This Week In Techdirt History: February 4th – 10th

Techdirt

from the and-so-it-was dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, the EU was taking a worryingly restrictive approach to trying to fix copyright licensing, France’s Hadopi was trying to get the national library to use more DRM, and Japan was planning to seed P2P networks with fake files containing copyright warnings. The UK, on the other hand, rejected plans to create a new IP Czar, though a new copyright research center seeking to restore some balance to the overall debate was facing heavy opposition right out the gate. This was also the week that we wrote about the curious privacy claims about tweets from an investigative journalist named Teri Buhl, which quickly prompted a largely confused response and, soon afterwards, threats of a lawsuit.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, the recording industry was continuing its attempts to sue Baidu and floating fun ideas like building copyright filters into antivirus software, while we were taking a look at the morass of legacy royalty agreements holding back the industry’s attempts at innovation. A Danish court told an ISP it had to block the Pirate Bay, leading the ISP to ask for clarification while it considered fighting back. And Microsoft was doing some scaremongering in Canada in pursuit of stronger copyright laws.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, Germany’s patent office was seeking a copyright levy on all PCs, while the EU was mercifully pushing back on attempts to treat more infringement as criminal. One record label executive was telling the industry it had to embrace file sharing or die, but the company line was still the language of moral panic. Speaking of which, in an interview in the Harvard Political Review, Jack Valenti was asked about his infamous “Boston strangler” warning about VCRs — and proceeded to tell a bunch of lies to claim his warning was in fact apt.

Filed Under: history, look back