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Old 06-02-19, 07:51 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - February 9th, ’19

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"Verizon didn't lift data restrictions until the [fire] department paid for an upgraded plan, court document emails showed, at twice the cost of its initial 'unlimited' plan." – Kristin Lam


"The best years of the music business are ahead of us, not behind us." – Laurie Davison, Deutsche Bank






































February 9th, 2019




Dutch Court Rules in Favor of ISP and the Protection of Customer Anonymity
Bill Toulas

• The Central Netherlands court has rejected a request for customer identity from DFW to Ziggo.
• The prosecutor will now have to pay for the litigation expenses of the ISP and reconsider their piracy targeting approach.
• This verdict follows the reasoning of US courts that do not accept the unquestionable linking between the infringer and the IP address.

A ruling that was issued yesterday by the Central Netherlands court exempts Ziggo ISP (Internet Service Provider) from having to hand over the identities of 377 of their customers to Dutch FilmWorks (DFW). The latter has turned to the court to get an order that would compel the former to share the requested information, on the basis that their customers have been involved in pirating activities. However, the court decided that Ziggo doesn’t have to disclose anything since IP addresses are not necessarily linking to the persons who committed the wrongdoing of downloading copyright-protected content.

This decision is in line with the approach that US courts have been following since last summer, and it makes perfect sense in terms of the legal and practical context. However, we rarely have the opportunity to see a court decide upon this matter, as most of the ISPs that receive customer identity information requests by copyright holders and protection groups are handing them over voluntarily. Ziggo is not one of them, as they believe in the importance of preserving customer anonymity, no matter what the allegations made against them are. This defensive stance has paid off, and the court has even decided to condemn DFW to pay the litigation costs of Ziggo, including the court fee (€639) and the lawyer’s salary (€930).

The court justifies the above decision by explaining that DFW did not make it sufficiently clear how they are planning to use the name and address data of the 377 Ziggo customers, and neither did they clarify how the actual downloader of a film is concretely connected to the IP address, and thus how they will prove that the account holder is the infringer. The court has even disputed the DFW settlement proposal that is €150 for each illegal download, querying whether this amount is actually in correspondence to the damage done.

A spokesman from the Dutch Filmworks has made the following statement on the verdict: “Our management is almost entirely in Berlin for a film festival, and we will come up with a substantive response next week when we have also spoken to our lawyers.” In the same time, Ziggo is satisfied with the court decision, and BitTorrent users in the Netherlands are hoping that this will set the scene for copyright holders to refrain from targeting casual downloaders in the future.
https://www.technadu.com/dutch-court...onymity/57658/





Study Claims that Pirate Bay Increases the Movie Industry Revenues by 3%
Bill Toulas

• Study finds that piracy is actually good for box office sales, as long as the movie has been released.
• According to the data, the measurable rise in revenues is estimated to be around 3%.
• Targeting pre-release piracy and allowing post-release could be a way to keep everyone happy.

Three researchers from the universities of Houston and Western Ontario have recently published an interesting study on the effects of online “word-of-mouth” in box office sales. According to their findings, post-release piracy can boost the movie industry revenues by about 3%, which is significant. The study focuses on movies released in the U.S. between 2015 and 2017, and the Pirate Bay blockages that have been imposed in Russia since then. Moreover, the analysts also note the impact of the Pirate Bay “original” take down that occurred back in December 2014.

Through a series of estimations, assumptions, variable definitions, and data correlation models, the researchers arrived in the conclusion that large piracy websites such as the Pirate Bay have the capacity to boost the post-release sales of movies thanks to the buzz that is generated online and in pirating communities. This post-release “word-of-mouth” advertising brings measurable benefits for the box office, and while downloading movies is ostensibly bad for the movie industry the numbers say it isn’t. Hollywood sales dropped for a little during the month that Pirate Bay was down, but no one in the industry noticed this detail as the notion of the piracy hurting the movie industry has solidified in everyone’s minds.

