This Week In Techdirt History: March 30th – April 5th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2020, the COVID news continued. Some hospital administrators were trying to silence doctors and nurses from commenting on pandemic shortages, voluntary virus tracking apps were trying to get a grip on the spread, and the UK’s NHS was enlisting Palantir to analyze data. We wrote about the tone deafness of using the pandemic as a prop to celebrate the death of net neutrality, and the challenges of moderating COVID misinformation. Also, the Internet Archive made a decision that led to a freakout from publishers and authors that would become a yearslong legal fight.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2015, we looked at how the TPP agreement could be used to undermine free speech and fair use in the US, while a Broadway parody of Three’s Company won a fair use victory. Obama signed a ridiculous new executive order about cybersecurity, which seemed to cover Wikileaks as a cyberattacker. Flickr officially began supporting public domain dedications, TV industry analysts were ignoring the existence of piracy in trying to understand cord-cutting, and a ruling in Ireland required ISPs to kick people accused of file sharing off the internet.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2010, NBC and Hulu were hit with a lawsuit over the idea of putting television shows online, the Olympics were once again resulting in police getting special powers, and a judge told IsoHunt to wave the magic wand that makes infringement go away. Extortion-like automated mass copyright lawsuits hit the US in a big way, and we quickly started finding embarrassing mistakes. But perhaps the biggest news was the landmark ruling that gene patents are invalid, which would have significant impacts on scientific research.