Filter by Year

1000 - 1500 1500 - 1700 1700 - 1900 1900 - 2000 2000+

Filter by Tag

Printing Copyright Internet Sound Encryption Repopulate

The filters above will show you entries from that year or tag, but multiple clicks have a stacking effect, so clicking two distinct time frames will always result in an empty list, whereas clicking two tags will show you only items associated with both tags. You can click Repopulate to bring the full list back on screen.

Content-wise, things are obviously far from complete. Please contribute. You can find the project on github, or I can always be reached by emailing daniel (at) binaryorganic (dot) com

The code used is based almost entirely on the wonderful work of Harry Roberts at CSSWizardry.com (the sloppy filtering system is mine, not his). This replaces our previous code that was based on the equally wonderful Timeline project.

brought to you by:

History of the Freedom of Information

1. 1041

   First known movable type

   Invented in China by Bi Sheng out of ceramic between 1041 and 1048 AD source

2. 1230

   Metal movable type

   Metal movable type was first invented in Korea during the Goryeo Dynasty (around 1230). source

3. 1377

   Printing of the Jikji

   Printed during the Goryeo Dynasty in 1377, it is the worlds oldest extant movable metal print book. UNESCO confirmed Jikji as the world oldest metalloid type in September 2001 and includes it in the Memory of the World program. source

4. 1440

   Printing press

   The mechanical systems involved were first assembled in Germany by the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg source

5. 1457

   First Printing of Music

   The first printed book to include music, the Mainz psalter (1457), had to have the notation added in by hand. source

6. 1486

   Venice grants first special privilage for a book

   It was a special case, being the history of the city itself, the Rerum venetarum ab urbe condita opus of Marcus Antonius Coccius Sabellicus. source

7. 1492

   Venice begins regularly granting special privillages for books

   The first went to Petrus Franciscus de Ravenna, a teacher of canon law at Padua University who had devised a system of training the memory, which he embodied in a book entitled "Foenix". source

8. 1501

   Germany grants first copyright

   granted by the Aulic Council to an association entitled the Sodalitas Rhenana Celtica, for the publication of an edition of the dramas of Hroswitha of Gandersheim, which had been prepared for the press by Konrad Keltes. source

9. 1503

   France grants first copyright

   source

10. 1512

    First European copyright granted for works not yet published.

    an Imperial privilege was issued to the historiographer John Stadius for all that he should print, the first European privilege which was made to cover more than a single work, or undertaking to protect books not yet published. source

11. 1518

    England grants first copyright

    It was issued to Richard Pynson, Kings Printer, the successor to William Caxton. The privilege gives a monopoly for the term of two years. source

12. 1557

    Stationers Company given Royal Charter

    It held a monopoly over the British publishing industry and was officially responsible for setting and enforcing copyright regulations until the passage of the Statute of Anne in 1709. source

13. 1623

    Printing of the ha- Shirim asher li-Shelomo

    The first notable copyright of music was a setting of the Psalms by the composer Salomone Rossi. It included a rabbinical curse on anyone who copied the contents. source

14. 1662

    The licensing act of 1662

    Required the printer of every book to print on it a certificate of the licensor, stating that it contained no writing "contrary to the Christian faith, or the doctrine or discipline of the church of England against the state and government of the realm, or contrary to good life or good manners, or otherwise". source

15. 1709

    Statute of Anne

    The statute of 1709 vested authors rather than printers with the monopoly on the reproduction of their works. It created a 21 year term for all works already in print at the time of its enactment and a fourteen year term for all works published subsequently. source

16. 1766

    Sweden's Freedom of the Press Act

    Considered the first piece of Freedom of Information legislation to be passed source

17. 1769

    Millar v Taylor

    An English court decision that held there is a perpetual common law copyright and that no works ever enter the public domain. source

18. 1774

    Donaldson v Beckett

    the ruling by the British House of Lords that denied the continued existence of a perpetual common law copyright and held that copyright was a creation of statute and could be limited in its duration. source

19. 1789

    US Federal Copyright Law of 1789

    In 1789 when the first congress of the US passed the first federal copyright law, music was not included. source

20. 1794

    Foreign Authors protected by copyright in Germany

    All German authors, and foreign authors whose works were represented by publishers taking part in the book fairs in Frankfurt and Leipzig, were to be protected throughout the states of Germany against unauthorized reprints. source

21. 1796

    Lithography

    Invented by Bavarian author Alois Senefelder source

22. 1831

    U.S. copyright law expanded to include music

    The copyright term for protection was 28 years plus a 14-year renewal period. source

23. 1842

    United Kingdom passes Copyright Act of 1842

    It repealed the former Copyright Acts, and provided that in future the copyright of every book published in the lifetime of its author would endure for the remainder of the authors life and for a further seven years after their death. source

24. 1857

    Phonautograph Invented

    source

25. 1877

    Phonograph Invented

    Thomas Alva Edison conceived the principle of recording and reproducing sound between May and July 1877 as a byproduct of his efforts to "play back" recorded telegraph messages and to automate speech sounds for transmission by telephone. source

26. 1886

    Berne Convention

    The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, is an international agreement governing copyright. source

27. 1888

    Records Invented

    Phonograph cylinders dominated the recorded sound market into the 1880s. Lateral-cut disc records were invented by EMile Berliner in 1888. They were used exclusively in toys until 1894. source

