This Week In Techdirt History: April 23rd – 29th
Five Years Ago
This week in 2018, we announced one of our most exciting and unusual projects: a Kickstarter to fund the production and release of a training card game developed by the CIA and uncovered via FOIA. We were blown away by the response when we hit our goal in 40 hours, and we’re still very proud of the end result. In fact, there are a tiny handful of copies still available at a discounted price on Miniature Market, and that’s almost definitely your last chance to get a copy — so if you want one, don’t hesitate!
Also this week in 2018: small ISPs were joining the legal battle to preserve net neutrality, Lindsey Graham was insisting that the “fairness doctrine” applies to the internet, we looked at an interesting question about whether the DOJ itself was violating SESTA/FOSTA, and we got what we hoped would be the last update from the Monkey Selfie case.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2013, Grooveshark suffered a loss in its long-running legal battle with UMG, CBS announced plans to expand its war against Aereo, and (in much brighter news) the appeals court defended fair use and appropriation art by overturning the ruling against Richard Prince. Bob Goodlatte was making worryingly vague calls for copyright reform, Spain admitted that its new copyright law was designed to keep it off the US’s “naughty list”, and it appeared people hadn’t learned from ACTA because they weren’t very worried about intellectual property enforcement being a difficult aspect of TAFTA/TTIP negotiations. Meanwhile, Prenda was in trouble in one court while some of its team were still up to its old tricks elsewhere.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2008, the head of the patent office admitted that they were overwhelmed by really bad patent applications. An AT&T lobbyist was the latest to make the old prediction about the internet becoming clogged in the next few years, Cablevision was caught blatantly lying to customers about the switch to digital TV, and ABC was trying to restrict how other networks reported on the presidential debates. The FBI was asking for more power to monitor internet activity, Bill Gates was making a bizarre attack on open source software, and a copyright battle appeared to be brewing over OK Go’s famous treadmill video.