This Week In Techdirt History: February 12th – 18th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2018, we took a look at how we got to the point where Hollywood is trying to attack the internet via NAFTA. In a case with echoes of those about to go before the Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit shut down a terrorists used Twitter" lawsuit. Congress was pressuring Ajit Pai over his failure to police net neutrality comment fraud, while Pai was facing an investigation by his own agency for being too cozy with the industry he regulates. And FBI Director Chris Wray was still avoiding sharing what encryption experts were saying to him about his bizarre approach to encryption.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2013, we looked at how the BPI cherry picks statistics to pretend that file sharers spend less, while the head of the Copyright Office was celebrating the fact that mechanics need to know about copyright, and some former Copyright Registers were doing the publishing industry's bidding and calling for limitations on fair use at public universities. Music publishers were also calling for strong copyright laws as always and the IIPA was asking for Canada and Spain to be put on the infamously silly Special 301 list, all while new research added more evidence that extending copyright massively increases prices and limits dissemination of knowledge.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2008, it was unsurprising to learn that the Danish block of The Pirate Bay resulted in even more traffic to the site, while Congress was (in the most limited way possible) trying to put some reins on the NFL's abuse of copyright laws. We looked at a list of quotes from judges who aren't swayed by the RIAA's flimsy evidence, while we learned that the Bush administration was spending more money on intellectual property prosecutions. Meanwhile, William Patry's blog was home to two interesting conversations around copyright law, first on whether a photograph is a derivative work of the object in the photo, then about a new ruling that suggested selling a CD you found in the trash could be copyright infringement.