This Week In Techdirt History: March 12th - 18th

from the old-stories dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, politicians were still reeling from recent public opposition. Don't get SOPA'd had become the new mantra in DC, while the European Commission was blaming ACTA's failure on social media and starting to worry about its upcoming copyright directive. Rep. Lamar Smith was unperturbed though, which is why people were working to fund a "Don't Mess With The Internet" billboard in his district.

Also this week in 2012: Mojang and Bethesda settled their dispute over the Scrolls trademark, Megaupload was negotiating with the government to let users retrieve their files from the service, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica ended an era by discontinuing its print edition.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, Viacom followed up on its mass YouTube takedowns with a now-infamous billion-dollar lawsuit — just as some of those who had their videos taken down were suing Viacom. Meanwhile, Hollywood was trying to export DRM around the globe even as the EU Commissioner was making veiled threats about stopping DRM on music. While one Microsoft executive was admitting the company benefits from piracy, the video game industry was joining the BSA, RIAA, MPAA et al in spreading bogus piracy stats. And we were pleasantly surprised to discover at least one person in congress who understood mixtapes and mashups.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, plenty of things were on the horizon. Augmented reality was making early waves (very early, obviously), people were warning about mobile phone viruses, news broadcasters had only just really started using green-screen sets instead of fancy newsrooms, and plagiarism-detection software was just starting to get the attention of universities. While Canada was trying to pass its levy on blank storage media (which still plagues its blank CDs to this day), webcasters and record labels were actually on the same side fighting against high internet radio royalties (if you can believe it). Meanwhile, the legal saga of "sucks" sites played out another chapter in the courts.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: February 26th - March 4th

from the reminiscence dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, we saw a somewhat parallel pair of bogus takedowns followed by apologies. First, there was the infamous Rumblefish incident in which a YouTube copyright claim was issued over birds singing in the background of a video, leading the CEO to explain the series of errors that lead to the mistake while missing most of the core point. The other incident targeted us here at Techdirt: one of our key posts about SOPA/PIPA was stripped from Google after a bogus DMCA takedown notice, garnering multiple apologies.

Also this week in 2012, the Aereo lawsuit finally began, and two pieces of memorable viral content were introduced: The Oatmeal's comic about the difficulty of legally obtaining Game Of Thrones and the fantastic Polish essay We, The Web Kids about the anti-ACTA generation (if you haven't read it in a while, read it again).

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, Mike was at the Tech Policy Summit, where Howard Berman was blaming the pharmaceutical industry for holding back patent reform and the patent panel couldn't come up with any real solutions for the system. Overall, the event seemed to suffer from a lack of tech in the tech/policy balance. Meanwhile, following the Oscars, the Motion Picture Academy made the inexplicable decision to pull all videos of the ceremony off the web with the bizarre reasoning of wanting to whet the appetite for the next year's awards.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, the W3C was engaged in a critical fight over how to handle patented technologies in web standards, mirroring today's fight over EME in the nature of the problem (but not, so far, in the nature of the solution). CNN was musing about the future of charging for news online while the New York Times was deeming blogs a fad. Jack Valenti was arguing with Lawrence Lessig over copy protection schemes, a Senator was bashing Intel over the same thing, and the music industry was predictably blaming its problems on downloaders.

Perhaps most notably, it was this week in 2002 that the EFF and various law schools launched ChillingEffects, the irreplaceable resource now known as Lumen.

Two-Hundred And Twenty-Six Years Ago

Long ago in the history of communication technology, there was a revolution that often goes under-discussed: the semaphore line. Though some designs exist from as early as the 17th century, it was on March 2nd, 1791 that one of the first practical experiments happened: at the height of the French Revolution, the Chappe brothers used a system based on colored panels, clocks and telescopes to transmit a message nearly 10 miles from Brulon to Parce.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: February 12th - 18th

from the and-recent-history dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, mass anti-ACTA protests broke out across Europe as opposition to the bill continued to swell. Bulgaria joined the list of EU members halting ratification of the treaty and even the European Parliament's president spoke out against it. The EU official who resigned in protest of ACTA explained further what was wrong with it, the head of Mozilla called it a bad way to develop policy, Public Knowledge made a strong call for greater transparency in such agreements, and our own Glyn Moody offered a thorough debunking of the European Commission's list of supposed "myths" about ACTA as well as the idea that there's any meaningful transparency at all. Despite all this, the IFPI and other lobbyists stood by the agreement, even having the gall to claim that the public protests were silencing the democratic process.

