This Week In Techdirt History: June 11th – 17th
from the NSAnniversary dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2018 began with a much-anticipated day: the official end of net neutrality rules. We took a long look at Ajit Pai’s latest comments about the change, while the FCC was busy fending off questions about the DDoS attack it made up (and also, randomly, about Pai’s big coffee mug), though Senators certainly had questions (about the attack, not the mug). Meanwhile, we looked at the huge dangers of the EU Copyright Directive and hoped European citizens would step up to oppose it the way they did with ACTA, while the UN’s free speech expert called it an attack on free speech that would violate human rights. And in the US, lawmakers were reintroducing pro-encryption bills after the FBI destroyed its own “going dark” narrative.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2013, America was reeling from the revelations (late the previous week) of the NSA’s PRISM program and general domestic surveillance. Many were anticipating a manhunt for the whistleblower, but one wasn’t necessary, because this was also the week we learned the name Edward Snowden when he revealed himself as the man behind the leaks. Meanwhile, the fallout was widespread: the author of the Patriot Act himself said the surveillance is abusive and must end, James Clapper was trying to explain why he had recently denied there was any data collection while Ron Wyden was calling for hearings over intelligence officials lying to Congress, Rand Paul called for a class action lawsuit, a group of 86 companies and civil liberties groups called on Congress to end the spying (which a bipartisan group of Senators quickly moved to do), while previous NSA whistleblowers were defending Snowden and adding context to the revelations.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2008, the MPAA was asking the FCC for the power to block DVR recording of certain movies, XM settled its lawsuit with EMI over the ability to record streams, and the Associated Press was going after bloggers for posting headlines and article snippets. Metallica was going back to its anti-internet roots and forcing early reviews of its latest album offline (and the backlash led the band to apologize and insist its management company was the one to blame). A court ruled, thankfully, that record labels cannot stop the sale of promo CDs just by printing “not for resale” on them, and we looked at a great article about how copyright has stretched so far it has broken. Meanwhile, Canada introduced its own version of the DMCA and tried to pretend US lobbyists had nothing to do with it.
Comments on “This Week In Techdirt History: June 11th – 17th”
Technically, Metallica’s roots were the promotion of sharing their music on cassette tapes. But once they climbed to the top, they pulled the ladder from right under them (which the Filipinos call “crab mentality”; I call it “ladder-pulling”). So Metallica suing Napster and other anti-fan activities of their are not a return to their roots but rather a treacherous betrayal thereof.
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*other anti-fan activities of theirs were
Much of what was in The Future of Copyright articles were spot on – but I don’t think any of them could have expected that the needle would actually start shifting away from media companies at all. To be fair, I don’t think any of us would see copyright law start to play a defensive position after Prenda Law and Malibu Media started to fuck things up so badly – or laws like SOPA being forced into submission.
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Or that copyright law would actually expire again after 40 years, such that Winnie The Pooh is in the public domain and that Mickey Mouse (!) will enter the public domain at the end of this year!
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More shocking is that Disney isn’t trying to extend copyright.
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I think Disney isn’t lobbying to extend © because they realize:
The fact that Disney realized they lost this © war is probably why they haven’t taken action suing Warner Bros. Discovery over John Oliver’s Mickey Mouse skits because they already threw in the towel and with a year left, there’s no sense in litigating a fait accompli.
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IMO, more reason 2 than reason 1. Disney could probably afford both the legal and popular opinion in support of extending copyright even further. But why would they need to if trademark is something they can constantly renew anyway, for minimal cost? Someone in the legal team probably also pointed out that Disney had, realistically, very little to lose with Steamboat Willie going into the public domain. As frequent troll out_of_the_blue amongst others said, nobody’s bending over backwards to obtain, leverage, or consume early 20th century material. Of course, they mostly used it as an argument for why the public domain didn’t matter, but the point very much stands.
Or they really, really didn’t want to take on another rich entertainment corporation in a highly protracted legal battle, knowing that John Oliver would all too readily follow up with an “Eat Shit Disney” musical number.
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Both are excellent points!
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Disney’s not dumb. Mickey Mouse will eventually fade into obscurity as the generations that grew up with him for nostalgia’s sake pass on. Disney as it is makes its money primarily through works like Hannah Montana and Owl House. There’s no money in a dumbass cartoon rodent unless it’s mass-produced as a fursuit.
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Quite a bit CHICAGOJACKET of what the future held of Copyright articles were right on the money however I don’t think any about them might have expected that the needle would really begin moving away from media organizations by any means.