This Week In Techdirt History

from the trend-tracking dept

Five Years Ago...

This week in 2009 we (along with the rest of the web) had a lot of posts about newspapers. We asked how they could claim to be serving the public while shutting that public out with paywalls; we noted that comparing the dollar value of print and digital readers was missing the point; and we called out CNN for ripping off the reporting of others while crowing about "parasitic aggregators." We watched as news organizations fought with sports leagues over various fees for access and reporting, and mused about the possibility of sports betting as a revenue stream for US newspapers. But as the newspapers continued to call for antitrust exemptions that would allow them to put up standardized paywalls, we said fine, let them collude. See how that works out.

In non-newspaper news, we saw the federal courts condemn and then reverse their stance on RECAP, and we noted the still-new-ish trend of music publishers suing lyric sites. We also had an interview with William Patry about the state of the copyright debate, and some data from Nina Paley about her film Sita Sings the Blues.

Ten Years Ago...

2004 is the perfect year to look at to see the earth tremors that preceded today's common tech trends. Ten years ago this week, we were watching the early competition in the in-flight WiFi space, questioning the future of new online carpooling systems, and getting curious about the emerging industry of currency farming in online games. A new study discovered that IM use at work was exploding, there were renewed rumblings about a Google browser, and nobody could deny that online bullying was getting kinda scary.

We also learned that the early Mars Rovers had some problems with DOS. Oh, and the DOJ said it wasn't interested in doing Hollywood's dirty work, which hasn't turned out to be entirely true.

Fifteen Years Ago...

Of course, for the really subtle early indicators, you have to go all the way back to 1999. That's when manufacturers were still struggling with the earliest iterations of the "electronic book". It's when we were remaining skeptical about a cellphone that (gasp!) played MP3s. It's when internet addiction was a brand new idea. And it's when Techdirt, much smaller than it is today, was first mentioned in an article in Wired.

Some things don't change though. Then, as now, the flying car was just around the corner.

179 Years Ago...

The internet, as we all know, is rife with journalistic hoaxes — but such hoaxes are much older than that. One famous example comes from this week in 1835, when The Sun in New York published an elaborate series of fictional articles about the discovery of life and civilization on the moon, all falsely attributed to a notable astronomer of the day. The whole thing was both a publicity stunt to boost circulation and a sincere piece of satire targeting the wild astronomical theories being tossed around in the media at the time. Known now as The Great Moon Hoax, it also may have inspired some of Edgar Allen Poe's famous forays into proto-science-fiction.

Filed Under: archives, history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History

from the looking-way-way-back dept

Five Years Ago

We were wondering if it would ever be possible to implement an evidence-based approach to copyright law, rather than a faith-based approach, as there is today. It especially didn't seem likely when a top UK politician was wined and dined by entertainment industry's one week, only to propose criminalizing file sharing the next. We were also looking way, way back to the 6th Century for what was arguably the first copyright trial involving Colmcille, who might be described as the very first "book pirate." It involved arguments about whether or not one could own the words in a book and whether or not harm was done in copying it. In more modern times, we were discussing how the courts were trying to figure how to divvy up Superman's copyrights after a big copyright termination fight.

Meanwhile, we couldn't understand why everyone was so up in arms about literary homage in which someone wrote a "sequel" to classic works and wondered if it was even possible for their to be a fair trial around file sharing when so much of the language around it was inherently biased.

In the world of intellectual property abuse, Reddit was being pressured to censor news of a simple URL hack on the Sears.com website that suggested it sold grills for cooking babies, research giant Gartner was telling reporters they couldn't mention its research without permission, and book publishers were jacking up the price of ebooks, because they could. On the patent front, trolls were swooping in to patent anything and everything related to "clean tech" so they'd later be able to demand payment from the companies who did the actual work.

Finally, over in the UK, the IFPI was insisting that the Pirate Part shouldn't even be allowed to express doubts about copyright law.

