This Week In Techdirt History: Techdirt Was Born!

from the twenty-years-of-techdirt dept

As you likely know by now, we're celebrating Techdirt's 20th anniversary this week. We've got a podcast episode about our history as well as some limited edition gear featuring a revamped version of the very first Techdirt logo:

And today, instead of our usual history round-up, we're taking a look back at the very first post — which was actually not a post originally, but a newsletter, containing a selection of tech news from the week.

On that day — August 23rd, 1997 — there was a fair bit of buzz around the so-called "Internet 2" being built by various universities and researchers, and the first item in the first Techdirt used that as a basis of comparison for a new distributed supercomputing project in California. Next there was a quick list of headlines, with one amusing and notable detail: in describing Apple as a competitor to Microsoft, it was at the time not inappropriate to put "competitor" in irony quotes.

Later, the newsletter includes some predictions. The first was that a new web portal called "Snap!" from CNET would fail — though some news stories from later years suggest it didn't happen quite as quickly as expected, the difficulty I had in finding any information about it today suggests the prediction came true eventually.

The second was right on the money: Mike predicted that Netscape would stop charging for its browser, Communicator. Five months later, not only did Netscape announce that the browser would be free, it launched the Mozilla Open Source project and shared the code with everyone.

The word "meme" hadn't morphed into its specific modern internet meaning just yet, and so under a category entitled Meme Watch the newsletter noted something more in line with the original notion — a particular idea popping up again and again and spreading from place to place. In this case it was the habit of comparing every standards battle in tech (DVD, HDTV, wireless connectivity) to the famous VHS versus Beta showdown of the 1980s. While not a useless analogy, it was certainly overused and oversimplified — and the nuanced nonsense of these standards fights would provide plenty of Techdirt fodder in the years to come.

Finally, the newsletter ends by noting that the FBI had released all its files related to Elvis Presley — yes, though the saga of Elvis and the FBI feels like mostly common knowledge now, it was only revealed in full in 1997.

And that's all for this anniversary week, folks! Once again, be sure to check out our post and podcast about our history, and pick up some original Techdirt logo gear before Sunday, September 3rd!

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the so-it-went dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, while Amazon was realizing it had little choice but to get in on the patent portfolio buying game, Google was launching a prior art finder to help stop bad patents — though some worried it might be used by trolls to find targets. Meanwhile, Google also made the controversial decision to start filtering searches based on DMCA notices received by the site, but of course even this wasn't enough to satisfy the RIAA and MPAA.

Also this week in 2012, we launched the Techdirt Insider Shop!

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, the proliferation of DVRs and digital video made us ask if the concept of a "TV channel" still made any sense. Of course, the digital video side was still struggling, with all the official offerings pretty much sucking in the eyes of consumers, and with Google Video shutting down and eliminating videos people thought they had bought, and the P2P networks continuing to strive to go legit under the weight of lawsuits,and Universal Music thinking it can still release CDs in different countries at different times (okay that last one is music not video, but still). Given how amazingly well the copyright regime was going for the entertainment industries, is it any wonder the Senate was looking to impose the same thing on the fashion industry?

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, we saw one reporter fired for having a blog and another fired after a congressman got mad about an email. Not great.

And now, a brief world tour: South Korea was facing the same tensions over music sharing as the US; Europe was implementing its own version of the DMCA; Indian telecoms were trying to get instant messaging banned; Norway was struggling to find a judge who was tech-savvy enough to try the creator of DeCSS software; and in a story that is rather appropriate given current events, Russia charged an FBI agent with hacking.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the it-happened! dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, we saw a couple interesting leaks. The fair use text from the TPP was made public, and we discovered (with little surprise) that the US proposals were about weakening fair use, not strengthening it. Meanwhile, a leak of MPAA documents revealed their plans to use sock puppets to smear Richard O'Dwyer, the TVShack operator that the agency was trying to extradite from the UK. And speaking of questionable extraditions, we wondered why New Zealand prosecutors were trying so hard to prevent the release of videos of the raid on Kim Dotcom's home — but were again unsurprised when some portions were released and even NZ police admitted it was "over the top".

