P2P-Zone  

Go Back   P2P-Zone > Peer to Peer
FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Peer to Peer The 3rd millenium technology!

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Old 28-07-17, 01:57 PM   #1
JackSpratts
 
JackSpratts's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: New England
Posts: 10,013
Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - July 29th, ’17

Since 2002


































"Who in the ’80s could imagine this? Can you imagine filming this and taking it back to the ’80s and saying, ‘This is what’s going to happen in 30 years: There’s going to be a frog in the food court’?" – Dan Bell






































July 29th, 2017




Lawsuit Seeks Ajit Pai’s Net Neutrality Talks with Internet providers

FCC accused of not complying with FoIA request for Pai's talks with ISPs.
Jon Brodkin

The Federal Communications Commission was sued today by a group that says the commission failed to comply with a public records request for communications about net neutrality between FCC officials and Internet service providers.

On April 26, a nonprofit called American Oversight filed a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request asking the FCC for all records related to communications on net neutrality between Internet service providers and Chairman Ajit Pai or Pai's staff. The group asked for "correspondence, e-mails, telephone call logs, calendar entries, meeting agendas," and any other records of such communications.

The group also asked for similar records related to FCC communications with members of Congress, congressional staff, and members of the media. But American Oversight's lawsuit against the FCC says the commission hasn't complied with the requests.

“The FCC has made it clear that they’re ignoring feedback from the general public, so we’re going to court to find out who they’re actually listening to about net neutrality," American Oversight Executive Director Austin Evers said in the group's announcement of its lawsuit. "If the Trump administration is going to let industry lobbyists rewrite the rules of the Internet for millions of Americans, we’re going to make them do it in full view of the public." (Evers was previously a US State Department lawyer.)

FCC repeatedly asked for delays, lawsuit says

American Oversight describes itself as an "organization committed to the promotion of transparency in government" that files public records requests to educate the public about federal government operations. The group's complaint against the FCC in US District Court for the District of Columbia was detailed in a Gizmodo story and is available here.

"After initially agreeing to process American Oversight’s requests quickly, the FCC repeatedly delayed releasing the records even as the Trump administration continued its work to roll back the open Internet rules," American Oversight said.

The FoIA law requires an agency to inform a records requester of the agency's decision to grant or deny access to requested records within 20 business days and to release the records shortly after that.

The FCC repeatedly requested extensions after getting the FoIA request from American Oversight, the group's complaint says. The nonprofit agreed to the first two extension requests, giving the FCC until July 24 to respond. The FCC asked for another one-month extension on July 21, but American Oversight refused to agree to a third extension.

Since the July 24 deadline passed, "American Oversight has received no further communication from FCC regarding the processing of its FOIA requests," the complaint said.

American Oversight asked for a court order requiring the FCC to produce the required records within 20 days and to pay damages and court costs.

We asked Pai's office for a response to the lawsuit today and will update this story if we hear back.

American Oversight's FoIA request on April 26 was filed just after Pai announced his plan to roll back net neutrality rules. The public records request said:

Earlier today, Mr. Pai gave a speech outlining his plans to further alter the net neutrality rules established by the FCC during the prior administration. These remarks followed reports that Mr. Pai has been meeting with telecom trade associations and large internet companies to discuss the Commission’s plans for the future of net neutrality. Given that Mr. Pai has declined to publicly discuss the details of those meetings, American Oversight is seeking to gain insight into those meetings via the Freedom of Information Act. The public should have access to communications related to the shaping of such influential regulations; significant regulatory changes should not be shaped by secret influences.

Pattern of denial

The FCC has also been secretive in response to FoIA requests regarding its analysis of DDoS attacks that hit the commission's net neutrality comment system in May. In response to a FoIA request from Gizmodo, the FCC said its analysis of DDoS attacks "stemmed from real time observation and feedback by Commission IT staff and did not result in written documentation."

After various media outlets wrote about this refusal to provide records, the FCC claimed that Gizmodo only asked for analysis produced on May 8, the day of the attack, and that the FCC thus doesn't have to provide any written analysis produced after that date.

US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) criticized the FCC for apparently "playing word games to avoid responding to FoIA requests" and "violat[ing] Chairman Ajit Pai’s pledge to increase transparency at the FCC.”

Gizmodo pointed out that it asked for any records related to the DDoS analysis, such as e-mails, and not just for the analysis itself. The FCC's statement that there is no documentation from May 8 would mean "that for a period of about 15 hours, no one in the agency’s IT department wrote a single e-mail or memo, nor did they take down any notes of any kind about the cyberattack that, according to Chairman Pai, caused a malicious 3,000-percent increase in network traffic," Gizmodo wrote.

The FCC also denied a FoIA request filed by Ars for e-mails and other communications and records related to the attack on the net neutrality comment system and related downtime. The FCC told us that it won't release the records because of an ongoing "internal investigation."

Freelance journalist Kevin Collier also filed a lawsuit against the FCC today, alleging that the commission failed to comply with FoIA requests about the alleged DDoS attack and the agency's analysis of of anti-net neutrality comments generated by astroturfers.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...net-providers/





Democrats Propose Rules to Break up Broadband Monopolies
Karl Bode

The Democratic party this week released a new party platform -- one that proposes new rules that could break up existing broadband monopolies and put an end to often-mindless mergers and consolidation in the telecom space. The proposal was part of a rebranding of the party after its repeated failures in state and federal elections. The proposed rules would also require that regulators look at mergers after they're completed to see if they served the public interest.

Democrats have been inconsistent on this subject in years' past.

While the Obama administration did block AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile (to obvious benefit to consumers), the administration also approved Charter's $79 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, which ultimately drove up costs for consumers and resulted in even worse customer service. There's also the fact that as the minority party, they likely realize there's a snowball's chance in hell of such a platform being implemented anytime soon.

Still, Democrats are hoping that a more consumer-centric, anti-monopoly message will resonate with voters that have found their previous election choices from both parties not particularly in tune with their interests.

"Right now our antitrust laws are designed to allow huge corporations to merge, padding the pockets of investors but sending costs skyrocketing for everything from cable bills and airline tickets to food and health care," US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote in the New York Times. "We are going to fight to allow regulators to break up big companies if they’re hurting consumers and to make it harder for companies to merge if it reduces competition."

The outline of the Democrats "Better Deal" proposal is here (pdf), and offers a little more detail. The party singled out AT&T's looming $89 billion acquisition of Time Warner as an example of how so many of these mergers harm consumers and competition longer term.

“If AT&T succeeds in this deal, it will have more power to restrict the content access of its 135 million wireless and 25.5 million pay-TV subscribers," the Democrats said. "This will only enable the resulting behemoths to promote their own programming, unfairly discriminate against other distributors and their ability to offer highly desired content, and further restrict small businesses from successfully competing in the market."

The problem traditionally has been that while both parties talk a good game about innovation and broadband competition, politicians are so awash in AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Charter campaign contributions, meaningful action magically never materializes. That said, by the time current FCC boss Ajit PAi gets done gutting all oversight of some of the least liked and least competitive companies in American industry, it's possible the political motivation may finally emerge to actually do something about this traditionally-dysfunctional, M&A-obsessed sector, and the consumer disdain that all-too-often passes for customer service.
https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/...opolies-140006





Republicans Want the CEOs of Facebook, Google, AT&T and Comcast to Testify to Congress about Solving Net Neutrality

A key House committee just scheduled a September 7 hearing.
Tony Romm

House Republicans are asking the chief executives of tech and telecom rivals — including Facebook, Google, AT&T and Comcast* — to appear before the U.S. Congress in September and help settle the debate over net neutrality once and for all.

At the moment, the Trump administration is preparing to scrap the U.S. government’s existing rules, which prevent internet service providers from blocking or slowing down web traffic, or from charging companies like YouTube or Netflix for faster delivery of their content. The reason: The Federal Communications Commission under its GOP leader, Chairman Ajit Pai, believes they’re too heavy handed.

But Pai’s plans for repeal — a guaranteed outcome at the Republican-controlled FCC — mark only the latest round of fighting in a debate that’s more than 15 years in the making. The constant legal wrangling has left all sides in agreement that Congress should get involved and craft a law that says what internet providers can or can’t do.

To that end, Rep. Greg Walden, the Republican leader of the tech-focused House Energy and Commerce Committee, has asked the chief executives of top technology and telecommunications companies to testify before his panel at a newly announced September 7 hearing focused on net neutrality, he said today.

Invitees include Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, and the leaders of Amazon, Netflix, Charter and Verizon, according to the committee.

In a letter requesting their appearance, Walden said the open internet rules put in place during the Obama administration — which subject broadband providers to utility-like regulation — “disrupted the longstanding regulatory balance that for years allowed the internet to grow and thrive.”

As Pai looks to repeal them, however, it gives both sides “an opportunity to rethink the current regulatory model and build new rules from the ground up” in Congress, Walden continued.

“With your help, I know we can craft a fair, predictable and sustainable solution that not only benefits edge providers and internet service providers, but also the billions of consumers worldwide that deserve a free and open internet,” he told chief executives in his letter requesting their help.

At the FCC, Pai’s repeal effort marks the third time in recent years that the agency is at the drawing board over net neutrality, after the likes of Comcast and Verizon took the agency to court and blocked its earlier efforts to implement open internet rules.

That vicious cycle has left both sides of the debate pining for Congress, not the FCC, to broker a resolution on net neutrality, so that the government’s approach to internet policy doesn’t change depending on which party is in power — or who prevails in federal courtrooms.

Even net neutrality advocates in the tech sector — and repeal-friendly telecom giants — share a reluctance to continue fighting over the issue in wonky FCC proceedings and lawsuits. Companies like AT&T and Verizon told the FCC in official comments earlier this month that Congress should set down the final limits on how they can manage their web traffic. So did Facebook’s Zuckerberg, who signaled his support for congressional action in a note posted during the July 12 online protest of Pai’s plans.

Now, those very executives are being asked to come before the House and actually begin the process of legislating, no easy task for the tech and telecom industries, which have long called for Congress to take action — and long have failed to reach any compromise.

Others in Congress share a desire to pursue legislation: That includes Walden’s counterpart in the Senate, John Thune, who wrote in Recode earlier this month that a new net neutrality law is “obvious and — no, I’m not kidding — within Congress’s reach.”

But lawmakers so far have offered few specifics, and for the moment, they don’t have much Democratic support. Many in the party have rallied to save the FCC’s existing, utility-like rules, preferring the Obama administration’s approach.

Others, like New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, fear that any attempt to tackle net neutrality with Republicans in charge of the White House and Congress will result in rules that are too weak — and give internet providers too much power to tamper with internet traffic.

“As a guy right now that has listened to Donald Trump, who is the president, who has the power of the pen, I don’t want to go to work on legislation that he is not going to approve because he has a very different philosophy than I do,” Booker told Recode. “I think we should have net neutrality. [Trump] is saying, let corporations be able to do the kind of things ... all the kind of things [that] we, who believe in net neutrality, are fighting against.”

Walden, however, expressed a note of optimism. Announcing his plans during a hearing with Pai and the FCC’s other commissioners, the leading GOP lawmaker highlighted “consensus is forming across party lines and across industries that it’s time for Congress to call a halt on the back-and-forth and set clear net neutrality ground rules for the internet.”

“With almost everyone in agreement about fundamental principles to prevent anti-competitive behavior such as throttling and blocking, I think we are closer than ever to achieving a lasting resolution,” he said. “The time has come to get everyone to the table and get this figured out.”

* Comcast, through its NBCU arm, is an investor in Vox Media, which owns this website.
https://www.recode.net/2017/7/25/160...oogle-facebook





App Developers Losing $3-4 Billion Annually Thanks To 14 Billion Pirated Apps
John Koetsier

Mobile app developers and publishers are losing $3-4 billion dollars annually thanks to pirated apps, according to mobile advertising company Tapcore. Up to 14 billion app installs globally each year are pirated installs: stolen from their original creators.

But these pirates don't fly the skull and crossbones. Instead, they are smart and highly-trained technologists.

The pirated app economy is almost entirely invisible to consumers in Europe and North America, where most install apps from two sources: Google Play and the iOS App Store. These apps are generally safe and generally kosher. App pirating generally occurs on third-party app stores in China and other countries.

And it's not just invisible to consumers:

"For many developers, mobile app piracy is still a bit unknown," Tapcore CEO Remco Smit told me via email. "We calculate that of the 70 billion installs across alternative apps stores and the $20 billion in revenues they are forecast to generate, 15-20% of the apps will be pirated."

To steal an app, pirate developers download and deconstruct apps from Google Play, generally. They insert their own monetization methodology into someone else's app and then re-upload it onto hundreds of alternative app stores. Now when people download and install those apps and view ads, the pirates rake in their booty.

All that piracy is expensive.

"This means that the developer community stands to lose between $3 billion and $3.8 billion in revenue per year," says Smit.

Smit's solution is to ask developers to insert hidden code in their apps that detect when the app has been pirated and shows ads which benefit the original developers. Other potential solutions could include monitoring the top 20 or 30 third-party apps stores continually for pirated copies of your apps and issuing takedown orders against them.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/century.../#38adc4c35981





Sci-Hub’s Cache of Pirated Papers is so Big, Subscription Journals are Doomed, Data Analyst Suggests
Lindsay McKenzie

There is no doubt that Sci-Hub, the infamous—and, according to a U.S. court, illegal—online repository of pirated research papers, is enormously popular. (See Science’s investigation last year of who is downloading papers from Sci-Hub.) But just how enormous is its repository? That is the question biodata scientist Daniel Himmelstein at the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues recently set out to answer, after an assist from Sci-Hub.

Their findings, published in a preprint on the PeerJ journal site on 20 July, indicate that Sci-Hub can instantly provide access to more than two-thirds of all scholarly articles, an amount that Himmelstein says is “even higher” than he anticipated. For research papers protected by a paywall, the study found Sci-Hub’s reach is greater still, with instant access to 85% of all papers published in subscription journals. For some major publishers, such as Elsevier, more than 97% of their catalog of journal articles is being stored on Sci-Hub’s servers—meaning they can be accessed there for free.

Given that Sci-Hub has access to almost every paper a scientist would ever want to read, and can quickly obtain requested papers it doesn’t have, could the website truly topple traditional publishing? In a chat with ScienceInsider, Himmelstein concludes that the results of his study could mark “the beginning of the end” for paywalled research. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: What made you want to look at the size of Sci-Hub’s coverage?

A: It all started when Sci-Hub tweeted the list of all the articles that they had stored in their repositories on March 19. I thought: “Wow, we can learn so much about their operations and coverage that we couldn’t before.” Most people knew that Sci-Hub provided access to some of the scholarly literature, but the question was how much.

Q: How did you approach this calculation?

A: The main step was figuring out how many scholarly articles existed. For that we used data from Crossref, which has a database of journal identifiers or DOIs [digital object identifiers]. It’s not the only one, but it’s by far the most common one for scholarly publishing. After making some exclusions, we compiled a list of 81.6 million articles. This step was important because it gave us the denominator for the equation. Previous people who’ve looked at Sci-Hub coverage didn’t really get this step right—to see what percent of the literature Sci-Hub has, you need to know the total amount.

Q: What were the main findings of your study?

A: The most simple result was that Sci-Hub contains 69% of all scholarly articles. We also found that the site preferentially covers articles from closed-access publishers and high-impact journals. [Editor’s Note: A breakdown can be found here.] I think it's interesting that Elsevier and the American Chemical Society had some of the highest coverage and those are the publishers that have sued Sci-Hub. Maybe they realized that basically their entire corpus was in Sci-Hub. There were a lot of journals where Sci-Hub has every single article.

Q: What about the other 31%?

A: Just because an article isn’t in Sci-Hub’s database, that doesn’t mean it can’t get it for you. We estimated that Sci-Hub was able to fulfill requests 99% of the time—that suggests the 31% of articles that aren’t covered by Sci-Hub are things that people really aren’t requesting.

Q: Did you look at how coverage varied by academic discipline?

A: Yes. There was some variation between fields, but I think it’s probably less than people have speculated in the past. The top was chemistry with 93% coverage, and at the low end was computer science at 76%. The results could be linked to publishing practices in those fields—we found closed-access journals had more coverage than open access.

Q: Sci-Hub has faced a number of legal challenges—do you think these will stop it?

A: In our paper we have a graph plotting the history of Sci-Hub against Google Trends—each legal challenge resulted in a spike in Google searches [for the site], which suggests the challenges are basically generating free advertising for Sci-Hub. I think the suits are not going to stop Sci-Hub.

Q: How do you think Sci-Hub will evolve in future?

A: In the paper we mentioned that there are technologies coming that would allow you to host files without any central point of failure, so going forward Sci-Hub, or a service like it, could still provide access to all these papers, but there wouldn’t be any domain or one person behind it. Right now, if the servers for Sci-Hub were found they could be seized and destroyed.

Q: Do you really foresee a time when librarians would endorse Sci-Hub over paying for journal access?

A: I don’t think librarians would ever endorse it, given the legal issues of instructing someone to do something illegal. But in a way they already do. There are many libraries nowadays that can’t provide 100% access to the scholarly literature. Globally, it’s a pretty small percentage of universities that offer full access.

Q: Is there anything publishers could do to stop new papers being added to Sci-Hub’s repository?

A: There are things they could do but they can really backfire terribly. The issue is the more protective the publishers are, the more difficult they make legitimate access, and that could drive people to use Sci-Hub.

Q: What do you hope the impact of this study will be?

A: I think the larger picture of this study is that this is the beginning of the end for subscription scholarly publishing. I think it is at this point inevitable that the subscription model is going to fail and more open models will be necessitated. One motivation for doing the study is that I want to bring that eventuality into reality more quickly.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017...d-data-analyst





Facebook has Acquired a Content Rights Startup Called Source3 to Help Fight Video Pirates

Facebook wants to make sure video creators can’t get ripped off.

• Facebook has had a lot of issues with pirated content in the past.
• "We're excited to work with the Source3 team and learn from the expertise they've built," a company spokesperson said.
• Source3 builds technology to detect intellectual property that has been shared by internet users without permission.

Kurt Wagner

Facebook has acquired a startup to help it crack down on users who share pirated videos and other content without permission. Source3 builds technology to detect intellectual property that has been shared by internet users without permission.

Facebook is acquiring both the technology and at least some of the team behind Source3, which announced the deal on its website. A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment on deal terms, though Source3 has raised just $4 million in venture capital funding, according to Crunchbase.

Facebook has had a lot of issues with pirated content in the past, and it has been two years since the company first announced "Rights Manager," technology to detect and remove video clips shared by people who don't have rights to the video. YouTube offers something similar, though more advanced, called Content ID.

In April, Facebook added another option for rights holders: Leave the content up, and make money off the views that these pirates are generating for you.