Ten Years Ago

Things were pretty grim on the copyright front this week in 2007. The RIAA was making its first forays into voluntary enforcement deals with ISPs that would forward settlement letters, which would eventually morph into the now-dead six strikes program. The US entertainment industry was trying to get Canada condemned as a pirate haven while its Canadian counterpart was itself pushing for an iPod tax. Microsoft was introducing yet another DRM scheme even as one survey showed that even two-thirds of music industry executives thought ditching DRM would be a good idea. Hollywood was beginning a new crusade against Google, not over YouTube but over ads on P2P websites, and a jury sided with sample troll Bridgeport in yet another abuse of the George Clinton copyrights they own. There was, at least, one victory: an EFF-backed lawsuit forced a prolific DMCA abuser to rescind his baseless takedown notices.

Fifteen Years Ago

There was one event this week in 2002 so much more significant than the others that it deserves the sole focus this week. Today, CC licenses are an integral part of the world of digital content, but (because copyright is a disaster) such open and flexible licenses were not always so easy to employ no matter how much a creator might want to. But it was this week fifteen years ago that we first learned that Lawrence Lessig and a team of other people were working on a new project called Creative Commons to provide an alternative to copyright.

Two Days Ago

What, two days ago? Yes: this week, I'm using this space to remind everyone about the Techdirt Survival Fund that we launched on Friday along with our filings in the lawsuit we face. We're very grateful to everyone who has donated so far, and hope you continue to give generously and spread the word so we can continue our fight for free speech.

Techdirt is off tomorrow for President's Day. We'll be posting the weekly comment winners at noon, and back to our regular schedule on Tuesday!

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: February 5th - 11th

from the five-ten-fifteen dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, as congress sat in the wreckage of SOPA, 70 different groups put together a letter telling lawmakers to halt all other efforts to expand intellectual property. Despite this, a number of elected representatives were still inexplicably backing the dead bill, while Lamar Smith was trying to declare all anti-SOPA data as invalid. At the same time, he was being trashed by Politifact for his claims about the impact of piracy, and styling himself as an enemy of the internet by continuing to push a data snooping bill. The RIAA was also on the warpath, attacking Google and Wikipedia and hypocritically complaining about 'misinformation'.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, we were digging deeper into Viacom's takedown of 100,000 YouTube videos, and noticing that some were short, innocent home movies that were clearly not infringing. They weren't alone, of course: people were starting to realize how the RIAA's DMCA notices were slapdash and flimsy, and we even saw a bizarre push from the supposed creator of the Electric Slide to get videos of "his" dance off of YouTube. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs personally spoke out against the recording industry's DRM demands, prompting a rather strange response from the RIAA (which was also ludicrously calling for higher prices on CDs).

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, congress was all over the internet with its "dirty dozen" crop of digital regulation bills. Apple and Sony were battling over the future of home entertainment and what the technology would look like, while other companies were avidly pushing home networking to a mostly-uninterested public that didn't really understand what the benefits would be or why they'd want such a setup. Broadband was still failing to gain a real foothold, but spam was going strong and people were trying to figure out how to create the next Silicon Vally. One thing was clear though: the dot-coms that dropped big bucks on Superbowl ads weren't seeing much return on investment.

One-Hundred And Eight Years Ago

There are lots of big milestones in the history of consumer electronics and communication technology, and many involve the invention of critical components like the transistor. But this week we celebrate one that gets discussed less often: the invention on February 5th, 1909 of of Bakelite, one of the first synthetic plastics. It was useful for a huge range of applications, but quickly became a critical material in the world of electronics where it formed insulating and non-conducting components like telephone and radio casings, lightbulb sockets and bases, automobile distributor caps and more. Though it began to be replaced in the 1940s, it is still manufactured today.

