This Week In Techdirt History: July 17th - 23rd

from the memories dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, the battle over the PROTECT IP bill continued, with the MPAA utterly failing to address the concerns of experts and the creators of the internet and the Copyright Alliance vaguely trying to "set the record straight" by responding to an un-linked, un-cited post written against the bill. We pointed to a variety of examples showing why we shouldn't rush to approve PROTECT IP, but it seemed like the lawmakers were pretty confused about what it was to begin with — one senator thought it was about an internet kill-switch, and another had it all confused with net neutrality.

Also this week in 2011, we saw the beginning of what we now know to be a very sad story: federal prosecutors filed felony charges against Aaron Swartz for downloading documents from JSTOR. We couldn't help but notice that, despite so much rhetoric about theft and infringement, there was no mention of copyright in the indictment. Indeed, there didn't seem to be any legal or moral basis for the charges whatsoever. But that didn't stop the Copyright Alliance from throwing their hat into the ring with a post full of terrible analogies — nor did it stop lots of people from uploading JSTOR research to file-sharing sites in protest.

Ten Years Ago

It's easy to forget that once upon a time YouTube was new — and that was the case this week in 2006, when it was still independent and so young that its very first copyright lawsuits were just beginning to materialize. Interestingly, this same week, the MPAA was getting hyped about new technology for detecting infringing video (though perhaps they should have focused more on innovations that aren't designed to fail).

We were also pleased to see a very rare beast: an honest debate about net neutrality. Not just that — there was also a great John Hodgman-helmed explainer segment on the Daily Show, and a creative reimagining of the debate that made it all about sidewalks instead of networks.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, though Napster was basically dead, it didn't seem to have helped the recording industry very much (and who could have predicted that?) Over in the UK, they decided the best way was to start young, and began teaching kids about the evils of file sharing in elementary school. Meanwhile, the high-profile arrest of a Russian programmer for breaking encryption was shaping up to be a major test to copyright law. And amidst all this, copy-protected CDs were starting to show up in record stores.

Also this week in 2001: Microsoft was discovered stopping a charity from distributing computers over licensing issues; the top-ranked legal advisor on an advice website was a fifteen-year-old kid; Fandango made the first brave foray into the now-normal practice of printing movie tickets at home; and people were still trying to figure out how (and why) to get video onto cellphones.

One-Hundred And Seventeen Years Ago

NEC isn't a big trendy consumer name — at least not outside Japan. But its a gigantic supplier of the network equipment that powers so much of our digital world — and it was on July 17th, 1899 that it was launched as the first ever Japanese joint-venture with foreign capital.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: July 10th -16th

from the oh-the-memories dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, we saw several examples of misuse and abuse of intellectual property. After a big riot in Vancouver, some rioters tried to use copyright to hide their identities only to have that plan completely backfire; Michael Jackson's estate tried to block a prank caller from selling a recording because it contained Jackson's voice; a company in Sturgis, South Dakota trademarked the name of the town and started suing over the sale of souvenirs; and Newport Television was abusing the DMCA to shut down criticism.

Meanwhile, the monkey selfie copyright conflict was getting underway: we received a request from the photographer's news agency to take down the photos, and so we explained in more detail why the photo was likely in the public domain, while David Slater made his own case for ownership.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2006, we saw the BPI start asking UK ISPs to start disconnecting people when provided with "unequivocal evidence" of copyright infringement, and the UK's indie labels joined the fight as well — but at least one ISP was not convinced by the evidence they were provided with. Meanwhile, the BPI was also pushing to get music sharing on the agenda for the G8 summit. In the US, Hollywood's own newspaper made the case that congress shouldn't just be helping Hollywood when it comes to copyright, and we also wondered how long the RIAA would be allowed to continue abusing the legal system. The entertainment industry was also trying to get its way by attaching some of its desires to a telco reform bill, and there was a major development on another critical front related to freedom of speech when the FCC's decency fines were increased tenfold.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, we saw a questionable study spelling doom and gloom for movie theatres due to piracy, while music retailers were complaining about their own doom at the hands of record labels and their legal online offerings. Metallica finally closed the book on Napster, having successfully killed the service, and we saw that some of the biggest fighters in the copyright battles were radical librarians defending their industry.