Ten Years Ago:

Ten years ago this week Google went public and the long national nightmare of the bursting of the original dot com bubble was officially considered closed. Meanwhile in the big Grokster v. MGM case, Grokster won at the appeals court, agreeing with the district court that, like the Betamax, a file sharing app was just a tool, and shouldn't be blamed for infringement done by users. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court later reversed that decision by making up (out of thin air) the idea of an "inducement" standard for copyright law. Speaking of inducement, Congress was having trouble passing a law to make "inducement" a violation of copyright law (you'd think the Supreme Court would have noticed this...) and proponents of the law had handed it off to the copyright maximalists at the Copyright Office to see if they could come up with a "compromise." That compromise never came, and Congress refused to make inducing copyright infringement a form of infringement. The Supreme Court then ignored Congress and created the inducement standard by itself soon after.

There were also a whole lot of bad ideas to ban things going on ten years ago. The US was trying to ban advertisements about gambling websites, Australia was trying to ban access to online porn, the Olympics were trying to ban athletes from talking about their experiences at the Olympics online (?!?) and stores were trying to ban customers from using camera phones lest they make use of them for comparison shopping. That seemed to work out well...

Fifteen Years Ago:

One of my absolute favorite stories of the absolute insanity that was the dot com boom/bubble was when fish oil company Zapata, which was founded by George H.W. Bush, tried to totally reposition itself as an internet company known as Zap.com. The company just seemed to believe if it bought up enough early websites it could become a dot com giant of its own. 15 years ago this week, it announced plans to buy Echo, then a well known NY-based online community. Meanwhile, it appears fifteen years ago was also the first time we wrote about Elon Musk, except we were so confused we called him Elton. Sorry about that, Elton.

Fifteen years ago, we were already concerned about the rise of business method patents. We were also a bit surprised to see AT&T sue Intel over an unpaid $5,000 phone bill.

We were talking about the instant gratification economy thanks to the launch of Kozmo.com -- an idea that was apparently 15 years ahead of its time. Meanwhile, we were also quite amazed at this crazy idea of letting people broadcast MP3s from their computers to stereo speakers. The future was apparently on the way...

One Hundred And Twenty Six Years Ago

None of us were alive, but William Seward Burroughs received a patent on what was considered to be the first working "adding machine," kicking off some of what would eventually become the computer revolution. Burroughs had formed the American Arithmometer Company, which later became Burroughs Adding Machine Company, and then just Burroughs Corporation... before eventually merging with Sperry to form Unisys. Burroughs, of course, was also the grandfather of another William S. Burroughs, known for being one of the most well known beat generation writers... who named one collection of his essays The Adding Machine.

Filed Under: archives, history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History

from the lookin'-way-way-back dept

Five Years Ago:

An entertainment industry lawyer (who now works for the MPAA) tried to make the ridiculous argument that people disliked the RIAA because they hated the music business. We argued, in response, that it seemed a lot more likely that people hate the RIAA because of its actions, which included ripping off musicians and suing fans. But, you know, everyone's got opinions. And, of course, the fact that the RIAA was getting million dollar plus awards against people sharing two dozen songs really endeared them to the public as well. Speaking of which, the DOJ went on record saying that awards of $80,000 per song for sharing a song didn't seem all that oppressive or unconstitutional. We also had a story about how the Premier League's fear of the internet was a perfect case study in what not to do. Five years later and it's clear that the Premier League has learned... absolutely nothing.

There was some bad news on the copyright vs. innovation front as copyright was winning out. In a critical case, an appeals court overturned a lower court ruling and declared that a DVD jukebox backup system infringed on copyrights by breaking DVD DRM. This was the same week that a judge issued an injunction against another DVD copying product, RealDVD.

On the flip side, we had a story about copyright scholar William Patry pointing out the obvious: it's not copyright that creates value, but people's willingness to pay for something. This was also the introduction of Tom Bell's wonderful Mickey Mouse Curve for copyright, which continues to show up in various debates on copyright terms. There was also a really good fair use ruling, involving a book of monster movie posters, with a court ruling that the use of the posters was fair use, even though it used the entire post images and the work was a commercial effort. That ruling remains a key one for fair use based on the work being "transformative."

