Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, Google was in the news twice — first for their inevitable admission that Google+ was a failure, and then for their surprising announcement of the new corporate structure under the parent company Alphabet. Meanwhile, a CIA FOIA dump provided new information about spying on the Senate, including the accidental release of an apology letter the CIA wrote but never sent. We also saw more DMCA shenanigans as Vimeo complied with bogus mass-takedowns over the word "Pixels" and a convicted fraudster sent a bogus takedown to Techdirt over our coverage of previous bogus takedowns.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2010, RIM managed to work out a deal with the Saudi Arabian government to prevent a BlackBerry ban, raising the question of just what device security would be like under this new agreement. We saw some... questionable journalism choices as the Washington Post peddled anti-Craigslist ideas by citing one of its own anti-Craigslist advertisers, and the Associated Press was strangely not reporting on the judge denying sanctions in its lawsuit against Shepard Fairey. Meanwhile, we took a look at how the FBI was prioritizing copyright issues, Congress introduced yet another iteration of a disastrous fashion copyright bill, Viacom unsurprisingly appealed the YouTube ruling, and, in a major move to protect free speech, the anti-libel-tourism SPEECH Act became law.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, AOL was trying to regain some relevance by moving into the wireless space, while Blockbuster gave up on trying to beat Netflix on price by raising its online DVD rental prices to match. The FCC was subtly but significantly downgrading the concept of internet freedoms, one school was refusing to back down on felony charges against students over some harmless hacking, and an Australian ISP was threatening to sue a forum over public information. We also talked some more about the myth of copy protection as a useful idea, and wondered if some of the companies trying to foist it on people thought buyers were complete idiots.