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, school boards were finally slowly starting to get over their fear about kids and the internet, folks were pushing hard for a ban on all the "internet hunting" that wasn't actually happening, and the New York Times was getting ready to pull the plug on its failed premium paywall experiment, TimesSelect. Meanwhile, in a display that is mostly just sad when you look back on it, Blockbuster bought Movielink from Hollywood for a pittance, hoping it could transform it into a real player in the digital media space.

Fifteen Years Ago

Blockbuster was at it this week in 2002 as well, finally eyeing competition from Netflix (still just a mailing subscription service at the time) and considering launching something similar, while the TV industry was fighting to try to make DVRs useless alongside the introduction of digital TV. We also enjoyed a three part series from Wired about the insane radio dominance of Clear Channel. And we took an interesting look at EULAs, which weren't quite as bad then, as evidenced by the surprise and concern over a new Windows EULA that allows Microsoft to update your system when it chooses.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: July 30th - August 5th

from the as-it-happened dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, it was Olympic time — which also means, time to be frustrated with NBC's exclusive coverage. One journalist who was highly critical of the network ended up getting his Twitter account suspended, then eventually reinstated, with the end result (of course) of a massive Streisand Effect. Meanwhile, a leaked document revealed the unsurprising fact that the IFPI had no plans to share any money it got from The Pirate Bay with musicians, the MPAA was hosting movie screenings to get cozy with congress, and for some reason Homeland Security was getting in on the YouTube takedown game.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, as had been the case for many years and still is to this day, e-voting machines were found to have terrible security. That particular report came from California, but was quickly followed up by a similar one from Florida, and then a source-code review that also uncovered numerous vulnerabilities. And yet election officials, as always, defended the machines — perhaps because of so many of the officials used to work at the companies that make them?

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, people were digging deeper into the many horrors of the bill that would make it legal for Hollywood to hack your computer in its crusade against piracy. Not that this was the only bad internet bill being considered — Congress was also looking into making even more stringent anti-circumvention laws than those in the DMCA. The same DMCA that, the very same week, was being used by HP to threaten security researchers who revealed a vulnerability in their software (though they later backed down). Amidst all this, we were glad to see some attempts to wake academics up to the dangers of the DMCA.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the stuff-that-happened dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, we started out by reporting on something that happened late on the previous Friday: the feds admitted that they violated the fourth amendment with their surveillance programs. We noted how Congress had lost all perspective with its moves to prosecute journalists as if they were spies, and that it was worrying how the Senate Intelligence Committee seemed more interested in stopping whistleblowers than figuring out why they blew the whistle. Meanwhile, the ACLU lost a fight to get the courts to recognize common sense and agree that widely published leaked documents should no longer be treated as classified.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, the RIAA was continuing its push to get radio stations to pay up for playing music by finding people to claim that radio play makes people buy less music. Meanwhile, a disturbingly RIAA-friendly change snuck into the Higher Education Reauthorization Act, potentially cutting funding from schools that don't filter P2P traffic (but was thankfully pulled soon after). The UK government, amidst various forms of copyright insanity, at least realized that extending copyright durations on 50-year-old songs was pointless. And the EFF kicked off a now-famous legal battle when it sued Universal Music for issuing a YouTube takedown over a clip of a little kid dancing to music.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, we saw one of the most insane attempts to prop up Hollywood of them all: a bill that would exempt them from hacking laws in their expeditions to find pirates was introduced in Congress. Meanwhile, the huge uncertainty caused by recent changes to royalty rates was threatening the future of webcasters, leading to a bill being introduced to save them. And a silly Texas company that had turned itself into a JPEG patent troll got some serious pushback from the ISO standards body.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the memba? dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, we saw some copyright insanity when BMG issued a YouTube takedown on a Mitt Romney campaign ad for including a clip of Obama singing an Al Green song, and then the next day went on to take down the original clip, because even the President was a pirate in the eyes of the entertainment industry. Thankfully, by the end of the week, YouTube decided the videos were fair use, and restored them. Meanwhile, Viacom was blacking out web clips as part of a spat with DirecTV, leading Jon Stewart to blast them on their own network and get them to reverse the decision for at least some clips. And in New Zealand, the judge in Kim Dotcom's extradition trial spoke out against the TPP and copyright extremism, which forced him to step down from the case (even though the same thing never seems to happen to pro-copyright judges).

