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

from the years-and-years dept

Five Years Ago

It was the previous week in 2012 that we learned the sad news of the death of the Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch (better known as MCA), and it was this week that the EFF called for an end to the war on sampling as a tribute to his legacy. Little did we know that, the very next day, Tuf America would sue the Beastie Boys over an unauthorized sample, which is some stunningly insensitive timing. And that wasn't the only copyright fuckup related to MCA's death — the co-creator of The Chappelle Show uploaded a previously unaired video of the Beastie Boys preforming for the show, only to have it taken down by a Viacom copyright claim.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, NBC was getting in on the Viacom/YouTube lawsuit with an amicus brief against the latter, while the government of Thailand was blocking the site entirely and considering its own lawsuit. Newspaper publishers, struggling to adapt to the web, were alternately scraping together data to portray their digital efforts as successful and blaming the internet for all their industry's woes. And "psychic" (read: mediocre magician) Uri Geller was abusing the DMCA and filing lawsuits in an attempt to censor a popular debunking of his little tricks by James Randi.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, we took a look at the absolute mess that was MusicNet, the attempt by major labels to offer a competitive digital music platform. The world was still for some reason debating whether video games are free speech, and a judge ruled that the DMCA was constitutional via an odd distinction regarding speech and software. Before mobile phones replaced the landline all but entirely, there was an earlier fear about them replacing people's second phone lines. And long, long before the west would see anything similar, Japan was adding wi-fi to 4000 McDonald's locations.

One-Hundred And Seventy-One Years Ago

America's oldest weekly newspaper that is still in publication is the Cambridge Chronical, and it was on May 7th, 1846 that the first issue was published, just a few days after Cambridge was incorporated as a city. Of course, like most old community newspapers, its recent history of sales and mergers has left it somewhat disconnected from its roots.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: April 30th - May 6th

from the not-so-special-301 dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012 the USTR, as it does every year, released its ridiculous Special 301 list of naughty countries, right around the same time that Chris Dodd was rewriting Hollywood history to thank IP laws for all of it. The UK was doing its part to stay off the list, apparently, with the High Court ordering The Pirate Bay to be blocked (and, of course, driving record traffic to the site). Techdirt friend Dan Bull — an artist whose single had just hit the charts with the help of piracy — shared his thoughts on the block with a guest post.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007 started the same way: with a silly Special 301 "watch list". The Pirate Bay was just beginning its growth as a political movement, and the author of a major UK copyright report was admitting that the evidence supports shortening copyright terms. The folks behind AACS, the new copyright protection scheme for DVDs, were learning all about the Streisand Effect in their attempt to suppress information about the technology — and also giving the Digg community a chance to demonstrate its control over the site. Meanwhile, the Google/Viacom lawsuit was moving slowly forward, and the UK's Premier League was getting in on the action.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, record labels were still excitedly announcing lacklustre digital music services, online radio stations were protesting onerous fees, and the new Eminem album was gearing up to be the largest copy-protected release to date. Deep linking reared its head again as a legal issue, online scams were going strong (and working as decent retirement plans for some, it seemed) and the crazy new idea of phones with WiFi was just on the horizon.

Eight-Hundred And Two Years Ago

Today we look back on the Magna Carta as a pivotal moment in the history of law (or just as an archetypal piece of general knowledge trivia), but at the time it was a stopgap solution in the midst of a political dispute between King John of England and some rebellious Barons. An important milestone in that dispute came on May 3rd, 1215 when the rebels officially declared against the King and issued their legal demands.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the as-I-recall dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, following widespread protests, ACTA was on the verge of death — but that hadn't stopped G8 countries from already preparing to replace it. Similarly, following the SOPA defeat, the usual copyright maximalist suspects were regrouping to come up with new tactics for fighting the public (and surely the revolving door between the MPAA and the federal government would help out on that front). Meanwhile, the lawmakers behind the new awful bill — CISPA — were downplaying the protests against it, even though the White House was also (meekly) opposed to the bill.

Also this week in 2012: Twitter unveiled its revolutionary patent agreement, and the Oracle/Google fight began heating up over the originally-secondary API copyright issues that would come to dominate the case.

