This Week In Techdirt History: April 22nd – 28th
from the past-and-present dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2013, while Prenda was facing new court orders and getting angry (but still trying to pull its same old tricks, we also saw lots of DMCA and copyright abuse all over the place. Fox managed to take down Cory Doctorow’s book about censorship with a bogus DMCA notice, a copyright troll was suing over the wrong movie, and Google’s problematic handling of DMCA requests led to a bad takedown being even worse. There were a couple victories too, though, such as an appeals court overturning the verdict denying Richard Prince’s fair use defence of his appropriation art, and a court rejecting a dentist’s attempt to use copyright to censor negative reviews.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2008, an AT&T lobbyist was soothsaying about the supposed dire future of broadband capacity, Cablevision was caught blatantly lying to customers about the switch to digital TV, and Bill Gates was making some simply bizarre claims about open source software. News companies were considering hitting back against MLB’s attempts to restrict reporters, while ABC was trying to do a similar thing by restricting coverage of the presidential debates. And Neil Gaiman was weighing in on J. K. Rowling’s ongoing copyright crusade against a Harry Potter guidebook.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2003, the DOJ was stepping up to take the RIAA’s side in its fight against Verizon, and a district court got on board and ruled in the RIAA’s favor, while Penn State was succumbing to the industry’s demands to help it crack down on student filesharing, and a whole bunch of record labels decided to sue the venture capitalists who backed Napster. We also got a look at the budding friendship between Hollywood and the FBI. In more positive news for the history of copyright, though, this was the week that Creative Commons went global.
Comments on “This Week In Techdirt History: April 22nd – 28th”
Budding Friendship Between Hollywood And The FBI ...
… culminating in the Kim Dotcom raid in 2012, with the pliant support of the NZ police.
So according to Nazaire the EFF is against Internet regulation. But Richard Bennett, in his rage against net neutrality, claims the EFF’s support for nn means they are for regulation.
Watching copyright nuts tie themselves in knots with their own bullshit is immensely hilarious. out_of_the_blue’s heroes, ladies and gentlemen…
Bill Gates: “Nobody Can Ever Improve The Software”
Well, Microsoft sometimes seems to act as though it were true. That is to say, it seems unable or unwilling to improve its own software after it has been open-sourced.