This Week In Techdirt History: October 21st - 27th

from the back-in-the-day dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, the latest NSA leak showed that the agency grabbed data on 70 million French phone calls in less than 30 days, leading James Clapper to play word games in issuing a denial, while the White House was trying to assuage Angela Merkel with a dodgy promise that they are not and will not monitor her phone calls (no word on the past, though). Government officials were continuing their long history of calling journalists traitors for reporting on the leaks, while Keith Alexander said the government needs to find a way to stop them. And Dianne Feinstein was trying to paint metadata gathering as not true surveillance, garnering a direct rebuttal from Ed Snowden. Also, we learned the Senate was sitting on a devastating report about CIA torture...

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, while the EFF and ACLU were asking news networks to stop sending DMCA notices over political ads, we were wondering whether this experience would prompt either McCain or Obama to support DMCA reform. The RIAA was establishing "vexatious" as its new favorite word to lob at its critics and opponents, and a really dumb ISP takedown of a record label showed why ISPs shouldn't be copyright cops.

Meanwhile, we had a big failure at Techdirt that wiped out half a day's worth of comments, but were saved by archives from the comment search engine BackType (which would go on to be acquired by Twitter in 2011).

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, critics were rebelling against the MPAA's ban on screener DVDs, leading the association to finally back down a bit — though not on Jack Valenti's crowing about the moral obligation to stop piracy, or the association's new program to brainwash school children with its copyright maximalism which finally launched this week. Two different writers in the same newspaper reached opposite conclusions about the same study on file sharing, while others debated whether iTunes would put a dent in it, and we wondered if the entertainment industry's many copyright initiatives were a way of starting so many fights about complex policy that their opponents appear to be crying wolf.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the what-was dept

Five Years Ago

There was plenty of NSA apologia again this week in 2013. Keith Alexander was claiming that he was protecting civil liberties by violating them and playing the fear card by claiming people will die due to the Snowden leaks, while the lawyer who helped give legal cover to Bush's warrantless wiretapping was claiming everyone will grow to love the intrusive NSA, and Dianne Feinstein was playing the 9/11 card (and being debunked by the ACLU).

Meanwhile, the latest information from the leaks revealed that the NSA was collecting email contact lists and instant messaging friend lists overseas with no oversight, that the agency was involved in the drone strike program, and of course that the agency was in fact drowning in a glut of data.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, the president finally signed the ProIP bill and created America's copyright czar position. We took a closer look at the MPAA's lawsuit against RealNetworks (and how it was all about controlling innovation), while the RIAA was appealing the mistrial ruling in the Jammie Thomas trial, and a German court was finding Google Images thumbnails to be a copyright violation. Unexpectedly, the McCain campaign sent a letter to YouTube urging them to consider and protect fair use when processing DMCA requests, and YouTube offered up the excellent response that they can't give the campaign special treatment, but they hope McCain will fix the law. Meanwhile, Larry Lessig was giving his own impassioned defense of fair use and remix culture.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, the EFF found another person who was wrongly accused of file-sharing and sued by the RIAA (they wouldn't be the last), just as the RIAA was commencing round two of its shakedown scheme by, as promised, offering people a chance to pay up before being sued (how nice of them). We also took a closer look at the RIAA's lawsuits against Grokster and Morpheus, and how their true ambitious goal was to overturn the Betamax precedent that makes video tape machines legal. Also this week, Brewster Kahle was fighting against the DMCA in an attempt to preserve old software.

Meanwhile, lots of companies and industries were really struggling to adapt. Some people were discussing possible futures for usual-consumer-electronics-leader Sony after Apple beat it to the punch on smartphones, print publishers were basically dragging their heels about this whole internet thing, and Polaroid reached the highly questionable conclusion that its future was in digital photo kiosks.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the what-went-down dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, the US government shut down. Former CIA director Morell used that as an excuse to skip an NSA surveillance review board meeting, while James Clapper warned that failing to pay the agency's mercenary contractors might lead to security problems. The TSA similarly used the shutdown as an excuse for letting a nine-year-old sneak on to a flight, and a lawsuit by tech companies over NSA surveillance was put on hold. Outside the government, some folks were having fun with the shutdown, such as the Russian pirates offering to host the NASA website, someone submitting a bug report to GitHub describing how "government occasionally shuts down", and Good Old Games started offering some free thematically-appropriate games to furloughed government workers.

