This Week In Techdirt History: April 28th – May 4th
from the insert-star-wars-joke dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2014, while Senators Feinstein and Chambliss were taking yet another shot at a new, concerning cybersecurity bill, they were also backing down on attempts to require transparency from the administration regarding drone strikes. The German government blocked Ed Snowden from testifying before parliament to mollify the US, we learned that the UK’S GCHQ had hidden its access to the NSA’s PRISM database from its parliamentary overseers, and we were wondering why Verizon’s pushback against bulk records requests was so much weaker than it could have been. This was also the week that John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight debuted, with its first episode featuring an interview with Keith Alexander that we couldn’t help but notice might be the toughest interview he’d yet faced, even with all the jokes.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2009, dumb tweets about swine flu led to an early preview of concerns about disinformation on social media. The BBC was happily promoting MPAA propaganda about movie piracy while claiming it was being balanced, German publishers were demanding ISPs block file sharing sites, France was still trying to adopt a three strikes law even as Nicolas Sarkozy was paying up for his own copyright infringement, and in general legacy industries were showing a real sense of entitlement with regards to the internet (not that piracy freak-outs regarding technology were anything new). The USTR finally got Canada bumped up to its Priority Watchlist for intellectual property (for some reason), Warner Music made the very foolish decision to issue a DMCA takedown of a presentation by Larry Lessig, and we learned just how bad the revolving door is with the revelation that former RIAA lawyers now working for the government only had to stay away from issues impacting their former employees for one year.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2004, we took a look at the one-sided file sharing propaganda being foisted on school students by the entertainment industry — and boy did it ever seem like brainwashing. The Senate was looking at four different intellectual property bills including one that would let the FBI start filing civil suits for its entertainment industry buddies, and one that would expand California’s ban on video cameras inside movie theaters. TiVo was pushing advertiser dollars onto the web, an attempt to force cable companies to offer a la carte channels fell through, self-publishing was shedding some of its stigma as it got easier, and the first federal charges were brought under the recent CAN SPAM laws. This was also the week that, after much anticipation, Google officially filed for its IPO — which of course everyone had to weigh in on, including us.
Comments on “This Week In Techdirt History: April 28th – May 4th”
BBC video
if anyone wants to see the video of Rossy seguing from a ‘lovable rum bunch’ to ‘organised crime’ funders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jcxfociGpI
Film industry death?
They all sound so sincere, don’t they?……"It may well kill off the film industry"…….Has it? Ten years later and it still seems to be going well, as far as I can see – and stronger than ever. Don’t hear any death rattles.
Re: Film industry death?
yeah, I’m tempting to have a go at doing a ‘ten years on’ video.
I think the original video files linked above are still around somewhere.
wonder what they’d say.
The Future of America
I see history as a series of trends with pivot points. Certain events occur, and then all future events are influenced by these pivot points. We are now witnessing a pivot point in American History. That is to say, that this week in Techdirt history, and this week in American history, both represent a new direction for the country.
General Barr has assumed command of the criminal justice system with respect to the government. It belongs to him, he is now guiding the nation in a new direction. We will quickly see the results of his leadership, in the form of criminal indictments of top former officials, I think naming and charging Comey first. The house of cards will fall quickly after that, and the country will recover from this long psychotic specially designed fever dream instigated by the deep state. It’s over. Listen closely to what POTUS recently said. It’s over. Really. No kidding. Now the next chapter is starting.
A new direction for America, based on Law and Order, not Chaos amidst large groups of conspiring traitors. We will set everything straight.
And it all was exposed this week. Listen closely. History in the making.
And God Bless Roy Moore. And his Horse.
Re: The Future of America
Still waiting for Mexico to fund the wall, Hamilton.
Re: With no respect to Terry Bollea...
When nothing happens and your fantasies come crumbling down, what’cha gonna do, brother, when Realitymania runs wild on you?
Re: Re: With no respect to Terry Bollea...
I’m going to have to invoke Poe’s law on this one. He’s supporting the documented perv Roy Moore, who lost his election – obviously this is sarcasm being mistaken for alt-right gibberish.
By "Documented" I mean he was tossed out of the local mall for perving on teen girls, long before anyone had an secret agenda to follow.
Re: Re: With no respect to Terry Bollea...
LOL @ "based on law and order." Trump and his team have respect for neither.
Re: The Future of Hamilton’s crumbling sanity
You are a psychiatrists wet dream bro. It would be sad if it weren’t so funny, and if you didn’t deserve all the mockery you get.
Re: Re: The Future of Hamilton’s crumbling sanity
I don’t know about Hamilton being funny. The idea of him, or someone with his level of cognitive abilities, can convincingly claim to wield powerful corporate and political influence, is pretty sad.
Fully agree with you on the latter, though. It takes a special sort of knucklehead to back the real Indian who got scalped by a fake Indian.