This Week In Techdirt History: February 21st - 27th

from the goes-around-comes-around dept

Five Years Ago

Lots and lots of IP fights this week in 2011. Multiple people were trying to claim they came with the idea for Kung Fu Panda first; the Tolkien Estate was embroiled in a battle over historical fiction that included a depiction of the famous writer, and it looked like they may be gearing up to go after a re-imagining of Lord Of The Rings too; and the lawyers for Settlers Of Catan were abusing IP law to take down legitimate competitors. We saw what might have been the first DMCA notice over 3D printer schematics, an appeals court was considering the possibility of plucking Wizard Of Oz images back out of the public domain, and Hulk Hogan was trying to use publicity rights to establish ownership over calling people "brother" and referring to your muscles as "guns". We also looked at the ridiculous trademark saga of Kennedy Fried Chicken, and examined some subtle copyright questions like whether copying the idea for a magazine cover and reciting song lyrics on television are forms of infringement.

Meanwhile, Chris Dodd was fresh out of the Senate and already breaking his promise to never become a lobbyist by joining the MPAA as exactly that (and this wasn't the only example of the revolving door between government and industry).

Ten Years Ago

Spam, spyware and fraud were big topics this week in 2006. The Washington Post was looking deeply into the world of botnets, Miller Brewing was tracking down customers who used junk email addresses, ESPN was trying to get people to cough up a fee to avoid having their info sent to marketers, and one spammer got eight years in jail for an identity theft hack. We wondered about the responsibilities of anti-spyware researchers while the makers of anti-spyware software were more or less at war with each other. Amidst all this, it was discovered that a group of 419 scammers in Amsterdam pulled in millions of dollars in just a few months.

This was also the week of the injunction against Google in the Perfect 10 lawsuit, which was highly problematic but not without its upsides.

Fifteen Years Ago

The fallout from the Napster ruling was still in full-swing, with the company guaranteeing a billion dollars to record labels if it can stay in business as a subscription service (though the math on that was questionable). The commentators were going wild as usual, some saying Napster must die and others pointing out that anti-piracy laws are often anti-consumer.

This week in 2001 also contains two "wow, it was that long ago?" moments. First, it was the announcement that Virgin Mobile was coming to the US. Then, it was one of the biggest and strangest early internet memes, before they were called memes: ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.

138 & 69 Years Ago

This week, we mark two historical firsts for important innovations that are all but obsolete today (though one is making a bit of a comeback). First, it was on February 21st, 1878 that the first ever telephone directory (a single piece of cardboard with 50 listings) was published in New Haven, Connecticut.

Later, on the same day in 1947, Edwin H. Land demonstrated the first instant camera to the Optical Society of America. Polaroid put 57 units up for sale before Christmas of the following year, estimating that they'd have plenty of time to manufacture more if demand was high — but all 57 units and all of the film sold out on the first day of demonstrations.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: February 14th - 20th

from the no-more-napster dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, Homeland Security continued its domain-seizure crusade with another 18 targets, again seized with no adversarial due process. It also appeared to have made a pretty big mistake in seizing a dynamic domain and taking down thousands of innocent sites, though when pressed on this it was particularly evasive. We reiterated the point that the seizures were almost certainly not legal, while Congress was getting ready to reintroduce COICA and make online takedowns even easier and more extreme (and it was good to hear Senator Ron Wyden speaking out against it while Senator Patrick Leahy struggled to show evidence for its necessity.) All this appears to have inspired UK law enforcement, who began seeking their own takedown powers, and France was ahead of the game.

But, before dealing with COICA, Congress was racing to extend the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act. First the House agreed to the extension with no discussion or oversight, then the Senate followed suit but mercifully added a better-than-nothing 90 day limit to start with. The administration was defending its vague right to spy on Americans, and yet amidst all this, the US still wanted to be seen as a champion of internet freedom.

Ten Years Ago

That same irony was present five years earlier in 2006, when the big news on that front was Google's decision to offer a censored version of its search in China. Suddenly, the US government was extremely interested in censorship and internet freedom, and the whole ordeal appeared to be a massive clash of business, politics and culture. China, for its part, seemed to be throwing the US a bone by shutting down some counterfeiting operations at the same time. Additionally, in an ersatz prototype of today's battle over iPhone encryption, UK police were worried that Microsoft's new Windows DRM system would stop them from doing their job, and were negotiating with the company to include backdoors that would let them hack people's machines.

