This Week In Techdirt History: September 4th - 10th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, copyright was going crazy in Europe. Even though a smart review of the copyright system there suggested that its purpose was to send as much money as possible to US companies, Europe announced plans to extend copyright terms retroactively and wasted no time making them official. Meanwhile, the leaked State Dept. cables were revealing just how big a role US diplomats play in copyright around the world: guiding the dismantling of online civil rights in Sweden, pressuring Canada to enact draconian copyright law (sometimes even at the behest of Canadian politicians, and acting as Microsoft sales staff in Bosnia.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2006, HP was embroiled in a massive scandal when it was revealed that Patricia Dunn, the chairperson of the board, was spying on other board members and, it soon turned out, members of the media as well, all over some leaked information a few years earlier. Eventually she spoke out publicly, admitting only that it was embarrassing (though really that's just the getting caught part, I suspect). Before that, HP's spokesperson addressed the whole mess by claiming the fraud and identity theft had something to do with "personal integrity".

Fifteen Years Ago

Five years before that in 2001, HP was in the news for the rosier reason of its purchase of Compaq in a $25-billion deal. Meanwhile, there was lots of speculation over who might buy Yahoo! (and as we recently found out, that speculation would have to wait another fifteen years to be resolved), and some back-and-forth on the question of whether Apple should buy Palm, or try to make its own way into the handheld market (and I think we all know how that worked out).

Also this week in 2001: the Justice Department backed down from seeking a breakup of Microsoft, a critical ruling found eBay not liable for pirated goods sold on the site, and despite the death of Napster more people were trading music online than ever before.

Fifty Years Ago

I'm sure I'm not the first to tell you that this week was the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, one of the greatest television franchises of all time. But as a Canadian I might be the first to tell you/brag about one lesser-known fact: though September 8th is when the first episode first aired on NBC, up here north of the border we actually got it before you - the very first airing of The Man Trap was two days earlier on CTV.