Given the acquisition of Source3, it's clear that Facebook hasn't yet perfected its rights management technology. The company would ultimately like to be home to lots of professionally produced video, which is why it's paying publishers and movie studios to make videos exclusively for the social network. Video creators won't want to keep giving Facebook their videos if people can easily steal them and profit off them.

"We're excited to work with the Source3 team and learn from the expertise they've built in intellectual property, trademarks and copyright," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement shared with Recode. "As always, we are focused on ensuring we serve our partners well."

The employees who join Facebook from Source3 will work out of the company's New York office, though it's unknown how many workers that will be. Source3 will be fully integrated into Facebook and won't operate as a standalone company. It already looks like its website and Twitter account have been taken down.

—By Kurt Wagner, Re/code.net.

CNBC's parent NBCUniversal is an investor in Recode's parent Vox, and the companies have a content-sharing arrangement.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/24/faceb...-pirating.html






Wisconsin Court Orders Apple Pay $506M for Infringing on WARF Patent
Mikey Campbell

A U.S. district court judge on Monday ruled Apple must pay $506 million in damages for infringing on a microprocessor technology IP owned by the University of Wisconsin-Madison's patent licensing body, adding $272 million to an initial $234 decision reached almost two years ago.

The fine levied by U.S. District Judge William Conley more than doubles damages imposed on Apple by a federal jury in October 2015, reports Reuters.

Apple's A-series CPUs, specifically the A7, A8 and A8X system-on-chip designs, were found to have infringed on a 1998 computer microarchitecture patent owned by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. The university's patent licensing arm initially sought $400 million from the tech giant.

Judge Conley in his determination said WARF is owed additional damages plus interest because Apple continued to use the patented technology without license until the IP expired in December 2016, the report said.

WARF first sued Apple in 2014 over alleged infringement of U.S. Patent No. U.S. 5,781,752 for a "Table based data speculation circuit for parallel processing computer." According to WARF and original patent claims, the IP provides a novel method of improving power efficiency and performance in modern computer processor designs using "predictor circuit" technology.

The university leveraged the same patent to force Intel into a settlement in 2008.

The original complaint against Apple claimed willful infringement, noting the company cited the '752 patent property in its own U.S. Patent and Trademark Office filings. Further, WARF claimed Apple refused requests to legally license the IP. The university branch later filed a separate lawsuit asserting the same patent against Apple's more recent A9 and A9X chips.

For its part, Apple denied infringement during court proceedings. The company also sought to mark the IP as invalid, and requested a PTO review of its validity, but the patent body declined to take such action.

Apple is appealing the 2015 jury verdict and subsequent damages finding. Conley will not hand down a ruling on the second WARF case against Apple until the company completes the appeals process, the report said.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/...on-warf-patent





Apple Paid Nokia $2 Billion to Escape Fight Over Old Patents

It’s on the hook for more payments down the line, too
Nick Statt

Apple’s latest patent spat with Nokia resulted in a $2 billion up-front payment from the iPhone maker, a colossal sum that seems to indicate Apple was eager to avoid a protracted and ugly dispute that could rival the one it had with Samsung. The new details of the settlement, which was first announced back in May without the disclosure of a financial amount or the new licensing terms, were spotted in Nokia’s second quarter earnings release by the blog Nokiamob.

“We got a substantial upfront cash payment of €1.7 billion from Apple, strengthening further our cash position. As said earlier, our plans is to provide more details on the intended use of cash in conjunction with our Q3 earnings,” reads the official transcript of Nokia’s quarterly earnings call with investors yesterday. Neither Nokia nor Apple have disclosed the terms of the new licensing deal, including whether it involves recurring payments or how many years it will be in place.

"Apple likely wanted to avoid an ugly and protracted legal dispute"

The lawsuit, the second high-profile patent dispute between Apple and Nokia in the last decade, began last year when Nokia accused Apple of infringing on dozens of patents it owns, as well as patents owned by Nokia subsidiaries. Given Nokia’s storied history in the phone market, many smartphone makers license the company’s patents for everything from display technology to antenna design. Apple has had a licensing deal with Nokia in place since 2011, after the two settled their last patent dispute. But Apple reportedly did not want to sign a new deal and accused Nokia of seeking unfair terms.

After Nokia filed suit in multiple countries, Apple went after the patent entities that were suing for more settlement and royalty money on Nokia’s behalf with an antitrust suit. That prompted Nokia to sue Apple directly. The dispute got ugly, with Apple briefly pulling Nokia-owned Withings’ products from its online store and from Apple Stores worldwide.

The two settled in May, striking new licensing terms and agreeing to a joint effort to explore “future collaboration in digital health initiatives.” We don’t know exactly what Nokia plans to do with the $2 billion it has in the bank. For Apple, however, it’s probably not going to hurt its bottom line: the iPhone maker reported earlier this year that it has more than a quarter-trillion dollars in cash and investments, much of it sitting outside the US because it cannot currently be repatriated without paying what Apple sees as unfavorable corporate taxes.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/28/1...illion-dollars





Game of Thrones Pirates Illegally Downloading Season 7 Torrents Targeted in HBO Crackdown

The TV network is sending internet service providers the IP addresses of customers who are pirating the show
Parsons

Game of Thrones has consistently been one of the most pirated TV shows on the internet and HBO is trying to stop people illegally watching the latest season, which debuted this week.

The American TV network has partnered up with data analytics firm IP Echelon to monitor torrents of the epic fantasy show and log the IP addresses of those in the US that download it.

According to TorrentFreak , the company is sending out thousands of warnings both to the alleged pirates themselves and to their internet service providers (ISPs).

The warning begins with the message: “We have information leading us to believe that the IP address xx.xxx.xxx.xx was used to download or share Game of Thrones without authorization.”

It then goes on to inform the alleged pirate that they are breaking copyright laws.

“HBO owns the copyright or exclusive rights to Game of Thrones, and the unauthorized download or distribution constitutes copyright infringement,” it reads.

"Downloading unauthorized or unknown content is also a security risk for computers, devices, and networks."

This isn't the first time that HBO has attempted to crack down on illegal distribution of the George R.R. Martin fantasy series. Last year's season was the most pirated TV show of the year.

However, the company is slightly hamstrung when it comes to dealing with shady pirates. It can't find out the identity behind each IP address without going to court, and there are several ways for users to hide their own IP address before downloading or sharing a torrent.

It is an increasing problem for the company as the series gains in popularity. According to MUSO.com , the season 7 premiere was downloaded and streamed illegally an astonishing 90 MILLION times across the globe in the three days following its release.

The United States topped the list of illegal activity but the UK came second. Rounding out the top three pirate countries was Germany.

"There is no denying that these figures are huge, so they're likely to raise more than a few eyebrows in the mainstream industry, but it's in line with the sort of scale we see across piracy sites and should be looked at objectively," said Andy Chatterley, the CEO and co-founder of MUSO.

"What we're seeing here isn't just P2P torrent downloads but unauthorized streams and every type of piracy around the premiere. This is the total audience picture, which is usually unreported.

He added that audience figures have always been a critical measure for studios and TV execs to assess the health of shows.

"The fact that there's been over 90 million streams and downloads of the Game of Thrones season seven premiere outside of the official channels in the first three days since airing not only shows just how popular this show is, but the massive opportunity to engage people and bring them back to legitimate mediums," he said.

"Of course, Game of Thrones’ growing popularity over the seasons has been no secret, but the numbers here show a much more complete picture, which is often missing from audience figures and is likely to be far bigger than anyone anticipated."

Here in the UK, Game of Thrones is distributed by Sky and can be streamed legally through either Sky Go or NowTV.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/game-th...ading-10846043





‘Dunkirk’ Exceeds Box Office Expectations as ‘Valerian’ Bombs
Brooks Barnes

“Dunkirk” and “Girls Trip” won big at the weekend box office by breaking unwritten Hollywood rules about release dates and cast diversity. But another flouter of film industry norms, the surreal, independently financed space adventure “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” was dead on arrival.

Powered by exceptional reviews — the word “masterpiece” was bandied about — “Dunkirk” (Warner Bros.) took in about $50.5 million at North American theaters, or about 20 percent more than analysts had expected before release. Turnout was very strong at Imax locations. (The film was shot with Imax 70-millimeter cameras.) “Dunkirk,” directed and written by Christopher Nolan and focused on trapped soldiers during World War II, collected an additional $55.4 million in partial release overseas.

“Dunkirk” cost about $100 million to make, not including marketing.

Releasing “Dunkirk” in late July was a risk. Serious films aimed at older audiences tend to arrive in the fall or late winter; summer is usually reserved for comic-book adaptations and science-fiction epics. But Mr. Nolan wanted a summer berth for “Dunkirk,” and Warner Bros. backed him, betting that audiences would be hungry for something smart and original after an unsatisfying diet of sequels to sequels.

“The right movie can play and play in late summer,” Jeff Goldstein, Warner’s president of domestic distribution, said by phone on Sunday. Mr. Goldstein cited “the Nolan pedigree” for stronger-than-expected turnout, along with “our marketing team, which did a phenomenal job.”

About 60 percent of the “Dunkirk” audience was male. Older moviegoers — anyone over the age of 25 in Hollywood’s calculation — made up about 76 percent. “I think we will see it broaden out in the weeks ahead due to word of mouth,” Mr. Goldstein said.

Warner Bros. had other reason to celebrate over the weekend, as “Wonder Woman” passed “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” to become the No. 1 movie of the summer at the domestic box office. So far this year, Warner Bros. has taken in $1.02 billion in North America, a 9 percent increase compared to the same period in 2016.

“Girls Trip” (Universal), an R-rated comedy about a group of women who let loose in New Orleans, took in a hefty $30.4 million. A string of comedies — “Baywatch,” “Snatched,” “Rough Night,” “The House” — have fizzled this summer, but “Girls Trip” offered something different: The principal roles were all played by black women, which almost never happens in Hollywood, where such casting is usually dismissed as too niche. The last time a studio backed such a comedic ensemble may have been in 1995, when 20th Century Fox released “Waiting to Exhale.”

“Girls Trip,” which cost roughly $20 million to make, was cheered by critics, with Tiffany Haddish’s breakout performance singled out for particular praise. The film, which received an A-plus grade in CinemaScore exit polls, was directed by Malcolm D. Lee, known lately for “The Best Man Holiday.” Kenya Barris (“black-ish”) and Tracy Oliver (“The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl”) wrote the screenplay.

And then there was Luc Besson’s “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” (STX Films), which took in about $17 million, a disastrous showing for a film that cost at least $150 million to make, not including marketing. The movie’s challenges included comic-book source material unfamiliar to most Americans, a shortage of star power and computer-generated creatures that drew comparisons to the hated Jar Jar Binks.

Reviewing “Valerian” in The New York Times, A. O. Scott said watching the film was akin to “crushing a DVD of ‘The Phantom Menace’ into a fine powder, tossing in some Adderall and Ecstasy and a pinch of cayenne pepper and snorting the resulting mixture while wearing a virtual reality helmet in a Las Vegas karaoke bar.”

The good news for STX, a three-year-old entertainment company: Mr. Besson’s troubled EuropaCorp, which is based in France, paid for “Valerian.” (Europa then dramatically reduced its own financial exposure by selling distribution rights in dozens of countries and bringing in outside investors.)

But “Valerian” is a setback for STX nonetheless. So far, STX’s movie division has not lived up to its bold promises, which included promoting “Valerian” as a blockbuster at a March convention for theater owners. STX declined to comment on Sunday beyond a statement summarizing the film’s results. “Historically, Besson’s films have performed extremely well overseas and ‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’ is expected to be no different,” it said in part.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/23/m...ox-office.html





Pennsylvania Man Avoids Felony Conviction for Pirating Movies
Brian Bowling

A Butler County man indicted for illegally recording the audio of “Sex Tape” at a Moon drive-in theater has successfully completed a pretrial diversion program that allows him to avoid having a felony conviction on his record, federal prosecutors said Friday in court documents.

A federal grand jury in February 2016 indicted Brian Douglas Ridley, 40, of Butler on charges of conspiracy and unauthorized recording of motion pictures in a motion picture exhibition facility.

Ridley was specifically charged with recording the audio of the romantic comedy starring Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel at Dependable Drive In on July 22, 2014, prosecutors said.

He entered the pretrial diversion program in May 2016. In addition to not committing another crime and meeting the other usual requirements of probation, he was required to perform 50 hours of community service

The Pretrial Services Office confirmed that Ridley successfully completed the program, Assistant U.S. District Attorney James Kitchen said in a motion filed Friday to dismiss Ridley's indictment. U.S. District Judge Nora Barry Fischer approved the motion.
Between August 2011 and July 2014, Ridley and others videotaped newly released movies at indoor theaters and then recorded the soundtrack from drive-in audio broadcasts, prosecutors said.

The conspirators sent the recordings over the internet to a conspirator who synced them together and then put the bootleg movies online, prosecutors said.
http://triblive.com/local/regional/1...irating-movies





Nolan’s Cinematic Vision in ‘Dunkirk’ is Hollywood’s Best Defense Against Netflix
Trey Williams

“Dunkirk,” director Christopher Nolan’s big budget war epic, is a filmmaker’s film and a movie buff’s dream with its wide, high-resolution 70mm format.

It’s like an expressionist painting, said ComScore media analyst Paul Dergarabedian. The Hollywood Reporter even said “Dunkirk” could launch a 70mm film renaissance.

“I would always prefer and really recommend that everyone see it on Imax 70mm,” Dergarabedian said. “People talk about ‘they don’t make movies like that anymore.’ Well, this is that movie.”

“Dunkirk,” which opens across the U.S. this weekend, is a film that everyone will tell you has to be seen on the big screen. And that has rekindled the debate about the pros and cons of films opening in a theater versus being streamed by Netflix.

In an interview with Indiewire ahead of the film’s premiere, Nolan criticized Netflix Inc. NFLX, +2.69% for its “bizarre aversion to supporting theatrical films.”

Netflix, despite doubling down on its film business and looking to make inroads in the industry, has continued its controversial stance against Hollywood’s theatrical window model. To the film industry’s dismay, Netflix is still adopting a day and date release model—dropping a movie on the streaming service the same day it hits theaters.

Hollywood relies on the money moviegoers spend at the box office, and the industry is reluctant to give up the exclusive window of time that films are only in theaters, fearing it would cripple that income stream. “Dunkirk” is an impressive $150 million argument on behalf of cinema.

Netflix did not return a request for comment.

Don’t miss: Investors are overreacting to poor returns at the Hollywood box office

Also read: Hollywood is using social causes to sell movie tickets

The film, distributed by Time Warner Inc.-owned TWX, +0.05% Warner Bros. brought in $5.5 million in early Thursday showings and is expected to garner $55.5 million in its opening weekend.

Kees Van Oostrum, the president of the American Society of Cinematographers, said Netflix is in over its head if it’s going to continue to proclaim to be the future of film, while doing things that might harm the industry. The “Gettysburg” cinematographer told MarketWatch in a phone interview he is skeptical Netflix will overtake the cinema crowd.

“Dunkirk” was shot using 65mm Imax cameras and will screened in 70mm at 125 theaters across the country and 30 Imax theaters. Nolan has said the film was shot to be immersive, describing it as virtual reality without the headset.

“When the movie experience is firing on all cylinders it really has no peer,” Dergarabedian said.

Netflix has certainly found a way to disrupt the industry. By changing how people engage with entertainment, it has changed how Hollywood operates and how filmmakers think.

Moviegoers are less likely to go see small, intimate movies in a theater. The box office has become reliant on big budgets, spectacle, superheroes and event cinema.

“We’re not doing the boutique theaters anymore. People have that at home,” Van Oostrum said.

Filmmakers who want to get smaller stories on screens might have a harder time doing so, Van Oostrum said. That’s where Netflix picks up the slack. But the streaming service is starting to make bigger investments in films.

The company’s $90 million fantasy flick “Bright,” starring Will Smith and directed by “Suicide Squad” director David Ayer, looks like a summer blockbuster. But the film will bypass the big-screen experience and drop on Netflix in December.

Check out: Netflix needs to address new accounting standards if it continues licensing content

Dergarabedian said he is unsure how a movie like that can recoup its budget without a theatrical run.

“I think it’s great that a company like Netflix is around,” said Van Oostrum. “Netflix has some extraordinary material which might have been on the big screen back in the ’70s, but not anymore.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nol...lix-2017-07-21





Leader Who Rebuilt Time Warner Empire Prepares an Exit
Emily Steel

Jeffrey L. Bewkes championed acclaimed series like “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City” at HBO, salvaged Time Warner from its disastrous merger with AOL and publicly battled his rival media mogul Rupert Murdoch three years ago to fend off a hostile takeover.

Since Mr. Bewkes took over as chief executive in 2008, Time Warner has delivered the highest stock market returns of the big media conglomerates. Now, after a 38-year career at Time Warner during which he shaped it into one of the most formidable media companies of its day, he is preparing for his final act.

If regulators approve AT&T’s $85.4 billion bid for Time Warner, two major changes are expected: Mr. Bewkes plans to leave as chief executive following a transition period, and the Time Warner name is likely to be eliminated, as AT&T subsumes the company’s assets: HBO, the Turner cable network brands and the Warner Bros. film and television studios.

It would all make for a smooth, perhaps even glamorous exit for Mr. Bewkes, and certainly a lucrative one, given that he stands to earn as much as $95 million if the merger is completed and he leaves the company. But there is one big storm cloud hovering over the deal: the Trump White House.

Analysts have said the merger faces no legitimate hurdles on its way to approval by the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. But President Trump’s blistering attacks in recent weeks against CNN, Time Warner’s cable news network, have raised the possibility that the administration will try to influence the decision. White House advisers have discussed using the pending merger as a potential point of leverage over CNN, a senior administration official told The New York Times this month.

In his understated manner, Mr. Bewkes said he was not worried about the White House interfering in the deal. “I know people say things like that,” he said in an interview last week. “I don’t think it is true.”

Mr. Bewkes said that the review of the proposed merger was an antitrust analysis of whether the combination would enhance or harm competition, and that Time Warner’s programming — including CNN’s aggressive reporting on Mr. Trump — was not relevant.

Still, Mr. Trump’s hostility toward CNN has thrust the network into the spotlight as the review of the deal continues. The issue of CNN’s editorial independence arose late last month at a dinner Mr. Bewkes attended with AT&T board members in Dallas.

As Mr. Bewkes was providing a rundown of Time Warner’s divisions, he said, he was asked about CNN, which had just made news by retracting a story about Anthony Scaramucci, a Trump confidant who is now the president’s communications director. Three journalists who worked on the story were ultimately forced to resign. He defended that decision, and told board members the network’s independence was “sacred.”

If Time Warner is folded into AT&T, it will mark the end of an era, for both an executive who rose through the corporate ranks after starting as an HBO staff member in 1979 — using a stack of boxes as a desk — and a media conglomerate. Over the past century, dating to its roots in Time Inc., the company ushered in a series of innovations, including the first weekly magazine in the United States, the first talking feature film, the first premium cable network, the first 24-hour news network and, on Mr. Bewkes’s watch, a push toward video-on-demand and other digital offerings.

