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

from the ghost-of-christmas-past dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, while newly-leaked documents were exposing the US government's surveillance options, Hillary Clinton was nonsensically calling for an encryption "Manhattan Project" but not to produce a back door. Tom Cotton was also attacking Tim Cook and demonstrating profound ignorance, and was joined by Manhattan's Disctrict Attorney. Blackberry, apparently hoping to hasten its own demise, started arguing for greater cooperation with law enforcement. And yet, amidst all this, the government apparently didn't notice the irony in freaking out about an unauthorized backdoor discovered in Juniper firewall software.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2010, we wondered if journalists would face the same treatment as Julian Assange and why US publications were downplaying the significance of major leaks, while, in apparent anticipation of a leak, Bank of America started trying to block payments to Wikileaks, soon followed by Apple blocking the Wikileaks app. Meanwhile, we got a closer look and Homeland Security's terrible evidence for its recent domain seizures, and its affidavit that was riddled with errors that just got worse and worse.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, Senators were apparently undeterred by multiple court rulings on the unconstitutionality of video game bans, the FTC was cautiously optimistic about spam trends although the clock was ticking on Bill Gates's prediction that the problem of spam would be solved by early 2006, and Eliot Spitzer began an investigation into digital music price fixing. Sony's woes continued as Texas expanded its lawsuit to include MediaMax CDs and some of the parent company's own stores were failing to pull the rootkit CDs from shelves. And, as three men were facing charges for selling modified Xboxes, we wanted to know why modifying your own hardware is a federal crime.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the then-and-now dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, the clueless press was still letting itself get played and suggesting that encryption played a role in the San Bernardino attacks, while congress was dropping all pretense and turning CISA into a full-on surveillance bill, which they then crammed into the must-pass government funding bill (which also included some other nonsense). It got support of confused congressmen and a promise-breaking White House then — despite being terrible for privacy — it predictably passed.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2010, the clueless press was playing the mark for a different scam and continuing to rely on bogus research about file sharing, but the main source of panic and confusion on the scene was still Wikileaks, and we argued America's reaction was doing far more harm than the leaks themselves and was probably just about overhyping online threats to pass new laws. The Congressional Research Service was pointing out the obstacles to criminally charging Assange and complaining about being blocked from accessing Wikileaks itself by the panicked government (and the Air Force went further the same week, blocking access to news sites reporting on Wikileaks as well), and the staff of Columbia Jounralism School was warning the president that prosecuting Wikileaks would set a dangerous precedent. But the government decided to look into the possibility of CFAA charges anyway. There was a slight bit of uplifting and surprising news though, when congressional hearings on Wikileaks turned out to be not entirely stupid.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, an emerging conversation about traffic shaping was paving the way for a net neutrality fight, with the most worrying aspect being that FCC chairman Kevin Martin was apparently prepared to give the telcos everything they wanted. Congress was doing its own kowtowing, this time to Hollywood, and serving up exactly the legislation the entertainment industry wanted, while the music business was getting mad at Apple for the DRM it had a huge hand in pushing for — and we talked about how copy protection stalls innovation. HarperCollins was spending a lot of money to scan its own books for no obvious reason beyond spiting Google, the MPAA was suing someone for sharing movies it couldn't actually find on his computer, and one band was dealing with Sony's DRM failure by sending their fans burned replacement CDs with no copy protection.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the times-past dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, the confluence of the Paris attack, the San Bernardino attack, and the rise of ISIS created a perfect storm for the anti-encryption, pro-surveillance crowd. President Obama was hinting at asking Silicon Valley to magically block terrorists from using tech products, while Hillary Clinton was doubling down on her attacks on the tech industry and mocking free speech online in the exact same way Donald Trump was — while Mitch McConnell was promising to offer up whatever bill the president wanted to ban encryption, Dianne Feinstein was bringing back a bill that would force internet providers to report on "suspicious" behavior by customers and teaming up with James Comey to mislead people about encryption, and Michael McCaul was proposing a commission to "force" encryption backdoors. Even a former FCC commissioner was getting in the game, idiotically claiming that net neutrality helps ISIS. In France, law enforcement released a "wish list" of draconian measures including banning open WiFi, which got at least a tiny bit of pushback from the Prime Minister — while Spain brought in a new law allowing widespread surveillance, and Kazakhstan was breaking the internet with an all-out war on encryption.

