This Week In Techdirt History: June 15th – 21st

Five Years Ago

This week in 2020, the killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests were having an impact, with one court citing the incident in denying immunity to officers in another case, more schools moving to end contracts with cops, and Minneapolis city council voting unanimously to disband its police department. Meanwhile, Devin Nunes’s lawyer was telling a judge to ignore Section 230, Josh Hawley was pushing yet another dumb anti-230 plan that was even worse than it appeared at first, and the DOJ released its own preposterous recommendations on 230. Also, the Internet Archive closed its National Emergency Library program early due to the lawsuit from publishers.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2015, News Corp. was trying to use the DMCA to defend a ridiculous Sunday Times story about Edward Snowden from criticism, even as the reporter behind it admitted he just wrote what the UK government told him. Congress was realizing it didn’t really have the votes to move fast track trade authority forward, much to the chagrin of TPP supporters, while the legislative fight got more confusing and went back to the Senate. We also wrote about how the CIA was still acting like a domestic surveillance agency despite instructions otherwise.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2010, as the release of the iPhone 4 approached, it was still far from clear whether video calling would ever truly catch on. The iPad was already making a big splash, but attempts to adapt all kinds of media to focus on them were not so promising, and we weren’t sure why iPad digital comics were being priced higher than paper copies. It was earlier in the history of Section 230, but there was still discussion about whether it needed to be “fixed”, and it was late in the history of LimeWire but apparently not too late for the recording industry to sue it yet again.