“It is the legacy that I have been the steward of,” Mr. Bewkes, 65, said. “That is why we thought, ‘We have got to do the next step.’”

In an industry filled with larger-than-life executives, driven to expand their empires, Mr. Bewkes developed a reputation as a cerebral, private figure with a dry sense of humor, who was focused on creating value for investors. He did so by spinning off Time Warner Cable in 2009, AOL the same year and the Time Inc. magazine division in 2014.

What was left was a focused TV and film company. Mr. Bewkes invested in ambitious programming, including original series on HBO like “Game of Thrones,” sports deals like the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament and big bets on major film franchises like the “Harry Potter” movies and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

He also pushed toward a streaming future, evangelizing his “TV Everywhere” video-on-demand initiative and creating HBO’s stand-alone streaming service.

As a result, Time Warner was positioned as an attractive takeover target.

Mr. Bewkes’s success can be attributed to “being very, very rational in his decision making and, on the other hand, having a real flair for the creative,” said Michael Lynton, a longtime media executive who was at Time Warner when it merged with AOL. “That is a rare combination.”

There is no question that Mr. Bewkes has delivered value to shareholders. A $1,000 investment in Time Warner stock when he became chief executive in 2008 would be worth about $4,400 today.

“There are different kinds of legacies,” said Richard D. Parsons, Time Warner’s chief executive from 2002 to 2007. “There are people who build things that last and last and last, that would be Ted Turner. His legacy is CNN. And there are people who create value for those who invested in him, and that is going to be Jeff.”

Should the deal with AT&T be completed, attention will turn to Time Warner’s properties as new corporate owners try to manage a business that sometimes brings controversy.

Mr. Bewkes said that the heads of Turner, Warner Bros. and HBO — all of whom had been viewed as candidates to succeed him — are expected to continue in their roles. The job of managing those assets, now Mr. Bewkes’s role, is expected to be assumed by John Stankey, the chief executive of AT&T’s entertainment group.

AT&T’s priority, Mr. Bewkes said, will be to find new ways to present programming to audiences. “I don’t believe they think their focus is about what to do about HBO’s programming schedule or how to mess around with the Warner show slate,” he added.

CNN, however, is expected to draw extra scrutiny. Mr. Trump’s criticism has focused attention not just on the network but on its embattled president, Jeffrey A. Zucker, whom Mr. Trump believes has been disloyal to him. And CNN has put itself on the defensive with damaging missteps, including the retracted story last month.

That issue arose at the dinner last month in Dallas with AT&T board members. When the discussion turned to CNN, Mr. Bewkes said, he supported Mr. Zucker’s handling of the retracted story. He argued that CNN was a successful and growing business, citing its global news operations and its push toward mobile platforms. CNN brings in more than $1 billion a year in profit.

“It is a huge achievement of the whole company under Jeff’s leadership,” Mr. Bewkes said in the interview.

In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has ratcheted up his attacks on CNN. He also stated publicly, without evidence, that management changes could be coming to the network.

Asked for his reaction to comments by the president — especially those attacking CNN — Mr. Bewkes said that he did not think they were relevant to how the network covered news or the review of the proposed deal between AT&T and Time Warner.

“I think statements out of high political office ought to be considered statements,” he said.

Mr. Bewkes said Mr. Zucker continued to have the support of Time Warner management.

“We have always been a public-trust journalism company,” Mr. Bewkes said in the interview. “We have all kinds of critics that say we failed.’’ He alluded to CNN’s having been criticized during the campaign for its extensive coverage of Mr. Trump and being attacked by Mr. Trump for coverage he deemed unfair.

“We either elected the president by giving him airtime — when in fact nobody else would come,’’ he said, “or we have been trying to not elect him by doing something with an agenda, which I hope isn’t the case.”

So far, there is no clear indication of how AT&T might manage CNN. Shortly after the deal was announced, Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive, declared that CNN was “an American symbol of independent journalism” and said later “the last thing we want’’ was to taint its independence.

As he prepared to move on, Mr. Bewkes said he had few regrets. The $850 million acquisition of the social networking site Bebo was a flop, he acknowledged. And he said the company should have bought Netflix in its early years and taken full control of Comedy Central when it had the chance.

But he noted that Time Warner networks have recruited several stars from Comedy Central, including Jon Stewart and John Oliver on HBO and Samantha Bee on TBS, although Mr. Stewart’s first HBO project did not pan out.

Mr. Bewkes jokingly lamented the decision to allow Time Warner Cable to hold on to the Time Warner name, which has led cable customers to call him with complaints about their service. (He said he still received about 10 a day.)

Mr. Bewkes said he was focused for the moment on closing the deal with AT&T and, until then, continuing to manage Time Warner. He said he was not sure what he would do next.

“If I was following the crowd, I guess I would just run for president like everybody else,” he joked, before adding that at 65 he was not in a rush to take on another job like his current one.

“How could you do something like this, after this?” he asked. “This is great.”

David Gelles and Michael M. Grynbaum contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/23/b...ewkes-cnn.html





AT&T Loses Record Number of Traditional TV Subscribers in Q2, Drops 156,000 DirecTV Satellite Customers

Telco says 491,000 DirecTV Now over-the-top subscribers signed up within seven months of launch
Todd Spangler

AT&T’s pay-TV business continues to sink, as the telco lost a record 351,000 traditional video customers in the second quarter — with the internet-delivered DirecTV Now over-the-top service failing to fully offset the losses.

Meanwhile, AT&T’s $85 billion bid to acquire Time Warner is still on track to close by the end of 2017, according to CFO John Stephens. The deal is currently being reviewed by the Department of Justice, he said on AT&T’s earnings call Tuesday.

“Our merger integration team is nearly complete,” he said. “Our goal is to hit the ground running” when the deal closes.

According to a Bloomberg report earlier this month, AT&T plans to form a media division that includes Time Warner headed by John Stankey, who currently is CEO of the telco’s entertainment group. Asked about the management structure post-merger, Stephens said chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson (who wasn’t on the call) and Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes “are working that process out, and I’ll definitely leave that to them… Oftentimes stories are very premature.”

In Q2, historically a seasonally weak period for the pay-TV business, DirecTV’s U.S. satellite division lost 156,000 customers sequentially, dropping to 20.86 million, compared with a gain of 342,000 in the year-earlier quarter. AT&T’s U-verse lost 195,000 subs in the quarter, which was actually an improvement over the 391,000 it lost in Q2 of 2016.

AT&T’s pay-TV business experienced an unexpectedly higher amount of “involuntary churn” in Q2, according to Stephens, which refers to customers who had their accounts canceled (for example, for nonpayment). The company also is seeing TV sub losses in areas it doesn’t have fiber networks deployed, where cable competitors can bundle broadband and TV.

AT&T touted that it gained 152,000 DirecTV Now customers in Q2, after adding just 72,000 in the first quarter of 2017. Overall, it had signed up 491,000 DirecTV Now subs as of the end of June, after the OTT service launched seven months ago.

Half of DirecTV Now’s customers switched from another pay-TV service — mainly from competitors, Stephens said on the earnings call. The other half did not previously subscribe to pay-TV service at all, he said.

For the first quarter of 2017, AT&T reported a loss of 233,000 U-verse TV subs and no net change in DirecTV satellite customers. The telco did not report the number of DirecTV Now customers.

Despite the decline in TV subscribers, AT&T video entertainment revenue increased 2.1% year over year, to $9.15 billion for Q2.

AT&T’s consolidated revenue for the second quarter totaled $39.84 billion, in line with Wall Street estimates. Q2 revenue fell 1.7% versus the year-ago period, which the telco said was primarily due to declines in legacy wireline services and consumer mobility. AT&T reported earnings per diluted share of 79 cents, beating analyst consensus estimates of EPS of 74 cents.

On the wireless side, AT&T reported 2.3 million total net adds with gains in postpaid, prepaid and connected devices. Total consumer wireless subscribers in the U.S. declined 4.7% year over year, to 51.7 million. AT&T’s domestic wireless unit revenue declined 2.3%, to $17.52 billion, while operating income dropped 0.2%, to $5.33 billion.

Stephens said on the call that AT&T is seeing the fruits of the strategy of bundling TV and wireless. The company said it has 19.8 million wireless subscribers who also are TV customers, up 31% since the close of the DirecTV acquisition in 2015.

Meanwhile, AT&T said its 5G Evolution network tests are under way in Austin, Texas, and Indianapolis, and has previously announced plans to reach more than 20 markets by year-end including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, and San Francisco. The 5G wireless technology provides twice the speeds of 4G LTE, AT&T says.
http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/att...er-1202506255/





Exclusive: Viacom Willing to Make an All-Cash Deal to Buy Scripps Networks – Sources
Jessica Toonkel

Viacom Inc has informed Scripps Networks Interactive it is willing to pay all cash to acquire the U.S. TV network operator, sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

The move by Viacom, which had $12.17 billion in debt as of March 31, could potentially mean that the $14.3 billion media company would lose its investment-grade status to buy the $10.6 billion Scripps. Last year Moody's downgraded Viacom's debt to the lowest level of investment grade - a status they would likely lose as a result of the deal.

Viacom is bidding for Scripps, which owns channels such as HGTV, Food Network and Travel Channel, against Discovery Communications, which is not expected to make an all-cash bid, according to the sources, all of whom wished to remain anonymous because they are not permitted to speak to the media.

A Viacom spokeswoman declined to comment, as did a Discovery spokesman.

It is not clear what the bids were valued at or whether Viacom or Discovery has won the bidding for Scripps, but a decision was expected within the next few days, according to the sources.

It is also possible that a deal may not happen.

Making an all-cash bid would mark an aggressive move for Viacom Chief Executive Bob Bakish, who has pledged to turn around the struggling media company, which owns MTV, Nickelodeon and Paramount Pictures.

A deal with Scripps would create a $24.9 billion cable network that brings together non-scripted programming and scripted programming, including children's shows and a movie studio.

Bakish was named to his role late last year after discussions between CBS Corp and Viacom about a possible recombination ended. Viacom has spent the past months focusing resources on six of its brands, including the soon-to-be-launched Paramount Network.

New York-based Viacom also has been selling assets, including its stake in premium channel Epix to MGM Holdings Inc, in order to reduce debt.

By acquiring Scripps, Viacom can gain cost savings and scale. Larger programmers are thought to have more leverage in negotiations with cable and satellite providers to carry their shows.

There also is increasing competition for viewers from streaming services like Netflix Inc and Amazon.

Viacom has been talking to cable and satellite companies about launching a so-called skinny bundle of non-sports networks for less than $20 per month. By acquiring Scripps programming, Viacom has more to offer its pay TV partners for such a bundle.

Reporting by Jessica Toonkel in New York, additional reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Editing by G Crosse and Bill Trott
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-c...-idUSKBN1AB1HJ





Inside Sinclair: CEO Nixes Fox News Rival Rumors, Talks Tribune and Big Ambition for Broadcast Biz
Cynthia Littleton

Of the many challenges Fox News Channel is facing amid a turbulent year, there’s one threat Rupert Murdoch can cross off the list: Sinclair Broadcast Group has no plans to launch a rival conservative-friendly TV network. Chris Ripley, CEO of the Hunt Valley, Md.-based TV-station giant, is ready to end months of speculation that his company was preparing to mount a competitive threat in the wake of its $3.9 billion deal to acquire Tribune Media in May.

“After we acquired Allbritton [Communications] in 2014, we looked hard at launching a national cable news channel, but we decided the world didn’t need another cable news platform,” says Ripley, who makes clear that the rise of Donald Trump and the upheaval at Fox News haven’t changed his calculus. “Our strength is local news,” he maintains. “The market for national cable news is very well served.”

It’s hardly surprising that Sinclair would face speculation over its plans for the future. The company is already the nation’s largest owner of TV stations, and it will grow to unprecedented size if the FCC approves the Tribune acquisition. And Sinclair has drawn more and more fire from critics — notably HBO’s John Oliver — for the increasingly conservative tilt to its local newscasts through “must-run” commentary segments and coverage decisions mandated at the corporate level.

But in an exclusive interview with Variety, Ripley defends those segments, returns fire on Oliver’s recent piece lambasting Sinclair and denies that the company is intent on furthering a political agenda — despite the hiring in April of Trump loyalist Boris Epshteyn as the group’s chief political analyst.

If there’s an agenda near and dear to the hearts of Sinclair management, it’s more technological than political. The company is aggressively pushing fellow TV station owners to adopt a bold new tech standard known as ATSC 3.0 (or Next Gen TV) that Ripley says is aimed at “moving the broadcasting industry into the current century.”

ATSC 3.0 is the brainchild of the same man alleged to be driving Sinclair’s political agenda: its executive chairman, David Smith, who declined to comment for this story through a Sinclair representative. Smith’s ambition is immense, and media biz observers say it will be greatly aided by the company’s coziness with the Trump administration.

“There is legitimate concern over what the lack of objectivity at Sinclair portends for the future,” says Michael Copps, former FCC commissioner and now a special adviser to Common Cause’s Media and Democracy Reform Initiative. Copps has been a longtime critic of Sinclair and its efforts to expand its footprint and market share.

No one could have foreseen that Sinclair would become one of the most influential forces in TV back in 1971 when the company’s first TV station, WBFF-TV Baltimore, signed on the air. Smith’s father, the late Julian Sinclair Smith, built the original control panels for the station by hand, according to company lore, after he recognized the potential of the then-emerging UHF technology to change broadcasting.

Sinclair has operated as a public company since 1995, but in many respects it still operates like a mom-and-pop firm — albeit a family business with empire-building ambition, industry sources say. Since 2012, Sinclair has spent about $4 billion on dozens of station acquisitions, not counting Tribune. The company’s balance sheet has rebounded after a close call with bankruptcy in 2009, when the advertising market collapsed during the recession and Sinclair was carrying a heavy debt load from a previous acquisition spree.

Smith, 66, and his three brothers — Frederick, Duncan and Robert — maintain iron-clad control through the preferential voting shares that are favored by media moguls such as Murdoch and Sumner Redstone. David Smith controls the largest percentage of the company’s voting shares, at 23%.

Outside of TV, Smith is a prominent figure in the Baltimore business community. He owns a few local restaurants through his Bagby Restaurant Group venture, supplied in large part by locally grown food from his 200-acre Cunningham Farms operation in Cockeysville, Md. But the passion that fuels his professional life, sources say, is growing Sinclair’s station empire and its bottom line.

Long before Trump began raising a ruckus about “fake news,” Smith was determined to use his TV station group, anchored in Baltimore, to combat what he viewed as raging liberal media bias, according to sources familiar with the company topper. About 15 years ago, Sinclair established a Washington bureau to feed news and commentary segments mandated to run on all Sinclair stations, which air about 2,200 hours of news a week, per the company.

“He genuinely believed that the media was so messed up and got it wrong all the time that it was bad for the country,” says a former Sinclair editorial staffer of Smith. “He felt like it was a civic duty.”

Sinclair’s harshest critics cite a litany of examples of the company serving as a soapbox for far-right commentary and frequently promoting a pro-GOP agenda on its airwaves. The accusations date back to 2004, when Sinclair decided that its eight ABC affiliate stations would not carry the episode of “Nightline” featuring anchor Ted Koppel reading the names of 721 military personnel killed in the war in Iraq. Sinclair branded the “Nightline” episode a stunt “to influence public opinion against the military action in Iraq.” “That was all David,” the Sinclair alum says.

The same year, Sinclair took aim at Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a decorated Navy war veteran, airing a program about the documentary “Stolen Honor” that savaged Kerry’s military service during Vietnam and his antiwar actions after he left the Navy.

More recently, Sinclair has generated controversy by mandating all of its stations run Epshteyn’s nine-times-weekly “Bottom Line With Boris” commentary segments. The former Trump strategist has unfailingly supported his ex-boss in virtually all of his two-minute segments to date: praising Trump’s “America First” trade policy, saluting his efforts to reform the Veterans Administration, crediting Trump for fueling job growth and chiding state leaders for balking at the administration’s request for voter registration data as part of its voter fraud investigation. On June 23, Epshteyn flatly declared, “This president has instilled further confidence in the American people that he and his government will be able to protect us from terror, and that’s the bottom line.”

Epshteyn told Variety that the criticism of his presence in Sinclair’s newscasts stems from bias against the company from mainstream media. He points to TV news personalities — such as ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and CNN contributor David Axelrod — who have made similar career shifts from politics to on-air roles.

“My segments are all very clearly marked as analysis and commentary,” Epshteyn says. “These are my insights into what’s really going on in Washington based on my background and my experience with the last three presidential campaigns, the inauguration and in the White House.”

Sinclair is also home to longtime conservative commentator Mark Hyman — a former executive at the company — who asked in a recent segment: “Does the public really like Obama, or are they afraid pollsters would consider them racists if they gave him poor marks?”

Sinclair critics “mischaracterize what we do by just focusing on a small subset of our newscasts,” says Ripley, 40, whom Smith tapped as CEO in January. “We put those players [Epshteyn and Hyman] on because we are optimizing for ratings. They represent a diversity of views that you can’t find on other channels.”

Viewers who tune in to Fox News or MSNBC likely expect to get a partisan slant on the headlines at least in some programs. But local TV news has typically had a down-the-middle approach, especially on national issues. Were Epshteyn to appear as a commentator on a cable news channel, his partisan affiliation would be identified. That’s not the case on air at Sinclair; Epshteyn’s previous work for Trump is disclosed only in the online postings of his commentaries on Sinclair station websites.

“They’re really trying to warp the worldview and the narrative that their audience is receiving from their newscasts, and it’s being warped by a source that [the audience] would otherwise trust,” says Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, a liberal-leaning watchdog organization that has been a vocal critic of Sinclair for years. “I think it’s exploiting and weaponizing the fact that people don’t expect their local news to be partisan.”

Though they don’t speak out on their political beliefs, Smith and his brothers have made significant donations to Republican causes and candidates. And Sinclair wasn’t helped by a report last December that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and influential adviser, told business leaders at a private luncheon that the Trump campaign cut a deal with Sinclair for favorable coverage toward the end of the grueling 2016 presidential race. Ripley and Sinclair news chief Scott Livingston strongly deny Kushner’s suggestion of a quid pro quo and say offers for in-depth interviews and news segments were extended to Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, as well.

Sinclair is clearly on the defensive now. Livingston issued an internal memo last week to all of the company’s news directors defending Sinclair’s programming. The pressure has been mounting since Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” ran its July 2 takedown of the company. The alarm Oliver raised over the consolidation of Sinclair and Tribune without making mention of HBO parent Time Warner’s pending $85.4 billion merger with AT&T is a prime example of the hypocrisy woven into most mainstream media coverage of Sinclair, according to Ripley.

