This Week In Techdirt History: October 3rd – 9th
from the back-in-the-day dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2016, the Trump’s campaign was reacting to the leaked pages of his 1995 tax returns by threatening to sue the New York Times, and also reacting to some ads from the Clinton campaign by threatening to sue them, too — while at the same time, the campaign was facing its own bogus threat from the Phoenix Police over imagery of cops in an ad. The big story, though, was the revelation that Yahoo had secretly built email scanning software under pressure from the feds. This led to basically every other tech company rapidly denying that they’d done the same, followed by Yahoo itself issuing a tone-deaf non-denial denial of the report. The media was very confused about the story, with the New York Times and Reuters claiming totally different explanations for the email scanning, and over the course of the week even more disagreements and confusion arose.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2011, countries around the world were signing ACTA and finally admitting that it meant they’d have to change their copyright laws, while Brazil was drafting its own anti-ACTA framework for the internet. The Supreme Court declined to consider an appeals court ruling that properly stated music downloads are not public performances, though this didn’t mean (as some claimed) that downloading had been legalized. Meanwhile, another judge dismissed a lawsuit over streaming video, but mostly avoided the larger copyright questions, and we saw a set of good rulings against copyright trolls, and one bad one.
This was also the week that Steve Jobs died at age 56.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2006, Facebook was getting a start on its soon-to-be-tradition of threatening people who make useful third-party tools. Amazon was abandoning its attempt to make an early version of something like Street View, and Wal-Mart was abandoning its much more stupid attempt to offer a MySpace clone. The fight between Belgian news publishers and Google was continuing, while the copyright fight over My Sharona was dragging in Yahoo, Amazon and Apple. And the big news — though it was still just a rumor with lots of conflicting information going around, making it hard to tell if it was true — was that Google was planning to buy YouTube for $1.6-billion.
Comments on “This Week In Techdirt History: October 3rd – 9th”
Steve Jobs' passing
Steve Jobs passed away 10 years ago? Damn!
And yet I’m furious that Apple’s Web Site has nothing about the date. I honestly think that Apple was a better company under Steve Jobs. He definitely had many of the same failings as Tim Cook but I felt he knew what he was doing in approving the right ideas from the design team in a way that Tim Cook never could. I don’t think a Steve-Jobs-run-Apple would have come out with something as banal as an iPad with a stylus or an Apple Watch.
Fifteen Years Later, Just Sayin' .....
Under the linked article about The Knack vs Run DMC, someone wrote "The real reason nobody is focusing on brick and mortar is probably less interesting — The physical CD has probably sold bupkus in the last three years, and therefore there’s no money to be made in suing over those sales." Link: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20061005/002553.shtml#c414
To which I say, well, actually, maybe not as that album was re-issued to CD and LP in 2002. I bought a copy of the CD in 2004 (within the three years) and the LP in 2013 (seven years later, so I guess the lawsuit failed).
Soon will be the "Fifteen years ago" when Larrakin Music sued Men At Work over the "Down Under" use of "Kookaburra" and won. I still can’t believe Larrakin won. Substantial portion my ass!
By the way, does anybody know what happened with the "Stairway To Heaven" / "Taurus" case?
Re: Fifteen Years Later, Just Sayin' .....
Yeah, the Led escaped unscathed, after some hotly contested jury instructions that were appealed, more than once.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/10/entertainment/led-zeppellin-stairway-heaven-lawsuit-trnd/index.html
Re: Re: Fifteen Years Later, Just Sayin' .....
Thanks for the reply and link, sumgai. I appreciate it!
Nothing to add
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