New Year's Message: Keep Moving Forward

from the it-seems-like-a-struggle,-but-lots-to-be-happy-about dept

Since 2008, I've always concluded the year with a post in which I take a step back and reflect on (1) how I continue to remain optimistic despite lots of negative news (2) the overall forward progress of innovation, even while so many stories play up the negative and (3) the power to keep that forward progress moving. It started after I had a few people question how I remained so optimistic and happy, despite writing so many stories that seemed somewhat infuriating. But, as I noted at the time, the infuriating parts were mostly about attempts by people (often those in power) to hold back the pace of innovation. The forward progress of innovation marches on, however. And thus, we can and should be happy about that, even if we're angry about the pace and the efforts to hinder that pace. It's about understanding the difference between relative and absolute change. We should be happy with where things are headed, even if we're upset about the pace at which things are moving.

If you'd like to see all of the historical New Year's Message posts, they're here:

• 2008: On Staying Happy
• 2009: Creativity, Innovation And Happiness
• 2010: From Pessimism To Optimism... And The Power Of Innovation
• 2011: From Optimism And Innovation... To The Power To Make A Difference
• 2012: Innovation, Optimism And Opportunity: All Coming Together To Make Real Change
• 2013: Optimism On The Cusp Of Big Changes
• 2014: Change, Innovation And Optimism, Despite Challenges

Last year I started off by noting that I expected that message to be a bit of a downer, as it felt like things had been an even bigger struggle than in the past. But as I looked over the details, I realized it was the same story again. Yes, it was a struggle against forces that sought to stop progress, but the frustration was more about the pace, rather than the overall direction. And the same is true this year. At first I felt like perhaps things did move a little backwards this year, but upon reflection that's not actually the case. Potentially it feels worse because of a few bits of bad news at the very end of the year, coloring the view over the entire year.

On the whole, however, there were lots of truly positive things this year. The FCC really did pass real net neutrality rules and has at least taken some steps towards enforcing them (and even just having those rules in place "magically" made the big broadband providers suddenly figure out how to stop Netflix from being throttled). Yes, there are challenges in place to those rules, including a legal challenge and attempts to route around the rules through data caps and zero rating, but overall the net neutrality fight was a huge win for the internet. At the beginning of the process, in 2014 it was "common knowledge" that there was no way the FCC would make use of its Title II powers to put in place real net neutrality rules -- and yet, thanks to the internet speaking out, it did exactly that in 2015.

On the surveillance front, I know there's lots of reasonable concern and criticism about it, but the USA FREEDOM Act really was the first significant surveillance reform package that restricted some surveillance activities in well over a decade. That's a huge win. No, it didn't go far enough. Yes, there are many other concerns about what USA FREEDOM does allow, as well as what other legal authorities allow, but the bill was still a step in the right direction. Yes, there are concerns about other efforts, like CISA (eventually passed in the Omnibus bill as the "Cybersecurity Act of 2015"), but getting at least some surveillance reform was a big deal. And, despite what some think, there are huge opportunities to push for even bigger wins in the future against mass surveillance. But this is going to require a really big fight, especially as countries like the UK take a massive step backwards on this issue.

Similarly, the fight over backdooring encryption is a key one that we've been focusing on, but so far it's been a pretty big success. While tech companies used to basically ignore encryption entirely, Apple has been out front and center banging the drum on the importance of encryption. And, yes, the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino (despite a lack of encryption being key to either attack) have given the enemies of encryption a new foothold to argue their nonsense, but cooler heads in both Congress and the White House both seem to recognize that what's being asked for is both magic pixie dust... and basically impossible.

In the meantime, though, stronger encryption and privacy is becoming much more standard. Apple has made encryption on phones a default and Google has been moving in that direction too. Consumer friendly apps like Signal are making communications encryption much more accessible. More and more websites are moving to HTTPS and DNSSEC. The forward progress of technology is making many of the political debates... obsolete.