“The selective cherry-picking of some stories that end up on our newscast paints us in a light that is very unjust,” he says. “If you were to listen to the John Oliver skit, you would think that our news was 24/7 commentary, which is certainly not the case. It is a small fraction of what we do.”
“For years, this company has done everything it can to evade the FCC’s rules.”

Sinclair opponents say the expected FCC approval of the Tribune takeover is in part payback for friendly news coverage Sinclair offered Trump during the bitter presidential campaign. Smith is widely reported to have discussed changes to the FCC’s media ownership rules in a meeting with Trump during the pre-inaugural period.

Craig Aaron, president and CEO of the D.C.-based watchdog group Free Press, which has long been a critic of Sinclair, says the sequence of events that led to the restoration of the FCC’s UHF discount — which eases ownership limits on many of the stations Sinclair owns by counting them as only half a station — is nothing less than a scandal. He notes that a legal effort to challenge the decision is pending in federal court, and that numerous public interest groups are prepared to do battle at the FCC as the deadlines for public comment on the deal approach in August.

“For years, this company has done everything it can to evade the FCC’s rules” on station ownership, Aaron says. “Now they have someone on their side willing to rewrite the rules to benefit one company. This kind of corporate welfare is unprecedented.”

Sinclair’s conservative credentials are seen as the reason newly appointed FCC chairman Ajit Pai moved quickly in April to pave the way for the Sinclair-Tribune deal by reinstating the discount, created in a bygone era in which analog TV sets received signals for UHF and VHF stations differently. Restoring the discount has enabled a merger that would bring together more than 200 stations that reach some 72% of U.S. TV households in 81 markets, including 39 of the nation’s 50 largest markets. The combined entity would become a broadcast colossus the likes of which the industry has never seen.

With a platform as big as the combined Sinclair-Tribune footprint, it’s guaranteed that Sinclair will angle to become a bigger player in the national programming scene, even if an all-news network isn’t in the cards. There have been preliminary conversations about the company recruiting former Sony Pictures Television chairman Steve Mosko to head a content-focused division based in Los Angeles. (Mosko began his career working for Sinclair’s WBFF.)

Sinclair has gradually been expanding its original programming portfolio in recent years through acquisitions (cable’s Tennis Channel), digital multicast channels (sci-fi themed Comet, viral video-centric TBD and action-oriented Charge!) and digital content (the millennial-focused news site Circa). Circa, which Sinclair acquired in late 2015, has come under scrutiny as a source of news stories distributed to Sinclair stations with what some see as a thinly veiled pro-Trump and anti-liberal agenda, based on the importance given to particular stories Circa provides — another point Livingston defended in his memo. Rumors persist that former Fox News star Bill O’Reilly could head to Sinclair.

Sinclair is poised to inherit Tribune’s general entertainment cabler WGN America, which is already bailing out of the scripted TV business, a format Sinclair deems too expensive. Ripley says Sinclair’s focus is on the unscripted programming — talk shows, game shows, court shows — that are the bread and butter of its stations.

“We don’t have a desire to get into the scripted genre,” says Ripley, a UBS Investment Bank alum who joined Sinclair as chief financial officer in 2014. “We feel like that’s very competitive and very well supplied.”

Sinclair also has no intention of dumping any of its network affiliates or trying to rival the five major English-language broadcast networks. “We’re not looking to compete directly with the ABCs and NBCs of the world,” Ripley says. “Those businesses are incredibly robust. We’ll continue to affiliate with them and that will be a core part of our business.”

But the enlarged company will have even greater clout in negotiating the terms of affiliate agreements — including the level of reverse compensation Sinclair pays to its network partners. The Tribune deal, if approved, would make Sinclair the largest operator of Fox affiliate stations, as well as ABC and CW affils.

Industry executives who have dealt with Sinclair say the company is known for relentlessly grinding down partners on contract terms. “They are not easy to deal with,” says a network executive with experience in negotiating affiliation deals with Sinclair.

Sinclair also will gain more sway with local and national advertisers, given that the company owns or operates more than one station in most of the markets it serves. And it will have more muscle to flex in retransmission consent negotiations — a huge driver of revenue that Sinclair was among the first broadcast groups to demand from MVPDs as a condition of distributors being allowed to carry their stations.

But Sinclair’s pursuit of Tribune is not just about getting bigger. Smith and Ripley want to use that expanded footprint to drive a radical reinvention of broadcast TV.

Sinclair for the past few years has been the industry’s most vocal champion of a new technical standard for broadcast TV — ATSC 3.0 — which would give stations much more bandwidth to use to distribute content and data, making them more competitive on a regional basis with digital behemoths. Industry veterans point to this as a sign that Sinclair has taken the lead in driving industry-wide technical and business innovations that were once dominated by the Big Four networks’ owned-and-operated stations.

ATSC 3.0 would shift the transmission of signals stations send to TV sets from the public airwaves to an Internet Protocol standard, enabling targeted communications to subsets of consumers delineated by zip codes, IP addresses or established user preferences. The technology would allow a station to offer “hyperlocal” advertising and programming, such as a newscast or sports coverage. “It will modernize our industry to the age of the internet,” Ripley says. “It will allow us to use subscription-fee models and have an offering like a Netflix that exists over the air. It increases the capacity that we have in any given stick or signal by four to five times what we can do today.”

Ripley says the imperative to adopt ATSC 3.0 is driven by the fact that younger consumers are increasingly abandoning traditional viewing on a TV set for mobile devices.

Smith gave up his CEO role in January in part to spend more time promoting the benefits of the ATSC 3.0 standard to the TV biz at large. He made the pitch to a conference of public TV station owners in February, suggesting that additional revenue from next-gen services could help fund their core mission of delivering educational programming.

“I can’t tell you what the market’s going to demand six months or two years from now,” Smith said in February in an address at the Public Media Summit in Washington, D.C. “The only thing I know is that I’ll be able to play in the game because I have a pipe that is completely mobile.”

The FCC voted unanimously in February to begin the process of adopting the new standard for stations on a voluntary basis. The one-way traffic that IP-based broadcasting offers has the benefit of being low cost to consumers, relative to broadband service, because it uses the station’s existing pathways, just in a more efficient way.

Sinclair has invested $30 million in R&D on the new technical standard. In 2014, the company created a subsidiary, One Media, devoted to fine-tuning the technology and equipment needed to make ATSC 3.0 a reality.

“We are relentless in our desire … to pursue any and all things that make broadcast better and allow us to serve two masters: the broadcast industry shareholders and the public interest,” Smith told the Public Media Summit.

Sinclair has assembled a consortium of broadcast groups — including Nexstar and Univision — that are working together on scouting out large-scale applications for ATSC 3.0 functionality such as the prospect of leasing bandwidth to manufacturers of driverless cars that will need a continuous stream of updates of maps and road conditions.

Barry Lucas, who monitors Sinclair as senior VP of research for Gabelli & Co., believes the company should be credited for leading the charge in a media sector that had been seen as a dinosaur but has become attractive again to investors, in part because of the potential yet to be unlocked by ATSC 3.0.

“They have as broad a vision as anyone for the potential of the new standard,” he says. “They are a well-managed company that is toward the top of the pack on [profit] margins.”

Efforts by Sinclair to ease or remove entirely the FCC’s station ownership limits need to be viewed in context of the broader media landscape.

“The real competitors these days are not the local newspaper and not iHeartRadio or Entercom — they’re Google and Facebook,” Lucas says. “They have 100% penetration and are taking 100% plus of all advertising revenue growth. From that standpoint, being a larger entity as a TV station owner is not just a desirable strategy; it may be the only strategy.”

The size and scope of Sinclair after absorbing Tribune has accelerated the M&A fever that was already brewing among TV station owners large and small. Everyone with a stick in the air predicts the local TV landscape will be transformed by a wave of consolidation in the next two to three years. Tegna, Hearst, Scripps and Raycom are among the station groups expected to see movement as buyers or sellers in the coming months. Sinclair and Nexstar may still be in the hunt if the FCC further relaxes media ownership rules.

Nexstar was a contender against Sinclair for Tribune in the bidding that went through several rounds from January through early May.

The emergence of giant station groups with the scale of Sinclair and Nexstar, which at present owns 170 stations, is putting pressure on the parent companies of the Big Four networks to respond, one way or another. Already there’s chatter about CBS kicking the tires on a few companies, or capitalizing on the demand by selling off some of its smaller-market O&Os. There’s also talk of a possible combination of ABC’s eight O&Os with Hearst’s 34 stations, most of which are ABC and NBC affiliates. Disney and Hearst are already partners in ESPN and A+E Networks.

This is all greatly concerning to observers like Copps, who thinks TV station ownership is too tightly concentrated in the hands of too few.

“This consolidation over the past 20 years has dealt almost a death blow to investigative journalism, to localism and to diversity of viewpoints,” Copps says. “To me, it looks like the [sales] bazaar is really getting into high gear under the new FCC.”

To broadcasters, the impetus to bulk up comes as their traditional profit centers are being squeezed from all sides. The largest cable operators have been through a round of consolidation — probably while digital giants are siphoning off local ad dollars.
“The continuing consolidation in the distribution universe will drive the continued consolidation of local station groups,” says Perry Sook, CEO of Nexstar Media Group. “It is a business of scale. You get what you negotiate. The larger your scale, the better terms you can negotiate.”

Steve Lanzano, president-CEO of the Television Bureau of Advertising trade org, says the focus for stand-alone broadcasters on scale is also driven by swings in the source of advertising dollars for local TV. A decade ago, 65% to 70% of advertising dollars for TV stations came from national advertisers making regionally specific buys compared to abut 30% from endemic local blurb buyers. Today, those ratios have flip-flopped because spending has migrated to low-cost national cable networks and digital outlets.

The technical upgrades offered by the ATSC 3.0 will make it easier for large station groups to run spots uniformly across their entire footprints. And it will make it possible for stations to offer marketers audience-targeted spots with sophisticated data to back it up. “It can’t come fast enough,” Lanzano says of ATSC 3.0.

To those who worry about the threat to diversity of ownership and viewpoints on the air with Sinclair having sway over such a wide swath of the public airwaves, Ripley points to the exponentially larger footprints enjoyed by his competitors.

“We are of the view that in order for the industry to survive, it had to be more consolidated,” he says. “We’re playing in the land of the giants.”
http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/sirn...ws-1202504687/





Sprint Seeks Alternatives to a Merger with T-Mobile: Sources
Anjali Athavaley and Liana B. Baker

Sprint Corp (S.N) has proposed a merger with Charter Communications Inc (CHTR.O) as the wireless carrier seeks an alternative to a deal with T-Mobile US Inc (TMUS.O) that has so far not come to fruition, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Japan's SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T), which controls Sprint, proposed a complex transaction that would create a new company and be controlled by SoftBank, the sources said, asking not to be named because the talks are private. The Wall Street Journal first reported the discussions on Friday.

There is no guarantee Charter would be interested in a tie-up with Sprint, the sources said. Bloomberg reported Friday Charter had rebuffed Sprint's merger proposal.

Charter's market capitalization, at $94.6 billion, is much larger than Sprint, which closed trading valued at $32.8 billion on Friday. Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) also expressed interest in a takeover of Charter earlier this year, sources have said.

If Charter were to agree to a merger with Sprint, it would need the blessing of No. 1 U.S. cable provider Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O). Charter and Comcast announced an agreement in May that bars either company from entering into a material transaction in wireless for a year without the other's consent.

Sprint and Comcast declined to comment while Charter, SoftBank and T-Mobile did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Sprint shares rose 5.8 percent in after-market trading while Charter shares were marginally up.

Sprint has been looking at solutions to further its turnaround, strengthen its financial health and better compete in the fierce U.S. wireless industry.

It held talks this month about receiving billions in funding from Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) and John Malone's Liberty Media Corp (FWONA.O), Reuters previously reported, but they have not resulted in a deal.

Sprint had been in a two-month period of exclusive negotiations with Charter and Comcast over a potential wireless partnership that had put Sprint's merger talks with T-Mobile US on hold. That exclusivity period has ended but talks with the cable companies continue, according to the sources.

Despite regulatory hurdles, investors have long expected a deal between T-Mobile and Sprint, the third- and fourth-largest U.S. wireless service providers, anticipating cost cuts and other synergies.

T-Mobile appears to be in no rush to pursue a merger although it has acknowledged interest in speaking to Sprint. T-Mobile has been gaining share from larger competitors AT&T Inc (T.N) and Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) in a saturated U.S. wireless market through network improvements and lower prices.

additional reporting by Ismail Shakil and Gaurika Juneja in Bengaluru; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Bill Trott
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-c...-idUSKBN1AD2SR





Exclusive: Spotify, Warner Hope to Clinch Royalty Deal by September – Sources
Sophie Sassard

Music streaming company Spotify is close to agreeing a new licensing pact with Warner Music Inc, the last big music royalty deal it needs before pushing ahead with a U.S. stock market listing, four sources familiar with the situation said.

The parties are positive a deal could be signed by September as major issues such as granting loss-making Spotify a more favorable revenue split in return for making some new albums accessible only to its paying subscribers for a defined period have already been agreed, the sources said.

However, the precise revenue split and the size of a potential guaranteed upfront payment to the label, home to artists including Ed Sheeran and Muse, have yet to be agreed, said two of the sources.

"The negotiations are at a crossroads," said one of the sources, asking not to be named because the talks are private, adding discussions were taking place daily. "There are still a number of key points that remain to be agreed. If we manage to come to terms on these points, then it could lead to a very quick transaction. If not, any deal would remain at bay."

Others saw a deal being done by late summer.

"Given the way talks are progressing, I would be surprised if we don't have a deal in September," said another source on the other side of the table.

Spotify Takes Wing

Sweden's Spotify has grown in less than a decade into the world's most popular streaming music service, but its financial sustainability hinges on its ability to strike music licensing contracts at less onerous royalty rates..

Basic features of Spotify are free and supported by advertising while paying subscribers enjoy unlimited listening and other premium features.

It faces mounting competition from far bigger internet players such as Apple (AAPL.O) and Amazon (AMZN.O), which can afford to subsidize their push into music by drawing on money they make in other businesses.

The streaming firm, which was recently valued at $13 billion, is pushing for a 50-50 revenue split but Warner Music is demanding it retains at least 52 percent of the royalties, in line with the other labels, according to the sources.

Under the terms of their current agreement, Spotify pays 55 percent of royalties to Warner.

Warner is also pushing to receive a guaranteed upfront payment regardless of subscription growth, said one of the sources. The label, owned by billionaire investor Len Blavatnik's Access Industries, is also asking for protection against the potential rise of unsigned artists who could over time reduce its revenue share.

This follows recent press reports that Spotify was filling its playlists with anonymous or little known artists to reduce the influence of the majors, said one of the sources. Warner would be ready to reduce its royalties rate from 55 percent to 52 percent provided these issues were resolved, said the same person. Spotify declined to comment.

Other Deals

Earlier this year, the Swedish company struck a licensing deal with Vivendi's (VIV.PA) Universal Music Group (UMG) to pay the world's largest label a lower royalty rate. This was recently followed by a similar agreement with Sony Music.

Spotify didn't disclose the terms of the deals but it was widely reported that the streaming firm had managed to lower the royalty rate from about 57 percent to 52 percent, based on growing volumes of paying listeners.

In return, the streaming service agreed to restrict new albums to paying subscribers for a couple of weeks before offering access to free users.

As of June, Spotify had 53 million paying users or 40 percent of streaming music subscribers worldwide, according to MIDiA Research. It has more than 140 million active users, including free listeners.

By comparison, Apple had 19 percent, or 28.2 million music subscribers, in June, up from 20 million in December, while Amazon held 12 percent, or 16 million subscribers, MIDiA estimated.

Heading for the Market

One of the sources said Spotify, which hired Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to advise it on a stock market listing, is still aiming to go public via a direct listing toward the end of this year or the beginning of the next.

Spotify recorded revenues of 2.9 billion euros for 2016, up 51 percent from 2015, according to company filings in Luxembourg in June.

Operating losses grew 48 percent to 349.4 million euros, but including financing costs, its losses before tax leapt 133 percent to 539 million euros.

Last year, Universal held a 28.9 percent share of global music label revenue, Sony Music generated 22.4 percent and Warner 17.4 percent. Independent labels made up the remaining 31.3 percent, according to MIDiA Research.

The company has faced boycotts from some top music artists who have complained its free services undercut the value of their work but the major label licensing deals have gone some way toward easing these tensions, according to analysts.

Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in Frankfurt and Jessica Toonkel in New York; Editing by Keith Weir
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-sp...-idUKKBN1A91BL





Even’s H2 Headphones Produce Sound Based On Your Hearing Ability
Stefan Etienne

Based out of Israel, Even is an audio startup that designs headphones tailored to the listener’s hearing. It starts with a short audio test of the frequencies you can hear in each ear, with an algorithm Even says stitches the resulting data into a sound profile called, your “EarPrint”.

It’s an interesting concept that works well in the instances I’ve used it. At the same time, this is a feature I’d like to see having a proven advantage, rather than anecdotal experiences.

What is an “EarPrint” and how does it help listeners?

Before I describe what Even’s headphones are doing to produce a sound that is “tailored” to your hearing, I have to provide some disclaimers.

Unlike your eye prescription, to-date there are no scientific or medical institutions that have stated an Even “ear print” to be an official measurement of your auditory abilities. That being said, Even’s argument for the H2 serving as “glasses for your ears”, does have some merit.

Due to the fact that not all humans have the same hearing: your left and right ears receive and translate vibrations traveling through the air differently. Aging, exposure that may damage the cochlea, etc. are all variables that can alter your auditory perception over time.

Meanwhile, just about every pair of consumer headphones in existence is designed on a one-size-fits-all (or hears) basis. So in theory, you’re never really getting the most out of them.

Short version: the algorithm understands your sense of hearing’s upper and lower limits for different sound frequencies. The H2 headphones then pushes sound to the frequencies that you’re best at hearing, first.

Using tailored headphones everyday

Using the H2 headphones without the sound tailoring is pretty good. Mid, highs and lows are balanced. This applies to both the wired and Bluetooth modes.

If you’re used to noise-cancelling, over-ear headphones then it comes as a helpful surprise that the on-ear H2 has a tight seal, without too much outside interference.

Turn on the EarPrint mode (via the app or the dedicated button) and the listening experience completely changes. Because it’s tailored to how I hear things, it’s more difficult to describe how I hear rather than what I hear.

I’d say with EarPrint turned on all and any music sounds, closer to me. It’s almost uncanny, since I do like bass with my music, but not in an overwhelming manner (ahem, Beats).

Songs are more intimate, clear and very balanced, with a touch of bass exactly where I want it. I can enjoy listening to anything from Lana Del Rey to Playboy Carti, without using high volume levels to compensate for lack of bass or treble.

By the way, lower volume levels preserve your hearing in the long-run.