(Fun side fact: Bakelite also became a tool for advanced art forgery, because it could be used to harden paint and make it appear much older than it really was.)

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: January 29th - February 4th

from the reflections dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, we watched as the reaction to ACTA continued to heat up. Though the opposition was in some danger of straying off course, there were some big developments: the Slovenian Ambassador apologized for signing the deal, the Polish Prime Minister suspended all efforts to ratify it, Bulgarian MPs followed in the footsteps of Polish MPs the week before and protested with Guy Fawkes masks, and widespread protests began to break out across Europe.

Meanwhile, the TPP was also on the docket for the week, with a stark example of crony capitalism presented by the USTR getting civil society groups kicked out of the Hollywood hotel where it was hobnobbing with entertainment industry elites. We pointed out that SOPA/PIPA should be a pretty good lesson on why these negotiations need to be way, way more transparent.

Also, this was the week we released the first Sky Is Rising report.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, the world was still reacting to the newly Google-owned YouTube. The plans for revenue sharing with video creators were brewing, and while NBC was embracing the promotional value of YouTube clips, Viacom made its big move of telling Google to yank 100,000 videos off the service, setting the stage for the big legal feud to follow.

Also this week in 2007: Sony BNG reached a deal with the FTC for violating federal law with its horrible rootkit DRM, the RIAA had a SWAT team raid an Atlanta mix-tape producer on questionable legal grounds, Google was offering half-apologies for aiding Chinese censorship, and Adult Swim's now-infamous marketing stunt shut down the city of Boston.

Fifteen Years Ago

Five years earlier in 2002, Google made a much more popular decision when it announced it would not use pop-up ads. Of course, that seems obvious now, as did other things that were fresh at the time, like the convergence of wireless devices and the possibility of having a laptop as your only computer. In the world of secondary effects from the dot-com bubble bursting, we saw Cisco grappling with a huge gray market for used IT products and folks to dropped out to work in tech going back to school to finish their degrees.

Also, because nothing is truly new: folks were commenting on how news was getting less factual and more opinionated.

One-Hundred And Seventy Years Ago

Though not in fact headquartered in the city itself, Techdirt does a whole lot of its business in and around San Francisco — so this week we're marking a milestone in that city's history. It was on January 30th, 1847 that its name was changed from Yerba Buena to San Francisco by Lt. Washington Allon Bartlett.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: January 22nd - 28th

from the post-sopa dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012 was all about the fallout from SOPA/PIPA, and the pivot to focusing on new battles. The SOPA supporters who own major media networks were somehow complaining they couldn't get their voices heard, while movie theatre lobbyists were continuing to make up facts and a very confused CreativeAmerica was still campaigning for SOPA on the basis of needing it to take down Megaupload — despite that being the other big battle of the week because Megaupload had just been seized without SOPA.

On that front, we saw the chilling effects as other companies began turning off useful sharing services, and began learning interesting tidbits from the indictment. Some artists spoke out in opposition, with Jonathan Coulton tweeting and blogging against the seizure and Dan Bull releasing one of his always-excellent protest songs. But Megaupload wasn't the only battlefront: we also saw the backlash against ACTA begin to build, with the Polish government seeing SOPA-like protests (and calling it "blackmail") followed by that epic moment when Polish politicians in parliament donned Guy Fawkes masks in protest themselves. And as if all that wasn't enough, we also had to contend with the TPP, support of which was laced into Obama's state of the union address, prompting public interest groups to speak out about an upcoming secret meeting on the deal.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, the big copyright fight was still over DRM. The RIAA was complaining about how people thought it looked evil, Blu-ray's DRM was rapidly cracked by the same hacker who beat HD DVD, the licensing group behind AACS admitted that DRM is not in fact a meaningful barrier to piracy, and a fight was breaking out over Apple's FairPlay DRM in Norway. On the plus side, we saw a couple positive court rulings, one further defending the right to anonymity online, and another not just protecting but potentially expanding the safe harbor protections of CDA Section 230.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002 we were still addressing a few more quaint copyright questions, like whether sharing abandonware is piracy. Beset by lawsuits, KaZaa was selling its site and software to an Australian company. Taxis were beginning to adopt GPS, the future of free web email seemed uncertain, PC-based e-voting was being tinkered with, and we got an early glimpse into the iron-fisted secrecy of Apple. Oh, and Techdirt was nominated for a Bloggie award.

