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Old 04-09-19, 06:52 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - September 7th, ’19

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September 7th, 2019




Piracy Rates in Sweden Remain Steady Despite the Success of Legal Streaming Platforms
Bill Toulas

• Pirates in Sweden continue to account for approximately 20% of the total population, despite the presence of numerous legal streaming platforms.
• Subscribers to legit services and platforms are flocking in – but they come from the cable TV field.
• Rightsholders are asking for stricter laws that would allow ISP blocking and even police raids, as seen in other countries across the world.

Ever since Netflix and other legal streaming services like Viaplay and HBO Nordic have become available in Sweden, the number of people who choose to subscribe to these platforms is continually rising. In the same time, however, the rate of illegal pirate streaming remains constant at 20% of the total population. This was recorded last week by a ‘Rights Alliance’ report, with the organization warning about the fact that Sweden remains the most ‘untamed’ country in Scandinavia when it comes to pirate rates. The main reason why this is the case in Sweden according to representatives of the Rights Alliance is that the illegal services are just too rich in content and too low in cost to compete with. In some cases, they are entirely free to use without any limitations, making money out of advertising.

Fighting this trend in Sweden is very hard for rightsholders, as the law isn’t as strict as in other places in the world, so the people behind these illicit services aren’t running a risk of getting caught. The Swedish government is processing a new law that will treat the operation of streaming platforms as a crime, and will also allow for police raids, but for now, this is in the consideration and preliminary discussion stages. Even court orders for ISP blocks that are so common in other countries have never been the case in Sweden.

So, if the uptake of legal services is satisfactory, then the continuation of pirating activity at the same levels could only mean one thing, and that is that legal platforms are getting their fresh audience from the pool of law-abiding cable TV viewers. Pirates don’t see a reason to jump ship because the additional cost isn’t making any sense to them, they don’t run the risk of getting in trouble, and they are enjoying amazingly rich content anyway.

Besides the call for stricter laws, the Rights Alliance is also making an effort to convince pirates that they are supporting money laundering and crime operations. As the people behind pirate streaming platforms are declaring none of their profits to the internal revenue office, they could very well be involved in shady schemes. Sure, the absence of any ethical context for pirating platforms is worrying for some, but for most of the pirates, it’s all about how light their pocket feels at the end of the month.
https://www.technadu.com/sweden-pira...success/78672/





Streaming Makes Up 80 Percent of the Music Industry’s Revenue

Although physical sales are also on the up-and-up
Julia Alexander

More people are streaming music through services like Apple Music and Spotify, and the record industry is seeing a major lift.

Revenue made from streaming services in the United States grew by 26 percent in the first six months of the year, according to trade group Recording Industry Association of America, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. That makes for a revenue of $4.3 billion, according to research conducted by the group, which represents approximately 80 percent of the music industry’s overall revenue.

Although this included both paid subscriptions and ad-supported streams, the report also found that paid subscriptions grew by 31 percent, accounting for 62 percent of the industry’s total revenue. Spotify has more than 100 million subscribers, and Apple Music boasts 56 million paid subscribers. The record industry in the US saw an 18 percent increase in revenue — hitting $5.4 billion — in the first six months of 2019.

It’s not just streaming that’s helping the industry see a boost, though: physical media sales also jumped. Both vinyl and CDs saw increases in sales, growing 5 and 13 percent, respectively. CD sales made up roughly $485 million of the industry’s revenue over the first six months of the year, and vinyl sales brought in an additional $224 million.

Even with the notable increases in physical media purchases, it’s clear that streaming is a dominant force for the industry in the United States. More artists have embraced streaming platforms, too. Taylor Swift, Drake, and Ariana Grande are some of the top performers on services like Spotify, according to the study. Even Tool recently made their music available on streaming platforms for the first time. Still, artists are only paid a fraction of every stream.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/6/20...e-taylor-swift





Hollywood’s Shaky Summer Box Office Points to Larger Issues
Brooks Barnes

This was supposed to be the summer when Hollywood blew the doors off theaters. Stay home and stream? Not with Simba, Spider-Man, John Wick, Snowball, Buzz Lightyear, Aladdin, the X-Men and Godzilla on the way.

Instead, the film business finds itself lagging last year’s surge and facing questions about why. Some box office analysts point to 20th Century Fox, which imploded in Rupert Murdoch’s handoff to Disney and delivered three bombs in a row. Others say moviegoing has become too expensive — concessions, tickets, babysitters — especially given the growing array of low-priced at-home entertainment options that are often already part of a household’s budget.

Or is something bigger going on? “It is another sign that the broader economy is in a fragile place,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, noting that some other leisure businesses — Disney theme parks, Major League Baseball games — also had a soft summer.

From the first weekend in May to Labor Day, a period that can account for as much as 40 percent of annual movie ticket sales, box office revenue in the United States and Canada is expected to total about $4.32 billion, a 2 percent decline from the same period last year, according to Comscore.

Catch up and prep for the week ahead with this newsletter of the most important business insights, delivered Sundays.

For the year, revenue from ticket sales is down 6.3 percent, which roughly translates to a 5 percent decline in attendance. That is despite the runaway success of “Avengers: Endgame,” the Disney-Marvel superhero movie that arrived in late April and collected a record-breaking $2.8 billion worldwide, nearly $860 million of that in North America.

The specialty box office has been in particularly rough shape. Between January and Aug. 25, combined ticket sales for the 20 largest art film distributors (Fox Searchlight, Magnolia and the like) fell 45 percent from the same period last year, according to Box Office Mojo data.

The movie business ebbs and flows depending on factors that vary from reviews to the weather. Ticket sales soared 15 percent last summer in part because of pent-up demand; the “Incredibles” series from Pixar returned after a 14-year hiatus, and “Crazy Rich Asians” was the first studio movie in 25 years to tell a contemporary Asian story. The art-house sector is extra-dependent on quality, and distributors say gems have been in short supply lately, in part because Netflix has snapped up so many of them (for premium prices).

Hollywood could make up ground in the coming months with potential blockbusters like “It: Chapter 2,” “Joker,” “Frozen 2,” “Jumanji: The Next Level,” “Cats” and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.” Specialty distributors have high hopes for Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” (Neon), which was the top prizewinner at Cannes, and “Downton Abbey” (Focus Features).

But box office experts say the theatrical landscape has shifted, possibly permanently. Before it drowned in red ink, MoviePass, the cut-rate ticket subscription service, trained fans (especially younger ones) to expect deep discounts. Streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime have also proliferated, offering huge catalogs of movies and shows for a comparatively low price. At this point, many living rooms are equipped with large flat-screen televisions.

Netflix charges $13 a month for its standard plan. Disney Plus, a service dedicated to everything Disney, Pixar, “Star Wars,” National Geographic and Marvel, will arrive in homes on Nov. 12 and cost $7 a month.

For a comparison, standard movie tickets cost $16 to $18 in New York and Los Angeles; IMAX screenings run about $22.

(The average ticket price in the United States in the second quarter was $9.26, down from $9.38 a year earlier, according to the National Association of Theater Owners. The average price reflects discounts — child, senior and matinee tickets — and tickets sold outside the more expensive cities.)

“Pricing was never an impediment to going to the movies, and it is now,” said Chris Aronson, a former distribution chief for 20th Century Fox who now runs his own consultancy. “Streaming services have come along with such attractively priced entertainment that theaters can’t compete, except on a handful of event movies that people absolutely must see.”

Out-of-home entertainment had a down summer in general. Attendance at Major League Baseball games is expected to fall for the fourth consecutive season, according to Two Circles, a sports marketing agency. Broadway attendance has declined 2.6 percent from a year earlier, according to the Broadway League. Full data was not yet available for concerts, but early numbers suggest a decline, according to statistics from Pollstar, a trade publication.