But hey, at least Congress's members-only gym was deemed essential and kept open.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, it was still the early days of the global financial crisis. Many self-serving and/or bizarre explanations popped up, blaming things like short selling and Wikipedia edit wars or, most strangely, flickering computer screens (according to author Tom Wolfe). Cooler heads took a closer look at the real causes: leverage and derivatives and a toxic, complex financial system.

Meanwhile, bogus stats and arguments were coming strong from the US Chamber of Commerce and members of congress in a push to get the president to sign the bill creating a copyright czar. At the same time, a judge ordered an injunction against Real's DVD copying software and for some inexplicable reason kept it secret, then extended it.

Also, long before the Snowden leaks and following Congress's capitulation on warrantless wiretapping, early leaks were already documenting NSA surveillance abuse.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, as we took a look at the role of music retailers in the industry's failure to adapt, the record companies were trying to ape the success of DVDs by adding "extras" to CDs. That's extra content — not extras like BMG's new DRM system, which a researcher discovered could be defeated by holding down the shift key while inserting the disk. SunnComm, the company that made the laughably useless DRM, naturally announced plans to sue the researcher for besmirching their good name — but reversed course in less than 24 hours in the face of public outcry. The software industry, on the other hand, was just beginning to dip its toe into the waters of a DRM approach that would gain much more traction (even while still being quite easily circumvented): product activation codes.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: September 30th - October 6th

from the what-was dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, as we discussed how the NSA had essentially built its own "shadow" social network, we learned and then confirmed that the agency was collecting GPS data from mobile phones. A We The People petition calling for a pardon for Ed Snowden was being quietly ignored, while Michael Hayden was joking about putting Snowden on a 'kill list'. We also learned that the NSA was storing all metadata for at least a year, and performing man-in-the-middle attacks with the help of telcos. Plus, it was working hard to compromise Tor, despite James Clapper's claims that they were just trying to "understand" it.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, the House followed the Senate in creating a copyright czar position, even as it let orphan works legislation die and the Senate moved on to more international piracy shaming. Cox was quietly adopting a copyright three strikes policy and lying about it being required by the DMCA, a comprehensive review of the RIAA's lawsuit strategy showed just how much of a failure it was, and The Pirate Bay was launching its own copyright lawsuit to expose the absurdity of the system.

Fifteen Years Ago

Five years earlier in 2003, in the early days of the RIAA's lawsuits, another 63 people gave in to its shakedown letters this week, while the agency concluded a Senate hearing by promising to at least leave a little time in between the letters and the lawsuits in future — but at least one senator wanted much more substantial change. There was talk about compulsory licensing for music and a lot of questions about how it could be abused depending on how you define "music" — not to mention talk about how the cost of making music was going way, way down. It was also around this time that the practice of bundling TV, internet and phone service was picking up steam.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the that-which-was dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013 we learned that, despite the White House's denials, the review of NSA surveillance was indeed overseen by James Clapper. The NSA was complaining about how it had to spend time closing leaks while its apologists were out in force, with some trotting out the old "privacy is dead" argument and, of course, incoming FBI director James Comey saying it was all good and legal. The critics were out in greater force, though: the New York Times called for the NSA to be barred from requiring surveillance backdoors, the president of Brazil blasted the US in front of the United Nations, Senator Leahy gave a speech condemning the agency's practices, and a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced comprehensive surveillance reform legislation.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, while companies were waking up to the absurd trademark restrictions around the Olympics, Major League Baseball surprised us by backing down from a takedown notice in the face of a well-crafted fair use defense. A Spanish court upheld the idea that deep linking is not infringement, a Ugandan composer was suing the government for copyright infringement over the national anthem, and the European Parliament rejected the idea of three strikes laws for file sharing. Back in the US, the judge in the Jammie Thomas case declared a mistrial, the Senate passed the bill creating a copyright czar, and Arts+Labs emerged as a new anti-piracy lobbying supergroup.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, we talked once again about how infringement isn't theft, and also how in fact what the RIAA does is a lot closer to stealing. Of course, studies unsurprisingly showed that file sharing wasn't going away, and smarter upstart record labels were starting to see it as an ally, but the RIAA was still stuck keeping an eye on innocent people. We also took a look at how the MPAA's mistakes were uniquely flavored and different from the RIAA's, but the BSA was taking a direct lesson from the RIAA with its offer of amnesty to confessed pirates (and its doom-and-gloom soothsaying about software piracy).

