Five Years Ago

This week in 2020, the Secret Service joined the list of law enforcement agencies using data brokers to dodge warrant requirements for location data, much like the CPB was still doing via a broker being investigated by congress, while other agencies were throwing tax dollars at junk science — but at least the court in Massachusetts insisted that cops need warrants to engage in long-term video surveillance. Also: Lindsey Graham launched a new confused attack on Section 230, RFK Jr. filed an insanely stupid lawsuit against Facebook, and the Epic/Apple fight over Fortnite continued.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2015, Ashley Madison was continuing to abuse the DMCA following its disastrous data leak, while we wrote about the rise of ContentID trolls on YouTube, and Carl Malamud was asking the site to institute a three strikes policy for takedown abuse. Twitter offered up a ridiculous excuse for shutting down services that highlighted deleted tweets from politicians, and we looked at how Google lobbied against real net neutrality in India. We also saw some examples of rightsholders really hating fun, with the Pokemon Company shutting down a Pokemon party at PAX, and Universal Music taking down a parody of a Nirvana song.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2010, and continuing on that same theme, we saw Warner Bros. getting upset about “Harry Popper” condoms, and LucasFilm (somewhat more understandably) getting upset about a company called “Jedi Mind”. In a bit of a reversal, Madonna was sued for selling clothes under the name “Material Girl” by a company that had been using that brand for over a decade. We shared an insider’s view on how grandstanding attorneys general were making life miserable for tech companies, with the prototypical example of course being constant attacks on Craigslist. Also, Techdirt itself received one of the more extreme legal threats we’ve ever gotten.

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