This Week In Techdirt History: April 17th – 23rd
from the same-as-it-ever-was dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2017, new CIA director Mike Pompeo went on a hypocritical rant about Wikileaks and free speech, the administration killed Open.Gov, and the DOJ boss was railing against encryption. Tech companies were fighting against Trump’s travel bans in two different courts, and Roku was getting into the lobbying world to fight for net neutrality. Meanwhile, Google’s rumored move to build an ad blocker into the Chrome browser was raising weird antitrust questions, while the famous Fearless Girl statue placed next to the Wall Street Bull was raising stupid copyright notions.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2012, ACTA was edging closer to death as its remaining EU supporters started thinking about rejecting it, and the Rapporteur’s recommendation was to scrap it and come up with a replacement (which it looked like G8 countries might already be hard at work on). The Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN was playing whac-a-mole against the Pirate Bay but not always getting its way in court. The Meguapload legal fight was continuing, the API copyright fight between Google and Oracle was getting started, and the legislative fight was on over the terrible cybersecurity bill CISPA. We also took a closer look at the extent of the revolving door between the government and the MPAA.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2007, Microsoft was challenging Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick on antitrust grounds, a judge rejected webcasters’ complains about new webcast royalty rates, and Clear Channel was being extremely hypocritical about media consolidation. An effort to show prior art on Verizon’s VoIP patents was moving slowly, while a new patent reform effort in Congress was missing the big picture. Also: the FCC admitted it sucks at measuring broadband competition, Jack Thompson settled his lawsuit with Take-Two Interactive, Sony’s DVD DRM was causing problems, and (long before the cord-cutting trend was in full swing) Time Warner was moving to reduce its reliance on cable TV.
Comments on “This Week In Techdirt History: April 17th – 23rd”
Question.
Was Fearless Girl taken down in the end? If so, I hope someone replaced with a statue of Bart Simpson pulling a moonie at Charging Bull. ;p