One detail to note is that the pre-release piracy is still hurting movie sales, and they do so by a lot, doing more damage than the post-release benefits, so piracy, in general, is still bad. However, it’s not always bad, and not entirely negative in all its manifestations. If fighting against piracy is focused only on pre-release stages, and then left free on post-release, everyone will have to benefit, including the box office. Right now, the movie industry is fighting all forms of piracy, even those that may work in its favor. This targeting, however, is unlikely to happen any time soon, as Hollywood studios cannot even distinguish between pirates and movie databases yet, so hopes to leave post-release piracy alone aren’t exactly high right now.

While studies like this one unveil new potential and could be leveraged to form a more effective anti-piracy action policy, we will probably need to see more of them popping up, using more granular data, and reaching to safer or more accurate conclusions. For now, we can say that we have an indication that post-release privacy is good for everyone.
https://www.technadu.com/study-pirat...evenues/56931/





House Democrats Tell Ajit Pai: Stop Screwing Over the Public

Pai's FCC is too secretive and too beholden to corporations, Democrats say.
Jon Brodkin

Democratic lawmakers have put Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai on notice that he can expect a lot more scrutiny now that Democrats control the US House of Representatives.

The House Commerce Committee is "reassuming its traditional role of oversight to ensure the agency is acting in the best interest of the public and consistent with its legislative authority," Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-Penn.) said in an announcement yesterday.

Pallone, Jr. and Doyle wrote a letter to Pai, saying that he has made the FCC too secretive and has repeatedly advanced the interests of corporations over consumers.

They wrote:

“Not only have you have failed on numerous occasions to provide Democratic members of this committee with responses to their inquiries, you have also repeatedly denied or delayed responding to legitimate information requests from the public about agency operations. These actions have denied the public of a full and fair understanding of how the FCC under your leadership has arrived at public policy decisions that impact Americans every day in communities across the country.

Under your leadership, the FCC has failed repeatedly to act in the public interest and placed the interest of corporations over consumers. The FCC should be working to advance the goals of public safety, consumer protection, affordable access, and connectivity across the United States. To that end, it is incumbent upon the Committee’s leadership and its members to oversee the activities of the FCC.”

Dems seek update on consumer complaints

Pallone, Jr. and Doyle asked Pai to update the Commerce Committee on its workload and on "the FCC’s interactions with the public through its handling of consumer complaints and Freedom of Information Act requests." Pai's FCC has repeatedly stalled in responding to public records requests or failed to provide any substantive response at all.

The Pallone, Jr. and Doyle letter goes on to ask a series of specific questions. For example, the letter asks for extensive data about consumer complaints and public records requests the FCC has received during Pai's tenure and information about the FCC's responses to those complaints and records requests.

Pallone, Jr. and Doyle requested a written response from Pai by March 4. We contacted Pai's office about the letter today and will update this story if we get a response.

On Thursday this week, the Communications Subcommittee will hold a hearing about the impact of Pai's net neutrality repeal on consumers, small businesses, and free speech. Witnesses who have been invited to testify at the hearing include former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, cable industry chief lobbyist Michael Powell (who is also a former FCC chairman), and representatives of Mozilla, Free Press, and Eastern Oregon Telecom.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...er-the-public/





Senators Ask the FCC to Investigate Wireless Carrier Throttling
Olga Kharif

• The FCC must respond by Feb. 27, according to letter
• Wireless carriers’ disclosure of throttling is at issue

Three senators asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate whether U.S. wireless carriers are throttling popular applications without telling customers.

The request came after Bloomberg News reported that the largest U.S. telecom companies are slowing internet traffic to and from apps such as YouTube and Netflix, citing research from Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The researchers used a smartphone app called Wehe, downloaded by more than 100,000 consumers, to monitor which mobile services were being throttled and by whom.

Even after the repeal of net-neutrality rules, requiring the carriers treat all internet traffic equally, the FCC has to make sure service providers give consumers accurate information about their broadband access.

In November, the Democratic senators -- Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut -- said they wrote to Verizon Communications Inc., AT&T Inc., T-Mobile US Inc. and Sprint Corp. expressing concern that customers often aren’t aware of the throttling.

The companies "failed to answer many of our questions, leaving us even more concerned about the carriers’ practice of purposeful degradation of certain services," the senators wrote in their letter to the FCC. The lawmakers asked the agency to respond by Feb. 27 in writing whether it will investigate.

