This Week In Techdirt History: August 2nd - 8th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, we wrote about how the TPP would override five years of democratic discussion about patents in New Zealand, and then got a look at the latest leak of the agreement which showed the US fighting hard to permit patent and copyright abuse, opposing provisions in support of the public domain, trying to include rules that would kill any future Aereo clones, and generally making copyright mandatory but public rights voluntary — but then, after missing a key deadline because of the failure to reach an agreement, the whole deal was put in jeopardy.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2010, Indonesia ordered a ban on all online porn while the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia announced plans to ban Blackberry usage and lawyers in New Zealand were suggesting total internet bans for repeat copyright infringers. Meanwhile, the Pentagon was freaking out about Wikileaks in a way that was reminiscent in some ways of the RIAA's response to Napster, first demanding the "return" of the digital documents then taking a total head-in-the-sand approach and banning military personnel from accessing the site. And the FBI was starting its own stupid fight with a different "wiki" — telling Wikipedia that it can't display the FBI logo.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, we were watching the rise of the online counterfeit drug market and the beginning of the deflation of the ringtone market bubble. Even back then, the US was already working hard to export the worst of its copyright law to other countries, though plenty of other countries had it was sued for letting people download movies and music, but that didn't seem to put a dent in the massive investments that flowed in when the IPO hit.