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Old 01-08-18, 06:31 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - August 4th, ’18

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August 4th, 2018




Easier Streaming Services Put Dent in Illegal Downloading
Mark Savage

Music piracy is falling out of favour as streaming services become more widespread, new figures show.

One in 10 people in the UK use illegal downloads, down from 18% in 2013, according to YouGov's Music Report.

The trend looks set to continue - with 22% of those who get their music illegitimately saying they do not expect to be doing so in five years.

"It is now easier to stream music than to pirate it," said one survey participant.

Another respondent said: "Spotify has everything from new releases to old songs, it filled the vacuum, there was no longer a need for using unverified sources."

The news will be encouraging to the music industry, which is returning to growth after piracy brought it to its knees in the 2000s.

It has campaigned heavily to shut down sites that offer pirated music - from Napster and allofmp3 to Pirate Bay and Megaupload.

Among those surveyed by YouGov, 36% said it was becoming more difficult to find unauthorised sources to verify music.

However, record labels remain concerned by the rise of "stream ripping" services.

Such apps allow users to "grab" music from streaming services like YouTube and Spotify and store the file on their phone or computer, which prevents artists and record labels getting revenue from future streams.

YouGov noted that some illegal downloading may be the result of streaming exclusives - with 44% of respondents saying they only download songs illegally when they can't access them elsewhere.

One of this year's most-pirated albums is Beyonce and Jay-Z's Everything Is Love, which was initially released as an exclusive on Tidal.

Justin Marshall, associate director of YouGov, said: "While illegal downloads still present a significant challenge to the music industry, there appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel.

"Whether or not streaming is what finally banishes illegal downloads remains to be seen, but there are encouraging signs."

YouGov surveyed 4,009 UK adults between 6-13 March this year.

However, its findings may have been skewed by respondents who were reluctant to admit accessing music illegally.

A separate report by piracy-tracking company MUSO, published in March, said there had been 300 billion visits to piracy sites in 2017, up 1.6%.

Music piracy rose 14.7%, it said, with the UK ranked 10th in the world for accessing illegal sites.
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-45042838





Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Vacate Obama-Era Internet Rules

The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to vacate a 2016 appeals court ruling that had upheld Obama era “net neutrality” rules that barred internet service providers from blocking, throttling or prioritizing content.

The request was made even though the Federal Communications Commission voted along party lines to toss out the 2015 rules late last year, rendering the fight over their legality moot.

In a filing to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration said the question for the court was “whether the now-superseded 2015 order was invalid because it exceeded the FCC’s statutory authority, was arbitrary and capricious, was promulgated without adequate public notice, or violated the First Amendment.”

The FCC’s decision to repeal the 2015 net neutrality rules was widely considered a victory for internet service providers, or ISPs, like Verizon Communications Inc or Comcast Corp, over internet companies like Netflix Inc or Facebook Inc which depend on ISPs to carry their content to customers.

Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Richard Chang
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN1KO2OF





Study: Throwing Taxpayer Money at Giant ISPs Hasn't Fixed America’s Broadband Problem

Corruption and inaccurate maps have allowed ISPs to paint a rosier picture of the broadband picture than actually exists.
Karl Bode

Americans pay some of the highest prices for broadband in the developed world, thanks to a lack of competition and ISP-loyal lawmakers. But a new study highlights how US efforts to throw taxpayer money at the issue isn’t striking at the heart of the problem.

While the United States likes to fancy itself a technological powerhouse, American broadband has long been derided for being decidedly mediocre. Customer service is often nonexistent and speeds and availability historically fall somewhere in the middle of the pack.

And as we’ve previously noted, roughly 28 million Americans, or roughly 8 percent of the country, lack access to any broadband whatsoever.

It’s a problem that only tends to see glacial improvement thanks to cash-compromised lawmakers and a lack of real competition in countless markets. And it’s a problem that’s only getting worse as telcos like AT&T and Verizon refuse to upgrade aging DSL networks, resulting in cable giants like Charter and Comcast enjoying greater monopolies than ever before.

This regulatory apathy and limited competition, in turn, only perpetuate the high prices, slow speeds, and net neutrality and privacy issues that crop up when there’s nothing in place to keep natural broadband monopolies in line. Consumers can’t punish bad behavior by switching ISPs, so said bad behavior only continues in perpetuity.

Historically, America has enjoyed throwing money—in the form of federal and state subsidies—at ISPs in the belief this broken market would somehow magically repair itself. But from coast to coast, corruption and apathy routinely shoot these good intentions squarely in the foot.

In New York City, Verizon is being sued for failing to adhere to fiber upgrade promises after years of subsidies. In West Virginia, Frontier Communications has routinely been accused of misleading lawmakers as to how taxpayer dollars were spent. And the FCC’s E-Rate program, intended to shore up connectivity in schools, often makes headlines for all the wrong reasons.

It’s a status quo of dysfunction the telecom industry works tirelessly to keep intact.

A new study by the Institute For Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) took a closer look at the data ISPs submit to the FCC, and found that carriers routinely over-state broadband availability. And because US broadband mapping is comically and historically terrible, it’s often impossible to accurately identify the areas most in need of subsidized network expansion.

The study notes that broadband mapping is so bad, the FCC declares an entire census tract served if just one home in that area can receive broadband. Since more accurate availability and pricing data would clearly illustrate broadband market failures, the broadband industry routinely lobbies against efforts to shore up data collection and publication.

The nation’s six biggest providers (Comcast, CenturyLink, Frontier, AT&T, Verizon, and Charter) have “invested the bare minimum to comply with requirements"

“With modern technology, it should be trivial to develop a process that is easy for ISPs to use and less likely for monopoly ISPs to game but we have not found a single person with deep knowledge of the FCC that believes it will happen in the near future,” notes the group.

Monopoly ISPs then use this inaccurate data to pretend that US broadband is faster and more widely-deployed than it actually is. They also work tirelessly to keep broadband pricing data out of the hands of the public, lest American consumers begin to understand just how soundly they’re being screwed by a broken market.

In short, the data we currently have likely paints a much rosier picture than what’s actually available to consumers, and you can’t buy your way out of a problem you don’t truly understand.

The report argues that ISPs that take billions in government subsidies (from programs like the FCC’s Connect America fund) traditionally focus their efforts on more competitive, urban markets, leaving less-affluent cities and rural markets with sluggish DSL that fails to even meet the FCC’s base definition of broadband (25 Mbp down, 4 Mbps up).

The nation’s six biggest providers (Comcast, CenturyLink, Frontier, AT&T, Verizon, and Charter) have “invested the bare minimum to comply with requirements while more significantly upgrading urban markets,” the group notes. “Meanwhile, cooperatives and local ISPs that have received far fewer subsidies have invested much more in rural communities.”

Here too ISPs have lobbied to thwart progress. Countless towns and cities have begun building and operating their own broadband networks in the wake of incumbent apathy, only to run face first into laws passed in 21 states banning them from doing so. These laws are often quite literally written by the same ISPs that refused to upgrade these areas in the first place.

