from the back-in-the-day dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2020, we wrote about how the idea that banning TikTok thwarts Chinese intelligence was ridiculous, and how any real threat probably comes from America’s feebly secured infrastructure. As for failed security, we looked at the incredible waste of Baltimore’s aerial surveillance program, and as for worrying “security”, we looked at how San Diego cops were using an old sedition law to punish people for swearing at them and how CBP was pulling all sorts of data and communications from people’s devices at the border. This was also the week that we learned more about how, contrary to the popular narrative, Facebook was favoring pro-Trump pages.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2015, Google finally admitted that Google Plus was a failure, and then surprised everyone by unveiling its new structure and the holding company Alphabet (which quickly led to some opportunistic trademark concerns from others). We looked at how the TPP threatened to undermine science, while the US and EU were disagreeing over new corporate sovereignty courts in TAFTA/TTIP. Team Prenda got smacked around again with another order to pay up some sanctions, Rightscorp engaged a law firm to enter the copyright lawsuit business, and Techdirt was hit with a bogus DMCA takedown for our reporting on bogus DMCA takedowns.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2010, an ISP was finally able to admit that it had been standing up to the FBI for six years but gagged from talking about it, while we looked at how the FBI was prioritizing copyright issues over things like missing persons. We pointed folks to a great overview of how copyright had evolved from and then back into a tool for censorship, and asked how many times content industries could claim the sky was falling before people stop believing them (but at least more and more people were noticing how collection societies distorted copyright law). We were also deeply unsurprised when Viacom appealed the ruling in its case against YouTube.
