This Week In Techdirt History: August 18th – 24th

from the do-you-remember dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, Beto O’Rourke (remember him?) joined the silly parade of politicians looking to destroy Section 230, while the Wall Street Journal was rightly calling out Josh Hawley’s “nannyish” internet law ideas. A Russian troll farm was taking a second shot at suing Facebook after its first attempt was dismissed on Section 230 grounds, and Devin Nunes’s discovery requests were revealing just how much of a fishing expedition he was going on. YouTube brought a lawsuit against a guy who tried to extort people through bogus DMCA takedowns, while MLB was claiming revenue from obviously fair use YouTube videos. And Facebook commenced a weird and pointless audit of political bias on the platform, while we ran the second part of our two-part podcast breaking down the FTC’s Facebook settlement.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, Stefan Molyneux (remember him?) was abusing the DMCA to silence a critic despite styling himself as an anarcho-capitalist who opposes copyright. Hollywood was back to blaming the poor performance of a movie on piracy instead of on the movie sucking, Konami was flip-flopping on a fan-remake of Metal Gear, Getty threatened the wrong IP law firm in its copyright trolling efforts, and the UK courts doled out a stunning 33-month prison sentence for camcording a movie. Meanwhile, the unsealed transcript in the Jewel v. NSA case showed how much contempt the DOJ has for American citizens, and NSA whistleblower Bill Binney offered up some insight into the real reasons the NSA spies on everyone.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, we asked why it’s necessary or good for copyright to block unauthorized sequels to literary classics, while courts were continuing in their insane efforts to slice and dice the Superman copyright, and an incident around infringing architectural plans raised some thorny and fascinating copyright questions. A damages order in a Finnish court really highlighted how crazy the numbers were in the Jammie Thomas ruling, while we looked back at what might be the very first copyright trial in history. Also, though it had only launched the week prior, we were already seeing the power and promise of RECAP.

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Comments on “This Week In Techdirt History: August 18th – 24th”

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31 Comments

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re:

LGBQ is now 2SLOWIQGBTAA+

Although it should be 2SLOWIQGB3TAA+^13

What happened to transvestites and transexuals?

Out of all the genders, why do they only transition to male or female? Why not transition to one of the other hundreds of genders?

Seems transgender people only believe in two genders.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

Hey, I appreciate you coming here and admitting you don’t understand something and want to be educated. Gender is a social construct and the details will vary from culture to culture. Some people more closely identify with various perceptions of “traditional” gender roles (regardless of their gender as assigned at birth) and others don’t. So some trans people might associate with being female whereas a non-binary person doesn’t. Both are fine because it’s all a social construct. Biological details are only important when you’re discussing medical issues like the ability to become pregnant or concerns over prostate cancer.

If you’d like to understand more, there are plenty of resources online. Glad you’re curious and willing to learn!

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

“A social construct is a concept that exists not in objective reality but as a result of human interaction. Put another way, it exists because humans agree that it exists.”

There are some confused individuals who believe in unlimited genders or the ability to change sex(not gender), but I do not believe it is even close to a majority.

I guess unicorns are real too

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terop (profile) says:

Re: Re:

According to your maximalist definition of ©, you’d regard google translate as a violation of ©

This is always a danger. If input data for the translator generally comes from pirate sources, the translator itself might be illegal. But its for google to decide when the horror has gone too far.

But if this is the case for google translate, my gltf_to_zip converter might have a rough ride. Google with their unlimited budget is able to withstand the wrath of newspapers who see their articles translated without permission to other languages and distributed on the internet. Since I don’t have unlimited budget for this, I need to be extra careful with my gltf_to_zip converter. If I see users input pirated material to the converter, the decisions needed are going to be annoying.

But fear not, currently the site has no traffic. Pirates didn’t get interested in the material, and thus we’re not seeing pirate material in our log files.

terop (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:6

I’ll just add that software I wrote benefits about 9.5 million users daily…

Then I need to bring in the software I wrote was purchased by customers 150 million units. I just can’t do that same level distribution without help from large company with extensive marketing operation.

My meshpage.org has around 570 downloads from itch.io. Thats the level of distribution that is possible when you work alone in your dungeon.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:7

The number of downloads of a piece of software you wrote (and continue to bring up in shameless, pathetic self-promotion completely out of context) is unrelated to how correct or incorrect you are about a particular topic. Also, you being incredibly wrong about copyright doesn’t shatter someone else’s world view.

terop (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:8

how correct or incorrect you are about a particular topic.

Its not about correctness, since opinions are fundamentally viewpoint-dependent and if you’re stuck next-door neighbour to russia’s war efforts, your viewpoint might be slightly different than the usa boys who were born with gold spoon in his mouth.

Also, you being incredibly wrong about copyright doesn’t shatter someone else’s world view.

you’re the one who insist that copyright is about correctness, instead of viewpoint dependent opinion. I think you’re wrong.

block dag (profile) says:

technology

“It’s always fascinating to look back at the history of tech and how far we’ve come, especially in such a rapidly evolving industry. The issues discussed years ago often still resonate today, highlighting ongoing challenges like digital privacy, intellectual property, and the balance between innovation and regulation.

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