This Week In Techdirt History: July 28th – August 3rd

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, the New York Times stood up for Section 230 and called out the politicians who were lying about it, like Rep. Gosar who had previously been sued for blocking constituents on social media, while we tried to put an end to the myth that big tech was censoring conservatives (and that platforms legally had to be neutral) and looked closer at Josh Hawley’s latest bill that would make him product manager for the internet. And, as expected, Nick Sandmann’s lawsuit against the Washington Post was quickly dismissed.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, Michael Hayden had a moment of accidental honesty and admitted that Ed Snowden was a whistleblower, while the EFF was asking the court to declare that the NSA’s “internet backbone” collections were unconstitutional, and Keith Alexander was going around asking for $1 million a month for his cybersecurity services. The recording industry was going after Ford and General Motors for cars with built-in CD rippers, City of London police were pulling some ridiculous shenanigans to “fight piracy”, and Prenda received another appeals court smackdown. Also, a podcasting patent troll was trying to run away from a lawsuit after realizing podcasting didn’t make much money.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, an earlier patent troll was stepping up to claim it owned pretty much all podcasting. The Associated Press was trying to get out of having to talk any more about its plans for news DRM, Hollywood was still calling for more movie DRM, and Barnes & Noble was defending its practice of putting DRM on public domain ebooks. A new ruling in Europe said that an 11-word snippet could be copyright infringement, a publisher was nervous about letting an author quote a single sentence, and we saw what might be the first defamation lawsuit over a tweet.