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

from the short-week dept

Five Years Ago

The SOPA battle rolled on this week in 2011. We took a look at how other parts of the world viewed the bill, as more people began to realize that it was about regulating the internet, not copyright. We gave kudos to the Senators who were standing up against PROTECT-IP, its partner bill and especially to Ron Wyden for promising to read out the names of all the people who opposed it. Even the BSA was changing its tune on SOPA — apparently prompted by the concerns of Microsoft. Meanwhile, the numbers were in: the previous week's anti-SOPA protest was huge (but wouldn't be the biggest).

Ten Years Ago

Record labels were at war with parody songs this week in 2006, with Universal Music threatening Bank of America over a viral video with a U2 parody and EMI targeting some sports fans who wrote parody lyrics to various famous songs — because apparently they think making unreasonable legal demands is a business model. On the flipside, CBS seemed to be realizing that TV show piracy increases viewership and that you can and must compete with free online video. Microsoft was in the middle of its failed attempt to offer the Zune as an iPod competitor, while iPods were embracing video but users mostly weren't — though not because Stephen Spielberg was crotchety about it.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, SMS in America took a big leap forward when AT&T finally launched inter-carrier messaging. Nokia, meanwhile, was making early forays into camera phones and MMS on its first phone with a color screen. An early encryption battle was underway, mirroring today's, with Bruce Schneier explaining why backdoors are a bad idea. We took a look at the entertainment industry's ongoing attempts to kill fair use, Amazon was making its transition from store to platform for stores, and the Sega Dreamcast was in its death throes and selling for only fifty bucks.

Twenty-One Years Ago

These days, 3D-animated movies are a dime a dozen and vary wildly in quality. But the first feature-length fully-3D-animated film is almost universally beloved, and it was on November 22nd, 1995 that Toy Story saw general release.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: A SOPA Retrospective

from the memba? dept

Over the past couple of weeks in our look at 2011, SOPA began to rear its head. This week things really hit full steam, and so for this history post we're going to focus just on what went down in the SOPA fight five years ago.

All eyes were on the upcoming House Judiciary Committee hearings, which were stacked 5 to 1 in favor of censoring the internet. Leading up to them, we pointed out how attempts at censorship in the UK demonstrated how SOPA would fail, that Silicon Valley hadn't realized it was in DC's crosshairs, and why all filmmakers should speak out against the bill. Soon, the chorus of voices opposed to SOPA (and its partner PROTECT-IP) began to grow at an astounding pace: Facebook, Twitter, eBay and other big internet companies spoke up, and were joined by over 100 lawyers and law professors and then hackers, the ACLU, consumer rights groups, and human rights groups; venture capitalists explained how it would break the internet, a study showed how it would chill innovation and investment, and the EFF warned about its regulation of VPNs, proxies and other privacy tools; Ron Paul joined the ranks of congressional opposition while SOPA supporter Joe Biden accidentally explained why the bills were un-American; a study showed that the majority of Americans opposed SOPA, and even Canadians were speaking up, fearing collateral damage. And we featured voices ranging from filmmakers and technologists to health care activists explaining the damage SOPA would do.

How did the other side respond? First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams twisted himself in verbal knots explaining how SOPA would censor protected speech but somehow not violate the First Amendment; the House Judiciary Committee denied that its hearings were stacked in any way; Viacom made the absurd and hilarious threat that failing to pass SOPA might mean Spongebob Squarepants dies; and the bill's congressional sponsors weakly tried to say it was going to protect the troops. Then the hearings got underway and were largely a SOPA love-fest, though a lot of Representatives expressed serious concerns.

Meanwhile, we still had more questions: how would we even guage SOPA's success? Do you really want to give China and other oppressive regimes a blueprint for internet censorship? Following the hearings, even more people spoke up: the EU Parliament warned the US against censorship efforts, Nancy Pelosi called for a better solution, multiple Senators came out against PROTECT-IP, security experts warned against DNS filtering, and the Washington Post's Dominic Basulto wrote an incredulous column about the message SOPA sends to the world. It even started to become a congressional election issue, with challengers calling out the SOPA support of incumbent representatives.

