This Week In Techdirt History: December 29th – January 4th

from the that-was-that dept

Five Years Ago

This week at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020, a new study shed light on just how racially biased facial recognition algorithms are, while we looked at how tracking college students everywhere they go on campus had become the new norm. The Minnesota appeals court struck down the state’s broadly-written revenge porn law, while a California court just barely allowed a class action lawsuit over Google’s location tracking to move forward. And over in the EU, the patent office rejected two patent applications that listed an AI as the inventor.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014-2015, we looked at some of the news that certain people hoped to bury on Christmas Eve, like the details of the NSA’s illegal surveillance of Americans and France’s enactment of a controversial surveillance law. We also looked at how the NSA tries to break encryption in any way it can, and how the FBI used NSLs to get around FISA court rejections. And we wrote about how copyright makes culture disappear and how it forced one filmmaker to rewrite Martin Luther King’s words. Also, we responded to a totally bogus cease and desist letter sent over our reporting on the infamous monkey selfie.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009-2010, we expressed disappointment in Zynga’s copyright attacks over an autoplay script, explored a curious question about music licensing and international borders, and looked at the UK Government report showing the real dangers and high cost of the Digital Economy Bill. A court cited Section 230 protections in dismissing a defamation claim against a consumer complaint website, the Canadian government shut down 4,500 innocent sites while going after a Yes Men parody, and it was revealed that there were 100 Viacom-uploaded clips among those that Viacom sued YouTube over.

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Comments on “This Week In Techdirt History: December 29th – January 4th”

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29 Comments

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

The NSA story reminded me of Room 641A, which, as you know, was located at 611 Folsom Street. Thinking about San Francisco also brings to mind how the city’s government has ceased functioning in any meaningful capacity and has essentially become a well-lubricated conduit for transferring tax dollars to crony NGOs.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:4

You have to admit, Trump intuited that political retailing was kayfabe and just another form of entertainment… and as such should be funny, exciting, and entertaining.

When the public realized they weren’t obligated to bear JEB!, HRC, or Kamala with equanimity, it was over for them.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:2

Look, the entire business model of West Coast NGO progressives is to abuse the public relentlessly and then demand money to ‘fix’ the problem.

The abuse is an integral part of the business model and the more abuse the better. Without immiserating the public, the libs have no leverage.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re:

“You know, with all this rightwing-to-far-right populism bullhonkey springing up all over the world, alongside poorly thought through tech regulation attempts, I wonder how the techdirt history articles are gonna look a decade or so from now.” the far and extreme left isn’t doing good either

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Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

The United States has no real “extreme left”. Lying about that fact because you don’t want anyone to shittalk conservatives won’t turn the lie into the truth. Neither will lying about Democrats being “extreme leftists” when almost all of them are right-of-center liberal dickheads.

Also: Criticizing the government, regardless of who holds office, is as American as the Boston Tea Party. The Founding Fathers wrote the First Amendment partly to give citizens the freedom to criticize their government for its shortcomings without being arrested/jailed/killed.

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