This Week In Techdirt History: August 17th – 23rd

Techdirt

from the that-was-that dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2020, a judge forbade a Facebook user being sued by a cop from publishing the cop’s name on social media, the DC police union was suing to block the release of the names of officers involved in shootings, and we wrote about how Section 230 protects the ability of people to complain about the police. Donald Trump issued his second TikTok executive order more directly requiring ByteDance to sell it, and we wondered if Oracle would change its tune about Section 230 if it bought the platform. We also dug into the interesting fight between Epic and Apple over Fortnite in the app store.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2015, we looked at all the things the appeals court got wrong in deciding that APIs are covered by copyright, a judge was not at all impressed by a class action lawsuit claiming Yelp reviewers are really employees, and a guest post from the EFF dug into why patent trolls love East Texas. Ashley Madison was still trying to abuse the DMCA to hide its infamous leak, a court threw up some roadblocks for Malibu Media, and the Illinois attorney discipline board finally moved against Prenda’s John Steele. Also, Comcast quietly admitted that broadband usage caps were a cash grab, not an engineering necessity.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2010, we highlighted a single graphic that summed up the insanity of the music licensing thicket, while both U2’s manager and John Mellencamp were freaking out about the internet’s impact on the music industry. Las Vegas Review-Journal seemed to have some weird ideas about what it was accomplishing with the Righthaven lawsuits, Apple pulled Grooveshark from the app store because Universal Music didn’t like it, and the recording industry was using the net neutrality debate to once again attempt to link copyright infringement with CSAM. Also, there was a development in the long-running legal fight over Bratz dolls.

Filed Under: history, look back