Ten Years Ago

Today there's a lot of controversy around Visa and MasterCard blocking Pornhub, but this same week in 2010 the exact same conversation was going on around Wikileaks. The week kicked off with PayPal cutting off payments, a Swiss bank found a technicality that allowed it to freeze the site's bank account, then Mastercard blocked any payment systems that work with Wikileaks, and were soon joined by Visa (I wonder if that had anything to do with its most recent leak). But attempts to kill Wikileaks were just contributing to its spread, and the government was contradicting itself in its panicked attempts to internally block the site, or just doing really dumb things like blocking any site with Wikileaks in the title, and making extremely silly requests like the State Department asking Wikileaks to "return" the leaked cables (ironically around the same time it was hosting World Press Freedom Day).

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, big telcos were doing their usual thing and freaking out about competition, even going so far as to punish New Orleans for offering free wifi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, or just completely contradicting themselves on fiber optic broadband, which they hate when municipalities try to offer it but which they are happy to sell themselves. Sony's DRM woes were far from over, with yet another security vulnerability found in one of their products, as well as a vulnerability in the patch the company issued to fix it. The recording industry was showing it would never be happy no matter what Kazaa did, and really going hard on its new obsession — unauthorized song lyrics — by attacking an app that displays them and even calling for people who host them to be thrown in jail.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: November 29th - December 5th

from the take-and-give dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, details were continuing to emerge that showed the Paris attackers made very little effort to hide themselves while the French government was using the state of emergency as an excuse to round up climate change activists, and some in the US were using the San Bernadino shooting to push for more domestic surveillance. New problems were being discovered with the UK's snooper's charter, while documents were showing that the country's intelligence agencies were hacking computers with minimal oversight. And there was a fresh attack on encryption from a different direction, as a patent troll started suing all kinds of encrypted websites.

Also this week in 2015, Homeland Security finally returned two domains they had seized for bogus reasons five years earlier, but we'll talk more about that in our next section...

Ten Years Ago

Yes, it was the very same week in 2010 that we first reported on ICE seizing a bunch of domain names supposedly for intellectual property violations. It immediately looked like a censorship campaign that was stretching the law to its breaking point, and inspection of the targeted websites revealed that many appeared legitimate and some were even embraced by big-name music artists — until Homeland Security eventually admitted that it was taking cues straight from the entertainment industry, further undermining any ability of the US to take a stance against internet censorship worldwide.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, we learned more about how the Sony rootkit came to be, and weren't that surprised to discover that other Sony copy protection tech also had big issues — plus, the rootkit had caught the attention of Eliot Spitzer, and new information revealed that Sony knew about it before it went public. The FCC suddenly changed its tune on a la carte cable programming, with plenty of people weighing in from televangelists (opposed) and Cablevision and AT&T in favor. Meanwhile, ratings giant Nielsen was finally acknowledging the existence of DVRs and introducing its now ubiquitous live-plus-x-days ratings for TV shows.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: November 22nd - 28th

