This Week In Techdirt History: May 7th – 13th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2018, the Defense Department was looking for another exemption from compliance with FOIA, while police were dropping charges against a 19-year-old who downloaded public documents from a FOI portal. The FCC’s Ajit Pai was celebrating as net neutrality got an official end date, while several companies were responding to the GDPR by blocking all EU users, and AT&T was continuing to fight to gut FTC authority over broadband monopolies. Also, we took a look at the dangers of copyright holders moving their enforcement efforts further up the tech stack.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2013, some sloppy copyright trolls sued the same guy multiple times, the fight was on over DRM in HTML5, and a broad coalition of stakeholders was calling for objective data and research concerning copyright reform. Chile announced that it did not recognize the legitimacy of the Special 301 report, while we noted that said report didn’t even mention Germany trampling fair use. Meanwhile, Prenda got hit with its massive smackdown from Judge Otis Wright with a nice helping of poetic justice, prompting John Steele to pledge to appeal, start blabbing to the press, and try to distance himself from the operation.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2008, we wondered whether the fight over Psystar computers would be a key case about the enforceability of EULAs, and hoped that courts would reject Blizzard’s assault on the first sale doctrine. TorrentSpy was ordered to pay a hefty sum to the MPAA, and despite being out of business, it pledged to appeal, while both the MPAA and RIAA were clearly in denial about DRM. We also took a look at how YouTube was changing political accountability, and at the Happy Birthday copyright saga. Meanwhile, the House overwhelmingly passed the PRO IP bill.