Attendance eased 3 percent at Disney theme park resorts in Florida and California in the April-June period, according to the company’s quarterly financial report. National Park Service data shows that Yellowstone National Park had fewer visitors in May, June and July.

“Recreation is, of course, a discretionary purchase, and that it has gone soft reflects greater caution by consumers,” Mr. Zandi said.

On a studio-by-studio basis, Hollywood’s summer was severely lopsided. The top 10 movies generated $2.57 billion in domestic ticket sales, and Disney commanded 51 percent of that total — with just three films: “The Lion King,” “Toy Story 4” and “Aladdin.” The No. 1 movie of the summer was “The Lion King,” a remake that took in $523.5 million in North America and $1 billion overseas (and is still playing).

Disney was humbled, however, by the performance of its newly acquired 20th Century Fox division, which delivered a hall-of-fame bomb: “Dark Phoenix,” an X-Men movie, cost an estimated $350 million to make and market and collected $252 million worldwide, roughly half of which goes to theater owners. Two other Fox movies, “Stuber” and “The Art of Racing in the Rain,” also fizzled at the box office. All were well in the works before the Disney deal.

Sony Pictures Entertainment accomplished a unique feat, releasing a juggernaut superhero sequel, “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” and a completely original blockbuster, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.” No other studio showed that range.

“We believe in balance, and you can see this exact strategy in the rest of our year,” said Thomas E. Rothman, Sony’s movie chief, noting the “Jumanji” sequel and an original drama, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” which stars Tom Hanks as the television personality Fred Rogers.

“As strong as the audience is for superheroes and sequels, we limit ourselves to serving that audience at our peril,” Mr. Rothman said. “It will ultimately narrow the business. We have to think about every audience.”

Sony misfired with “Men in Black International” in June, but the studio limited its financial exposure on that science-fiction film by bringing in outside financiers to share the production costs. “We wish it had gotten more enthusiasm,” Mr. Rothman said.

For the year, Sony is a whisper away from Warner Bros. in domestic market share, a standing that drew double takes in Hollywood. Just a few years ago, Sony was sputtering and Warner was the film industry’s superpower. But Warner, now owned by AT&T, has struggled in recent months.

Warner had hoped that female moviegoers would rally around releases like “The Kitchen” and “Blinded by the Light,” which were directed by women. But they were dead on arrival. “Shaft,” starring Samuel L. Jackson, similarly failed to catch on with black ticket buyers, its target audience. Warner was pleased with the turnout for “Annabelle Comes Home,” which collected $72.7 million in North America, but the film, a sequel to a sequel, trailed its franchise predecessor by 29 percent.

Lackluster marketing? Subpar movies? Fingers have been pointing inside the studio. Warner’s top films of the summer were “Pokémon Detective Pikachu,” which took in $432 million worldwide, and “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” which collected a disappointing $386 million. (An independent company, Legendary Entertainment, led the production effort on both of them.)

Warner declined to comment.

In a few cases, studios suffered because hoped-for behemoths were merely big. “Rocketman,” the Elton John bio-musical from Paramount Pictures, sold $190.4 million in tickets worldwide — a very healthy number. But it was less than half the amount Paramount thought was possible.

Universal Pictures and its Illumination animation division had a similar experience with the humdrum “Secret Life of Pets 2,” which generated $414 million. The first chapter sold $875.5 million in tickets.

“Sequels and remakes that do not bring something different, original and outstanding are going to lose their audience fast,” said David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a movie consultancy.

Otherwise, Universal mostly succeeded. A high-stakes “Fast and Furious” spinoff, “Hobbs & Shaw,” has chugged away in theaters since arriving in early August, taking in roughly $700 million worldwide. Comedies, which have struggled in theaters in the streaming age, also came through for Universal, in particular the Beatles-themed “Yesterday.” It was the sleeper hit of the summer, costing about $26 million to make and collecting $135 million.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/01/b...ce-movies.html





The Internet Should Be a Public Good
Ben Tarnoff

On October 1, the Internet will change and no one will notice. This invisible transformation will affect the all-important component that makes the Internet usable: the Domain Name System (DNS). When you type the name of a website into your browser, DNS is what converts that name into the string of numbers that specify the website’s actual location. Like a phone book, DNS matches names that are meaningful to us to numbers that aren’t.

For years, the US government has controlled DNS. But in October, the system will become the responsibility of a Los Angeles-based nonprofit called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

ICANN has actually already been managing DNS since the late 1990s under a contract with the Commerce Department. What’s new is that ICANN will have independent authority over DNS, on a new “multi-stakeholder” model that’s supposed to make Internet governance more international.

The actual impact is likely to be small. The trademark protection measures that police DNS on behalf of corporations will remain in place, for instance. And the fact that ICANN is located in Los Angeles and incorporated under US law means that the US government will continue to exercise influence, if somewhat less directly.

But the symbolic significance is huge. The October handover marks the last chapter in the privatization of the Internet. It concludes a process that began in the 1990s, when the US government privatized a network built at enormous public expense.

In return, the government demanded nothing: no compensation, and no constraints or conditions over how the Internet would take shape.

There was nothing inevitable about this outcome — it reflected an ideological choice, not a technical necessity. Instead of confronting critical issues of popular oversight and access, privatization precluded the possibility of putting the Internet on a more democratic path.

But the fight is not over. The upcoming ICANN handoff offers an opportunity to revisit the largely unknown story of how privatization happened — and how we might begin to reverse it, by reclaiming the Internet as a public good.

The Internet’s Public Origins

Silicon Valley often likes to pretend that innovation is the result of entrepreneurs tinkering in garages. But most of the innovation on which Silicon Valley depends comes from government research, for the simple reason that the public sector can afford to take risks that the private sector can’t.

It’s precisely the insulation from market forces that enables government to finance the long-term scientific labor that ends up producing many of the most profitable inventions.

This is particularly true of the Internet. The Internet was such a radical and unlikely idea that only decades of public funding and planning could bring it into existence. Not only did the basic technology have to be invented, but the infrastructure had to be built, specialists had to be trained, and contractors had to be staffed, funded, and in some cases, directly spun off from government agencies.

The Internet is sometimes compared to the interstate highway system, another major public project. But as the legal activist Nathan Newman points out, the comparison only makes sense if the government “had first imagined the possibility of cars, subsidized the invention of the auto industry, funded the technology of concrete and tar, and built the whole initial system.”

The Cold War provided the pretext for this ambitious undertaking. Nothing loosened the purse strings of American politicians quite like the fear of falling behind the Soviet Union. This fear spiked sharply in 1957, when the Soviets put the first satellite into space. The Sputnik launch produced a genuine sense of crisis in the American establishment, and led to a substantial increase in federal research funding.

One consequence was the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which would later change its name to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

ARPA became the R&D arm of the Defense Department. Instead of centralizing research in government labs, ARPA took a more distributed approach, cultivating a community of contractors from both academia and the private sector.

In the early 1960s, ARPA began investing heavily in computing, building big mainframes at universities and other research sites. But even for an agency as generously funded as ARPA, this spending spree wasn’t sustainable. In those days, a computer cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. So ARPA came up with a way to share its computing resources more efficiently among its contractors: it built a network.

This network was ARPANET, and it laid the foundation for the Internet. ARPANET linked computers through an experimental technology called packet-switching, which involved breaking messages down into small chunks called “packets,” routing them through a maze of switches, and reassembling them on the other end.

Today, this is the mechanism that moves data across the Internet, but at the time, the telecom industry considered it absurdly impractical. Years earlier, the Air Force had tried to persuade AT&T to build such a network, without success. ARPA even offered ARPANET to AT&T after it was up and running, preferring to buy time on the network instead of managing it themselves.

Given the chance to acquire the most sophisticated computer network in the world, AT&T refused. The executives simply couldn’t see the money in it.

