This Week In Techdirt History: February 8th – 14th

from the anniversaries-past dept

Five Years Ago

As you probably know, we marked the 30th anniversary of Section 230 this week, so it’s not surprising that this same week in 2021 we were celebrating its 25th anniversary with a special online event where we were joined by Chris Cox and Ron Wyden. We also wrote about the many reasons to celebrate the law and explained how it lets tech companies fix content moderation issues, and how to think about 230 in the context of online advertising. Plus, we celebrated the matching anniversary of the Declaration Of The Independence Of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow. Of course, none of that stopped the GOP from rolling out a dumb new talking point saying 230 should be killed if net neutrality happens, nor did it stop Orrin Hatch from telling flat out lies about what 230 does.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2016 we were, of course, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Section 230 and doing the same for the aforementioned Declaration. We also looked at the impact of Title II regulation a year after the many doomsayer predictions about it. Meanwhile, Warner/Chappell had to pay up in the lawsuit over the Happy Birthday copyright while the plaintiffs began seeking to declare the song in the public domain, Honda got hit with the Streisand Effect in its attempt to get Jalopnik to dox a commenter, a judge changed their mind and allowed James Woods to unmask a Twitter user who made fun of him, and Techdirt received (and rebuffed) yet another bogus legal threat from Australia.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2011, while Righthaven was going after a new target that had a strong fair use case, we wondered what the shutdowns of ACS:Law and MediaCAT meant for the future of the US Copyright Group, just as the latter was teaming up with the producers of The Expendables to shake down thousands of people. Meanwhile, a report from IP Czar Victoria Espinel was little more than a list of lobbyist talking points, the MPAA filed a surprisingly weak billion dollar lawsuit against Hotfile, the US Chamber of Commerce was calling for more censorship and more IP protectionism, and a bizarre opinion piece in NME claimed the recent takeover of EMI by Citigroup was proof that file sharing had “murdered the music business”.

Filed Under: history, look back