And amazingly, as we all now know, the protests had not yet even come close to their peak.

Filed Under: history, look back, sopa

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

from the look-back dept

Five Years Ago

One topic naturally dominates this week's look at 2011, and will for several weeks to come: SOPA. The industry's plan was becoming clear: pretend the bill doesn't say what it says and offer up nonsensical interpretations. Pay no attention to the studies showing it will harm investment and innovation, the fact that it will not solve infringement, the loud voice of Rep. Darrel Issa opposing the voice, the huge censorship concerns summarized in Time magazine, or the opposition of the American Library Association. The House of Representatives certainly seemed to have no problem ignoring all these concerns either. No effort was made to resolve the convoluted language in the bill, and we pointed out that it also massively expands the copyright industries' diplomatic corp. Soon, the internet began planning the first of many protests.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2006, Australia was facing its own copyright reform, but began to smarten up as Google explained how it would kill the internet and the government actually looked into (and debunked) the industry's absurd claims of losses. Meanwhile, much like today, people in the US were discussing what the recent election would mean for various policy issues — in this case, the Democratic takeover of the House in 2006. It actually offered some encouragement, but lots of questions, for areas like copyright policy and telecom policy and net neutrality.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, the world was still reeling from September 11th while also preparing for the holiday seasons. These things intersected in the occasional prediction that fear of going to malls would drive shoppers online — but evidence didn't back this up, and besides, there were a lot of other factors in what the e-holidays would bring. As for physical retailers selling high-tech equipment, they were facing their own crisis. Meanwhile, Microsoft was under the anti-competitive microscope and negotiating with the DOJ, while the Hewlett-Packard/Compaq merger met with disapproval from both the Hewlett family and the Packard family.

One-Hundred Years Ago

This week we can note an interesting centennial in the history of technology and politics. On November 7th, 1916, an experimental New York radio station broadcast the U.S. election results in audio for the very first time (they had previously only been broadcast in morse code). Amusingly, this first ever broadcast also called the election wrong, declaring Charles Evan Hughes the winner before signing off at 11 PM, only to find out the next day Woodrow Wilson had actually won.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: October 30th - November 5th

from the sopa-rears-its-head dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011 we witnessed the true birth of a monster. The PROTECT-IP act morphed into the E-PARASITE act and, realizing how ridiculous that name is, lawmakers began calling it... SOPA. Soon everything went crazy: supporters ranged from Go Daddy (and we all know how that ended) to, uh, firefighters (?) and of course the US Chamber of Commerce and Hollywood astroturf groups like Creative America. Warner Bros. pleaded for support on the basis of poverty despite just having announced record profits, Joe Biden threw his hat into the "pro" ring, and Viacom insisted it wouldn't require changes to the DMCA even as its co-author admitted that was the plan.

But the backlash was quick to form too. We published an open letter to Senator Chris Dodd signed by top VCs and innovators, a White House petition started gaining steam, and the Future Of Music Coalition said it couldn't support the bill in good conscience. Larry Downes published an excellent and thorough analysis of the bill's problems, and even the mainstream press started to catch on.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2006, anonymous rumors were painting an intriguing picture of the deals between YouTube and record labels. The owners of UTube.com, desperate for a way to cash in after a slew of mistaken traffic, tried suing Google for clogging their site by buying YouTube. We took a look at how the DMCA could be abused to shut down critics or really just about anyone, and knew it would be on the rise as online video became big business, with early first steps like Google striking a special ad deal on viral "Mentos and Diet Coke" videos and Hollywood's creative class looking to secure its share of this new market.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, people were still amusingly trying to figure out if the iPod would be successful. The market for absurd luxury devices was forming with a $60,000 bejeweled mobile phone. The holes in post-9/11 security theater were already beginning to show. And Google Search unveiled a feature it's hard to imagine life without now: searching by file type.

