This Week In Techdirt History: November 20th – 26th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, congress rushed to pass a bill empowering copyright trolls to shake people down, while Ajit Pai was complaining about the state-level net neutrality laws he helped create. Donald Trump was threatening to sue CNN for its coverage based on a dumb legal theory, while we wrote about how a cop’s bogus defamation lawsuit nearly put a small Iowa newspaper out of business. And we looked once again at why Section 230 is not a “free pass” for internet companies, and dedicated an episode of the podcast to the story of Backpage versus the feds.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, we noted that even the FBI itself knew director James Comey was wrong about encryption, while he called on congress to “fix” the “problem”. Mike Rogers was ramping up the rhetoric and calling for Ed Snowden to be charged with murder, while a former NSA official was saying the government shouldn’t hire anyone who “justified” Snowden’s leaks. Marvel went DMCA crazy over the leaked trailer for Avengers 2 shortly before putting it on its own YouTube page, Microsoft got a bunch of non-infringing videos taken down because of product keys posted in the comments, and we wrote about how copyright law stifles artistic criticism.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, Monster Energy drink was getting aggressive, hiring trademark bullies to go after a beverage review site and a movie monster, but it also backed down from another fight it had started a few weeks earlier against a Vermont brewery. Hollywood studios were starting to put anti-Twitter clauses in contracts with actors, AT&T was asking its employees to hide their affiliation while protesting net neutrality laws, and we asked whether the AP could be trusted to report on its own lawsuit with Shepard Fairey.