Filed Under: history, look back

The Bullshit Rewriting Of History To Claim FOSTA Took Down Backpage

from the not-how-it-happened dept

I was afraid that this was going to happen. If you don't recall, the official "reason" for why we needed FOSTA (originally SESTA) was that it was necessary to "take down Backpage." In the original announcement about the bill by Senator Portman, his press release quoted 20 Senators, and 11 of them mentioned Backpage.com as the reason for the bill. Not one of them seemed to mention that Backpage had already shut down its adult section months earlier. And, over the months of debate concerning FOSTA/SESTA, we noted that there was nothing in the existing law preventing federal law enforcement officials from taking down Backpage if it were actually violating the law.

And, indeed, before FOSTA was even signed into law, the DOJ seized the website and arrested its founders. Incredibly, even though Backpage was shut down before FOSTA was law, some of the bill's backers tried to credit the bill with taking down the site. The worst was Rep. Mimi Walters, who directly tried to take credit for FOSTA taking down Backpage (even though FOSTA wasn't even signed into law at the time she took credit for it).

Since then, I've been concerned that there will be an attempt to rewrite history to pretend that FOSTA was, in fact, responsible for the criminal prosecution of Backpage. And, it appears that is coming true. Last week, Buzzfeed ran a worth-reading profile of lawyer Marc Randazza, whom we've talked about plenty on this site (sometimes agreeing with him, and sometimes... not agreeing with him at all). I really don't have too much to say about the profile, except that it's unfortunate that Buzzfeed's Joseph Bernstein helps build up the myth that FOSTA was responsible for taking down Backpage:

The state still has the limited power to regulate individuals’ speech. But so too can the state pressure or mandate social platforms to limit what they publish (as it did in FOSTA/SESTA, which forced websites like Backpage to stop hosting ads for sex work, resulting in conditions that sex workers say have endangered them), and so too do social platforms govern the speech of their users.

This is really, really wrong -- and it's unfortunate, because it makes you wonder what other errors might be lurking in Bernsteins' reporting (he's normally a great reporter, but this is a pretty big error). In fact, there was an entirely different law, the SAVE Act from 2015, that made advertising sex trafficking illegal. And, it was grandstanding threats by Congress (way before FOSTA/SESTA) that made Backpage shut down its entire adult section. And it was the DOJ who took down Backpage before even FOSTA was law. So why is anyone reporting that FOSTA helped take down Backpage?

Because that's the narrative FOSTA supporters wanted from the very beginning. It's why so many of the quotes about the introduction of the bill mentioned Backpage. It's why sponsors of the bill falsely claimed Backpage was taken down thanks to FOSTA. But we shouldn't let them rewrite history like this, and reporters like Bernstein shouldn't contribute to this myth. FOSTA wasn't necessary to take down Backpage.

Filed Under: cda 230, fosta, history, intermediary liability, mrac randazza
Companies: backpage

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

from the for-the-record dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, we learned that in addition to communications the NSA was keeping millions of credit card transaction records, and then we finally got a look at the secrett FISA court ruling that permitted bulk phone data collection, in which it was revealed that Verizon and AT&T never fought back. The court also made the untrue claim that all of congress already knew all the details, and of course we wondered why the ruling was ever secret to begin with. Meanwhile, Michael Hayden was making some crazy claims about terrorists using Gmail and the US's right to spy on the internet it invented, while also making some childish prognostications about Ed Snowden's likely future of alcoholism — though other defenders of the agency were sticking to the same tired talking points, plus the new euphemism that Snowden's activities were "masked by his job duties".