The carriers told Bloomberg in September that they throttle to manage internet traffic. Verizon said it doesn’t automatically throttle any customers, while AT&T executive John Donovan said the company doesn’t "look at any traffic differently than any other traffic."
https://www.bloomberg.com/technology





Verizon Super Bowl Ads Honor California Firefighters after Throttling their Data Speeds
Kristin Lam

Verizon paid tribute to California first responders in a pair of Super Bowl advertisements Sunday following criticism for throttling firefighters' data speeds last summer during the one of the state's largest wildfires.

The service provider slowed down a fire department's internet services because it hit the plan limit while coordinating trucks and personnel fighting the Mendocino Complex Fire, which torched 410,203 acres. Days after a Silicon Valley fire chief submitted court documents in August about the critical communication disruption, Verizon said it would provide first responders with full network access during disasters.

Sunday's Super Bowl ads featured Anthony Lynn, head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers thanking first responders for saving people's lives, including his. Clips showed firefighters running into burning buildings, a helicopter flying over a flood zone and an ambulance driving on the streets.

"First responders of California answer the call," the ending text of the commercial read. "Our job is to make sure they can get it."

When the Santa Clara County Fire Department relied on Verizon data to track resources in the field, however, the service provider slowed its speeds to 1/200th of normal according to documents. Going over 25 gigabytes allegedly forced the department to use other agency's services or use personal devices.

Verizon didn't lift data restrictions until the department paid for an upgraded plan, court document emails showed, at twice the cost of its initial "unlimited" plan.

The provider's #AllOurThanks campaign featured in the commercial advertises a plan discount for first responders, a social media donation match and a dedicated communications lane for first responders during emergencies.

Following the Mendocino Complex and Carr fires in the summer, the Camp Fire and Woolsey Fire ravaged both Northern and Southern California in the fall, igniting the same day. More than $11.4 billion in insured losses have been reported for the November fires, the state insurance commissioner announced last week, including 46,000 claims.

The Camp Fire killed 86 people and leveled the town of Paradise. The Woolsey Fire burned in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...sy/2765137002/





Countries With Zero Rating Have More Expensive Wireless Broadband Than Countries Without It
Ernesto Falcon

When an ISP decides to exempt certain applications or services from cutting into a user's data cap, that's zero rating. And the evidence is in that it conclusively makes broadband more expensive.

A comprehensive multi-year study by the non-profit Epicenter.works, comparing the 30 member countries of the European Union (EU) on net neutrality enforcement, has found that zero rating business practices by wireless carriers have increased the cost of wireless data compared to countries without zero rating. This directly contradicts all of the assertions by major wireless carriers that their zero rating practices are “free data” for consumers.

Based on the evidence, zero rating not only serves as a means to enhance ISPs’ power over the Internet, but it’s also how they charge consumers more money for wireless service. Zero rating was originally going to be banned by the FCC under the General Conduct Rule, but when the FCC changed leadership the agency promptly green lighted and encouraged the industry to engage in zero rating practices before it began its repeal of net neutrality.

Zero Rating Is Anti-Competitive, Not “Free Data”

EU countries that do not have zero rating practices enjoyed a double digit drop in the price of wireless data after a year. In comparison, the countries with prevalent zero rating practices from their wireless carriers consistently saw data prices increase. This makes sense; carriers have an incentive to raise the costs of exploring alternatives in order to make their preferred, zero-rated choice of content more attractive. However, once that incentive is removed, the wireless carrier no longer has a reason to raise the cost of alternatives because nothing is given special treatment. In short, zero rating practices cost you more money.

Furthermore, EFF has raised anti-competitive concerns about how zero rating can be leveraged by ISPs playing gatekeeper to distort consumer traffic to favor large Internet companies willing to pay for preferential treatment. That includes ISP “self-dealing” with affiliated services to the detriment of startups and new entrants. In fact, the entire wireless industry knows from their own studies that zero rating drives their customers to prefer zero rated content over alternatives. Hence zero rating serves as a powerful means for ISPs to pick winners and losers and shape consumers’ Internet experience. EFF raised these concerns specifically regarding the AT&T merger with Time Warner–HBO, where we predicted the ISP network would self-deal with its newly acquired content to the disadvantage of alternative video providers—which is exactly what it did.