On the copyright front, there were some huge victories, including a really great ruling on fair use in the Author's Guild case against Google Books. It's a ruling that will get cited time and time again in copyright/fair use cases. The 9th Circuit corrected its huge mistake from a year earlier in saying that an actress had a copyright interest in her performance in a movie. And it was made clear that Warner/Chappell no longer can shake down everyone for singing "Happy Birthday." Yes, there were some bad rulings as well, including the ruling over Cox's DMCA protections, but that's just at the district court level, and we can hope that it will get fixed in later rounds.

More importantly, there are indications that many in Congress are finally realizing that copyright law does not work well with the internet today, and there appears to be some willingness to fix the problems of statutory damages and the use of the DMCA for outright censorship.

On patents, we still have not gotten the necessary patent reform out of Congress, but courts are still showing an increasing willingness to pushback on abuse, and hopefully that continues into the new year.

Yes, there's still much to be done. We could use lots of legal reforms on issues: patent law, copyright law, the CFAA, ECPA and surveillance all still need fixing. But, again, there's been forward progress on many of these items, and things that were considered off the table only a year ago are now entirely within the realm of possibility.

Meanwhile, innovation itself continues to move forward. I've talked about new consumer-friendly tools for privacy and encryption, and that is likely to increase over the next year. Similarly, we're seeing new powerful innovations that I hope will address many of the other policy challenges that we're facing. While politicians and legacy industries bemoan technology "outpacing" the law, I keep seeing examples of technology doing a much better job providing the public with what it needs, rather than policy makers trying to create laws to do the same.

On the Techdirt front, we had another fun year of discussions and conversations. Our biggest news was the launch of our think tank, The Copia Institute, which released some papers and held our first summit and some additional gatherings. Expect a lot more on that front in the coming year. We're also working on some additional things for the Techdirt community itself, so stay tuned.

As always, I'd like to conclude with a giant thank you to everyone here who's a part of the Techdirt community. As I've said in the past, you're the ones who make all of this worthwhile, no matter how you engage. Whether you comment or lurk. Whether we're something you share with all your friends, or are just a guilty pleasure you keep to yourself. Whether you submit stories or engage with us. We appreciate that you're a part of this community, and that you're passionate about all that we discuss.

We know that lots of websites are rejecting their own communities these days -- turning off comments, putting up paywalls, and blocking people from reading if they have ad blockers on. We've gone in the other direction on all of these things and that's because we don't look upon each person as an opportunity to exploit, but rather a community member who we hope will participate in some way.

I've been doing this for 18 incredible years and I don't intend to slow down any time soon. This remains the best job in the world -- to write about and discuss these issues with all of you. Any time I get annoyed at what's happening in the world, it's the folks here who not only prop me up, but help me see through the clutter. I know that some of you are more optimistic than others, and some are more cynical. But overall, the depth and knowledge and passion of this community are what makes this all worthwhile.

Thank you again for being a part of all things Techdirt.

Filed Under: challenges, innovation, new year's message, optimism, progress, surveillance, techdirt

Gmail Takes A Sledgehammer To The Techdirt Daily Newsletter When Not Even A Scalpel Is Needed

from the all-the-links! dept

As several subscribers to our Techdirt Daily Newsletter have pointed out to us, Thursday morning's edition was flagged by Gmail with the following warning:

"Be careful with this message. It contains links to websites hosting malware."

Of course, being a collection of the previous day's Techdirt posts, the Techdirt Daily email contains many, many links. Also, as it is something of a Techdirt policy to not spread malware to our readers, our writers are generally careful about the sites they link to in their posts. So, trying to track down which link might be to a site Google deems suspicious seemed daunting. But it turns out we didn't have to look any further than the third post to figure out what happened, the title of which conveniently contains the word "malware." Within that post, Tim Cushing included the domain name of a site that has been known in the past to distribute malware (in addition to squatting on a domain using the Electronic Frontier Foundation's name). It appears Google took that unlinked mention of the domain name as Techdirt carelessly endangering the digital lives of our newsletter subscribers, and stepped in to protect those subscribed via Gmail by throwing up the scary red warning banner and squashing every link in the email (even the unsubscribe link!).