Microsoft (which was in the midst of a disastrous weeklong MSN Messenger outage) was caught bullying poor school districts for copying software, while Apple was quietly reclaiming the education market for itself. Infamous grocery startup Webvan died its long-anticipated death and the future was looking questionable for Tivo, too. And we saw two very bizarre complaints coming out of the UK: Prince Charles denounced computer games, and a Nobel Prize winning scientist decided to pin the death of British engineering on Lego, of all things.

Twenty-Four Years Ago

The open source revolution got rolling in the 1990s, and Linux was its flagship product — but before Linux (though not by much) there was 386BSD, the precursor to FreeBSD and NetBSD, version 0.1 of which was released on July 14th, 1992.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: July 3rd - 9th

from the tubes-and-monkeys dept

Five Years Ago

The fight over PROTECT IP was heating up this week in 2011, with law professors joining the ranks of those opposed to the bill while Hollywood ramped up its smear campaign against Senator Ron Wyden, and Senator Jerry Moran removed himself as a co-sponsor of the bill. Of course, this wasn't the only bad bill being considered — there was also the anti-streaming bill, which caught the attention of video game streamers and was met with a mass of YouTube video protests. Meanwhile, the entertainment industry was busy moving ahead of the law by signing the major US ISPs onto a "five strikes" plan for copyright infringement. Those who received strikes would have to pay to contest them, and it looked like the industry had backdoored in the disconnection powers it so desired.

But the most memorable thing to happen this week in 2011 was, of course, the unveiling of the famous (and fascinating/contentious from a copyright perspective) monkey selfie.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2006, the RIAA was busy suing sites around the globe, with the latest target being Allofmp3.com in the UK. We were skeptical of this approach, but the Associated Press certainly seemed to have bought the scare stories about global piracy in full. The RIAA was also failing on the home front, with university students seeing right through its terrible "free" music service. Hollywood was busy taking down the free promotion it got from its fans, and after a German magazine noted that you can technically pirate a movie by simply screencapping every frame, we wondered how long it would take for the MPAA to try to ban the Print Screen button.

There was a big, memorable moment this week in 2006 too: Senator Ted Stevens offered his infamous "series of tubes" explanation for the nature of the internet.

Fifteen Years Ago

Last week, we noted that Amazon introduced a free shipping program for the first time. This week in 2001, Barnes & Noble followed suit, and managed to do so without raising any prices on Monday. But then, on Friday... Amazon ended its free shipping program, calling it an experiment. Such was the dance of the early online retailers.

We saw the early rumblings of a legal response to the problems of cyber-bullying, and early takes on how to deal with (or possibly flat-out ban) the use of cellphones while driving. We even saw the earliest of baby steps down the long road to Uber with Ireland experimenting with the ability to get cabs by texting. And in a move that may not have seemed revolutionary at the time, but was actually a first step towards opening up lots of enlightening data, Google unveiled its "Zeitgeist" product for exploring the most popular searches and trends.

Twenty-Six Years Ago

Techdirt has been around for a long time, but the folks at the EFF still have a few years on us: it was on July 6th, 1990 that the EFF was founded by John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor after both faced inquiries by law enforcement agents who were clueless about technology. Happy birthday, EFF!

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: June 26th - July 1st

from the echoes dept

Five Years Ago

Hactivism was a big topic this week in 2011, especially after infamous group LulzSec announced that it would be disbanding. Australian telco giant Telstra was reconsidering its censorship plan due to hactivist fears, while the RIAA was unsurprisingly using hactivism as another reason to promote the PROTECT IP bill. Governments were struggling to address the issue, though some people were smart enough to point out that the best approach would be to examine their own policies. And, hot of the heels of the major Sony hack, the company was claiming it was targeted due to the fact that it enforces its intellectual property. As for the other high-profile Sony hacker, George Hotz, well — he was busy getting hired by Facebook.

Last week we talked about turntable.fm, the exciting new music service that we knew wasn't long for this world, and indeed this week it was blocked to all non-US users in the first step towards its demise. This was also the week that Prince made his bizarre statements about how digital music supposedly has a different effect on the brain. And, in ruling that was predictable but highly important, the Supreme Court struck down California's anti-violent-videogame law for violating the First Amendment.