Guess what? The FCC was ignoring the public again. It had set up a bunch of "workshops" to discuss its national broadband plan, but nearly all of the speakers were associated with... big broadband players. Because, of course.

There were also a series of... just wacky things happening this week five years ago: Insurance company ICBC sued a website, saying it was infringing by telling people how to avoid having their claims denied. RSA threatened a guy with trademark infringement for daring to point out that the Navy Federal Credit Union website let people login from an unsecured page. RSA insisted that it was trademark infringement to claim the page wasn't secure. Yikes. On the trademark front, we had Walmart trying to abuse trademark law to shut down a union website. Big pharmaceutical companies were abusing patent law to seize and destroy legitimate generic drugs while in transit. And a very angry patent-loving guy in Oregon, nicknamed the Patent Hawk (who stops by here on occasion to hurl insults) tried to file an amicus brief in a key Supreme Court case on software patents. For reasons that still don't make sense, he filed the brief claiming it was on behalf of the entire state of Oregon, leading state officials to say they had no idea who he was and certainly didn't authorize such a brief. Meanwhile, Encyclopedia Britannica tried to abuse some patents it had covering GPS functionality, but failed (thankfully).

Ending on some good news: a court in New Hampshire said that demanding a settlement after filing a bogus lawsuit was a form of extortion. It's too bad more courts don't agree just yet. And... it's been five years since RECAP launched, saving us all a bunch of money on PACER, the electronic court docketing system -- a system that still should be free.

Ten Years Ago

We were writing about giant patent troll Acacia using a bogus patent to threaten universities that streamed content online. Meanwhile, we noted that patent battles might slow innovation in anti-spam offerings. Ten years ago, eBay ended up getting 25% of Craigslist after an early employee sold his shares. That resulted in a rather nasty legal fight four years later.

A decade ago, we wrote about a good explanation for how innovation and intellectual property didn't work well together, talking about how important it is to get ideas and information out into the world, rather than hoarding it. Also, there was a discussion by some who wondered if it could really be infringement to download TV shows that were broadcast over the air, since it would be hard to argue there was any harm at all. Of course, ten years later (in the wake of the Aereo decision and many other legal rulings) this argument seems fairly naive. But, still, there is a point there.

On the wireless front, people were arguing for much more open spectrum a fight that goes on today, while also speculating about whether or not Walmart might put wireless towers on each of its stores and create its own national wireless ISP (that didn't happen).

Fifteen Years Ago

The billions that were sunk into the global satellite phone company Iridium went up in smoke as the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Search engine AltaVista (remember them?) tried to stay hip by offering free dialup access (remember dialup?). Red Hat had its IPO. We weren't too sure about this concept known as "electronic books", but we also weren't very surprised that Microsoft Internet Explorer had been crushing Netscape, since Netscape had basically given up on improving its browser.

Seventy-two years ago

Famed actress Hedy Lamarr received US Patent 2,292,387 on a "secret communications system" that was basically spread spectrum frequency hopping -- a concept that became a key part of many important wireless technologies, including WiFi, Bluetooth and some mobile phone systems.

Filed Under: archives, history, look back

RIAA Uses Copyright Claim To Disappear Historical Archive Of Radio Airchecks

from the copyright-as-censorship dept

Another day, another example of copyright as censorship. Today's example comes from the RIAA. TorrentFreak has the story of how the RIAA has suddenly (for no clear reason) decided that ReelRadio's historical archive of radio airchecks is problematic. ReelRadio, created (and apparently last designed) in 1996, is a non-profit organization focused on preserving music radio history. Airchecks are demo reels, showing off the talents of radio announcers, and are a pretty useful and fascinating look into the history of radio. But, as far as the RIAA is concerned, ReelRadio is nothing more than a pirate site. This is despite the fact that ReelRadio actually has a license to play the music that is often incidentally included in airchecks.

“The RIAA has determined that our service fails to meet the requirements for ‘archived programs’, which must be at least five hours in duration and may not be made available for more than two weeks. The service must also display the Title, Artist and Album of each featured song, but only while the recording is being performed,” ReelRadio President Richard Irwin explains.

