from the that-was-that dept

Five Years Ago

This week at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020, a new study shed light on just how racially biased facial recognition algorithms are, while we looked at how tracking college students everywhere they go on campus had become the new norm. The Minnesota appeals court struck down the state’s broadly-written revenge porn law, while a California court just barely allowed a class action lawsuit over Google’s location tracking to move forward. And over in the EU, the patent office rejected two patent applications that listed an AI as the inventor.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014-2015, we looked at some of the news that certain people hoped to bury on Christmas Eve, like the details of the NSA’s illegal surveillance of Americans and France’s enactment of a controversial surveillance law. We also looked at how the NSA tries to break encryption in any way it can, and how the FBI used NSLs to get around FISA court rejections. And we wrote about how copyright makes culture disappear and how it forced one filmmaker to rewrite Martin Luther King’s words. Also, we responded to a totally bogus cease and desist letter sent over our reporting on the infamous monkey selfie.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009-2010, we expressed disappointment in Zynga’s copyright attacks over an autoplay script, explored a curious question about music licensing and international borders, and looked at the UK Government report showing the real dangers and high cost of the Digital Economy Bill. A court cited Section 230 protections in dismissing a defamation claim against a consumer complaint website, the Canadian government shut down 4,500 innocent sites while going after a Yes Men parody, and it was revealed that there were 100 Viacom-uploaded clips among those that Viacom sued YouTube over.

Filed Under: history, look back