Ten Years Ago

Before Sony was the victim of hackers, it was the hacker — or at least the hacker's friend — thanks to its horrible rootkit, and it was this week in 2006 that the authors of a virus leveraging that rootkit were arrested. At the same time, Microsoft was rolling out "Windows Genuine Advantage" and some were wondering if it would become the next such fiasco. And before the question of violent video games made it to the Supreme Court, the New York DA's office was pulling out all the stops in a desperate effort to find something to bring down Grand Theft Auto.

The net neutrality fight was raging too, but with a severe dearth of actual honest discussion. Cory Doctorow was suggesting a P2P-driven shaming system for bad broadband providers, while Senators were strutting their hypocrisy by opposing net neutrality regulation and supporting broadcast flag regulation in the same bill.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, before the days of WGA, Microsoft was trying out more mundane copy protection schemes and pissing off serious users of Microsoft Office. Rumors were beginning to spread about a Google IPO, though it wouldn't materialize for another three years. Amazon unveiled free shipping, but coupled with some quiet price hikes that mitigated the impact. And advertisers were scrambling to figure out how to make money off the instant messaging craze.

But no doubt the biggest tech news this week in 2001 was the fact that a federal appeals court reversed the antitrust decision that said Microsoft must be broken up. Of course, absolutely everyone had something to say about this fact, and we've still got a few more years left to fact-check Steward Alsop's prediction that Microsoft will fail in 2020 or 2021.

Forty-Two Years Ago

Today, barcodes are ubiquitous. They were conceived in the late 1940s, patented in the early 50s, and shopped around for some time after that before the critical development of the Universal Product Code that dominates the retail world. It was on June 26th, 1974 that the first UPC barcode was scanned at a retail checkout, ringing up the price of a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum in Troy, Ohio.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the history-of-histories dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, amid lots of IP chaos, we offered up a two-part history of the many "killers" of the music industry, first in the analog era and now in the digital one. Undeterred, Universal Music was in the midst of going to war with popular hip-hop blogs and websites for posting tracks (most if not all of which the artists wanted posted). If you doubt that last bit, consider that one of the targets was 50 Cent's own official website. There was also a lot of buzz about the awesome new social music service turntable.fm, and we wondered how long it would take for the RIAA to kill it (it's gone now, by the way).

While a new filing in the Rojadirecta case elaborated on how ICE's domain seizures violate the first amendment even as Senatory Patrick Leahy was celebrating them, rightsholders in the UK were seeking their own web censorship powers. Hollywood was busy too, with the MPAA lobbying to get law enforcement to behave as its own private police force and trying to convince ISPs to become copyright cops, too.

Ten Years Ago

Five years earlier in 2006, there was a very similar history lesson for the people thinking about entertainment industry legislation: Gary Shapiro of the CEA took out a full page advertisement in the Capitol Hill newspaper highlighting, once again, all the past freakouts about new technology destroying music and movies. This was important considering big legal questions like deep linking of MP3s, and mean lawsuits like Paramount suing an amateur filmmaker for making his own 12 minute version of an Oliver Stone movie. Not to mention the creepy prevalence of the MPAA hiring people to stalk and/or hack potential legal targets, and the agency's generally high levels of bullshit.

Fifteen Years Ago

It was a different time in 2001, when we could be surprised by the fact that teenagers were adopting the internet en masse or that Amazon wasn't dead yet. Doctors were still fairly resistant to using technology like email and the first IBM PC was a mere 20 years old. The hot new TLDs on the block were .biz and .info, and buyers were competing over popular picks like show.biz and sex.info, while Network Solutions was busy trying to sabotage the whole .biz enterprise. "Cyber Rage" was a new notion that would evolve into today's doxxing, swatting and other nastiness, and one group was so miffed by digital smut that it sought to send Yahoo execs to jail as pornographers.