While it's nice that Google tries to look out for its users by preventing them from inadvertently downloading malware, their approach is a bit over the top. First, if Google can detect which links in an email may be hazardous, why not just unlink or censor those particular links? And, in this case, the "link" in question didn't even exist. Google should be able to detect that and realize that no, we're not sending our readers to their doom. It seems obvious that Google should be able to handle this type of thing in a much more sophisticated way -- and you'd think that it would want to do so. People trust Google and many people use its products, and when it makes mistakes like this, it can cause real reputational harm.

Filed Under: gmail, malware, techdirt
Companies: google

Techdirt 2014: The Numbers.

from the counting-it-up dept

2014 is over, and as we've done every year for the past few years, we'll try to round up some of "the numbers" about that year (and yes, this is our only post today -- we'll be back on Monday with regular posting). If you'd like to look back, we've got the posts from 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010.

We had visitors from 240 countries this year, with (as per usual) the US holding steady at almost exactly two-thirds of all traffic (actually 66.95%). This was followed by the UK, Canada and Australia. Germany rounds out the top five with India, the Netherlands, France, Sweden and New Zealand making the top 10. The only major change here was India jumping up a few slots and Sweden dropping a few. After India, our top traffic from Asia comes from... the Philippines -- which is a bit of a surprise. Singapore, Turkey (and yes, I know some people debate whether Turkey is part of Asia) and Japan round out the top five Asian countries for traffic. China doesn't even make the top 10 (it's 11th), though we frequently hear that the site is blocked there.

The top five countries in Europe all made the top 10 list above, but in case you're wondering, the next five are Spain, Ireland, Finland, Italy and Norway -- all of which sent a healthy amount of traffic. If we combine all of the Americas after the US and Canada, the most traffic comes from Brazil, Mexico and Argentina. In Africa, again the top country is South Africa, but we still get a decent number of visitors from Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt as well.

Last year we noted that the only two countries on the map (leaving out tiny islands and such) that we could see where we got no traffic was Chad and Western Sahara. This year, however, we appear to have had 30 visits from Chad. Western Sahara, however, remains a dark zone. For years, we joked about no visits from North Korea, so last year we were amazed that we got two whole visits from that country. This year... it doubled to four, but I'm assuming at least two of those were the supposed Sony Hackers, right? And, in what's become an annual tradition, we have a single visit from Christmas Island.

Also, a yearly tradition: visitors from Gibraltar stick around the longest -- something that PaulT takes credit for each year (rightfully so). If we limit it to countries where we have a significant number of visitors, folks from Australia, Switzerland and New Zealand seemed to stick around the longest, so thanks for that! In terms of the number of pages per visit, Gibraltar, Bangladesh and... Congo top the list, but based on fairly small numbers of visits. If we look at countries with significant visits, India, the Philippines and Switzerland top that list.

I always enjoy digging down into the city numbers as well. The top spots remain pretty much unchanged: New York City, London, LA and Chicago. Toronto fell out of the fourth slot down to sixth, with San Francisco moving up. Seattle, Sydney, Houston and Melbourne rounded out the top 10 with Washington DC coming in 11th. As always, it's interesting to see this data, but given the differences in population size, perhaps it's not always that meaningful.

As always, it's interesting to see how some of you are visiting the site. Remember when Microsoft was going to dominate the world with Internet Explorer? Almost half of all visits these days come from Chrome. Firefox is second and Safari is third. Internet Explorer is fourth, though still with a fair bit of usage (who are you people?). Approximately 36% of our traffic is mobile these days -- jumping up from 29% last year. Most of that is from phones, but plenty of tablet users as well. As per usual, the iPhone and the iPad absolutely dominate the device side, but if we just look at browser OS, Android is almost neck and neck with iOS. Android represented 44% of mobile visits, with iOS at 51%. Windows was a little under 4%, Blackberry about half a percent, and you Nokia loyalists with a combination of Series40, SymbianOS and others make up the remaining tiny percentages. Outside of Apple, mobile visitors came most on Samsung devices and then LG, but coming from a wide variety of devices from those companies.

