This Week In Techdirt History: December 21st – 27th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2020, Congress sold out to Hollywood yet again by sneaking the CASE Act and a felony streaming bill into the funding omnibus, with the former introducing absolutely insane damages especially when compared to COVID stimulus money. Meanwhile, we looked at the issues with a new COVID bill that included billions to shore up broadband access, Trump finally went through with his threat to veto the NDAA, and Senator Tillis unveiled a massive plan to reshape the internet even more to Hollywood’s liking. Plus, Ron Wyden and Chris Cox felt it was time to yet again dispel some misconceptions about Section 230.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2015, we hoped (though not that much) that the government’s panic over the Juniper backdoor would make them realize the problems with backdoors, while Senator Cotton was slamming Tim Cook for protecting user privacy with encryption with an assist from Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, and we dedicated an episode of the podcast to asking how much surveillance is acceptable. India told Facebook to shut down its controversial zero rating “Free Basics” program, while the FCC responded to Comcast’s latest assault on net neutrality with nothing more than a sheepish letter. And a New Zealand judge ruled that Kim Dotcom was eligible for extradition in an opinion that showed an unfortunate willingness to ignore context.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2010, a closer look at the “evidence” Homeland Security used to seize domain names showed that it included songs voluntarily sent to sites by record labels, followed by the discovery of even more and bigger mistakes. The US ambassador to the UN was waxing about the extreme importance of patents and copyrights, the Harvard Crimson newspaper was getting a lot of things wrong about copyright in supporting a bad MPAA proposal, a Berkeley law professor explained how copying an entire article can still be fair use, and we debunked the myth that ISPs are profiting from “piracy”. Meanwhile, Apple joined the list of companies turning on Wikileaks, and we asked if those companies would do the same to the New York Times for its own investigative reporting.