Ten Years Ago

Maybe all those lawmakers should have read our post five years earlier in 2007, all about how politicians need to understand the internet before trying to regulate it. Of course, at the time, you had high new webcasting royalty rates from the RIAA, Sony's DRM on DVDs causing all sorts of problems, the Authors Guild calling writers who give away content 'scabs', and telco-funded think tanks insisting anyone who supports net neutrality is just a pirate. Some corporate competitions were getting nasty too, with Microsoft lobbing antitrust accusations over Google's purchase of DoubleClick and Ticketmaster suing StubHub over exclusivity.

Meanwhile, Mike's series on the economics of scarcity drew some poorly-argued ire from sources ranging from CNN's James Ledbetter to Dilbert creator Scott Adams (the latter of which turned into a longer back-and-forth).

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, lots of people were grappling with new questions and trends raised by technology. Parents were deciding whether or not to use internet filters for their kids while workplaces were getting into the idea of monitoring employees' instant messaging; texting was becoming a favorite tool of schoolyard bullies and, unsurprisingly, sexting was already on the rise (though still unnamed). Meanwhile, a new study was showing that the death of Napster did little to change the popularity of digital music, even as the recording industry continued to blame file sharing for all its woes (rather than, say, idiotic DRM "compromises" like a CD that lets you send temporary copies that "expire" to friends).

But every now and then in doing this rundown, I find one of those posts that sounded so innocent at the time and now evokes an instantaneous "oh if only you knew..." reaction — such as this brief post noting Nathan Myhrvold's "interesting idea" to start up an "invention factory." Can anyone recall how that turned out?

Forty Years Ago

Though the technology had already been in development and testing for some time, it was today on April 22nd that fiber-optic cable was first used to carry telephone traffic, reaching 6 Mbit/s speeds all the way back in 1977.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the memory-lane dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, Congress (apparently having learned nothing from SOPA) was pushing forward with CISPA, the new cybersecurity bill. In its original form it was really, really bad — then a new draft was released that was slightly better but still full of problems. Nevertheless, the House Intelligence Committee launched a new Twitter account to misleadingly plug the bill, and it was even supported by companies like Facebook along with a promise not to abuse it — though we challenged them to go a step further and withdraw support until it was fixed to prevent anyone from abusing it.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, the lacklustre response to the Windows Vista launch was sending ripple effects through the computer hardware industry, though it appeared to be a bad time for consumer electronics in general. Though while some were chattering about Microsoft's demise, cooler heads pointed out that might be going a bit too far.

Also this week in 2007: Perfect 10 reared its head with a shotgun spray of lawsuits, a court pointed out the should-have-been-obvious fact that the First Amendment applies on MySpace as much as it does anywhere else, and Techdirt was nominated for a Webby award.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, plenty of folks were busy hacking the iPod to do new things and helping chart the future of mobile devices — right at the same time that thumb keyboards were becoming all the rage in the wake of the popularity of the Blackberry. Google was still in its pre-IPO days and trying to pin down a business model, and this was long before it came into conflict with the Authors Guild which, at the time, was moaning about Amazon for showing used book prices next to new book listings. But we took a look at the other side of that equation and saw how empowering a used book selling platform can be.

One-Hundred And Twenty-Three Years Ago

We've all heard of the early "nickelodeon" movie houses where five cents in a machine let you enjoy a brief kinetoscope of a butler falling over or whatever. It was on April 14, 1894 that this started with the first paid exhibition of motion pictures at Andrew M. Holland's phonograph store in New York City.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: March 19th - 25th

from the archive-lane dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, the public got a terrifying glimpse of the extent of the NSA's surveillance capabilities thanks to some excellent journalism, which put the agency on the defensive trying to downplay its powers. While this was going on, Senators Wyden and Udall were pressing the Obama administration to open up about its secret interpretation of the Patriot Act.

In the fallout of the Megaupload indictment, a restraining order on Kim Dotcom was rendered void by a procedural error, the MPAA was trying to get the site's data retained so it could sue the users (though it quickly tried to backtrack), and scammers were targeting Megaupload users by masquerading as copyright trolls sending settlement letters.