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, Apple made the decision to block a competitive podcast app from the App Store, leading to significant backlash, while a court in Germany was getting in on similar action in its own way by banning VOIP on the iPhone at the behest of T-Mobile. NBC was bragging about its ability to lock down online Olympic footage, the movie industry was making yet another attempt to build the mythical "good" DRM, and the cops were continuing to bring in the RIAA to help with investigations where it would clearly be biased. There was a glimmer of light for online entertainment though: this was also the week that BandCamp launched, and its easy-to-build pages quickly became one of the best tools for musicians to distribute their work online.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, as file-sharers were going deeper underground, a study showed that most online copies of movies were coming from industry insiders — which perhaps explains the industry's insane plan for self-destructing DVDs. While RIAA head Carey Sherman was struggling to defend the agency's lawsuit strategy (and totally missing the point), the Senate was gearing up for hearings over the lawsuits, and considering a bill to close the DMCA's special subpoena powers — also a major issue in the ongoing court battle between the RIAA and Verizon.

Filed Under: history, look back

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the writin'-words dept

This week, both of our top comments on the insightful side come from our post about Apple deleting purchased movies from people's devices after losing the rights. In first place, it's Gwiz responding to the idea that people should known they are only licensing digital content, not buying it:

Then why does the button say "Buy" and not "Rent"?

As far as I'm concerned, when the terms of sale indicate that I am "purchasing" a digital copy, then that is exactly what I am doing. I will take "my copy" and do with it as I please, which includes removing any DRM and making backup copies.

This is exactly what I do periodically with my Kindle and the wife's Kindle. I save un-DRMed copies of everything to my laptop with Calibre.

In second place, it's Thad responding to the assertion that copyright law is more to blame than Apple:

But Apple implemented a system that allows purchases to become unavailable when the work is no longer for sale. That is on Apple.

There are other digital distributors that do not operate under those same terms.

To pick one example: Rifftrax no longer sells the two 1960s Doctor Who movies that used to be available on the site; it lost the rights to them. However, if you purchased them when they were available, then you can still stream or download them.

To pick another example: The Square Enix game Last Remnant was recently removed from Steam; it's no longer for sale. But if you bought it when it was for sale, you can still download and play it. If you bought a Steam code from a third-party seller, you can still redeem that code.

Rifftrax is located in the US. Valve is located in the US. Both companies are subject to exactly the same copyright laws that Apple is. And yet, they don't take away their customers' purchases when those items are removed from their stores.

There's plenty to criticize about US copyright law.

But this? This is Apple's fault. Not solely Apple's fault, but Apple's certainly not blameless.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we'll carry on the trend with two more comments from that post. First, it's Bergman with another rejection of the "it's just a license" idea:

If it was a rental, the price shouldn't be the same as a purchase. If it was a purchase, then Apple owes a refund since they charged for a purchase, not a rental.

And what if the customer(s) just licensed their money to Apple?

Next, it's Get off my cyber-lawn! painting an even broader picture of the ridiculousness of how digital goods often work:

I went onto a large, popular e-book website last month and looked up a book I wanted to purchase (still popular, still in print). I got an "out of stock" response for a freaking E-BOOK!

Its bad enough that you want to charge me as much OR MORE money than for a print copy, but then you tell me you are fresh out of 1s and 0s for that particular item?

And THAT is what contributes to a "pirate" culture.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is TheResidentSkeptic with an attempt to sort out government demands of social media companies:

At least the rules are getting clearer...

1) If you block posting of any user content, we will fine you.
2) if you fail to remove objectionable content within 1 hour we will fine you.
3) if you remove or otherwise censor any content, we will fine you.
4) If you don't block objectionable content from being posted, we will fine you.

or, to put it simply, "Send us all your money"

In second place, it's That One Guy expanding on the proposal that the SDCC's trademark war over the term "Con" could present some promotional opportunities:

Several opportunities in fact, given SDCC convinced a judge that shortening 'convention' to 'con' belongs only to them. Really, legal thuggery paired with trying to monopolize a word with multiple connotations, one of them not so pleasant? The jokes practically write themselves.

'When you think 'con', think SDCC.'

'SDCC: For when you want a first-class con.'

'Why settle for a lesser con where they might not know what they're doing when you can let the SDCC show you how a con-job really works.'

