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

from the thou-infringeth-on-a-summer's-day dept

Five Years Ago

There was plenty of ridiculousness from Hollywood this week in 2010. For one thing, movie studies were decidedly not following through on their "promises" to offer lots of new content if they could only break your TV with selectable output control, while the MPAA was also bizarrely focused on getting soldiers to stop buying bootleg DVDs, and Hurt Locker producer Nicholas Chartier was angrily defending his crusade against downloaders. Of course, given Hollywood's remake culture, it was no surprise that the studios were starting to run into copyright problems of their own (and given its anti-piracy culture, it was no surprise to see different anti-piracy solutions suing each other over patents). Not to mention the irony of Time Warner Cable standing up against automated copyright filings, or actor Peter Serafinowicz explaining why he even pirates movies he's in.

The UK was still grappling with the realities of the Digital Economy Act. We wondered if it would interfere with London's ambition to offer free wi-fi, while one regulator said the act only applies to big wireline ISPs and several politicians started trying to repeal it altogether. Copyright shenanigans were all around on the music side of things too: ASCAP bullied another local coffee shop into no longer playing local bands while a massive performance royalty rate hike in Australia drove gyms to start ditching pop music, and it became increasingly clear just how much the RIAA had clogged up the court system with its lawsuits.

Ten Years Ago

Five years before all that, the US Copyright Office was busy showing off just how much it misunderstood copyright law. Spain's recording industry pressured a university lecturer into resigning after he explained how file-sharing could be legal and positive. People were shocked at a Star Wars leak, but ignored the fact that it probably wasn't a big deal at all. And the UK's Premier League was moaning about illegal streams but not acknowledging that it was creating the market for them by failing to offer anything in competition.

The BSA conducted its annual ritual of releasing bogus piracy numbers, followed by the inevitable backlash. One copy-protection firm was playing both sides of the piracy game by patenting a P2P system and the technology to stop it. The NY Times tried its ill-fated experiment to charge for opinion pieces, one university library was going all digital, and megaplex movie theaters were straining to recapture their former glory.

Fifteen Years Ago

Last week, we saw Volkswagen become the first auto manufacturer to start selling cars directly online. This week, Ford joined them (in Canada) followed closely by GM, and lo the floodgates were opened. Meanwhile, online retail giant Amazon was experimenting with dynamic pricing, and some were predicting that the next great digital frontier would be family businesses — but we were all hoping that the then-dominant trend of cartoon mascots on every website would die out, quickly.

Michael Eisner, on the other hand, was convinced that email was a great existential threat to companies and the country (perhaps he heard that Singapore arrested a man for "cyber rage" after he sent thousands of them) while most people stopped shorter, at "email marketing is getting annoying". Congress was, for some reason, worried about genealogy websites, and Napster was struggling to figure out its future (with 60% of college students saying they'd supposedly pay for it).

Oh, and, you know those topic icons over to the left of every post? This week in 2000 is when we debuted them.

Four-Hundred and Six Years Ago

Shakespeare's Sonnets: they are among the foundational texts of English culture, and on May 20th, 1609 they were first officially listed in the Stationer's Register (an early precursor to copyright — for publishers, not authors), and printed shortly thereafter. Nobody has been able to determine whether the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, had authorization from Shakespeare or was working from an illicit copy.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the wars-and-thickets dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2010, another shot was fired in the ongoing Apple-Nokia patent war, and in the Apple-HTC war as well. Wired was thus inspired to take on the smartphone patent thicket, and all this was at a time when the USPTO was ramping up patent approvals. On the flipside, though, we also saw the birth of the Defensive Patent License.

The RIAA racked up another legal win, this time in its lawsuit against LimeWire, while the YouTube-Viacom case was still winding its way through the court with some amicus briefs that tried to rewrite the DMCA. The Hurt Locker producers were just gearing up for their now-infamous plan to go after thousands of filesharing fans, Games Workshop was suing a Warhammer fan site over trademark issues, and music publishers were still trying to get money from lyrics websites. At least the EU Digital Commissioner recognized the market created by piracy, Brazil decided against a notice-and-takedown system, and the estate of Roy Lichtenstein backed down from threats against a band that appropriated some of the same material used by the famous artist.