Two-Hundred And Sixty-Three Years Ago

This has little to do with Techdirt topics, but it's a fun and interesting fact nonetheless: it was on January 28th, 1754 that Horace Walpole coined the word "serendipity" in a letter to Horace Mann, basing it on an old name for Sri Lanka used in a Persian fairy tale.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: The Slaying Of SOPA

from the a-big-week dept

Five Years Ago

It's time for one more focused retrospective on the events of this week in 2012: the week of the SOPA blackout and a huge victory for the internet. First, we dip briefly into the previous week, where we put out a special Saturday post to report the surprise news that the White House had come out against the approach in SOPA/PIPA. The MPAA responded to this with a bizarro-world statement interpreting it as a sign they could rush the bills through and Rupert Murdoch lashed out at the president on Twitter, while NBCUniversal's Rick Cotton was lying about the bill on MSNBC and Harry Reid was admitting concerns but insisting they must push forward. But the looming Wednesday blackout was gaining steam: Wikipedia officially announced its participation with a tweet from Jimmy Wales, then Google announced that it would join the fray, but not with a full blackout (later revealing a blacked-out logo that drew a lot of attention to its petition page). The Internet Archive (recently declared a rogue site by the entertainment industry) threw its hat into the ring as well, as did gaming site Rock Paper Shotgun and some artists like Peter Gabriel. Even Microsoft, while not joining the blackout, finally made it clear that it opposed the bills in their current form. For our part, we decided that blacking out to raise awareness wouldn't be so helpful on Techdirt where almost all of our readers were well aware of SOPA, and instead spent the day reporting on what was happening.

With all this going on, even before the protest there was talk of the bills being dead — but Lamar Smith quickly made it clear that wasn't the case. He and the MPAA both brushed off the planned blackout as a publicity stunt, and Smith put out a press release announcing the next phase of markup for the bills. On blackout day (Wednesday, January 18th) the denial continued, with the MPAA making the astonishing claim that no "big sites" had joined the protests (Wikipedia, Google and Reddit, anyone?) and Chris Dodd spouting sanctimonious bluster about tech companies turning users into their pawns. A whole bunch of creators signed a letter saying they don't want SOPA/PIPA passed in their names, and soon the blackout began to take effect...

The first one to go was Rep. Lee Terry, who removed his name as a co-sponsor. On the senate site, Marco Rubio followed suit. Then Senators Boozman, Hatch and Blunt and Rep. Quayle, with more and more joining them as the day progressed. The most entertaining response came from Rep. Bruce Braley of Iowa. At the end of the day, we noted that 8-million people had looked up their Representatives' information with Wikipedia's tool, and posted a gallery of all the blackout screens. Senator Ron Wyden, long-time opponent of the bills, thanked the internet but noted that the work was not yet done.

The reaction continued strong into the next day, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell calling for the bill to be dropped all four GOP candidates for the 2012 election said no to SOPA and PIPA. But the most telling responses came from the industries that pushed the bills to begin with: Hollywood studio execs expressed pretty blatant anger at the fact that the government wouldn't stay bought, and the MPAA straight-up threatened politicians who wouldn't stick to its agenda. The RIAA, meanwhile, just condescended to the internet.

On Friday, staunch supporter Marsha Blackburn conceded that it was time to scrap SOPA, and by the end of the day the internet had won: the bills were both listed as "delayed" and both Harry Reid and Lamar Smith announced that they would no longer move forward with them. We analyzed a long interview with Chris Dodd to explain why the industry's approach failed, and then began focusing on what comes next.