from the timelines dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, the attacks on encryption continued, with David Cameron's former speechwriter publishing an incredibly dumb article in the Telegraph and Dianne Feinstein contradicting her month-old fearmongering about cybersecurity with demands for encryption backdoors — while a supposed ISIS encryption manual that people had been freaking out about turned out to be a guide for journalists. Meanwhile, we learned about widespread illegal wiretaps by police in California, and that reports of the end of NSA domestic email collection were incorrect — and, long before he was the Supreme Court's most prominent alleged rapist, Judge Brett Kavanaugh was offering up a strident defense of the NSA's bulk metadata collection.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2010, the TSA was on everyone's minds thanks to its still-new naked scanners, which suddenly had the support of the president after he traveled with the CEO of a company that makes them. Some were trying to find out if the TSA had ever actually caught a terrorist, and being told it's a state secret, while the stories of incredibly invasive and demeaning searches for people who don't get scanned continued to flood in. One airport tried to claim that recording the TSA's gropings was an arrestable offense, and the agency's attempt to demonstrate to congress that the searches are fine completely backfired — and Homeland Security investigators were discovering that TSA agents weren't even good at spotting prohibited items in the scans.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, we continued to watch the fallout from the Sony rootkit fiasco, with anti-virus firms trying to explain why their products couldn't catch it and the state of Texas filing a lawsuit against Sony, all while the label's sales plummeted and got it in hot water with many of its artists. TiVo was trying to thread the needle with a new offering that included copy protection but it unsurprisingly wasn't enough to stop TV executives from threatening to sue. And finally, for anyone who is currently trying to get their hands on a next-gen console, enjoy this fifteen-year-old post about people paying thousands for Xbox 360 consoles on eBay.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the on-the-record dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, the world was reeling from the Paris attacks that killed 130 people. Unfortunately, many were also treating it as an opportunity: haters of encryption quickly started somehow blaming Edward Snowden, and defenders of the surveillance state began using the attacks to justify mass surveillance and push to expand it (which France had already done twice in the past year. Senators were moving to legislate backdoors to encryption and extend NSA programs, and Manhattan's DA got in on the act with a white paper seeking an encryption ban... and then it turned out that the Paris attackers had coordinated via unencrypted text messages. The whole thing was a failure of the intelligence community that had long been fighting for surveillance despite little evidence that it works. But this didn't stop anyone from treating encryption as a bogeyman, and by the end of the week France had rushed through an internet censorship law and Hillary Clinton had vocally joined the anti-encryption brigade.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2010, in keeping with its strategy of pretending the government can save it, the entertainment industry was ramping up its astroturf campaigns and generally lying about stuff in order to supportthe COICA online censorship bill that was back up for another vote later in the week. As was expected, the lame duck Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to move forward with COICA, and Ron Wyden was one of the few senators speaking out vocally against the bill and saying he planned to block it. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown were seeking more information on the legality of certain provisions in ACTA (the latest text of which still had plenty of issues) only to be stonewalled by the USPTO, while many defenders continued to insist that ACTA didn't need Senate approval anyway because it was somehow not a treaty.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, things just kept getting worse for Sony in the wake of the rootkit fiasco. First, it turned out that the copy protection rootkit included copyright-infringing code. Then, security researchers discovered that the web-based uninstaller Sony was offering opened up a new and serious security hole on users' machines that would let any other website easily hijack them. The rootkit was looking like it might be the most widespread malware of the month and finally, after dragging its feet for over a week, the company announced that it would pull all CDs with the rootkit from stores, and offer swaps to people who bought them, but it really felt like too little, too late. By the end of the week, Sony started offering unprotected MP3 downloads in exchange for the CDs in a final attempt to make good, which seemed like a fittingly ironic end for a misadventure that began with music DRM.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: November 8th - 14th

from the hindsight dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, we looked at early warnings of the EU's all-out attack on hyperlinks, while the silly Monkey Selfie lawsuit was winding forward, and a new surprise player entered the copyright fight over Happy Birthday. The MPAA's attempt to sneak SOPA in the back door was rejected, but the agency was getting cozy with the House Judiciary Committee. And we looked at the unsurprising trio of industries that most loved the TPP agreement.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2010, the USPTO was going in the wrong direction when it came to standards for patents, while we were sad to see the MIT Tech Review come out in favor of patent trolls. We saw some examples of overly draconian punishment with a sentence of 30 months in prison and over $50,000 in fines for a DDoS attack, an arrest in Japan for a leak of a new Pokemon character, and a university promising to report file sharing to police and warning students about five-year prison terms — so it was a good week to also take a look at just how insane statutory damages for file sharing are.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, Sony was not-really-dealing with the fallout from the previous week's rootkit fiasco. As a class-action lawsuit was being prepared, the company was flubbing its media response and claiming rootkits aren't a problem because most people don't know what they are — never mind the fact that virus writers were already taking advantage of Sony's technology to hide their tracks. This prompted some to take a deeper dive into Sony's EULA, and find some ridiculous provisions like requiring you to delete all your music if you go bankrupt. Finally, at the end of the week, the company was browbeaten into "temporarily" stopping production of the rootkits, though apologies or admissions of wrongdoing were not forthcoming.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the from-the-archives dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, the UK government released its "Snooper's Charter" surveillance bill after pretending it had backed down on the worst provisions — when in fact the bill mandated backdoors to encryption and aimed to legalize over a decade of illegal mass surveillance. In the US, documents from the DOJ confirmed the extensive powers of Stingray devices, while legislators were moving to turn the agency's "guidance" on the devices into law. The think-tank behind SOPA was now pushing for the US to encourage other countries to block the Pirate Bay, while attacks on Section 230 were still mainly the realm of some law professors. And then the biggest release of the week came on Friday: the full, very bad text of the TPP.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2010, we were surprised to see the DOJ weigh in against gene patents, and the USPTO was not happy about it. The Jammie Thomas trial got its third jury verdict with another huge award of damages that highlighted how the framing of the jury instructions changes everything in such a case. A YouTube star was being threatened by music publishers claiming parody isn't fair use, a reality show was sued for copying an idea, and a pizza shop sued a former employee for "stealing" their recipe — while librarians in Brazil were forcefully speaking out against copyright, calling it a fear-based reaction to open access to knowledge. Also, this is the week that the proposal of a Right To Be Forgotten started making the rounds in Europe.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, the FCC okayed the big telco mergers of SBC/AT&T and Verizon/MCI, while SBC was making demands of Google, and Sprint was launching its mobile broadband network. The movie industry was trying to plug the "analog hole" and Congress appeared to be going through the motions to appease them without much enthusiasm. But the most memorable development of the week was the discovery that Sony's new copy protection on CDs was a dangerous rootkit, and that other malware could piggyback on it, and that the same DRM was on CDs from other companies... all of which forced Sony to scramble to release a "patch" which didn't really fix the problem, and which itself turned out to come with a bunch of highly questionable baggage.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the happy-halloween dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, the fight over the CISA cybersecurity bill was on, but it looked like Facebook was secretly on the wrong side of this somewhat-disguised surveillance bill (a true purpose that was occasionally admitted if you looked in the right places). But none of this stopped the Senate from rejecting all the amendments that would have protected privacy and passing CISA with a 74-21 vote. Elsewhere, the EU was working on net neutrality rules that were full of loopholes and other problems. Meanwhile, the DOJ was saying Apple should decrypt customers' phones because the company still owns their copies of iOS, James Comey was blaming violent crime on citizens with cameras, and the Library of Congress released new DMCA anti-circumvention exemptions that were a complete mess.

