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

from the back-then dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, it was revealed that the FBI's hacking tool compromised dozens of computers in Australia, while new FOIA documents showed that the FISA court once refused the FBI's request to scoop up communications along with metadata, one FBI official was comparing encryption guru Moxie Marlinspike to the KKK, and the Manhattan DA was claiming he didn't want encryption backdoors even though he certainly did. Meanwhile, we were wondering why the Copyright Office was helping to protect the cable industry's monopoly on cable boxes, and why it was so intent on changing the part of copyright that protects libraries and archives. The RIAA's latest attacks on YouTube were drawing criticism even from usual defenders of the association, and the DOJ made a smart decision about music licensing that caused music publishers to freak out.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, we highlighted the latest evidence that copy protection does not increase sales, and discussed the question of whether ISPs should cut off the entertainment industry over its constant attempts to convince them to engage in censorship — just as a new paper was arguing that ISPs should be made liable for cybercrime efforts, and the Justice Minister in Switzerland decided that ISPs should have to retain data despite no legal basis for forcing them to do so. A court found that Megaupload could be guilty of direct infringement in the Perfect 10 case, but the biggest and most important Perfect 10 ruling from the 9th Circuit said that proving copyright infringement doesn't automatically mean irreparable harm was done. We also saw a major episode in the interminable (and fascinating) Mattel lawsuit over Bratz dolls.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, we marveled (and wondered) at the absurd glut of video sharing services appearing (a bunch of them specifically from Time Warner) while YouTube took the world by storm, and also noted the interesting (but likely unimportant) fact that MSN was technically considered the leader over YouTube. There was an early discussion about the influence of Google AdSense policies on journalism, Norway was talking about banning iTunes, and — in a somewhat historic move — AOL finally became a free portal with free email addresses. Also, as expected, Limewire got sued, beginning the first big fight over the inducement standard recently set down in the Supreme Court's Grokster decision.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: July 25th - 31st

from the plus-a-different-week dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, the hack of DNC emails was sweeping the news, revealing things that were important regardless of who conducted the hack (and some things that were just plain embarrassing) while we warned against any disastrous overreactions in response. We also highlighted Trump's worrying response as well as a ridiculous tidbit in the backlash from the DNC itself. IsoHunt settled the last of its lawsuits, an MPAA front group was attacking CloudFlare for not censoring the internet, and the TPP was meeting more resistance around the world. This was also the week that Verizon bought Yahoo, and of course it featured a continuation of the Monkey Selfie saga.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, governments were engaging in a propaganda war against hacktivist groups, Ron Wyden was pressing intelligence officials about their "secret" interpretation of the Patriot Act while other senators were trying to shift attention elsewhere, and Homeland Security was finally 'fessing up to the latest round of domain seizures. We saw worrying copyright rulings and laws in several countries including Sweden, Sierra Leone, and the UK (which offered up a double) — but perhaps the most concerning was in the US, where a judge put another nail in the coffin of the idea/expression dichotomy by allowing a photographer's lawsuit against Rihanna to move forward. But even more problematic than that was the CAFC ruling in the Myriad case that said individual genes can be patented.

Fifteen Years Ago

Well, this is an unusual one — as I was looking through posts for this section, I got a sense of deja vu, and had a realization: last month, I accidentally messed up the dates somehow and featured posts from this week in the flashback roundup for the final week of June. So you can go check out that link to see what happened this week in 2006, and today I've rounded up a few things that should have appeared in that post:

There were trends of gimmicky WiFi offerings and people blaming Google for their own failures; people were still working to figure out what Nathan Myhrvold was up to with Intellectual Ventures while the Supreme Court agreed to look into the question of patent obviousness; the Sony Rootkit fiasco reared its head again as the makers of a virus that exploited the technology were arrested; we wondered why there was so little honesty in the net neutrality debate, and how Senators who voted against net neutrality could be in favor of the broadcast flag; and we looked at just how little impact the Grokster decision had on the world of file sharing.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the as-before dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, Cy Vance was still arguing for mandated encryption backdoors with an unconvincing legal argument, while Apple was snubbing John McCain's attempts to drag them in to hear complaints about encryption, and a former Homeland Security advisor was trying to place the burden of proving backdoors are bad on tech companies. An important ruling in California reaffirmed Section 230 protections in a lawsuit against Yelp, a judge smacked down the DOJ for being lazy about fulfilling FOIA requests, and the EFF was challenging the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions on first amendment grounds.