Sixty-Nine Years Ago

Before the World Trade Organization, there was its prototype: the International Trade Organization, which reigned for almost fifty years from the signing of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade on October 30th, 1947.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the 'memba? dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, we saw several examples of companies attacking consumers and/or making their products worse/harder to access. Universal Music started going after the Bad Lip Reading parodies on YouTube, Sony Ericsson shut down an Xperia fan blog that aggressively promotes their products, Hollywood's "kinder, gentler" DRM Ultraviolet was being widely hated upon, and Warner Bros. decided it wanted to embargo DVD sales to libraries for a month.

We also featured our own little historical epic on the site this week: Tim Cushing walked through the many, many technologies that have "killed" the film industry in a trilogy of posts: part one, part two and part three.

Ten Years Ago

The ripples of the YouTube acquisition were continuing to spread this week in 2006. Despite lots of concern about legal issues, it became clear that YouTube's compliance with DMCA takedown procedures were keeping it in the clear (this was long before the rollout of ContentID) and the service was perfectly legal. Meanwhile, Google was building a portfolio of legal wins against smaller claimants as ammunition for when bigger companies came calling. And despite all this supposedly hurting music sales, Weird Al was openly crediting YouTube and the internet with the success of his new album, while folks in Hollywood were realizing that online stars might just represent the next big talent pool.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, we saw prototypical versions of fights that would become commonplace in the digital world. Tech companies were opposing an onerous regulatory bill in congress, Microsoft was getting ready to sue a hacker for breaking DRM, and Homestead was ordered by a court to turn over identifying info about its users. Meanwhile, some big products were hitting the market: Windows XP was getting a lukewarm reception (not to mention pushback against its new activation procedure), and as we mentioned last week, Apple officially unveiled the iPod — though folks weren't sure if it was revolutionary enough (a funny notion in retrospect).

Twenty-Four Years Ago

Computer-aided dispatch systems are now the norm for emergency services, and have vastly improved their efficiency — but getting here wasn't an easy road, as one historical example this week demonstrates. The London Ambulance Service in the UK commissioned a computer dispatch system way back in the 1970s, but it sat unused for thirteen years because nobody wanted to switch. The system was replaced but the replacement failed tests. It was replaced again on October 26th, 1992 and the results were a complete disaster that caused huge ambulance delays. The debacle now serves as a popular item of study in the subject of poor engineering management.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the blast-from-the-past dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, an interesting copyright question was raised when Warner Bros. bought the movie rights to a story written in a Reddit comment thread, and subsequently stopped the author from continuing to use Reddit, even as it wasn't clear that under Reddit's TOS he would be able to offer Warner Bros. an exclusive deal in the first place. Meanwhile, in a real blast from the past, Bill Gates was called to testify in an antitrust trial about... Windows 95. And Microsoft's views on sure seemed to waver a lot depending on who was in the antitrust hot seat. In congress, Senator Wyden was continuing to fight the PROTECT IP bill while the broader internet clued in on the notion that another bill focused on anti-streaming could make Justin Bieber a felon.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2006, everyone was still trying to parse the implications of Google's acquisition of YouTube, except for politicians who were rushing to blame YouTube for all sorts of things. Universal Music launched a lawsuit against streaming sites but left YouTube out of the list of targets — which became very unsurprising when we learned that Google's new deals with record labels included giving them equity in YouTube. Meanwhile, the Authors Guild lawsuit over Google Books was proceeding just about as slowly as a lawsuit possibly can, the MPAA was doing its best to brainwash the Boy Scouts with an anti-piracy badge, and a tour through the EULA for Windows Vista revealed a hilariously broad term stating that "you may not work around any technical limitations in the software".

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, the first inklings of the mass-ditching of landlines in favor of cellphones were spotted. There were also inklings about the death of broadband that didn't pan out quite as accurately. Speaking of technology takeovers, professional photographers were starting to make the switch to digital cameras and (most) retail software stores were struggling to compete with downloads. But in retrospect, perhaps the biggest tech news was a simple and vague rumor portending that Apple was going to launch some sort of non-Mac music device the following week (and fifteen years ago tomorrow, the world would meet the iPod).

