This Week In Techdirt History: September 17th - 23rd

Furnished content.


Five Years AgoThere was all sorts of copyright nonsense this week in 2012, beginning with a claim from the Canadian Mint over a musician's album cover photo that included some pennies sitting on a table. We noticed some disturbing things hiding in the history of US copyright, like the fact that the Copyright Act explicitly says disruptive innovation should be blocked, or that somehow a letter written by John Adams in 1755 had still not entered the public domain. The Spanish octogenarian who gained notoriety after her extremely poor "restoration" of a fresco of Jesus decided, for some reason, to start exercising her copyright over the famous failure, and we also saw the beginning of the copyright dustup over The Innocence of Muslims.Also, this was the week that the Big Four record labels became the Big Three, with regulators approving Universal's purchase of EMI.Ten Years AgoThings weren't much better this week in 2007, with the copyright czar stepping up to sing the praises of the DMCA and copyright holders gloating over every mole successfully whac'd in their pointless crusade. NBC seemed insistent on making life harder for paying customers> (though CBS seemed to have a better handle on internet video), the Canadian recording industry was flip-flopping on private copying levees lest people get the impression downloading was legal, and a book store at Harvard was trying to claim copyright on... its book prices.Fifteen Years AgoGuess what? More of the same this week in 2002. The music industry was touting new "CD-killer" music formats without mentioning their real motivation was the enhanced copyright protection of new, pointless devices, while at least one record company was taking the absurd anti-leak action of sending reviewers individual players containing the CD and glued shut. Cablevision gave everyone a preview of the DRM future by accidentally turning on new copyright protection technology for a little while. At least CEA head Gary Shapiro was eloquently making the point that downloading is neither immoral nor illegal, though that sensible understanding of the situation unsurprisingly didn't catch on with the entertainment industries.

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