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, the RIAA finally found itself on the hook for legal fees in one of its aggressive lawsuits, despite its usual strategy of dropping cases whenever that looked like a possibility. The head of an LA news agency who made headlines by being the first person to sue YouTube for copyright infringement decided he might take his misguided fight to Apple as well. The MPAA was speaking out against net neutrality because it might interfere with anti-piracy enforcement, Clear Channel was trying to use the Sirius-XM merger as a reason to get looser restrictions on terrestrial radio ownership, and Microsoft was making promises about future Windows editions as damage control after the poor reception of Vista.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, webcasters were appealing the new royalty rates that would cripple them, tech executives were seeking a better starting point for a conversation about piracy with Hollywood, and Universal was doing the kind of thing Universal does and appointing a new "senior vice president of anti-piracy". At least one analyst was looking at broadband adoption in a more positive light than usual at the time, while others were not too sanguine on the future of 3D TV — but we also took a moment to celebrate how it's often unglamorous technology that changes history the most, on the 100th birthday of the air conditioner.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the years-gone-by dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, we saw the folks who had recently been defeated by the internet try to sneakily get their way. In Europe, that took the form of resurrecting the all-but-dead ACTA inside the Canada-EU Trade Agreement (and writing clueless columns, of course). In the US, it was Lamar Smith trying to sneak SOPA through in bits and pieces in other bills, seemingly having learned nothing from the experience. The public wasn't oblivious though, and soon a backlash led to some of the problems of CETA being fixed and Smith's new bill falling apart.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, webcasters lost their fight to delay a big royalty hike when the court denied the requested stay, but then SoundExchange surprised us all by actually being just a little bit decent and holding off on actually enforcing the royalties. Sony BMG tried to redirect some of the blame for its rootkit fiasco by suing a company that supplied one of the pieces of copy protection software, while the silly DRM game of AACS was serving only to annoy legitimate customers. And surprise, surprise: a study found ripped DVDs weren't even a big source of piracy compared to file sharing.

Fifteen Years Ago

The battle over webcasting had already begun five years earlier in 2002, when it was clear that the labels wanted internet radio stations to go away. Meanwhile, after much concern about various pieces of bad internet legislation, it looked like Congress wasn't going to be moving on any of it anytime soon — but that didn't mean we could ignore a new bad bill that would basically eliminate people's fair use rights, which was unsurprising at a time when it looked like only one person in all of Congress really understood or cared about user rights.

Also this week in 2002, in a move that would further cement them both as tentpole internet platforms for years to come, eBay bought PayPal.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the stuff-that-happened dept

Five Years Ago

Charles Carreon kicked off this week in 2012 by continuing to dig deeper, while Matt Inman and IndieGogo hit back. He then tried to intimidate a parodist with a bizarre list of threats and a DMCA takedown. But by Tuesday, he had dismissed his lawsuit (while still claiming victory somehow), only for things to take a truly bizarre turn when an apparently fake lawsuit was filed against him under Inman's name.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, Russia shut down Allofmp3, a new legal spat raised the question of whether embedding a YouTube video can be infringement, and restaurants were beginning to really grapple with independent, amateur reviewers. The MPAA and RIAA were still up to their dirty investigative tricks while the NFL was trying to dictate the contours of fair use. And this was the week that Bill Gates ceased to be the richest man in the world.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, the RIAA was just starting up its campaign of going after the individual users of P2P sharing networks, while webcasters were being driven underground by onerous new royalty rates and a Danish court deeming it illegal to deep-link to a newspaper website. As WiFi continued to ascend, ISPs like Time Warner were starting to crack down on open hotspots — and as text messaging continued to ascend, the Methodist Church was joining the early crowd of people decrying it for getting in the way of social interaction.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: June 25th - July 1st