And then there's this:

“The RIAA insists that we obtain permission from the copyright owners of these old radio broadcasts. Many broadcasters understand the difficulty of this requirement, since nearly all radio stations have changed ownership, format, and call letters, many times over,” Irwin explains.

“Nevertheless, we are expected to provide the RIAA with an explanation of how we have permission from radio stations that no longer exist and copyright owners who have no interest in historic recordings of their property.”

It seems like ReelRadio would have an astoundingly strong fair use defense, but actually taking on the RIAA in court is likely prohibitively expensive (and distracting), though I'd hope that the organization could find some pro bono legal support. TorrentFreak argues that the RIAA may be on "solid ground" legally, but I don't see how this doesn't pass the fair use sniff test. The purpose and character of the use clearly falls into fair use. The nature of the work (an aircheck) also clearly leans towards fair use. The amount and substantiality taken may at first look like it leans against fair use, but the recent Westlaw ruling demonstrated that when it is "necessary" to copy the entire work for the intended purpose, that also supports fair use. It's possible this could weigh against ReelRadio, given that an argument could be made that the airchecks could be "scoped" (i.e., have all music removed), but that would certainly lessen the value of the archive. And, finally, the commercial impact clearly weighs (strongly) towards fair use.

Honestly, I'm curious exactly what kind of "license" the RIAA claims to have sold ReelRadio in the first place, because now it seems like the RIAA has been ripping off ReelRadio for years, demanding payments for something that doesn't need payment. Either way, ReelRadio appears to have taken down over 1,100 of those unscoped airchecks, basically deleting them from history. Thanks, RIAA, for helping to destroy culture and hide it from public view (potentially forever) yet again.

Filed Under: airchecks, archives, copyright, culture, fair use, history, license, scoped, unscoped
Companies: reelradio, riaa

This Week In Techdirt History

from the hindsight-is-20-20 dept

Let's embark on another look back through Techdirt's history:

Five Years Ago

This week in 2009, there was a lot of wrangling over royalties and rates. YouTube convinced PRS in the UK to slash its streaming royalties by reminding them just how much they rely on YouTube for an audience. Meanwhile, ASCAP was pushing for videogame sellers to pay performance rights to songwriters. A Swedish indie label operator asked whether $1 per song still make sense in the age of iPods, and a Canadian lawyer was demonstrating the absurdity of Canada's copyright levy system. eMusic had just raised prices after signing Sony to its service — a terrible PR move that the company appeared to be trying to sweep under the rug. In the background of all this was a discussion about the rise and future of internet radio, now a massive royalty battleground all its own.

Five years ago, the RIAA was six months into pushing an earlier version of its voluntary "strikes" plan for ISPs, but none had signed on. Meanwhile, the British government was rejecting the whole notion of "three strikes". On the ISP side, Verizon wasn't counting strikes but it was pitching a screwball argument that US broadband is really competitive.

The USTR had just launched a new website with promises of transparency, and we all know how that went. Also, the Supreme Court had just announced that it would hear the Bilski case, giving it a chance to rule firmly on the question of software and business model patents — which it decided not to do, offering an extremely narrow ruling instead.

Ten Years Ago

In 2004, the CAN-SPAM act was still reasonably young, and we were grappling with its impact. We noted that, as predicted, it increased the amount of spam. It created a whole new service industry for spam detectives, and some major issues like nefarious use of the required 'unsubscribe' button. And of course, companies were rushing to patent anti-spam technology.

Several new tech trends were emerging or taking shape this week in 2004. The public was growing increasingly comfortable with online news, while experts were discussing the future of security and the need to adopt two-factor authentication. The online storage revolution sparked by Gmail was picking up steam with 1gb storage offerings transforming from "news" to "the norm". There was a lot of buzz (and a lot of questions) about the move to 64-bit systems. And we took a look at the youth of the digital age's very own musical art form: circuit bending.

Fifteen Years Ago

It was a quiet week (remember those?) in 1999. We were surprised and a bit dismayed by the sales of Sony's silly $2000 robot dog, excited about the possibility of fiber to the house (before Google would have been anywhere on anyone's list of companies that might offer such a thing), and curious but unsure about the idea of sending exobits per second of data through power lines.

