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Old 12-03-14, 08:20 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - March 15th, '14

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"Are we going to continue on the road and just allow the governments to do more and more and more control - more and more surveillance - or are we going to set up something like a Magna Carta for the world wide web and say, actually, now it's so important, so much part of our lives, that it becomes on a level with human rights?"." – Tim Berners-Lee






































March 15th, 2014




Popcorn Time Is So Good at Movie Piracy, It’s Scary
Jared Newman

One thing that iTunes, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu have proven is that content makers can fight piracy by providing a better, easier service to paying customers. But what happens when piracy fights back with something just as convenient?

A new app called Popcorn Time raises that very question. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux, Popcorn Time lets you stream the latest movies — including American Hustle, Gravity and Frozen – with just a couple clicks. The software uses BitTorrent to find and download movies, but eliminates the usual hassle of wading through sketchy torrent sites and waiting for the file to finish downloading.

Basically, it’s the version of Netflix that you’ve always wanted — and maybe have been willing to pay extra for — but that Hollywood may never allow. It’s also a flagrant enabler of copyright violation, at least in the United States.
Popcorn Time

Popcorn Time’s creators are quick to acknowledge the legal dangers. A disclaimer, warning that it may be illegal in your country to download copyrighted material, appears on the Popcorn Time website and again in the app itself. Movie studios have been known to monitor torrent traffic and sue individual file sharers, so Popcorn Time isn’t necessarily safe unless you’re using a virtual private network to mask your whereabouts.

But the creators aren’t particularly worried about the movie industry hounding them. “We don’t expect legal issues,” a developer named Sebastian told TorrentFreak. “We don’t host anything, and none of the developers makes any money. There are no ads, no premium accounts, and no subscription fees or anything like that. It’s an experiment to learn and share.”

I have a feeling Hollywood will try its best to attack Popcorn Time, but as a free, open-source project, it’s going to be tough to take down. The developers have shown that movie piracy can be intuitive and user-friendly. If movie studios can’t break down the release windows and old business models that prevent new movies from being available on-demand, they should be very afraid of apps like Popcorn Time.
http://time.com/18867/popcorn-time-i...acy-its-scary/





Popcorn Time App Shuts Down Amid Threats of Video Piracy
Aaron Pressman

Popcorn Time, we hardly knew ya.

Just a few days after the new app arrived on the scene with its incredibly easy to use interface giving users acces to the entire Internet storehouse of illegally uploaded movies and TV shows, it has shut down.

The authors of the Netflix-like (NFLX) software have not identified themselves but appear to have explained the shutdown in an anonymous post on Medium under an account where they had earlier touted the software's availability.

"Our experiment has put us at the doors of endless debates about piracy and copyright, legal threats and the shady machinery that makes us feel in danger for doing what we love. And that’s not a battle we want a place in," the unknown authors wrote in a March 14 post. The authenticity of the post could not be confirmed. But a check of the app did show the service was no longer operating.

Thousands of current movies and TV shows are available on the Internet in downloadable digital files via the file sharing network called BitTorrent. But watching the pirated shows requires sorting through various files of unknown quality and downloading them entirely to a computer or other device, a process that can take 10 to 20 minutes or more.

Popcorn Time presented a friendly front end displaying pirated movies and, with a single click, streamed the content instantly onto the user's computer screen. The software included warnings that its use might not be legal in some countries.

Once major media outlets, including Yahoo Finance, publicized the app's capabilities, usage spiked, as did angry rhetoric from copyright holders in Hollywood. Downloading of the app itself was interrupted and then restored earlier this week due to a change in the web site where it resided, but the service was operating for those who had the app until Friday.
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-e...194137379.html





Aereo's Internet TV Service in Denver and Salt Lake City Shuts Down Today
Richard Lawler

Aereo's streams in Denver and Salt Lake City hung on for a while after the US District Court of Utah granted its opponents a preliminary injunction on February 20th, but today they're shutting off. Yesterday a panel of federal court judges denied Aereo's request to stay the injunction while it appeals, claiming "Aereo has not made a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal. Nor has Aereo demonstrated that the other factors weigh in its favor." As a result, the antenna-to-streaming company has informed affected customers service will go dark today at 10am. For now, it's looking forward to the upcoming Supreme Court case to affirm its belief that the service is legal, and issuing a refund for this month's service for anyone living in those two markets. Aereo's hearing is set to take place April 22nd -- check out CEO Chet Kanojia's message to customers after the break.

[Thanks, Marc]

A message from Aereo's Founder & CEO:

On February 25, the District Court in Utah granted a preliminary injunction against Aereo in the Tenth Circuit of the United States, which includes Utah and Colorado. On March 7, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals denied, 2:1, Aereo's request to stay that injunction. This means that for the time being, we will have to cease providing our services to you, our valued customers in the Salt Lake City and Denver markets, beginning at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, March 8.

We are extremely disappointed that the District Court in Utah has chosen to take a different path than every other Court that has reviewed the Aereo technology.

Consumers have a fundamental right to watch over-the-air broadcast television via a modern antenna and to record copies for their personal use. The Copyright Act provides no justification to curtail that right simply because the consumer is using modern, remotely located equipment.

We are very sorry for the effect that this decision has on you and we look forward to presenting our case to the U.S. Supreme Court and ultimately restoring your ability to use Aereo. In the meantime, we are issuing a full refund for the current month to you, our customers in Salt Lake City and Denver. We commit to letting you know as soon as we have more information about the future of Aereo in your market.

We are unwavering in our belief that Aereo's technology falls squarely within the law and we look forward to continuing to serve you. This is an ongoing battle, but together we can to protect innovation, progress, and consumer choice.

http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/08/a...tion-shutdown/





Press Release

Recent Study Cites 374% More File Sharing Activity on ISPs Not Participating in Rightscorp's Digital Loss Prevention Service

Study Shows Additional Value to Rights Holders of Company's Copyright Monetization Service

SANTA MONICA, Calif., March 10, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rightscorp (RIHT) a leading provider of monetization services for artists and holders of copyrighted Intellectual Property (IP), announced the results of a recent study which showed that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) not utilizing Rightscorp's monetization service experienced 374% more copyright infringing file sharing on their networks versus those that participate with Rightscorp.

A 374% increase for ISPs not using Rightscorp's service shows the value that Rightscorp provides. This recent study demonstrates that Rightscorp's monitoring services directly lead to the reduction of illegal content that is distributed through ISPs' bandwidth traffic. This equates to lower traffic/bandwidth expense for ISPs and lower maintenance costs with a reduction in illegal file sharing, benefitting participating ISPs as well as their subscriber base.