Also this week in 2006: the television industry was struggling to figure out what to do with its new stats on DVR viewers, the RIAA was pretending that it's doing you a favor by letting you use your iPod (while also using dirty tricks in its file sharing lawsuits, like gathering private info on the target's kids), and Apple shut down a group that was putting OSX on non-Apple PC hardware (precisely the type of machine from which I am typing this).

Fifteen Years Ago

On Monday of this week in 2001, the final ruling came down: Napster is bad, and must stop. There was no shortage of analysis on this front, with some predictions that were wildly optimistic, suggesting Napster could retain 25% of its users on a subscription model, some that were much more realistic, pointing to other services that atrophied users after starting to charge a fee, and some that looked deeper and found the real losers here: the music industry. Meanwhile, P2P sharing wasn't going anywhere (and, tangentially, neither was open source software, despite one bizarre assertion that it's un-American).

One-Hundred And Five Years Ago

In the long history of global communication there have been many critical developments, and one we probably haven't discussed much around here is airmail. It was on February 17th, 1911 that the first unofficial airmail delivery took place (by an airplane, that is — there had been some deliveries by balloon and, of course, pigeon in the past). It was followed the next day by the first official airmail flight.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the when-will-they-learn dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, we saw some great stuff. David Guetta suggested "beating" piracy by embracing free music; Neil Gaiman explained how he went from fearing piracy to believing it's incredibly good; the Khan Academy was moving to leverage the power of BitTorrent; and a study from the Japanese government showed that anime piracy might be boosting sales.

But, on the flipside, we saw even more awful stuff. One rapper sued multiple companies for giving him lots of free promotion; the MPAA was lobbing all sorts of threats at Google over file sharing and suing Hotfile; a report from the IP Czar sounded like it was largely written by pro-copyright lobbyists; and Sony was going nuts over the PS3 jailbreak video, demanding the identity of anyone who watched it even while being tricked into tweeting the critical jailbreak code itself.

Ten Years Ago

Five extra years doesn't seem to change much. This week in 2006, even while some artists were realizing you could make money giving away free music and the evidence was showing that movie piracy doesn't reduce sales, plenty of people were still trying to fight this imagined enemy with restrictive licensing terms that kill the value of the product and set-top movie boxes that cost a fortune despite not offering much.

Newsweek, for some reason, was praising Rupert Murdoch as a digital visionary based largely on News Corp's acquisition of MySpace (which went wonderfully, right?) One look at MTV's efforts to compete was enough of a reminder that old media really struggles to "get" new media.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, Napster was in limbo. It was unclear when its paid, licensed offerings would be arriving, while some were still arguing that it should remain free. Then the word came down that the final ruling on Napster from the 9th Circuit would be arriving the following Monday (so we'll check in on that next week, naturally).

Wi-Fi was on the rise, but still had some security-related kinks to work out, and mobile innovation was orbiting the still-unborn iPhone with ersatz mashups of PDAs and phones. E-books were starting to make their mark, online shopping seemed due for its true rise, and home networks remained less common than anticipated.

Also, in one of the first instances of a point we'd go on to make many times, we pointed out that content isn't necessarily king, and connectivity matters a lot.

One-Hundred And Eighteen Years Ago

The justice system, the government, the national security apparatus, the media, the public, espionage, free speech, libel — they are all intersecting topics of interest here at Techdirt, and perhaps no incident in history brings them all together in as sharp a focus as France's Dreyfus Affair. The details of this infamous miscarriage of justice are far too numerous and intricate to recount here, but one of the most important aspects of the whole thing was J'Accuse, an essay published by Émile Zola as a direct attack on the government, which landed him on trial for defamation starting on February 7th, 1898.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: January 31st - February 6th

from the tides-of-time dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, Egypt was wracked with protests, and the government responded by shutting down the internet. China was trying to stop people from talking about the uprising while Al Jazeera was trying to spread coverage far and wide by putting it under a Creative Commons license. We took a look at the impact of the shutdown, and then later in the week Egypt finally turned it back on.

Meanwhile, in a more insidious form of internet shutdown, Homeland Security was going nuts with the domain seizures, even as its affidavits continued to expose how much it was twisting the law and raise major legal questions. The week's big seizure was Spanish website Rojadirecta, which made us wonder if there would be an exodus from US-controlled domains, not to mention how the US would react if Spain started messing with American websites. Senator Wyden was demanding an explanation, and Homeland Security was not doing a good job on that front.