But here’s the most interesting thing! To another listener, my EarPrint sounds “too intense”. In this case, I’d just get a friend to perform their own EarPrint test, where the response would usually positive. No matter how I look at this it is pretty cool, in a modern “what do you hear in the conch shell”, sort of way.

But I’ve also noticed a drawback: like in a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, where a tiny bit of quality is sacrificed from filtering noise in your environment, some sound fidelity feels like it’s been lost.

It’s not detrimental to the sound experience, but the difference is even more apparent when you switch to the regular, stereo mode or if I grab another pair of good headphones and listen to the same track. If the EarPrint technology is to be believed, non-tailored sound is what I’ve been used to my entire life, so of course I would find differences between the H2 and another pair of headphones.

Bottom Line

These are not the most aesthetically pleasing pair of headphones; what they lack in style and form they make up with serious audio quality and customization. Sony, Bose, Sennheiser and others take note: the future of personal audio might just involve creating your own, personalized listening profile based on your hearing.

It’s just too cool a feature to not want alongside the stereo, Dolby and noise-cancelling headphones of the world. If you’re feeling adventurous and want to try these out, starting today Even is selling the H2 directly and listing it on Amazon soon after.

However, I’d wait and see where this trend (and further research) goes before I settle on listening to what the H2 thinks I should hear.

Price as Reviewed: $299 at Even
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/ev...aring-ability/





Researchers Develop a Sampling Scheme That is Unconstrained by Bandwidth
Larry Hardesty

Researchers from MIT and the Technical University of Munich have developed a new technique could lead to cameras that can handle light of any intensity, audio that doesn’t skip or pop.

Virtually any modern information-capture device — such as a camera, audio recorder, or telephone — has an analog-to-digital converter in it, a circuit that converts the fluctuating voltages of analog signals into strings of ones and zeroes.

Almost all commercial analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), however, have voltage limits. If an incoming signal exceeds that limit, the ADC either cuts it off or flatlines at the maximum voltage. This phenomenon is familiar as the pops and skips of a “clipped” audio signal or as “saturation” in digital images — when, for instance, a sky that looks blue to the naked eye shows up on-camera as a sheet of white.

Last week, at the International Conference on Sampling Theory and Applications, researchers from MIT and the Technical University of Munich presented a technique that they call unlimited sampling, which can accurately digitize signals whose voltage peaks are far beyond an ADC’s voltage limit.

The consequence could be cameras that capture all the gradations of color visible to the human eye, audio that doesn’t skip, and medical and environmental sensors that can handle both long periods of low activity and the sudden signal spikes that are often the events of interest.

The paper’s chief result, however, is theoretical: The researchers establish a lower bound on the rate at which an analog signal with wide voltage fluctuations should be measured, or “sampled,” in order to ensure that it can be accurately digitized. Their work thus extends one of the several seminal results from longtime MIT Professor Claude Shannon’s groundbreaking 1948 paper “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” the so-called Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem.

Ayush Bhandari, a graduate student in media arts and sciences at MIT, is the first author on the paper, and he’s joined by his thesis advisor, Ramesh Raskar, an associate professor of media arts and sciences, and Felix Krahmer, an assistant professor of mathematics at the Technical University of Munich.

Wraparound

The researchers’ work was inspired by a new type of experimental ADC that captures not the voltage of a signal but its “modulo.” In the case of the new ADCs, the modulo is the remainder produced when the voltage of an analog signal is divided by the ADC’s maximum voltage.

“The idea is very simple,” Bhandari says. “If you have a number that is too big to store in your computer memory, you can take the modulo of the number. The act of taking the modulo is just to store the remainder.”

“The modulo architecture is also called the self-reset ADC,” Bhandari explains. “By self-reset, what it means is that when the voltage crosses some threshold, it resets, which is actually implementing a modulo. The self-reset ADC sensor was proposed in electronic architecture a couple years back, and ADCs that have this capability have been prototyped.”

One of those prototypes was designed to capture information about the firing of neurons in the mouse brain. The baseline voltage across a neuron is relatively low, and the sudden voltage spikes when the neuron fires are much higher. It’s difficult to build a sensor that is sensitive enough to detect the baseline voltage but won’t saturate during spikes.

When a signal exceeds the voltage limit of a self-reset ADC, it’s cut off, and it starts over again at the circuit’s minimum voltage. Similarly, if the signal drops below the circuit’s minimum voltage, it’s reset to the maximum voltage. If the signal’s peak voltage is several times the voltage limit, the signal can thus wrap around on itself again and again.

This poses a problem for digitization. Digitization is the process of sampling an analog signal — essentially, making many discrete measurements of its voltage. The Nyquist-Shannon theorem establishes the number of measurements required to ensure that the signal can be accurately reconstructed.

But existing sampling algorithms assume that the signal varies continuously up and down. If, in fact, the signal from a self-reset ADC is sampled right before it exceeds the maximum, and again right after the circuit resets, it looks to the standard sampling algorithm like a signal whose voltage decreases between the two measurements, rather than one whose voltage increases.

Big mistakes

Bhandari and his colleagues were interested in the theoretical question of how many samples are required to resolve that ambiguity, and the practical question of how to reconstruct the original signal. They found that the number of samples dictated by the Nyquist-Shannon theorem, multiplied by pi and by Euler’s number e, or roughly 8.5, would guarantee faithful reconstruction.

The researchers’ reconstruction algorithm relies on some clever mathematics. In a self-reset ADC, the voltage sampled after a reset is the modulo of the true voltage. Recovering the true voltage is thus a matter of adding some multiple of the ADC’s maximum voltage — call it M — to the sampled value. What that multiple should be, however — M, 2M, 5M, 10M — is unknown.

The most basic principle in calculus is that of the derivative, which provides a formula for calculating the slope of a curve at any given point. In computer science, however, derivatives are often approximated arithmetically. Suppose, for instance, that you have a series of samples from an analog signal. Take the difference between samples 1 and 2, and store it. Then take the difference between samples 2 and 3, and store that, then 3 and 4, and so on. The end result will be a string of values that approximate the derivative of the sampled signal.

The derivative of the true signal to a self-reset ADC is thus equal to the derivative of its modulo plus the derivative of a bunch of multiples of the threshold voltage — the Ms, 2Ms, 5Ms, and so on. But the derivative of the M-multiples is itself always a string of M-multiples, because taking the difference between two consecutive M-multiples will always yield another M-multiple.

Now, if you take the modulo of both derivatives, all the M-multiples disappear, since they leave no remainder when divided by M. The modulo of the derivative of the true signal is thus equivalent to the modulo of the derivative of the modulo signal.

Inverting the derivative is also one of the most basic operations in calculus, but deducing the original signal does require adding in an M-multiple whose value has to be inferred. Fortunately, using the wrong M-multiple will yield signal voltages that are wildly implausible. The researchers’ proof of their theoretical result involved an argument about the number of samples necessary to guarantee that the correct M-multiple can be inferred.

“If you have the wrong constant, then the constant has to be wrong by a multiple of M,” Krahmer says. “So if you invert the derivative, that adds up very quickly. One sample will be correct, the next sample will be wrong by M, the next sample will be wrong by 2M, and so on. We need to set the number of samples to make sure that if we have the wrong answer in the previous step, our reconstruction would grow so large that we know it can’t be correct.”

“Unlimited sampling is an intriguing concept that addresses the important and real issue of saturation in analog-to-digital converters,” says Richard Baraniuk, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University and one of the co-inventors of the single-pixel camera. “It is promising that the computations required to recover the signal from modulo measurements are practical with today’s hardware. Hopefully this concept will spur the development of the kind of sampling hardware needed to make unlimited sampling a reality.”
https://scitechdaily.com/researchers...-by-bandwidth/





Upcoming USB 3.2 Specification Will Double Data Rates Using Existing Cables
Juli Clover

The USB 3.0 Promoter Group, comprising Apple, HP, Intel, Microsoft, and other companies, today introduced an upcoming USB 3.2 specification, which will eventually replace the existing USB 3.1 specification upon release.

An incremental update, USB 3.2 is designed to define multi-lane operation for USB 3.2 hosts and devices. USB Type-C cables already support multi-lane operation, and with USB 3.2, hosts and devices can be created as multi-lane solutions, allowing for either two lanes of 5Gb/s or two lanes of 10Gb/s operation.

With support for two lanes of 10Gb/s transfer speeds, performance is essentially doubled over existing USB-C cables.

As an example, the USB Promoter Group says a USB 3.2 host connected to a USB 3.2 storage device will be capable of 2GB/sec data transfer performance over a USB-C cable certified for USB SuperSpeed 10Gb/s USB 3.1, while also remaining backwards compatible with earlier USB devices.

"When we introduced USB Type-C to the market, we intended to assure that USB Type-C cables and connectors certified for SuperSpeed USB or SuperSpeed USB 10 Gbps would, as produced, support higher performance USB as newer generations of USB 3.0 were developed," said Brad Saunders, USB 3.0 Promoter Group Chairman. "The USB 3.2 update delivers the next level of performance."

Along with two-lane operation, USB 3.2 continues to use SuperSpeed USB layer data rates and encoding techniques and will introduce a minor update to hub specifications for seamless transitions between single and two-lane operation.

More information about USB 3.2 will be unveiled at USB Developer Days 2017 later this year.
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/07/25...le-data-rates/





Samsung Ends Intel’s 24-Year Reign, Becomes the Largest Chipmaker in the World
Asif S.

Samsung announced its quarterly results yesterday, and became the most profitable company in the world. However, the company broke a few other records as well. It ended Intel’s 24-year reign as the largest semiconductor-based chipmaker in the world. Samsung has now leapfrogged Intel by posting a higher revenue as well as operating profits during Q2 2017.

The South Korean electronics giant consistently developed new DRAM and flash storage technologies. However, what helped Samsung in become the king of semiconductor chips is that it quickly responded to the changes in the industry. On the other hand, Intel couldn’t make successful chipsets for mobile devices, failed in capitalizing on the growing smartphone, tablet, and wearable devices segment.

Samsung’s chip business posted a revenue of KRW 17 trillion ($15 billion) and an operating profit of KRW 8.03 trillion ($7.1 billion) for Q2 2017, which is a huge increase over Q2 2016’s operating profit of KRW 2.64 trillion ($2.4 billion). The reason behind this increase in operating profit is rising demand for server DRAMs and SSDs. Intel reported a revenue of $14.8 billion and an operating profit of $3.8 billion for the same period.

“Given Samsung’s strength today in flash memory, I am not surprised Samsung surpassed Intel in semiconductor revenue,” said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, adding that Intel may be able to catch up Samsung when Intel’s memory output is at full production capacity in about six months. “I think we will see a lot of back and forth between the two companies.”

While Intel stuck to developing CPUs for laptops, PCs, and servers, Samsung diversified its portfolio by developing chipsets for smartphones, tablets, wearables. It also made signification improvements in its UFS and SSD storage chips as well as DRAM products. Its Evo and Evo Pro lineup of SSD solutions are one of the best in the world.

Samsung’s chip business could also beat Intel in annual performance as the chip industry’s outlook remains bright for the rest of the year. Samsung is also developing connected chipsets for IoT devices as well as automobiles. To make a strong headway into the connected automobiles segment, Samsung announced that it would acquire Harman International Industries last year, and the acquisition was completed earlier this year.
https://www.sammobile.com/2017/07/28...ipmaker-world/





Toyota’s New Solid-State Battery Could Make its Way to Cars by 2020
Darrell Etherington

Toyota is touting its progress on a new kind of battery technology, which uses a solid electrolyte instead of the conventional semi-liquid version used in today’s lithium-ion batteries. The car maker said that it’s near a breakthrough in production engineering that could help it put the new tech in production electric vehicles as early as 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The improved battery technology would make it possible to create smaller, more lightweight lithium-ion batteries for use in EVs, that could also potentially boost the total charge capacity and result in longer-range vehicles.

Another improvement for this type of battery would be longer overall usable life, which would make it possible to both use the vehicles they’re installed in for longer, and add potential for product recycling and alternative post-vehicle life (some companies are already looking into putting EV batteries into use in home and commercial energy storage, for example).

Batteries remain a key limiting factor for electric vehicle design, because of how far tech companies focused on the problem have pushed existing science. The move to solid state would help make room for more gains in terms of charge capacity achieved in the footprint available in consumer vehicles, while helping to push further existing efficiencies achieved through things like the use of ultra-light materials in car frames and interiors.

Toyota isn’t saying yet where its batteries will end up, but any edge here is bound to be a big boon for automakers looking at a future that increasingly seems like it’ll be dominated by EVs.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/to...-cars-by-2020/





Tesla Model 3 First Drive: this is the Car that Elon Musk Promised
Tamara Warren

I felt like I was driving in an Eames chair. That was my first impression as I climbed into the driver’s seat of the Tesla Model 3 at the Fremont Factory on Friday afternoon. It took a moment to orient myself — no gauges, no speedometer, no airplane cockpit cues. Instead, one continuous smooth line between myself and the road ahead, offset by natural, unfinished wood. The premium model of the Model 3 caught me off guard. After hearing so much hype about this car, I was surprised that my first reaction was a profound sense of delight. It wasn’t bland, nor sterile, nor cheap feeling. Here was something different. Here was an exercise in minimalism. Here was the car Elon Musk promised to make 14 years ago.

"The premium model of the Model 3 caught me off guard."

Much has been made of the tall order that Tesla has to deliver on to manufacture an electric car for the people, but first the young car company had to prove the most essential aspect: finishing a product that people would want to drive, and fulfill the dream that makes it the company that has shaken up the auto industry.

Can Tesla make a $35,000 car that feels like a Tesla?

Yes, and they have.

Air filled the cabin, but no vents were in sight. The car has a single air vent in the back seat that I noticed, but none are needed in the front. Surfaces in the front seat are simple and smooth. I began to fiddle with the piano black console. I opened up one closest to the dashboard and discovered a rubbery charging pad for my phone, no wires required. In the second console I found a storage bin, where someone had left behind a Boring Company baseball cap. Welcome to Fremont. I was in Tesla territory.

"Welcome to Fremont. I was in Tesla territory."

My eyes drew to the natural focal point. The single screen, a 15-inch display, at the center of the car, where all of the essential information is presented. I could scroll through the buttons using two singular buttons on either side of the steering wheel, or the touch pad. A small icon of the car popped up on the left of the screen. I didn’t have to turn my head from the windshield.

I didn’t have much time to play with the screen. It was time to go. Others were waiting to drive. Foot on the brake, I attempted to shift the car into gear using the lever next to the steering wheel. But the screen said “hold”. Hold, as I understand it, is a function that keeps the car from rolling when idle at a stoplight. Now it was really time to drive.

Foot squarely on the accelerator, I was surprised at the jolt when I pulsed the throttle. Elon Musk said the car accelerates from 0 to 60 in 5.6 seconds. I turned onto a small stretch of open road, and I was off and running. Yes, the Model 3 has a glee factor. All too soon I had to brake, which in this short sprint, felt like a confident, firm exercise, not carbon fiber ooh la la, but enough to do the job. I drove in a large square around the boundaries of the campus. While it’s not ludicrous fast, it certainly feels capable.

"I walked away with was a glimpse into what Tesla is thinking."

Cornering was decent, and when I turned the wheel, I saw no sign of understeer. I made only right turns, and most of the roads that I drove on were crowded with other cars or construction, so I wouldn’t describe my experience as a conclusive test drive, but what I walked away with was a glimpse into what Tesla is thinking.

And the best part: when I pulled into park, I asked about the key. The car doesn’t haven’t one. You control the car through the Tesla app on your phone. Tesla has succeed in making a car for gadgeteers, and for forgetful people like me that sometimes leave their phones behind. (It does have a small credit card key to hand off to valets, for people that will stunt in their 3.)

I spent a few moments checking out the rest of the car — the backseat had ample room for my long legs to spare, and plenty of room for a car seat. Yes, there were car seat hooks included on this production models, and a flip down armrest with a cupholder — a sign that Tesla is actually an American car company. The backseat folds down, though I didn’t try this option, nor did I get a chance to open the trunk to check for golf club room.

Will the production cars maintain this same sense of good carness? It’s hard to say if Tesla can deliver on its ambitious promises, but it certainly surprise delivered on making a good impression on me.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/29/1...rst-drive-2017





Shell Gets Ready for "Lower Forever" Oil Prices

CEO warns that the electric car will cut into demand - and he plans to buy one
MarEx

On an earnings call Thursday, Royal Dutch Shell CEO Ben van Buerden said that the firm has adopted a "'lower forever' mindset” with a focus on controlling costs. His long-term strategy is to be "fit for the forties."

While oversupply is the driving force behind today’s low prices, Shell's long-term concern actually has to do with weak demand. The UK, France, Germany, Norway, China and India are all moving to phase out internal combustion-engined vehicles, and Volvo has pledged to go all-electric by the end of the decade. With electric cars on the rise, van Buerden expects that the need for fossil fuels is going to plateau as early as the 2030s – much sooner than predicted by organizations like the International Energy Agency.

Van Buerden doesn't see this as a bad thing – far from it. He told Bloomberg TV that he thinks electric vehicles are an important part of the effort to limit global climate change. "We need to be at a much higher degree of electric vehicle penetration – or hydrogen or gas vehicles – if we want to stay within the 2 degrees Celcius outcome," he said, referring to the commonly accepted threshold for dangerous warming. He intends to do his own part by buying a plug-in hybrid Mercedes-Benz S500e.

In keeping with this perspective, Shell intends to invest another $1 billion per year on new energy sources like biofuels and hydrogen fuel cells, among other technologies. It is also advancing gradually into the field of renewable electrical power. This does not mean that it will cease to be an oil major – its recent acquisition of BG Group affirms its role as a leader in oil and gas – but it will be making ready for a future where fossil fuels play a role alongside other alternatives.

Shell says that it is already well-positioned to profit in an environment of low oil prices. CFO Jessica Uhl pointed out that its cash flow from operations has risen for four quarters running at prices of less than $50 per barrel – comparable to the firm's performance when oil was near $100. She added that even at these low price levels, the firm has still managed to reduce its net debt, cover its cash dividend, and make capital investments sufficient to deliver growth.

Part of this financial performance comes from downstream diversification. "The integration of our refining, trading and marketing activities as well as the performance of our chemicals business is improving margins and making Shell’s portfolio more resilient to lower oil prices," Uhl said.
http://www.maritime-executive.com/ar...ver-oil-prices





These Cheap Phones Come at a Price -- Your Privacy

How much do you value your privacy and security? Researchers at Black Hat found a series of phones that are secretly sending data to Chinese servers.
Alfred Ng

Cheap phones are coming at the price of your privacy, security analysts discovered.

At $60, the Blu R1 HD is the top-selling phone on Amazon. Last November, researchers caught it secretly sending private data to China.

Shanghai Adups Technology, the group behind the spying software on the Blu R1 HD, called it a mistake. But analysts at Kryptowire found the software provider is still making the same "mistake" on other phones.

