This Week In Techdirt History: February 22nd – 28th

from the that-was-that dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2021, Australian news sites were reacting bizarrely to Facebook’s withdrawal from sharing news in the country, just before Facebook caved and decided to restore news links. The whole ordeal was surrounded by silly reactions so we pointed to the best summary of everything, and also looked at how it demonstrated the evil of Zero Rating. We also wrote about how attacks on internet free speech in Malaysia and Indonesia demonstrated the importance of Section 230, and some recent examples of how content moderation at scale is impossible. Also, a court tossed out Devin Nunes’ silly SLAPP suit against CNN.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2016, the fight over breaking into Syed Farook’s iPhone continued. We reminisced about when law enforcement told people to upgrade their phones for stronger security, explained how the FBI didn’t need the info but was just trying to set a precedent, noted that the scorched earth approach to Apple meant tech companies had even less reason to help the feds, and learned that the DOJ reached out to victims of the shooting for legal support before going to court. A stupid poll from Pew and a conflicting poll from Reuters demonstrated how the way you write questions impacts public opinion on issues like this one. Then we dug into Apple’s lengthy legal rebuke of the DOJ’s arguments.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2011, we wondered why the MPAA openly prioritized “fighting piracy” more than helping the film industry thrive, and continued whining about it even as we saw yet another record year at the box office. Music publishers were still annoyed by a free online archive of public domain scores, while Google finally got involved in a disappointingly limited way in a lawsuit over torrent search engines. Australian ISP iiNet scored another win in court, as did the admins of a torrent tracker in the UK, while we wrote about how the lawyers for Settlers of Catan were abusing IP to take down perfectly legal competitors, and about a particularly ridiculous trademark saga about a chicken restaurant.

Filed Under: history, look back