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

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, Colorado’s net neutrality bill was heading to the governor’s desk while Mitch McConnell was promising a House net neutrality bill would never get past the Senate. The UK proposed a ridiculous plan to fine internet companies for vaguely defined “harmful content” while the European Parliament was moving forward with its regulation of terrorist content (which apparently included much of the Internet Archive). This was also the week that Devin Nunes’s campaign against an internet cow kicked into high gear, followed by him quickly admitting that it was all about fishing for journalists’ sources.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, while Mike Rogers was still pushing the idea that Ed Snowden was a Russian spy, and Michael Hayden was having some anger issues, we learned that the NSA spied on Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and that the agency was (according to Snowden) lying when they say he didn’t try to raise concerns through the proper channels. But the Supreme Court was still not ready to hear a case challenging NSA surveillance. Meanwhile, the MPAA joined the pile-on and sued Megaupload, and their lawsuit was (unsurprisingly) another broadside attack on the internet.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, a dangerous appeals court ruling opened Google up to trademark liability in AdWords, but we also saw a rare example of a sensible AdWords trademark lawsuit. The Associated Press announced plans to sue news aggregators, Senators were looking to ban SMS spam, and Wizards of the Coast got in one of its many conflicts with Dungeons & Dragons fans. U2’s manager was still crusading against the internet, while Sweden’s anti-piracy law boosted the market for encryption technology. And we saw a couple interesting copyright articles, one showing just how ridiculously confusing it can get, and one questioning how it gets around the First Amendment.