines in Ohio were discovered, which I mention because...

Fifteen Years Ago

...Why were Diebold machines still in use in 2008 anyway? This same week in 2003, the company's problems were already pretty clear. California was considering banning them from selling voting machines at all, and it was revealed that they had employed at least five convicted felons in management positions. More and more people were calling for a paper trail for the electronic votes, which Diebold offered to add to its machines — at a ridiculous jacked-up price because, as internal memos revealed, they figured the customers had no choice but to pay.

This was also the week that the CAN SPAM bill was signed into law, effectively legalizing spam while not being particularly effective in restricting or controlling it. Google also quietly launched its book search feature, and this alongside some other recent launches was making more people realize that Google was going to be something much bigger and different than just a web search engine.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: December 9th - 15th

from the things-what-was dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, we learned about how the NSA and GCHQ infiltrated World Of Warcraft and Second Life, and about how the NSA was to track people. Most big tech companies were calling for major surveillance reform while AT&T was rebuffing criticism from shareholders — but the government's plan for reform seemed mostly cosmetic and ineffectual. Law enforcement was also ramping up its collection of cellphone data and use of Stingray devices, though for the time being the feds were accepting a ruling saying they need a warrant to put GPS devices on cars. But the feds definitely didn't want to share their FISC legal filings with companies suing them over surveillance, and Keith Alexander was insisting he couldn't think of any way to keep Americans safe without bulk metadata collection.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, Warner Music was pushing for a music tax and we were explaining why that's a bad idea. Universal was continuing to wage war on Redbox, online video sites were harming themselves with geographical restrictions, and a hairdresser in New Zealand got billed for playing the radio in her shop. In the DRM world, Nokia's flopped "Comes With Music" scheme for devices had its DRM cracked, while Ubisoft finally decided to drop DRM on Prince of Persia in a highly passive-aggressive way.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, the deluge of online music offerings got even sillier with Coca Cola launching its own download store, even while across the industry customers were starting to question the standard pricing (and it was becoming clear that the real money was in selling hardware). Meanwhile, the RIAA hired ATF chief Bradley Buckles to head up its anti-piracy efforts, while a court was telling MPAA head Jack Valenti that he doesn't get to decide whether studios can send out DVD screeners. But Hollywood was winning on other fronts, trying to push its anti-camcorder laws to the national level, and doing well in its fight for a broadcast flag because consumer electronics companies weren't united in their opposition.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: December 2nd - 8th

from the reflections dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, we saw a spate of worrying changes around the world, with a German court telling Wikimedia that it's liable for user content, a French court ordering a search engine to make an entire website disappear over copyright infringement, and Italian politicians looking to have copyright handled by regulators, not courts — but at least in the UK, a court was also ruling that software functionality is not subject to copyright. Back in the US, just before the MPAA reached a settlement with Hotfile that would assuredly not actually help any artists, the agency was surprisingly told it couldn't use the words "piracy", "theft" or "stealing" during the trial. And there were developments in two major long-term IP court battles, with the appeals court overturning the ruling exempting APIs from copyright in the Oracle/Google case, and the Supreme Court agreeing to hear the Alice software patent case.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, before Denuvo became the leading name in the useless and annoying DRM world, it was SecuROM driving gamers nuts while failing to stop pirates — and so nobody was happy when RockStar decided to use it for Grand Theft Auto (apparently having learned nothing from seeing the high-profile failure of Spore's DRM). Warner Music was trying to talk universities into making students pay a piracy tax, while copyright apologists were arguing that schools which refuse to do so were protecting "terrorists, pedophiles, phishing-scheme operators, hackers [and] identity thieves". The MPAA, meanwhile, was trying to claim that its desire for selectable output control on media devices was a pro-innovation stance being opposed only by the luddites at the CEA...

We also saw a few key copyright developments in the courtroom: the banning of Bratz dolls (we covered this fascinating fight in a podcast this year), and Joe Satriani's lawsuit against Coldplay.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, the spam wars heated up as the world headed into the holiday shopping season, with spammers using new techniques to get around filters and even designing extensive spam campaigns just to annoy and hinder anti-spam companies — which were themselves becoming a lucrative industry. Alongside all this, we were beginning to realize just how much spam was coming from networks of hijacked computers. Meanwhile, with every damn tech company trying to launch an online music store, even Hewlett Packard was trying to get in on the action, while the RIAA was filing more insane filsharing lawsuits including one infamously targeting a 79-year-old retiree with no computer.

Filed Under: history, look back