Given how many of you are from the US, and how the US broadband market works here, it's no surprise that the biggest ISPs for traffic are Comcast, followed by Time Warner (if they merge the numbers from the two would be massive). Verizon and AT&T make up the next two.

As for how people come here, it seems like we have a pretty balanced split. We've never focused on doing things like "gaming" search with search engine optimization, or going for social with clickbait, and so we don't end up relying too much on anything. In terms of where people came from -- once again Reddit was a major source of traffic. On the "social media" side, this was followed by Facebook and Twitter, with Stumbleupon far behind them. Google+ sent a few (but not very many). From the non-"social" side, we got our most traffic from Instapundit, Boing Boing, Daily Rotation, Popehat and Slashdot. On the search side, the only really noticeable search term that drove significant traffic (outside of people searching for "techdirt" "tech dirt" and variations of that) was... "Walter O'Brien." And yes, our Walter O'Brien stories continue to get a fair number of visits and comments as people discover that his public story is mostly made up.

Okay, onto some lists:

Top Ten Stories, by unique pageviews, on Techdirt for 2014:

1. No, A 'Supercomputer' Did NOT Pass The Turing Test For The First Time And Everyone Should Know Better
2. Keurig Will Use DRM In New Coffee Maker To Lock Out Refill Market
3. US Patent Office Grants 'Photography Against A White Background' Patent To Amazon
4. UK Porn Filter Architect Arrested On Child Porn Charges
5. The Rebranding Of SOPA: Now Called 'Notice And Staydown'
6. New Snowden Doc Reveals How GCHQ/NSA Use The Internet To 'Manipulate, Deceive And Destroy Reputations'
7. Student Who Found GPS Device On His Car Due To Reddit Comment Sues The FBI < --- Will explain this below
8. Guy Finds FBI Tracking Device On Car, Posts Pics Online... FBI Shows Up Demanding It Back < --- Will explain this below
9. How The Copyright Industry Made Your Computer Less Safe
10. T-Mobile Writes The Best Press Release You'll Ever See From A Phone Company

So you'll notice there are two old stories in there. One from 2010 and another from 2011 -- though both about the same thing (a guy discovering an FBI tracking device on his car and then posting it on Reddit). For whatever reason, Reddit suddenly picked up on that story again and drove a tremendous amount of traffic to it (well, mainly to the one about him suing the FBI, and that resulted in people clicking through to the other one as well). In case you think those shouldn't count, the next two biggest stories were... the first Walter O'Brien story and one about Verizon basically admitting that it was its own fault that its network got clogged (while it attempted to blame Netflix).

2014's Top Ten Stories, by comment volume

1. Thanks Anti-Vax Loons: The Return Of The Measles And The Backlash Against Jenny McCarthy 304 Comments
2. Keurig Will Use DRM In New Coffee Maker To Lock Out Refill Market 262 Comments
3. Appeals Court Doesn't Understand The Difference Between Software And An API; Declares APIs Copyrightable 262 Comments
4. Chilling Effects: Climate Change Deniers Have Scientific Paper Disappeared 250 Comments
5. Megaupload Say US Gov't Is Trying To Steal Assets Based On Crimes That Are 'Figments Of The Gov't's Boundless Imagination' 230 Comments
6. The James Foley Beheading Video And How Americans Conceptualize Their Enemies 227 Comments
7. Copyright Maximalists And Lobbyists Insist 'Criminal Elements' Are A Part Of The Copyright Reform Effort 219 Comments
8. The Homicide No One Committed: Eric Garner's Death At The Hands Of An NYPD Officer No-Billed By Grand Jury 202 Comments
9. Another Story Of A 'Fake' Brilliant Inventor? Is 'Scorpion Walter O'Brien' A Real Computer Security Genius? 199 Comments
10. Proud Voters Tweeting In The UK Could Receive Jail Time And A Fine 196 Comments