According to Online Piracy Statistics -- Infographic, 22% of all Internet traffic violate copyrights, and the monitoring of such activities would be a significant cost savings for ISPs. Through Rightscorp's proprietary service for identifying and notifying ISPs on repeat copyright infringers, ISPs will receive a notice with all the information of the copyright infringer, which is then forwarded to the infringer.

Additionally, Rightscorp helps ISPs maintain compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright ACT (DMCA). Under the DMCA, ISPs are required to make a reasonable effort to curtail illegal activity on their networks. ISPs are given "Safe Harbor" Protection as long as once the ISPs are notified of a copyright infringement, they forward the notice to their customer, and otherwise they can be held liable. From a cost and operations perspective, a legal perspective, and a better working relationship with content providers perspective, ISPs utilizing Rightscorp's monetization service is a smart decision.

"This is just the latest objective evidence on the effectiveness of Rightscorp's monetization service," said Christopher Sabec, CEO of Rightscorp. "As we continue adding to our copyright inventory and collecting on IP infringements, we think other ISPs will be compelled to cooperate with our Company. More and more, ISPs are beginning to recognize the high potential cost of not cooperating in the prevention of IP theft, which could leave them liable for damages of $150,000 per infringement notice and potentially force their closure."

Rightscorp COO and CTO Robert Steele stated, "Currently, 50 of the 1,800 ISPs in the U.S. participate in Rightscorp's services. This represents roughly 10% of US households, leaving room for growth and improvement. We have approval to represent over 1,000,000 copyrights and are loading thousands into our system every month. We have closed over 60,000 cases of infringement for our customers and collections from unauthorized file sharing are growing rapidly and we believe the growth rate in cooperating ISPs will continue to accelerate with our closed cases and represented copyrights."
http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-...10-902935.html





Hollywood's Copyright Lobbyists Are Like Exes Who Won't Give Up

SOPA's sneaking back.
Marvin Ammori

You know when you break up with someone and they just don’t get the message? A few months later, they’re trying again, testing the waters with a few small things that just keep getting bigger. They friend you again on Facebook. They start liking your posts. They show up at a party they expect you to be at. They ask you for drinks, just to “catch up,” you know? And then they talk about the way things used to be, and if only you two could try again. And you’re like, “What part of ‘I never want you to be a part of my life’ did you not understand?”

The copyright lobbyists in D.C. are following this ex-boyfriend playbook.

Let’s begin with the breakup. Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Tumblr, YouTube, Reddit, WordPress, and Facebook aren’t responsible for the copyright infringement of each of their millions of users, so long as they take down specific posts, videos, or images when notified by copyright holders. But copyright holders thought that wasn’t good enough. They wanted to take down whole websites, not just particular posts, and without ever going to court. In 2011, they proposed a bill that would let them do just that.

It was called SOPA.

Over the course of several months, the Internet community made it clear that, no, SOPA was not going to happen. On one day in January 2012, Reddit, Wikipedia, Google, and thousands of other websites blacked out their services or otherwise protested the bill. Millions of people called their representatives. In response to this movement, Congress dropped the bill—indefinitely. Message delivered.

But now the copyright lobbyists seem to be testing the waters again. Rather than introduce another bill, they are talking about “voluntary” commitments among copyright-holders and payment processors, advertisers, and others. And they talk about these commitments in hearings and little information-gathering events—the equivalent of an ex just trying to catch up over drinks.

This Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee, the folks in Congress who wrote SOPA, will hold a hearing about the DMCA notice-and-takedown procedure, which is one of the cornerstones of digital copyright law—and which SOPA would have gutted. But that’s not all. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has scheduled a “multistakeholder forum” to discuss “improving the operation of the DMCA notice and takedown system” for next month: another chance to build some voluntary consensus.

Copyright lobbyists just can’t get over the breakup; they want SOPA back. Already, they have made some Game of Thrones-esque alliances with payment processors and advertisers to pressure the tech companies they want to squeeze. Recently, I spoke to Andrew Bridges, a copyright lawyer in Silicon Valley and a partner at Fenwick & West. He said that he’s been involved in four cases in which payment processors or advertisers cut off a tech company—merely because a large copyright holder complained, without a single legal order, to the payments company or advertiser. Sometimes, the copyright holder was in the middle of litigation with his client, and the “voluntary agreement” with the advertiser or payment company was used for extra leverage. Other times, he came to believe that the copyright holder just didn’t like the industry his client was in—cloud storage, say, or virtual private networking.

The clearest public indicator of Hollywood’s intentions, though, came through at one of the last House Judiciary Committee hearings, a few months ago. It was called “The Role of Voluntary Agreements in the U.S. Intellectual Property System.” Each of the Hollywood representatives who testified at the hearing argued in favor of brokering voluntary agreements, often with the same content as SOPA. The recording industry’s top lobbyist told Congress that “legislative options” are great but that voluntary agreements may even be “much more effective.” More effective, he means, at avoiding the established legal framework and targeting websites without proving a thing in court.

These voluntary agreements are bad, bad news for two reasons.

One is the substance. It’s essentially a “voluntary” SOPA, and SOPA was bad substance. With these voluntary agreements, copyright holders can starve websites of their funding, strip them of their domain names, and remove them from search. The sites at risk include those that enable users to store and share content—if even a fraction of those users might violate copyright. So these agreements can threaten free expression and innovation online for all of us, just to target a few infringers.

The other problem is the process. Users certainly won’t be in the business development meetings where big companies are crafting “voluntary agreements.” We won’t be in the room when copyright holders whisper into the ears of their partners in the payments and advertising fields. Unlike a court of law, there will be no evidence in open court, no established processes, no published decisions, no opportunity to appeal. Our freedom to visit sites and share our thoughts might be drastically curtailed, while we won’t have a seat at the table. These agreements might be “voluntary” for the companies involved, but they’re arranged marriages for the rest of us.

Replacing the current legal framework with shadowy agreements won’t be good for anyone, except the companies who need to keep their intentions in the shadows.

Update, March 11, 2014: Disclosure: The author represented Google and other companies fighting SOPA/PIPA in 2011 and 2012. He currently represents Google and other companies on several issues, including copyright reform. These views are his own.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_te..._exes_who.html





Song Download Link Extraction from the Web (How it Works)
AbhishekBiswal

Hey. I stumbled upon this website which lets you search for a song by its name, and then displays its download link. It's cool, but I wanted to know how it worked. Sure, this guy did a lot of work, but when asked, he refused to answer.