One-Hundred And Forty-Seven Years Ago

Hoaxes are a dime a dozen in the internet era, and frankly they are just too easy. But I love a good hoax story from the golden age, and this week we've got one that certainly qualifies: on October 16th, 1869 workers uncovered the Cardiff Giant, a huge "petrified man" forged by an atheist New York tobbaconist in order to win an argument with some Methodists. Scientists quickly realized it was a fake, but theologians who believed giants once walked the earth defended its authenticity. It's still on display in the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, and a replica made by P. T. Barnum can be seen in Michigan.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the doomed-to-repeat-it dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, a terribly-kept secret was confirmed: the government worked with the RIAA/MPAA to negotiate the "six strikes" system. In Denmark, a judge handed down a crazy reward of 84% of the royalties for a song to the owner of a 10-second sample used therein. In Germany, the Pirate Party was building an impressive base of support, and better ideas about copyright were spreading through the government — even as infamous collection society GEMA was demanding licensing fees for songs it didn't own. And one confused columnist was bemoaning the death of the "creative class" because... nobody works at Tower Records anymore.

Ten Years Ago

If you thought that was a bit late to still be lamenting the death of Tower Records, you're right: five whole years earlier, the same week in 2006, people were doing the exact same thing (at the time it was two months after the company declared bankruptcy). Meanwhile, one movie executive was insisting that shortening release windows is technically impossible, while Intel and Morgan Freeman were continuing to vaguely promise a movie simultaneously released in theaters and online. But the big news of the week was Google's confirmed purchase of YouTube, which spawned all sorts of speculation about the future, and of course an increased rate of lawsuit threats from media companies negotiating licensing deals with the platform.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, a hoax story about the death of Britney Spears spawned conversation about how hard it is to figure out what's true online. And indeed a prime example came that very week: we fell for a story about secret meetings between the RIAA and government officials that turned out to be entirely made up.

The hoaxes haven't changed much, but we've upped our scrutiny. As for something that has really changed, get a blast from the past by looking at the 2006 browser statistics: Internet Explorer still dominated with 76% of traffic, and half of people were still surfing at a screen resolution of 800x600.

Thirty-Three Years Ago

In the western world, the first analog cellular network that took hold was the Analog Mobile Phone System, which followed networks deployed in Japan and Scandinavia. It was on October 13th, 1983 that AMPS was commercially introduced in the US, kickstarting the cellphone revolution.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the different-and-not-so-different dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, the Supreme Court let stand an important ruling that downloads are not public performances. Of course, some media rushed to interpret this as saying that unauthorized music downloads are legal, but this was not at all the case. Meanwhile, a former anti-piracy investigator was admitting how he fed the police cases and inflated piracy statistics, and over in Australia, the band Men At Work shockingly lost its appeal over use of a brief riff from a folk song that went unnoticed for decades.

Also this week in 2011, the world said hello to Siri — and, sadly, goodbye to Steve Jobs.

Ten Years Ago

Speaking of inflated piracy statistics, this week in 2006 we watched how they become accepted facts as an utterly bogus industry report started being parroted by news organizations. At least one Swedish court was demanding actual evidence from the recording industry. Yahoo, Amazon and Apple were all dragged into a copyright lawsuit over sampling in a Run DMC song, too.

The HP spying scandal's latest development was felony charges against former chairwoman Patricia Dunn, and a new and still extremely dubious rumor started spreading that would eventually come to pass: there were whispers of Google buying YouTube.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, the notion of broadband connections in the home was still struggling to take sustainable hold, and the notion of internet access in airplanes was put on hold for a while. Meanwhile, the notion of a 3D web refused to die. Thanks to the epidemic of pop-ups, the internet got its first taste of rudimentary ad blockers, but they didn't work great and websites were already starting to fight back. And the recording industry was continuing its campaign against file sharing services by sweeping up with a new lawsuit against Music City and Kazaa.