Ten Years Ago

Though there were a few things going on this week in 2011, like the continuing fight over the PROTECT IP Act, it's worth focusing on the story that was infuriating at the time and which we now know was the beginning of a terrible tragedy. This was the week that the feds charged Aaron Swartz with felony hacking for downloading JSTOR articles. The indictment was immediately huge news, and closer inspection raised lots of questions (including the curious lack of a copyright angle to the charges — though that didn't stop the Copyright Alliance from weighing in with a post full of bad analogies). Soon it became clear that the indictment lacked any real legal or moral basis to an extremely troubling degree, and the internet began fighting back by uploading JSTOR articles to file sharing sites. Sadly, this wasn't the end of the story, and there will be more to come in future weeks.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, CBS was attempting a desperate strategy of selling DVDs of old news clips, Wal-Mart was making an equally desperate attempt to launch a social media network, and some quacks were claiming that iPods cause autism. A court reaffirmed that the DMCA cannot be used to block third-party repairs, MySpace was struggling to make a profit, and a printer company got in trouble for abusing trademark to block competition. We also saw a rare (in those days, and to some degree still) honest debate about net neutrality, as well as the much-anticipated opening of the floodgates on YouTube copyright lawsuits.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: July 11th - 17th

from the looking-back dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, the DEA seemed to be making some kind of effort to curb its abuse of warrantless wiretaps, while a report in the UK showed that police improperly accessed data on citizens thousands of times, and Sweden was considering making DNA that had been donated purely for medical research available to cops and insurance companies. Two senators were speaking out against efforts to expand FBI surveillance, and one of them who is well known to Techdirt readers — Ron Wyden — joined the podcast to discuss it. This was also the week that Pokemon Go took the world by storm, and we had an early mention of what is now a household name with a post about AstraZeneca trying to extend a patent.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, we wrote about why PROTECT IP would fail in its goals because people would never accept it, while lobbyists were ramping up the pressure to get it passed. Righthaven was accused of avoiding paying legal fees it owed and was ordered to stop delaying, while it continued to suffer loss after loss. And the Monkey Selfie drama continued, with a news agency telling us to remove the photos from our post and the photographer claiming he owned the copyright because he thought the picture might happen, while we looked closer at why the photo is likely in the public domain.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, a judge handed down a worrying ruling that said it infringes copyright to edit movies you've bought. The recording industry in the UK was asking ISPs to shut down the accounts of file sharers, but they were not convinced by the evidence, drawing the disappointing ire of indie record labels that were failing to innovate. There was also a lot of think-of-the-children panic happening, and we took a look at the overbearing ways people were trying to keep kids "safe" by tracking and monitoring them, while some in congress were blaming MySpace for troubled children.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: July 4th - 10th

from the what-was dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, transparency was under attack on many fronts. A North Carolina legislator who was a former police chief pushed through legislation to keep body camera footage out of the public's hands, while in the course of two days we got two examples of cops making recordings disappear, and the Philadelphia police department responded to an open records request by releasing one document: the journalist's own request email. An Ohio court sanctioned a lawyer for sharing publicly-available court documents with journalists, while another court secured a grand jury indictment against a newspaper publisher for filing open records requests. The details about Hillary Clinton's email server showed several emails withheld from FOIA availability (as an appeals court said email stored on private servers is still subject to FOIA requests). And the FBI was vacuuming up local law enforcement documents about the Orlando shooting to block open records requests. President Obama did sign a FOIA reform bill... just in time for it to have no impact on his administration.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, a group of law professors came out against the PROTECT IP bill, while Hollywood was ramping up a smear campaign against opponents of the bill, and one Senator removed himself as a co-sponsor (though the reasons were unclear). PROTECT IP wasn't the only bad piece of copyright legislation either: an anti-streaming, anti-embedding bill caught the attention of video game streamers who realized how it could impact them, and a bunch of YouTubers started putting up videos to protest it.