More than 750 communities nationwide have built and operate their own broadband networks, and a recent Harvard study highlighted how these networks tend to offer better, cheaper, and more uniformly deployed service than their private industry counterparts.

The ILSR report notes that while larger, private ISPs tend to do the bare minimum to meet subsidy compliance requirements in under-served markets, cooperatives, municipal ISPs, and locally-owned providers “tend to invest in longer-term next-generation services that well exceed the minimum definition of broadband” due to a genuine interest in local welfare.

The battle between Americans eager for better broadband and monopolies like Comcast focused on defending the broken status quo has raged for decades. And as Ajit Pai and his assault on consumer protections makes clear, the pendulum has swung pretty sharply in Comcast’s favor during the Trump era.

The solution, according to ILSR founder Christopher Mitchell, is to stop whining on Reddit, get out of your chair, and begin taking action where giants like Comcast are weakest: locally.

“It sucks to tell someone in this situation that they have to become an organizer, hound their elected officials, or scout for good local companies to potentially partner with in expanding access,” Mitchell tells Motherboard. “But that is what happens in a working democracy.”
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...adband-problem





$50 a Month for 1Mbps: How AT&T and Verizon Rip Off DSL Customers

AT&T and Verizon force copper customers to pay fiber-level prices.
Jon Brodkin

Tens of millions of people in the AT&T and Verizon service territories can only buy slow DSL Internet from the companies, yet they often have to pay the same price as fiber customers who get some of the fastest broadband speeds in the US.

That's the conclusion of a new white paper written by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), a broadband advocacy group.

AT&T has been charging $60 a month to DSL customers for service between 6 and 10Mbps downstream and 0.6Mbps to 1Mbps upstream, the white paper notes, citing AT&T's advertised prices from July 2018. AT&T also charges $60 a month for 50Mbps and 75Mbps download tiers and even for fiber service with symmetrical upload and download speeds of 100Mbps. These are the regular rates after first-year discounts end, before any extra fees and taxes.

Verizon similarly charges $65 a month for 100Mbps fiber service (including a $10 router charge), and $63 or $64 a month for DSL service that provides download speeds between 1.5Mbps and 15Mbps, the white paper says. The price is this high partly "because Verizon ADSL service at any speed requires paying separately for a landline telephone account."

"[i]n recent years, the nation's two largest telco ISPs, AT&T and Verizon, have eliminated their cheaper rate tiers for low and mid-speed Internet access, except at the very slowest levels," the NDIA wrote. "Each company now charges essentially identical monthly prices—$63-$65 a month after first-year discounts have ended—for home wireline broadband connections at almost any speed up to 100/100 Mbps fiber service."

The exceptions are for Verizon DSL service with download speeds of 768kbps or less and for AT&T service with download speeds from 768kbps to 5Mbps. For those extremely slow services, "the two companies charge $10 a month less," or $50 a month, the NDIA wrote.

AT&T didn't dispute any of the specific prices from the NDIA report but called it "misleading." AT&T said in a statement to Ars:

“Attempting to assess Internet service offerings by only looking at standard rates does not give a complete picture; the Internet service market is more competitive than ever and most customers make their purchases at bundled and discounted rates. The claims made in this report are completely misleading and do not reflect all options available to consumers.”

AT&T also said that it hasn't "eliminated speed tiers." Instead, AT&T says that "Over the last several years we've simplified our Internet portfolio, offering an entry-level price point that's remained relatively constant while the speed offered has increased."

A Verizon spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on the NDIA's white paper.

UPDATE: Verizon responded after this story published, saying that its "products are priced competitively in all of our markets." Verizon also defended its record of investing in its network; we've added more quotes from Verizon to the last section of this article.

Tier flattening

The NDIA calls the practice of charging identical prices for wildly different speeds "tier flattening." It affects both urban and rural customers who live in areas where AT&T and Verizon haven't upgraded networks because they face no competition, because the upgrades wouldn't result in higher profits, or both. These customers end up using "the oldest, slowest legacy infrastructure," while paying much higher per-megabit prices than other Internet users.

Tier flattening "imposes higher rates on millions of urban households who are relegated to slow ADSL technology by AT&T's documented 'digital redlining' of lower-income neighborhoods as well as Verizon's refusal to deploy broadband upgrades in some entire cities like Baltimore and Buffalo," the NDIA wrote. "It also victimizes millions of underserved households in the two companies' rural service areas."

Customers with the slowest speeds end up paying more than $65 a month for each megabit per second of download speed, while people with higher speeds pay about 60 cents per megabit. The NDIA detailed the price-per-megabit range in this chart.

Extracting profit from low-speed customers

Bringing high speeds to sparsely populated areas is generally more expensive on a per-customer basis than doing the same in urban areas, of course. But AT&T and Verizon have failed to upgrade networks in rural America and some urban areas, the NDIA noted:
“Slower ADSL speeds at lower rates—i.e., what most reasonable people would expect—should be providing a cheaper alternative. Given that capital investment by AT&T and Verizon in their legacy ADSL networks in the past ten years has been minimal, the cost of service on those networks should be significantly lower than the cost of service on recently constructed fiber-to-the-node and fiber-to-the-premises networks. Instead, both companies seem bent on extracting as much profit as possible from their lower-speed customers.”

Verizon told Ars that it "is one of the one or two single largest investors of capital in the country and we don't ignore rural areas with those investments. For example, early this year, we announced our participation in New York State's New NY Broadband Program to deploy fiber to over 15,000 homes in rural upstate NY." Verizon also pointed to separate plans to bring broadband to another 50,000 customers in New York.

"In the areas where we haven't brought fiber, we continue investing to maintain and improve the performance of the DSL network," Verizon said. "It wasn't that long ago that speeds topped out at only a few Mbps—now we reach 15Mbps in some areas thanks to our investment in the network. And new technologies are on the way, such as 5G, that will be game-changing in delivering high-speed broadband to rural areas where deploying fiber to the home isn't feasible."

AT&T noted that DSL networks have "higher costs of maintenance and fewer subscribers" than its fiber-to-the-node and fiber-to-the-home premises.

We previously wrote about the NDIA in September 2016 when it successfully pressured AT&T to stop exploiting a loophole that it used to deny a discounted home Internet service to poor people in areas where it hasn't upgraded its network.

AT&T's statement to Ars pointed to the existence of that program, "Access from AT&T," as evidence that it charges reasonable prices. Access makes $5 or $10-per-month Internet service available to households in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. AT&T is required to offer this under a condition that the Federal Communications Commission imposed on its purchase of DirecTV.
https://arstechnica.com/information-...dsl-customers/





Spectrum Allegedly Throttled Content Providers Netflix and Riot Games for Money

So much for that Net Neutrality rollback
Cal Jeffrey

A hot potato: Spectrum is alleged to have been engaged in “artificially” throttling the broadband speeds for backbone and content providers including streaming services like Netflix and online gaming companies like Riot Games, which made and hosts League of Legends. The cable selectively limited port connections to companies unless they agreed to payment.

