This Week In Techdirt History: November 10th – 16th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, Biden was spreading myths about Section 230, Microsoft was giving the go-ahead to California's new privacy law, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Google v. Oracle case about APIs and copyright. A copyright troll lawyer faced sanctions and arrest over some courtroom shenanigans, Universal Music was claiming copyright over one of the first newly public domain songs in over two decades, and we dedicated an episode of the podcast to the simple fact that copying is not theft. Also, John Oliver famously took on SLAPP suits and anti-SLAPP laws with a grand musical number.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, the latest era of the crypto wars was heating up, and folks were trying to push legal liability up the stack to domain registrars. The broadband industry was still fighting against Title II and Comcast was professing support for only the unimportant parts of net neutrality, while the FCC was calling AT&T's bluff about fiber investment and Verizon was admitting the wireless industry is not really competitive. The Roca Labs saga continued with a lawsuit against Marc Randazza and more bogus DMCA takedowns. Also, though we totally missed this ten-year anniversary this week, we officially launched the Techdirt Podcast with a debut episode about privacy, surveillance, and transparency.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, Rupert Murdoch was going to war with fair use and Google and being joined by others in the newspaper industry. The IFPI was threatening to ramp up its enforcement efforts in Denmark, while we looked at whether Google would be liable under Sweden's Pirate Bay ruling. We also looked at the conflict between copyright and education and a clear and concise explanation of why software patents harm innovation. We launched one of our most popular (and still available, in an updated design) t-shirts, mocking the DMCA, and witnessed the birth of now-ubiquitous cookie notices on websites when the EU started requiring consent for cookies.