But perhaps most memorably, this was the week that the infamous Monkey Selfie fiasco kicked off.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, the recording industry was wasting its time suing international sites while the Associated Press was taking a look at piracy around the world and largely missing the point. Attempts to get college students onto special music download platform swere a total flop, record labels were turning to elaborate deluxe CDs to compete with piracy, and Australia was seeking to regulate YouTube.

But, once again most memorably, this was the week that Senator Ted Stevens delivered the infamous "series of tubes" line about the internet.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: June 27th - July 3rd

from the that's-how-it-went dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, the Copyright Office was pushing a dangerous plan to strip websites of DMCA harbors, Google and Facebook were using copyright tools to take down extremist content, and lawmakers in Europe were floating the dumb idea of letting robots and computers have copyrights. Malibu Media was getting called out by a judge while also launching a lawsuit against its former lawyer, while two other important rulings in copyright cases stated that an IP address is not a person. We also took a closer look at Hillary Clinton's problematic tech platform and vague and confusing intellectual property platform.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, early hacktivist group LulzSec announced plans to disband, and we looked at the impact this kind of hacktivism was having while the RIAA was citing such groups as another reason for passing the PROTECT IP act. Sony's CEO was blaming its own hacking woes on people wanting everything for free, while PS3 jailbreaker George Hotz (aka GeoHot) was hired by Facebook. Meanwhile, Righthaven's troubles continued with racketeering claims brought in South Carolina and similar claims made in Nevada, while the company was begging to be put back into a case it was dismissed from and trying to avoid sanctions by blaming its lawyer. Amidst this, we looked at the silver lining of Righthaven's activities: they helped to establish a much more expansive view of fair use when it comes to copying newspaper articles.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, newspapers were at the peak of their efforts to block people from reading their work for free online. The fact that IP addresses are not people (and weren't in 2006 either) was proving an effective way of getting the RIAA to drop lawsuits. Amazon's plans to get into the video download business were leaked, while Metallica finally caved and decided to sell music downloads in iTunes, and Kazaa settled its lawsuit with the music industry and announced plans to go legit while Torrentspy was facing its own lawsuit and asking why Hollywood wasn't suing Google too.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the so-it-went dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, the Supreme Court was chipping away at the Fourth Amendment while the FBI was continuing to use its bad facial recognition database and getting away with problematic warrants and hacking — and congress was seeking to legalize more FBI abuses (in an attempt that narrowly failed). The DOJ was fighting against privacy advocates, and CIA director John Brennan was bizarrely claiming that only the US had encryption technology. We were also disappointed to see Twitch bring CFAA and trademark claims against bot operators.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, Righthaven was losing lawsuits left and right, and the CEO was not taking it well. Sony was fighting against PS3 modding and Microsoft was claiming it could use the DMCA to block competing Xbox accessories, while Universal launched a war on popular hip-hop sites and blogs, which even swept up 50 Cent's own website. A new court filing explained how ICE's domain seizures violate the First Amendment, while Senator Leahy was praising the agency's initiative. We also took a look back at the many things that people thought would kill the music industry in both the analog and digital eras.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, the NY Times was in the midst of one of its many paywall experiments while the LA Times was subjecting reporters to stifling web filters. Blockbuster was fighting against Netflix's patents while GoDaddy was sued over a patent on server auto-configuration. We wrote about how ISPs were screwing everyone, and how their cooperation with the NSA was boosting the encryption market. Meanwhile, social media sites were booming but struggling to figure out how to make money, and of course still facing a variety of vague freakouts.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: June 13th - 19th