TZero Rating Favors Large Established Internet Companies over Smaller Internet Companies

The Epicenter.works study also measured how many zero rating agreements Internet companies enter across the EU zone. It found that the more fragmented the ISPs made the Internet with multiple zero rating practices for different services and applications, the larger the drop-off from Internet companies capable of engaging in those practices. In fact, a vast majority of Internet applications and services can only manage one to three agreements with ISPs because, in order to be welcomed into the zero rated club, an Internet company has to take on various new obligations (and thus spend more money) before their product can be properly identified and zero rated.

One company with only 200 employees, Vimeo, asserted to German regulators that it was unable to sustain the resources required to engage in zero rating agreements with Deutche Telekom (which owns T-Mobile). This makes sense: zero rating agreements are effectively established contractual relationships between an ISP and Internet services that carry with them an ongoing burden of satisfying the ISP's demands. In contrast, broadband service in the absence of zero rating levels the playing field, with no looming requirement for small companies to negotiate with an ISP for preferential treatment if they want to remain competitive.

Zero Rating Disproportionately Harms Low-Income Users

The harms from ISP-directed zero rating are not limited to stifling competition and making everyone’s wireless services more expensive. The practice also has a disproportionate impact on low-income users. These users tend to only be able to afford wireless broadband services for their entire Internet experience, resulting in them receiving an inferior Internet compared to users who can afford both a wireline and wireless service.

When the issue of zero rating came before California during its debate on net neutrality, California organizations that represent low-income Californians (such as the Western Center on Law and Poverty) as well as organizations that promote the digital civil rights of communities of color (such as the Center for Media Justice and Color of Change) all came out in strong support for California banning on zero rating.

Now, this newest comprehensive study reinforces the point that zero rating fundamentally makes the Internet more expensive for all of us. With this knowledge, we should cast a wary eye on wireless carriers’ offers of “free data” in the future, and prohibit the practice when we can restore net neutrality at the federal level.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/0...ies-without-it





Ex-FCC Commissioner Advises T-Mobile, Sprint on $26 Billion Merger

Democrat Mignon Clyburn says a combined company would bring affordable 5G to underserved communities. Also, T-Mobile's CEO tells the FCC he'll keep rates low.
Marguerite Reardon

Former FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn is working to help T-Mobile and Sprint get their $26 billion merger approved by regulators.

Clyburn, a Democrat, confirmed she's working as a paid consultant to the carriers to advise them on their impending merger. The news of her involvement was first reported by Politico on Monday.

The companies, whose merger was announced in April last year, need approval from the Federal Communications Commission and the US Department of Justice.

"Affordable broadband access is a critical priority particularly for those Americans who are underserved or currently have no viable options at all," she said in an interview with CNET. "I am advising T-Mobile and Sprint as they seek to accelerate the creation of an inclusive nationwide 5G network on how best to build a bridge across the digital divide that currently exists in our country."

Clyburn served on the FCC from August 2009 until June 2018. She was originally appointed under President Barack Obama and served as interim chairman of the agency for half the year in 2013. Clyburn was considered a champion of several consumer causes, including reforming prison inmate calling services and pushing to modernize and protect the FCC's Lifeline program, which subsidizes the cost of phone and broadband service for poor and disabled Americans. She also advocated for enhanced accessibility in communications for the disability community. And Clyburn was a strong supporter of the 2015 net neutrality protections adopted when her party was in control of the FCC.

It's not uncommon for former FCC commissioners and others serving in government to work for companies they once regulated. Former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a Republican, also consults for T-Mobile. He published an op-ed in Fortune in May extolling the benefits of the merger. But Clyburn's involvement in advising the merger is interesting because she was part of the majority on the FCC in 2011 that rejected the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile, concluding that a reduction in the number of national carriers would harm consumers. When the idea of a merger between T-Mobile and Sprint was first floated in 2014, the Democratic-controlled FCC also signaled it wouldn't approve the deal for the same reason.