But there was no need to look far, because for all the significance of the victory, SOPA/PIPA were also a prime example of winning the battle not being the same as winning the war. Not only did the Supreme Court choose the blackout day to issue the Golan ruling that allowed works to be yanked back out of the public domain — on Thursday, in the midst of SOPA/PIPA chaos, the DOJ went ahead and unilaterally seized and shut down Megaupload and arrested many of the principles, including Kim Dotcom.

They didn't need SOPA to do it. They didn't need anything to do it. Much like the seizures of Dajaz1 and Rojadirecta, they didn't even appear to need especially solid legal footing: at least, they took a whole lot of questionable things as evidence of criminal activity. Some artists like Busta Rhymes spoke out in defence of the site (it being an extremely useful distribution tool) — and then Anonymous struck back with widespread DDoS attacks on entertainment industry websites, prompting some nonsensical free speech complaints from the MPAA and suspicions that the DoJ might have provoked Anonymous on purpose.

As we now know, the arrest of Kim Dotcom was just the beginning of another long fight about the overreach of the US government and the influence of the entertainment industry thereon — and we know that's not the only example of a continued war against the supporters of free culture and an open internet. The internet should still take time to remember and celebrate the defeat of SOPA though, if only because we're almost certainly going to have to do the same thing again, and again, and again...

Filed Under: history, look back, pipa, sopa

This Week In Techdirt History: January 8th - 14th

from the the-gloaming dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, plans were coming into place for the SOPA blackout that would happen the following Wednesday. Reddit was the first to announce a site-wide blackout, and the next day they were joined by the Cheezburger network of sites. Then came the announcement that would really shift the tides: Jimmy Wales stated that he was in favor of the blackout, and asked the Wikipedia community to decide.

Meanwhile, it was a big week for SOPA/PIPA supporters being caught infringing content themselves. CreativeAmerica appeared to crib much of a pro-SOPA mass email from Public Knowledge's anti-SOPA equivalent, then offered a denial that inadvertently underlined exactly why SOPA was so dangerous. CreativeAmerica also teamed up with the MPAA to place a pro-SOPA opinion piece in the Salt Lake Tribune, which turned out to be a bit of a remix from the text past lobbying efforts. And then SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith himself was discovered to be violating the Creative Commons license of a photo used on his website.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, the big news (especially in retrospect) was Tuesday's unveiling of the Apple iPhone after a flurry of rumors and hype. There was a hiccup when it turned out Apple hadn't yet secured the rights to the name, but as we know the ascendance of the device was unstoppable. There was also a weak attempt to use the iPhone as an example of why patents are necessary, which was much less convincing than the new study showing no link between patents and innovation.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, long before the days of SOPA, the DMCA was still a source of real debate — with attacks on the anti-circumvention provisions still showing promise. Apple was fresh off a somewhat-less-revolutionary announcement of a new iMac, and an early leak debacle showed just how tight a relationship they seemed to have with the press. Satellite radio was showing promise, SMS was failing in the US for reasons that were getting boring to hear about, online pizza delivery was becoming a competitive space, and Taser was working on its first consumer model.

One-Hundred And Twenty-Three Years Ago

We've used the example of telephone switchboards many times in talking about how job-destroying innovation can often yield an explosion of unexpected new jobs, and this week we mark a turning point in that piece of history: on January 9th, 1894 the first battery-operated telephone switchboard was installed in Lexington, Massachusetts by the New England Telephone And Telegraph Company.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: January 1st - 7th

