This Week In Techdirt History: September 3rd – 9th
from the stuff-that-happened dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2012, as the election drew near, we noted that both the Democrats and Republicans were in deep denial about the need for copyright reform — even as the tide seemed to be turning on bad copyright laws in some other countries. Meanwhile, the copyright takedown game was going nuts as usual, with rightsholders issuing takedowns over content that has been gone for months, and automated bots managing to take down the live-stream of the Hugo awards (for showing clips from an award-winning show) and even the official stream of the Democratic National Convention (with claims from a shockingly long list of media companies).
Ten Years Ago
Ironically for sci-fi fans who couldn’t watch the Hugos in 2012, this same week in 2007 it was a sci-fi writers group abusing the DMCA to take down content. Meanwhile, Ridley Scott gave as an interlude from Hollywood’s usual complaints about technology being used for piracy (like the MPAA’s new crusade against camcording in UK cinemas) to complain about small screens killing the art form. This was also the week that Apple made major updates to its iPod line including the introduction of the iPod Touch, and we noted that the excitement around the technology was itself a good argument against music industry business models.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2002, record labels were actually backing away from copy protection, although their official music download sites were still languishing in obscurity. The industry was fresh off an insane attempt to stop piracy with a lawsuit against internet backbone providers, and Duke University had just received a curious anonymous $1-million donation to fight abuse of the DMCA. This was also the week that Greece passed a somewhat-infamous anti-gaming law that, due to its vague wording, effectively banned all video games.