Okay, so breaking it down. I did a check. First, the search sends a request to search.php?item=variable which throws data in JSON format ( http://cdn2.mysong.ga/search.php?term=test ).

The way it is set up : the variable names, etc. it looks like he's using some API to search, after that the download link is ( http://cdn1.mysong.ga/get.php?which=1&tt=yo&source=b ), which directly downloads the song. the 'which' here is the song listing in the search.

And, I found out that there are two sources : source 'a' and 'b', songs in source a are hindi/bollywood songs, and source b are 'world music'.

If you guys can find out which API / how this whole thing is working.

P.S. : I need a similar functionality in one of my project.

API Availability : Spotify / Rdio / other APIs aren't available in India, in addition to that, the websites allows you to download music for free.

Website URL : http://mysong.ga/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7398310





Share MP3s and Other Non-Standard Files Between Android Devices with File Beam

The File Beam app lets you share non-standard files (such as MP3s) between two Android devices via NFC.
Jack Wallen

Near Field Communication (NFC) allows you to easily send files, apps, and information from one Android device to another, by simply touching the two devices together. The technology is astounding, but sometimes frustrating.

What happens when you want to share, say, a song between two devices? Royalties notwithstanding, you open that song up in your music player, tap two NFC-enabled devices together and what happens? You beam your music player app from one device to the other. What about the song? This file sharing method works perfectly if you're viewing, say, an image in the Gallery app. But not certain types of files.

That's where File Beam comes in handy. You can install this app from the Google Play Store. Install that app and you're almost ready to go.

Before sharing a file, enabled NFC on both the sending and receive phones. Most newer devices ship with NFC enabled, so that should be a problem. But just in case, open up Settings, tap More under Wireless and Networks, and then Tap NFC if it is disabled.
Once you've installed File Beam and have NFC turned on, you're ready to beam any kind of file that shows up with a Share option. The easiest method is to use a file manager like Astro File Manager.

1. Navigate through the folder hierarchy until you find the file you want to share.
2. Long-press the file and tap Share. From the resulting Share menu, tap Beam File.
3. Touch the two Android devices together and you'll be prompted to tap the screen to initiate the beaming process.
4. Keep the devices together until the beam is complete.

That's it! Of course, beaming standard files (such as images, contacts, and apps) is as simple as tapping to NFC-enabled devices together and tapping the sending screen to start the beam. But when you're looking to beam non-standard files, File Beam is the way to go.
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...ith-file-beam/





Amazon Working on Music-Streaming Service

To spur song purchases, limits would be placed on listening
Hannah Karp and Greg Bensinger

Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.46% is hoping to offer an on-demand music-streaming service to customers of its Amazon Prime program, but it may limit how much a person can listen to any given song, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Seattle-based company has held negotiations with record companies and music publishers seeking to license their music for the planned service, but it remains far apart from some record companies on financial terms, these people said.

An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment.

The music service is one of several new features that Amazon may add as it raises the price of Prime to as much as $119 a year. Customers of Prime currently pay $79 a year for unlimited two-day shipping and access to a video-streaming service similar to Netflix Inc. NFLX -0.56% But the online retailer is also looking for a way to buoy download sales at its MP3 store, according to people familiar with the company's thinking. In theory, the limited-time streaming would encourage fans to purchase music they like once their streaming windows expire.

Amazon has been toying with a streaming-music service for several years as it has watched the rise of Pandora Media Inc., P -4.71% Spotify AB and others, according to people familiar with the plans.

Amazon has told record companies it would pay them out of a fixed pool of money, according to people familiar with the matter, instead of compensating them based on how often users listen to their songs. Music companies are seeking to withhold their newest music from the service, a person familiar with the matter said, though details were unclear as the negotiations are in process. The retailer has told some music companies that it plans to impose time limits on how long a user can listen to a given song or album on the service. The average duration of that limit couldn't be learned.

Several weeks ago Amazon told one music-rights holder that it planned to offer record companies a total of $20 million to add their music on a limited basis for Prime customers.

Billboard, the music industry publication, reported this week that Amazon had offered record labels a total of $30 million. Of that, it said, $25 million would be divvied up among the three major companies: Vivendi SA VIV.FR -0.27% 's Universal Music Group,

Amazon plans to offer music publishers—who hold the rights to compositions, as distinct from recordings—21% of what record companies receive, according to a person familiar with the matter. On-demand streaming companies like Spotify and Rdio use that same rate, in conjunction with other variables, to determine what they pay in publishing royalties, while Internet radio services, which offer a non-interactive experience, pay lower rates. Pandora, for example, pays publishers about 7% of what it pays record labels, though that percentage varies significantly according to Pandora's revenue and number of plays.

Some record companies and music publishers have long lobbied Amazon to bundle music into Prime, according to people familiar with the matter, and have been in talks with Amazon for years about what shape its streaming offering might take.

The music industry doesn't want a free service that would compete directly with paid subscription services like Spotify AB, Beats Music and Google Inc. GOOG -0.96% 's All Access, which offer unlimited access to 20-million-plus song catalogs for about $10 a month and represent a fast growing chunk of record companies' income.

Instead, Amazon's planned offering would be similar in its aim to Apple Inc. AAPL +0.97% 's iTunes Radio, which serves up music based on a users' input, like Pandora, but features prominent "Buy" buttons.

Limited-time streaming could similarly encourage customers to buy music. The offering could pose a challenge for subscription services if it spurs more Amazon Prime customers to listen to and buy their music solely on Amazon instead of subscribing elsewhere for more extensive access.

Amazon said in January it may bump up the price of its Prime program by $20 to $40 annually to help offset the costs of shipping merchandise as well as streaming-video rights.
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_e...MDEwMTExNDEyWj





Rate Court Judge Rules Pandora Will Pay ASCAP 1.85% Annual Revenue
Ed Christman

In what is being viewed as a defeat for songwriters, the ASCAP/Pandora rate court judge has decided that Pandora will pay the performance rights organization a rate of 1.85% of annual revenue.

"This rate is a clear defeat for songwriters," Sony/ATV Music CEO Martin Bandier says. "This rate is woefully inadequate and further emphasizes the need for reform in the rate court proceedings. Songwriters can't live in a world where streaming services only pay 1.85% of their revenue. This is a loss, and not something we can live with."

