This Week In Techdirt History: January 23rd - 29th
Five Years Ago
This week in 2017, outgoing FCC boss Tom Wheeler had a message for Trump supporters about the benefits of net neutrality, while cable's congressional allies were lining up to urge Ajit Pai to kill the cable box competition plan. Trump was muzzling federal employees and seeking to trademark "Make America Great Again". Virginia was pushing a protectionist law preventing better broadband, garnering opposition from internet companies. Meanwhile, a judge allowed the lawsuit over PACER fees to continue as a class action, Perfect 10 suffered another loss in court that set more good copyright precedent, and in unfortunate news, a state appeals court said unlocking a phone with a fingerprint doesn't violate the Fifth Amendment.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2012, many on the internet were celebrating the victory over SOPA, getting bolder in calling out the MPAA for lying and opposing Chris Dodd — while SOPA supporters were busy whining, offering fake olive branches, and making up threats. But much attention was also already turning to new issues: the Megaupload shutdown which was causing other companies to turn off useful services (and leading one astroturf group to embarrass itself with a late press release claiming SOPA was necessary to shut Megaupload down), and the ACTA agreement, which was getting the SOPA treatment in Poland with huge crowds on the street and politicians donning Guy Fawkes masks.
Fifteen Years Ago
In 2007, the most controversial thing about the MPAA in the eyes of the average person was their movie rating system — and this week they finally agreed to make some small changes to it. The RIAA was telling the CEA to do the impossible and stop making them look evil, while record labels were talking up the idea of getting paid for giving consumers rights they already have. Blu-ray's DRM was cracked (even the creators admitted it) while Apple's DRM was facing legal issues in Norway. And Fox's "piracy czar" was subpoenaing YouTube to find out who was uploading episodes of 24 and The Simpsons.
Also, we got an extremely important Section 230 ruling in a case against Yahoo.