Some traditional companies and retailers were going web-only, and one particularly weird company was offering to write complaint letters for you, for a fee.

519 Years Ago

Over half a millennium ago, in a wonderful and timeless act of innovation, a friar distilled the first-ever batch of Scotch whisky at the Lindores Abbey in Scotland. The order came down this week, on June 1st 1495, from the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, along with the necessary supplies: "To Friar John Cor, by order of the King, to make aqua vitae, VIII bolls of malt."

Filed Under: history, look back, royalties, spam, ustr
Companies: ascap, riaa, verizon

This Week In Techdirt History

from the randomly-accessing-memory-lane dept

Time for another look back at Techdirt history:

Five Years Ago...

In 2009, the infamous Joel Tenenbaum filesharing case was in progress, and Charles Nesson had just revealed plans to attempt a fair use defense which, as many noted at the time, was destined to fail — but oh how different today would look if downloading had been deemed fair use five years ago. Of course, five years ago the record labels were also trying to bring down the Pirate Bay, an equally unachievable goal that they continue to struggle futilely with today.

This week in 2009, we were still examining the recent decision that ordered Google to pay $1.6-million in back streaming royalties to ASCAP, based on an arbitrary calculation that highlighted just how much of a mess royalties can be. A more personal music dispute was also unfolding, with Coldplay and Joe Satriani locked in a fight about copying that was heavily influenced by amateur musicologists and fans. There was plenty of fighting happening outside the realm of music, too: attorneys general were grandstanding against Craiglist as they are wont to do, and Blizzard was getting aggressive with trademark C&D letters long before its recent campaign to go after hackers.

Ten Years Ago...

Blizzard provides an interesting transition to 2004. It was in November of that year that World of Warcraft came out and revolutionized the world of MMORPGs — but a few months prior, on this week in 2004, we were wondering if the decline of EverQuest (remember EverQuest?) indicated that such games were hitting a wall because of their lack of appeal to casual gamers.

Meanwhile, you can find early roots of plenty of modern trends ten years ago this week. Not too long after the introduction of .biz and .info, but before the rollout of .mobi, Tim Berners-Lee was arguing against new TLDs. He lost the .mobi battle and then, if I recall correctly, was proven wrong when .mobi became the most popular TLD in the world, which we all continue to use and love to this day. Er, right? At the same time, we were discussing the huge success of online pizza ordering (and though I don't think it came to Canada for a couple more years, it's a convenience I confess to using far too frequently) and the return of internet grocery stores (which were still struggling but beginning to find their legs, long before the days of Amazon Fresh). It wasn't just a week of internet trends either: we also noted the growth of often-pointless motorization to make everything from razors to pot scrubbers vibrate and oscillate.

Not every trend was destined to continue, of course: these were also the days of attempts at "paid search", and Lycos (remember Lycos?) was trying to compete with Gmail.

Fifteen Years Ago...

This week in 1999, long-since-forgotten The Mining Company changed its name to About.com, and an internet fixture was born. SETI released its distributed computing screensaver in an early example of crowdsourcing long before that term was in use, and the world learned that Microsoft had a 10-man team dedicated to learning about Linux.

In the device world, the Palm VII was launching, but perhaps more interestingly, so was an early device we described as "a PDA that doubles as a portable MP3 player". To quote Mike at the time: "now, they just need to add in a phone."

200 Years Ago...

Around this time in 1814, German glassblower and physicist Heinrich Geißler was born, and would go on to develop some of the earliest glass vacuum tubes. His designs and techniques evolved into neon lighting, the tubes used to first discover the electron, and the vacuum tube technology that paved the way for the entire world of electronics, broadcast and computing.

Filed Under: archives, history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History

from the way-way-back dept

Another week of history to look back on:

Five Years Ago:

Let's kick this one off with a bang. Five years ago, the CEO of Sony Pictures, Michael Lynton said, in public, "I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the internet. Period." Believe it or not... he's still in that job today. And we wonder why Hollywood seems to have so much trouble learning how to embrace the internet. On the more optimistic side, we wrote about the amazing power of people on the internet making all sorts of great content. Those two stories show quite a bit of contrast in outlooks.