Their shortsightedness was fortunate for the rest of us. Under public management, ARPANET flourished. Government control gave the network two major advantages.

The first was money: ARPA could pour cash into the system without having to worry about profitability. The agency commissioned pioneering research from the country’s most talented computer scientists at a scale that would’ve been suicidal for a private corporation.

And, just as crucially, ARPA enforced an open-source ethic that encouraged collaboration and experimentation. The contractors who contributed to ARPANET had to share the source code of their creations, or risk losing their contracts. This catalyzed scientific creativity, as researchers from a range of different institutions could refine and expand on each other’s work without living in fear of intellectual property law.

The most important innovation that resulted was the Internet protocols, which first emerged in the mid 1970s. These protocols made it possible for ARPANET to evolve into the Internet, by providing a common language that let very different networks talk to one another.

The open and nonproprietary nature of the Internet greatly enhanced its usefulness. It promised a single interoperable standard for digital communication: a universal medium, rather than a patchwork of incompatible commercial dialects.

Promoted by ARPA and embraced by researchers, the Internet grew quickly. Its popularity soon led scientists from outside the military and ARPA’s select circle of contractors to demand access.

In response, the National Science Foundation (NSF) undertook a series of initiatives aimed at bringing the Internet to nearly every university in the country. These culminated in NSFNET, a national network that became the new “backbone” of the Internet.

The backbone was a collection of cables and computers that formed the Internet’s main artery. It resembled a river: data flowed from one end to another, feeding tributaries, which themselves branched into smaller and smaller streams.

These streams served individual users, who never touched the backbone directly. If they sent data to another part of the Internet, it would travel up the chain of tributaries to the backbone, then down another chain, until it reached the stream that served the recipient.

One lesson of this model is that the Internet needs lots of networks at its edges. The river is useless without tributaries that extend its reach. Which is why the NSF, to ensure the broadest possible connectivity, also subsidized a number of regional networks that linked universities and other participating institutions to the NSFNET backbone.

All this wasn’t cheap, but it worked. Scholars Jay P. Kesan and Rajiv C. Shah have estimated that the NSFNET program cost over $200 million. Other public sources, including state governments, state-supported universities, and federal agencies likely contributed another $2 billion on networking with the NSFNET.

Thanks to this avalanche of public cash, a cutting-edge communications technology incubated by ARPA became widely available to American researchers by the end of the 1980s.

The Road to Privatization

But by the early nineties, the Internet was becoming a victim of its own success. Congestion plagued the network, and whenever the NSF upgraded it, more people piled on.

In 1988, users sent fewer than a million packets a month. By 1992, they were sending 150 billion. Just as new highways produce more traffic, the NSF’s improvements only stoked demand, overloading the system.

Clearly, people liked the Internet. And these numbers would’ve been even higher if the NSF had imposed fewer restrictions on its users. The NSFNET’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) banned commercial traffic, preserving the network for research and education purposes only. The NSF considered this a political necessity, since Congress might cut funding if taxpayer dollars were seen to be subsidizing industry.

In practice, the AUP was largely unenforceable, as companies regularly used the NSFNET. And more broadly, the private sector had been making money off the Internet for decades, both as contractors and as beneficiaries of software, hardware, infrastructure, and engineering talent developed with public funds.

The AUP may have been a legal fiction, but it did have an effect. By formally excluding commercial activity, it spawned a parallel system of private networks. By the early 1990s, a variety of commercial providers had sprung up across the country, offering digital services with no restrictions on the kind of traffic they would carry.

Most of these networks traced their origins to government funding, and enlisted ARPA veterans for their technical expertise. But whatever their advantages, the commercial networks were prohibited by the AUP from connecting to the Internet, which inevitably limited their value.

The Internet had thrived under public ownership, but it was reaching a breaking point. Skyrocketing demand from researchers strained the network, while the AUP prevented it from reaching an even wider audience.

These weren’t easy problems to solve. Opening the Internet to everyone, and building the capacity to accommodate them, presented significant political and technical challenges.

NSFNET director Stephen Wolff came to see privatization as the answer. He believed ceding the Internet to the private sector would bring two big benefits: It would ease congestion by sparking an influx of new investment, and it would abolish the AUP, enabling commercial providers to integrate their networks with NSFNET. Liberated from government control, the Internet could finally become a mass medium.

The first step took place in 1991. A few years earlier, the NSF had awarded the contract for operating its network to a consortium of Michigan universities called Merit, in partnership with IBM and MCI. This group had significantly underbid, sensing a business opportunity. In 1991, they decided to cash in, creating a for-profit subsidiary that started selling commercial access to NSFNET with Wolff’s blessing.

The move enraged the rest of the networking industry. Companies correctly accused NSF of cutting a backroom deal to grant its contractors a commercial monopoly, and raised enough hell to bring about congressional hearings in 1992.

These hearings didn’t dispute the desirability of privatization, only its terms. Now that Wolff had put privatization in motion, the other commercial providers simply wanted a piece of the action.

One of their chief executives, William Schrader, testified that NSF’s actions were akin to “giving a federal park to K-mart.” The solution wasn’t to preserve the park, however, but to carve it up into multiple K-marts.

The hearings forced the NSF to agree to a greater industry role in designing the future of the network. Predictably, this produced even faster and deeper privatization. Previously, the NSF had considered restructuring NSFNET to allow more contractors to run it.

By 1993, in response to industry input, the NSF had decided on the far more radical step of eliminating NSFNET altogether. Instead of one national backbone, there would be several, all owned and operated by commercial providers.

Industry leaders claimed the redesign ensured a “level playing field.” More accurately, the field remained tilted, but open to a few more players. If the old architecture of the Internet had favored monopoly, the new one would be tailor-made for oligopoly.

There weren’t that many companies that had consolidated enough infrastructure to operate a backbone. Five, to be exact. NSF wasn’t opening the Internet to competition so much as transferring it to a small handful of corporations waiting in the wings.

Strikingly, this transfer came with no conditions. There would be no federal oversight of the new Internet backbones, and no rules governing how the commercial providers ran their infrastructure.

There would also be no more subsidies for the nonprofit regional networks that had wired campuses and communities for Internet in the NSFNET days. They were soon acquired or bankrupted by for-profit ventures. In 1995, the NSF terminated NSFNET. Within the space of a few short years, privatization was complete.

The rapid privatization of the Internet provoked no opposition and little debate. While Wolff led the way, he was acting from a broad ideological consensus.

The free-market triumphalism of the 1990s, and the intensely deregulatory political climate fostered by Bill Clinton’s Democrats and Newt Gingrich’s Republicans, framed full private ownership of the Internet as both beneficial and inevitable.

The collapse of the Soviet Union strengthened this view, as the Cold War rationale for more robust public planning disappeared. Finally, the depth of industry influence over the process guaranteed that privatization would take an especially extreme form.

Perhaps the most decisive factor in the giveaway was the absence of an organized campaign demanding an alternative. Such a movement might have proposed a range of measures designed to popularize the Internet without completely privatizing it. Instead of abandoning the nonprofit regional networks, the government could have expanded them.

Funded with fees extracted from the commercial backbone providers, these networks would enable the government to guarantee high-speed, low-cost Internet access to all Americans as a social right. Meanwhile, the FCC could regulate the backbones, setting the rates they charge one another for carrying Internet traffic and overseeing them as a public utility.

But enacting even a fraction of these policies would have required a popular mobilization, and the Internet was still relatively obscure in the early nineties, largely confined to academics and specialists. It was hard to build a coalition around democratizing a technology that most people didn’t even know existed.

In this landscape privatization scored a victory so complete that it became nearly invisible, and quietly revolutionized the technology that would soon revolutionize the world.

Reclaiming the People’s Platform

Twenty years later, the Internet has grown tremendously, but the ownership structure of its core infrastructure is mostly the same. In 1995, five companies owned the Internet backbone. Today, there are somewhere between seven and twelve major backbone providers in the United States, depending on how you count, and more overseas.