The Humble Bundle, now an online fixture, was just beginning to strut its stuff and show off some extremely impressive numbers. While the Bundle was going open-source, Rockstar was amusingly caught selling a pirated version of their own game on Steam in order to get around the disc-based DRM they had originally saddled it with. But President Obama was brushing off the whole world of videogames (and tablets, and iPods...) as diversions and distractions.

Ten Years Ago

In 2005, Napster was in its "legal service" phase, and trying to get into the ringtone market (though record labels were getting fighty over those, too). Speaking of tough rebrandings, former RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen (architect of lawsuits against individual downloaders and anti-consumer policies) was trying to pass herself off as a consumer rights defender. Former Universal Music head Edgar Bronfman Jr., since moved on to Warner Music, was not doing so great in his new gig, and we started to notice other businesses facing new digital challenges, like wedding photographers.

Also in 2005: Google went down for a terrifying 15 minutes this week in 2005, followed by some serious eBay outages; Bill Gates made the not-at-all-biased prediction that Windows-based phones would replace iPods (though I guess he was only one word off) while Microsoft was doling out the intellectual property propaganda; Blockbuster was getting ready to give up on online rentals, people were starting to catch on to free credit report scams, and newspapers were trying their hardest to beat Craigslist at its own game. Last but not least, Techdirt held a party to celebrate our 25,000th post.

Fifteen Years Ago

Bill Gates had some stupid things to say this week in 2000, too. This time it was the claim that if Microsoft was broken up into separate companies, there would be no tablet PCs and Windows never would have had a taskbar. Uh, sure. Napster's position was far more nebulous at this time, with the CEO giving interesting interviews while also caving to Metallica's ban-demands. Of course, this latter event inspired someone to (probably jokingly) start working on a Napster-clone for Metallica songs only.

Volkswagen was the first carmaker to get their dealers on-board for direct online car sales (somehow). There were other areas of retail where it wasn't clear that brand mattered much at all. The broader world of ecommerce, plus issues surrounding Napster and eBay, started raising serious liability questions. The internet was of course still raising various underthought social objections too, but some people were starting to push back, noting that the internet keeps lots of people in touch who wouldn't be otherwise, and genuinely makes people closer. And, nearly fifteen years before the launch of our new podcast, Techdirt made a foray into online radio.

Forty Years Ago

Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, the battle fought over Sony's Betamax technology which established the legality of home recording, was a major turning point in modern copyright law. It introduced the question of "substantial noninfringing uses" that has come up time and time again in more recent lawsuits over copying and sharing technology, with mixed results. But it was on May 10th, 1975 that the seed was planted for the whole shebang: Sony released Betamax, in Japan, for the very first time.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the copyright-news-and-news-copyrights dept

Five Years Ago

News was flying in every direction on the copyright front this week in 2010. An unauthorized Catcher In The Rye sequel sparked a copyright fight that remains near the center of the debate about transformative works, but a ruling against the idea that you could copyright the concept of sneaking veggies into kids' food upheld the idea/expression dichotomy. Two different studies (and the chair of the Featured Artist Coalition) underlined the fact that innovation is more important than worrying about piracy. A UK court found that sports schedules could be covered by copyright, while German court ruled that RapidShare is not liable for infringement by users, and a Costa Rican artist was claiming that the country's new money infringes on his artwork. At home, a court ruled that an album is a single work for the purpose of damages, while Google was seeking a declaratory judgement that linking to files is not infringement.