At the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, researchers from Kryptowire, a security firm, revealed that Adups' software is still sending a device's data to the company's server in Shanghai without alerting people. But now, it's being more secretive about it.

"They replaced them with nicer versions," Ryan Johnson, a research engineer and co-founder at Kryptowire, said. "I have captured the network traffic of them using the command and control channel when they did it."

An Adups spokeswoman said that the company had resolved the issues in 2016 and that the issues "are not existing anymore."

Kryptowire said it has observed Adups sending data without telling users on at least three different phones.

This year's Black Hat conference comes against the backdrop of a year's worth of reports about Russian hacking and its intrusion into the 2016 presidential race, as well as news in the last few months about ransomware attacks that hijack people's computers, to be unlocked (if you're lucky) for a fee.

People have enough to worry about when it comes to privacy on their personal devices. Between government surveillance and security vulnerabilities, preinstalled software on the phone itself is an unexpected breach of both trust and privacy for millions of owners who are just looking for an inexpensive phone.

'A huge invasion of privacy'

Having access to the command and control channel -- a communications route between your device and a server -- allowed Adups to execute commands as if it's the user, meaning it could also install apps, take screenshots, record the screen, make calls and wipe devices without needing permission.

"It does seem like a huge invasion of privacy," Johnson said.

Kryptowire looked at more than 20 pieces of firmware from low-end Android devices, all which had vulnerabilities that allowed for spyware apps and all of which had a MediaTek chipset. The chipset always came with a preinstalled app called MTKLogger, which allowed for surveillance of data like your browsing history and GPS location if it were hijacked.

MediaTek said it resolved the issue in November, but researchers at Kryptowire found out last week that the Blu Advance 5.0 still ships with a vulnerable version of the app. The phone, which is the third best-selling phone on Amazon, does not have a firmware update available to stop a potential exploit, Johnson said.

It works through something called privilege escalation, which gives advanced permissions to certain apps far beyond what you would like it to have. Kryptowire has not found any cases yet in which the MTKLogger has been hijacked, but the vulnerability still exists.

Kryptowire originally discovered Adups' spying nature last October. After it had been revealed, Adups removed its data tracking on devices like the Blu R1 HD and the Blu Life One X2, two phones that are popular on Amazon for their cheap prices. For those two devices, Adups stopped sending text message and call logs to China since.

Blu did not respond to requests for comment.

A widespread problem

Johnson only found Adups' secret data funneling to China because it was the top-selling phone on Amazon -- but the issue remains prevalent on low-profile devices, he said. In May, he purchased a Blu Grand M from Best Buy, which goes for between $60 and $75.

Six months after Adups said it made a mistake with its data tracking, Johnson discovered that it was still happening on the Blu Grand M. In May, he found the phone was sending data to China containing a list of apps installed, the apps used, unique phone identifiers like the MAC address and IMEI, the phone number, and cell phone tower ID.

It doesn't track your phone's GPS, but cell phone tower data is close enough to be admissible as evidence in murder trials and has raised massive debates on digital privacy.

"It can generally locate a person, presuming they're in an urban area," Johnson said.

Adups' spying intensity varies based on the phone, but it comes preinstalled on up to 700 million devices, including cars and other connected devices. Some of the more aggressive spying would send a person's browsing history and bookmarks.

Johnson said he hasn't found the spyware on any phones that cost more than $300, as Adups is mostly installed on cheaper devices. It's not only on Blu devices, as Johnson in May found data exfiltration on the Cubot X16S as well.

The Chinese phone, which sells for between $90 and $110, was sending call logs, browser history and location data behind users' backs. Cubot did not respond to requests for comment.

"It seems pretty widespread around lower-end phones," Johnson said.

Johnson tested the Cubot X16S's software again on Monday, and found that Adups had quietly removed the backdoor app on the device -- shortly after CNET reached out to the company.

It's still unclear what happens with the data once it's on servers in China. When Johnson contacted Adups, the company said it would just delete the data. Kryptowire was able to track the data to where it ended up, but not what was done with it.
https://www.cnet.com/news/these-chea...-your-privacy/





Feds Crack Trump Protesters’ Phones to Charge Them With Felony Rioting

Officials have cracked the locked phones seized from protesters at the inauguration—and may be planning to use browsing data and texts against them.
Kelly Weill

Officials seized Trump protesters’ cell phones, cracked their passwords, and are now attempting to use the contents to convict them of conspiracy to riot at the presidential inauguration.

Prosecutors have indicted over 200 people on felony riot charges for protests in Washington, D.C. on January 20 that broke windows and damaged vehicles. Some defendants face up to 75 years in prison, despite little evidence against them. But a new court filing reveals that investigators have been able to crack into at least eight defendants’ locked cell phones.

Now prosecutors want to use the internet history, communications, and pictures they extracted from the phones as evidence against the defendants in court.

Evidence against the defendants has been scant from the moment of their arrest. As demonstrators, journalists, and observers marched through the city, D.C. police officers channelled hundreds of people into a narrow, blockaded corner, where they carried out mass arrests of everyone in the area. Some of those people, including a journalist and two allegedly peaceful protesters, are now suing for wrongful arrest.

Police also seized more than 100 cell phones from “defendants and other un-indicted arrestees,” prosecutors disclosed in a March filing. “All of the Rioter Cell Phones were locked, which requires more time-sensitive efforts to try to obtain the data,” prosecutors noted in the filing.

But a July 21 court document shows that investigators were successful in opening the locked phones. The July 21 filing moved to enter evidence from eight seized phones, six of which were “encrypted” and two of which were not encrypted. A Department of Justice representative confirmed that “encrypted” meant additional privacy settings beyond a lock screen.

For the six encrypted phones, investigators were able to compile “a short data report which identifies the phone number associated with the cell phone and limited other information about the phone itself,” the filing says. But investigators appear to have bypassed the lock on the two remaining phones to access the entirety of their contents.

Prosecutors moved to use a wealth of information from the phones as evidence, including the phones’ “call detail records,” “SMS or MMS messages,” “contact logs/email logs,” “chats or other messaging applications,” “website search history and website history,” and “images or videos,” so long as the data related to January 20, the protest, or other people suspected to have been involved in the protest.

The owners of the two unencrypted phones were likely using a password, Fred Jennings, a cybercrime and privacy attorney said. But the security measures weren’t enough.

“The two phones where they had a laundry list of data they were able to get, I think it’s a fair assumption that those phones may have had a lock screen enabled, but were not using any sort of full-disk encryptions,” Jennings told The Daily Beast.

If investigators were able to crack the phones’ passwords within their department or through a contract, they would not necessarily have to file any additional court documents, Jennings said.

Police appear to have begun searching at least one phone within a day of its seizure, CityLab reported in January. At 4:15 pm, the day after the arrests, one defendant received a Google alert that their Gmail account had been accessed while the phone was in police possession, that person’s lawyer told CityLab. Jennings said next-day phone access by law enforcement was “unusual to see,” but not entirely out of the pale.

“For best practices for digital discovery, there usually is a delay between time of seizure and searching or attempting to decrypt phones. More as a practical matter,” Jennings said. “To do intake of forensic digital discovery correctly, you need some specialized equipment and some specialized training and knowledge. It usually takes some time to get those individuals on hand. It’s possible it’s a higher priority here, this inauguration being a pretty high-profile event.”

The exact contents of the two unencrypted phones—or whether prosecutors will attempt to introduce evidence from other cracked phones—is unclear. In March, prosecutors said they had collected hundreds of hours of video from seized phones, which would show evidence of defendants’ participation in the riot.

But Mark Goldstone, a lawyer representing six of the accused said the footage is less than damning.

"Here's your client at the beginning of the march, wearing black clothes and goggles, your client could have left but did not, and here is your client at the end, in the police kettle," Goldstone said in a March conference call with 15 other defense attorneys, Esquire reported.

One of the more than 200 defendants has pleaded guilty to riot charges after being named extensively in a superseding indictment. But the case against most defendants is less clear; in the superseding indictment, prosecutors accuse hundreds defendants of conspiracy to riot, based on “overt acts” as banal as chanting anti-capitalist slogans or wearing dark clothing.

If prosecutors were ready to stake their case on the color of a defendant’s jacket, the personal information on demonstrators’ phones could be a treasure trove for a case otherwise absent, at least so far, of other evidence.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/feds-cr...felony-rioting





Google Finds and Blocks Spyware Linked to Cyberarms Group
Hay Newman

Tonight, Google has discovered and blocked a new family of insidious Android spyware, called Lipizzan, that can surveil and capture user text messages, emails, voice calls, photos, location data, and other files. You know, pretty much everything. And while it appeared on relatively few devices, Lipizzan has all the hallmarks of the type of professional, targeted malware reserved for deep-pocketed countries.

Finding malware that targets only a few hundred devices turns out to be a tough job; it requires sifting though hundreds of millions of apps using machine learning, app certificate comparison, and other tools to analyze aggregate data from large populations of mobile devices. That's how Google spotted Lipizzan, which it described in a blog post and presented with mobile security firm Lookout at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday. And all signs point to it being the work of a cyberarms group called Equus Technologies.

"We can leverage the big coverage of the Android ecosystem to find potentially harmful apps," says Megan Ruthven, a software engineer on Google's Android Security team. Ruthven noted also that Lipizzan included references to Equus Technologies, and was found on devices that had also been infected with other specialized types of spyware.

Lipizzan is a two-stage spyware attack, meaning that it gains full access to a target device in two steps. In the first, attackers spread downloads for innocuous-looking apps—with names like "Backup" or "Cleaner"—through various Android app stores, including the official Google Play store. Once the attackers trick targets into downloading the malicious app, Lipizzan automatically downloads the second stage. At this point, the app scans the target device to ensure that it can't detect the second stage in action. If not, Lipizzan then uses known Android exploits to root the device, and start sending data about the victim back out to a command and control server.

Android Security says it has blocked all related developers and apps from Android, and Google Play Protect, the automatic app-scanning and management feature Android rolled out last week, has pulled Lipizzan from all devices. As a result, the Lipizzan family only affected 0.000007 percent of all Android devices, according to Google.

But don't conflate limited spread with lack of success. Targeted tools like Lipizzan are expensive to develop and purchase, and are generally used by well-funded criminal actors or nation states to surveil high-profile targets. They aren't created to be used for widespread bulk surveillance; more scale makes them more easily identifiable. Lipizzan has more in common with previous precision malware, like Lookout-discovered Pegasus on iOS and Chrysaor on Android, than

"A lot of this stuff that we’re looking for, a lot of these targeted attacks, are being used in very specific and low-prevalence situations on very few devices," says Andrew Blaich, a security researcher at Lookout. "What’s enabling finding them out there now in the wild is that companies are using their big data for this ability to find these attacks. We’re able to [develop] a baseline like what should be normal for a device? What should we expect? And then that helps us surface anomalous apps."

Lookout's Pegasus and Chrysaor research is still evolving, and the methodologies to identify new targeted spyware apps are already leading to discoveries like Lipizzan. You may never personally end up in that targeted 0.000007 percent, but given the far-reaching access these apps obtain, it's well worth it to shut them down.
https://www.wired.com/story/lipizzan...e-nation-state





British 'Spiderman' Sentenced in Massive German Router Attack
Reuters Staff

A 29-year-old British hacker-for-hire was convicted by a German court on Friday after he confessed to unleashing a cyber attack that knocked out the internet for around 1 million Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE) customers.

The regional court in Cologne handed the man, named only as Daniel K., a suspended sentence of a year and eight months for attempted commercial computer sabotage. The maximum sentence was up to 10 years, and prosecutors had asked for two years.

The convicted hacker, who used the online alias "Spiderman", among other names, also faces criminal charges in Britain, where authorities have requested his extradition.

Last November, the man used a variant of the malicious Mirai botnet code to attack internet routers and turn them into remotely controlled "bots" for mounting large-scale attacks that disrupted websites and computer systems, police have said.

The botnet, once launched, spread out of control around the world, knocking out internet router equipment at up to a dozen telecom operators around the world, with Germany's Deutsche Telekom far and away the hardest hit.

British police arrested Daniel K. in February at Luton airport, north of London, on a request from Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) to charge him with selling his botnet to online criminals. He was sent to Germany for trial.

Deutsche Telekom, Germany's largest telecom company, had said the attack caused internet outages for as many as 900,000 of its customers, or about 4.5 percent of its 20 million fixed-line customers, but that it was thwarted before it could spread.

Still, the attacks knocked out internet service for affected customers for several hours and in some cases several days.

The malicious code exploited unprotected ports which allow network technicians to fix customers' routers from afar, but which can also expose the equipment to outside attack. Both the attack and the rapid recovery from it exploited this feature.

One out of every two companies in Germany has been the victim of cyber attacks over the last two years, according to a study by the country's digital trade group Bitkom published this month.

Reporting by Anneli Palmen; Writing by Eric Auchard and Maria Sheahan; Editing by Susan Fenton
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-de...-idUKKBN1AD1F5





Sweden Accidentally Leaks Personal Details of Nearly All Citizens
Swati Khandelwal

Another day, Another data breach!

This time sensitive and personal data of millions of transporters in Sweden, along with the nation's military secrets, have been exposed, putting every individual's as well as national security at risk.

Who exposed the sensitive data? The Swedish government itself.

Swedish media is reporting of a massive data breach in the Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen) after the agency mishandled an outsourcing deal with IBM, which led to the leak of the private data about every vehicle in the country, including those used by both police and military.

The data breach exposed the names, photos and home addresses of millions of Swedish citizen, including fighter pilots of Swedish air force, members of the military's most secretive units, police suspects, people under the witness relocation programme, the weight capacity of all roads and bridges, and much more.

The incident is believed to be one of the worst government information security disasters ever.

Here's what and How it Happened:

In 2015, the Swedish Transport Agency hand over IBM an IT maintenance contract to manage its databases and networks.

However, the Swedish Transport Agency uploaded IBM's entire database onto cloud servers, which covered details on every vehicle in the country, including police and military registrations, and individuals on witness protection programs.

The transport agency then emailed the entire database in messages to marketers that subscribe to it.

And what’s terrible is that the messages were sent in clear text.

When the error was discovered, the transport agency merely thought of sending a new list in another email, asking the subscribers to delete the old list themselves.

If you think the scandal ends there, you are wrong. The outsourcing deal gave IBM staff outside Sweden access to the Swedish transport agency's systems without undergoing proper security clearance checks.

IBM administrators in the Czech Republic were also given full access to all data and logs, according to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN), which analysed the Säpo investigation documents.

According to Pirate Party founder and now head of privacy at VPN provider Private Internet Access Rick Falkvinge, who brought details of this scandal, the incident "exposed and leaked every conceivable top secret database: fighter pilots, SEAL team operators, police suspects, people under witness relocation."

Tons of Sensitive Info Exposed about Both Individuals and Nation's Critical Infrastructures

According to Falkvinge, the leak exposed:

• The weight capacity of all roads as well as bridges (which is crucial for warfare, and gives a lot idea about what roads are intended to be used as wartime airfields).
• Names, photos, and home addresses of fighter pilots in the Air Force.
• Names, photos, and home addresses of everybody in a police register, which are believed to be classified.
• Names, photos, and residential addresses of all operators in the military's most secret units that are equivalent to the SAS or SEAL teams.
• Names, photos, and addresses of everybody in a witness relocation program, who has been given protected identity for some reasons.
• Type, model, weight, and any defects in all government and military vehicles, including their operator, which reveals a much about the structure of military support units.

Although the data breach happened in 2015, Swedish Secret Service discovered it in 2016 and started investigating the incident, which led to the fire of STA director-general Maria Ågren in January 2017.

Ågren was also fined half a month's pay (70,000 Swedish krona which equals to $8,500) after finding her guilty of being "careless with secret information," according to the publication.

What's the worrying part? The leaked database may not be secured until the fall, said the agency's new director-general Jonas Bjelfvenstam. The investigation into the scope of the leak is still ongoing.
https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/sw...ta-breach.html





German Court Rules Bosses Can't Use Keyboard-Tracking Software to Spy on Workers

Are bosses going too far when they use spy software to track employees' every keystroke? Apparently yes, according to a ruling by Germany's highest labour court on Thursday.

The Federal Labour Court ruled on Thursday that evidence collected by a company through keystroke-tracking software could not be used to fire an employee, explaining that such surveillance violates workers’ personal rights.

The complainant had been working as a web developer at a media agency in North Rhine-Westphalia since 2011 when the company sent an email out in April 2015 explaining that employees’ complete “internet traffic” and use of the company computer systems would be logged and permanently saved. Company policy forbade private use of the computers.

The firm then installed keylogger software on company PCs to monitor keyboard strokes and regularly take screenshots.

Less than a month later, the complainant was called in to speak with his boss about what the company had discovered through the spying software. Based on their findings, they accused him of working for another company while at work, and of developing a computer game for them.

He was fired that same day.

The complainant claimed that he had indeed been programming a computer game and done other work for his father’s company, but argued that this was mostly only during his work breaks. He said the work only took about ten minutes out of his day, and that over the course of four months, he had only spent three hours total on this outside work.

So the programmer took his case to court, arguing that the evidence used against him had been collected illegally.

The Federal Labour Court agreed with this argument, stating in the ruling that the keylogger software was an unlawful way to control employees. The judges added that using such software could be legitimate if there was a concrete suspicion beforehand of a criminal offence or serious breach of work duties.

Therefore the court determined that because the evidence used to fire the employee had been obtained illicitly the programmer’s termination should now be void.

The court further said that the fact that the employee admitted to using the company computer for private purposes did not justify the circumstances of the firing.
https://www.thelocal.de/20170727/cou...spy-on-workers





Russia Moves Closer to Banning the Use of Proxies and VPNs
Shreyas Gandhe

Earlier this year, China begun assessing ways to ban VPNs and proxy servers in the country, and finally made it mandatory for individuals and organizations to register with the government in order to use such services. Now, Russia seems to be moving towards a similar decision as well.

The bill to ban the use of tools such as proxy websites, proxy servers or virtual private networks (VPNs) in the country was passed by the State Duma (lower house) of the Russian Parliament on Friday. It is yet to be approved by the upper house and the President, but once done, the country's internet service providers will need to block access to any providers of proxy services.

As per Russian lawmakers, the move would further help enforce the country's ban on extremist content hosted online. Currently there is no word on whether any special provisions are available for companies that rely on global content or individuals that need access to such services. We will know more about the bill in the coming weeks.
https://www.neowin.net/news/russia-m...oxies-and-vpns





Apple Removes Apps From China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship
Paul Mozur

China appears to have received help on Saturday from an unlikely source in its fight against tools that help users evade its Great Firewall of internet censorship: Apple.

Software made by foreign companies to help users skirt the country’s system of internet filters has vanished from Apple’s app store on the mainland.

One company, ExpressVPN, posted a letter it had received from Apple saying that its app had been taken down “because it includes content that is illegal in China.”