While a long chain of mergers and acquisitions has led to rebranding and reorganization, many of the biggest American companies have links to the original oligopoly, such as AT&T, Cogent, Sprint, and Verizon.

The terms of privatization have made it easy for incumbents to protect their position. To form a unified Internet, the backbones must interconnect with each other and with smaller providers. This is how traffic travels from one part of the Internet to another. Yet because the government specified no interconnection policy when it privatized the Internet, the backbones can broker whatever arrangement they want.

Typically, they let each other interconnect for free, because it works to their mutual benefit, but charge smaller providers for carrying traffic. These contracts aren’t just unregulated — they’re usually secret. Negotiated behind closed doors with the help of nondisclosure agreements, they ensure that the deep workings of the Internet are not only controlled by big corporations, but hidden from public view.

More recently, new concentrations of power have emerged. The backbone isn’t the only piece of the Internet that’s held by relatively few hands. Today, more than half of the data flowing to American users at peak hours comes from only thirty companies, with Netflix occupying an especially large chunk.

Similarly, telecom and cable giants like Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable dominate the market for broadband service. These two industries have transformed the architecture of the Internet by building shortcuts to each other’s networks, bypassing the backbone. Content providers like Netflix now pipe their video directly to broadband providers like Comcast, avoiding a circuitous route through the bowels of the Internet.

These deals have triggered a firestorm of controversy, and helped produce the first tentative steps towards Internet regulation in the United States. In 2015, the FCC announced its strongest ruling to date enforcing “net neutrality,” the principle that Internet service providers should treat all data the same way, regardless of whether it comes from Netflix or someone’s blog.

In practice, net neutrality is impossible given the current structure of the Internet. But as a rallying cry, it has focused significant public attention on corporate control of the Internet, and produced real victories.

The FCC ruling reclassified broadband providers as “common carriers,” which makes them subject to telecom regulation for the first time. And the agency has promised to use these new powers to ban broadband companies from blocking traffic to particular sites, slowing customer speeds, and accepting “paid prioritization” from content providers.

The FCC decision is a good start, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. It explicitly rejects “prescriptive, industry-wide rate regulation,” and exempts broadband providers from many of the provisions of the New Deal-era Communications Act of 1934.

It also focuses on broadband, neglecting the Internet backbone. But the decision is a wedge that can be widened, especially because the FCC has left open many of the specifics around its implementation.

Another promising front is municipal broadband. In 2010, the city-owned power utility in Chattanooga, Tennessee began selling affordable high-speed Internet service to residents. Using a fiber-optic network built partly with federal stimulus funds, the utility offers some of the fastest residential Internet speeds in the world.

The broadband industry has responded forcefully, lobbying state legislatures to ban or limit similar experiments. But the success of the Chattanooga model has inspired movements for municipal broadband in several other cities, including Seattle, where socialist city councilwoman Kshama Sawant has long championed the idea.

These may seem like small steps, but they point toward the possibility of building a popular movement to reverse privatization. This involves not only agitating for expanded FCC oversight and publicly owned broadband utilities, but changing the rhetoric around Internet reform.

One of the more damaging obsessions among Internet reformers is the notion that greater competition will democratize the Internet. The Internet requires a lot of infrastructure to run. Slicing the big corporations that own this infrastructure into smaller and smaller companies in the hope that eventually the market will kick in to create better outcomes is misguided.

Instead of trying to escape the bigness of the Internet, we should embrace it — and bring it under democratic control. This means replacing private providers with public alternatives where it’s feasible, and regulating them where it’s not.

There is nothing in the pipes or protocols of the Internet that obliges it to produce immense concentrations of corporate power. This is a political choice, and we can choose differently.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/i...-icann-netflix





13 Ways to Screw Over Your Internet Provider

Turnabout is fair play
Devin Coldewey

Internet providers are real bastards: they have captive audiences whom they squeeze for every last penny while they fight against regulation like net neutrality and donate immense amounts of money to keep on lawmakers’ good sides. So why not turn the tables? Here are 13 ways to make sure your ISP has a hard time taking advantage of you (and may even put it on the defensive).

Disclosure: Verizon, an internet provider guilty of all these infractions, owns TechCrunch, and I don’t care.

1. Buy a modem and router instead of renting

The practice of renting a device to users rather than selling it or providing it as part of the service is one of the telecommunications industry’s oldest and worst. People pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars over years for equipment worth $40 or $50. ISPs do this with various items, but the most common item is probably the modem.

This is the gadget that connects to the cable coming out of your wall, and then connects in turn (or may also function as) your wireless and wired router. ISPs often provide this equipment at the time of install, and then charge you $5 to $10 per month forever. What they don’t tell you is you can probably buy the exact same item for somewhere between $30 and $100.

The exact model you need will depend on your service, but it will be listed somewhere, and they should tell you what they’d provide if you ask. Look online, buy a new or lightly used one, and it will have paid for itself before the year is out. Not only that, but you can do stuff like upgrade or change the software on it all you want, because it’s yours. Bonus: The ISP is limited in what it can do to the router (like letting other people connect — yes, it’s a thing).

2. Avoid service calls, or if you can’t, insist they’re free

I had an issue with my Comcast internet a while back that took them several visits from a service tech to resolve. It wasn’t an issue on my end, which was why I was surprised to find they’d charged me $30 or so every time the person came.

If your ISP wants to send someone out, ask whether it’s free, and if it isn’t, tell them to make it free or ask if you can do it yourself (sometimes it’s for really simple stuff like swapping a cable). If they charge you for a visit, call them and ask them to take it off your bill. Say you weren’t informed and you’ll inform the Better Business Bureau about it, or take your business elsewhere, or something. They’ll fold.

When someone does come…

3. Get deals from the installer

If you do end up having someone come out, talk to them to see whether there are any off the record deals they can offer you. I don’t mean anything shady like splitting cables with the neighbor, just offers they know about that aren’t publicized because they’re too good to advertise.

A lot of these service techs are semi-independent contractors paid by the call, and their pay has nothing to do with which service you have or choose. They have no reason to upsell you and every reason to make you happy and get a good review. Sometimes that means giving you the special desperation rates ISPs withhold until you say you’re going to leave.

And as long as you’re asking…

4. Complain, complain, complain

This sounds bad, but it’s just a consequence of how these companies work: The squeaky wheels get the grease. There’s plenty of grease to go around, so get squeaking.

Usually this means calling up and doing one of several things. You can complain that service has been bad — outages and such — and ask that they compensate you for that. You can say that a competing ISP started offering service at your location and it costs $20 less, so can they match that. Or you can say your friend just got a promotional rate and you’d like to take advantage of it… otherwise you’ll leave to that phantom competitor. (After all, we know there’s often little or no real competition.)

What ISPs, and, more importantly, what their customer service representatives care about is keeping you on as a customer. They can always raise rates or upsell you later, but having you as a subscriber is the important thing.

Note that some reps are more game than others. Some will give you the runaround, while others will bend over backwards to help you out. Feel free to call a few times and do a bit of window shopping. (By the way, if you get someone nice, give them a good review if you get the chance, usually right after the call or chat. It helps them out a lot.) Obviously you can’t call every week with new demands, so wait until you think you can actually save some money.

Which reminds me…

5. Choose your service level wisely

ISPs offer a ton of choices, and make it confusing on purpose so you end up picking an expensive one just to be sure you have what you need. The truth is most people can probably do pretty much everything they need on the lowest tier they offer.

A 1080p Netflix stream will work fine on a 25 Mbps connection, which is what I have. I also work entirely online, stream high-def videos at a dozen sites all day, play games, download movies and do lots of other stuff, sometimes all at the same time. I think I pay $45 a month. But rates like mine might not be advertised prominently or at all. I only found out when I literally asked what the cheapest possible option was.

