Techdirt: This Week In Techdirt History: April 18th - 24th

Five Years Ago

EU regulators were busy this week in 2016, trying to force YouTube to be more like Spotify and going after Google for antitrust regarding Android, which prompted Microsoft to drop all its own antitrust complaints about Google and vice versa, while both companies claimed the timing was just a coincidence. The FISA court was still uncovering surveillance abuses by the feds while the EFF was suing the DOJ for refusing to release FISA court documents, and another court said that national security letters were constitutional under the USA Freedom Act. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court said it wouldn't hear the Authors Guild's appeal over the Google Books ruling, prompting the Guild to whine.

Ten Years Ago

Righthaven was having a bad time this week in 2011, with a judge slamming their legal tactics and unsealing the document that revealed "sham" copyright assignments to the company — while, in another state, Righthaven was continuing its self-destruction by directing their petulant tone at the judge . It wasn't over, either, as yet another court told Righthaven its demand for domain names was silly. And another similar company, Digiprotect, was also getting dinged by a judge. On the other hand, one of the RIAA's lawyers in the Limewire case was recommended as a federal judge.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, people were beginning to notice how much free product placement Apple was getting in movies and television shows, high-price domain names were back and we wondered where the skepticism was, and ATT was pretending to love competition. We looked at the story of how NTP kept prior art on its wireless email patent quiet, and we were irritated at the fact that the Patent Office needed to be told to look online for prior art on patent applications. More and more states were pursuing driving-while-yakking regulations without paying attention to the broader data about distracted driving in general. And the Supreme Court declined to hear Jerry Falwell's typosquatting case.