Ten Years Ago

After the recent announcement that Nikon would no longer sell film cameras, it felt like yet another end of an era this week in 2006 when Western Union announced it would no longer offer telegrams. This was, after all, a brave new era of broadband weather balloons (maybe, someday) and really expensive connected ovens. Perhaps that also explains why companies were so eager to plug the analog hole with terrible technology, though the real reason was probably to squeeze out amateur creators.

Also this week in 2006: the RIAA sued yet another person without a computer, we looked at the unusual idea of applying trespass laws to computers, and we started catching on to the role of East Texas in the patent world.

Fifteen Years Ago

Rumours were flying about the acquisition of Yahoo! this week in 2001, which some thought would herald the end of the internet while others just wondered if Disney would be the buyer. Such rumours would likely make the "most popular stories" lists that news websites were just discovering. Alongside them, you might see stories of eBay hijinks, ranging from the artist who tried to sell his whole life to the scammer who sold a very literal listing of a Playstation 2 Original Box to one unlucky buyer.

Long before the Apple Watch, Timex made a watch that could check email; long before Obama's highly digital campaign, some asked if 2000 was the first "net election"; and long before smartphone-aided comparison shopping was the norm, it wasn't clear if it would ever catch on in the US where people still didn't seem to care about wireless.

One-Hundred And Thirty-Two Years Ago

The Oxford English Dictionary is the gold standard of the English language, and my personal choice of dictionary whenever possible. It was on February 1st, 1884 that the first dictionary fascicle (look it up, in a watchacallit) was published with its full title: A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society. Of course, it was just Volume One: A to Ant.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: January 24th - 30th

from the lots-o-lawsuits dept

Five Years Ago

There were two related incidents this week in 2011, to do with citizens in Illinois videotaping authorities. One woman was arrested and faced 15 years in prison for recording her attempt to file a report of being sexually assaulted by a police officer; meanwhile, an artist faced the same sentence for video taping his own arrest. On the flipside, in the same week, a man was acquitted of charges that came after he filmed the TSA and refused to show his ID.

The George Hotz situation was still in its early stages and unfolding slowly, but was already troubling after the judge approved an aggressive temporary restraining order requested by Sony. UFC was going after Justin.tv for inducing infringement, a Japanese court deemed overseas place-shifting of television to be infringing, and mass copyright shakedowns appeared based on Paris Hilton's sex tape and, more generally, the wide world of porn. Amidst all this, the president nominated a former top RIAA lawyer to be Solicitor General.

Ten Years Ago

Speaking of the RIAA, this week in 2006 they were pushing the new line that merely making files available is infringing, while some were predicting that their next target might be ISPs (following other trailblazers). In Canada, one record label actually stepped up to help defend a teen against the RIAA's aggressive tactics. The MPAA, for its part, exposed a serious double standard when it defended its own right to internally copy and distribute movies, even as the industry continued to push a plug for the analog hole in the form of secretive technology that nobody's allowed to examine.

Following the disastrous launch of its Video project, Google admitted its mistake (though perhaps didn't quite grasp its full scope). This came the same week that Google announced it would let the Chinese government censor results on a special version of its site — a disappointing move, though we weren't sure why congress was grandstanding about it.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, IBM was claiming to have developed "Napster-proof" DRM-laden music, Sega was getting out of the console business, the digital holdouts at The New Yorker were finally getting ready to go online, and even the smartest among us often failed to recognize the potential of mobile internet.

The Presidential turnover was marked by widespread failures on the new Whitehouse website, though perhaps they had something to do with the prank pulled by the outgoing Clinton administration: removing the "W" key from all the keyboards in the building (prompting one TV show to hold a drive to collect replacements.

Also this week in 2001: Despair.com (in)famously managed to trademark the :-( emoticon.

Thirty Years Ago

As you've likely noted, this Thurdsay was the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Back in 2011, we wrote a little about it on the 25th anniversary.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the back-to-the-former-future dept

Five Years Ago

There was lots of grappling over censorship this week in 2011. While the European Commission was planning draconian new "anti-piracy" laws, the head of the ICE was defending the recent domain seizures and getting some distressing support from a wide variety of companies (Senator Ron Wyden, at least, called these companies out for supporting censorship). We also learned more worrisome details about the settlement over the unauthorized Catcher In The Rye sequel, saw Zynga start turning into a trademark bully, and watched as Righthaven started suing message board posters in its ongoing crusade.

