This Week In Techdirt History: January 8th – 14th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2018, Germany's new hate speech law was straight out the gates with two incidents of collateral damage. Trump was complaining about the US's very weak" libel laws, perhaps because Steve Bannon's publisher was very unimpressed with Trump's defamation threats. Meanwhile, Dennis Prager was seeking an injunction against YouTube and Chuck Johnson was copying Prager's lawsuit but directing it at Twitter. We also saw the beginnings of an uphill effort to restore net neutrality, while Nebraska became the first red" state to craft its own net neutrality law, and Google and Facebook ended their absence from the fight by funding net neutrality lawsuits.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2013, we published an interview with Derek Khanna, author of the controversial RSC copyright policy briefing. Major labels were getting back to their crusade against lipdubs on Vimeo, Malibu Media was fighting with Comcast, and Prenda law was trying out a sad new legal strategy. TorrentFreak was sussing out the details of the voluntary six strikes" plan that ISPs were preparing to implement, Australia was facing industry pushback in its efforts to update copyright for the digital economy, and Senator Ron Wyden laid out a broad internet freedom agenda to counter the demands of legacy players and copyright maximalists.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2008, some members of the Motion Picture Academy were getting annoyed about the way the MPAA's screener policies treat them like criminals (since, you know, all DRM ever really does is punish legitimate users). The UK's proposed copyright reform was more of the same old stuff, Prince took down another video with his music in the background, and Hasbro sued the runaway hit app Scrabulous for being too similar to Scrabble, of course. Meanwhile, the FCC was getting ready to investigate Comcast for traffic shaping, just as Congress was getting ready to investigate the FCC's practices for favoritism.