In the world of journalism, Sumner Redstone was saying that all newspapers would be gone within two years. While that hasn't exactly been the case, it's an understandable thought at a time when Rupert Murdoch was getting shy about his newly-paywalled websites and The Economist was warning about paywalls creating news pirates — all while Fox News was aggregating copyrighted photographs. At least the New Hampshire Supreme Court recognized that new media can be news media.

Ten Years Ago

It's not like that was the first sounding of the bell for old media. Back in 2005, faltering ad revenues had already driven newspapers to advertising to advertisers, seeking advertising. The New York Post was irritating readers not with a paywall, but with a broken registration wall. But what was bad news for print also appeared to be good news for digital, and Forbes' online revenue was set to surpass its print revenue. Online advertising was booming, though we noted that it might not grow forever, and video game ads were the next big source of hype.

On the copyright front, we were disturbed to see the Boy Scouts offer an intellectual property badge, but happy to see the RIAA's lectures at colleges fall on deaf ears. We were intrigued by an analysis suggesting the RIAA's high damage amounts in copyright lawsuits were unconstitutional, but sad to see the Supreme Court pass on a case that could have let it give some teeth to people targeted by bogus DMCA takedowns.

Fifteen Years Ago

Five years before that, in 2000, we heard the RIAA's own words about its lawsuits against MP3.com and Napster. Already, people were realizing that the world of MP3s (still a hot topic) extended far beyond those two famous services, though its future was unclear. This was also the time of the fallout from the Microsoft antitrust verdict, leading some to imagine alternate futures and question the company's kindergarten-level manners. These were days before the cult of Steve Jobs, when there was still a cult of Bill Gates.

A dispute between Disney and Time Warner broke out this week in 2000, leading the former to pull ABC from the latter's cable service and causing some to question the future of the AOL/Time Warner merger. Star Wars, on the other hand, was still in the pocket of George Lucas, who finally agreed to release it on DVD.

Sixty-Three Years Ago

All of modern computing is based on the integrated circuit. As with all monumental inventions, it has its roots in several incremental innovations and sparks of inspiration that came before it, but it was on May 7th, 1952 that British radio engineer Geoffrey Dumner fully formulated and described the idea in a public speech, saying:

With the advent of the transistor and the work in semiconductors generally, it seems now to be possible to envisage electronic equipment in a solid block with no connecting wires. The block may consist of layers of insulating, conducting, rectifying and amplifying materials, the electrical functions being connected by cutting out areas of the various layers.

And the rest is history.

Filed Under: archives, history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: April 26th - May 2nd

from the the-power-of-free dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2010, the world was abuzz over the prototype iPhone that was left in a bar, and we discussed the legal fallout and its implications for bloggers-as-journalists. At the same time, another case found that a blog commenters was not a journalist. In the old-school journalism world, Rupert Murdoch was moving towards paywalls while his competitors were proudly promising to remain free, and the New York Times was struggling to find reasons to like its paywall.

Lots happened on the copyright front this week. A historical association claimed copyright over scans of 100-year-old photos while we asked why UNESCO was launching pro-copyright efforts; Twitter was removing a lot of tweets over bogus DMCA takedowns while a horrible new bill in congress sought to extend DMCA takedowns to cover "personal information"; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a bogus study pushing for more IP enforcement while the IFPI's latest report actually showed music sales growth in some markets; the USTR released its "revised" Special 301 report (and continued to lie about ACTA) while the Justice Department boosted the number of FBI agents and attorneys focused on copyright infringement; and the RIAA utterly missed the point about Record Store Day but also got AFL-CIO to sign on in support of a proposed performance tax. Internationally, Shanghai was cracking down on (read: pushing underground) bootleg discs, Chile got a mixed bag of new copyright laws, and an Irish collection society was trying to get music bloggers to pay up.

Ten Years Ago

Back in 2005, many newspapers weren't nearly as well-established online as they would be in 2010 amidst all the debates about paywalls. It was only just becoming clear (well, it was only just becoming undeniable anyway) that the future of news was online (and that future wasn't in walled gardens). An interesting upshot was that local newspapers were faring better online, and teaching the rest a thing or two about targeted advertising. Meanwhile, Techdirt got some newspaper love of its own.