Also of note this week in 2011: the world was learning the fascinating details of the Stuxnet worm, and the FCC gave the okay to the Comcast/NBC Universal merger.

Ten Years Ago

Five years earlier in 2006, similar censorship battles were still unfolding. One big question (that has never been entirely solved) was simply that of jurisdictions online. Major League Baseball was fighting to claim ownership of facts, and the organizers of the 2012 London Olympics were getting an extreme head start — which is what you need when your plan is to rewrite the host country's laws to give you special censorship powers. And speaking of bold legislative changes, Hollywood made an amusing and telling attempt to explicitly preserve the past by protecting "customary historic use of broadcast content by consumers". That's what happens when an industry fears innovation — that, and theaters boycotting a film because it will be released on DVD at the same time.

Fifteen Years Ago

Last week, we talked about the hype over what would eventually turn out to be the Segway — and by this week in 2001, the inventor was already struggling to manage expectations. Other hypes, such as that around online dating and the wireless web, were also disappointing people. Affiliate programs were losing some steam too, with both Google and the Wall Street Journal ditching theirs. The FBI was decidedly not immune to the hype of some script kiddies in a chat room, and the people behind famous the almost (and might-as-well-have-been) vaporware Duke Nukem game were so eager to exercise control over their hype that they went intellectual property crazy.

Thirty-Five Years Ago

Since we're venturing back through time, how about a nod to one of the most famous vessels for that very task? It was on January 21st, 1981 that the first iconic DeLorean DMC-12 rolled off the line in Belfast.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the the-less-things-change dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, much of the news on the Wikileaks front was centered on Twitter, which the government had ordered to reveal information on people connected with the site. This drew the ire of Iceland officials (among others), and not unlike the recent domain seizures, the government's approach was full of mistakes. But, at least, we learned that Twitter would stand up for its users rights. Of course, that wasn't the only attack Wikileaks faced: customs officers were intimidating Wikileaks volunteers, a congressional rep was asking the Treasury Department to put the site on the terrorist list (a request that was thankfully refused), and one bold man from Florida was suing Wikileaks for personal distress. On the flipside, the EFF was debunking the myth that the leaked cables didn't help anything while On The Media was seeking out the anonymous senator who killed a recent whistleblowing bill and the press at large was starting to realize that Bradley Manning was being tortured.

Also of note this week in 2011, we covered the beginnings of a now-infamous incident when Sony got a restraining order against George Hotz for jailbreaking the PS3.

Ten Years Ago

Netflix was the unstoppable giant this week in 2006, and it was still just focused on mailing DVDs — which unscrupulous postal workers would occasionally steal. The main victim, however, was clearly going to be Blockbuster. Google was trying to wow the world with a new online video offering, but it was sadly all about copy protection and not very impressive. MySpace revealed that it had its own video strategy in the works, which explained why it had recently started blocking YouTube. This dismal state of affairs even led some to wonder if AOL was the one with the most interesting and innovative video offering. That title certainly didn't belong to the world of mobile TV, which was wrecked by fragmentation and walled gardens like so much mobile content.

Meanwhile, efforts were still underway to plug the analog hole, and Tim Lee pointed out that the most insidious effect might come from the exception for so-called "professional" equipment. We bemoaned the fact that DRM was still endearing itself to artists as Sony's CEO attempted to brush off the recent rootkit fiasco.

Fifteen Years Ago

In these early days of 2001, calls for regulating the internet were much simpler — and even more absurd. Case in point: one novelists request that everything online be officially labelled as "true" or not. Case in point the second: a legislative attempt to deem the actions of spiders and other online bots as "trespassing". But hey, this was a time when one of the biggest intellectual property questions on the internet was the legality of "framing" content from other sites. Blogs, which were still often given their forgotten full name of weblogs, were still new enough that a different news organization would "discover" them every few weeks, leading to strange ideas like blog-based print magazines.

Also this week in 2001: we heard the very first murmurs of what would grow into immense hype about "IT", also known as "Ginger". Remember that? Yeah, it turned out to be the Segway. Hurrah.

