This Week In Techdirt History: August 25th – 31st
from the as-it-was dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2019, the Ninth Circuit was putting at least some limits on warrantless device searches at the border, while the EFF sued CBP and ICE for refusing to hand over GPS tracking device policies. The judge in one of Devin Nunes’s lawsuits asked for the identity of the famous Twitter accounts mocking him, newly released documents revealed how Backpage was helping law enforcement track down traffickers, and we highlighted a great op-ed about how gutting Section 230 harms the most marginalized.
There were also two very memorable events this week. One was the publication of Mike’s now-kinda-famous Protocols, Not Platforms paper, and the other was New York Times columnist Bret Stephens’s meltdown over being called a bedbug.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2014, we learned more about how the NSA makes its surveillance data available to domestic law enforcement, while former CIA director Michael Hayden was trying to downplay the CIA torture report, and the FISA court was twisting the Patriot Act to justify spying on Americans. A copyright-trolling lawyer was abusing the DMCA to silence critics, while a music distribution company was sending a bunch of bogus DMCAs of its own, and the fight was heating up between Lindsay Lohan and the makers of Grand Theft Auto. Also, PACER suddenly deleted a bunch of old cases, sparking a conversation about the many problems with the service and leading to a weak, nonsensical excuse.
Fifteen Years Ago
Five years earlier in the same week, we were still fresh off the recent launch of RECAP, and the federal courts were sounding the alarm about losing PACER revenue before changing their tune and saying RECAP was fine. Also this week in 2009, a Swedish court got The Pirate Bay taken down while Switzerland was trying to do the same to Google Street View, music publishers began their campaign of suing lyric sites, and we learned about the practice of copyright holders seeding their own files to find and sue downloaders. We also saw another good early Section 230 ruling, and featured an excellent interview about copyright with William Patry.
Comments on “This Week In Techdirt History: August 25th – 31st”
'The right for ME to offend OTHER people I meant, not them to offend ME!'
That ‘Bret Stephens is a bedbug’ story was just priceless to re-read, well worth checking out if anyone needs a quick chuckle.
Bret Stephens in multiple articles and tweets: The right to offend is a core part of society, and if you don’t like it go back to hiding in your safe-spaces!
Someone on twitter: Jokes about the NYT’s having a bedbug infestation, and someone else cracks a joke that the Stephens is the bedbug.
Bret Stephens: This is an outrage, no different then the most heinous of authoritarian atrocities against speech and civilized behavior throughout history!
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It won’t be much longer before we get to the 5th year anniversary of the Nunes memo article where out_of_the_blue desperately tried to spam it to hell and back with pro-Trump blogposts and promises that Hilary would see the inside of a jail cell, because… reasons, on top of promising to make it the article with the most comments.
Of course, this was before we realized what a shitshow 2020 was going to be, and there’d be genuine COVID-19 apologists in the audience that ballooned the vaccination article up into the thousands of comments.
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It’s Musk’s fault Brazil has turned into a dictatorship. What a conclusion.
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How did you come to that conclusion?
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I’ll take “straw men that came right out of my ass” for four hundred, Alex.
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Shut up, dork/loser!
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Sir, this is an Arby’s
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I’ll take “weak middle school comebacks” for a thousand, Alex.
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“It’s Musk’s fault Brazil has turned into a dictatorship. What a conclusion.”
Pardon my ignorance but … when was Brazil not a dictatorship?
How does one turn something into what it already is and has been for a very long time.
is meidastouch trust worthy?
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Even in the Greek myth, Midas turning everything he touches into gold is problematic, as he can’t embrace his daughter or drink water anymore.
So to answer your question, no.
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the youtube channel named meidas touch
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Ah, then to answer your question, I don’t know.
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so far i seen them criticize trump but never kamala always praising her despite her still having issues
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and I should care because why?
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uhhhh i wasn’t talking to you am talking to sam?
Re: Re: Re:3
Well, trump has a lot more to criticize.
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How come the media never reports on that time Harris totally tried to overthrow the government?!?
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If you want that kind of “reporting”, please tune in to Fox.