from the that-was-that dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2020, Donald Trump got angry about a trend on Twitter and went full force calling for a repeal of Section 230, renewing the effort to slip this into the must-pass military spending bill. Trump promised he was willing to defund the entire military if Congress didn’t agree, but Congress decided to ignore his threats and even Republicans threatened to override his veto as he doubled down. At the same time, of course, Congress itself was looking to sneak unconstitutional copyright reform into the same bill, and Nancy Pelosi sold out the public and agreed.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2015, France was using the state of emergency following the Paris terrorist attacks as an excuse to round up climate change activists, while former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer was using the San Bernadino shooting to call for more domestic surveillance. One appeals court issued a fantastic First Amendment ruling against a censorious Sheriff’s anti-internet crusade, while another allowed secret drone memos to remain secret, and one recipient of an FBI National Security Letter was finally able to reveal the details 11 years after receiving it. Also, the US government quietly returned two domain names that ICE had seized five years earlier.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2010, we were writing about that very domain seizure, pointing out how the evidence that they were all purely dedicated to infringement was unconvincing. But the even bigger topic was the war on Wikileaks, as Obama announced he was “considering” legal action against the site, Amazon bowed to pressure and refused to host it, Senator Liberman introduced a new kneejerk censorship bill, the Library of Congress blocked the site, and we wrote about how both both this drama and the domain seizures showed how private intermediaries were increasingly involved in government censorship.

Filed Under: history, look back

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