That said, if you have three kids who like to watch videos simultaneously, or you have a 4K streaming setup that you use a lot, you’ll want to bump that up a bit. But you’d be surprised how seldom the speed limit actually comes into play.

To be clear, it’s still important that higher tiers are available, and that internet providers upgrade their infrastructure, because competition and reliability need to go up and prices need to come down. The full promise of broadband should be accessible to everyone for a reasonable fee, and that’s still not the case.

6. Stream everything because broadcast TV is a joke

Cord-cutting is fun. Broadcast TV is annoying, and getting around ads and air times using a DVR is very 2005. Most shows are available on streaming services of some kind or another, and while those services are multiplying, you could probably join all of them for well under what you’re paying for the 150 cable channels you never watch.

Unless you really need to watch certain games or news shows as they’re broadcast, you can get by streaming everything. This has the side effect of starving networks of viewers and accelerating the demise of these 20th-century relics. Good ones will survive as producers and distributors of quality programming, and you can support them individually on their own merits. It’s a weird transitional time for TV, but we need to drop-kick them into the future so they’ll stop charging us for a media structure established 50 years ago.

Something isn’t available on a streaming service? 100 percent chance it’s because of some dumb exclusivity deal or licensing SNAFU. Go pirate it for now, then happily pay for it as soon as it’s made available. This method is simple for you and instructive for media companies. (They always see piracy rates drop when they make things easy to find and purchase.)

This also lets you avoid certain fees ISPs love tacking onto your bill. I had a “broadcast TV fee” on my bill despite not having any kind of broadcast service, and I managed to get it taken off and retroactively paid back.

On that note…

7. Watch your bill like a hawk

Telecoms just love putting things on your bill with no warning. It’s amazing how much a bill can swell from the quoted amount once they’ve added all the little fees, taxes and service charges. What are they, anyway? Why not call and ask?

You might find out, as I did, that your ISP had “mistakenly” been charging you for something — like equipment — that you never had nor asked for. Amazing how these lucrative little fees tend to fall through the cracks!

Small charges often increase and new ones get added as well, so download your bill when you get it and keep it somewhere (or just keep the paper copies). These are really handy to have when you’re on the phone with a rep. “Why wasn’t I informed my bill would increase this month by $50?” “Why is this fee more now than it was in July?” “Why do I pay a broadcast fee if I don’t pay for TV?” These are the types of questions that get you discounts.

Staying on top of these fees also means you’ll be more aware when there are things like mass refunds or class action lawsuits about them. Usually these have to be opted into — your ISP isn’t going to call you, apologize and send a check.

As long as you’re looking closely at your bill…

8. Go to your account and opt out of everything

When you sign up for broadband service, you’re going to get opted into a whole heap of things. They don’t tell you about these, like the ads they can inject, the way they’re selling this or that data or that your router might be used as a public Wi-Fi hotspot.

You’ll only find this out if you go to your account page at your ISP’s website and look at everything. Beyond the usual settings like your address and choice of whether to receive a paper bill, you’ll probably find a few categories like “privacy” and “communications preferences.”

Click through all of these and look for any options to opt out of stuff. You may find that your ISP has reserved the right to let partners email you, use your data in ways you wouldn’t expect and so on. It only takes a few minutes to get out of all this, and it deprives the ISP of a source of income while also providing a data point that subscribers don’t like these practices.

9. Share your passwords

Your friend’s internet provider gets him streaming services A, B and C, while yours gives you X, Y and Z. Again, this is not about creators struggling to get their content online, but rather all about big media and internet corporations striking deals that make them money and harm consumers.

Share your (unique, not reused!) passwords widely and with a clean conscience. No company objects when you invite your friends over to watch “Fleabag” at your house. This just saves everyone a drive!

10. Encrypt everything and block trackers

One of the internet companies’ many dirty little deals is collecting and selling information on their customers’ watching and browsing habits. Encrypting your internet traffic puts the kibosh on this creepy practice — as well as being good security.

This isn’t really something you can do too much to accomplish, since over the last few years encryption has become the rule rather than the exception, even at sites where you don’t log in or buy anything. If you want to be sure, download a browser plug-in like HTTPS everywhere, which opts you into a secure connection anywhere it’s available. You can tell it’s secure because the URL says “https://” instead of “http://” — and most browsers have other indicators or warnings as well.

You should also use an ad blocker, not necessarily to block ads that keep outlets like TechCrunch alive (please), but to block trackers seeded across the web by companies that use sophisticated techniques to record everything you do. ISPs are among these and/or do business with them, so everything you can do to hinder them is a little mud in their eye.

Incidentally there are lots of ways you can protect your privacy from those who would invade it — we’ve got a pretty thorough guide here.

11. Use a different DNS

On a similar note, most ISPs will usually be set up by default with their own “Domain Name Service,” which is the thing that your browser pings to convert a text web URL (like “techcrunch.com”) to its numerical IP address.

There are lots of these to choose from, and they all work, but if you use your ISP’s, it makes it much easier for them to track your internet activity. They also can block certain websites by refusing to provide the IP for content they don’t like.

TechCrunch doesn’t officially endorse one, but lots of companies offer free, fast DNS that’s easy to switch to. Here’s a good list; there are big ones (Google, Cloudflare), “open” ones (OpenDNS, OpenNIC) and others with some niche features. All you need to do is slot those two numbers into your internet configuration, following the instructions they provide. You can change it back at any time.

Setting up a VPN is another option for very privacy-conscious individuals, but it can be complicated. And speaking of complicated…

12. Run a home server

This is a bit advanced, but it’s definitely something ISPs hate. Setting up your home computer or a dedicated device to host a website, script or service seems like a natural use of an always-on internet connection, but just about everyone in the world would rather you sign up for their service, hosted on their hardware and their connection.

Well, you don’t have to! You can do it on your own. Of course, you’ll have to learn how to run and install a probably Unix-based server, handle registry stuff, install various packages and keep up to date so you don’t get owned by some worm or bot… but you’ll have defied the will of the ISP. That’s the important thing.

13. Talk to your local government

ISPs hate all the things above, but what they hate the most by far is regulation. And you, as a valued citizen of your state and municipality, are in a position to demand it. Senators, representatives, governors, mayors, city councils and everyone else actually love to hear from their constituency, not because they desire conversation but because they can use it to justify policy.

During the net neutrality fight, a constant refrain I heard from government officials was how much they’d heard from voters about the issue and how unanimous it was (in support, naturally). A call or email from you won’t sway national politics, but a few thousand calls or emails from people in your city just might sway a local law or election. These things add up, and they do matter. State net neutrality policies are now the subject of national attention, and local privacy laws like those in Illinois are the bane of many a shady company.

Tell your local government about your experience with ISPs — outages, fees, sneaky practices or even good stuff — and they’ll file it away for when that data is needed, such as renegotiating the contracts national companies sign with those governments in order to operate in their territories.

Internet providers only do what they do because they are permitted to, and even then they often step outside the bounds of what’s acceptable — which is why rules like net neutrality are needed. But first people have to speak out.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/02/13...rnet-provider/





Life in an Internet Shutdown: Crossing Borders for Email and Contraband SIM Cards
Patrick Kingsley

When Zimbabwe turned off the internet during a recent crackdown, Obert Masaraure, a prominent government critic, had no way of knowing when it was safe to emerge from hiding.

He waited one day, then another. On the third day he broke cover, hoping that a wave of arrests had come to an end.

He was seized at home by soldiers 12 hours later.

“If I had been connected,” Mr. Masaraure said, “maybe I would have got information that it wasn’t safe to be out there.”

Internet shutdowns have become one of the defining tools of government repression in the 21st century — not just in Zimbabwe, but in a growing number of countries, mainly in Asia and Africa, that are seeking to quash dissent.

