This Week In Techdirt History: November 1st - 7th
Five Years Ago
This week in 2015, the UK government released its “Snooper’s Charter” surveillance bill after pretending it had backed down on the worst provisions when in fact the bill mandated backdoors to encryption and aimed to legalize over a decade of illegal mass surveillance. In the US, documents from the DOJ confirmed the extensive powers of Stingray devices, while legislators were movi
ng to turn the agency’s “guidance” on the devices into law. The think-tank behind SOPA was now pushing for the US to encourage other countries to block the Pirate Bay, while attacks on Section 230 were still mainly the realm of some law professors. And then the biggest release of the week came on Friday: the full, very bad text of the TPP.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2010, we were surprised to see the DOJ weigh in against gene patents, and the USPTO was not happy about it. The Jammie Thomas trial got its third jury verdict with another huge award of damages that highlighted how the framing of the jury instructions changes everything in such a case. A YouTube star was being threatened by music publishers claiming parody isn’t fair use, a reality show was sued for copying an idea, and a pizza shop sued a former employee for “stealing” their recipe while librarians in Brazil were forcefully speaking out against copyright, calling it a fear-based reaction to open access to knowledge. Also, this is the week that the proposal of a Right To Be Forgotten started making the rounds in Europe.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2005, the FCC okayed the big telco mergers of SBC/ATT and Verizon/MCI, while SBC was making demands of Google, and Sprint was launching its mobile broadband network. The movie industry was trying to plug the “analog hole” and Congress appeared to be going through the motions to appease them without much enthusiasm. But the most memorable development of the week was the discovery that Sony’s new copy protection on CDs was a dangerous rootkit, and that other malware could piggyback on it, and that the same DRM was on CDs from other companies… all of which forced Sony to scramble to release a “patch” which didn’t really fix the problem, and which itself turned out to come with a bunch of highly questionable baggage.
Author: Leigh Beadon
Date: 2020-11-07
techdirt.com
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| GitHub, EFF Push Back Against RIAA, Reinstate Youtube-dl Repository (2020-11-17) | A few weeks ago the RIAA hurled a DMCA takedown notice at an unlikely target: GitHub The code site was ordered to take down its repositories of youtube-dl software that allowed users to download local copies of video and audio hosted at YouTube and other sites The RIAA made some noise about copyright infringement citing notes in the code pointing to Vevo videos uploaded by major labels before gett.. |
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| Senator Tillis Plans Major Copyright Overhaul: Recognizes Legit Problems, But Current Solutions Are Lacking (2020-11-23) | Weve criticized Senator Thom Tillis for his patent and copyright reform ideas that seemed to take a strong maximalist line in its approach Hes also taken the Hollywood line on things like the Internet Archive that was troubling Hes been promising a copyright reform bill for a while and many thought it wasnt going to matter much since polls indicated that he was very very likely to lose his re-elec.. |
| Facial Recognition Company’s Employees Abused Tech To Sexually Harass Coworkers (2020-11-09) | Someone wants to out-evil Clearview Now there are a lot of questionable facial recognition tech vendors but most have decided to cede most hated to Clearview But another startup thinks it should generate as much ill will as possible before securing prominent marketplace status The unanswered question I guess is whether to direct your AI-enabled sociopathy at random individuals or your own coworker.. |
| Twitch’s No Good, Very Bad Time Continues: Part 1 (2020-11-18) | Im beginning to wonder if the folks that run Twitch are secretly attempting to commit corporate suicide The past several weeks have seen the popular streaming platform embroiled in controversy It began when in response to the RIAA labels DMCA attacks on streamers Twitch took the unprecedented step to simply nuke a zillion hours of recorded content without warning its creators In the wake of that t.. |
| Time to Treat Broadband Like the Essential Service It Is (2020-11-02) | Lets stop ignoring the obvious: broadband internet access service is a public utility and needs to be regulated as one American consumers agree A Consumer Reports survey from earlier this year found that four out of five 80 percent consumers believe broadband service is as important as water and electricity Indeed broadband has become the essential service in the daily lives of 21st century consum.. Time to Treat Broadband Like the Essential Service It Is |
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| Daily Deal: The Complete 2020 CompTIA Training Bundle (2020-11-16) | The Complete 2020 CompTIA Certification Training Bundle has 14 courses to teach you IT Fundamentals Infrastructure and Cybersecurity The courses cover what you need to know in order to pass various CompTIA certification exams such as A+ Network+ Server+ Linux+ and more Youll learn hardware basics troubleshooting software installation security and networking Its on sale for $69 and save an addition.. |
| Federal Court Strikes Down California’s Ban On ‘Offensive’ License Plates (2020-11-30) | License plate rules are weird Vanity plates are something anyone can obtain for a fee to personalize their vehicle just as long as they follow a set of shifting rules arbitrarily enforced by their license plate overseers Theres a lot of talk about only forbidding whats objectively offensive but digging around in DMV databases – as several litigants have done – show there are a lot of rejections .. |