A couple of days ago we reported on how the New York State Public Service Commission kicked Charter owned cable provider Spectrum out of the state. The company allegedly failed to deliver on several promises related to its merger with Time-Warner Cable (TWC). In a bizarre twist to the story, it seems it was more than unfulfilled commitments that got Spectrum in trouble.

In its “official act,” the commission stated one of the reasons for its revocation of the merger was “the company's purposeful obfuscation of its performance and compliance obligations to the Commission and its customers.”

According to GamesIndustry.biz, this accusation refers to a 2017 lawsuit filed against Spectrum by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. The complaint is a laundry list of allegations ranging from leasing customers “deficient equipment” to misleading subscribers regarding internet speeds.

“Revisiting earlier arrangements, in which Spectrum-TWC often exchanged data with backbone and content providers for free, Spectrum-TWC now sought to make those providers pay Spectrum-TWC for access to its subscribers. A senior Spectrum-TWC executive explained in an email a short time later that, as consumer demand for content exploded, the company wanted to take the opportunity to extract additional revenues from content providers.”

Spectrum did this by deliberately limiting port capacities to content providers unless they paid for the connections. In layman’s terms, it was engaged in a form of extortion.

One of the companies named in the suit was Netflix, which refused to pay the fees. It even offered to freely install its own equipment on Spectrum’s "last mile" to improve subscribers’ content delivery. Spectrum insisted on payment instead. The squabble continued between 2012 and 2014, during which time Spectrum never informed customers why their access to Netflix was subpar.

Riot Games, makers of League of Legends was also listed as a victim to the throttling. In this instance, the company agreed to the payment demands but still did not receive adequate service.

Specifications for the game require a stable latency of less than 60ms with less than two percent packet loss.

“Latency above 100 milliseconds affected performance in key parts of the game, creating lag time that put Spectrum-TWC subscribers at a disadvantage to their gaming competitors on other ISP networks,” states the lawsuit. “Similarly, packet loss of more than two percent resulted in interruptions, buffering, and other performance issues.”

Riot agreed to pay Spectrum in August 2015 in hopes of lowering latency. The company, which started tracking its data in 2013, provided proof that Spectrum’s latency was well above 100ms (graph above). Furthermore, even after paying the cable provider to connect ports, latency only lowered to about 90ms — nowhere close to the 60ms threshold. Packet loss also remained well above two percent during the same period.

This lawsuit has not been decided yet, but it does not change the commission’s decision to boot Spectrum out of New York. The company has 60 days to pack its bags, which includes coming up with a plan “to ensure an orderly transition to a successor provider(s).” If the switch does not go smoothly, the commission will consider taking other actions including bringing the matter in front of the supreme court.
https://www.techspot.com/news/75754-...iot-games.html





High Speed Internet Is Causing Widespread Sleep Deprivation, Study Finds

First of its kind study establishes causal link between broadband internet and sleep deprivation.
Daniel Oberhaus

Sleep deprivation is an increasing problem in many developed countries, which can result in impaired cognition and a number of serious individual and societal consequences. Lack of sleep has been linked to billions of dollars in lost revenue, up to one sixth of all traffic accidents in the US, and increased risk of chronic disease. The reason for this chronic sleep shortage is due to a combination of factors. Longer work hours, stress, and interpersonal relationships have all been blamed for the widespread insomnia. Now a new study claims that high speed internet access is at least partly at fault.

The study, published Friday in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and funded by the European Research Council, suggests that high speed internet access is causing people to lose up to 25 minutes of sleep per night compared to those without high speed internet. It’s the first study to causally link broadband access to sleep deprivation.

The so-called “digitalization of the bedroom,” defined by our inability to part with our phones/laptops/televisions before bed, has already been linked to various sleep disorders. The light from our smartphones and computers suppresses the production of melatonin, which regulates our sleep cycles; late night text messages disturb our sleep; and internet addiction has been cited as a major cause of sleep deprivation. But does the quality of that internet connection also play a role?

To find out, a research team led by Franceso Billari, a professor of demography at Milan’s Bocconi University, turned to Germany, which has extensive survey data on the sleeping patterns and technology use of its citizens. Moreover, the country is also experiencing a massive economic loss due to sleep deprivation—about $60 billion per year—and has a well documented telecom divide resulting from the Cold War partition of the country.

After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, many regions in East Germany adopted optical access line (OPAL) technology, which ended up being incompatible with the more widely adopted Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology. The distinction between OPAL and DSL lines are technical, but the important point is that they are incompatible. So as DSL became the favored standard for high speed internet, this posed significant barriers to broadband adoption in Eastern Germany.

By drawing upon confidential location data from the German socioeconomic survey, which has surveyed a representative sample of German households since 1984 on a wide range of issues including sleep and PC use, the researchers were able to determine how sleep deprivation is linked to high speed internet access by comparing this to broadband penetration in the country.

As the researchers found, high speed internet access “promotes excessive electronic media use,” which has already been shown to have detrimental effects on sleep duration and quality. The effects of high speed internet access were particularly noticeable in younger age demographics.

“High-speed Internet makes it very enticing to stay up later to play video games, surf the web and spend time online on social medias,” the researchers concluded. “Given the growing awareness of the importance of sleep quantity and quality for our health and productivity, providing more information on the risks associated with technology use in the evening may promote healthier sleep and have non-negligible effects on individual welfare and well-being.”
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...on-study-finds





Cord Cutting Accelerates Faster Than Expected, As Cable Still Refuses To Compete On Price
Karl Bode

As we just got done noting, roughly 5.4 million Americans are expected to cut the TV cord this year, thanks largely to the rise in cheaper, more flexible streaming TV alternatives. And while some traditional cable TV providers have responded to this challenge by competing on price and offering their own cheaper streaming alternatives (AT&T's DirecTV Now, Dish's Sling TV), most of the cable and broadcast sector continues to double down on the very things causing this shift in the first place. Like a refusal to invest in customer service, an obsession with mindless merger mania, and seemingly endless price hikes.

Companies like Comcast have tried to stall this natural evolution by striking marketing partnerships with Netflix and including Netflix in their set top boxes, in the apparent hopes that users won't get rid of traditional cable if they're already getting Netflix as part of their monthly cable, broadband, and phone bundle. But data released this week indicates that this effort to stop cord cutting by cozying up to Netflix isn't really working, and cord cutting is accelerating at a rate notably faster than many analysts predicted:

"Even as traditional pay TV providers form partnerships with former over-the-top (OTT) rivals to retain customers, cord-cutting continues to outpace projections. According to eMarketer’s latest figures, the number of cord-cutters—adults who have ever cancelled pay TV service and continue without it—will climb 32.8% this year to 33.0 million. That’s higher than the 22.0% growth rate (27.1 million) projected in July 2017."