Subscribe for original insights, commentary and discussions on the major news stories of the week, from columnists Max Fisher and Amanda Taub.

The shutdowns do more than stunt the democratic process. They can batter whole economies and individual businesses, as well as drastically disrupt the daily life of ordinary citizens, turning the search for mobile service into a game of cat and mouse with the police and driving people across borders just to send emails for work.

The Indian government employs the practice more frequently than any other, most recently in Kashmir, but it is not alone: In 2018, there were at least 196 shutdowns in 25 countries, up from 75 in 24 countries in 2016, according to research by Access Now, an independent watchdog group that campaigns for internet rights. In the first half of this year alone, there were 114 shutdowns in 23 countries.

In all, more than a quarter of the world’s nations have used the tactic at one point or another over the past four years.

Typically used during times of civil unrest or political instability, a shutdown allows officials to stifle the flow of information about government wrongdoing or to stop communication among activists, usually by ordering service providers to cut or slow their customers’ internet access.

While authoritarian countries like China and Iran have long blocked some international websites that they consider subversive, like Facebook, an internet shutdown is usually a temporary measure, often wielded by governments that have historically had a less systematic approach to internet censorship.

“People always had this simplistic view that technology could only be used in one way — that it was this great tool for democracy,” said Kuda Hove, a digital rights researcher at the Media Institute of Southern Africa. But after the emergence of the shutdown, he said, “it dawned on them that the government could use technology against the people.”

Governments sometimes justify their actions as an attempt to stop the spread of “fake news” or hate speech, or to keep students from cheating during exams. But these explanations often mask the real motivation, said Berhan Taye, who leads research into internet shutdowns at Access Now.

“Internet throttling and internet shutdowns are an extension of traditional forms of censorship,” Ms. Taye said. “This is not a unique phenomenon — it’s an extension of what’s happening in countries where civil space is already shrinking.”

The economy often pays the price, research suggests. In countries with a medium level of internet penetration — that is, where 49 percent to 79 percent of the population has internet access — a shutdown might dent daily economic activity by $6.6 million per 10 million people, according to analysis by Deloitte, an international accounting firm.

From July 2015 through June 2016, shutdowns caused global losses of more than $2.4 billion, according to the Brookings Institution, a research group.

The six-day shutdown in Zimbabwe in January was meant to target opposition demonstrations, but it also ended up severely hindering businessmen like Peter Makichi, a fuel merchant.

As the agent for a South African gas company, Mr. Makichi was meant to wire his suppliers more than $100,000 every three days. The shutdown prevented him not only from transferring the money for several days, but also from emailing his clients, who then canceled his contract.

The cancellation forced him to close three of his four branches and fire 27 of his 35 workers, reducing his profits more than 90 percent every month, Mr. Makichi said.

On the outskirts of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, most customers at Wisdom Fore’s grocery store had money to pay for food, but not the means to access it.

Because of a bank note shortage, many transactions in Zimbabwe are made through mobile payment systems, even small purchases. But the system needs the internet to function, so Mr. Fore ended up throwing away most of his perishable food and losing about half his daily turnover.

The shutdown even hit the music industry. Ameen Jaleel Matanga, a popular singer who performs as Poptain, had intended to release his latest music video on the first day of the internet outage. The shutdown prevented him from uploading it, and that delay disrupted his business plan for the whole year.

“Due to a network shutdown, the economy shuts down,” said Mr. Fore. “The flow of everything slows.”

In some countries, that has even included the supply of crucial medicines and the deployment of medical professionals.

In Sudan, the interim government shut down the internet for a month, principally to obstruct opposition activity after the ouster of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. But it also stopped Sudanese doctors from ordering new medicine, leading to shortages of diabetes treatment, and prevented protest leaders from using WhatsApp to call for medical assistance, according to Dr. Sara Abdelgalil, who coordinates supplies in Sudan via the internet from her home overseas.

“We had a WhatsApp group in which we’d say, ‘We need a surgeon in Omdurman, we need an anesthetist in Buri,’” said Dr. Abdelgalil, the president of the British chapter of the Sudanese Doctors’ Union, which supports Sudan’s transition to civilian government. “All that became very difficult.”

In parts of the developing world, merchants derive most of their revenue by advertising their products in public WhatsApp groups, which allow sellers to send advertisements to hundreds of recipients at a time. During a shutdown, those groups turn into online ghost towns.

Patrice Binwa Naledi runs a series of such forums in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the government stopped the internet for 20 days this year, nominally to prevent rumors spreading while votes were counted from the presidential election.

Normally, advertisers using Mr. Naledi’s groups can reach about 70,000 people and make sales totaling as much as $10,000 a day, keeping Mr. Naledi’s phones constantly buzzing with new messages.

But during the shutdown, “it was like the phones had stopped working,” he said. “It was very calm — and when it’s calm, for me it’s sad.”

To circumvent a shutdown, citizens have sometimes traveled for miles to get brief bursts of internet access.

In Cameroon, a shutdown blocked internet access in the restive, English-speaking western regions of the country, on and off, for 240 days in 2017 and 2018.

To keep communications flowing, residents there would draft emails on their phones and hand them to friends and colleagues who were traveling to Francophone regions, said Rebecca Enonchong, an internet entrepreneur in Cameroon.

Once the phones were carried over the invisible border between English- and French-speaking provinces, the emails would send.

“Everyone was doing it,” Ms. Enonchong said. “You would give someone the device, and they would come back with the device at the end of the day.”

But the workaround was not enough to save many digital-based firms in the affected regions, which were the epicenter of the Cameroonian technology business. “Imagine shutting down the internet in Silicon Valley,” said Ms. Enonchong, who runs digital innovation centers in both Anglophone and Francophone areas. “That’s the equivalent of what happened in Cameroon.”

In eastern Congo during the shutdown, businessmen were forced to travel to Rwanda for the day to read their email. Arsčne Tungali, who runs a translation business in Goma, Congo, regularly drove to the border and waited for an hour to get his papers stamped, before heading to a Rwandan restaurant to set up a temporary office for the day.

The cost of additional fuel, as well as food at the restaurant, cost him an extra $100 a week. And the whole process created untold complications.

“If the email I was expecting hasn’t arrived, I have to decide whether to go back across the border, or to wait until the person I was waiting for has got connected,” said Mr. Tungali. “But that means delaying the things I need to do back in the office.”

In the capital, Kinshasa, people gained access to the internet by secretly buying SIM cards from the Republic of Congo, a separate country just across the Congo River, at a vastly inflated price. Once they were sure the police weren’t looking, they would loiter on the riverbank until they picked up nearby mobile networks.

“It became a bit like a drug deal,” said Lemien Sakalunga, a journalist based in Kinshasa. “You’d buy a SIM, and you’d hide it immediately. The vendor would say: Hide it, hide it, hide it. Then you’d move as quickly as you could, as far as you could.”

In Zimbabwe, a growing number of people have downloaded virtual private networks, systems that allow users to circumvent some internet restrictions. But V.P.N.s are often themselves blocked by the government, and those that work are often too slow to be useful, said Mr. Hove, the digital rights researcher.

Besides, V.P.N.s might not be enough if governments adopt more sophisticated forms of internet censorship.

The Zimbabwe government already appears to be harnessing the internet to its advantage, using software to surveil opponents and sending armies of trolls against its critics, Mr. Hove said.

“The next battle in my view isn’t going to be against the government shutting down the internet — that’s maybe too obvious, and with the level of international condemnation they received, they might not do it again,” he said. “But they may step up attempts to drown democratic discourse online.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/02/w...n-economy.html





Hong Kong Protestors Using Mesh Messaging App China Can't Block: Usage Up 3685%
John Koetsier

How do you communicate when the government censors the internet? With a peer-to-peer mesh broadcasting network that doesn't use the internet.

