This Week In Techdirt History: February 15th – 21st
from the ah-the-memories dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2021, we looked at how state laws around community broadband were harming communities during the pandemic, just as one Congressional representative introduced a new such law to do so nationwide. Minneapolis joined the list of cities banning facial recognition tech, while it was revealed that CBP’s use of the technology identified fewer than 300 imposters after gathering 50 million face photos. We also wrote about how history shows Section 230 isn’t just for startups, while North Dakota was considering an anti-230 bill that would let people sue you for reporting their content to Twitter.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2016, a California judge worryingly ordered Apple to create a new iPhone backdoor following the San Bernardino shooting. Apple responded to the order, and soon after we wrote about how the new backdoor would work on modern iPhones too. A lot of people were extremely confused about what exactly the order would do, including many lawmakers and nearly all the presidential candidates, and we dismantled a lot of the myths going around including the false notion that Apple had done this 70 times before. Also, a footnote in the DOJ motion to compel Apple revealed that the whole mess was caused by the San Bernardino health department resetting Syed Farook’s password.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2011, evidence suggested that major film studios were uploading movie clips to YouTube and pretending they were pirated, a CBS reporter uploaded footage of the Grammys to YouTube only to have CBS send a takedown notice, and the target of one of Liberty Media’s mass infringement lawsuits was fighting back. We dug deeper into why DHS’s domain name seizures were almost certainly illegal, while DHS was being cagey about whether or not it seized Mooo.com and took down 84,000 sites in the process. Meanwhile, Congress was getting ready to reintroduce COICA and Ron Wyden was speaking out against it.
Comments on “This Week In Techdirt History: February 15th – 21st”
This was a great reminder of how quickly tech controversies repeat themselves. From Facebook’s news standoff in Australia to the Apple–FBI encryption battle, it’s striking how often policymakers push for short-term control without fully understanding the long-term consequences for security, free speech, and innovation. The parallels across the years really highlight how debates around platform responsibility, IP enforcement, and intermediary liability never truly go away — they just evolve. Looking back at these moments makes it clear that overreaching reactions often age poorly, while principles like strong encryption and balanced platform protections remain crucial. History doesn’t just repeat itself online — it reloads.