Once again -- as we point out every year -- we see very little overlap between these two lists. Only one story (the Keurig DRM one) made both lists (in the second spot on both too). Also something that stood out to me -- while not a single one of the top 10 traffic getting posts were written by Tim Geigner, 4 of the top 10 commented posts were by him. That Dark Helmet sure knows how to get you to speak up (though, to be fair, none of the next ten posts in comments were written by him).

Okay, onto the community, and who did well on the commenting front. For the third year in a row, John Fenderson was our top commenter, though he seriously upped his game. In 2014, he posted an astounding 6105 comments -- nearly double of last year's 3604. Here's the top 10 list:

2014 Top Commenters, by comment volume

1. John Fenderson: 6105 comments
2. That One Guy: 3431 comments
3. Ninja: 1864 comments
4. nasch: 1695 comments
5. PaulT: 1031 comments
6. Mason Wheeler 840 comments
7. Whatever 777 comments
8. That Anonymous Coward: 707 comments
9. Mike Masnick 685 comments
10. art guerrilla 675 comments

Here's a little oddity: I seem to appear on the above list in even years (2010, 2012 and 2014), and don't make it on odd years (2011 and 2013). Guess I'll be commenting less in the new year... Also interesting to see how the list has changed over the years. Only nasch and PaulT were also on the list in 2010, with only PaulT making the list every single year (nasch missed just one year).

Top 10 Most Insightful Commenters, based on how many times they got the lightbulb icon:

1. John Fenderson: 456 comments
2. That One Guy: 316 comments
3. Mason Wheeler 128 comments
4. Karl: 101 comments
5. Ninja: 98 comments
6. PaulT: 89 comments
7. Gwiz: 88 comments
8. jupiterkansas 82 comments
9. That Anonymous Coward: 71 comments
10. Mike Masnick: 63 comments

Top 10 Funniest Commenters, based on how many times they got the LOL icon:

1. That One Guy: 32 comments
2. Ninja: 30 comments
3. John Fenderson: 26 comments
4. DannyB: 23 comments
5. ChurchHatesTucker: 22 comments
6. silverscarcat: 19 comments
7. Mason Wheeler 16 comments
8. That Anonymous Coward: 15 comments
9. Roger Strong: 15 comments
10. sorrykb: 15 comments

Kudos to John Fenderson and That One Guy for dominating the commenting lists this year! Also interesting to see the "funny" numbers are much lower than the insightfuls (and much lower than in the past). Either you guys just aren't as funny as you used to be, or people are getting pickier about the funny voting... Perhaps that's a challenge for someone in the new year...

That's it for last year. If you want to appear on this list next year, time to get cracking...

Filed Under: numbers, techdirt, the numbers

New Year's Message: Change, Innovation And Optimism, Despite Challenges

from the happy-new-year dept

Every year since 2008, my final post on New Year's Eve has been on the topic of "optimism" about the future. It started when I had a few separate people note (in person to me) that they were amazed I seemed so happy and optimistic despite constantly writing about negative things that were happening -- people trying to block innovation, politicians passing crazy laws, judges making bad rulings, etc. As I pointed out then, I actually found it rather easy to stay happy because I had seen how far we've come over the years since Techdirt began, way back in 1997. I had seen how much innovation had happened in spite of attempts to stop it. I had seen how people and innovators routed around the problems. While much of what I wrote about did cover negative things -- and to some people I seemed angry about them -- it was mainly frustration that there were further attempts to slow things down, despite knowing that innovation and the public's interest always prevail in the end. I'm optimistic because I can see it coming, while frustrated because of all the efforts that will slow it down and limit how much of that innovation I'll get to experience in my lifetime.