Comcast cozying up to Netflix isn't working because the industry continues to misread the situation. Customers are cutting the cord primarily due to the high cost of mandatory, bloated cable bundles filled with channels nobody actually watches. Comcast's solution was to include a Netflix subscription -- but only if you subscriber to Comcast's higher end TV bundles, something that certainly doesn't address the actual problem.

The report proceeds to note that users are drawn to streaming alternatives for a number of reasons, not least of which being the rise in quality original content at Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, but the lack of obnoxious, hidden surcharges and fees:

"The main factor fueling growth of on-demand streaming platforms is their original content,” eMarketer principal analyst Paul Verna said. “Consumers increasingly choose services on the strength of the programming they offer, and the platforms are stepping up with billions in spending on premium shows. Another factor driving the acceleration of cord-cutting is the availability of compelling and affordable live TV packages that are delivered via the internet without the need for installation fees or hardware."

So why aren't more cable companies competing on price? While cable companies that charge an arm and a leg for DVRs and cable boxes aren't blameless, broadcasters largely dictate programming pricing. And while that's not as big of a deal for companies like AT&T and Comcast that are broadcasters, it's an untenable situation for smaller cable ops, who already have pretty tight profit margins on pay TV due to high broadcaster rates. The same broadcasters who will, of course, be partially responsible for the steady price hikes we're also starting to see in streaming services.

But companies like Comcast refuse to compete on TV pricing for another reason: they know that a lack of competition in broadband (which is actually getting worse in many areas) means they can relentlessly jack up prices for broadband to recoup any lost revenue on the TV side of the equation. That means not only higher overall prices for broadband, but the implementation of usage caps and overage fees, unnecessary surcharges that not only make broadband more expensive, but make cutting the cord more difficult and costly as well.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...te-price.shtml





Comcast Could Lose as Many as 430,000 Video Subscribers in 2018, Analyst Says
Ben Munson

Comcast might be in store for a bumpy year, as one media analyst is predicting significant losses for the company’s video subscriber base.

Macquarie Capital’s Amy Yong is forecasting Comcast’s net video subscriber losses could total 123,000 during the third quarter and 430,000 for 2018.

“Competition from VMVPDs continues, accelerated by increased marketing spend; integration of third-party apps like Netflix/YouTube into the X1 platform should help,” Yong wrote in a research note.

Losing 430,000 subscribers in 2018 would mark a significant acceleration over 2017, when Comcast lost a net 186,000 video subscribers, according to nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon. But losing 123,000 in the third quarter would represent a slight improvement over the same quarter one year ago, when Comcast lost 125,000 subscribers.

Comcast began fiscal 2018 on a strong start, at least relative to its pay TV competitors. The company was the only provider to add video subscribers; it added 42,000 while the industry as a whole coughed up 621,627, thanks in large part to AT&T’s DirecTV and Uverse platforms.

But for many analysts, any uncertainty about Comcast’s video business was offset at least somewhat by positive results for the company’s high-speed internet and NBCUniversal businesses.

“Taken together, consensus estimates for EBITDA, earnings, and FCF are headed higher, and by more than just the beat from this quarter. The results bode well for Cable equities generally; they should help restore confidence in the bull thesis, characterized by strong broadband growth coupled with operating leverage and declining capital intensity, driving powerful growth in FCF,” wrote New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin in a research note.

ScotiaBank analyst Jeff Fan saw long-term positives coming out of Comcast’s lower cable CPE capex.

“Since surpassing the 50% X1 penetration mark about a year ago, CMCSA's CPE capex has dropped 20% y/y driven by lower volume and lower unit cost. We believe this supports lower long-term capex intensity assumptions in valuing cable operators on the X1 platform,” Fan wrote in a note.

And while vMVPDs could be eating into Comcast’s video subscriber totals, the same services may be helping NBCUniversal’s bottom line, according to Jefferies analyst John Janedis.

“Comments on the strength of the ad performance were consistent with our expectations, with NBC CPMs up ~11% and cable nets up 7% to 9%,” Janedis wrote in a research note. “Improvement in sub losses to ~-1% from -1.5% to -2% helped by VMVPDs should help the negative narrative for those that are part of the packages (we view Comcast as un-droppable in future negotiations). LT, VMVPD churn will be a swing factor for subs.”
https://www.fiercevideo.com/cable/co...8-analyst-says





Comcast, Charter Dominate US; Telcos “Abandoned Rural America,” Report Says

AT&T and Verizon have generally built fiber only where they face competition.
Jon Brodkin

You already knew that home broadband competition is sorely lacking through much of the US, but a new report released today helps shed more light on Americans who have just one choice for high-speed Internet.

Comcast is the only choice for 30 million Americans when it comes to broadband speeds of at least 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream, the report says. Charter Communications is the only choice for 38 million Americans. Combined, Comcast and Charter offer service in the majority of the US, with almost no overlap.

Yet many Americans are even worse off, living in areas where DSL is the best option. AT&T, Verizon, and other telcos still provide only sub-broadband speeds over copper wires throughout huge parts of their territories. The telcos have mostly avoided upgrading their copper networks to fiber—except in areas where they face competition from cable companies.

These details are in "Profiles of Monopoly: Big Cable and Telecom," a report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). The full report should be available at this link today.

“Market is broken”

"The broadband market is broken," the report's conclusion states. "Comcast and Charter maintain a monopoly over 68 million people. Some 48 million households (about 122 million people) subscribe to these cable companies, whereas the four largest telecom companies combined have far fewer subscribers—only 31.6 million households (about 80.3 million people). The large telecom companies have largely abandoned rural America—their DSL networks overwhelmingly do not support broadband speeds—despite years of federal subsidies and many state grant programs."

The ILSR report is based on the Federal Communications Commission's Form 477 data; ISPs are required to identify the census blocks in which they provide residential or business Internet service and the maximum speeds offered in each block.

The Form 477 data "overestimates actual broadband availability and ISPs' service areas," because it counts an entire census block as served even if an ISP offers service to just one resident in the block, the report notes. But the ILSR said it found no better alternative, and ISPs have resisted efforts to make the data more accurate.

The report includes deployment data for cable, fiber, DSL, and fixed wireless broadband. The report excludes satellite Internet "because the technology is highly dependent on terrain and weather, has very poor latency, and is often more expensive than terrestrial ISPs." Mobile broadband also is not included because the report focuses on home (or "fixed") Internet service, rather than smartphone coverage.

The most recent Form 477 data is from December 2016, so the numbers in this article aren't fully up to date. As we've reported, the data showed that 30 percent of developed census blocks have just one ISP offering speeds at least as fast as the FCC's broadband standard of 25Mbps downloads and 3Mbps uploads. In 13 percent of developed census blocks, there were zero providers offering speeds that fast.
Comcast and Charter

Comcast, the nation's biggest cable company and broadband provider, offers service to about 110 million people in 39 states and Washington, DC.

