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

Five Years Ago

This week in 2017, as a new study shed more light on America's terrible broadband access situation, many people were gearing up for a day of protest in support of net neutrality. After long being holdouts, Facebook and Google finally joined, followed by the laughable move of AT&T getting on board, though most of the telecom industry was feebly trying to deflate the protest with its own think tank campaign. But the FCC was saying it couldn't do anything about the many fake comments being submitted on the subject.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2012, The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde was detailing why his conviction was a farce, while the Megaupload extradition hearing was postponed (though Kim Dotcom offered to come to the US voluntarily if the DOJ released his funds for a legal defense). Lamar Smith was trying to sneak through SOPA in bits and pieces, over 90,000 people signed a petition expressing their concerns about the TPP, and Mexico became the latest country to show signs that ACTA was dead in the water. Meanwhile, a judge rejected a key argument from Universal Misc in its legal fight with Grooveshark, and Aereo won an early victory against broadcasters (though neither of those stories would ultimately have happy endings).

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2007, the world of blogging provided a test ground for alternatives to closed academic journals, Microsoft appeared to be gaining ground in the search wars, and things were off to a rocky start for AMD following its acquisition of ATI. Sony BMG was suing a provider of some of the tech for its disastrous rootkit DRM, while we took a look at how AACS was just as bad and useless as any other DRM. And another pointless Perfect 10 copyright trolling lawsuit got shot down.