This Week In Techdirt History: July 14th – 20th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, an opportunistic IBM sold out Section 230 while the Third Circuit joined the Ninth in denying its protections to e-commerce platforms, soon followed by the Sixth Circuit making a mess of it as well, so we wrote more about how Section 230 is not exceptional and is not a gift to internet companies. We also looked at the FTC’s $5 billion dollar fine against Facebook, how Gab and Mastodon were demonstrating the challenges of moderating a more distributed social network, and how the CASE act would enable copyright trolling despite its best intentions. This was also the week that we got our first look at the ideas that would become the EU’s Digital Service Act.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, copyright lawyers were priming the pump for the return of SOPA, the MPAA was stretching the DMCA to the breaking point in its fight against Popcorn Time, and Universal Music Group’s deal with YouTube was causing a lot of damage to fair use. The FCC had to extend its deadline for net neutrality comments after the website went down on the final day, so we were able to get our own comments through, and then we noted how much you can deduce from the fact that all the major broadband players supported the FCC’s proposed rules. Meanwhile, the Conan Doyle Estate was fighting to prevent Sherlock Holmes from entering the public domain, but the Supreme Court made very short work of their attempt.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, the National Portrait Gallery a Wikimedia Commons developer and administrator for downloading public domain images, there was yet another misguided lawsuit over Google AdWords, and the uploader of the leaked Guns ‘N Roses album got sentenced to two months of house arrest. In an echo of the problems from the Universal/YouTube deal, in 2009 it was YouTube’s deal with Warner Music causing problems. The boss of the Songwriters Guild was claiming songwriters can’t write without copyright, while the Vice-Chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review was calling on Google to pay out to newspapers. And we examined the question of whether streaming was replacing downloading.