This Week In Techdirt History: July 11th – 17th

Techdirt

from the looking-back dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, the DEA seemed to be making some kind of effort to curb its abuse of warrantless wiretaps, while a report in the UK showed that police improperly accessed data on citizens thousands of times, and Sweden was considering making DNA that had been donated purely for medical research available to cops and insurance companies. Two senators were speaking out against efforts to expand FBI surveillance, and one of them who is well known to Techdirt readers — Ron Wyden — joined the podcast to discuss it. This was also the week that Pokemon Go took the world by storm, and we had an early mention of what is now a household name with a post about AstraZeneca trying to extend a patent.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, we wrote about why PROTECT IP would fail in its goals because people would never accept it, while lobbyists were ramping up the pressure to get it passed. Righthaven was accused of avoiding paying legal fees it owed and was ordered to stop delaying, while it continued to suffer loss after loss. And the Monkey Selfie drama continued, with a news agency telling us to remove the photos from our post and the photographer claiming he owned the copyright because he thought the picture might happen, while we looked closer at why the photo is likely in the public domain.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, a judge handed down a worrying ruling that said it infringes copyright to edit movies you’ve bought. The recording industry in the UK was asking ISPs to shut down the accounts of file sharers, but they were not convinced by the evidence, drawing the disappointing ire of indie record labels that were failing to innovate. There was also a lot of think-of-the-children panic happening, and we took a look at the overbearing ways people were trying to keep kids “safe” by tracking and monitoring them, while some in congress were blaming MySpace for troubled children.

Filed Under: history, look back