This was also the week of a major ruling in the patent world: the Supreme Court effectively rejected the concept of patenting medical diagnostics in Prometheus v. Mayo.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, even as the RIAA was trying and failing to escape paying legal fees in a doomed lawsuit against an indebted mother of five, the agency was continuing to defend its practice of suing college kids and trying to get their schools to help — which irritated one university so much that it demanded the RIAA pay up for all the time that was wasted with onerous requests. Meanwhile, NBC Universal and News Corp. were making waves with their YouTube competitor, which you might notice has not become a lasting pillar of the internet, as plenty of people suspected at the time. But this was interesting since Viacom was just revving up in its lawsuit against the real YouTube, which Lawrence Lessig argued was made possible by the Grokster decision, and which was leading to some ironic situations with the company's own star content creators.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, the world was being buried under a rising tide of spam, but at least society was beginning to accept that internet dating is normal. Not from work, of course, as offices were ramping up their efforts to block various internet activities in a misguided panic about productivity. Of course, some were over-ambitiously predicting that fully half of us would be working from home by 2007, in which case that would presumably cease to be a problem. It was a different time, when Stephen King was selling his novel in phone booths and the UK's Times Online was trying to charge web subscriptions to your phone bill (and, of course, trying to patent the technology). Most importantly, though, we saw an early victory for safe harbors when AOL was found not liable in a copyright lawsuit filed by Harlan Ellison over a Usenet posting.

Thirty-Eight Years Ago

If you care about US politics, you know it: it's the TV station you watch slightly less than you say you do and much less than you probably should, and this week was its birthday. That's right: on March 19th, 1979, C-SPAN was unveiled to the country, offering an unprecedented window into the House of Representatives. It opened with a speech by Al Gore, though at the time only 3.5-million homes were capable of receiving it. The Senate would not follow suit and allow itself to be televised for another seven years.

Filed Under: history, look back

Industry-Hated Game Emulators Save Two Video Games For Posterity

from the emulation-preservation dept

For far too many years, the video game industry struggled to assert its place as a true artform, one deserving of the kind of respect granted to movies, music, television, and literature. This has been a source of frustration to those of us who can recognize the powerful storytelling device that video games represent, as well as the way modern games contribute to art and social commentary. But by its nature as a relatively new medium, games have also struggled to preserve the industry's history in the way more widely and permanently disseminated artforms have accomplished. And that's where the gaming industry has taken a turn against its own artistic interests, often demonizing methods for preserving gaming history over intellectual property concerns. Emulators are the chief method at hand, where games that are ancient by gaming standards can be digitized and preserved for posterity, save for the threat of legal action over copyright infringement and the industry's attempts to stave off these useful tools.

Like so many issues in the intellectual property world, it's not hard to understand the gaming industry's consternation. There's no doubt that many people use emulators simply to play games from old consoles and cabinets rather than pay for physical copies. Still, there's also no doubt that these same emulators work to preserve the artistic output in the gaming realm. This was most recently evidenced in two games that might never have seen the light of day again, save for emulators.

The first is the discovery and release of Millennium Racer: Y2K Fighters, a previously completely unknown 2001 Dreamcast port of a 1999 PC racing game. The title was recently discovered intact on a Dreamcast development kit, altered a bit to get it into a playable state, and then released as both an emulatable ROM and a burnable disc image that will work in actual Dreamcast hardware...The second emulation-fueled release making the rounds recently is Primal Rage 2, the unreleased sequel to the popular prehistoric-themed, stop-motion arcade fighting game of the mid '90s. Only two prototype cabinets for the cancelled sequel are known to exist, and one of them has been playable at Illinois' sprawling Galloping Ghost arcade complex since 2014.

The moment we agree that games like this are a form of art, we must also agree on the impetus to preserve that art. And once that's done, we can only conclude that these efforts to digitize the history of gaming in this manner have to be more important than any legal hurdles that exist in the form of copyright infringement or DMCA prohibitions on tinkering with them. The stated purpose of copyright seems to make this quite clear. What could be more important to promoting the arts than preserving art that could otherwise be at risk of total loss?

Emulators and those that use and support them play a key role in this, one that goes beyond merely copying the game digitally to be played.

While both of these games were technically accessible on their original hardware when they were discovered, it's only the ability to copy and emulate the software on other hardware (often with crucial software tweaks) that has made sure they'll be preserved and playable going forward. That kind of preservation doesn't just happen, either; remember that an estimated three-quarters of all silent films ever made have been lost to history. Thanks to emulation and a committed community of video game preservationists, that situation seems less likely to happen as the video game medium grows out of its youth.

The future will judge the history of gaming by the actions of the present. If games are art, and they are, then efforts to preserve this art must be cheered on, not demonized.

Filed Under: archival, copyright, emulators, history

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