Another tweeted from its official account that its app had been removed.

A search on Saturday showed that a number of the most popular foreign virtual-private networks, also known as VPNs, which give users access to the unfiltered internet in China, were no longer accessible on the company’s app store there.

ExpressVPN wrote in its blog that the removal was “surprising and unfortunate.”

It added, “We’re disappointed in this development, as it represents the most drastic measure the Chinese government has taken to block the use of VPNs to date, and we are troubled to see Apple aiding China’s censorship efforts.”

Sunday Yokubaitis, president of Golden Frog, a company that makes privacy and security software including VyperVpn, said its software, too, had been taken down from the app store. “We gladly filed an amicus brief in support of Apple in their backdoor encryption battle with the F.B.I.,” he said, “so we are extremely disappointed that Apple has bowed to pressure from China to remove VPN apps without citing any Chinese law or regulation that makes VPN illegal.”

He added, “We view access to Internet in China as a human rights issue, and I would expect Apple to value human rights over profits.”

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment about the removals, which appear to affect only users in Apple’s China app store — generally those who have indicated a billing address in mainland China.

This is not the first time that Apple has removed apps at the request of the Chinese government, but it is a new reminder of how deeply beholden the tech giant has become to Beijing at a moment when the leadership has been pushing to tighten its control over the internet.

The removals signal a new push by China to control the internet. In the past, the Great Firewall has used technology to disrupt VPNs, and Beijing has shut down Chinese VPNs and even aimed a huge cyberattack at a well-known foreign site hosting code that circumvented the filters.

But they also mark the first time China has successfully used its influence with a major foreign tech platform, like Apple, to push back against the software makers.

While internet crackdowns often peak every five years, ahead of a key Chinese Communist Party congress, this year’s efforts cover fresh ground, a likely indication that stricter controls of things like VPNs will persist after the congress this autumn. Earlier this month, China also began a partial block of the Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp.

Greater China is Apple’s largest market outside the United States. That has left the company more vulnerable than almost any other American technology firm to a Chinese campaign to ween itself off foreign technology and tighten control over foreign tech companies operating there.

In response, Apple has made a number of moves to ensure that it stays on Beijing’s good side. Last year, the company complied with what it said was a request from the Chinese authorities to remove from its China app store news apps created by The New York Times.

This month, the company said it would open its first data center in China to comply with a new law that pushes foreign firms to store more of their data in China.

Apple has operated its app store in China for many years with only the occasional run-in with the government. The VPN crackdown and Beijing’s move in December to target news sites indicates that China’s internet regulators have taken a deeper interest, and are exerting more control, over what is available on Apple’s China app store.

Carolyn Zhang contributed research from Shanghai.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/29/t...censorhip.html





Why Rashida Jones Changed Her Mind About Porn
Ana Marie Cox

In 2015, you produced a documentary about young pornography performers, ‘‘Hot Girls Wanted,’’ that was eventually turned into a new Netflix documentary series. But in 2013, you wrote a pretty strident essay in Glamour against the ‘‘pornification’’ of everything, where you recount using the hashtag #stopactinglikewhores, in regard to the mainstreaming of, say, V-strings and stripper poles. What changed?
I was impulsive. Being old isn’t a good excuse for it, but using the word ‘‘whore’’ was absolutely not appropriate. I didn’t even know what ‘‘slut shaming’’ meant at the time, and I have educated myself. But that was sort of the beginning of my relationship with all this work — I wanted to see if my feelings had any validity in the real world, or if I was just being close-minded.

Do you remember the first time you saw porn?
It wasn’t appointment television. ‘‘Emmanuelle’’ was something I stumbled upon at a young age, on cable, and was titillated by.

Do you personally consume porn now? I do.
When I was single, it was a great way to stay at home. It’s nice that you can separate the idea of personal pleasure from the pressure of a relationship. But I had a hard time finding the kind of porn I wanted, because I had to sift through so much stuff that isn’t for me — like abuses of power, dark porn — and I know we aren’t supposed to criticize people’s fantasies, because everybody has their own thing, but unfortunately, the first thing you see when you go to a tube site is often pretty violent stuff.

Do you think there’s a tension between being a feminist and enjoying porn?
Maybe it’s a generational thing, but because my identity as a feminist didn’t come about through my sexuality, I don’t have that reference point where the freedom I have with my body and my sexuality is part of my expression of feminism. I’ve had a steep learning curve to understanding that those things are interrelated, but it does create an interesting conversation about what it means to feel like a sexual being and how that’s different from sexualizing yourself — and then, is objectifying yourself ultimately a feminist thing, or is it an internalization of the patriarchy?

Is there a difference between the politics of sexual practice versus what someone might produce for money?
Yes, because the feminine power that is sometimes called feminism comes from capitalism. If you are making money, you are powerful; therefore, anything you do to make that money makes you powerful; therefore, anything you do to be powerful is feminist. That has been the narrative that was presented to me, and that’s what I’m trying to ask questions about.

Jones is a creator and producer of the Netflix documentary series ‘‘Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On’’ and the star of ‘‘Angie Tribeca’’ on TBS.

Age: 41

Occupation: Actor and producer

Hometown: Los Angeles

Her Top 5 Female Porn Makers:
1. Erika Lust
2. Holly Randall
3. Angie Rowntree
4. Candida Royalle
5. Shine Louise Houston

There’s a recognized genre of women creating content for other women in porn, which is something we haven’t seen much of in Hollywood. There are women who have gone into the sex industry, they’re just like, ‘‘I’m going to make my own stuff.’’ Whereas in Hollywood, there’s so much development and bloat and numbers and budgets that stand in the way of things. There’s a more direct relationship between the filmmaker and the consumer in porn.

One of the saddest episodes of the series, for me, was the episode about dating apps. The fact that you shop for toilet paper and, in a way, for people on the same device — everything becomes a performance, and you’re constantly being graded. Which reminds me of porn!
I believe in individuality and the freedom to express yourself however you want, but don’t all the ways we perform our sexuality all look the same? It seems harder to express your individual sexual or emotional needs when you feel like you have to perform for other people. Look, this could be my age talking, but it’s something I want to keep talking about, as opposed to just accepting that the only way to feel sexy about myself is to post a duck-lips selfie to Instagram.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/m...bout-porn.html





Snopes Seeks Crowdfunding in Ownership Battle
Devin Coldewey

How many times have you heard some urban legend, chain letter or misleading bit of news repeated and immediately found a thorough, fact-based debunking on Snopes? Like every damn day for the last 20 years or so, right? Snopes was there for you when you were looking up fake news and cryptids — but it’s in trouble, and asking you to return the favor.

The venerable fact-checking site is in the middle of an ownership dispute, and it’s looking for donations to keep the lights on in the meantime. The site’s blog describes the situation thus:

We had previously contracted with an outside vendor to provide certain services for Snopes.com. That contractual relationship ended earlier this year, but the vendor will not acknowledge the change in contractual status and continues to essentially hold the Snopes.com web site hostage. Although we maintain editorial control (for now), the vendor will not relinquish the site’s hosting to our control, so we cannot modify the site, develop it, or — most crucially — place advertising on it. The vendor continues to insert their own ads and has been withholding the advertising revenue from us.

But wading into the lawsuit and counter-lawsuit filed earlier this year, it’s clear things are far from straightforward, even if Snopes appears (warning: I am not a lawyer) to be… well, if not in the right, then perhaps less in the wrong. Here’s the story, as far as I can tell.

Snopes was founded in 1995 by David Mikkelson and Barbara Mikkelson, and ownership formalized in 2003 in Bardav Inc (Get it? Barbara + David = Bardav). Each had one share of the company. But in 2014 the two began divorce proceedings, which would of course necessitate negotiating ownership of their company and Snopes.

In August of 2015, Snopes entered a revenue-share/content and ad management agreement with a company called Proper Media, formed earlier that very year. In early 2016, Proper arranged to buy Barbara’s share of Bardav, replacing her as co-owner of the company. David Mikkelson attempted to kill the contract in spring of 2017 (wouldn’t you?), but Proper resisted, saying the terms of said contract were not fulfilled. In the meantime, it is apparently holding onto the site’s revenue and parts of its infrastructure.

To me this sounds like an opportunistic takeover, but in addition to not being a lawyer, I also am not a businessman, so possibly I’m just naive. At the same time, Proper alleges that Mikkelson misused company funds and inappropriately managed Bardav otherwise. The details are being cherry-picked by both sides, as generally happens in dueling lawsuits (not to mention when a divorce is mixed in), so I don’t want to give too much credit to either side here.

But the bigger picture to me is this: Snopes itself is valuable enough (in terms of utility, not cash value), and Mikkelson’s leadership has been sound enough for years, that it seems worth giving him benefit of the doubt for now. To me the important thing is that Snopes continue its work, as it has done for decades, and it’s unlikely things would remain the same if it’s put under the control of some shady “content” company.

The Snopes crowdfunding effort has already netted 100 grand and counting, half of which was raised while I wrote this article, so clearly others feel the same way, even if it’s not quite the “ransom” situation described. We need websites like Snopes, now more than ever. No one said it would be simple.

Update: I spoke with Snopes’s David Mikkelson about the situation. He contests just about everything alleged by Proper, including the idea that it owns half of Bardav and Snopes.

“The position we were in was, we had this popular website but outdated architecture,” which he hired Proper to help modernize. “It’s not like we were having financial problems, but as long as I was basically running the entire operation there was no way we were going to grow.” Mid-contract, Proper made an aggressive bid for control, paying what Mikkelson said was an “exorbitant” price for the other half of the company.

The contract with Proper was one that could be canceled at any time by either party, and that’s what Mikkelson says he did, as part of his everyday job as President of the company. Even if Proper’s owners were on the Bardav board (they aren’t, he noted), their permission wouldn’t be necessary because it’s not a board-level decision, and anyway they would have to recuse themselves for conflict of interest.

As for the donations, Mikkelson was less detailed in his explanations, but it seems unlikely that (as some worry) it will be used for some dark purpose.

“We’re hoping [the $500K goal] can get us by until the end of the year,” he said, cautioning that specific dates or numbers hadn’t been thought out. “We’re just trying to cover operating expenses, it’s all very standard: salaries, we have 16 staff that work at Snopes, various kinds of overhead, travel, that kind of thing. There’s no telling how much we’re going to have to end up frittering away on legal fees.”

Proper’s legal firm contacted me offering a statement that doesn’t add much to what I’ve put down here, but I’ve asked for clarification on a few things, and will update if I receive any interesting answers. I’m also looking up some legal documents to verify some of what both parties are claiming.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/24/sn...ership-battle/





The New York Times Is Not 'Failing': Announces Strong 2Q Profits And 2.3M Digital Subscribers
Brett Edkins

Donald Trump likes to say the New York Times is “failing.” He Tweeted the insult again last week and at least 24 other times since last November. In reality, the Times is thriving, earning higher revenues and offsetting declining print ad revenue by attracting a record number of digital subscribers.

On Thursday, the Times announced $407 million in revenue in the second quarter of 2017, 9% higher than in the second quarter of 2016 and well above Wall Street expectations.

In two years, the New York Times has doubled its digital subscriber base. The Times now boasts 2.3 million digital subscribers, 63% more than in 2Q 2016. This quarter, the paper added 93,000 digital-only subscribers, bringing in $83 million in revenue this quarter—a 46% increase over 2Q 2016.

For the first time, digital subscriptions brought in more revenue than print advertisements, marking a decisive inflection point for the Times as it evolves away from print and towards a digitally-based business model. About two-thirds of the paper's revenue comes from subscriptions, and another third comes from advertising.

“We believe that more and more people are prepared to pay for high quality in-depth journalism that helps them make sense of the world,” said Mark Thompson, CEO and president of The New York Times Company.

In addition, for the first time in three years, total advertising revenue increased, rising from $131 million in 2Q 2016 to $132 million this quarter. As with most newspapers, the Times saw a decline in print advertising revenue, but digital ads nearly made up for the loss. Digital ad revenue rose 23% in 2Q to $55 million. Print ads brought in $77 million, 11% lower than 2Q 2016.

The good financial news comes as the Times struggles with staff shakeups and poor morale.The paper is laying off copy editors and hiring roughly 100 investigative and visual journalists as part of its shift towards digital news. The number of employees at the Times will remain fairly steady around 1,300. The Times is also downsizing physically, shrinking from twenty floors to twelve in its New York City headquarters. One editor recently told Vanity Fair, “The mood at the paper is poisonous in a way I've never seen it in the past 15 years.”

Still, Trump’s presidency has been an unexpected gift to the paper, as well as to other major newspapers and cable news outlets. Americans have been reminded of the importance of a free press, and rising revenues and subscription numbers are reflecting their rediscovered interest.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bretted.../#7bf621813869





The Rise and Fall of Liz Smith, Celebrity Accomplice

She was the most powerful gossip columnist in the 1980s. A tabloid celebrity herself, she could turn anyone into a star overnight. Until she couldn’t.
John Leland

Liz Smith, who is 94 and recovering from a minor stroke, would like it to be known that she is available for duty.

“I’m just fine,” she said the other day. “I can’t walk. I can’t talk as well as I used to, but I’m relatively healthy otherwise.”

It was a warm afternoon in her new Park Avenue apartment, six months into the administration of President Trump, whose tabloid rise was once closely linked to her own.

She has a laptop, but she doesn’t like it. She has an electric typewriter, which she bought after her stroke at the suggestion of Tom Hanks, a friend, but it sits on the floor because she does not have a desk.
Continue reading the main story

She has her wits, though words sometimes elude her or come out sideways. She even has a column of sorts, which she writes with her longtime collaborator, Dennis Ferrara, for a website called New York Social Diary.

What she does not have is a column in a New York tabloid, the Via Veneto of the gossip world. Since The New York Post dropped her in 2009, she has been a herald without a proper platform, rejected by the media names she helped make boldface.

She pleaded with Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Post, not to drop her — no soap.

She offered herself to Mortimer B. Zuckerman, owner of The Daily News, the paper where she made her name. “I said, you have nothing to lose, you don’t even have to pay me a salary,” she said — no soap there, either.

So when J-Lo sneezes, it is now up to someone else to make sure the public gets sick.

Facebook, maybe?

“I don’t think my name could sell anything now,” Ms. Smith said in the apartment where she moved after her stroke in January, from her longtime digs above a Tex-Mex restaurant in Murray Hill. She wore a white cable-knit sweater and bright orange lipstick.

“It used to mean — bylines used to mean something in journalism,” she said, her Texas accent still unbowed. But with the internet and social media, she said, “most people have forgotten about so-called powerful people like me; we served our time.”

Which put Ms. Smith at an existential crossroads: If a gossip columnist dishes in the forest and no one repeats it, does it make a sound? In a celebrity landscape that considers contestants on “The Bachelorette” to be celebrities, how does a star-chaser regain her star?

“I am in search of Liz Smith,” she said softly, musing at the thought. “After a lifetime of fun and excitement and money and feeling important and being in the thick of it, I am just shocked every day that I’m not the same person. I think that happens to all old people. They’re searching for a glimmer of what they call their real self. They’re boring, mostly.

“I’m always thinking falsely, expending what little energy I have, believing every day I may just rediscover that person. I try to be all of the things I was, but it inevitably fails. I don’t feel like myself at all.”

Mary Elizabeth Smith was born in 1923 in Fort Worth and grew up enthralled by the radio broadcasts of Walter Winchell, aching for “the glamour and the excitement of New York,” she said. She was not interested in Hollywood; New York was where the luster was.

Her arrival, in September 1949, was less than glamorous. She reached Pennsylvania Station after a three-day train ride, with $50 and no job prospects, and spent her first night in a hotel room on 21st Street with two friends. She knew how to hail a taxi because she had seen it in movies, she said. When she looked out the window her first morning, she asked, “Which way is town?”

She quickly found her way, landing an apartment with two roommates, taking turns sleeping on the couch. The place was small but it did not matter. The city was too exciting for her to stay home and read or sleep, knowing what was outside her window — stars, celebrities, the El Morocco club.

“I was just climbing and electrified all the time,” she said. “Burning up with ambition. So I don’t want to judge other people too harshly that I see on television. They’re just climbing also. But I like to think that I had some talent.”

Words that recur in her conversation: climbing, clawing, talent, important, powerful, Trump, Mrs. Astor. Also some that cannot be printed here.

Her friends in New York showed her how to make a meal of free crackers and ketchup at the automat. She knew the actor Zachary Scott from college — he played Joan Crawford’s love interest in “Mildred Pierce” — so she looked him up in the phone book, and he helped her get a job at Modern Screen magazine.

The phone book!

“That would be impossible today,” she said. “Any celebrity would flee from the publicity. They are trying to escape their fans. Once they’re really big, they choose to insulate themselves with money, and they don’t need publicity, they just get it by appearing, but they’re not exactly clawing their way to the top, like everybody in the theater and the movies used to be. They’re just so big, they don’t care anymore.”

Into this gap, of course — between the untouchable star and the curious public — rose the gossip columnist, and particularly Ms. Smith. Access made the stars more like mortals, and made the gossip columnists more like stars. The price of admission, she discovered, was often uncritical reverence. Celebrities learned they could count on Ms. Smith.

Meeting her heroes, she said, did not diminish their glow. “Oh, I don’t think that’s true,” she said. “It seemed fabulous.”

She was invited to lavish openings and parties, or to travel to exotic film locations, and when she wrote favorably about these, she was invited to more. Instead of digging for scandal, like some of her competitors (“I thought I was above it,” she said. “I wanted to better myself”) she cultivated mutually beneficial relationships with her subjects.

“We need Liz,” the gossip columnist Michael Musto once told New York magazine, “because we need someone who actually likes celebrities. We knock everyone down, and then she builds them back up.”

Others resented her fawning and occasional sharp elbows. Spy magazine ran a monthly “Liz Smith Tote Board” of favorites she puffed. The publicist Bobby Zarem, angered over perceived slights, once helped send false wedding notices for Ms. Smith and her partner at the time, a socialite and archaeologist named Iris Love. Mr. Zarem, who, when asked to comment for this article, said, “I hope it’s for an obituary,” added that as Ms. Smith rose, people bowed to her.

“I know people who wouldn’t care if Liz Smith killed somebody as long as she mentioned their names in her column,” he said.

She advised a virginal Elaine Stritch to have sex with Marlon Brando to keep him interested; helped Rock Hudson thwart a blackmailer who threatened to out him; sheltered Ivana Trump from other gossip-hounds; traveled the world with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton; and during her tenure at The Post broke the story of Mr. Murdoch’s divorce — from his point of view, of course. She mixed with Richard Nixon, Roy Cohn, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Ann Richards, Hillary Clinton and Roger Ailes, among others.

“I had a fabulous education around the world, through people no one else could get,” she said. “What reporter wouldn’t have wanted to go?”