from the blogging-through-the-ages dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, we saw some obstinate reactions to the ACTA protests, with an EU Parliamentarian saying dissent was "a soft form of terrorism", and the EU Commissioner saying he would simply ignore rejection of ACTA by the EU Parliament — while Australia's parliamentary committee on the subject was recommending rejection. As for the TPP in the US, we were annoyed but unsurprised to learn that the MPAA had full online access to the text of the agreement even as Congress continued to struggle to get even the slightest glimpse. Rep. Darrell Issa made the reasonable request that he be allowed to observe the next round of TPP negotiations, but he was (again unsurprisingly) rejected.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, some people were beginning to ask whether the RIAA's piracy investigation tactics were even legal. Of course, Attorney General Albert Gonzales was far more interested in throwing people in jail for attempted piracy. Rolling Stone rolled its eyes and wrote an obituary for the recording industry, while the MPAA was off doing its own thing — suing sites for just linking to infringing content. Meanwhile, statistics about reality kept being disobedient to the world of anti-violent-videogame crusaders, with their protests driving up the hype around Manhunt 2, and violent crime rates continuing to fall while violent video games got more popular.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, the new era of the web was slowly being born as the world noticed that broadband internet access unlocked entirely new usage patterns and behaviors for internet users — even though broadband was still really struggling to catch on in the US. Meanwhile, a congressman introduced a bill to legitimize all sorts of nasty anti-piracy vigilante tactics including the increasingly popular music industry scheme of trying to swamp file trading networks with fake files. Newspaper executives were looking to the future of the mobile web, while newspaper columnists were stuck in the past and moaning about those newfangled "blogs". And the RIAA succeeded in scaring workplaces into cracking down on employees sharing MP3s.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: June 18th - 24th

from the how-things-change dept

Five Years Ago

The Charles Carreon saga continued this week in 2012, with a lawsuit against Matthew Inman and the charities he was raising money for. When the full details of the suit became public, so did all sorts of nuttiness contained therein. Inman came to the table with an open letter, telling Carreon to take some time off and cool down — but he didn't listen, and promised to subpoena Twitter and Ars Technica over a parody account mocking him. Finally, at the very end of the week, he admitted the initial lawsuit was a mistake — but kept on digging anyway with new bizarre theories and attacks.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, NBC was on a copyright warpath, trying to get the FCC to force ISPs to monitor traffic for infringement, and trotting out the now famously hilarious attempt to blame movie piracy for hurting corn farmers. Viacom was still going full-force against YouTube and bulldozing over fair use in the process, even as YouTube (which played a big role in ending P2P's dominance of web traffic) was unveiling its video editing tool to encourage more user-generated content. And EMI was oh-so-shockingly discovering that people responded positively to the sale of DRM-free music.

Fifteen Years Ago

There are a variety of reactions I often have to these stories from these early days of Techdirt. Sometimes they include amusingly incorrect predictions or shockingly precise ones; sometimes it's simply intriguing to see the small beginnings of something that would later become a big deal. This week in 2002, there was one post that fell into that latter category in a particularly striking way that makes it very funny to read now in all its early innocence, and so I think it's worth reposting in full. In the days when the web was still fresh, before some of the bigger cyberwar panics, and long before today's perplexing geopolitical landscape, there was this small post entitled Can't Hack The Kremlin:

Apparently, since the new website of Russian President Vladimir Putin went online about 24 hours ago, more than 100 hackers have tried to break in. Putin is "excited" that the Kremlin's techies have been able to block all the hack attacks. Does anyone else think this is just begging for more hackers to hit the site until someone finds a way in? It seems odd to promote how proud you are that no one broke in after just one day.

And the rest is, as they say, history. And also current events.

Filed Under: history, look back