from the as-it-was dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2018, the FCC’s broadband availability data was being derided as inaccurate and “shameful”, while the agency was relaunching its map that hallucinates broadband competition. We got a clear idea of when net neutrality protections would formally end, while more than half of US states were pushing their own net neutrality rules. Meanwhile, Germany’s speech laws continued to be a raging dumpster fire of censorial stupidity, publishers were trying the “just trust us” defense of the EU’s snippet tax, and Wired published a big cover story on Facebook that got a key legal point completely wrong.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2013, we took a look at the copyright situation surrounding the Harlem Shake. The RIAA was blaming Google for its own failure to use Google’s DMCA tools properly, the Pirate Bay was taking action against an anti-piracy group in a bit of a stunt to highlight double standards, and CCIA was similarly trying to expose double standards by asking for Germany to go on the Special 301 list due to its attacks on fair use. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court was looking at thorny questions around Monsanto seed patents, and the Prenda saga was still not over.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2008, UK ISPs were getting ready to serve customers ads based on their online behavior, Australia joined the list of countries considering kicking people off the internet for file sharing. Comcast was making questionable choices in an attempt to defend its recently-exposed traffic shaping, the Olympics were cracking down on bloggers, and the RIAA hit a new low in weird scumminess by encouraging prosecutors to use piracy charges as a way of going after drug dealers and terrorists. We also kicked off a new series of posts about intellectual property issues with a look at the constitutional reasons behind copyright and patents.
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