That's exactly what Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters are doing now, thanks to San Fransisco startup Bridgefy's Bluetooth-based messaging app. The protesters can communicate with each other — and the public — using no persistent managed network.

And it's led to swift growth for Bridgefy: downloads are up almost 4,000% over the past 60 days, according to Apptopia estimates (Apptopia is an app metrics company).

The app can connect people via standard Bluetooth across an entire city, thanks to a mesh network. Chatting is speediest with people who are close, of course, within a hundred meters (330 feet), but you can also chat with people who are farther away. Your messages will simply "hop" via other Bridgefy users' phones until they find your intended target.

While you can chat privately with contacts, you can also broadcast to anyone within range, even if they are not a contact.

That's clearly an ideal scenario for protesters who are trying to reach people but cannot use traditional SMS texting, email, or the undisputed uber-app of China: WeChat. All of them are monitored by the state.

I asked Bridgefy's co-founder and CEO, Jorge Rios, for more information.

Koetsier: Tell me about the app ... what it's for, why you built it, and why most people use it.

Rios: Bridgefy is a messaging app that works with or without Internet. It's based on Bluetooth instead, and we built it because we know that the lack of communication can be vital in many places and situations. Most people download it before going to a large music of sporting event, but we're currently having huge spikes in downloads from Hong Kong due to the protests.

Koetsier: I hear it's being used in Hong Kong by the protesters. Tell me why what purposes they're using it for and how big a spike you've seen in downloads/registrations/usage.

Rios: People are downloading it for two reasons:

1) Because Internet access is starting to be limited by the authorities.

2) Because it's a safe way for people to communicate with there being very little risk of messages being read by unwanted eyes.

We've seen more than 60,000 app installations in just the past seven days, most of them from Hong Kong. People are using it to organize themselves and to stay safe, without having to depend on an Internet connection.

Koetsier: Anything else?

Rios: Whenever there's a hurricane or earthquake in the world, we see spikes in app downloads. It's important for us to say that our core technology is also available to developers, so that they may integrate it into their own apps and make them work offline. We license it based on the amount of offline users, and are currently working so that some day we might be able to use apps like WeChat, Tinder, Uber, and Whatsapp without Internet.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoe.../#53ce997b135a





Consent Removed from Australia's Proposed Data-Sharing Legislation

The National Data Commissioner won't be able to prevent data from being shared, rather they are tasked with capabilities to 'encourage' data custodians and accredited users to 'safely and respectfully share personal information'.
Asha Barbaschow

The Australian government has released a discussion paper on Australia's Data Sharing and Release Legislative Reforms, tweaking what it proposed last year by removing a fundamental element of privacy -- consent.

The paper proposes the Data Sharing and Release legislation not require consent for the sharing of personal information.

"Instead, we are placing the responsibility on Data Custodians and Accredited Users to safely and respectfully share personal information where reasonably required for a legitimate objective," it says.

The paper says that following feedback, the government has "nuanced" its position on consent.

"While consent is important in certain situations, the societal outcomes of fair and unbiased government policy, research, and programs can outweigh the benefits of consent, provided privacy is protected," it says. "The Office of the National Data Commissioner will encourage the use of consent where appropriate when applying the Data Sharing Principles, although the legislation will not require it in all circumstances."

According to the government, requiring consent for all data sharing will lead to biased data that delivers the wrong outcomes.

"The Data Sharing and Release legislation is about improving government policy and research by helping government and researchers use a better evidence base. If we required consent, then data would only be shared where consent was given," the paper says.

"This will skew the data which is shared, leaving it unfit for many important purposes in the public benefit; it also runs the risk of leading to flawed policy and research which impacts negatively on society."

This decision to not include consent comes despite the paper saying that many involved in the process supported efforts to progress the public conversation around consent.

The Data Sharing and Release framework has been touted by the government as setting a new direction for how public sector data in Australia is used and reused.

"The Data Sharing and Release legislation will provide legal grounds to empower the government to share public sector data for specified purposes with the right safeguards," the paper says.

The framework is underpinned by the appointment of an independent National Data Commissioner tasked with "driving change and supporting best practice sharing and release of public sector data"; a National Data Advisory Council advising the Commissioner on ethical data use, community engagement, technical best practice, as well as industry and international developments; and new legislation to authorise a data sharing system and modernise Australia's public sector data framework.

"We can and will do more for improving people's experience when dealing with government -- and data plays an important role in achieving this goal," Minister for Government Services Stuart Robert said in the paper's foreword.

The government currently shares public sector data through various laws and mechanisms developed at various points in time, with little consistency or a single point of oversight. The government expects the Data Sharing and Release framework will provide an alternative pathway for government agencies who want to share data.

According to the paper, data sharing must satisfy the purpose test -- this means that data can only be shared when it is reasonably necessary to inform government policy, programs, or service delivery, or be in support of research and development.

It also says that safeguards, through the five Data Sharing Principles, must be applied to holistically minimise and mitigate the risks of the data sharing, by determining the specific controls to be applied.

Details must also be recorded in a Data Sharing Agreement to be published for greater transparency of public sector data sharing.

The Productivity Commission was in 2016 asked to look at how data was used across the Australian economy. It found Australia's use of data was falling behind other countries and recommended data reforms to unlock the full potential of public sector data.

Public comments on an Issues Paper outlining the proposed Data Sharing and Release legislation was then opened 18 months later.

Shortly after, the Office of the National Data Commissioner was established within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, tasked with improving data sharing and use across the Australian public sector. The interim National Data Commissioner, Deborah Anton, was then appointed.

In response to the Issues Paper, researchers from the University of Melbourne in September called the data-sharing legislation a "significant misalignment", concerned that by not acknowledging and protecting the fundamental right to privacy of individuals, there will be little chance of establishing trust in the use of public data.

The researchers also touched on consent in their submission.

"'Consent' does not make one appearance in the proposal, while being a central tenet to privacy best practice, is indicative of significant misalignment," they wrote.

Responding to issues brought up by the research sector like those, the Discussion Paper said such issues "remain serious concerns we must approach cautiously".

In response to concerns about overriding all secrecy provisions, the Data Sharing and Release legislation will not compel sharing, rather government agencies will be responsible for deciding whether to use the legislation -- only if they are satisfied data can be shared safely, however.

Also changed since the Issues Paper, it has been decided that data sharing for compliance and assurance purposes will not be allowed under the Data Sharing and Release legislation.

The recent Discussion Paper asks for submissions in response to a total of 14 questions, such as if the safeguards address key privacy risks, do the purposes for sharing data meet expectations, what the challenges for open release of public sector data are, and what is thought of the name "Data Sharing and Release Act".

Submissions close October 15 and the government said it will use responses to undertake another round of engagement.

It expects to introduce legislation into Parliament in mid-2020.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/consen...g-legislation/





Google, Industry Try to Water Down First U.S. Data-Privacy Law
Daniel Stoller

Google and its industry allies are making a late bid to water down the first major data-privacy law in the U.S., seeking to carve out exemptions for digital advertising, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg and people familiar with the negotiations.

A lobbyist for Google recently distributed new language to members of California’s state legislature that would amend the California Consumer Privacy Act. As currently drafted, the law limits how Google and other companies collect and make money from user data online, threatening a business model that generates billions of dollars in ad revenue. It’s due to kick in next year and there are only a few more days to amend the law.

The lobbying push seeks legislative approval to continue collecting user data for targeted advertising, and in some cases, the right to do so even if users opt out, according to the documents and the people familiar with the negotiations. They asked not to be identified discussing private activities and to keep the lobbyist’s name confidential.

It’s unclear if the language circulating in the state capitol’s corridors was drafted by Google, and other lobbyists are likely asking for similar changes. Industry groups, such as the California Chamber of Commerce and the Internet Association, often help write legislation and have been the face of industry during two years of debate over the CCPA. It’s also common for interested parties to suggest late changes to bills.