For the record, here are each of the posts since 2008:

• 2008: On Staying Happy
• 2009: Creativity, Innovation And Happiness
• 2010: From Pessimism To Optimism... And The Power Of Innovation
• 2011: From Optimism And Innovation... To The Power To Make A Difference
• 2012: Innovation, Optimism And Opportunity: All Coming Together To Make Real Change
• 2013: Optimism On The Cusp Of Big Changes

As I was preparing to write the post for this year, I actually thought it might end up on more of a down note. Something about this past year felt... somehow slightly more exhausting than years past (even as I, personally, completely revamped my sleep schedule and probably got more than double the amount of sleep this year than in past years). But as I started thinking through this year, I realized just how many amazing and wonderfully good things did come to pass.

Early in the year the FCC's pretty weak net neutrality rules were struck down by the court (as most everyone expected), and at the end of the year it seems like the FCC is actually (amazingly) poised to put real net neutrality rules in place. Almost no one would have predicted that Title II reclassification would even be in the discussion these days, yet now it seems likely. That's an astounding shift towards the positive.

At the beginning of the year, the story on patents was still a huge mess. Patent trolls were still running around like crazy causing problems, and the idea of true patent reform seemed remote. Yet, Congress actually came mighty close to a decent (if not perfect) patent reform bill (only to have it killed by the trial lawyers). However, it appears that much stronger patent reform is likely to happen in the next Congress. More importantly (so far), the Supreme Court continued to make rulings that smacked down an over-expansive patent system (and the dreadful rulings of the Federal Circuit). The Alice v. CLS Bank case in particular has already had a massive impact in getting bad patents and bad patent cases tossed out (and an earlier ruling making it easier to get lawyers' fees for bad patent litigation has helped as well).

Surveillance reform turned out to be something of a bust in Congress, but it came very, very close, and there's significant interest in making a real stand in 2015 on both the key surveillance parts of the PATRIOT Act that need to be renewed and on dealing with Executive Order 12333, under which a lot of mass surveillance is really happening. Still, while Congress dithers, innovators are innovating. The number of companies that have upped their encryption game and are taking privacy seriously has been going up rapidly. We may finally be reaching a point where protecting privacy is a real competitive advantage.

We're still in a bit of a holding period on copyright reform, but the concerns and worries about what bad copyright laws have done to expression are getting increased attention and awareness. And, at the same time, alternative business models and services are thriving in incredible ways, making more culture available to more people -- and allowing more content creators to create more content, to reach more people and to make more money than ever before. It's an amazing time to be a creator.

That's not to say there aren't concerns. Congress is still working on some bad laws while ignoring broken laws that need to be fixed (such as CFAA and ECPA). The reaction of law enforcement to greater encryption is ridiculous but won't be going away any time soon. The backroom dealing by the MPAA with state Attorneys General, and the USTR on bad trade deals, shows how those legacy industries aren't giving up on their plans to hobble innovation to protect the interests of big legacy players (and to do so as secretly as possible).

But if you went back just a few years and told your older self what's on the table today, what innovators are working on and what the public is interested in on these issues, your older self likely wouldn't believe it. Real copyright and patent reform wasn't even seen as a possibility. NSA surveillance wasn't talked about in polite company. Net neutrality was a wonk issue for telco nerds. But they're all getting talked about regularly today.

And an awful lot of that is due to the power of the public speaking out. The win over SOPA may feel like it was long ago but it set the framework for the net neutrality battle, and really did help make a big difference in that fight. While similar efforts won't win every battle (NSA reform being one that so far has failed), that fight isn't over yet, and the momentum continues to shift in the right direction. The power of the internet itself to connect people and make such expression possible is truly world-changing. Sometimes it's difficult to see all that in the thick of things, but take a step back and think about just how amazing this time we live in really is.