from the new-years dept

Five Years Ago

This week we finally move from 2011 to 2012, but as far as the news goes little has changed: it was all SOPA, all the time. There was growing confusion around which companies actually supported the bill, with some like EA trying to avoid taking a position altogether and others, like some game developers, clashing with their own industry groups like the ESA over how to respond. The ESA was a strong supporter of the bill, and initially had the firm backing of Capcom — but Capcom soon tried to back down and worm its way out of the spotlight. Grover Norquist, a huge supporter of strong copyright law, also tried to get some distance from SOPA and PIPA. Al Gore came out with some thorough and strong opposition, and Senator Ron Wyden was planning a filibuster.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, everyone and their brother was jumping on the MySpace-clone bandwagon, with Disney launching a limited and unimpressive platform and even Toyota announcing plans to do the same. A tech company somehow managed to get a patent that basically covered all digital downloads and proceeded to sue everyone, while the RIAA was fighting its own fight to keep its wholesale digital download prices on the hush-hush. The movie industry was still flailing around with even more DRM and an unwelcome addition to the high-def DVD format wars, and we saw the latest crazy attack on YouTube in the form of an accusation that the site aids and abets vandalism.

Fifteen Years Ago

Speaking of DRM, this week in 2002 one congressional representative pointed out that it is probably illegal under a 1992 law — but I guess that idea didn't fly. There was lots of buzz about the future of "interactive television" but that idea didn't exactly soar either. The beginning of 2002 also marked one of only two times in history so far that the number of domain names online had gone down (presumably after cybersquatters and domain prospectors abandoned their domains after the tech bubble burst). And though the technology was still in its early days, folks were beginning to worry about facial recognition software.

Sixty-Three Years Ago

But now here's a real example of technology in its early days. I'm rarely surprised to find out that an area of tech has been around longer than I thought and than you might expect, but I was genuinely surprised to learn that all the way back on January 7th, 1954, IBM used one of its mainframe computers to do the first demonstration of computer translation, taking Russian sentences encoded to punch cards and producing print-outs of English translations. Of course the system was quite simple, the sentences carefully chosen, and the scope extremely limited — but it worked, and placed the first example of such technology much earlier in the history books than I would have guessed.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the christmas-eve dept

Five Years Ago

The anti-SOPA momentum continued to gain steam at an exponential rate this week in 2011. Both polls and wildly successful petitions were demonstrating that Americans across the political and demographic spectrum were opposed to the bill. And the list of high-profile voices realizing SOPA was a bad thing was growing by the day: the cable news networks figured it out, a CBS opinion piece went as far as calling for MPAA boss Chris Dodd to be fired over his position on it, and a Reuters columnist explained why SOPA is a cure worse than the disease. Long-retired political cartoonist David Rees picked up his pen again to oppose the bill, MythBusters' Adam Savage explained why it could destroy the internet, and Ashton Kutcher spoke up as well. Scribd launched a creative and aggressive campaign to educate its users, and all sorts of major internet infrastructure players started coming out of the woodwork to oppose SOPA. And, in a major surprise, the Heritage Foundation broke its pattern of support for the MPAA and opposed the bill too.

Moreover, the bill's supposed "support" was crumbling. Gibson Guitars and several other companies that were listed as "in favor" stated that they said no such thing. Law firms started removing their names from those lists too. And, in a high-profile example of successful public pressure, GoDaddy reversed its position and withdrew all support.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2006, the recording industry was pursuing its more traditional strategy of just suing everyone. The RIAA dropped a case against a mom because it couldn't draw blood from a stone, and turned its attentions to her kids, while a bunch of record labels ganged up and sued Allofmp3.com despite already pressuring Russia into going after the site for them. Meanwhile, with even folks like Roger Ebert calling for eliminating movie release windows and giving customers more options, there was a mixed response from the industry: some folks, like Xbox, were offering actually good video download services, while others like Morgan Freeman (for some reason) were offering crappy competition.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, Universal began releasing copy protected CDs in the US to block people from ripping MP3s (or... playing the CDs in Mac computers or DVD players, because that's how you make a good product). A few days later, of course, the protection was easily cracked. Meanwhile, much like 2006's crappy Hollywood-built online movie services, the record industry's new MusicNet and PressPlay offerings were by all accounts pretty terrible, which might explain why music listeners across the board were mostly ignoring them. At least we also saw the seeds of some more successful digital innovations too: people began to notice that Netflix was a strong survivor of the dot-com bubble burst, and rumblings were afoot about selling games for mobile devices.

Filed Under: history, look back