The entertainment industry was still desperately trying to make the case for mobile TV, this time suggesting babies might be a great audience, which was insane but at least a little more detailed than "just because". Some wanted to leapfrog TV and go straight to selling extremely expensive feature-length movies on phones. Meanwhile, Disney was rolling back its failed video-on-demand test programs just as Steven Soderbergh was trying to get more films available in theatre and on DVD at the same time. RealNetworks was offering a music streaming service with an incredibly sad 25 free streams per month, though it's hard to say whether that's sadder than Wal-Mart's custom-burned CDs.

Oh, and Nathan Myhrvold was going around hyping up his plans to create an "invention factory". I wonder whatever happened with that...

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2000, Silicon Valley was in the midst of the dot-com bubble collapse, with the peak now a month in the past. Still, some CEOs were rightly saying that focusing on running a business was more important than the market, and Valley innovation wasn't going to disappear. People were noting that there was still a lot of investment money out there in the pockets of VCs, while a new book (slightly hypocritically) discussed this question of short- and long-term thinking. Certainly none of this was scaring entrepreneurs away from the web, or stopping dot-coms from throwing big parties and media outlets from listing internet business superstars. It didn't stop ridiculously expensive dot-com Superbowl ads or, on the other end of the scale, the coming wave of dot-com infomercials. After all, there was plenty of evidence to suggest that online retail wasn't dead and that ecommerce would keep on growing. Hell, even music sales were up.

Twenty-Two Years Ago

April 30th, 1993 is an important day in the history of the information era: it's the day CERN announced that the newfangled "World Wide Web" and the protocols and technologies that it consists of would be free to anyone, with no fees due. This decision, arguably moreso than the technology innovations or the proliferation of home computers or any other factor, shaped the future of the global communication network we all rely on today, and shaped it for the better. Sadly, now much of what is now happening online stems from the exact opposite attitude, with even many well-meaning innovators proving too nervous to relinquish control of their creations and let them truly flourish. Hopefully more people will take a moment to think about what the internet might look like if all its higher functions relied on a fragmented mess of proprietary protocols and walled gardens, instead of a unifying web on which everyone can build.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the moore-not-less dept

Five Years Ago

By this time in 2010, everyone had seen the leaked draft of ACTA — so, naturally, the USTR decided it was time to release it. It was, as we put it, "only very slightly less awful than expected", and it was missing a critical piece of information: what each country is pushing for.

Speaking of pushes by various countries, this week in 2010 we saw Canada's recording industry begin a campaign for draconian copyright laws, while India introduced draft copyright amendments that were a mixed bag. We were unsurprised to discover that UK piracy statistics are bunk too (while at home the MPAA was refusing to reveal how it came up with its own bogus numbers). Amidst all this, Google launched its tool for looking up international takedown stats, though it seemed to have significant limitations.

Also in 2010: Blizzard sold $2-million worth of virtual horses in four hours while Ubisoft was busy annoying customers with its DRM; still-free Hulu announced its paid subscription service while DirecTV struck another customer-confusing release deal with movie studios; and we looked at possibilities for reforming copyright such as returning it to its roots or using compulsory licensing to build an "abundance-based" system.

Ten Years Ago

Plenty of what happened in 2010 wasn't exactly new to that year. Five years earlier the same week, the Canadian recording industry was already trying to kill online music stores with tariffs, the UK recording industry was already saying stupid thinks about filesharing, and bad DRM was already annoying customers.

The entertainment industry was exerting a lot of influence on law enforcement, and sharing songs or movies before their release became a felony with three years of jailtime. Not content to be overly protective of the movies themselves, the MPAA was also sending C&Ds to people who use its movie rating system for other things. Not content to be overly protective of the songs themselves, the recording industry in Germany was forcing a bunch of lyrics sites to shut down.