Here at Techdirt, we were blown away by the support we received for our BeaconReader crowdfunding campaign for reporting on net neutrality. Your contributions helped raise nearly $70,000 which we've put to good use, producing over 100 stories so far and many more to come. We switched the site to default to HTTPS, to better protect your privacy (and we appreciate NameCheap stepping up to sponsor that move). Many of you have helped out as well, supporting us via the Techdirt Insider Shop (and getting some nifty swag in the process). And 2015 is shaping up to be a very big year for us. We have some major announcements about the future of our company that will come pretty early into the new year, so please stay tuned...

As always, however, my final message of the day is a massive thank you to all of you who are a part of the Techdirt community, no matter how you choose to take part. Whether you comment or lurk. Whether we're something you share with all your friends, or are just a guilty pleasure you keep to yourself. Whether you submit stories or engage with us. We appreciate that you're a part of this community, that you're passionate about innovation, the internet, free speech, privacy and a bunch of related issues.

While other sites are pushing their communities away, turning off comments or outsourcing the effort, we still believe that it's the community around here that makes this site so special -- and we look forward to sharing an exciting 2015 (and beyond) with all of you.

It's now been more than 17 years (yikes -- I'm old) that I've been writing Techdirt, and I still think I have the best job in the world. It is an absolute, unquestionable joy each and every day to share these stories, to express opinions and debate interesting topics with all of you. It's the community here that continues to inspire me every single day to see what more we can do. Thank you, once again, for being a part of this effort.

Filed Under: new year's message, techdirt

This Week In Techdirt History: November 23 - 29

from the looking-back dept

Five Years Ago:

ESPN suspended Bill Simmons (from Twitter) for calling someone deceitful. Huh. That sounds familiar. ACS:Law, which was the UK version of Prenda before Prenda existed was just ramping up. Spam King Alan Ralsky was sent to jail. Microsoft was trying to shut someone up after they revealed some "flaws" in Microsoft's plan to bribe users to use Bing instead of Google. Speaking of Bing, Rupert Murdoch was toying with the idea of taking News Corp. sites out of Google's search results if Microsoft paid him enough. And Hulu was furious that people were actually embedding its videos, despite the fact that Hulu provided tools to embed.

We looked at how Hollywood was really at fault for a significant part of movie piracy, by not giving users what they wanted. Similarly, we looked at how the recording industry spent so much on payola to get people to hear their music for free -- and yet were so angry about piracy, which got people to hear their music for free. Speaking of Hollywood, the heads of the big studios had pretty much all settled on a new talking point: that they were really concerned about the independent filmmaker, rather than big studios when ti came to piracy. Of course, more indie films were being made than ever before, and those indie filmmakers now have many more ways to get supported than ever before, so that rang pretty hollow. And, a record label exec was arrested for not using Twitter to ask Justin Bieber fans to disperse.

We were celebrating Wil Wheaton saying people should "get excited and make things" rather than griping about how business models and such were changing online. Meanwhile, we highlighted some research about how copying and imitation are actually quite good for society, even if people think they're bad.

Ten Years Ago:

We were talking about how there were over 400 companies selling "VoIP" offerings, and wondering how they could possibly survive (spoilers: they didn't). The first case we'd heard of where scammers were trying to sneak malware through banner ads on popular sites. Unfortunately, this remains an issue today. People were starting to realize that stores like Best Buy were really showrooms for Amazon. And a court told the MPAA that it couldn't lump a bunch of unrelated file sharing lawsuits into the same case.

Also, ten years ago, Perfect 10 sued Google for showing thumbnails of some of its porn images hosted on other sites. That case would result in one of Perfect 10's many courtroom losses, and also set a good precedent concerning fair use. Also, ten years ago Congress started pushing for a new job in the White House, the IP Enforcement Coordinator -- a role they finally pushed through as part of the ProIP Act in 2008 (with the job coming into existence in 2009).