Eight-Two Years Ago

The FCC is a big and complex regulatory body that has a massive impact on all modern communication innovation in America — and it was on June 19th, 1934 that it came into existence after the passage of the Communications Act of 1934.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the same-difference dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, things were heating up around ICE's recent domain name seizures. Several of the targeted sites were challenging the seizures to get their domains back, with one — Rojadirecta — going ahead and suing the US government, Homeland Security and ICE. Those trying to get more information via FOIA requests were met with stalling by the government (which was not out of character). Then, the government decided to up the ante and sought to extradite one of the site operators from the UK on copyright charges (despite the fact that this essentially amounted to enforcing US copyright law outside its jurisdiction, since the target violated no UK laws). Meanwhile, some people online were busy turning ICE's gaudy takedown notice pages into the new Rickroll, and China was using the copyright excuse to clamp down on freedom of speech.

Ten Years Ago

There was a big fight over net neutrality happening in 2006, and this week we couldn't help but balk at all the propaganda, from terrible newspaper editorials to celebrity endorsements and good ol' propaganda music. The issue was muddied by nonsense, and only a few people had rational thoughts to share.

The RIAA seemed to have moved into the denial phase of grief about piracy, declaring victory and saying it was "contained". Perhaps that's why it had to turn its sights on YouTube videos of people dancing to music they haven't licensed. At least they still had Canadian politicians in their pocket.

Fifteen Years Ago

There were several technologies looming on the horizon this week in 2001. Digital cash was struggling to catch on long before the revolution of the blockchain; Ebooks were poised to change everything from the way people write to the role of libraries; and SMS text messaging was taking the world by storm, but the US was a major holdout.

Also this week in 2001: we saw a prototypical net neutrality crisis, the homepage takeover ad started to appear, Apple sued the Church of Satan for its own "Think Different" campaign, and Homer Simpson's iconic "Doh!" was officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

One-Hundred And Ninety-Four Years Ago

Most of you surely know that the world's "first computer" is generally considered to be Charles Babbage's mechanical difference engine. It was on June 4th, 1822 that Babbage first proposed the possibility of such a machine to the Royal Astronomical Society. The project wound on for 20 years and cost £17,000, but never came to fruition, as the government abandoned it and Babbage moved on to his new analytical engine.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the iirc dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, we were still looking at the previous week's hearings on pre-1972 sound recordings, where the RIAA was staunchly supporting the past extensions of copyright law while insisting that reducing copyright law would be unconstitutional, and leading us to ask would it really be so bad if The Beatles were public domain? This was all happening at the same time as the Golan case, which led us to underline how damaging it is to take works out of the public domain as well. Sadly, we also saw yet another loss for appropriation art in the courts, this time focused on a Run DMC painting.

Apple was launching its new Music Match service, with all the copyright questions it implied, but rightsholders couldn't seem to agree on how they felt about it — and alongside its competitors, it also highlighted the point that fragmenting the cloud is missing the point.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2006, the US government was pressuring other countries over foreign music sites for no obvious reason other than direct marching orders from the entertainment industry. This pressure, and the exportation of policy, was poised to stymie innovation globally just like the DMCA did at home. At least there were rumblings of more reasonable views on copyright coming from politicians in the UK and a former RIAA boss who came to her senses a little too late. Meanwhile, the copyright industries were lobbying for a pernicious legal change that would require licenses even for incidental copies such as cached files. But what the industry excelled at most was invoking the Streisand Effect on sites like AllOfMp3.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, we noted a trend towards centralization on the web, with fifty percent of online time being spent on four websites (AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Napster). The dot-com bubble blame game was still going on and occasionally getting ugly, with violence and lawsuits. MIT had some interesting thoughts on how technology impacts linguistics, and we took an early look at how the very concept of copyright has been corrupted. Also, the Catholic Church made a digital decision: online confessions were declared not to be an option.

Finally, I think it's fair to say we were right to question Business Week's assertion that Apple "should not get back into the handheld market".

Thirty-Two Years Ago

It's one of the most famous and successful games of all time, and in some people's estimation it's the quintessential realization of what a "game" truly is. On June 6th, 1984, Tetris was first released.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the looking-back dept

Five Years Ago

Our first inkling that that the NSA and the White House had reinterpreted the PATRIOT Act in secret came out as Senator Ron Wyden began sounding the alarm, that eventually resulted in Snowden leaking documents two years later. Of course, Wyden's warnings didn't stop the PATRIOT Act provisions from being renewed. That same week, Wyden also put a hold on the PROTECT IP bill, which was later known as the PIPA half of SOPA/PIPA. None of that really mattered since Homeland Security was already seizing web sites for copyright infringement... and for online poker.

