This Week In Techdirt History: May 1st – 7th

from the back-then dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2017, the NSA was shutting down its 702 program, but with a whole lot of caveats and some questionable statements, while the public dump of the agency’s hacking toolkit was causing privacy problems. Meanwhile, James Comey was testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and hinting at expanded NSL powers and encryption backdoors, then following that up with some problematic ideas about journalism. This was also the week that Chris Dodd announced he was “stepping down” from the MPAA.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2012, the UK’s High Court ordered ISPs to block the Pirate Bay, leading (of course) to record traffic for the site. Eric Goldman delivered a brutal assessment of the case against Megaupload, the USTR released the latest edition of its silly Special 301 list, and a good ruling from the EU Court of Justice said software functionality is not subject to copyright. Meanwhile, five years before he stepped down, Chris Dodd was busy rewriting the history of Hollywood to claim it was all thanks to IP laws.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2007, the Supreme Court made two good decisions about patent law. Yahoo was following in the footsteps of Google’s purchase of Doubleclick, while rumors said Microsoft might be planning to do the same. Google officially responded to Viacom’s YouTube lawsuit, while the apparently jealous Premier League decided to file its own lawsuit against Google/YouTube. This was also the week that the Digg community famously rebelled over takedowns of the AACS HD-DVD encryption key.

Filed Under: history, look back