This Week In Techdirt History: June 2nd – 8th

Techdirt

from the those-were-the-days dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, the FCC was remaining in denial about the lack of broadband competition, while we asked why all the antitrust attention was focused on Big Tech but not Big Telecom. Officials in Germany were pushing for encryption backdoors while Facebook was considering going ahead and undermining its own encryption regardless, and the EU Court of Justice was suggesting that maybe the entire internet should be censored and filtered. The targets of Devin Nunes’s cow lawsuits were fighting back, and some drama at YouTube once again demonstrated the impossibility of content moderation.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, a failed patent troll was hit with legal fees and the Supreme Court issued two more smackdowns of the CAFC, while Malibu Media was trying to get more ammo against its targets and the EU Court of Justice ruled that just viewing stuff online isn’t copyright infringement. The EFF argued in court that the NSA knowingly and illegally destroyed evidence, while the UK government was trying (and failing) to hide details of GCHQ fiber line taps, while courts in both countries were holding secret trials related to terrorism. Also, we hit the one year anniversary of the very first Snowden revelation, and noted that while much had changed since then, it wasn’t enough.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, the Supreme Court agreed to take on the Bilski case about whether software and business models could be patented. The RIAA’s voluntary program for ISPs was not exactly a hit, ASCAP was looking to get some of that sweet video game money, and JD Salinger infamously sued the author of an unauthorized sequel to Catcher in the Rye. Apple proved the EFF’s point about arbitrary app store rejections by rejecting the EFF’s RSS reader, and Creative Commons was still facing some problems due to the blurry line between commercial and non-commercial. Also, Barbara Streisand decided to publish an entire book about the Malibu home that she once rather famously wanted to keep secret.

Filed Under: history, look back