This Week In Techdirt History: February 16th – 22nd
from the as-it-was dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2020, the fight around Section 230 was heating up with Mark Zuckerberg suggesting it should go away, Tom Wheeler disappointingly getting it all wrong, and the News Media Alliance coming out against it, while Ron Wyden stepped up to explain why modifying it would give more censorship power to Trump. We also featured a lengthy two part guest post about a DOJ Section 230 workshop. Meanwhile, Devin Nunes’ lawyer was continuing to use unrelated cases to try to fish for info, Comcast and AT&T were suing Maine over a privacy law, and we looked at an amusing attempt to demonstrate the problems with music copyright by putting every possible melody in the public domain.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2015, we got a chance to look closely at Obama’s stance on encryption, while Tim Cook was making it clear that he had no interest in giving the government any backdoors to iOS. Then we learned about how the NSA hacked most hard drives and SIM cards, and looked at how its ability to steal keys to phone encryption demonstrated why backdoors are such a bad idea. Meanwhile, a nominee for Attorney General tapdanced around questions about Aaron Swartz, John Oliver did a segment about the ridiculousness of corporate sovereignty provisions, and a new company was trying to get in on the copyright trolling business.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2010, a court in the UK found that simply linking to infringing videos is not infringement, while the Digital Britain Minister was claiming that nobody is creative if they don’t earn money, and Universal Music got a new CEO who thought CDs were the future. There was a copyright fight in Germany over Beyonce’s bikini, and EMI decided to repeat the Grey Album disaster and go after a Wu Tang/Beatles mashup album. We also published our comments to the USTR on the Special 301 Report, while EFF and Public Knowledge teamed up to ask the USTR to change the process and stop taking industry lobbyists at their word.
Comments on “This Week In Techdirt History: February 16th – 22nd”
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
They tried five years ago, and now the senile senate democrats are practically handing section 230 to them on a platter, ready for execution by the time Trump’s midterms come around.
Maybe it won’t pass, maybe it’ll get stopped in the courts after the fact, who knows. All I know is that every corner of the web I’ve been to either hate it or speak with almost god-given certainty that it’s going away.
Feel like the discussion could benefit a little from someone with a more optimistic take on the fallout of it all.
Re:
Democrats lost the plot a long time ago.
“Oh my God! The fascists are taking over government! What do we do?”
“Help them kick queer people and criticism off the internet!”
You’re literally doing the opposite here.
Be the optimism you want to see in the world.
Or in the face of what you, with unsupported pessimism, think is a losing battle, become defiant and decide what you’re going to do in response.
Re:
You know what, fair point.
Maybe this will turn out alright in the end.
Re: Re:
If getting rid of section 230 means you finally shut up with it….I’m thinking the pain just might be worth that outcome.
Re: Re: Re:
he’s on the sunday article btw
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re:
idk why this ac keeps doing it
In the era of AI-generated everything, this seems to have aged like fine wine…
Re:
More like a French Cheese…