"All of these people have access to broadband-level service through Comcast Xfinity, but about 30 million of these people have no other option for broadband service," the ILSR wrote.

Comcast's broadband subscribers included 25.5 million households, or about 64.8 million people, based on the average US household size of 2.54 people.

Charter, the second biggest cable company after Comcast, offers service to 101 million people in 45 states. 22.5 million households covering about 57.2 million people were subscribing to Charter Internet, according to the numbers cited by the ILSR.

Like Comcast, Charter offers broadband-level speeds throughout its territory. "About 38 million [people in Charter territory] have no other option for broadband service," the report said.

Comcast and Charter generally don't compete against each other. They have a combined territory covering about 210 million people, yet the companies' overlapping service territory covers only about 1.5 million people, according to the Form 477 data cited by the ILSR. The overlap is mostly in Florida, where Charter purchased Bright House Networks, and may be overstated because an entire census block is counted as served even if an ISP offers service to just one resident in the block.

The numbers look a lot different when you switch from cable to DSL and fiber providers. AT&T is the biggest such provider, offering Internet service to 122.5 million people in 21 states. But nearly all of that is DSL or fiber-to-the-node, as AT&T was offering fiber-to-the-home to just 7.8 million people as of the December 2016 data, the ILSR report said.

The report continues:

About 53.7 percent of people (65.8 million) in the total service area have access to broadband-level service through AT&T. Of these people, 745,000 have no other option for broadband service. The data suggests that AT&T has almost exclusively upgraded its networks to offer broadband-level service only in areas where it faces competition.

In other words, AT&T has installed fiber or at least broadband-level speeds in many areas where it competes against cable companies, but it generally hasn't bothered to do so in areas without competition.

Verizon, meanwhile, offers Internet service to 55.2 million people. "The DSL service area covers 47.7 million people, but the FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) service area covers 33.3 million people," with significant overlap, the report said.

About 33.5 million people have access to broadband speeds from Verizon. Of those, "approximately 185,000 people have no other option for broadband service," the report says. "This means that FiOS has almost exclusively been deployed to areas where it faces cable competition." Verizon had 7 million households subscribing to its Internet service.

The report also covers CenturyLink and Frontier. CenturyLink offers Internet service to 49.1 million people, but its fiber-to-the-home service is only available to 3.8 million.

"About 47.9 percent of people (23.5 million) in the total service area have access to broadband-level service through CenturyLink and approximately 1 million people have no other option for broadband service," the report said.

CenturyLink's subscribers include about 5 million households covering about 12.7 million people.

Frontier's DSL service area covers 30 million Americans, while its fiber-to-the-home territory covers 10 million people.

"About 38.7 percent of people (12.6 million) in this service area have access to broadband-level service through Frontier," the report said. "Approximately 59,000 people have no other option for broadband service. These data suggest that Frontier has invested in faster services almost solely where it faces competition and not in more rural areas."
https://arstechnica.com/information-...ion-americans/





'Mission: Impossible - Fallout' Nabs Franchise-Best Opening

Mission accomplished for Paramount and Tom Cruise.
Frank Pallotta

"Mission: Impossible - Fallout," the sixth film in the spy series starring Cruise, opened to an estimated $61.5 million at the domestic box office this weekend.

That makes "Fallout" the biggest opening in the history of the 22-year-old franchise. It just beat out 2000's "Mission: Impossible II."

The Paramount film was also the second highest-grossing opening weekend for Cruise, eclipsed only by 2005's "War of the Worlds." "Fallout" also exceeded industry expectations for a $50 million opening.

This weekend is not just a big win for Cruise, but also for Paramount.

It marks the biggest opening of the year for a studio that has been struggling. Paramount ranks sixth in box office revenue among major studios in 2018.

The film, which also stars Rebecca Ferguson and Henry Cavill, was also a big win around the world bringing in $153.5 million globally.

"Mission: Impossible" is a rare blockbuster brand that is sold on a star in Cruise, not a brand like Marvel or "Star Wars." Cruise is the face of the franchise, which has made roughly $3 billion at the worldwide box office. Selling Cruise, and his extensive stunts, paid off for the studio this weekend.

"Paramount did a masterful job of putting Cruise, the key asset for the 'Mission: Impossible,' front and center in their marketing campaign and publicity for 'Fallout,'" said Paul Dergarabedian, senior analyst for comScore. "This paid off handsomely for the latest installment of what has become one of the most popular and long running action franchises of all-time."

Related: 'Mission: Impossible': The rare blockbuster franchise sold on a star, not a brand

"Fallout" is another hit for this year's surging summer at the box office. The US box office is up 10.2% this summer from the same point in the season last year.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/29/med...ice/index.html





With DaaS Windows Coming, Say Goodbye to Your PC as You Know it

How much are you going to like having Microsoft in charge of your desktop?
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

For over 30 years, we’ve thought of PCs primarily as Windows machines, which we owned and controlled. That’s about to change forever.

This isn’t about Microsoft forcing us off Windows 7 to Windows 10 as fast as it can (though it has found many ways to push that agenda). This is about Microsoft abandoning the Windows platform as a conventional desktop.

Microsoft is getting ready to replace Windows 10 with the Microsoft Managed Desktop. This will be a “desktop-as-a-service” (DaaS) offering. Instead of owning Windows, you’ll “rent” it by the month.

DaaS for Windows isn’t new. Citrix and VMware have made a living from it for years. Microsoft has offered Remote Desktop Services, formerly Terminal Services, for ages.

Microsoft Managed Desktop is a new take. It avoids the latency problem of the older Windows DaaS offerings by keeping the bulk of the operating system on your PC.

But you’ll no longer be in charge of your Windows PC. Instead, it will be automatically provisioned and patched for you by Microsoft. Maybe you’ll be OK with that.

Unless you’ve been under a rock, you know IT departments have not been happy with Microsoft’s twice yearly major “upgrades” to Windows 10. Let’s call it what it is. These aren’t upgrades or updates; they’re service patches (SP).

Take the Windows 10 April 2018 Update — please! It came with more than its fair share of bugs. What was especially annoying was that “Update” fouled up so many of Microsoft’s own programs. When even Word, Outlook and File Explorer lock up, you know you’ve got a mess on your hands.

Computerworld’s Woody Leonhard even recommended that, unless you were stuck with the April Update, you turn off automatic updating. He’s right to do so. Windows patching was always chancy, but with Windows 10 you’re more likely to have trouble when you patch than you are to avoid problems. And isn’t that a heck of a note?

So, with this track record, do you want to pay good money to let Microsoft maintain your desktops for you? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Nonetheless, DaaS Windows is coming. Microsoft has been getting away from the old-style desktop model for years now. Just look at Office. Microsoft would much rather have you rent Office via Office 365 than buy Microsoft Office and use it for years.Microsoft Managed Desktop is the first move to replacing “your” desktop with a rented desktop. By 2021, I expect the Managed Desktop to be to traditional Windows what Office 365 is to Office today: the wave of the future. Or maybe tsunami, depending on your perspective.