from the the-style-at-the-time dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, we were learning more about the scope of Peter Thiel's attack on Gawker (and the further exploits of his laywer...) while Gawker was exploring a questionable legal counterattack. The issues with corporate sovereignty in trade agreements were getting more mainstream attention while the paperback version of Hillary Clinton's memoir removed text about her support fro the TPP. Europe was getting ready to create a link tax just as its top court was confirming that copyright levies don't work. An appeals court handed a big loss to record labels in their attack on Vimeo over lipdub videos, while Twitter, Facebook and Google were hit with claims of material support for terrorism following the Paris attacks.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, while some websites were playing pranks by pretending their domains had been seized by ICE, several of the sites that were actually targeted were challenging the seizures — and notable target Rojadirecta sued the US government, Homeland Security, and ICE. But ICE was still stalling on FOIA requests seeking more information about the seizures. And at the same time, China was getting in on the website seizure game while using copyright infringement as an excuse. Meanwhile, a judge was threatening sanctions while tossing out a Righthaven lawsuit, and the Denver Post was sued over its considering taken action, leading Righthaven to threaten them with more suits.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, we were bracing for the onslaught of political spam, and also for the inevitable freakout about mobile social media, while rolling our eyes at the latest panic about violent video games. We took a look at how the recording industry had Canadian politicians in its pocket, while the RIAA seemed to be reaching the denial stage of its war on piracy (and opening up a new front by sending out cease-and-desist letters to people dancing to music on YouTube). And while we were glad to see Congress starting to recognize the problem of patent trolls, we were not so optimistic about Rep. Lamar Smith's approach to combating them.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the and-then-and-then-and-then dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, there were lots of stories about questionable actions by the FBI, and amidst all that, the agency turned down our FOIA request to find out how much money they spent getting into Syed Farook's iPhone. A worrying appeals court ruling chipped away at privacy while Senator Jeff Sessions was seeking to blast a giant hole in the Fourth Amendment. We learned more about the NSA's handling of Ed Snowden's concerns prior to his leak, and took a look at how despite all the supposed damage, the agency was doing great. This was also the week that Gawker filed for bankruptcy.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, the RIAA was arguing that changing copyright terms is unconstitutional, though only if they get shorter, while the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Golan case examining the opposite. YouTube added Creative Commons licensing options for videos while Russia's president proposed baking similar options right into copyright law. ICE declared victory in its domain seizure campaign while Homeland Security appeared to be stalling on related FOIA requests. Meanwhile, the ridiculous prosecution of whistleblower Thomas Drake was falling apart and by the end of the week, Drake took a plea bargain deal.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, long before ICE's domain seizures, we wondered why the US government was getting involved in takedowns of foreign music sites. We also took a look at the negative impact of the DMCA on innovation, and the way that the music industry's efforts to shut down sites often served as free advertising via the Streisand Effect — and the same was true with the movie industry, as was soon demonstrated by the MPAA going after Isohunt. Meanwhile, the copyright industries were trying to sneak through a huge and insane change to the law around "incidental copies". Blizzard relented on its attempts to block third-party World Of Warcraft game guides, the story of how Canada's "Captain Copyright" propaganda mascot might himself be a copy continued to develop, and we were surprised when some British politicians appeared to have reasonable views on copyright.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: May 30th - June 5th

from the collected-recollections dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, we were pleased to see a dearth of support for the Burr-Feinstein anti-encryption bill, but not so happy about the 4th circuit rolling back its warrant requirement for cell site location info. We were also watching the fallout from the second ruling in the Oracle/Google trial and digging into just what happened in an episode of our podcast. Meanwhile, an independent musician was suing Justin Bieber and Skrillex over a sample they didn't use, just as two recent rulings from around the world looked like they might clear the copyright barriers to sampling. And one court gave a very bad copyright ruling, saying that remastered old songs can get a brand new copyright.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, the copyright nonsense was widespread, with an EMI executive saying people should pay again to stream their own music, and both an industry lawyer and the RIAA talking about the supposed evils of the public domain. The push was on to criminalize more infringement too, with some senators seeking to make embedding videos a felony and the RIAA wanting to do the same for music subscription service password sharing. Amidst all this, we took a deep dive into why the PROTECT IP Act would break the internet.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, Canada was doling out entertainment industry propaganda to kids in the form of an embarrassing new character called Captian Copyright (who might have himself been engaging in infringement), while the industry was hard at work on the next generation of terrible DVD copy protection. We took a closer look at some easily-misinterpreted statements about net neutrality from the creator of BitTorrent, and at an early example of a still-ongoing tradition: fake public comments about net neutrality. But there was no need to worry about a lack of regulation, because AT&T's chairman promised they would absolutely definitely not violate net neutrality principles.

Filed Under: history, look back