This Week In Techdirt History: February 23rd – March 1st

Five Years Ago

This week in 2020, a court finally dumped one of Devin Nunes' ridiculous lawsuits only for him to immediately promise to file another, while Public Citizen weighed in on why the famous cow's information should be protected under the First Amendment and a watchdog group asked the Congressional Ethics Office to investigate how Nunes was paying for all these suits. The 9th Circuit slammed Prager University for its silly lawsuit against YouTube while the Trump campaign filed a silly SLAPP suit of its own over a New York Times opinion piece. Rep. David Cicilline was seeking to remove Section 230 protections for platforms that host demonstrably false" political ads, the Smithsonian released 2.8 million images and 3D models into the public domain, and the FCC was getting ready to field another round of comments on net neutrality.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2015, we celebrated Fair Use Week by writing a reminder that fair use is a right, not an exception or a defense, and dedicated an episode of the podcast to how it protects culture from copyright, not the other way around. This was, of course, in contrast to the Blurred Lines trial kicking off with a special copyright only" remix of the songs at issue. Ajit Pai was leading a last minute war on net neutrality, while the Wall Street Journal was upset that Wall Street didn't actually hate net neutrality when the agency bucked low expectations by voting 3-2 to approve Title II rules.

And also, this was the week of... The Dress.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2010, the internet chapter of ACTA leaked and revealed just how sneaky negotiators had been, while we called out the many countries lined up against ACTA transparency as concern among EU officials was growing. The Olympics were in full control everything" mode and trying to clamp down on companies tweeting about it, and Stephen Colbert did a segment on the many ridiculous restrictions. VoIP dongle company MagicJack tried to silence BoingBoing and failed badly, Amazon and Perfect 10 settled their lawsuit with the details under seal, and a worrying copyright ruling said a US postage stamp infringed on the US Korean War Memorial. And a million Rickrolls went temporarily silent when the (in)famous video was taken down due to a TOS violation.