This Week In Techdirt History: July 7th – 13th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, we wrote about how getting rid of Section 230 would just strengthen the internet giants, the dangers of forthcoming deep fake legislation, and why thinking of privacy as a property right would end badly. We looked at the backwards approach of the UK’s online harms legislation, while UK ISPs were vilifying Mozilla for trying to secure the internet. An appeals court affirmed the ruling that Trump couldn’t block follows on social media, which quickly led to a lawsuit against AOC. And Prenda’s John Steele insisted he was very, very sorry as he got sentenced to five years in prison.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, we learned about how Hollywood studios tried to get file sharing sites added to New Zealand’s CSAM blacklist, while Keurig was demonstrating its terrible idea for coffee DRM, and Aereo was pivoting in reaction to the ruling against it. New emails revealed that the NSA knew in advance about GCHQ’s plan to destroy The Guardian’s computers, Lindsey Graham was offering up a hysterical defense of NSA abuse, and the US Courts wiretap report showed just how easy it was to get wiretaps. Also, the judge in Ross Ulbricht’s trial was not impressed by his “bitcoin isn’t money” defense.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, the RIAA was fast out of the gates in attempting to extend the interpretation of its victory over Usenet.com, the future of the Pirate Bay was uncertain (and some of the reporting on it was incorrect), and an appeals court punted on the constitutionality of the Copyright Royalty Board, while the Pirate Party member of the European Parliament, Christian Engstrom, was explaining the party’s position and goals. One court worryingly decided that blogs aren’t legitimate news sources and don’t get shield protections, while another decided that IP addresses aren’t personally identifiable information. And the Shepard Fairey case about transformative works got even more complicated.