“This is a jailbreak,” said California state Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson. “This blows up the entire purpose of the CCPA, which is for people to know when their information is being used and to give them the right to opt out.”

A spokesman for Alphabet Inc.’s Google said the company has “long supported privacy legislation that protects consumers’ data and encourages innovation.”

Google to pay $170 million to settle claims it violated children’s privacy law.

“The CCPA will impose new obligations on thousands of small and large businesses, and it is critical that its requirements are clearly defined,” he added in a statement. “We are encouraged that California legislators have been considering clarifications to the law in recent months.”

One proposal shared by the lobbyist would let Google and others use data collected from websites for their own analysis, and then share it with other companies that may find it useful. This includes firms that are not involved with the website in question. Currently, the CCPA prohibits the sale or distribution of user data if the user has opted out, with limited exceptions.

Another change would loosen the definition of “business purpose” when it comes to selling or distributing user data. The law currently defines this narrowly and has a list of specific activities, such auditing and security, that will be allowed. Google’s lobbyist shared new language that significantly broadens the rule by replacing the phrase “Business purposes are” with “Business purposes include,” before the list of approved activities.

The proposal may also create a loophole for companies when users request access to their data or ask for their information to be deleted.

The Google representative, who distributed the revised language in recent weeks, has yet to find a lawmaker to sponsor the amendments, according to people familiar with negotiations. The proposal must be in a bill by Sept. 10 to be eligible for lawmakers to vote on it before they adjourn for the year on Sept. 13.

The CCPA is set to become the first data-privacy law in the U.S. once enacted in 2020. It’s part of a broader crackdown on internet companies, which have become hugely profitable by offering useful services backed by targeted ads and mountains of data. The industry is trying to rewrite the law, while running critical ads in Sacramento, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

Google works hard to protect user data and the company has applauded some privacy legislation in recent years. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai told Congress in December 2018 that data privacy is “an ongoing area of effort” while praising the European Union’s stringent General Data Privacy Regulation as a “well thought-out law.”

Still, the company gets about 85% of revenue from ads, so any limits on its ability to use data for marketing are a threat to its business. In Washington state this year, the company attempted to amend a bill dubbed GDPR-lite, according to sources familiar with the matter. The bill failed to pass. Last year in Illinois, Google tried and failed to roll back definitions in the state’s comprehensive biometric privacy law. The law remains as it was enacted in 2008.

California’s new law is widely viewed as the benchmark other states will use for their own data-privacy regulations. The CCPA may also be a template for a future federal law. In Congress, lawmakers are already discussing language for possible nationwide legislation that would supersede California’s law.

If Google and other internet companies fail to change the CCPA, the proposed amendments suggest the industry will continue to push for exemptions to other data-privacy legislation, or fight for a more-favorable federal law.

Earlier this year, the industry proposed a CCPA exemption for all targeted advertising, which failed. In July, the California Chamber of Commerce backed a bill to redefine the term “deidentified,” the practice of separating user data from people’s real identities. Senator Jackson’s committee quashed that effort.

Jackson says the CCPA debate could shift the balance of power in Sacramento, which she thinks has been controlled by Silicon Valley firms to protect their unregulated ways of doing business.

“Up till now, there really hasn’t been any policy, it’s been the Wild West,” she said. “They’ve just gone and done their thing, but now we’ve forced industry to come to the table.”

— With assistance by Ben Brody
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ta-privacy-law





Tesla Batteries Are Keeping Zimbabwe’s Economy Running
Antony Sguazzin

• Mobile money is dominant in country with 18-hour power outages
• Econet installing Tesla Powerwall batteries at base stations

Zimbabweans are relying on Tesla Inc. to help them pay their bills.

Amid power outages of as long as 18 hours a day, Econet Wireless Ltd., Zimbabwe’s biggest mobile-phone operator, is turning to the Palo Alto, California-based automaker and storable-energy company for batteries that can keep its base stations running. The southern African country faces chronic shortages of physical cash, so almost all transactions are done digitally, and many via mobile phones.

“Telecommunications have become the lifeblood of the economy,” said Norman Moyo, the chief executive officer of Distributed Power Africa, which installs the batteries for Econet. “If the telecom network is down in Zimbabwe, you can’t do any transactions.”

The installation of 520 Powerwall batteries, with two going into each base station, is the largest telecommunications project in which Tesla has participated to date, Moyo said. With Econet having about 1,300 base stations in the country and two other mobile-phone companies operating there, Distributed Power intends to install more batteries and could eventually roll the project out to other power-starved countries in Africa, such as Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, he said.

Base stations in Zimbabwe often use diesel-fired generators as backup, but fuel is also scarce in the country. The Powerwalls, which cost $6,500 each, will step in when solar panels aren’t generating enough electricity because it’s night or when heavily overcast. The lithium-ion batteries can power a station for as long as 10 hours, according to Econet. They are charged by the sun.

Tesla is working with a number of telecommunications companies around the world and sees a combination of solar panels and battery storage as a good opportunity to expand its business in countries and areas where electricity supply is erratic or non-existent, a company spokesperson said.

Econet’s mobile-money system Ecocash has 6.7 million active users in a country of 14 million people. It is used for everything from buying groceries to tipping waiters.

With assistance by Godfrey Marawanyika, and Loni Prinsloo
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...conomy-running





You May Not Know You are Doing Something Illegal Online

Despite fake names being illegal, almost eight in 10 Americans do not care and plan to continue using a fake name on the internet.
Eileen Brown

Countless Americans break the law unknowingly -- and a lot of it happens online.

You may not be the law-abiding citizens you think you are. Whether it is driving over the speed limit, or hosting a poker night with friends, you could be more guilty than you realize.

To find out the most common offenses we commit, and if we are likely to repeat them, law firm Lawsuit.org asked 1,071 Americans about their 'minor' offenses.

The results show that almost all (96%) Americans consider themselves to be law-abiding citizens. However, over four out of five Americans (81%) had committed one 'minor' offense in the last year.

The most common offense is jaywalking, followed by sharing your Netflix password, pirating music and videos, and using a fake name on social media. Forty-five percent of the people studied were unaware that sharing their Netflix logins is technically illegal.

These results varied greatly across different generations. Millennials are more likely than others to borrow passwords to access streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, Prime, or Hulu.

Amongst baby boomers, only 13% shared their Netflix password. Almost one in four (23.5%) of Generation X, 30.9% of millennials, and a whopping 59.1% of Generation Z shared their Netflix passwords.

Generation Z was almost the most likely to repeat this behavior (31.8%), compared to baby boomers, who, when pointed out that this practice is illegal, would not repeat this activity again.

Most people do not know that their 'finsta' in actually illegal. Younger generations are more likely to use a fake name on the internet.

Using a fake name is practiced by 17.6% of baby boomers, 22.9% of Generation X, 24.9% of millennials, and 40.9% of Generation Z. This generation was most likely to repeat the activity, with 18.2% of Gen Z compared to 12.2% of millennials and 11.1% of Gen X.

Pirating music or video content is also most prevalent amongst Generation Z, who are also most likely to repeat this illegal activity. Only 10.7% of baby boomers pirated music or video content, followed by 18.3% of Gen X, 29% of millennials, and 59.1% of Gen Z.

When advised that this practice is illegal, 31.8% of Gen Z would be likely to repeat this activity, followed by 15.2% of millennials, and 9.5% of Gen X. Once again, no baby boomers (0.0%) would repeat this activity once they knew it was illegal.

These results show that even those Americans who consider themselves to be law-abiding may still choose to skip over a law or two. Ethics and morals often clash with the law. But if Netflix is truly playing the long game -- it will get its money eventually -- when Gen Z finally comes of age.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/you-ma...llegal-online/

















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