This Week In Techdirt History: June 29th – July 5th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2020… remember Parler? The uncensored free speech social media platform? Well, it was changing its tune and starting to ban users as it embarked on a speedrun of the content moderation learning curve (and we also noted some striking clauses in its terms of service). Twitch and Reddit were ramping up their enforcement against hateful content, companies were issuing bogus copyright claims to hide police training materials from the public, and ISPs were bringing back usage caps after the very brief pandemic hiatus. Also, the Senate watered down the EARN IT Act while leaving in lots of problems, and research libraries stepped up to tell publishers to drop their lawsuit against the Internet Archive.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2015, the Supreme Court declined to hear Google’s appeal in the Oracle case over API copyrightability. Donald Trump filed an absolutely hilarious lawsuit against Univision, France was taking its war on Uber up a notch (though this didn’t stop downloads from reaching record highs), and the EU was moving to create internet fast lanes under the guise of net neutrality. A Chicago area sheriff was trying to strong-arm payment companies into avoiding Backpage, a Newsday editor was calling for hate speech exceptions to the First Amendment, and in news that feels like it should have come much earlier, Congress was finally allowed to use open source software.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2010, the Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling in the Bilski case, allowing business method and software patents to survive. We wondered if another case might get a more direct ruling on the business method question, while the IEEE was celebrating Bilski with a misleading press release. ASCAP members were mad at the society for attacking Creative Commons, ACTA negotiators were responding to questions with more of the same rhetoric while USTR negotiators were avoiding the question of releasing the latest draft, and music publishers kept lashing out at consumer groups. Also, there was another casualty of the aggressive IP enforcement by the producers of Twilight.