The PROs and the large music publishers have reached out to the U.S. Department of Justice asking them to review the consent decrees that ASCAP and BMI operate under. For the last 18 months, the large publishers have been trying to withdraw just their digital rights from the PROs but the courts have ruled against the publishers, saying that they are either "all in or all out."

When the rate case was being heard, Pandora argued that the rate should be in the range of 1.7% on the low-end and 1.85% on the high end, while ASCAP's lawyers made the case that the rate should be 1.85% for the first two years; 2.5% for 2013 and 3% in 2014 and 2015.

Instead of giving ASCAP, the American Society of Composers and the rate increases it asked for the last three years, the court went with the rate Pandora has been paying for the last few years. In a statement, ASCAP noted that while the Judge Cote did not fully adopt the escalating rate structure that ASCAP sought, she also rejected Pandora's argument that it should get the 1.7% rate that the Radio Music Licensing Committee has negotiated for terrestrial radio's digital webcasts.

ASCAP CEO John LoFrumento said that ASCAP is pleased that the court recognized the need for Pandora to pay a higher rate than traditional radio stations.

"But recent agreements negotiated without the artificial constraints of a consent decree make clear that the market rate for Internet radio is substantially higher than 1.85%," LoFrumento added. "And today’s decision further demonstrates the need to review the entire regulatory structure, including the decades-old consent decrees that govern PRO licensing, to ensure they reflect the realities of today’s music landscape.

By recent agreements, LoFrumento was apparently referring to the 10% of revenue rate that sources say Apple agreed to pay publishers in direct deals -- and also to ASCAP and BMI -- for its Pandora-like service, iTunes Radio. If the BMI/Pandora rate court judge makes a similar ruling -- that trial was recently completed and the parties are awaiting a decision -- that likely means Pandora's rate to the music publishing industry will remain about 4% of its revenue.

"This is a very sad day for America's songwriters and music publishers," National Music Publishers' Assn. president David Israelite said in a statement. "The decision confirms that songwriters will never be paid fairly under World War II era consent decrees."

While Pandora declined to comment, a source in the digital service camp says that Judge Cote's decision is "an unqualified victory" for the digital service.

Meanwhile, LoFrumento said that ASCAP remains committed to working with all "music industry stakeholders to create a system that preserves the benefit of collective licensing to businesses seeking music licenses," while giving consumers greater access to music and working toward getting true value for the music created and/or owned by the 500,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers ASCAP represents.

“Streaming is growing in popularity -- and so is the value of music on that platform," LoFrumento said.
http://www.billboard.com/biz/article...cap-185-annual





Next-Gen “Archival Disc” Will Squeeze 1TB of Data Onto Optical Discs

Sony and Panasonic developing AD for "professional use"; 300GB-per-disc by 2015.
Andrew Cunningham

There are plans to scale the format's capacity from 300GB in 2015 to 1TB at some point in the future.

Move over, Blu-ray: Sony and Panasonic have just announced a new optical disc specification with even higher storage capacities. The new "Archival Disc" format promises to store between six and 20 times the data of a standard 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray disc. Unlike Blu-ray, this new format is intended primarily for professional, archival use. The companies first announced that they would be working on this then-nameless standard together in July of 2013.

"Optical discs have excellent properties to protect themselves against the environment, such as dust-resistance and water-resistance, and can also withstand changes in temperature and humidity when stored," reads the release. "They also allow inter-generational compatibility between different formats, ensuring that data can continue to be read even as formats evolve. This makes them robust media for long-term storage of content."

First-wave Archival Discs are slated to launch in summer of 2015 and will be able to hold up to 300GB of data. By comparison, the largest commonly available Blu-Ray discs use the 100GB and 128GB BDXL format. Archival Discs will apparently be double-sided, so this works out to 150GB of data per side. Future versions of the technology will improve storage density, increasing to 500GB (or 250GB per side) and 1TB (500GB per side) as the standard matures.

It's possible that this technology could come to consumers at some point—we'll eventually start seeing more 4K content as TVs that use the standard begin to replace their 720p and 1080p predecessors. However, streaming video services combined with new, more efficient video codecs may reduce the need for this kind of high-capacity optical disc in the home. Blu-ray sales aren't growing fast enough to make up for the continuing decline in DVD sales, and an even more expensive, higher-capacity storage medium is unlikely to reverse this trend.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/...optical-discs/





Comcast Lobbyist Cohen Meets His Match in FCC's Wheeler
Alina Selyukh and Liana B. Baker

Comcast Corp's top lobbyist David Cohen is known to be a savvy political operator, having pushed through the No. 1 U.S. cable operator's landmark acquisition of media giant NBC Universal in 2011.

But when it comes to getting approval for Comcast to buy its biggest rival, Time Warner Cable Inc, Cohen must win over someone just as well versed in the ways of lobbyists and the cable industry: Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Wheeler headed the cable trade group from 1979 to 1984 and ran the wireless industry association from 1992 to 2004. Since taking over the FCC last November, however, he has not shied away from stances that have roiled past allies.

One of his most attention-grabbing moves was in February, when Wheeler publicly expressed skepticism about a potential merger between wireless carriers Sprint Corp and T-Mobile U.S. Inc.

"You can't kid a kidder. Having been a lobbyist, he knows all their tricks," Blair Levin, a fellow at the Washington-based nonprofit Aspen Institute, said of Wheeler.

Comcast will formally request an FCC review of the $45.2 billion Time Warner Cable deal later in March. The combined company will cover just under 30 percent of the U.S. pay television video market and about 33 percent of the high-speed Internet market, according to MoffettNathanson Research.

Wheeler and other FCC officials have declined to comment on the proposed merger before seeing the details. Even privately, Wheeler has given few hints of his views, leaving all options on the table, FCC sources say.

"All we can ask for is a full, fair, and open hearing - and I think Chairman Wheeler's message is that is what we will get," Cohen told Reuters in February.

Cohen, 59, has yet to meet with Wheeler, 67, about the review, but the Comcast executive vice president has made the rounds at the FCC, asking staff to keep an open mind even as some lawmakers and public interest groups criticize the merger.

Opponents say the combined company will have too much power over what Americans can watch on television and do online. Comcast says it will not take away any existing choices from consumers, and will instead lead to faster broadband speeds and serve businesses better.