Critics of the deal, including many public interest groups that have long considered Clyburn a friend, oppose the merger, because they say more consolidation in the wireless market is bad for consumers. Specifically, they say the deal will lead to fewer choices and higher prices for consumers and reduce the incentive for these companies to continue to compete aggressively on price. They also point to the competitive pricing and promotions both T-Mobile and Sprint have offered in the market, which have pressured AT&T and Verizon to lower prices and ditch contracts. And they argue that if the deal were to be approved those competitive pressures would go away.

"The proposed combination of T-Mobile and Sprint is a clear-cut horizontal merger that will dramatically curtail competition in the wireless market and harm consumers," Phillip Berenbroick, senior policy counsel at Public Knowledge, said in August when the group filed a petition with the FCC to deny the deal. "By nearly any measure, today's wireless marketplace is already excessively consolidated … Without independent T-Mobile and Sprint challenging Verizon Wireless and AT&T, and each other, consumers are unlikely to continue to reap the benefits they have accrued from four-firm competition."

Executives for the companies say they will not raise rates on consumers. In a letter to the FCC on Monday, T-Mobile CEO John Legere made a personal pledge to regulators that the "New T-Mobile" would not raise prices on its service following the merger. Doing so, he said, would erode the relationship with T-Mobile customers.

"I want to reiterate, unequivocally, that New T-Mobile rates are NOT going to go up," he said. "Rather, our merger will ensure that American consumers will pay less and get more ... My management team and I can make this personal commitment because we believe in delivering on our promises, and we know if we do not, we will lose credibility and the trust of our customers."

The companies say the deal will lead to faster and wider deployment of 5G, the next generation of wireless technology that will not only increase speeds, but also improve the responsiveness of the network. The new technology is expected to pave the way for a slew of new services like streaming VR and self-driving cars.

They've argued they need the scale of a larger, combined company because 5G infrastructure will be very expensive to build, particularly in hard-to-reach areas like rural communities or underserved poor areas.

Legere and Sprint Executive Chairman Marcelo told the Senate Judiciary Committee in June that the deal is necessary to ensure US dominance in 5G. The two executives will be on Capitol Hill again later this month defending the merger in front of a joint hearing before two House committees, as the intensity over the regulatory review of the deal heats up.

Still, Clyburn said she's not abandoning the ideas she fought to protect when she was a public servant. She serves as a board member of the Benton Foundation, a public interest group pushing for equity and diversity in communications policy. Clyburn was also recently appointed by Rep. Frank Pallone, chair of the House Commerce Committee, to serve on the board of the National Security Commission for Artificial Intelligence.

"I bring certain sensitivities and passions that I believe are natural extensions of this public-private partnership that I have been a part of for 19 years that is so clearly expressed in our nation's universal service principles," she said.

Clyburn, who was the first African-American woman to serve on the FCC and was also the first woman to chair the agency, was included in CNET's first list of notable women in tech to celebrate International Women's Day last year.
https://www.cnet.com/news/former-fcc...illion-merger/





AT&T’s Mega Mergers Are Going Poorly, And You’re Footing the Bill

Massive merger debt forced company to raise rates, only driving users to cut the cord even faster.
Karl Bode

A series of major mergers was supposed to transform AT&T from a stodgy old phone company into a slick online video and advertising juggernaut. Instead, customers are headed for the exits as AT&T hikes prices in a bid to pay down the company’s soaring merger debt.

AT&T’s $67 billion acquisition of satellite television provider DirecTV in 2015 not only eliminated a competitor, the combined weight of the two companies gave AT&T greater leverage in programming negotiations. Last year’s $86 billion acquisition of Time Warner gave AT&T ownership of essential, must have programming like HBO, providing an additional competitive advantage.

AT&T executives proclaimed the mergers would bring “a fresh approach to how the media and entertainment industry works for consumers, content creators, distributors and advertisers.” But some Wall Street analysts at the time expressed concern that the debt incurred from the company’s mergers would make that goal untenable.

It’s now looking like those Wall Street analysts were right to worry.

