This Week In Techdirt History: November 19th - 25th

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Five Years AgoThis week in 2012, we saw a lot of interesting documents related to copyright. First, there was the excellent report from Derek Khanna at the Republican Study Committee, which was quickly retracted by the party (but that wouldn't be the last we'd hear from Khanna — and we continued to look closely at the report). Next, there was the newly available English translation of a Polish copyright study that, it turned out, had been critical to the growth of the ACTA opposition. Finally, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University was getting ready to publish a book about the need for copyright reform — just as rightsholders were co-opting the "reform" language for their own purposes.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, we got the opinions of presidential candidates on copyright through the lens of an incredibly slanted survey clearly aimed at promoting stronger laws, while a much better and more interesting report was highlighting just how much casual infringement everyone commits every day (rendering copyright law largely obsolete). While music retailers were begging the recording industry to cut it out with the DRM and the MPAA was defending its assault on universities, the writer's strike was highlighting just how many new competitors Hollywood has online. Meanwhile, a company was claiming to offer "open-source DRM", which we noted is either not open source, or not DRM.Fifteen Years AgoThe more things change, the more they sound exactly like they did in 2001 — like concerns about the uptick in fake, doctored photos being spread online, and tech companies asking the FCC not to filter the internet. On the copyright front, some were of course trying to claim that DRM can save the entertainment industry while Microsoft was realizing that it's a futile endeavor. We also pointed to an early article discussing something that would become a common point here at Techdirt: copyright is about user rights, not an analogy for property. Meanwhile, though it started as a small and curious experiment, it was becoming apparent that Google and Amazon's newfangled "web services" offerings might change the face of the web as we know it.

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Daily Deal: Black Friday Sales

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