This day in history

2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023.

Cory Doctorow
2 min readApr 18, 2024

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I’m on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

#20yrsago The RIAA’s Clean Slate “amnesty” euthanized https://web.archive.org/web/20040517135600/https://blogs.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/001435.php

#20yrsago 1995 web-hosting rates https://web.archive.org/web/20040421110701/http://1c4.net/

#15yrsago UK wine-sellers declare that wine has horoscopes, advise wine-drinkers to avoid certain moon-days https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/apr/18/wine-lunar-calendar-tesco-supermarkets

#10yrsago Army comes clean about its recruitment AI, accidentally discloses info about pedophile- and terrorist-catching chatbots that roam the net https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/answers-questions-about-military-law-enforcement-and-intelligence-agency-chatbots

#5yrsago Pepsi won’t put a billboard in space after all https://spacenews.com/pepsi-drops-plans-to-use-orbital-billboard/

#5yrsago The Antitrust Case Against Facebook: a turning point in the debate over Big Tech and monopoly https://memex.craphound.com/2019/04/18/the-antitrust-case-against-facebook-a-turning-point-in-the-debate-over-big-tech-and-monopoly/

#5yrsago The sovereign nation of Iceland has finally invalidated the European trademark on “Iceland,” formerly held by a British discount grocery chain https://www.techdirt.com/2019/04/17/end-absurdity-iceland-country-successfully-invalidates-trademark-iceland-foods-grocer/

#5yrsago Dentistry’s evidentiary vacuum allows profiteering butchers to raid our mouths for millions https://memex.craphound.com/2019/04/18/dentistrys-evidentiary-vacuum-allows-profiteering-butchers-to-raid-our-mouths-for-millions/

#5yrsago 1% of England owns half of England https://whoownsengland.org

#5yrsago Effective July 15, British porn consumers will be required entrust their sexual tastes to private companies’ badly secured databases https://www.wired.com/story/porn-block-uk-wired-explains/

#5yrsago We lost the fight for balance in the EU’s Copyright Directive, but here’s what we won https://felixreda.eu/2019/04/not-in-vain/

#5yrsago John Oliver tackles the Sacklers: the litigious, secretive billionaires whose family business engineered the opioid crisis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qCKR6wy94U

#1yrago How tech does regulatory capture https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/18/cursed-are-the-sausagemakers/#how-the-parties-get-to-yes

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