Microsoft Encarta was still around in 2005, and beginning to adopt some vaguely Wikipedia-like features, but it was too little too late. Macromedia was also still around, and this week Adobe announced that it would buy it for $3.4-billion. And catalog shopping was still around, but not for long, it seemed. Book publishers were starting to freak out about Google's scanning plans, while newspaper editors were surprisingly and naively not freaking out about Craigslist (if they even knew what it was).

Fifteen Years Ago

Just this morning, I was calibrating the voice-wakeup on my phone and being frustrated by its general lack of responsiveness. Despite this, I can't deny it's come a long way from visions of voice-based WAP shopping all the way back in 2000, when AltaVista was still around and postponing its IPO, and colleges were bizarrely cracking open the subject of internet ethics.

This week in 2000 also featured a big announcement from Mirimax: an experiment in putting feature films online, something nobody had done before. It was impossible not to consider the turbulent future of that move, since this was also a time of rampant discussion and controversy around Napster, including some side-switching and the decision of a few fans to put together a system for donating money to Metallica.

Fifty Years Ago

Predictions are abundant in the technology world. They are also almost always wrong, usually either vastly overestimating change in the short-term or vastly underestimating it in the long-term. But there's one fundamental and famous tech prophecy that has held true throughout all the twists and turns of the entire digital revolution: Moore's Law, which turned 50 this week. Put in the simplest terms, the law states that the power of computer processors (more technically, the number of transistors in dense integrated circuits) will double every two years — and that's exactly what's happened for half a century.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the copying-is-not-theft-or-strangulation dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2010, the move to a new type of mass media was accelerating across the board: more people were giving up TV across the board and smart artists were trying smart business models like the classical orchestras using CwF+RtB. The old guard, as usual, was having trouble catching up: Fox and Universal both wrangled release delay deals out of Netflix; copyright threatened the best thing to come out of the second Star Wars trilogy; broadcasters were still futilely trying to push mobile TV; a book publisher was threatening US fans for ordering from overseas instead of waiting for a local copy; and the RIAA was insisting that musicians can't make money without it (while an Australian recording industry group was trying to claim copyright on a photo of a piece of paper). All the while, we were noting that protection of content has to come from the business model, not the law or technology.

Also in 2010: the Library of Congress announced that it would begin archiving tweets; we noted that the real problem with internet comments isn't anonymity; we wondered whether intellectual property is a violation of real property; and, even if it's not, we certainly agreed with Nina Paley's video underlining the fact that copying is not theft:

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2005, we proposed a code of conduct for the recording industry (which they immediately took to heart, obviously). Perhaps we should have suggested one for Comcast too, since it was sued for handing subscriber info over to the RIAA. And ones for Microsoft and AOL, who were trying (and failing) to make the internet work more like television. Meanwhile, in these pre-YouTube-acquisition days, Google quietly launched its own video upload feature (remember Google Video?)

Video games entered a new phase of maturity in 2005 as people began to realize they could have bigger aspirations: the UN made one to educate people about world hunger, others were building games geared at teaching kids, and still others were building games to teach literacy and cultural sensitivity. Amidst all this, some were discovering the zen of button mashing.

Fifteen Years Ago

Well, this is when it happened — this week in 2000, Metallica sued Napster. At the time we considered it "silly" and "ridiculous" — little did we know just how historic a case it would become. At the same time, people were realizing that MP3s were good for a lot more than just music.

Broadcasters were much more optimistic back then, claiming they weren't scared by the internet. The big device showdown at the time was between BlackBerry and Palm. Ireland was turning itself into a tech hub, while some people were worrying that earthquakes could knock out Silicon Valley. We discussed the future of RealNetworks (it still appeared to have one, as did OS/2) and of the wireless world (realizing it might not be based on WAP). Of course, some people were still just convinced that the internet is evil.