Fifteen Years Ago:

Ah, such a quaint time. We were excited about the possibility of paying bills online (seriously). This was the era of the "free ISP," though the catch was that if you used them, you had to deal with ads from them. So we found it interesting that a new one was launching, and its main selling point was that it was a free ISP with no ads. Instead, they hoped you'd buy stuff from their e-commerce store. Media merger potential is always in the news, so fifteen years ago, Time Warner as looking to buy NBC. Oh, and remember when AOL was so powerful that it could be evil without consequence? In order to ramp up its business of spamming its own users, AOL claimed that all of the opt-outs from spam had "expired" and users had to re-opt-out to avoid being spammed by AOL partners in the future. How nice. No wonder people started leaving in droves soon after.

Forty two years ago:

Atari released Pong, the first "commercially successful video game" kicking off the start of the video game revolution. Two years ago, on the 40th anniversary, Buzzfeed published an astoundingly wonderful history of Atari and Pong. Go read it.

Filed Under: archives, history, look back, techdirt

Thanks To Namecheap For Sponsoring Techdirt's Switch To SSL

from the for-a-secure-internet dept

As some of you know, Techdirt recently completed the process of protecting all Techdirt traffic with full SSL encryption — something we believe every internet company should do. Part of this process involved seeking a sponsor to help us offset the money and time spent getting everything switched over, and today we're happy to announce that Namecheap has stepped up to that role.

We're very happy to work with Namecheap, as the company has established itself as a defender of user rights and an open and secure internet, sharing many of the same values that we espouse here at Techdirt. They were among the first domain registrars to speak up against SOPA, they contributed heavily to the matching funds in our Beacon campaign to raise money for net neutrality reporting, and they do frequent fundraising for groups like the EFF and Fight For The Future.

As part of our sponsorship deal, you'll notice a message from Namecheap at the top of Techdirt, and see a couple more posts highlighting work the company has done and the services it offers — including SSLs.com, Namecheap's SSL certificate shop. We're grateful to Namecheap for its support, which helps our small team keep turning out quality content while juggling important technical upgrades like this one. We hope our readers will take a moment to support Namecheap in return, and check out its services for your needs when it comes to domain names, hosting and security certificates.

Filed Under: sponsorship, ssl, techdirt
Companies: namecheap

What Makes You Tell Others About Techdirt?

from the a-conversation... dept

Over at the Verge, Nilay Patel (who just recently returned to take over the place), had a great idea: asking the readers there what makes them share something on the internet, noting that he thinks that site can do better than just trying to game Reddit and Facebook for votes and likes. While I'm sure there's some overlap in readership, and we could just read what those guys say (and we will), Techdirt is obviously a different kind of site, with different types of stories, so I'm not entirely sure what is said there will apply to us. Furthermore, I wanted to slightly adjust the question for folks here. I'm curious what makes you tell others about Techdirt itself, or any of it's stories. I'm less interested in what makes you share "something" on the internet, because the answer to that question may sometimes be "more clickbaity stories," and we've never been about that (nor will we be). The focus here is on what we do that really gets you, our community, so interested in Techdirt (or in a particular story) that you share it with others -- either in person or online.

And while I'm at it, I might as well ask what makes you comment on a story? We've pointed out for years that, even though people always assume this, the number of comments does not correlate well with the amount of traffic a story gets (often because long comment threads are just a couple people arguing back and forth). Also, I know that there are many lurkers who never comment, and that's great too. But since we're having a conversation, it seemed worth discussing.

We have our data on which stories do well, but even then it's something of a mystery. There are stories I swear will go absolutely viral, which it seems like everyone winds up skipping over. There are stories that I think are probably "space fillers" for slow times, which then go insane and hit the top of Reddit. I've written over 45,000 posts (and others have written many more on Techdirt) and my ability to predict which stories you guys will really like versus which ones will elicit a giant "meh" is still fairly weak -- though it is something I think about. Nilay's post made me realize that, duh, I should just ask you guys -- though it's entirely possible you don't quite "know" either. Still, it seems like it should be an interesting discussion... Just as Nilay says, there are no "wrong answers" here. It would just be helpful to us.

Filed Under: discussion, sharing, techdirt