It was the early days of copyright trolling in the US as one of the originators of the scheme, US Copyright Group, sued 24,583 people for sharing Hurt Locker. It was also an early legal loss for famed copyright troll John Steele, who went on to found Prenda Law.

Back on the privacy front we were explaining why "if you've got nothing to hide..." was such a dumb argument. The UK was dealing with another situation involving a ridiculous superinjunction designed to silence the press from mentioning Ryan Giggs, leading to the UK press figuring out ways to name him anyway, and that leading a judge to argue this proves why such press censorship is so important.

This was the beginning of Rakofsky v. the Internet, in which a young lawyer sued basically everyone who said anything mean about him (we were briefly almost included in that lawsuit, but due to a filing error, that never became official). A new report in the EU found that IP laws that were too strong were harming the EU economypushing for greater enforcementdemanding royalties for inspiring some of her popular songs.

Oh, and following on the push in Texas to pass a law banning the TSA from groping airline passengers, the Justice Dept threatened to block all flights out of Texas.

Ten Years Ago

Some things never change. Security researchers were afraid to report vulnerabilities because they were getting blamed for them. The RIAA was suing XM (pre-Sirius) over a useful little device called the Inno. Meanwhile, it's partners in the IFPI were cheering criminal charges brought against 3,500 file sharers in Germany. Someone was challenging the legality of the GPL, but it wasn't working. Telcos were happy to use regulations that helped them beat off competition, while complaining about regulations in all other contexts -- and we (rightly) expected that the fCC would do nothing about net neutrality. And the BSA was releasing its bogus stats. We were already worried about the NSA abusing surveillance data and misinterpreting results, since your book club might look like a terrorist group.

People were exploring who was really behind Nigerian 419 scams. Meanwhile people were noticing that MySpace was being used by scammers... and also noticing that MySpace was going out of style. An appeals court told Apple that bloggers are journalists too and wireless networks were battling it out in court over who could claim to have the best network. Wired unleashed the word crowdsourcing on the world and people were still freaking out about how kids could possibly survive the rise of digital technology.

Fifteen Years Ago

People were, as always since the internet began basically, worried about the future of media on the internet. The RIAA was being the RIAA and suing Aimster, a somewhat unique file sharing system, that insisted it was legal (courts eventually disagreed). Speaking of file sharing online, we mocked the idea that sharing TV shows online was a real issue, because at the time bandwidth wasn't fast enough to really matter. The great age of innovation was progressing as we were shocked by the idea of mobile check in for flights (and even just automated check in kiosks, that are now standard). Speaking of mobile internet, there was too much hype about the wireless web, because back then it truly sucked. Lots of other tech stuff sucked at the time as well, and someone argued that the world needed a "geek hero" to encourage kids to get into tech (anyone still think that's true?). Meanwhile, Webvan, the poster child for dotcom excess and failure began auctioning off its assets (if I remember correctly, healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente ended up buying a bunch of them), and dot commers still coming to terms with the original dot com bubble collapse were dealing with depression.

Eighty Years Ago:

Famed mathemetician/code breaker Alan Turing submitted his landmark paper "On Computable Numbers" to be published, arguably the first paper on "computer science." Kind of amazing how far we've come in well less than a century.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: May 15th - 21st

from the looking-back dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, we saw lots of critical digital issues being debated around the world. France was playing statistical games to claim that its HADOPI three strikes law was effective (it wasn't), even as it was having to temporarily suspend some operations following a data breach; Turkey was facing protests in response to a new plan for internet censorship; Pakistan was considering banning Facebook in the country; libraries in New Zealand were considering avoiding their own three strikes law by shutting off internet access; and in the UK, the courts were expanding superinjunction laws to cover social media and considering the Hargreaves report on the state of copyright.

In the US, we were digging into the PROTECT IP act, which was really all about old media going to war with the internet. As Google pointed out, it would set a disastrous precedent for free speech (which, of course, the big media companies tried to claim meant Google thought it was above the law). The International Trade Commission was using some silly methodology to amp up the damages of "piracy" in China, the RIAA was pushing for warrantless searches of CD and DVD manufacturing plants and trying to dig through the cloud for infringement.