28. 1903

    Offset Printing

    Ira Washington Rubel invented the first offset printing press in 1903. source

29. 1925

    Electrical Sound Recording

    The advent of electrical recording made it possible to use microphones and over-dubbing and drastically improved audio quality. source

30. 1952

    Universal Copyright Convention

    One of the two principal international conventions protecting copyright; the other is the Berne Convention. The UCC is, while still in effect, largely irrelevant source

31. 1966

    U.S. Freedom of Information Act

    The U.S. Freedom of Information Act was signed into law by Presiden Lyndon B. Johnson. source

32. 1971

    Unix Released

    The Unix operating system was conceived and implemented in 1969 at AT&T's Bell Laboratories in the United States by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna. source

33. 1976

    Data Encryption Standard

    The Data Encryption Standard (DES) is a block cipher (a form of shared secret encryption) that was selected by the National Bureau of Standards as an official Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for the United States in 1976 and which has subsequently enjoyed widespread use internationally. source

34. 1976

    Copyright Act of 1976

    The Copyright Act of 1976 is a piece of United States copyright legislation and remains the primary basis of copyright law in the United States, as amended by several later enacted copyright provisions. source

35. 1985

    Free Software Foundation

    Richard Stallman created the FSF to promote the ideals of free software. The most notable contribution was probably the creation of the GNU General Public License (GPL) source

36. 1985

    Microsoft Windows Released

    The shell of Windows 1.0 was a program known as the MS-DOS Executive. Other supplied programs were Calculator, Calendar, Cardfile, Clipboard viewer, Clock, Control Panel, Notepad, Paint, Reversi, Terminal, and Write. source

37. 1988

    United Kingdom passes CDPA

    Reformulated almost completely the statutory basis of copyright law (including performing rights) in the United Kingdom, which had until then been governed by the Copyright Act of 1956. source

38. 1994

    Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

    An international agreement administered by the World Trade Organization (WTO) that sets down minimum standards for many forms of intellectual property (IP) regulation. source

39. 1995

    Geocities Launched

    In mid-1995, the company decided to offer users (thereafter known as "Homesteaders") the ability to develop free home pages within those neighborhoods. source

40. 1996

    Content Scrambling System (CSS)

    Content Scramble System (CSS) is a Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme used on almost all commercially produced DVD-Video discs. It utilizes a proprietary 40-bit stream cipher algorithm. The system was introduced around 1996 and has subsequently been compromised. source

41. 1996

    Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments

    The Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments were signed by President Bill Clinton on October 2, 1996. source

42. 1997

    AOL Instant Messenger

    AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) is an instant messaging and presence computer program which uses the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time. source

43. 1998

    Copyright Term Extension Act

    The Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 extended copyright terms in the United States by 20 years. source

44. 1998

    Digital Millenium Copyright Act

    Criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as Digital Rights Management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works. source

45. 1999

    CSS cracked, DeCSS Released

    Jon Lech Johansen and two people who remained anonymous reverse engineered the algorithm and DeCSS was released. source

46. 2000

    Universal v. Reimerdes

    The first test of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a United States federal law. The plaintiffs sought an injunction against the distribution of DeCSS, a program that reverse engineered the CSS algorithm, thereby allowing decryption of DVDs without paying CSS licensing fees. source

47. 2000

    Nupedia Launched

    Nupedia was an English-language Web-based encyclopedia whose articles were written by experts and licensed as free content. source

48. 2001

    Wikipedia Launched

    Wikipedia is a free, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. source

49. 2001

    Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

    In cryptography, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is an encryption standard adopted by the U.S. government. source

50. 2002

    Bertelsmann implements DRM on audio CDs

    Bertelsmann (now defunt, but then comprising BMG, Arista, and RCA) was reportedly the first corporation to use DRM on audio CDs. source

51. 2003

    MySpace Launched

    MySpace is a social networking website. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California, US, where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media, which is owned by News Corporation source

52. 2003

    Nupedia goes offline

    Nupedia is mostly known now as the predecessor of the free wiki encyclopedia, Wikipedia. source

53. 2004

    Facebook Launched

    Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. source

54. 2005

    Sony DRM unleashes rootkit

    Sony installed DRM software on users computers without clearly notifying the user or requiring confirmation. Among other things, the installed software included a rootkit, which created a severe security vulnerability others could exploit. source

55. 2005

    Family Entertainment and Copyright Act

    The Act consists of two subparts: the Artists Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005, which increases penalties for copyright infringement, and the Family Home Movie Act of 2005, which permits the development of technology to "sanitize" potentially offensive DVD content. source

56. 2005

    Advanced Access Control System (AACS)

    The specification was publicly released in April 2005 and the standard has been adopted as the access restriction scheme for HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc (BD). source

57. 2005

    Broadcast Flag

    A broadcast flag is a set of status bits (or a "flag") sent in the data stream of a digital television program that indicates whether or not the data stream can be recorded, or if there are any restrictions on recorded content. source

58. 2006

    World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty

    An international treaty on copyright law adopted by the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). source

59. 2006

    AACS Cracked

    A person using the alias "muslix64" published a working, open-sourced AACS decrypting utility named BackupHDDVD. source

60. 2007

    EMI stops using DRM on audio CDs

    In January 2007, EMI stopped publishing audio CDs with DRM, stating that "the costs of DRM do not measure up to the results." source