This Week In Techdirt History: April 14th – 20th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, Starz was going after tweets about a TorrentFreak article, then issuing a laughably unbelievable excuse and apology. The EU nations, as expected, rubber stamped the copyright directive, while the Parliament moved on to the terrorist content regulations and quickly pushed those through too. We learned some more about ICE’s fake university sting operation, while Motel 6 was set to pay out another $12 million for handing guest info to ICE. And Facebook and a very, very bad week on the privacy front, while the Sixth Circuit dumped a lawsuit attempting to hold Twitter responsible for the Pulse nightclub shooting.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, we looked at the lessons from the suspicion and denial around the NSA and the Heartbleed vulnerability, and how the agency could certainly still be using it. The Guardian and the Washington Post won Pulitzers for their Snowden coverage, leading to some backlash that got pretty bizarre. Hollywood was pressuring Australia to make ISPs act as copyright cops, Eli Lilley was pressuring Canada to approve a patent on a useless drug, and General Mills was trying out quite a legal theory about what you can agree to by “Liking” a page on Facebook.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, Google turned off uploads in Korea rather than abide by a requirement to identify and disclose users, some new research was being misrepresented to claim that “Twitter makes you immoral”, and there was one of many examples of Amazon’s DRM turning a Kindle into a paperweight. An activist group was using bogus DMCA claims to take down videos exposing its use of fake “concerned citizens”, while a news station was doing the same to hide the fact that it fell for an April Fool’s prank. And the Coldplay/Satriani copyright fight continued, with Coldplay’s filing that denied any copying.