https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200822/11255845163/this-week-techdirt-history-august-16th-22nd.shtml

This week in 2015, new leaks confirmed what we suspected about AT&T's cozy relationship with the NSA, which was especially concerning given the company's long history of fraudulent and abusive behavior, and the fact that the NSA seemed to think telco partners freed it from the constraints of the Fourth Amendment. The leak also revealed that the agency was misleading at best about how many cellphone records it could access.

This week in 2010, Peter Sunde gave a fascinating presentation on the history of The Pirate Bay, while we were emphasizing that record labels can still have a role in music if they embrace the ways that role is changing, and a new comprehensive graphic aptly demonstrated just how insane the music licensing world is. The trend of established musicians and industry folk using apocalyptic language to describe the impact of the internet continued, with rants from U2's manager and John Mellencamp (who compared the internet to the atomic bomb).