I’m not happy with this development. I’m old enough to remember the PC revolution. We went from depending on mainframes and Unix boxes for computing power to having the real power on our desktops. It was liberating.

Now Microsoft, which helped lead that revolution, is trying to return us to that old, centralized control model.

Forget that noise. If Microsoft continues on this course, soon your only real choices if you really want a “desktop” operating system will be Linux and macOS. Oh, you’ll still have “Windows.” But Windows as your “personal” desktop? It will be history.
https://www.computerworld.com/articl...u-know-it.html





Stumbles? What Stumbles? Big Tech Is as Strong as Ever
Farhad Manjoo

You may have heard that the tech giants are on their heels.

Over the last two years, lawmakers and the public around the globe have been awakened to fears about the expanding powers of the largest technology companies, particularly the ones I’ve called the Frightful Five: Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft, the most valuable companies on the American markets.

The concerns span the gamut. There are calls for renewed antitrust investigations. Some people have accused the companies of political biases, while others have criticized their lack of diversity and how narrowly they distribute their wealth. Then there are the questions of their vulnerability to foreign influence and their capacity for addicting us to their products.

In different ways, the companies have conceded some of these fears and have vowed to address them. Taking stock, cleaning up, admitting “moral responsibility” for their contributions to society — these are the buzzwords of a tech ecosystem that is supposedly subsumed by remorse and committed to rehabilitation.

Yet there is something deeply incongruous at the heart of the supposed “techlash”: It is not really making a huge dent in the tech giants’ financial performance. Over the last two weeks, each of the five reported earnings that were brimming with mostly fantastic news for its investors. Amazon, which has long conditioned shareholders to expect a lot of growth but not much earnings, reported a record profit. Microsoft and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, both handily beat Wall Street’s projections. On Tuesday, so did Apple; if its price jumps as a result, it could become the first company to reach a market valuation of more than $1 trillion.

Wait, but what about Facebook, which told investors to expect lower growth rates and higher expenses, causing its stock to lose $120 billion in market value in a single day?

In a strange way, the social network’s troubles only underscored its dominance. Even after its stock crash, Facebook remains the fifth most valuable corporation in the American markets, ahead of Berkshire Hathaway, and there are almost no serious calls for its chief executive to resign, as you might expect for any other company experiencing such a loss. That’s because the company reported little to cause experts to alter their long-term outlook. Pretty much everyone who studies Facebook believes that it will hold its grip on the culture and the advertising industry for the foreseeable future.

“This is one of the most profitable business models I’ve ever seen, and that really hasn’t changed,” said Mark Mahaney, an analyst at the firm RBC Capital. He added that Facebook’s stock now “may be the single most attractively priced asset across technology.”

Together the earning statements tell a clear story. Despite the public outcry, the five are all expanding their foothold in our lives, and the forces arrayed against them, which range from regulation to apathy, aren’t having a substantial impact. To the extent that the five companies face meaningful competition, it is usually from other members of the group; that is, one of the five might steal market share from another without affecting the overall dynamic in the tech business.

Why is this happening? If you dig into their reports, you find several powerful forces keeping these companies at the top.

Software really is eating the world

Back when it was just an e-commerce company, Amazon was dogged by a persistent worry: Could it ever make a lot of money? The company has spent more than two decades methodically building out its capacity to deliver an ever larger number of products at an ever-increasing rate. That takes a lot of investment, so even though Amazon’s sales grew like crazy every year, it had to plow its revenue back into further expansion.

Three years ago, Amazon began to report small but consistent profits. And in the last year, its earnings began to grow, and now they’ve reached a level that stands out even in the tech industry. In the quarter ending in June, Amazon booked a $2.5 billion profit. That’s only about half what Facebook made, but it is real money.

Where did Amazon find all the new money? The same place the tech industry always finds profits: software. Though most people think of Amazon as a place to buy toilet paper, the vast majority of its profits come from its cloud-services business, Amazon Web Services, which allows companies to store their data on Amazon’s servers rather than locally. Another new source of profits is its advertising business, which charges companies to place ads for their products across Amazon’s site.

For rival retailers, Amazon’s new profitability constitutes a kind of nightmare scenario. By shuttling profits from software into its retail business, Amazon can keep expanding its store at a breakneck pace.

“These high-margin businesses allow Amazon to run its entire store at close to zero margin — and once you do that, it becomes effectively impossible for someone whose sole business is commerce to compete with you,” said Youssef Squali, an analyst at the firm SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.

But it’s not just Amazon that’s profiting under the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s thesis that “software is eating the world.” Microsoft’s surging earnings were also driven by its cloud business, while Apple’s software services — things like sales of apps, music subscriptions, cloud storage and Apple Pay — are the fastest-growing part of its business.

Regulatory pressure isn’t having a huge impact

The European Union recently fined Google $5.1 billion for abusing its mobile software monopoly, which followed a $2.7 billion fine last year for abuse of its search monopoly. (Google is appealing both decisions.) Apple agreed last year to pay nearly $16 billion in back taxes to the European Union over its cozy tax deal with Ireland. (The funds will be held in escrow while Ireland appeals the decision; Apple has disputed any wrongdoing.) Facebook, which has been hauled before lawmakers in Europe and the United States for its role in politics, faces threats of increased regulation and possible fines for mishandling private data.

But Big Tech’s earnings so far don’t show much of an impact from the increased scrutiny. Google paid its fine and still reported a $3.2 billion quarterly profit. Neither Google nor Facebook saw much of an effect from Europe’s new privacy rule, the General Data Protection Regulation. Facebook’s user base declined by only a million users in Europe (367 million people use it every month there). Both companies warned that the law may have a greater effect in the future, but several analysts said both Google and Facebook could benefit from the law, because compliance costs could sink their smaller rivals.

There is also the possibility that regulatory zeal will abate. Google watchers say it’s notable that President Trump tweeted criticism of the European Union’s fine against Google, suggesting, perhaps, that American regulators won’t take up a similar case. (Of course, it is hard these days to really know how much to read into a presidential tweet.)

Or consider the changing dynamics of the digital advertising business, which is dominated by Google and Facebook and has been a top target of antitrust activists. Amazon’s growing ad business poses a threat to both Google and Facebook — which suggests that the ad economy is becoming more competitive even without the government’s help.

“There’s been this fear that advertising was going to become a duopoly owned by Google and Facebook,” Mr. Mahaney said. “Now it’s going to be a triopoly — but if you were worried about the duopoly, you’re probably saying, ‘Couldn’t the third company have been someone besides Amazon?’”

The Five still have a lot more ways to make money

Finally, there are what Mr. Mahaney calls the “green fields” — the nearly endless opportunities that many of the Five have to start minting more and more money from various parts of their businesses.

Facebook, for instance, has experienced a slowdown in the growth of its core social network, but its other properties — Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp among them — are still growing quickly, and the company has only just started to make money from them. At Google, there’s a similar opportunity for YouTube, which, like Facebook, will benefit from the billions in TV advertising money that marketers will shift online over the next few years.