Ten Years Ago

Five years earlier in 2006, we were happy to see the New York Times recognizing the amazing power of a digital library of scanned books, and also pointing out how great it can be for bringing attention to commercially neglected works. The RIAA was freaking out about the ability to record songs from satellite radio in a re-hash of the old "home taping is killing music" debacle, despite having sworn it would never be opposed to private, non-commercial recording. At least Australia was smart enough to realize that people should be allowed to rip their own CDs to their own iPods. Meanwhile, some were realizing that TV downloads could be a huge commercial opportunity for Hollywood, though they'd been trying to offer movies for years and the offerings still sucked. After all, how else could they keep making $200-million movies, right?

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, the biggest source of prediction and speculation was the future of wireless. One report noted that the real key to unlocking the wireless revolution was a killer app that everyone wanted, while MIT was focusing on the need for devices to improve, especially in terms of their displays (though small screens were probably going to do just fine for porn) and really trying to figure out exactly where the wireless web was at, and where it was going. We also saw an extremely smart, subtle prediction that has proven largely true: that consumer choices for wireless devices would start significantly influencing their choices for more traditional PC hardware and software (hello, Apple!)

Thirty-Six Years Ago

Since the latest Star Wars movie is still fresh in many people's minds, and since we even talked about its remix qualities earlier today in our Awesome Stuff post, it seems worth noting that it was on this day in 1980 that The Empire Strikes Back was released in cinemas. It's now widely considered to be the best of the original trilogy, and one of the best films in movie history.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the wasteland?-perhaps dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, the copyright maximalists were out in force. We saw complaints about new TLDs on the basis that they create "more space" for infringement while lobbyists sought to include special censorship capabilities in .net domains. A judge let US Copyright Group move forward with its huge shakedown operation over The Expendables, BMI tried to claim that a person listening to their own music via the cloud counts as a public performance, and the creators of some origami patterns sued a painter whose work was inspired by them. In Portugal, politicians were seeking to make Creative Commons illegal, while in Ireland there was a push for fair use laws that was somehow branded as "radical". But of course the biggest news was the son of COICA: the hugely problematic PROTECT IP act that had a few good ideas undermined by all the bad ones and had the potential to gut the DMCA safe harbors. Senator Ron Wyden and Rep. Zoe Lofgren were not impressed.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2006, the trademark battle between Apple Computers and the Beatles' record label came to an end with the judge siding with the former's definition of iTunes as a data transmission service, not a music store. We saw an early push to make sure taxpayer-funded research is freely available, the dawning realization that video games are a really big deal, and a very silly squabble over the .xxx TLD. The big copyright topic was DRM, with one analyst presenting unconvincing multi-billion-dollar figures for the loss due to a lack of good DRM, even while Hollywood was being held back by its DRM obsession (and its apparent inability to understand BitTorrent). We debunked the idea that copy protection is somehow "necessary" and one of the few people who seemed to understand the problem was the CEO of RealNetworks.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, things were settling into a new post-bubble groove in Silicon Valley, with people realizing that overhyped areas like B2B weren't dead, they just weren't exciting and had to be approached like any other business — an attitude that was emerging throughout the world of internet startups. There was even more grappling over new TLDs, an interesting glimpse into the FBI's tactics against Russian hackers, and of course an ongoing glut of dot com documentaries. We also got some early bumps on the road to things that are much more common now: Microsoft killed off its subscription-based Office offerings with the apparent awareness that they would come back later, inflight WiFi was possible, but not coming to the US anytime soon, and we were clearly a bit too critical of Apple's plan to start opening retail stores. Also, all the way back in 2001, people were already discussing the still-far-from-complete switch to IPv6.

Fifty-Five Years Ago

Back in 1961, the recently-appointed head of the FCC was Newton N. Minow, and on May 9th of that year he gave a famous speech entitled Television and the Public Interest, but better known as the "vast wasteland" speech. It was a call for creating more television content in the public interest, and contained some hard-to-argue assertions:

When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.

But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you'll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.

Fifty years later, he said that he never fully predicted the impact of television, but also that little had changed, noting that "too much deals with covering controversy, crimes, fires, and not enough with the country's great issues".

Filed Under: history, look back