This Week In Techdirt History: March 8th – 14th (Plus: A Note On Your Feedback)
Before we get started: last week, I asked for your feedback on the weekend posts and some possible changes we’re considering going forward. The dominant theme of the responses was that lots of people like the Comment posts just the way they are, but can take or leave these History posts. We’re still mulling over the options, and next week we’ll be taking a break from the History posts for a few weeks while we spotlight our game jam winners. After that, the likely plan is to bring back the History posts with a time shift to ten, fifteen, and twenty years ago, and also to replace these paragraph summaries with a simple bullet list of headlines, in the hopes that it makes them a little more interesting and easier to skim (plus a little quicker to put together on my end, since it seems like not many people are reading them).
But, for this week, we’re not making any changes just yet — so let’s get started!
Five Years Ago
This week in 2021, we did a deep dive into the problems with Senator Tillis’s Digital Copyright Act, while some other Senators were pushing the FCC to finally update the pathetic definition of broadband. A DMCA complaint claiming copyright on the word “outstanding” sought to get dictionary entries de-listed from Google, while one court was allowing a lawsuit over abusive DMCA notices to move forward. Tennessee lawmakers introduced another attack on Section 230, while the Utah legislature wrapped up its session by passing two unconstitutional internet bills, but we wrote about how it’s not just Republican state legislatures pulling such nonsense. Also, a judge tossed out the Trump campaign’s laughably stupid SLAPP suit against the New York Times.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2016, while Donald Trump sent a cease and desist threat to a band over using his name in a song, we wrote about how laws should be designed as if the people we distrust the most are in power. We dedicated an episode of the podcast to the ins and outs of the Apple/FBI fight over iPhone encryption, while noting that the DOJ kept pointing to a test in its cases that didn’t actually exist, and how Apple might be forced to reveal and share the iPhone unlocking code widely, just before Apple’s VP of Engineering spoke up about what the FBI was doing. Of course, none of this stopped Senators Burr and Feinstein from threatening yet another bill to backdoor encryption, or President Obama from getting everything wrong about the issue.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2011, we did a deep dive into a pair of recent events all about intermediary liability and Section 230. Music publishers settled with Limewire to avoid proving they actually owned the copyrights in question, while the RIAA (which was also very unhappy with Rep. Lofgren for calling out ICE’s web censorship) had its absurd claim of “trillions” in damages against Limewire rejected by a judge, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear an important appeal regarding copyright and the first amendment. Meanwhile, we saw several examples of silly trademark bullying, with Lady Gaga threatening a controversial line of ice cream, Zynga seeking to trademark the suffix “Ville”, and Bath & Bodyworks going to court to explain to Summit Entertainment that the word “twilight” existed before the movie.