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with Stephen T. Stone, who has a question about Valve's latest foggy explanation of who it will ban from Steam:

Defining what separates a good faith effort to sell a game from a "troll" involves a "deep assessment" of the developer, Valve says, including a look at "what they've done in the past, their behavior on Steam as a developer, as a customer, their banking information, developers they associate with, and more."

So when do they ban games published by EA?

And last but not least, we've got an anonymous commenter catching another commenter out on an amusing typo about, er, rampant piracy:

Wonton piracy is only practical if you can get the goods fresh. Nobody wants stale wontons.

That's all for this week, folks!

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the depths-of-time dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, the NSA revelations continued with the discovery that the US was launching hundreds of cyberattacks and that AT&T had employees embedded in the government to provide real-time phone call searches. The various excuses and half-measures were coming frequently, with a former agency boss saying surveillance is important but the NSA should just lie less, President Obama saying the NSA needs more checks and balances while simultaneously claiming the existing ones are working well, and the agency itself asserting that it only spies on bad people while leaving open a giant loophole that covers spying on everyone else.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, there were two huge launches from Google: they introduced the Chrome browser, and the Android Market for apps (which they touted heavily as being more open than Apple's App Store. AT&T was bragging about the pursuit of patents while US Customs was raiding trade show booths over patent infringement. Facebook was, rather heavyhandedly, blocking all links to the very useful resource of BugMeNot. And we were starting to see how the proliferation of GPS-enabled devices was becoming a tool of the police.

Fifteen Years Ago

There was a big launch this week in 2003 as well, with the folks behind Kazaa (who had also recently made the ill-advised choice to send DMCA notices to Google) launched the soon-to-be-nearly-ubiquitous Skype. It was also the very early days of the RSS protocol, and our post questioning whether it was a bit overhyped somehow got us lumped in with the supposed "RSS backlash". Meanwhile, the RIAA was preparing to upgrade its legal campaign from subpoenas to actual lawsuits, while also offering a hilarious amnesty program for anyone who would sign a file sharing confession and delete all their songs.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: August 26th - September 1st

from the on-the-record dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, we learned that the NSA had tapped the UN and various embassies and cracked the UN's video conferencing encryption. We also got a look at the agency's "black budget" and realized how much effort they were putting into breaking encryption. The DOJ began making the "just metadata" argument, while we looked at how well Ed Snowden covered his tracks and wondered how many intentional surveillance abuses were hidden the same way, not to mention how many of the 1000 other sysadmins with the same access copied documents too. Meanwhile, the UK's Deputy Prime Minister was defending the destruction of Guardian hard drives but not the detention of David Miranda, the latter of which was also condemned by the author of the UK anti-terrorism act. Barry Eisler argued that both incidents were all about creating a chilling effect on journalism, and later in the week we learned that the UK government asked the NY Times to delete the Snowden documents too (they didn't listen).

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, people were scrutinizing the true nature of Disney's Mickey Mouse copyrights, AMC was stupidly freaking out over the new trend of fans creating Twitter accounts for fictional TV show characters, and in an early version of the Ubers and Lyfts to come, we saw a bus company in Canada try to shut down a carpool-matching service. Meanwhile, Mattel sadly followed in Hasbro's footsteps and brought the war on Scrabble-clone apps to the rest of the world where it owns the rights to the game, and the Tetris Company started getting in on the same anti-app action. The RIAA won a copyright case because the defendant had foolishly destroyed evidence, while a different and excellent court ruling found that Veoh was protected by safe harbors for videos uploaded by users. But the FBI still had nothing better to do than arrest the leaker of a Guns N' Roses album.

Fifteen Years Ago

Lots of innovations were still in their nascent stages this week in 2003, with everyone struggling to figure out what exactly to do with location-based tech, US wireless carriers doing a not-so-great job of supporting and promoting camera phones, a growing number of consumer electronics starting to come with broadband connectivity (as more and more computer makers started becoming general consumer electronics companies), and of course the beginning of the ascent of the famous/infamous (depending on who you ask) autotune technology. Meanwhile, porn websites were getting in on the file sharing subpoena game while the RIAA (which also got sued by webcasters for monopoly actions) was firing back at a woman who was fighting just such a subpoena.

Filed Under: history, look back