This Week In Techdirt History: August 27th – September 2nd

Five Years Ago

This week in 2018, a security flaw at Charter Spectrum exposed the private data of millions of subscribers, while Big Telecom was trying out new tactics in its fight against net neutrality in California. An appeals court ruled that forcing someone to unlock their phone violates the fifth amendment, while another ruled that an IP address alone is insufficient for infringement claims. Danish ISPs scored a win against copyright trolling, while the EU Copyright Directive continued to be a threat to the public domain, as well as bringing the nightmare of link taxes.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2013, we learned that the NSA had bugged the UN and various EU embassies, and then we got a look at the black budget" that funded surveillance as well as, it turned out, a major focus on cracking encryption. Meanwhile, a bad court ruling said cyberlocker Hotfile and its owner could be liable for copyright infringement by users, and we wrote about the worrying statistic that half of all retiring Senators go on to become lobbyists, then quickly got a related example when the White House's IP Czar jumped ship to the BSA.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2008, we wrote about how the benefits of piracy aren't always in the expected places. A lawyer in the UK offered to represent falsely accused file sharers for free, while the subject of a RIAA lawsuit lost... thanks to evidence destruction. Mattel followed in the footsteps of Hasbro and forced Scrabulous offline in the areas where it owned the rights to Scrabble, AMC attacked (then backed off from) Mad Men fan accounts on Twitter, and more academics joined the crowd criticizing the EU's push for copyright extension.