This Week In Techdirt History: November 6th – 12th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2017, Comcast joined the chorus of ISPs trying to stop states from protecting privacy and net neutrality, and also targeted Colorado’s thoughts of building its own broadband network, though it was failing to overpower the voters there. Meanwhile, the SESTA fight was heating up: we talked more about how bad it was for the Internet Association to support the bill, we asked its sponsors what blogs were supposed to do if it passed and asked Sheryl Sandberg and Facebook if they would help small websites threatened by the law, wondered by it would allow State AGs to file civil claims, and were happy when Ron Wyden put a hold on it.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2012, we were surprised in the midterms when two of Hollywood’s favorite representatives lost their reelections, were disappointed but not-exactly-surprised to learn that Joe Biden was sitting in on MPAA board meetings and giving them anti-piracy advice, and were very much not surprised at all when an excellent video about fair use and remix culture was taken down over a copyright claim. Meanwhile, Twitter improved its DMCA policy, the UN was calling for discussions on “rethinking copyright”, and a multimillion-dollar ruling against a lyric site showed how short-sighted the music industry is. And we also had an early post getting annoyed about the cliche of “you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater”.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2007, Mitt Romney was fighting back with fair use against Fox’s threats over campaigns using debate footage, an academic paper argued that search engines should be regulated to protect free speech, and AT&T was asking for trouble with a plan to placate Hollywood by adding antipiracy technology to its network. Some Senators were trying to make the DOJ act as Hollywood’s private enforcement agency, a study threw some cold water on Viacom’s angry insistence that YouTube was hurting it, and Wall Street seemed to finally be realizing that the recording industry was in trouble.

In The Beginning…

This week’s edition of the Up To Date newsletter that would become Techdirt went out on November 8th, 1997, opening with some very early concerns about the specter of password sharing.