Thirty-Three Years Ago

You've all heard the quote, here on Techdirt and likely elsewhere as well. It was this week in 1982 at a congressional hearing about the home recording of copyrighted works that Jack Valenti, then-head of the MPAA, served up his infamously absurd analogy:

I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

This statement might have held true if over the next few years the Boston Strangler became the number one source of revenue for the entire woman-home-alone industry. Alas, this was not the case.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the happy-birthday-anne-and-verizon dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2010, the patent office hired an economist in a move we hoped would help bring some reason to the patent system. Meanwhile, we wondered if you could save software patents with a team of "obviousness" developers, and one IP lawyer was telling people to stop wasting money on patents. We also took a closer look at how bogus patents get approved, and witnessed a patent fight over the Dominos pizza tracker.

Over in the UK, the house of commons hatched a plan to rush through the Digital Economy Bill, and then did just that. One ISP quickly said it would not follow the rules while a member of the UK Musician's Union (which supported the bill) wrote an excellent open letter about his disappointment. All told, it was a bill proposed by the unelected, debated by the ignorant, and voted on by the absent.

Ten Years Ago

Back in 2005, technology was rapidly changing life in sometimes-unexpected ways. Watchmakers looked on in horror as their once-widespread devices were replaced by smartphones, while plumbers capitalized on a booming new business in retrieving phones from toilets. Online groceries were catching on in NYC, and kids were buying (crappy) homework online. Of course, not all trends were entirely true: Pew admitted that it pumped up the numbers on the prevalence of podcasting, and the creator of the idea of "toothing" (finding sex hookups via Bluetooth) admitted it as all a hoax.

We were already noting the fact that copy protection was not the issue faced by the entertainment industries, and that there were lots of opportunities to sell music the way people want it, especially since sharing music is a cultural thing and the newfound ease of content creation was already making its mark.

Fifteen Years Ago

Let's all say happy birthday to Verizon, I guess. It was this week in 2000 that Bell Atlantic and GTE announced that, in their merger, they would abandon both brands and operate as the shiny new "Verizon". Meanwhile, we also learned of another big merger negotiation between BellSouth and SBC.

Also in 2000: the Microsoft antitrust ruling came out, leading some to wonder just how much it meant; Mattel dumped The Learning Company that it had bought only a year before; Dot Coms were struggling to find events to sponsor, while we noticed some were being run by kids who were hiring their parents; it turned out the question of deep linking wasn't quite closed; and we pointed to an article saying something that has been a guiding principle of Techdirt for a long time: that you need to understand the legal system to understand the goings-on in technology.

Three-Hundred And Five Years Ago

Most of you probably know that basically all modern copyright descends from the Statute of Anne, an early 18th-century British law that created the first ever government-run copyright system. Well, it was on April 5th, 1710 that the bill passed and received royal assent, and the Statute of Anne became law.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: March 29th - April 4th

from the from-osborne-to-ipad dept

Five Years Ago

In the wake of the Apple iPad announcement, the company was scrambling to secure a trademark on the name, and this week in 2010 it succeeded. Meanwhile, publishers were scrambling to take advantage of the new device, while grappling over what that meant and the iPad's future in general. Plus, as expected, patent holders were also scrambling to bring claims against the new tablet.

In the world of patents, there was a major ruling: a district judge declared gene patents to be invalid, leading many to discuss what would happen next. We also discussed the fact that software patents violate the patent bargain, while over in New Zealand some politicians were looking to explicitly ban them. Nearby, Australia was looking into a great-firewall-esque censorship scheme, drawing criticism from President Obama and responding with a barely-related attack on Google.

Copyright extortion schemes based on automated threat letters started picking up steam in the US, with tens of thousands of letters sent by a group of filmmakers. One of these was Uwe Boll who, it turned out, registered his copyrights too late. Meanwhile, some online scammers were using mock copyright threats to spread malware.

