This Week In Techdirt History: February 4th – 10th
Five Years Ago
This week in 2019, as quickly as it went away, Article 13 was back in the EU. And now somehow the Copyright Directive was even worse than before, but still not bad enough for the copyright industries. Meanwhile, we wrote about the failings of YouTube’s ContentID, the ongoing fight to make PACER stop charging so much, and the latest brazen example of the revolving door between government and lobbying. This was also the week that Gavin McInnes filed his silly defamation lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2014, we learned about just how many Yahoo and Google accounts the NSA and FBI got access to, the DOJ admitted that NSA phone record collection “probably” swept up Congress as well, and leaks revealed the GCHQ’s program dedicated to “dirty tricks”. We also took a closer look at the practice of parallel construction. Meanwhile, the USTR was still pretending to be transparent, but perhaps also realizing that just pretending was becoming a problem. We also wrote a pair of posts about an excellent Cory Doctorow column on the subject of DRM.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2009, we looked at how much Apple’s view on patents had changed over the years. A new ACTA proposal aimed to criminalize non-commercial copyright infringement, the EFF was gearing up to fight back against bogus YouTube takedowns, Hollywood took another crack at getting permission to break DVRs, and Fox was demanding people give up their fair use rights. Germany rejected a three strikes law, while a new EU proposal called for a heavyhanded crackdown on file sharing. But perhaps most memorably, this was the week when a very important fight about fair use and transformative work kicked off, as Associated Press demanded that Shepard Fairey pay to license the photo of Obama that was the basis of his iconic “HOPE” poster.