AT&T’s fourth quarter earnings, released on Wednesday, weren’t pretty. The company lost a whopping 403,000 DirecTV satellite subscribers in a single quarter. And while AT&T still serves 19.22 million satellite TV customers, more than 1.4 million DirecTV customers have fled the satellite TV provider in just the last two years.

Customers making the switch from cable or satellite TV to digital options like Netflix—often called cord cutting—has hit numerous TV providers hard as customers flee to modern streaming alternatives. Studies have shown these defections are largely driven by skyrocketing pay TV rates, though the industry’s historically-awful customer service also plays a role.

In 2016 AT&T launched its own streaming video service: DirecTV Now, at a less expensive price point than the company’s traditional cable TV offerings. But things aren’t going quite as AT&T planned there, either. According to AT&T’s earnings breakdown, AT&T lost 267,000 DirecTV Now subscribers last quarter, or a whopping 14 percent of its streaming subscriber total.

Sector analysts believe these defections were largely thanks to a $5 price hike imposed over the summer and the elimination of promotional discounts. AT&T has made it clear that DirecTV Now subscribers should expect more hikes and fewer promotions moving forward.

“As those customers come due, we’ll get closer to market pricing,” AT&T executive John Donovan said last November. “We’ll be respectful of our customers, but that will move up.”

Between the DirecTV Deal and the Time Warner acquisition, AT&T saddled itself with a whopping $160 billion in debt in just three years.

"Our top priority in 2019 is driving down the debt from our Time Warner acquisition," AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told reporters on this week’s call.

But longtime Wall Street analyst Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson Research told Motherboard he doesn’t believe AT&T’s current trajectory is financially sustainable, given the price hikes are likely to just drive further customer defections, creating a perfect circle of dysfunction.

“They’re doing exactly what they promised,” Moffett told me in an email exchange. “They said they would prioritize free cash flow and paying down debt, and now the market is getting an up close and personal look at just what that looks like. Raising prices and losing subscribers even faster.”

AT&T’s made great headway in recent years killing consumer protections like net neutrality and eroding FCC oversight, paving the way for anti-competitive revenue generation efforts like exempting AT&T’s own streaming content from usage caps while penalizing Netflix users.

But Moffett doubts if even this will be enough to right the AT&T ship. He believes that while AT&T might make its 2019 financial targets, it could be “at the cost of an even uglier 2020.”

“Interestingly, most of the most aggressive strategies, like trying to keep key content from Time Warner exclusive for the benefit of either DirecTV or their wireless business, would actually hurt near term results,” Moffett said.

When contacted by Motherboard for comment, AT&T would only say that the company has been clear about its plan to eliminate promotions and pay down debt, noting the company has paid down $9 billion in debt since the Time Warner deal closed. It was also quick to insist its current streaming pricing is well in line with comparable services like Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV.

But as Motherboard has exclusively reported, some of this debt is being eliminated courtesy of looming layoffs, despite AT&T receiving tens of billions in tax cuts and regulatory favors from the Trump administration. Many AT&T customers are particularly annoyed by the company’s assault on net neutrality, a move also likely to drive up consumer costs.

Hammering already frustrated customers with yet more price hikes—to pay for mergers nobody wanted—isn’t likely to improve AT&T’s image anytime soon.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...oting-the-bill





Big Telecom Sold Highly Sensitive Customer GPS Data Typically Used for 911 Calls

A Motherboard investigation has found that around 250 bounty hunters and related businesses had access to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint customer location data.
Joseph Cox

Around 250 bounty hunters and related businesses had access to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint customer location data, according to documents obtained by Motherboard. The documents also show that telecom companies sold data intended to be used by 911 operators and first responders to data aggregators, who sold it to bounty hunters. The data was in some cases so accurate that a user could be tracked to specific spots inside a building.

The news shows not only how widely Americans’ sensitive location data has been sold through the overlooked and questionable data broker market, but also how the ease-of-access dramatically increased the risk of abuse. Motherboard found that an individual company made more than 18,000 data location requests through a data broker; other companies made thousands of requests. The full details of our investigation are available here.