POWER BROKERS

Comcast ranks among the top-ten corporate influencers in Washington, having spent $18.8 million on lobbying last year, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Cohen and Wheeler do not know each other well, according to Cohen, but their paths have crossed in senior political and industry circles.

Both men are supporters of President Barack Obama, each helping to raise more than half a million dollars for his re-election campaign in 2012, according to disclosures.

Wheeler advised Obama on tech policy, and the president has called him "the Bo Jackson of telecom" because of Wheeler's history in the cable and wireless industries. Jackson is the only athlete to be named an All-Star in two major American sports, baseball and football.

Cohen, too, is no stranger to Obama's White House. Visitor logs put Cohen, who is not a registered lobbyist, there for meetings and receptions 14 times since 2010, including twice at the Oval Office.

People who know Cohen and Wheeler describe them in similar terms: steady negotiators with a strong grasp of the issues at stake, as well as the players at the table.

Cohen "goes to a meeting and knows exactly who is going to be there and what are their dislikes, strengths, and weaknesses, positioning, what they've done for him and how much they've helped him," said a former colleague who requested anonymity.

A long-time Philadelphia power broker, Cohen in the 1990s was the closest aide to then Mayor Ed Rendell, who turned around the city's budget deficit and battled labor unions over cost cuts. Cohen is known as a fixer who keeps binders full of data at his fingertips.

Colleagues of Wheeler, a published historian, also highlight his subject expertise.

"He knows these issues like the back of his hand," one FCC official who works with Wheeler said of the chairman. "He knows how the business runs. He knows these people, he knows what they think and what policies they want."

As FCC chairman, Wheeler has publicly and repeatedly stated his "unabashed" support for competition. He has also hired a heavyweight consumer advocate, Gigi Sohn, as a senior adviser.

DEAL'S FATE IN FCC'S HANDS

The Justice Department and the FCC are expected to take months to review the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger, focusing on antitrust and public interest concerns respectively.

Comcast has tried to ease the way for the deal with a range of commitments, some of them extensions of the promises it made as part of the NBC Universal acquisition. For instance, Comcast said it would divest about 3 million subscribers, preserve so-called net neutrality and extend a discounted Internet service program.

TV and Internet content companies say they are formulating their strategies on dealing with the proposed merger of the two largest cable service providers. Some are interviewing lobby shops to potentially use their help to win concessions from Comcast related to carrying their content.

"In the longer run there are some questions on competition that any deal like this will look at, the government will look at and make sure the appropriate conditions are in place to optimize competition," Time Warner Inc Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes said at a conference on Tuesday.

(Corrects paragraph 14 to say Bo Jackson was an all-star in baseball, not basketball)

(Reporting by Alina Selyukh in Washington and Liana B. Baker in New York; Editing by Christian Plumb and Tiffany Wu)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...A2B1WA20140312





FCC Approves AT&T's Purchase of Leap Wireless, Says it's 'In the Public Interest'
Chris Welch

The Federal Communications Commission has approved AT&T's acquisition of Leap Wireless, the company that operates the popular Cricket brand of prepaid wireless service. Acknowledging that an unchecked deal could've harmed the public interest, the FCC says concessions and commitments made by AT&T have effectively counterbalanced any major concerns. Many of them focus on south Texas and southwestern markets where Cricket holds a strong footprint. "We find that the public interest benefits of the proposed transaction outweigh the likelihood of significant public interest harms, such that overall, the proposed transaction is in the public interest," the commission said.

We've gone over what the deal means for consumers previously, but in short, AT&T just picked up 5 million new customers and is expected to use Leap's assets to bolster its network capacity in larger markets. The acquisition also gives AT&T a strong presence in the prepaid market. On the other side, Cricket's customers will gain access to a significantly larger LTE network.

But it didn't come without some negotiating. As part of the deal, AT&T has agreed to divest spectrum in certain markets. The second-largest US carrier will also deploy LTE service using unused Leap spectrum "within 90 days or 12 months of closing." And since Cricket was a popular choice for consumers seeking a cheap way into mobile service, AT&T has agreed "to offer certain rate plans targeted to help value-conscious and Lifeline customers." The FCC says these and other commitments ensure AT&T will have "every incentive to provide higher quality service" after scooping up Leap. The approval also calls for AT&T to provide the commission with quarterly reports on the status of its commitments (included below) and the migration of Leap’s customers.

• Spectrum divestitures in certain markets, which will help ensure that AT&T’s competitors have access to spectrum.

• Deploy LTE service using unused Leap spectrum within 90 days or 12 months of closing, which will ensure that that spectrum is being deployed and that consumers in the current Leap service areas will benefit from network improvements to AT&T’s advanced 4G network technologies.

• Build out LTE service in six specific markets in south Texas within 18 months, which will ensure that consumers in those markets have access to advanced 4G services.

• Offer certain rate plans targeted to help value-conscious and Lifeline customers.

• Offer a device trade-in credit program and a feature phone device trade-in program to certain Leap customers prior to discontinuing CDMA service in a particular area in order to ensure that Leap customers have future access to wireless service.

• Honor existing CDMA roaming agreements that AT&T is assuming from Leap so long as it operates the CDMA network.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/13/55...-leap-wireless





Here's The Technology That's Going To Make Your Phone's Internet 1,000 Times Faster Than 4G
Kyle Russell

In today's world, there's one area of technology that can almost never be fast enough: the wireless networks that power our mobile devices.

Despite decades of advancements, we still lose signal when walking around in a big city like New York or San Francisco.

Or when attending a popular sporting event — individual towers just can't handle thousands of people trying to move data at once.

But a hot startup with some major engineering talent is hoping to change all of that.

Founded in 2011, Artemis is a startup working on pCell, a new wireless standard that it thinks could leapfrog 4G altogether.

Like any new, potentially disruptive technology, pCell has a ton of hype and uncertainty around it. We've put together the following guide to pCell for those who want to know more without any of the confusion or tricky marketing language.

What is pCell?

Cell towers as we know them today can be visualized as giant umbrella tops. You deploy them, and they broadcast a bubble of reception that gets weaker as you get farther away. They have to be far enough away from each other so as to not cause interference, but close enough together that you can move between their areas of coverage and still have cell service. If you have too many people in one place, their data use can bog down a tower for everyone.

Artemis' technology takes a very different direction. Rather than carefully spacing out a relatively small number of towers, Artemis wants to deploy a massive number of boxes the size of routers — called "pWaves" — that will provide much better service to a much smaller area.