Eighty-Nine Years Ago

With all the obligatory and uninteresting hype surrounding the recently-announced Oscar nominations, perhaps it's worth noting that the Academy was founded on January 11th, 1927 by Louis B. Mayer and a room of his 36 hand-picked guests. If I understand correctly, those people all became immortal in their 60s and continue to choose every Oscar winner to this day.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the government-and-television dept

Five Years Ago

Recently, Homeland Security returned a domain it seized all the way back in 2010. This week in 2011, we were still examining the fallout from the original seizures, as well as some similar seizures that were finally moving into the forfeiture phase. Some were claiming the technical and legal errors in the affidavit didn't matter, but we pushed back against that idea while marveling at how Homeland Security had clammed up about the seizures. They also appeared to have invented a non-existent form of criminal contributory liability in their justification.

In the world of Wikileaks, the new congressional leadership was prioritizing an investigation even while paying lip service to transparency. A Spanish newspaper explained its decision to publish the leaked cables, while a USAF Intelligence veteran explained why he supports Wikileaks and we debunked the idea that the leaks put lives in danger in Zimbabwe.

Also notable: this week in 2011 we took our first look at the TPP, and the now-infamous "study" linking vaccines to autism, which had already been known to be mistaken, was beginning to be exposed as outright fraud.

Ten Years Ago

The RIAA was up to its antics this week in 2006, using scare tactics to implicitly threaten anyone visiting the Grokster site and subpoenaing a bunch of John Does over file sharing. The MPAA was celebrating a DVD bust that was basically fake as part of Hollywood's broader strategy of entirely missing the point. Some media companies were starting to experiment with device-independent content as though it was a shocking and difficult innovation (not an obvious and simple feature) while some TV networks were opening up a bit more to VOD. The New York Times was trying to get its head around the fact that bloggers were calling out inaccuracy in the press, while other major newspapers were failing to fact check stories they lifted from blogs. But the worst trend in online content by far was the separation of articles into multiple pages.

Fifteen Years Ago

After Y2K went off without a hitch, few expected that the real bugs would start coming a year later. This week in 2001, systems that had put in place hacky patches to avoid Y2K problems but not account for future years suddenly experienced the Y2K+1 bug, which brought down the trains in Norway and made 7-Eleven regret the $8 million it spent on a Y2K fix.

Looking back on the year 2000, the total count was over 200 dot coms dead in the water. The still-profitable ones were those that didn't get venture capital and had to be scrappy from the start. The Blogger platform was begging for money and we saw an early call for getting rid of free content. Still, the overall effect of the internet appeared to be an increase in productivity.

Sixty-Nine Years Ago

Here's a historical tidbit from the intersection of two of our central topics: technology and government. It was on January 3rd, 1947 that the proceedings of the US House of Representatives were broadcast live on television for the first time. Three days later, Harry Truman would make the first televised State Of The Union address from the same chambers.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: December 27th - 31st

from the last-of-2015 dept

Thanks to the way the days align and the fact that we don't publish on New Year's, there aren't any posts from 2011/2006/2001 to highlight just yet — so this slightly-truncated history post represents the very last of the 2010/2005/2000 batch!

Five Years Ago

Lots of back-and-forth on the copyright and piracy front was happening this week in 2010, and most of the news was international. In India, the film industry was threatening a strike over the possibility that filmmakers would have to pay composers for music, while we looked out how 'piracy' helped establish the Nigerian film industry, which is often compared to the famous Bollywood; in Canada, a music collection society was trying to get payouts for 30 second song previews, while Germany's infamous GEMA collection society was cracking down on free sheet music for kindergarten students; in Sweden, the leaked State Dept. cables revealed that copyright enforcement was happening at the behest of the US, while officials complained that the Hollywood-backed IPRED law was doing more harm than good; and, following a similar situation in Spain, politicians were already planning the return of a rejected US-written copyright bill.

There was at least one bit of sanity too, thankfully. A Dutch court dismissed criminal charges against a P2P index site while noting how heavily law enforcement relied on information (and prompting) from an anti-piracy group.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2005, a huge discussion broke out about blog plagiarism, and we wondered just how big a deal it really is. At the same time, blogs were supposedly the booming new thing in China, but that bubble appeared to be rapidly bursting. The shiny new MMS multimedia messaging was struggling to get off the ground, but it turned out early adopters included high school drug dealers — while in South Korea, SMS was already so common it was normal to serve legal notices via text. Telecommuting as a whole, on the other hand, appeared to have an uncertain future.