We also wrote about an Obama advisor who was all excited about how the FCC would be under Julius Genachowski. While we had been skeptical previously, we were briefly hopeful that maybe some good tech policy would happen... though our hopes were quickly dashed by reality.

These were the days before Prenda and Malibu Media, so instead we were talking about ACS:Law, which was basically Prenda's role model over in Europe. It was discovered that Elsevier had a whole division publishing fake medical journals to keep big pharma happy. Oh yeah, and the early days of the lawsuit that would eventually kill off gene patents.

Ten Years Ago:

People were still arguing that no one would want a camera in their phone. The FBI was worried about an evil reclusive millionaire who turned out to... only exist in a video game. Perhaps that's because the $600 million computer system they were building (which was already way over budget) was useless at finding terrorists (that story went on for a few more years, and eventually the system was scrapped entirely -- but not before some computer science experts suggested going on a crime spree the day the system launched...).

Also ten years ago: IBM talked about its plans to launch a web-based office suite in those days before Google Docs came along. Oh yeah, and blogging pioneers Movable Type basically priced themselves out of the market, opening the door to Wordpress to become the blogging platform of choice for many.

Fifteen Years Ago:

Sony decided to sell robotic dogs. I thought the idea sounded crazy, but the Aibo was a big deal for many years. Also the remains of Pointcast were sold off for $10 million. If you weren't around in the mid-90s, you may not remember this, but Pointcast was the "big" internet company with its "push technology." At one point, it was rumored to have turned down an acquisition offer of $500 million. More to the point, this $10 million sale came just two years after a Wired cover story arguing that the web was dead and push technology like Pointcast would replace it. Oh, the good old days of hype. Finally, kicking off yet another bad decision, Yahoo was trying to expand into the enterprise portal business.

That's all for this week in Techdirt history...

Filed Under: archives, history, look back

Contrary To What Big Broadband Players Will Say, The FCC Has Acted Many Times To Protect Net Neutrality

from the a-look-at-the-history dept

The cable and phone companies are telling people in DC that the Internet has benefited from "no" net neutrality rules. They claim, since there were no rules for a decade, we don't need them now. They've got the story exactly backwards: we have had active FCC interventions on net neutrality. That's one reason we have had a neutral Internet until now. Indeed, since 2004, we have had enforcement actions, policy statements, merger conditions, spectrum conditions, and a rule. The first time we have had the FCC announce that it would not ensure neutrality but would instead authorize fast lanes ... was Chairman Wheeler's comments earlier this year.

While very often imperfect, the FCC has done much to ensure an open internet. Carriers have not historically engaged in rampant discrimination partly due to the threat of FCC action. In 2004, the FCC's Chairman issued a speech about the "Four Freedoms" online, which promised to keep the Internet an open platform. In 2005, the FCC punished Madison River, a small telephone company that was blocking Vonage, an application that powered online phone calls competing with Madison River's own service. In 2005, the FCC adopted an Internet Policy Statement and pledged to respond to any violations of the statement with swift action. In 2008, after it was discovered that Comcast, the largest ISP in the nation, was interfering with some of the internet's most popular technologies -- a set of five peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies -- the FCC enjoined Comcast in a bipartisan decision. Much of the cable industry was engaging in such actions, so this wasn't a small exception. In 2010, the FCC adopted the Open Internet Order that was only recently struck down.

Additionally, in the years since 2005, the FCC has conditioned spectrum assignments and mergers on net neutrality rules. The largest three broadband providers have been (or remain) subject to net neutrality for many years. AT&T accepted two-year net neutrality conditions in its merger with BellSouth, and SBC accepted a two-year condition in its merger with AT&T. Verizon accepted a similar condition in its merger with MCI. Verizon purchased a 22MHz band of spectrum (the C block) in the FCC's 2008 700MHz auction for $4.7 billion dollars, and did so subject to open internet conditions modeled on the Internet Policy Statement. Comcast has been subject to network neutrality rules since its merger with NBC in 2011, and the merger condition extends for seven years. Both Verizon and Comcast's conditions still apply today. Moreover, Congress imposed contractual obligations on internet networks built with stimulus funds -- nondiscrimination and interconnection obligations that, at a minimum, adhered to the internet Policy Statement, among other obligations.