Rather than working against interference, pCell embraces the collision of radio waves. By combining the incoming signals from several of the pWave base stations, each pCell user is given the equivalent of their own "personal cell" (hence the name) — which basically means getting full bars of LTE at all times becomes the new standard, while "good" signal strength means getting a signal that's as much as 1,000 times faster than what we're all used to.

How is pCell better than 4G or LTE?

Besides speed and signal strength, it uses a lot less power. pWave radios use a 1-milliwatt transmitter to deliver data, compared with the 250 milliwatts used by most Wi-Fi radios and even larger amounts of power used by cellular towers.

They also use less power on the user's end, too: phones as they exist today would waste far less power searching for a signal, and one day "pCell Native" devices could use parts that use even less power than the Wi-Fi chips built into devices like the iPod Touch today.

Going back to the carrier side of things, pCell also brings significant reductions in the amount of infrastructure needed to power a cell network. Unlike cell towers, which need a massive fiber infrastructure to provide enough bandwidth for all their users, pWaves can be deployed in enough locations that each unit can "see" another unit, meaning they can bounce data around using line-of-sight radio waves for far less money. And instead of using custom hardware to handle all signal processing, a carrier using pCell can run the software behind it on any sufficiently powerful Linux computer.

Will I need a new phone to use pCell?

Nope. To make adopting the technology as easy as possible, Artemis engineered pCell to work with regular LTE devices — so when it's ready, your iPhone or Android device should already be compatible. That also means you'll be able to use your phone on a pCell network and still have it work when you go somewhere that's still running regular LTE cellular service.

With that said, there will be some devices made "pCell Native" that will use less power (and thus get better battery life) than regular LTE-compatible devices.

How long until I can use pCell?

The first consumer launch of pCell is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2014, with the initial rollout taking place in San Francisco. Artemis is working with a wireless partner to deploy pWaves to as many as 350 rooftops in the city, which should be more than enough to blanket the city — for the lucky few who get to try it out, that is.

From there, Artemis says that full pCell deployment will begin at some point early next year. In a demo last month at Columbia University, Artemis CEO Steve Perlman claimed that the technology could be deployed in all major markets by the end of 2015, but we're doubtful; even the most exciting technologies need to prove themselves before companies will be willing to spend billions building them out into their nationwide infrastructures.
http://www.businessinsider.com/every...#ixzz2vksMg1qB





Facebook CEO Zuckerberg Phoned Obama to Complain About Spying
Alexei Oreskovic

Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg blasted the U.S. government's electronic surveillance practices on Thursday, saying he'd personally called President Barack Obama to voice his displeasure.

"When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government," Zuckerberg said in a post on his personal Facebook page.

"I've called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform," the 29-year-old Zuckerberg continued.

The phone call and Zuckerberg's 300-word missive on Thursday come amid a series of revelations about controversial government surveillance practices that were leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

"The president spoke last night with Mark Zuckerberg about recent reports in the press about alleged activities by the U.S. intelligence community," a White House official said.

The official declined further comment and referred to the National Security Agency's statement released earlier on Thursday saying recent media reports that allege the NSA has infected million of computers around the world malware and that the NSA is impersonating U.S. social media or other websites are inaccurate.

Facebook, which operates the world's No. 1 Internet social network with 1.2 billion users, declined to comment beyond Zuckerberg's post.

Secret documents published on news website The Intercept on Wednesday showed that the NSA impersonated Facebook web pages in order to gather information from targets. When those people thought they were logging into Facebook, they were actually communicating with the NSA. The agency then used malicious code on the fake page to break into the targets' computers and remove data from them.

Last year, Facebook moved to encrypt all its pages, making such impersonation more difficult.

Previous media reports based on leaked Snowden documents detail how the government may have tapped into communications cables that link data centers owned by Google Inc and Yahoo Inc, intercepting user data without the companies' knowledge or cooperation.

"The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they're doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst," Zuckerberg said in his post.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; additional reporting by Mark Felsenthal in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Leslie Adler)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...A2C27920140313





You Know Who Else Collected Metadata? The Stasi

Republished from ProPublica under a Creative Commons license.
Julia Angwin, ProPublica

The East German secret police, known as the Stasi, were an infamously intrusive secret police force. They amassed dossiers on about one quarter of the population of the country during the Communist regime.

But their spycraft — while incredibly invasive — was also technologically primitive by today's standards. While researching my book Dragnet Nation, I obtained the above hand drawn social network graph and other files from the Stasi Archive in Berlin, where German citizens can see files kept about them and media can access some files, with the names of the people who were monitored removed.

The graphic shows forty-six connections, linking a target to various people (an "aunt," "Operational Case Jentzsch," presumably Bernd Jentzsch, an East German poet who defected to the West in 1976), places ("church"), and meetings ("by post, by phone, meeting in Hungary").

Gary Bruce, an associate professor of history at the University of Waterloo and the author of "The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi," helped me decode the graphic and other files. I was surprised at how crude the surveillance was. "Their main surveillance technology was mail, telephone, and informants," Bruce said.

Another file revealed a low-level surveillance operation called an IM-vorgang aimed at recruiting an unnamed target to become an informant. (The names of the targets were redacted; the names of the Stasi agents and informants were not.) In this case, the Stasi watched a rather boring high school student who lived with his mother and sister in a run-of-the-mill apartment. The Stasi obtained a report on him from the principal of his school and from a club where he was a member. But they didn't have much on him — I've seen Facebook profiles with far more information.

A third file documented a surveillance operation known as an OPK, for Operative Personenkontrolle, of a man who was writing oppositional poetry. The Stasi deployed three informants against him but did not steam open his mail or listen to his phone calls. The regime collapsed before the Stasi could do anything further.

I also obtained a file that contained an "observation report," in which Stasi agents recorded the movements of a forty-year-old man for two days — September 28 and 29, 1979. They watched him as he dropped off his laundry, loaded up his car with rolls of wallpaper, and drove a child in a car "obeying the speed limit," stopping for gas and delivering the wallpaper to an apartment building. The Stasi continued to follow the car as a woman drove the child back to Berlin.

The Stasi agent appears to have started following the target at 4:15 p.m. on a Friday evening. At 9:38 p.m., the target went into his apartment and turned out the lights. The agent stayed all night and handed over surveillance to another agent at 7:00 a.m. Saturday morning. That agent appears to have followed the target until 10:00 p.m. From today's perspective, this seems like a lot of work for very little information.