But Ms. Smith also had misgivings. She had studied journalism at the University of Texas and wanted to be taken seriously, like the news reporters she admired. When she landed assignments for the first issues of New York magazine, which published the so-called New Journalism of writers like Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese, she thought about following their path. “I was still at their feet, slathering over them,” she said. Then she discovered that she could not make a living at it. Celebrities, on the other hand, paid the bills. Like the stars she wrote about, she did what was necessary to get ahead.

“I needed access to people,” she said. “And you’re not supposed to seek access. You’re just supposed to be pure and you go to the person you’re writing about and you write the truth. Nobody can do it totally.”

“But everybody gives up something to be able to do a job, a demanding job,” she added. “And being a reporter is a demanding, dangerous job. It may be glamorous or put you in harm’s way. I gave up being considered ethical and acceptable, for a while.”

She moved from Modern Screen to television to Cosmopolitan, along the way contributing to the pseudonymous Cholly Knickerbocker society column in the Hearst newspaper chain. At The Daily News, where she got her first column under her own name in 1976, she took notice of a brash young real estate developer who irked the city’s old-money types but entertained the readers of New York tabloids. Mr. Trump was made for tabloid columns, she said, because he was both ravenous for their attention and gifted at feeding their needs.

Ms. Smith especially befriended Ivana Trump, who she thought was being unfairly shunned by high society. When the Trump marriage soured in February 1990, Ms. Smith chose sides cannily.

“I was horrified at the way he treated her, and I made the mistake of defending her,” she said. “This is always fatal for your aspirations to be taken seriously as a reporter. But I had no choice. I had to be nice to them for a while to get access to them. I didn’t particularly approve of them, I didn’t like or dislike them. And I met his whole family and they were charming. So I was swept up in the scandal of Ivana wanting a decent settlement from Donald. And I became a featured player in the story, which I came to regret.”

“The divorce made Liz,” said the gossip columnist Cindy Adams, who landed rival exclusive interviews with Mr. Trump for The Post. “It catapulted her, because she had the original story. In those days she was a major force.”

As Ivana Trump’s confidante, Ms. Smith channeled details of a divorce that filled not just the tabloids, but also the networks and the covers of Time and Newsweek. As the former gossip columnist Jeannette Walls noted in her 2000 book “Dish: How Gossip Became the News and the News Became Just Another Show”: “A lot happened in the world that week. The Berlin Wall was toppled and Germany was reunited. Drexel Burnham Lambert, the wildly powerful junk bond company that spearheaded the 1980s financial boom, collapsed. And after 27 years in prison, South African civil rights leader Nelson Mandela was freed. But for 11 straight days, the front pages of the tabs were devoted to the Trump Divorce.”

For three months, Ms. Smith wrote about nothing else, often on the tabloid’s front page, and she even appeared there in a photo, ushering Ivana Trump past a horde of journalists and gapers in front of the restaurant La Grenouille. She repeated her stories or added new ones on the 5 o’clock news. Alexander Cockburn in The Nation called the story “Manhattan’s answer to Götterdämmerung” and wrote that “its Wagner is Liz Smith.” If her universe was one in which the Trumps and Marla Maples were the brightest stars, she was the one handing out the glow.

“I just tried to be fair, and most of these other columnists weren’t,” she said of her rivals. “I like to think I was better than them. I’m probably miscalculating.”

The succession of front page stories raised the stakes for gossip, and made the competition for sources more cutthroat, Ms. Adams said. “We were two tigers trying to cover our turf, I’ll just say that,” she said.

Circulation and ratings boomed. With income from her column, syndication and television, Ms. Smith was said to be the highest-paid print journalist in America. When Mr. Trump vowed to buy The News just to fire her, it made her only bigger.

But the high did not last. When newspapers started to crash in the first decade of this century, Ms. Smith fell with them, accepting “less money for the privilege of still being printed as a byline,” she said. Until finally, even this came to an end.

Ms. Smith still loves famous people, including Gloria Steinem (“one of my idols”), Larry Kramer (“a superior person”), Jennifer Lopez (“I just love her”) and Michelle Obama (“If I were energetic and young and Liz Smith again, I would go after Michelle Obama”). But she is somewhat baffled to be in a world where people can tell the Kardashians apart.

“Maybe gossip is still amusing, but I don’t think it’s as much fun as it used to be, because it’s now all-pervasive,” she said. “Someone you never knew their name is on the front page, making millions of dollars or going broke, and you never heard of them before. In the past we were able to identify important people and stars.”

Ms. Adams, who at 87 is still writing a column for The Post, characterized the new gossip as “young kids who are out there with their telephones recording what these nonpeople are saying.” She added, “They’re making it very difficult.”

Two years ago, a website called AfterEllen described Ms. Smith as “the most powerful queer woman in media who you’ve never heard of.”

Ms. Smith, who appreciates a well-packed phrase, was amused. “Ha!” she said.

Since publishing her autobiography, “Natural Blonde,” in 2000, she has dropped her reticence about her relationships with men and women, in part in response to gay activists who demanded she come out.

Her regret, she said, was waiting so long. “It sounded defensive to protest that I thought myself bisexual, like I wouldn’t admit that I was a lesbian. I wasn’t a happy convert to any particular sexual thing. But I eventually got tired of defending myself and said, ‘Say whatever you like.’”

Since breaking her hip a few years ago, Ms. Smith has used a walker to get around. These days she rarely leaves the apartment, except for the occasional Broadway opening. Even dressing up to go to the restaurant on the ground floor is often too much trouble, she said.

But she still has stories to tell, she said, even if she is no longer sure that anyone is reading them. “It’s just the diminution of your name,” she said. “It’s a natural thing to happen. So I began to be forgotten, like the seven newspapers I worked for are forgotten.”

“And I could give up and commit suicide or just let events take their place,” she added. But she thought she had one last contribution to make — a reminder, perhaps, of what gossip once was, and a chance to discover who Liz Smith was now. “I don’t particularly want any reward,” she said. “I know I’m not going to get it. But I might get another day of searching.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/n...-new-york.html





An Ode to Shopping Malls

Farewell, pleasure palaces of days past. A filmmaker’s series chronicles a way of life as it reaches its end.
Steven Kurutz

One day in 2015, Dan Bell left his home in Baltimore and drove into the suburbs to visit the Owings Mills Mall. It was a trip out of memory. As a 9-year-old boy, he had attended the grand opening of this 820,000-square-foot shopping emporium with his family.

Gold dust and pink feathers rained down from the glass-roof atrium that day as thousands gathered. Saks Fifth Avenue was an anchor tenant. The food court, lined with palm trees, was called the Conservatory. The NBC station in Baltimore dispatched its Copter Cam 2 to sweep over the parking lot and broadcast shots of the ocean of cars. Mr. Bell remembered his aunt driving around for 45 minutes to find a spot.

This was 1986, a peak mall year in America. At least one new shopping mall had been built in the United States every year since the 1950s, and 19 opened in 1990 alone. To capture the spirit of the time, Esquire dispatched a writer to the Chicago suburbs to follow two teenage boys on a typical Saturday night of mall cruising. Movies of the era, like “The Blues Brothers” (1980), “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982), “True Stories” (1986), “Clueless” (1995), “Mallrats” (1995) and “Jackie Brown” (1997), included key sequences set within these “cathedrals of consumption,” a term coined by the sociologist George Ritzer to describe large indoor shopping spaces.

If you were remotely involved in the booming consumer culture in those years, you spent hours circling indoor fountains and riding escalators while sucking down an Orange Julius. Even the eternally alienated Joan Didion wrote of buying two straw hats, four bottles of nail enamel and “a toaster, on sale at Sears,” at the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu.

At the time of his return visit in 2015, Mr. Bell had not been to the mall in Owings Mills, Md. — or any shopping mall — in more than a decade. Although he had heard that it was struggling, he was not prepared for what he saw.

“The first moment kind of took my breath away, because it was this entire corridor of nothing,” Mr. Bell said.

The French marble floors still gleamed under artificial light. It wasn’t quite a ruin, but it looked as if a viral outbreak had removed all life from the place.

“They had loud pop music echoing through the mall, and I’m looking down this corridor, and there’s no people, no stores open,” Mr. Bell said. “It was really a sobering moment.”

You can see his hushed reaction in the 10-minute video he filmed that day and posted to YouTube. Owings Mills turned out to be the pilot episode for what Mr. Bell, a 40-year-old filmmaker, has called the “Dead Mall Series” — a visual journey through the Mid-Atlantic States focused on the dying pleasure palaces of his youth.

Others have found creative grist in the dead-mall phenomenon. In her best-selling thriller “Gone Girl,” Gillian Flynn set a scene in a four-story destination mall gone to seed in a Missouri suburb. What was once the beating heart of the community had become “two million square feet of echo.” The author wrote the mall into the novel and kept it in her screenplay for the film adaptation, because, she said: “For kids of the ’80s especially, dead malls have a very strong allure. We were the last of the free-range kids, roaming around malls, not really buying anything, but just looking. To see all those big looming spaces so empty now — it’s a childhood haunting.”

Narrated in a low-key voice-over and set to a downbeat soundtrack of retro-synth Vaporwave music, Mr. Bell’s video shorts pay affectionate tribute to and try to understand a fallen world. They evoke the same fuzzy ’80s nostalgia as the recent time-capsule photo book “Malls Across America” by Michael Galinsky, even as they offer an unsettling visual document of the retail apocalypse that changing consumer habits, e-commerce and economic disparity have wrought. A report issued by Credit Suisse in June predicted that 20 to 25 percent of the more than 1,000 existing enclosed malls in America will close in the next five years.

Though upscale malls in wealthy communities continue to do well, Mr. Bell isn’t interested in those; he visits dead malls, and among the deadest are ones in working-class and rural communities. Filming at the Bristol Mall in Bristol, Va., Mr. Bell discovered 10 stores that remained open in the entire center; the rest of the retail spaces sat empty behind lowered metal gates.

At the Rehoboth Mall in Rehoboth Beach, Del., he met a middle-aged immigrant couple running a clothing alteration business in a space that had once been the food court. Weird moments abound in the series, as when Mr. Bell’s camera fixes on a forgotten corner to underscore the desolation, and then a geriatric mall-walker appears in frame, doing solitary laps.

In his running commentary, Mr. Bell is part affable tour guide (“Heading down this corridor, you can see ahead there, that’s where the Sears used to be”), part mall-architecture buff (“Do I love this vintage brick planter? Yes”) and part baffled Everyman (“There’s no customers, but they have a customer-service desk”).

Watching the “Dead Mall Series” provokes in the viewer a conflicting swirl of emotions. You think of your own happy times in malls and feel sad for the loss, and then feel stupid for getting all emotional about what was an artificial and manipulative experience built around shopping.

Malls are an emotional subject, Mr. Bell has discovered: “The things people write me are incredible. From young people who just love the retro aspect to people who experienced things in malls that are meaningful. First dates, meeting their husband or wife, their first job.”

The short history of malls goes like this: In 1954, Victor Gruen’s Northland Center, often credited as the first modern shopping mall (though earlier examples existed), opens in Southfield, Mich. The suburban location is fitting because the rise of the automobile, helped along by the Federal-Aid Highway Act, led to the widespread creation of large shopping centers away from urban centers. This, among other factors, nearly killed downtowns, and malls reigned supreme for some 40 years. By the 1990s, however, a new urbanism movement revived the urban shopping experience and eroded the dominance of malls. Next, the rise of big box stores and online shopping sounded the death knell for mall culture.

“People who are in the malls, who went to malls, this is the mourning period right now, because we are losing a lot of malls,” Mr. Bell said. “It’s hard for some people.”

In the Marley Station Mall episode, filmed in January in Glen Burnie, Md., Mr. Bell related a personal story. Training his camera on a steel abstract sculpture, he says, “The shoe store was right in front of that sculpture. It’s now a Spencer’s, but at the time it was a Dolcis. And I worked there because my friend managed it. So I stared at that sculpture every single day from work.”

Marley Station was Mr. Bell’s home mall. He could get there in 15 minutes if he managed to swing a ride, an hour if he walked. Like Ms. Flynn and a whole generation of middle and lower-middle-class suburban kids, for Mr. Bell the mall was the place to go. Chess King and Regal Cinema beckoned. “You would sit outside and smoke cigarettes and walk around inside and see who’s there,” Mr. Bell said.

Mr. Bell’s favorite store in the mall was Suncoast Motion Picture Company. He would spend half the afternoon digging through videotapes in the $10 rack and finding weird little cult films like “The Honeymoon Killers” and “Street Trash.” Then he would stroll down to Walden Books and spend more happy hours in the film section.

In those years the mall was derided as an alienating place filled with soulless chain stores, but it was possible to get something of a cultural education there.

“It really fueled the artistic mind that I had but didn’t know how to do anything with,” Mr. Bell said. “Just having access to these films and books and everything the mall had at the time.”

In his later teens Mr. Bell held various jobs at the mall: at Macy’s, at the shoe store, at a leather-goods boutique that sold the brown suede jackets with puffy shoulders that were all the rage at the time.

“I don’t know how I kept my jobs at the mall, because I was never in the store,” Mr. Bell laughed. “I would just go around and talk to everybody. We were all losers, smoking cigarettes, drinking at work, hanging out with working-class, cool, fun people. We all kind of looked out for one another. It made having a crappy job easier.”

In 1996, a blizzard shut everything down. Mr. Bell and a co-worker were stranded inside the mall and spent the night walking the empty interior as the wind howled outside. The experience was a premonition of what he would film 20 years later.

On a recent Friday, Mr. Bell met me at Voorhees Town Center, a mall in central New Jersey that was dealt a blow when an anchor tenant, a Macy’s, closed.

An image of malls in their heyday may be frozen in your mind if you haven’t visited one in a while, and upon entering, the old sense memories rush back: the distinct smell of a department store (here, a Boscov’s), at once fresh and synthetic; the inward thrill upon entering the open main floor; the childlike joy of riding an escalator.

In the 1991 Paul Mazursky comedy “Scenes From a Mall,” shot partly at the Beverly Center in Los Angeles, the main characters, played by Woody Allen and Bette Midler, relive the ups and downs of their marriage as they shop, eat and go to the movies “under the all-embracing roof of this sparkly, neon-glowing shrine to American consumerism,” as the New York Times film critic Vincent Canby described the mall in his review. With apologies to that movie, here is Scenes from Voorhees Town Center:

A bird flies around the mall’s upper level.

Advertising banners show young women smiling and having fun. “Something new starts here,” say the banners, which hide the windows of vacant stores.

A lone man sits in a massage chair, staring at his smartphone in an otherwise shopperless corridor.

The employees of Keith’s Classic Furniture, a secondhand furniture store, discuss the mall’s precise state of deadness. “It’s not quite dead, and it’s not quite alive,” one says to the other. “We’re a zombified mall.”

The most happening part was the food court, which had six remaining restaurants and a small crowd having lunch among the palm trees under a skylight.

“I have not been to a food court this populated in a while,” Mr. Bell said. “In the heyday, you wouldn’t be able to find a seat.”

A large man with short brown hair and a beard, Mr. Bell comes across as wistful for his youth. He agrees that mallgoing was lame in retrospect, but he nevertheless beams when he sees a still-operating fountain.

“I love the smell of pizza and chlorine together,” he said. “It’s like my favorite smell.”

His many visits to dead malls have not, however, aroused in him a renewed desire to be a mall shopper. Like so many, he hasn’t purchased anything in a mall in years. “The stuff that interests me is really not in a mall,” he said. “Plus, it’s a lot cheaper to buy it on Amazon.”

He ordered a slice of pizza and a soda and offered his assessment on Voorhees Town Center. “It seems like there’s a little bit more going on than some of the other malls I’ve been to,” he said. “It’s not completely dead, but it’s definitely getting there.”

His eyes widened when he noticed an older woman leaving the mall with a Great American Cookie box. “Now, see, that is right out of the ’80s,” he said. “That’s an experience I have not seen lately, someone walking out with a Great American Cookie cake. She’s probably getting it for her grandkid.”

Like some archaeologist of retail, Mr. Bell read the “label scars” on the facades of closed storefronts, the marks left behind by the uprooted lettering. One of them had been a Kay Jewelers, he determined.

The upper level had an unlikely mix of tenants, including government offices, a cancer charity, a youth club called the Spot, and the Echelon Mall Ministry. “This is another way malls can redo themselves,” Mr. Bell said. “At one time, this was probably five stores.” Looking at potted flora in the corridor, he noted, “People are taking care of the plants at least.”

For all the time he spends visiting and filming these concrete carcasses, “malls do not make me sad,” Mr. Bell said. In fact, he finds it calming to be in a large building among the familiar sights and smells of his childhood with the air-conditioning cranked high and not many people around. “When I hear about malls that are in the series that have closed, there’s a moment where I’m, like, ‘That’s a shame,’” Mr. Bell said. “But I don’t mourn for malls.”

Instead, like some latter-day Edward Sheriff Curtis, he is visually documenting a culture that is, if not dying out, then surely transforming. As he put it, “So 20 years from now, 30 years from now, people can say, ‘Hey, that mall we used to go to, let’s look it up,’ and there will be a full video of me walking through it and talking about it.”

Only once was Mr. Bell truly unsettled during the course of his work. It happened two years ago, at the Rolling Acres Mall in Akron, Ohio. The place was not dying but fully dead and abandoned. Inside, he got a glimpse of end times. The first thing he heard upon entering the place, he recalled, was frogs singing as loud as could be.

“They were in a pool in the elevator shaft,” Mr. Bell said. “There was a bank of fog hovering midair in the food court. I was, like, ‘You have got to be kidding me.’”

“Who in the ’80s could imagine this?” he added. “Can you imagine filming this and taking it back to the ’80s and saying, ‘This is what’s going to happen in 30 years: There’s going to be a frog in the food court’?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/f...ing-malls.html

















Until next week,

- js.



















Current Week In Review





Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles, press releases, comments, questions etc. in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. The right to publish all remarks is reserved.


"The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public."
- Hugo Black
__________________
Thanks For Sharing
JackSpratts is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 29-07-17, 05:52 AM   #2
theknife
my name is Ranking Fullstop
 
theknife's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Promontorium Tremendum
Posts: 4,391
Default

this is the house that Jack built, y'all
theknife is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - July 30th, '11 JackSpratts Peer to Peer 0 27-07-11 06:58 AM
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - July 16th, '11 JackSpratts Peer to Peer 0 13-07-11 06:43 AM
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - July 9th, '11 JackSpratts Peer to Peer 0 06-07-11 05:36 AM
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - January 30th, '10 JackSpratts Peer to Peer 0 27-01-10 07:49 AM
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 5th, '09 JackSpratts Peer to Peer 0 02-12-09 08:32 AM






All times are GMT -6. The time now is 01:21 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
© www.p2p-zone.com - Napsterites - 2000 - 2024 (Contact grm1@iinet.net.au for all admin enquiries)