In light of these merger obligations, license conditions, FCC adjudications and rule-making, stimulus conditions, and consistent threats of FCC action, startups have enjoyed a generally neutral network that is conducive to, and necessary for, innovation. These actions provided some certainty that startups would not be arbitrarily blocked, subject to technical or economic discrimination, or forced to pay carriers so that the carriers' consumers can access all the innovation online.

Following the Verizon v. FCC decision, and under the Chairman's proposal, that will likely change, in ways that harm entrepreneurship and the public interest.

The past decade of tech innovation may not have been possible in an environment where the carriers could discriminate technically and could set and charge exorbitant and discriminatory prices for running internet applications. Without the FCC, established tech players could have paid for preferences, sharing their revenues with carriers in order to receive better service (or exclusive deals) and to crush new competitors and disruptive innovators. Venture investors would have moved their money elsewhere, away from tech startups who would be unable to compete with incumbents. Would-be entrepreneurs would have taken jobs at established companies or started companies in other nations. The FCC played an important role. The Chairman and this FCC shouldn't break that.

Filed Under: broadband, conditions, fcc, history, mergers, net neutrality, open internet, regulation, spectrum, tom wheeler

History Repeating: Google Glass Getting Same Treatment As Walkman And Cameras Once Did

from the will-glassholes-look-better-in-hindsight? dept

There's just something about Google Glass that seems to... create a visceral emotional response among some people. For some it's excitement at the potential, but for many others it's pure hate, leading to things like the term "glasshole" and various reports of attacks or problems for Google Glass wearers. It's even to the point that Kash Hill at Forbes has an article based on all the various news stories about "places not to wear your Google Glass." Personally, I don't have (nor want) a pair right now, but I'm excited by the potential and opportunity for wearable devices (even as it seems fashionable to hate on the concept).

A few months ago, though, the folks at On the Media's TLDR blog posted a story comparing the launch of the Walkman to the launch of Glass that I keep thinking about. The basic idea was that with the Walkman there was a similar reaction to the idea of people walking around wearing headphones all the time. Of course, today, you basically can't walk anywhere without seeing people with headphones on -- but, as they note, in the early days, people really didn't like it. That link takes you to an NPR story from 1981 about people reacting to the original Walkman. And the quotes could almost all be applied to much of the haters of Google Glass today:

Unidentified Man #1: They're obnoxious.

Unidentified Man #2: It looks stupid to me. Some people approve of it, you know. It's fine if - privacy your home, you know? A closet radio listener.

(Soundbite of laughter)

PROFITT: You know what? I love these big radios.

(Soundbite of music)

PROFITT: But there's something weird about these little headphones, isn't there?

Unidentified Man #2: Yeah, people do kind of look funny and they kind of look, like, you know, pretty smug when I'm wearing them and everything.

Unidentified Man #1: With a radio, it's a power impulse, because I used to have big radio and everybody admires you with the radio. But as far as the little Walkmans is concerned, you're keeping all the sound to yourself.

PROFITT: What, pray tell, are you listening to on your headphones?

That "smug" line is really the killer one, given that's the biggest complaint about "glassholes." I have no idea if Glass itself will catch on. Certainly plenty of the reviews point to significant problems with the current versions. But it seems likely that something like Glass, if not Glass itself, will eventually catch on. Even if they look dorky and make people look smug. I recently saw, for example, a Kickstarter project for some interesting looking augmented reality glasses that have many similar features to Glass. And the product video made it look really cool... until they actually showed someone wearing the damn thing, and my emotional response was the same as folks above. It just looks ridiculous.