And yet, the Stasi files are an important reminder of what a repressive regime can do with so little information. You can view the complete files at ProPublica.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...ta-stasi.shtml





Kill the Snowden Interview, Congressman Tells SXSW

Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo wants organizers of South by Southwest Interactive to back out of their scheduled video conference interview of Edward Snowden.
Seth Rosenblatt

A member of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Pompeo, published an open letter to South by Southwest Interactive conference organizers on Friday demanding that they rescind their invitation to Edward Snowden.

Pompeo, R-Kan., said he was "deeply troubled" by the scheduled video appearance of Snowden, whom he described as lacking the credentials to authoritatively speak on issues pertaining to "privacy, surveillance, and online monitoring."

Snowden is scheduled to speak by video conferencing on Monday at 11 a.m. CT with Christopher Soghoian, a privacy advocate and principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, who will be onstage at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Moderated by Ben Wizner, the director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, Snowden is expected to answer audience questions.

The panel, "A Virtual Conversation with Edward Snowden," will focus on the impact of the NSA spying revelations and how technology can be used to protect privacy.

Snowden's "only apparent qualification," Pompeo wrote, "is his willingness to steal from his own government and then flee to that beacon of First Amendment freedoms, the Russia of Vladimir Putin."

Representing Kansas' fourth district, Pompeo has been critical of Snowden's whistle-blowing. He described Snowden as a "traitor" in the press release announcing the SXSW letter, and said that the documents leaked by Snowden are "now in the hands of other countries."

Snowden and the reporters to whom he leaked the NSA documents have denied that accusation, saying he gave all his copies of the documents to reporters.

Snowden denied giving the documents to other governments. "There's a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents," he said last October.

Snowden fled the US before leaking the documents, and eventually settled in Russia, which granted him asylum for one year.

Neither Rep. Pompeo nor SXSW returned requests for comment. CNET will update the story when we hear back from them.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57...an-tells-sxsw/





At SXSW, Snowden Speaks About N.S.A. Spying
Jenna Wortham

Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked documents that revealed a vast network of surveillance by American government agencies, wants the technology industry to become serious about protecting the privacy of its customers.

Mr. Snowden, speaking Monday at the South by Southwest festival via videoconference, said the early technology adopters and entrepreneurs who travel to Austin every year for the event are “the folks who can fix this and enforce our rights.”

On stage while Mr. Snowden spoke were Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Ben Wizner, director of the A.C.L.U.’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project and Mr. Snowden’s legal adviser. All three men said that they wanted to raise a call to arms to developers and activists to build better tools to protect the privacy of technology users.

Mr. Snowden said that even the companies whose business models rely on collecting data about their users “can still do this in a responsible way.”

“It’s not that you shouldn’t collect the data,” he said. “But you should only collect the data and hold it as long as necessary.”

Hundreds of people sat quietly as Mr. Snowden spoke. Mr. Snowden, who faces criminal charges of espionage and fled the United States last summer, spoke from Russia, where he is living.

Ultimately, the tech industry can help fix the problem, Mr. Soghoian said.

“Most regular people are not going to download some obscure security app,” he said. “They’re going to use the tools they already have,” which include Google, Facebook and Skype.

The technology community should pressure those companies to introduce security measures that are stronger and easier to use, Mr. Soghoian said.

“We need services to include security by default,” he added.

Privacy and surveillance were major themes of the technology portion of the SXSW conference. During the weekend, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, also gave a talk via videoconference.

In a discussion on Friday, Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, talked about the idea of data permanence — that what is done online never goes away — as the hallmark of the digital era. There is no erase button, he said, and we all need to think critically about the footprint we are creating for ourselves.

He also floated the notion that online privacy itself may soon become a luxury item that people will pay for. Mr. Schmidt described “ecosystems developing around the idea of data permanence,” such as “parents taking out insurance policies around their kids’ acting stupidly about what they say and do online.”

Conference attendees cheered as Mr. Snowden spoke, but the event drew some criticism. Representative Mike Pompeo, Republican of Kansas, wrote a letter to SXSW organizers calling for them to cancel the event.

In their description of the event, SXSW organizers said “SXSW agrees that a healthy debate with regards to the limits of surveillance is vital to the future of the online ecosystem.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/0...-n-s-a-spying/





US Court Disallows NSA from Holding Phone Records Beyond Five Years

The government had said the data may be required as evidence for privacy civil suits filed by various groups
John Ribeiro

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has ruled against a U.S. government request that it be allowed to hold telephone metadata beyond the current five-year limit as it may be required as evidence in civil lawsuits that question the data collection.

The American Civil Liberties Union, U.S. Senator Rand Paul and the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles are among those who have filed lawsuits challenging the phone records program, which came to light in June last year, after former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden, revealed that the agency was collecting bulk phone records of Verizon customers in the U.S.

The FISC's Presiding Judge Reggie B. Walton ruled Friday that the proposed amended procedures would further infringe on the privacy interests of U.S. persons whose "telephone records were acquired in vast numbers and retained by the government for five years to aid in national security investigation."

"The great majority of these individuals have never been the subject of investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities," he added.

The government which has confirmed that it has a program for the bulk collection of phone metadata, had argued in a filing last month by the Department of Justice that when litigation is pending against a party, or is reasonably expected, the party has a duty to preserve relevant information that may be evidence in the case.

The Judge pointed out that there had not been a request from the plaintiffs in the civil suits that the data be preserved beyond the five-year limit, despite it being on public record that the metadata is routinely destroyed after that period. To date, no District Court or Circuit Court of Appeals has entered a preservation order relating to the phone metadata in connection with any of the civil suits cited by the government in its motion, he added.

The government can be sanctioned for destruction of evidence only if it is established that it had an obligation to preserve it at the time it was destroyed, that the records were destroyed "with a culpable state of mind," and the destroyed evidence was relevant to the party's claim or defense, the Judge wrote.

The government's motion has been denied "without prejudice," which gives it the option to file another motion on the issue in the light of additional facts or legal analysis.
http://www.itworld.com/government/40...ond-five-years





NSA Phone-Record Destruction Halt Won by Privacy Group
Karen Gullo

The National Security Agency was blocked by a judge from carrying out plans tomorrow to begin destroying phone records collected for surveillance after a privacy group argued they are relevant to lawsuits claiming the practice is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco ordered the agency today to retain the records and scheduled a hearing for March 19 on whether they can be destroyed. The NSA had planned to dispose of the records following a March 7 ruling by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet privacy and civil liberties group based in San Francisco, asked White for a temporary restraining order today, saying the records may be used as evidence in its lawsuits challenging NSA surveillance and are covered under preservation orders in those cases.