And that’s just in the short term. The earnings reports show that all of the five are investing heavily in the tech that will dominate the future, from artificial intelligence to voice services to self-driving cars.

“The one thing that is likely to keep these companies at the top for much longer than traditional megacap companies is that they are not afraid to reinvent themselves,” Mr. Squali said. “They see themselves as laboratories for new ideas, and they’re not afraid to destroy something that’s working today to make the longer-term work even better for them.”

In other words: Get used to the Five. They’re not going anywhere.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/01/t...-stumbles.html





Amazon Just Quietly Invited the Government to 'Weigh In' on Facial Recognition

Is Amazon passing the buck -- or inviting regulation? We're hearing the former.
Sean Hollister

When Amazon's controversial facial recognition system mistakenly matched 28 members of Congress with criminal mugshots, it caused quite a stir. Particularly among some of those congressmen, who demanded immediate answers.

Now, Amazon has published an official blog post disputing the results of that test -- one which includes a rather interesting message at the very end.

A message that suggests that Amazon, like Microsoft, may believe that the US government should weigh in on facial recognition -- that it's not Amazon's job to police. But also a message that may require me to explain a few things.

On Thursday, Amazon had already told CNET that it didn't believe the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) test of its Rekognition facial recognition service was completely fair -- in no small part because the ACLU used the tool at its default 80-percent confidence-level setting, as opposed to the 95-percent-plus setting Amazon recommends to law enforcement agencies.

(In plain English: Even if Amazon's system was only 80 percent sure that a Congressman looked like a criminal, it'd still say so when tested this way, unless you changed the setting.)

The ACLU countered that police might easily do the same thing they did: 80 percent is the default setting, there's no instructions to tell a law enforcement agency to use a different setting -- and besides, the ACLU just plain believes facial recognition software is too easy for governments to abuse.

But on Friday, Amazon's new memo disputes that the company doesn't provide instructions -- Amazon claims it has documentation that specifies a 99-percent confidence level. (CNET does see a mention of 99 percent in Amazon's documentation, but it's only a passing idea -- not exactly a clear instruction.)

Not only is it a passing mention, but Amazon also has a separate example of an employee authentication scheme where the default 80 percent confidence level seems to be acceptable.

The memo also points out that Amazon's facial recognition is actually rather good, judged by industry standards, if it only matched 28 out of 507 members of Congress. False positives are generally accepted in facial recognition software, because humans pick up where machines leave off.

OK, now here's the weird part. On Friday afternoon, Amazon pulled that memo off the internet -- and replaced it with one that added a new sentence at the bottom:

"It is a very reasonable idea, however, for the government to weigh in and specify what temperature (or confidence levels) it wants law enforcement agencies to meet to assist in their public safety work," the memo now reads.

That can be read at least a few different ways:

1) Amazon believes the US government should tell Amazon directly (not through regulation) how it believes its software should work.

2) Amazon believes the government should tell its own law enforcement agencies which confidence level to use when using facial recognition. (Basically, passing the buck.)

3) Like Microsoft, Amazon believes the government should regulate facial recognition.

We're not quite sure which one's accurate, but a source close to the matter says that no. 2 is the right one -- Amazon thinks the government should make sure it's using the tool carefully.

Whichever way, the ball seems to be in Congress's court.

Amazon declined to comment.

In a statement, the ACLU wrote: "In its five stages of grief over its dangerous face surveillance product, Amazon is clearly stuck at denial. In a matter of 48 hours, Amazon has gone from its own system default of an 80 percent match rate to saying yesterday it should be 95 percent, and then saying today it should be 99 percent. At no time has Amazon taken any responsibility for the very grave impact that their face surveillance product has on real people."
https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-jus...l-recognition/





After Threats, Austin Founder Shut Down Browser Firm Authenticated Reality
Angela Shah

When Authenticated Reality launched last year, it seemed that the company had struck gold in terms of market demand and fit. The Austin-based startup had developed a Web browser that would require users to prove they are who they say they are.

Users would have to sign up for an account—scanning their driver’s license and taking a photo—in order to download the browser, which would sit “on top” of the Internet, said Chris Ciabarra, Authenticated Reality’s co-founder, in an interview last year. “Everybody knows who everybody is,” he said.

So, when Facebook announced this week that its site was, once again, home to inauthentic pages and accounts designed to influence the outcome of the upcoming midterm Congressional elections, I contacted Ciabarra to find out how the company was doing.

But, he said Wednesday that he had shut down the startup just a month after its debut. He said people who had heard about Authenticated Reality from media reports were visiting the firm’s offices in California and threatening employees. (The addresses were listed on the website.) “It was getting kind of scary,” he told me. “They were thinking we were taking their freedom away because they had to sign up using a driver’s license. They thought we were trying to follow them.”

In addition to the personal visits, Ciabarra said, the company received “hundreds” of harassing e-mails, all of which he said was reported to law enforcement. Ciabarra said the company returned nearly all of the $1 million it had raised to its investors. “I just realized we have to turn it off,” he said.

With so much of life migrating online, the issue of whether we are interacting with real people is becoming increasingly important. Sure, we want to be sure that the businesses which we are patronizing are real in that they deliver what we pay for. But, as the Facebook controversy shows, fake accounts designed to resemble those that come from peers, which are designed to spread propaganda, can have serious consequences.

“There’s definitely a need for a platform like this,” Ciabarra said.

He added that he still gets contacted by people interested in using Authenticated Reality’s technology. (Though the company has stopped operating, Ciabarra said he hasn’t yet taken down its website.)

Since Authenticated Reality closed up, Ciabarra co-founded Employee Wow, which sells employee-management software for businesses. Ciabarra said he’s now working on a startup in Austin called Athena, which he didn’t want to share many details about except to say that the technology acts as a “virtual bodyguard.” (Employee Wow’s website still lists him as the company’s co-founder and CTO.)

Looking back at Authenticated Reality, Ciabarra said if he were to start the company again, one thing he would change is to make providing a driver’s license ID optional. In that case, people would be labeled as “authenticated” or “not authenticated.”

Authenticated users could be given special privileges such as the ability to kick off unauthenticated users who were peddling “fake news” or harassing other users. “That’s a way it could police itself,” he said.

But apparently it’ll be up to someone else to take on an Authenticated Reality 2.0. “I’ll even give them the code if they want,” he said.
https://www.xconomy.com/texas/2018/0...cated-reality/





Eight AT&T Buildings and Ten Years of Litigation: Shining a Light on NSA Surveillance
David Ruiz

Two reporters recently identified eight AT&T locations in the United States—towering, multi-story buildings—where NSA surveillance occurs on the backbone of the Internet. Their article showed how the agency taps into cables, routers, and switches that handle vast quantities of Internet traffic around the world. Published by The Intercept, the report shines a light on the NSA’s expansive Internet surveillance network housed inside these sometimes-opaque buildings.