Ten Years Ago

Five years earlier in 2010, in the same week, there was a prime example of a DMCA exemption mess when we noted that jailbreaking iPhones was legal, but jailbreaking an Xbox could land you in jail for three years. The Lenz v. Universal case was moving forward as Universal argued that the dancing baby video was not obvious fair use, a judge ordered Limewire to shut down entirely, and Myriad Genetics officially appealed the ruling that invalidated gene patents. The US was basically saying it would just ignore anything in ACTA it didn't like, while a group of law professors was urging Obama to drop support for the agreement and we were looking at how it could create insanely broad new criminal copyright liabilities. And we had an early mention of the brewing controversy around a little company you might have heard of, at the time still known as UberCab.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, some prominent technology commentators were still missing the point of the rise of amateur content online, while the online world of self-published movies was set to take off and even television networks were, ever so slightly, starting to grasp the need for change. The mobile web was still being hampered by attempts to section it off and pre-decide how it would work, while mobile email was beginning to move beyond the world of BlackBerry (and BlackBerry seemed to have suffered a bit of a glitch in the UK that got the devices temporarily banned by the BBC). MP3 player makers who weren't Apple were complaining about the Apple-induced shortage of flash memory, and Google abandoned its attempts to appease authors and publishers and went back to scanning books after a temporary pause.

Filed Under: history, look back

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

from the stuff-that-happened dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, the FBI was seriously dragging its heels on a FOIA request we filed, while we were looking at a recent terrorist bust by the agency that didn't seem to be very hampered by people "going dark", and Apple was in court fighting against demands that it unlock a phone. We took a look at how cable television is the exception to a pattern of decreasing prices for tech hardware and services, while the cable industry was still trying to explain how cord-cutting wasn't a real problem. And Tim Berners-Lee was speaking out about Facebook's plan to bastardize the internet with a limited free offering.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2010, there were a lot of shots fired in the legal war over commenters, with Google being ordered to turn over the IP addresses of YouTube commenters in one case just as a Canadian cop was filing another case with a similar demand, and a Broadway actor was also suing Twitter to unmask an anonymous tweeter — though perhaps the most fiery anger towards anonymity was from Gene Simmons who... wanted the nebulous online group Anonymous thrown in jail. Blizzard was employing a dubious copyright theory to go after cheat creators, an English heritage organization was making a beyond-dubious claim that it holds effective copyright on any and all photos of Stonehenge, and Joe DiMaggio's estate was trying to block the use of a photo of DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe with a threat that seemed like it might turn into a battle over questionable publicity rights — something we generally expected to fuel a growing category of IP trolling. There were developments in a few major copyright lawsuits too, with Righthaven losing to fair use in the first ruling to come down on its operation, the Golan case being appealed to the Supreme Court, and Viacom busting out the big guns for its YouTube appeal by hiring former solicitor general Ted Olson.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, the booming world of blogs was facing its first big spam crisis, while traditional news publishers were beginning to come to terms with how deeply they needed to rethink their operations for the internet. India joined the list of countries getting scared about Google Earth, though a tragedy in Pakistan was demonstrating how satellite images can be a good thing. Viral video makers JibJab were being awfully hypocritical about fair use and apparently failing to properly understand what it's for, while Craigslist was disappointingly fighting against scrapers and aggregators. And two of the biggest and most controversial internet names of the era were teaming up as Michael Robertson hired DVD Jon to hack for him.

Filed Under: history, look back