Thirty-One Years Ago

Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation, creator of the GNU, has been one of the driving forces and defining voices in the entire open source movement — and it was founded on October 4th, 1985.

Filed Under: archives, history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: September 25th - October 1st

from the memories dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, Occupy Wall Street was in full swing, leading (of course) to video of NYPD cops wantonly pepper-spraying nonviolent protestors. It soon became clear that people were being targeted just for recording the police, despite attempts to justify their actions with explanations that conflicted with the video evidence. Meanwhile, in Illinois, prosecutors were trying to put a guy in jail for 75 years for filming a traffic stop, and seeking 15 years for another guy for the same reason.

Amidst all this, in the realm of higher-level questionable police activities, the world was first coming to terms with the existence of Stingray devices.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2006, LimeWire hit back hard against the RIAA with a lawsuit for antitrust and consumer fraud. Meanwhile, the RIAA scored a scary win in its crusade against Morpheus (originally part of the famous Grokster case). The MPAA, most bizarrely of all, got the access to bring "pirated DVD-sniffing dogs" to inspect packages coming into the country (despite there being no way to distinguish pirated DVDs from legitimate ones by smell, and it's not clear why they should have this access to begin with).

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, we saw the birth of one of the earliest and stupidest 9/11 conspiracy theories: the idea that Microsoft hid foreknowledge of the attacks in... the Wingdings font. We also saw momentum continue to pick up on new laws that threatened civil liberties and would bury the FBI in more data than it could possibly make real use of. Bruce Schneier wisely pointed out that proposed surveillance efforts wouldn't have stopped the attacks. Others were tracking the cultural fallout, such as nearly-immediate changes to the nature and tone of advertising. And finally, The Onion released its brilliant and now-famous issue focused on the attacks, which stands alongside A Modest Proposal and Stephen Colbert's White House Correspondents Dinner speech as one of the finest works of satire in history.

One-Hundred And Ten Years Ago

The first ever demonstration of a radio remote-controlled apparatus was by Nikola Tesla, but the second and arguably more influential such demo happened on September 25th, 1906 when Leonardo Torres y Quevedo remotely steered a ship out of the port of Bilbao before the king of Spain and an assembled crowd using his Telekino device.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History - September 18th - 24th

from the followups dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, the Pirate Party scored another big victory when it took 9% of the vote and a bunch of seats in parliament in Berlin. Their influence was badly needed across Europe, what with Italy proposing a one-strike law to ban people from the internet based on a single accusation of infringement (prompting questions about whether that was even legal in Europe), and the EU Commissioner straight-up asking big entertainment companies to step up their lobbying for more draconian copyright law.

Also this week in 2011: the now-tiresomely-ubiquitous "Keep Calm And Carry On" poster was at the height of its popularity, and the trademark battles were heating up.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2006, HP was still grappling with the massive spying scandal that hit it last week. First, more details came out that exposed even more elaborate spying and made the company look even worse, although it still wasn't clear whether or not California law actually made any of the activities illegal. Chairperson Patricia Dunn's pleas of ignorance began to fall apart when more documents suggested she was closely involved, and by the end of the week she resigned from the company only to be replaced by CEO Mark Hurd. But... additional leaked memos implicated him in the scandal too.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, Techdirt (and the world) was still reeling from the events of September 11th. The FBI was already moving to expand its wiretapping abilities, companies with poor taste were already moving to capitalize on the tragedy, scammers with even fewer morals were doing the same in their own way and, of course, the conspiracy theories were already flowing. Publishers of violent video games were delaying their launches, and after every store sold out of American flags it turned out they were pretty hard to find online in 2001.

Seventy Years Ago

The Cannes Film Festival is one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions in the world of film, and generally seen as a bastion of movie artistry and creativity in a Hollywood-dominated world. The first ever festival was supposed to happen in 1939, until a pesky global conflict got in the way — but the dream survived the war, and the long-delayed Cannes Film Festival debuted on September 20th, 1946.

Filed Under: history, look back