from the short-week dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2017, it became clear the FCC was gearing up for an attempt to hide its attack on net neutrality just before the Thanksgiving weekend. While Comcast once again falsely claimed there was nothing to worry about, the agency did exactly that and released its order on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the DOJ sued to kill the AT&T/Time Warner merger, tech experts were calling on the DHS & ICE to stop their social media surveillance and extreme vetting, and a Q&A about the NSA’s Section 702 program glossed over the problems with incidental collection and domestic surveillance.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2012, Rep. Zoe Lofgren was turning to Reddit for help putting together an anti-SOPA bill, Rep. Darrell Issa was trying to correct the Copyright Office’s omission and codify the right to rip DVDs, and Senator Patrick Leahy was ready to cave to law enforcement and carve out warrantless spying loopholes from his privacy reform bill. The DOJ was using the fact that Megaupload helped out in the NinjaVideo prosecution against the company, the founder of SurfTheChannel got extra jail time in the UK for revealing documents that raised questions about his conviction, and Malibu Media was getting some serious pushback against its porn trolling operation. Also, for a special Thanksgiving post, we looked at some of the silliest turkey-related patents over the years.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2007, the marketing push was on for Amazon’s brand new Kindle device, and we looked at some of its biggest problems as well as the reasons it might be a turning point for non-phone wireless devices. The writer’s strike was shining a spotlight on Hollywood’s many new competitors, the MPAA was defending its push to force colleges to fight against file sharing, the FSF set up a fund to pay experts who could push back against the RIAA’s evidence in lawsuits, and music retailers were begging the recording industry to drop DRM. We also looked at the skewed perspectives and motivations behind the latest report claiming the internet would soon collapse.
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