This Week In Techdirt History: August 21st – 27th
Five Years Ago
As you probably know, this week was Techdirt's 25th anniversary! And this week in 2017, of course, we were marking the 20th anniversary (and also published a podcast reflecting on the history of the site).
As for other events this week in 2017: we saw yet another example of the problems with the FBI's terrorism stings, a court thankfully ruled that the government needed more than the assumption someone owns a cellphone to justify a search, another court less-thankfully ruled that Google had to hand over data from overseas servers, and the High Court in New Zealand found that the government broke the law with its spying on Megaupload executives. Also, lawmakers were asking the GAO to investigate the FCC's flimsy claims of a DDoS attack taking down its website, while the EFF and others were trying to get the agency to stop hiding 47,000 comments about net neutrality.
Ten Years Ago
Naturally, this week in 2012 we marked the fifteenth anniversary of Techdirt! Meanwhile, we learned more about how horrible the criminal conviction in the Surfthechannel case was, took an earlier but not-that-different look at the problems with the FBI's terrorism stings, and discussed the NYPD's fruitless efforts to spy on Muslims. We discussed how pointless the Apple/Samsung patent fight was just before Samsung was thoroughly routed and told to pay $1.05 billion, and were disappointed to see Google target Apple with its first offensive patent attack. And it was also unfortunate to see the feds get back to seizing websites over copyright infringement claims.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2007, it appears we didn't have a post marking the tenth anniversary of the site. As for what we did cover: Craiglist faced another attack from a grandstanding politician, Facebook was getting blamed for supposedly diminishing worker productivity, and people were still getting arrested for using open WiFi networks. New York politicians moved forward with yet another attempt to ban the sale of violent video games, Universal was realizing that its attack on mixtape creators had killed a major means of promotion, and MTV was giving up on its online music service.
In The Beginning...
In case you missed it earlier this week, it's worth checking out the very first edition of the newsletter that would become Techdirt, which went out twenty-five years ago this week on August 23rd, 1997.