This Week In Techdirt History: October 13th – 19th
from the that-was-that dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2019, states were rushing to protect net neutrality followed by the court ruling that shot down the FCC’s attempt to prevent them. Marc Benioff was being extremely hypocritical about Section 230, the guy who tried to extort YouTubers with bogus DMCA takedowns agreed to a settlement, and a guest post from Eric Goldman ran through the top myths about content moderation. Meanwhile, the Portland Police Review Board gave officers the go-ahead on lying to people to get them to stop filming, and an infamous police interrogation firm sued Netflix over a documentary miniseries.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2014, there were bits of good news on the patent front, with the number of new patent troll lawsuits declining thanks to the Supreme Court, the US Patent Office rejecting a lot more software patents, and the Judicial Conference voting on a rule change to make life a little harder for patent trolls. On the other hand, the leak of the latest TPP text revealed an IP chapter that would be a disaster for public health and enable much greater online surveillance to appease Hollywood, plus measures to criminalize corporate whistleblowing.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2009, NBC faced a hefty copyright lawsuit over a font, ASCAP and BMI were looking to jack up radio royalties, and ridiculous DRM was adding to the many problems of the disastrous PSP Go launch. A court smacked down the feds’ attempt to stall on handing over lobbying info about telco immunity, while another court ordered Comcast and a newspaper to reveal the identity of anonymous commenters. ASCAP failed in its attempt to have ringtones treated as public performances, Public Knowledge was pointing out the MPAA’s lies about why it wants to break your TV, and we looked at the latest trends in anti-file sharing propaganda.
Comments on “This Week In Techdirt History: October 13th – 19th”
Maybe if we’re lucky, maybe websites like techdirt will still also be here in 15 years.
Re:
Independent sites and blogs will likely still be around in some shape or form. They may simply have to make changes owing to policy clashes or difficulties, or simply because moderation and other tasks are more trouble than they’re worth. I still visit Torrentfreak quite regularly, for one, even though they purged their comment databases and that was half the fun of that place.
Sometimes websites just end up disappearing for more practical, IRL analog reasons. I remember the days of p2pnet.net, until Wayne Crooke tried to get the site taken down on a spurious defamation claim (sound familiar?). He didn’t succeed, but got what he wanted – the lawsuit took such a physical and mental toll on site owner Jon Newton that he eventually retired and sold off the site to someone, who quietly closed the site after a few months.
It’s sad, but there’s always going to be demand for news and opinions that don’t pander to the narrative peddled out by dictators, corporations and other powers that be – and to that end, there will be people who want to share those narratives. If Techdirt and other sites like it were to disappear, it would be sad – but it would also create a void for other likeminded individuals to fill.
Sometimes, you need to create your own luck.