Ten Years Ago

The entertainment industry's history of blocking innovation runs deep. This week in 2005, we noticed how much control they were exerting over new mobile phones, blocking some devices and crippling features on others to prevent piracy. Sony was demanding the courts solve its innovation problems while pitching a weak plan for an "iTunes for movies", and the FCC was still pushing for a broadcast flag at the behest of Hollywood, and facing opposition from librarians and hobbyists.

Also in 2005: yet another study showed that red light cameras are dangerous, while Illinois was gearing up to use speed cameras that take your license away; HP seemed to be attempting to patent refilling printer ink, while the patent office seemed to suddenly realize that online auctions are obvious; and ISPs mocked the very concept of net neutrality by seeking to block VOIP usage, while Japan's lack of public wi-fi spurred by near total mobile data penetration (in 2005!) provided a rude wake-up call to Americans about how crappy their service is.

Fifteen Years Ago

Had a few court cases gone differently back in these early days, deep-linking might be illegal and the web would be a very different place — but thankfully, this week in 2000, this didn't happen. Another thing that didn't happen is any meaningful impact from the Patent Office's supposed changes in the way it handles internet patents.

It was the early days of the DivX codec for video; online bill paying existed but had yet to take off in a big way; laptop thefts at the airport were worthy of a scare-story or two; and the social experiment of personal weblogs was in full-swing. Salon was telling the music industry that it had to get used to Napster and learn to adapt to technology, but unless this is your first time reading Techdirt and you skipped directly to this sentence in this post, you know they didn't exactly listen.

Thirty-Four Years Ago

This week in 2010 everyone was buzzing about the iPad's April 3rd release, so it's fitting that all the way back on the same day in 1981, the world saw the release of the first commercially successful portable computer, the Osborne 1. It cost $1,795 (just under $5000 in today's cash), weighed nearly 25lbs, and was described as looking like "a cross between a World War II field radio and a shrunken instrument panel of a DC-3":

By Bilby (Own work) [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Reportedly, its sales tanked after the company prematurely announced a superior successor machine — a phenomenon dubbed the Osborne effect and applied to similar situations like Sega's early discussion of the upcoming Dreamcast after releasing the Saturn. However, it appears that the effect's original, titular example may have been a myth.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the the-first-domain dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2010, the Viacom/YouTube lawsuit started in earnest with the motions for summary judgement from both sides, most of which appeared to be a lot of he-said-she-said. As the week wore on, though, the cracks started to show: Viacom couldn't figure out which clips were actually infringing (despite insisting that Google should be able to do so), and people realized that a lot of YouTube quotes in Viacom's filing were taken completely out of context. YouTube's motions, on the other hand, highlighted how industry lawsuits may have slowed innovation, and we wondered if the whole case might lead to an FTC investigation.

Over in the UK, Simon Singh stopped writing his Guardian column to fight the British Chiropractic Association's libel lawsuit against him for calling them out on their many pseudoscientific claims. A commission was calling for a tax on Google to prop up newspapers (while Google was telling newspapers to experiment), and the Times Online was blocking aggregators after a ruling that the latter didn't have to pay a license fee. But perhaps the biggest news was the passage of the Digital Economy Bill through the House of Lords, which had only one positive outcome: it garnered another hilarious message song from Dan Bull.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2005, Kevin Martin took over as FCC chair following Michael Powell; INDUCE Act author Orrin Hatch was put in charge of the Senate's copyright panel; bad stats were misleading people about reactions to copy protection; and we were wondering about the balance between privacy and anti-piracy efforts (while AOL was actively sacrificing the privacy of AIM users). Internet jurisdiction questions were still heated and unsettled, and strange legal ideas were popping up all over the world such as an attempt by an Indian newspaper to claim that ongoing criticism was a criminal conspiracy. Meanwhile, the MPAA was searching for the legal theory that would make BitTorrent trackers illegal.

France was beating up Google on trademark issues while embarking on its own book scanning project; Apple managed to wrestle itunes.co.uk away from its previous owner; the NY Times was toying with the idea of charging for content; eBay was embroiled in a business model patent mess; and Yahoo was backtracking on claims that it would fully support Firefox.

