from the those-were-the-days dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2018, there were a few interesting studies and reports that deserved attention. One built on previous research showing that you beat piracy with innovation, not enforcement, and was echoed by similar results coming from the UK. On another front, a new report outlined how US telcos abandoned rural American broadband. Meanwhile, Ajit Pai was throwing his employees under the bus after an investigation proved the FCC made up a DDoS attack, the MPAA was claiming broad censorship was necessary to save free speech, and a court told DOJ officials that they must answer questions from BuzzFeed about the Steele dossier.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2013, the NSA revelations kept coming. We learned about how other government agencies were trying to get access to the surveillance data, and that the DEA was getting access and had been instructed to cover up the source of the info. A former NSA boss was attacking Snowden’s supporters and transparency advocates with ridiculous rhetoric, while we noted one of the ways the agency was evasive when asked about its capabilities. Meanwhile, Obama was denying the existence of a domestic spying program, offering up little more than some minor reforms and transparency for the NSA, straight-up lying about the idea that Snowden could have benefited from whistleblower protections, and overall just focusing on trying to appease the public rather than fix the problem.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2008, the world lost a great source of discussion about copyright when William Patry shut down his blog because the subject was “too depressing”. We continued to watch the Jammie Thomas trial, Cablevision scored a win in court regarding its remote DVR, and we highlighted how much was at stake in the TorrentSpy vs. MPAA email snooping lawsuit. Warner Music was complaining that Rock Band and Guitar Hero didn’t pay enough for music, a study in France completely misunderstood movie downloading, yet another star singer came out to say she didn’t mind file sharing, and we took a bigger look at all the ways copyright holds back the creative class.
Source link
