This Week In Techdirt History: July 2nd - 8th

Five Years Ago

Charles Carreon kicked off this week in 2012 by continuing to dig deeper, while Matt Inman and IndieGogo hit back. He then tried to intimidate a parodist with a bizarre list of threats and a DMCA takedown. But by Tuesday, he had dismissed his lawsuit (while still claiming victory somehow), only for things to take a truly bizarre turn when an apparently fake lawsuit was filed against him under Inman's name.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, Russia shut down Allofmp3, a new legal spat raised the question of whether embedding a YouTube video can be infringement, and restaurants were beginning to really grapple with independent, amateur reviewers. The MPAA and RIAA were still up to their dirty investigative tricks while the NFL was trying to dictate the contours of fair use. And this was the week that Bill Gates ceased to be the richest man in the world.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, the RIAA was just starting up its campaign of going after the individual users of P2P sharing networks, while webcasters were being driven underground by onerous new royalty rates and a Danish court deeming it illegal to deep-link to a newspaper website. As WiFi continued to ascend, ISPs like Time Warner were starting to crack down on open hotspots - and as text messaging continued to ascend, the Methodist Church was joining the early crowd of people decrying it for getting in the way of social interaction.