Fifteen Years Ago

Would it blow your mind to know that, unlike today, in 2000 the entertainment industry was still struggling with the internet? Oh, they still are? Never mind then.

Those struggles included, but where not limited to: the question of used CDs online, a cancelled merger between CDNow and Columbia House, and the creation of and subsequent freakout over Gnutella, the P2P file-sharing network. Meanwhile, some people were already cluing in to the idea that live performance is where it's at.

Also in 2000 this week: rumours flew (as they would again in later years) that eBay and Yahoo were merging; Microsoft tried revitalizing MSN for the umpteenth time; Network Solutions got hit with a big class-action lawsuit; Stephen King tried releasing an online-only novel; and WashingtonPost.com seemed to be in trouble.

Oh, and it appears that we may have accidentally coined the name "iPad" ten years early.

Thirty Years Ago

Techdirt was still a decade away (and I myself was still five months away), but on March 15th, 1985, the first commercial internet domain name — symbolics.com — was registered. The site that lives there now purports to offer "unique and interesting facts pertaining to business and Internet history", but seems to be a little light on content.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the berned dept

Five Years Ago

There was a whole lot of conversation about ACTA this week in 2010. More leaks revealed the positions of more countries, Danish politicians began questioning the country's opposition to ACTA transparency, Sweden said it won't agree if any changes to the law are required, the EU apparently agreed that more transparency was needed, and the USTR admitted its desire for ACTA to cover patents too. Meanwhile, the UK was grappling with its own Digital Economy Bill — making it worse with a new web censorship aspect, trying to outlaw weblockers, and ensuring open WiFi would be a liability.

There was more copyright insanity, too. We learned that Metallica, still famous for bringing down Napster, made only a small fraction of its revenues from CD sales; Brazil sued Columbia Pictures for violating the copyright on its famous Jesus statue; Activision killed a fan game project that had been previously licensed; Spanish indie labels tried to sue the government for not stopping file sharing; and the RIAA claimed that file sharing was undermining human rights efforts in Haiti (right).

Ten Years Ago

Record labels misunderstanding the market was hardly new to 2010. It was happening this week in 2005, too. BPI proudly announced 23 pointless file sharing settlements. Sony was among the worst, demonstrating that it was completely out of touch (and also shutting down a tribute band website, but it wasn't alone. Meanwhile, many popular musicians were taking Grokster's side at the supreme court — only for the industry to try to convince them they'd been used.

Also in 2005: LinkedIn was trying out a business model while XM was monkeying with its own, the widely publicized hack of Paris Hilton's phone turned out to be good for T-Mobile, driving while talking on a cellphone was catching on, and so were alternate reality games (except, apparently not that much), and we could tell Firefox had really made it as an browser when spyware makers started to notice it.

Fifteen Years Ago

Mind-controlled computing is one of those things that seems to have been just around the corner for a very long time — since at least 2000, in fact. But hey, this was a time when CD sales were still rising, and other things still just around the corner included the wireless internet (which similarly seemed to be taking forever). Online gambling was big, B2B was (probably) bigger, and we just began to notice how big the databases of our personal information are (which was scary at a time when hacks could still significantly undermine general public confidence in the internet). Some still wondered if perhaps pen and paper was better for notes and tests — but maybe just keeping the web pages under 5K would be sufficiently old-fashioned.

Twenty-Six Years Ago

On March 1st, 1989, after a long period of resistance, the United States joined the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, which continues to influence (though not really directly shape or control) copyright policy around the world. The US still exercises what some have called "minimal compliance" with the convention, and that's probably a good thing, or at least better than total compliance — US copyright law barely includes the prohibitive moral rights called for by Berne, and while a registration requirement and other formalities were (sadly) removed in general, Congress retained them as a prerequisite for statutory damages. Which is, y'know, something.

Filed Under: history, look back