EFF has been shining its own light on NSA Internet surveillance for years with our landmark case, Jewel v. NSA. In more than 10 years of litigation, we’ve made significant strides.

We’ve had our case dismissed but we fought the decision and it was reversed on appeal. We’ve overcome multiple delays. We’ve forced the NSA to produce evidence about whether our plaintiffs were harmed by mass, warrantless surveillance. And earlier this year, the former NSA director finally submitted a 193-page declaration in response to our questions, in addition to producing thousands of pages of other evidence concerning the NSA’s spying program for the court to review. No case challenging NSA surveillance has ever pushed this far.

As the years press on, the picture becomes clear: the NSA’s mass surveillance operation is deeply embedded inside our country’s Internet and telecommunications infrastructure. Now, thanks to The Intercept’s reporting, we have a better idea of where this surveillance takes place. For many of us, it’s in our own backyards.

Despite the government’s years-long stonewalling, EFF is committed to continuing its fight against the NSA’s mass, warrantless surveillance.

According to The Intercept, the NSA is siphoning data out of eight large AT&T buildings, known as “service node routing complexes,” located in Washington, D.C., New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles. These centers handle not only AT&T’s internet traffic, but also the traffic of other phone and Internet providers.

At these complexes, the NSA and AT&T copy and analyze large swaths of domestic and international Internet traffic. This information includes the content of your emails and online chats, along with your browsing history. Some amount of this traffic is processed and stored by the NSA, sometimes for years.

This network of warrantless surveillance, described by The Intercept, is quite familiar to EFF.

In 2006, former AT&T technician Mark Klein told our organization about what he believed was NSA surveillance taking place inside one of the company’s San Francisco buildings. As he stated in 2006, through his work at AT&T, he learned that the NSA had installed surveillance devices in AT&T facilities in other cities on the West Coast, like Los Angeles and Seattle, just as the Intercept confirmed.

In 2012, technical expert J. Scott Marcus reviewed the Klein evidence and offered his opinion on what it all meant. He agreed with Klein that the evidence suggested that NSA had installed surveillance devices in AT&T facilities across the country, including Atlanta, as the Intercept confirmed. Even in 2012, after reviewing the evidence, Marcus concluded that:

“AT&T has constructed an extensive—and expensive—collection of infrastructure that collectively has all the capability necessary to conduct large scale covert gathering of IP-based communications information, not only for communications to overseas locations, but for purely domestic communications as well.”

Equipped with expert testimony, verified technical diagrams, and investigative reporting like the Intercept’s that increasingly bolsters our arguments, EFF’s signature lawsuit against NSA surveillance is looking stronger by the day.

Jewel v. NSA in 2018

The new year got off to a promising start. After three deadline delays spanning more than a year, the government’s lawyers were finally expected to comply with our “discovery” requests. (These are inquiries for evidence when lawsuits advance towards trial. In many lawsuits, this process can take months. In Jewel v. NSA, simply forcing the government to begin the process took eight years.)

But the government missed the first deadline of 2018 and received one last extension. The new deadline to respond to our discovery questions was February 16. The court also told the government that it would need to comply with a previous order to “marshal all evidence” it had about our plaintiff’s ability to prove harm and deliver it directly to the court, away from public view, by April 1.

Finally, the government complied, submitting reams of evidence about its vast surveillance operation. That included declarations from former NSA director Michael Rogers and Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Susan Gordon.

But yet again, we met obstacles. Much of the submitted evidence is classified, requiring security clearances that our lawyers do not possess. We asked the court for temporary approval to help review the evidence, but our requests were denied.

Now, the court will have to sort through this information on its own. However long that takes, we’re confident the evidence will show that the NSA has been collecting and searching the communications of millions of innocent Americans for decades.

Despite the government’s years-long stonewalling, EFF is committed to continuing its fight against the NSA’s mass, warrantless surveillance. Multiple newspapers and publications, like The Intercept, are equally committed, too. We thank them for investigating and writing stories that confirm what we’ve said in our Jewel suit, and for continuing to expose the enormous breadth of NSA surveillance to the public.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/0...a-surveillance





Everything But the Voice - Britons' Mobile Calls Fall for First Time
Paul Sandle

Britons are more attached to their mobile phones than ever before, but the amount of time they spend using them for their original purpose - talking to someone else - has fallen for the first time, Ofcom said on Thursday.

The regulator said the popularity of internet-based services such as WhatsApp, Skype and Snapchat, all of which can be used to make calls as well as send messages, had reduced the time spent on mobile voice networks.

Total outgoing mobile call volumes dropped by 2.5 billion minutes last year to 148.6 billion minutes, the first decrease since data collection started, Ofcom said.

Smartphones, which started to take off when Apple (AAPL.O) launched its first iPhone in 2007, have become essential to people’s lives, it said, with 78 percent of adults now owning one.

“Over the last decade, people’s lives have been transformed by the rise of the smartphone, together with better access to the internet and new services,” said Ian Macrae, Ofcom’s director of market intelligence.

“Whether it’s working flexibly, keeping up with current affairs or shopping online, we can do more on the move than ever before. But while people appreciate their smartphone as their constant companion, some are finding themselves feeling overloaded when online, or frustrated when they’re not.”

Three quarters of people said their smartphones helped keep them close to friends and family, Ofcom found.

But conversely 54 percent said connected devices interrupted face-to-face conversations with the same people, while more than two in five also admitted to spending too much time online.

Adult users spend an average 2 hours and 28 minutes a day online on a smartphone, Ofcom said. This rises to 3 hours and 14 minutes for 18-24 years olds.

Smartphones have also usurped television as the device that adults say they would miss the most.

Some 52 percent were most attached to their televisions in 2007, but by 2018 Ofcom said 48 percent favoured the smartphone, beating the 28 percent who saw the TV as their most important device.

Editing by Susan Fenton
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-br...-idUKKBN1KM6BE





It’s Official: BitTorrent Is Now Part of TRON!
S. McDonald

We are excited to announce that TRON has officially closed its acquisition of BitTorrent. BitTorrent has more than 100 million active users worldwide, and has one of the top-rated apps on Google Play and other products, including BitTorrent Play (iOS), uTorrent Web, and desktop clients for PC and Mac.

BitTorrent will continue operating from TRON’s new San Francisco location, which is now the center of operations for the company’s global market expansion. The division will provide robust support for TRON’s global business development and partnerships, while pursuing its vision for the world’s largest decentralized ecosystem.

With this acquisition, BitTorrent will continue to provide high quality services for over 100M users around the world. We believe that joining the TRON network will further enhance BitTorrent and accelerate our mission of creating an Internet of options, not rules.

To learn more, please visit the following channels:
TRON’s official website: https://tron.network
TRON Foundation Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tronfoundation
Justin Sun’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/justinsuntron

http://blog.bittorrent.com/2018/07/2...-part-of-tron/

















Until next week,

- js.



















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