from the that-was-that dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2020, the DOJ ended up with a mistrial in its first attempt to prosecute an accused leaker, and also proposed some Section 230 reform ideas that were even dumber than expected, while Match.com was also getting on the anti-230 bandwagon. FBI Director Chris Wray was pitching weakened encryption at a cybersecurity conference, while we called out senators who were wrongly claiming the EARN IT Act wouldn’t be used to undermine encryption. Also, we took a look at how copyright maximalists were trying to rewrite the history of SOPA/PIPA.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2015, in the build-up to the FCC’s new net neutrality rules (which officially dropped on Thursday to a flurry of reactions) were getting plenty of advance complaints, with Jeb Bush demonstrating no understanding whatsoever and Marsha Blackburn moving to gut the rules with the so-called “Internet Freedom Act”, though perhaps none of it matched the hyperbole in Europe’s net neutrality fight, where the EU Digital Commissioner compared net neutrality supporters to the Taliban. This was also the week we officially launched the Copia Institute.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2010, there was actually another (and equally ironic) “Internet Freedom Act” proposed in congress, this time from Hollywood’s favorite representative, Howard Berman. Meanwhile, we looked at the problems in the latest ACTA leaked text, while EU politicians were getting more serious in demanding transparency and no three strikes rules in the agreement (after all, France had its own three strikes system and piracy was only going up), but Obama was insisting that ACTA must move forward. Also this week, when almost every publisher was complaining about ad blockers, we came out in defense of everyone’s right to use them (and, later, decided to build the ability to block ads directly into the settings for Techdirt user accounts).