NSA is prohibited from destroying “any telephone metadata or ‘call detail’ records,” White said today.

The surveillance court, in its ruling, barred the NSA from keeping the records for more than five years because the privacy rights of the people whose phone data was swept up in the agency’s database trump the need for the information in litigation.

The retention of phone records has emerged as one of the most contentious issues for the government stemming from the documents leaked by former security contractor Edward Snowden. Civil liberties groups argue that such data collection violates privacy rights. Government officials say the information is needed to combat terrorism.
NSA Program

The records collected under an NSA program consist of “metadata” including the numbers used to make and receive calls and their duration. They don’t include information about the content of the communications, or the names, addresses or financial information of parties, according to government filings.

EFF challenged the NSA telephone surveillance in a complaint filed in July alleging that it illegally erodes the free-speech rights of religious, environmental and human-rights groups. The records are also relevant to a pending 2008 case challenging NSA surveillance, and the NSA was on notice in both cases that it should preserve evidence, Cindy Cohn, legal director at EFF, said in a filing today.

Last week’s ruling by the surveillance court was in response to a government bid to waive the requirement that the records be destroyed after five years because they might prove relevant to such lawsuits.

The U.S. request to hold the records indefinitely “would further infringe on the privacy interest of the United States persons whose telephone records were acquired in vast numbers and retained by the government for five years to aid in national security investigations,” wrote U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who is the presiding judge of the surveillance court.
‘Mistaken Belief’

The March 7 FISC ruling was “based on a mistaken belief that no preservation order existed for the material,” Cohn said.

“If the government proceeds with its planned destruction of evidence, the evidence will be gone,” Cohn said. “This is by definition irreparable.”

The EFF case is First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. National Security Agency, 13-cv-03287, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

The FISC case is In Re Application of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for an Order Requiring the Production of Tangible Things, BR 14-01, U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, District of Columbia (Washington).
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...acy-group.html





Web Founder Berners-Lee Calls for Online 'Magna Carta' to Protect Users

The inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, called on Wednesday for bill of rights to protect freedom of speech on the Internet and users' rights after leaks about government surveillance of online activity.

Exactly 25 years since the London-born computer scientist invented the web, Berners-Lee said there was a need for a charter like England's historic Magna Carta to help guarantee fundamental principles online.

Web privacy and freedom have come under scrutiny since former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden last year leaked a raft of secret documents revealing a vast U.S. government system for monitoring phone and Internet data.

Accusations that NSA was mining personal data of users of Google, Facebook, Skype and other U.S. companies prompted President Barack Obama to announce reforms in January to scale back the NSA programme and ban eavesdropping on the leaders of close friends and allies of the United States.

Berners-Lee said it was time for a communal decision as he warned that growing surveillance and censorship, in countries such as China, threatened the future of democracy.

"Are we going to continue on the road and just allow the governments to do more and more and more control - more and more surveillance?" he told BBC Radio on Wednesday.

"Or are we going to set up something like a Magna Carta for the world wide web and say, actually, now it's so important, so much part of our lives, that it becomes on a level with human rights?" he said, referring to the 1215 English charter.

While acknowledging the state needed the power to tackle criminals using the Internet, he has called for greater oversight over spy agencies such Britain's GCHQ and the NSA, and over any organizations collecting data on private individuals.

He has previously spoken in support of Snowden, saying his actions were "in the public interest".

Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web Consortium, a global community with a mission to lead the web to its full potential, have launched a year of action for a campaign called the Web We Want, urging people to push for an Internet "bill of rights" for every country.

"Our rights are being infringed more and more on every side, and the danger is that we get used to it. So I want to use the 25th anniversary for us all to do that, to take the web back into our own hands and define the web we want for the next 25 years," he told the Guardian newspaper.

(Reporting by Costas Pitas Editing by Belinda Goldsmith and Alison Williams)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...A2B0PC20140312





Popcorn Time Shuts Down, Then Gets Resurrected by YTS (YIFY)
Andy

A roller-coaster week for controversial movie application Popcorn Time hit a huge low last evening with the news that the creators of the software were throwing in the towel. Well people, not so fast. The people behind YTS (YIFY) inform TorrentFreak that they are taking over the project with immediate effect.

Last Saturday TF reported on the now-controversial torrent streaming app Popcorn Time, a piece that was followed by dozens of mainstream articles in the week that followed. It quickly became evident that this software had broken new ground with its beauty and simplicity.

Unsurprisingly, the first signs of trouble were not far away. During the middle of the week the software was removed from Mega.co.nz. It’s still unclear if that action was taken by Mega under its own steam or after it was prompted by Hollywood, but with the Popcorn Time developers confirming they had nothing to do with it, one or the other must be to blame.

But after a stormy week, with the software receiving critical acclaim, last night the veils were being drawn over the project. In a long announcement on the tool’s website, the Popcorn Time team confirmed they were stepping down.

“Popcorn Time is shutting down today. Not because we ran out of energy, commitment, focus or allies. But because we need to move on with our lives,” the team explained.

“Our experiment has put us at the doors of endless debates about piracy and copyright, legal threats and the shady machinery that makes us feel in danger for doing what we love. And that’s not a battle we want a place in.”

The Argentina-based team added that piracy is not a people problem, it’s one based around service created by an industry that “portrays innovation as a threat to their antique recipe to collect value.”

But just as another flood of articles hit the mainstream press, each waving goodbye to Popcorn Time before moving on to something else, there’s important news yet to report.

Popcorn Time is not dead and will live on, seamlessly.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, YTS (formerly YIFY-Torrents) developer Jduncanator has confirmed that Popcorn Time will not die with the withdrawal of its founding team. Instead, YTS will pick up the baton and run.

“The YTS team will now be picking up the Popcorn Time project and continuing on like previously. We are in a better position copyright wise as for us, because it’s build on our API, it’s as if we have built another interface to our website. We are no worse off managing the project than we would be just supplying the movies,” the dev explains.

“It’s our vision at YTS that we see through projects like these and that just because they create a little stir in the public, it doesn’t mean they are shut down. That stir is exactly what the public needs and it’s already evident that people are becoming more aware of copyright-related issues.”

The project, which can now be found here, is open to all former developers who will be given contributor access upon request. The Popcorn Time installer will be made available shortly.
http://torrentfreak.com/popcorn-time...s-yify-140315/
















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