Also this week in 2005: we saw an early net neutrality battle around the idea of a two-tiered internet, the RIAA was accused of coaching a teenage witness in a file-sharing case, Australia was considering expanding fair use, and Sony agreed to settle a class action suit filed over its rootkit.

Fifteen Years Ago

Bluetooth was still a big new thing this week in 2000, but its applications were still uncertain. Some complained that venture capitalists were funding too many Bluetooth chipmakers and not enough application builders, while others were going as far as to call the whole technology vaporware. As usual for the time, some were predicting the end of the dot-com downturn and pointing out the sectors that were surviving, while some were looking at the bigger picture and examining the consequences of an economic recession in the US.

The video game world was rocked by rumors that Nintendo was buying Sega, but they were quickly put to rest. Meanwhile, a more traditional gaming world was re-emerging, as people realized that board games were a comeback hit. We had our first (I think) run-in with a website trying to charge people to link to it, and Techdirt got mentioned (weakly) in the news.

Fifty-Six Years Ago

You may have heard the conception of nanotechnology attributed to Richard Feynman. In fact, this is only partly true — while he did indeed propose the idea in a lecture over half a century ago, it went largely unnoticed, and appears to have been dug up much later by scientists pursuing nanotechnology, in order to absorb some prestige from the famous physicist. In any case, like all Feynman lectures and writings, There's Plenty Of Room At The Bottom is full of intriguing ideas explained brilliantly, and it was on December 29th, 1959 that it was delivered to an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the holiday-history dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2010, we continued to track Homeland Security's recent mass seizures of domains. We discovered that their "evidence" of piracy included songs sent to the targeted blogs by the record labels themselves, and a close reading of the affidavit revealed plenty of technical and legal errors that kept getting worse. Despite all this, the Indie Music Association came out in support of the seizures.

While Homeland Security was playing copyright cops at home, the US was busy trying to export stronger copyright around the globe, too. The ambassador to the UN made it clear that copyright and patents were more important than progress in developing nations, and the State Department was spending millions to train foreign judges on intellectual property issues. The Spanish legislature, at least, rejected new copyright laws that Wikileaks had revealed to be heavily influenced by US diplomats and, by extension, Hollywood.

We also took some time this week to debunk common myths, like the idea that it can't be fair use to quote an entire article, the accusation that ISPs are profiting from piracy, and the fear that people just want stuff for free.

Ten Years Ago

Security and spam were big topics this week in 2005. Rootkits were spreading via instant messaging and even the Sony rootkit was still on some shelves (while Texas was extending its lawsuit to cover Sony's other copy protection technology), and one mysterious virus was surreptitiously downloading Mr. Bean to people's computers, possibly as part of some sort of shakedown scheme. Amidst this, we took a look at a three part series on overhauling the internet from MIT'S Tech Review, though sadly the original articles appear to have been taken down or moved. On the spam front, we noted that Bill Gates would almost certainly not be able to keep his 2004 promise that the spam problem would be "solved" within two years, though the FTC was cautiously optimistic about the future of spam, and some people were simply content to enjoy all the creative names spammers come up with.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2000, there was lots of overhype about the sold-out gift of the season: the Playstation 2. This had interesting and varied consequences, ranging from one man's long and rambling article about trying to decide what to do with the one he got his hands on, to the news that Iraq was buying them up in bulk (presumably for the purposes of building a supercomputer). Next door in Iran, meanwhile, we saw a big collision of tradition and technology: a flame war among clerics, complete with cybersquatting.

This year's other popular gift, despite it's $1,300 price tag, was Sony's Aibo robotic dog (which may or may not have come with a rootkit, who knows?), which sold 40,000 units. That's one way to use robots to make money from people with too much of it — another is what Honda announced: that it would start renting out the Asimo robot to parties and events.

One-Hundred And Thirty-Three Years Ago

Here's a slice of Christmas technology history from long before Playstations and robots: it was on December 22, 1882 that an associate of Thomas Edison unveiled the first Christmas tree decorated with electric lights. The lights became popular among businesses within 20 years, but wouldn't truly replace the mainstream choice of candles until the 1930s when the price had dropped sufficiently.

Filed Under: history, look back