This Week In Techdirt History: June 23rd – 29th
from the as-it-was dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2019, an Australian court ruled that media companies could be held liable for Facebook comments on their news stories, the Indian government used a national security law to block Twitter accounts all over the world, and the EU Intellectual Property Office released an utterly ridiculous propaganda film. Josh Hawley’s bill to remove Section 230 protections was not getting much support, and we dedicated an episode of the podcast to all the ways it sucked. We also released our Don’t Shoot The Message Board report about the impact of Section 230 on innovation and the economy.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2014, former NSA boss Keith Alexander was chasing big paychecks for cybersecurity consulting, while we looked at how House leadership tried to misrepresent the amendment that defunded NSA backdoor searches. Meanwhile, the long-awaited DOJ drone memo revealed all the rights the AUMF trumps, and cited yet another secret drone memo in its text. Also, the Supreme Court finally killed Aereo with its bizarre “looks like a duck” test, leading even Hollywood publications to express their concern about the decision.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2009, the Associated Press was still being weird about people “stealing” their content, newspapers were getting some early backlash over online-only stories, and we noted how newspaper websites rarely linked out to other sites. Musician Katy Perry started a dumb fight over designer Katie Perry’s clothing, Kindle DRM struck again, a German court demanded Rapidshare do the impossible, Spain rejected a three strikes law, and the Swedish court denied a Pirate Bay retrial. Also, an era came to an end when Kodak announced that it would discontinue its iconic Kodachrome film.
Comments on “This Week In Techdirt History: June 23rd – 29th”
Interesting that there’s a story about Kindle DRM fifteen years ago, because I purchased A.R. Moxon’s Very Fine People on the Kindle store yesterday and stripped its DRM. Moxon was okay with it, his publisher was okay with it (which is Moxon himself, since Very Fine People is self-published), and I’m not going to share the file of the DRM-stripped ebook, so basically, stripping it of its DRM is a victimless crime (unless you count Amazon, and I don’t, since they have the resources to maintain the DRM of the books up-to-date and prevent hackers to the best of their ability, which is not very good as I’ve shown).
BTW, the book is fantastic and I highly recommend everybody here buy it. Including the trolls, but they’d probably hate it.
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He’s one of the few people I still keep track of via Twitter. Having read several of the essays that are in the book via his newsletter, I can second that recommendation.
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I think it was actually because of your recommendation that I followed him on Substack, and then Ghost, and now I have bought his book from my local independent bookstore as well as the aforementioned Kindle ebook whence I stripped the DRM.
What can I say? I’m a format maximalist (even though I’m as far from a copyright maximalist as can be)!
lmao, some of the comments on that one. Really takes me back.
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From what?
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Surprised they haven’t deleted your comment yet.
Rather than respond to criticism with more compelling speech, this site prefers to censor those who manifest viewpoints in opposition to their degenerate, pro-Democrat orthodoxy.
So you’re not very familiar with the website is what you’re saying…
Your comments are still here. What censorship are you talking about? The community flagging that community members do rather than the Techdirt personnel? The act of flagging your bullshit is an act of free speech by everyone else. You say “respond with more compelling speech” but A) compelling is subjective and you’ll never agree when someone calls you on your bullshit B) people aren’t required to respond and are free to not listen to you. Free speech doesn’t mean you get a free audience that is forced to listen to you.