Of course, the more you look, the more you realize that such fears aren't a new phenomenon or a rare thing either. The Walkman/headphones example is just one of many. For example, back when Eastman Kodak released its first cameras, there was a similar freakout:

The appearance of Eastman's cameras was so sudden and so pervasive that the reaction in some quarters was fear. A figure called the "camera fiend" began to appear at beach resorts, prowling the premises until he could catch female bathers unawares. One resort felt the trend so heavily that it posted a notice: "PEOPLE ARE FORBIDDEN TO USE THEIR KODAKS ON THE BEACH." Other locations were no safer. For a time, Kodak cameras were banned from the Washington Monument. The "Hartford Courant" sounded the alarm as well, declaring that "the sedate citizen can't indulge in any hilariousness without the risk of being caught in the act and having his photograph passed around among his Sunday School children."

Even if these kinds of reactions may be perfectly normal emotional responses to new technologies, these days, I'm trying to keep in mind that recognizing the real possibility of such devices can take some time. So, the next time you're tempted to make fun of someone for wearing Glass or something similar, think about whether you'd make fun of the same person for popping in earbuds to listen to some music or a podcast, or for carrying a camera around her neck, and remember... things change.

Filed Under: awkward, cameras, culture, google glass, history, innovation, walkmen

A Look Back In Techdirt History

from the what-happened-this-week dept

Another week, another time to reflect on what we were writing about five, ten and fifteen years ago.

Five Years Ago:

Turns out this week was the first time we wrote about two of my favorite folks in the music industry, both of whom have been at the forefront of embracing changing technologies, and both of whom I now consider friends. First up was Dave Allen (now at Beats Music) talking about helping bands try out a pay what you want scheme for their merchandise, and finding that fans actually paid more than when they set prices. We also wrote about Amanda Palmer singing a song asking that her label drop her. They eventually did (much, much later), and she's gone on to do many amazing things, including having one of the most successful Kickstarter projects ever (though, that may be one of the least interesting aspects of all she's done to build a community around her music).

That week were also surprised but hopeful to see the Appeals Court rule in the Golan Case that pulling works out of the public domain was unconstitutional. Unfortunately, a few years later, the Supreme Court overturned that ruling, in yet another awful Supreme Court ruling on copyright. Five years ago was also when France passed the law that launched its 3-strikes Hadopi regime, which has since been recognized as a complete and total failure, and basically shut down. On that front, one of the main music industry lobbying groups was found infringing on copyrights, because that always seems to happen.

Also, Time Warner Cable was in the process of expanding its capped broadband plans. Some things never ever change.

Ten Years Ago:

As you may have heard, this past week was the launch of Gmail with the immediate question raised of whether or not it was "creepy." While a California State Senator quickly sought a law to ban Gmail, claiming that was "an absolute invasion of privacy," it seems that the vast majority of folks out there were never that concerned about it. 500 million users don't seem to mind -- and as others have noted, Gmail has significantly changed how people use email.

10 years ago we also wrote about Pennsylvania officials seizing computers from an ISP, blaming the ISP for some child porn found on Usenet. That case was CDT v. Pappert, and became a very important case on establishing how Section 230 protecting internet service providers from the actions of their users. It's too bad, this week, we had to write about efforts to undermine Section 230.

Also 10 years ago, two of Hollywood's favorite Senators, Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy, introduced the PIRATE bill, which would have given millions of dollars to the DOJ to file civil cases against people accused of copyright infringement. While it eventually passed the Senate, it died a welcome death in the House.

Fifteen Years Ago:

It was actually a fairly quiet week... but we did have stories on the launch of Tivo (and the big funding of its one time competitor, ReplayTV) and the fact that Mark Cuban became a billionaire by selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo. Happy anniversary, Mark.

Twenty Years Ago:

Okay, we weren't publishing then, but twenty years ago Netscape was founded (originally as Mosaic Communications). I remember reading about it, and had been an NCSA Mosaic user prior to that. I also remember downloading an early copy of Netscape, which was a massive 4 megs in size. I had to set it to download overnight on my 2800 baud modem while I slept. That was about the time I really started to think about upgrading to a superfast 14.4 k modem. Exciting times. Either way, Netscape was a key part in mainstreaming the web, and my entire career has been based on the web, so a big thank you to Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark.

Filed Under: history, look back