“This scandal keeps getting worse. Carriers assured customers location tracking abuses were isolated incidents. Now it appears that hundreds of people could track our phones, and they were doing it for years before anyone at the wireless companies took action,” Oregon Senator Ron Wyden said in an emailed statement after presented with Motherboard’s findings. “That’s more than an oversight—that’s flagrant, wilful disregard for the safety and security of Americans.”

Between at least 2012 until it closed in late 2017, a now-defunct data seller called CerCareOne allowed bounty hunters, bail bondsmen, and bail agents to find the real-time location of AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint mobile phones. The company would sometimes charge up to $1,100 per phone location, according to a source familiar with the company. Motherboard granted a number of sources in this story anonymity to provide details about a controversial industry practice.

Some of the data available to CerCareOne customers included a phone’s “assisted GPS” or A-GPS data, according to documents and screenshots of the service in action provided by two independent sources. A-GPS is a technology that is used by first responders to locate 911 callers in emergency situations. A letter to the Federal Communications Commission from a T-Mobile lawyer in 2013 noted that “A-GPS is reasonably the foundation of wireless [emergency] 911 location for both indoor and outdoor locations.”

“Oftentimes A-GPS provides location information about where someone is inside a building,” Laura Moy, executive director at the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown University Law Center, told Motherboard in an email.

Blake Reid, associate clinical professor at Colorado Law, told Motherboard in an email that “with assisted GPS, your location can be triangulated within just a few meters. This allows constructing a detailed record of everywhere you travel.”

“The only reason we grant carriers any access to this information is to make sure that first responders are able to locate us in an emergency,” Reid added. “If the carriers are turning around and using that access to sell information to bounty hunters or whomever else, it is a shocking abuse of the trust that the public places in them to safeguard privacy while protecting public safety.”

Both Reid and Moy said this was the first instance of a telco selling A-GPS data they had heard of.

A Sprint spokesperson did not directly answer whether the company has ever sold A-GPS data. When asked if T-Mobile has sold A-GPS data, a company spokesperson told Motherboard in an email “We don’t have anything further to add at this stage.” AT&T did not respond to a request to clarify whether it sells or has ever sold A-GPS data.

A list of a particular customer’s use of the phone location service obtained by Motherboard stretches on for around 450 pages, with more than 18,000 individual phone location requests in just over a year of activity. The bail bonds firm that initiated the requests—known in the industry as phone pings—did not respond to questions asking whether they obtained consent for locating the phones, or what the pings were for.

“The scale of this abuse is outrageous,” Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at campaign group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Motherboard in an email.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...data-911-calls





Google Fiber's Secret Weapon in its Gigabit Comeback has Failed

An experimental process for more cheaply and quickly rolling out speedy fiber internet didn't pan out, forcing Google Fiber to pull out of Louisville.
Jason Hiner

Google's trick to more rapidly and cheaply deploy its super-speedy Google Fiber project has hit a wall, throwing a wrench into the company's broader attempt to get its gigabit service back on track across the nation.

The internet titan had pinned its hopes on an experiment called "shallow trenching," which enabled it to deploy gigabit internet in Louisville in just five months and drastically outpace rival AT&T Fiber. But a Google Fiber spokesperson said problems with the process will force Google Fiber to cease operations in Louisville. Google is informing customers Thursday that their service will end on April 15.

It's a massive setback for Google Fiber, which "paused" operations in October 2016 but rolled out in Louisville and San Antonio in 2017 as part of a quiet Google Fiber 2.0 comeback, using cutting-edge techniques to control costs and outflank traditional telecom companies. The service was supposed to be a speedier, less costly alternative to your standard cable or phone provider, but Google encountered the same problem as everyone else: the insane costs of laying down physical fiber lines.

In the other 10 metropolitan areas where Google Fiber is still operating -- Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; Huntsville, Alabama; Kansas City, Missouri; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; Orange County, California; Salt Lake City/Provo, Utah; and San Antonio -- it'll continue to put more fiber in the ground and sign up new customers. A Google Fiber spokesperson also told CNET that it'll learn from the failure in Louisville and improve its deployments in other cities.

The Google Fiber team cited the experimental construction methods used in Louisville as the reason behind the failure. That deployment technique, called "nanotrenching," enabled Google Fiber to deploy fiber at greater speed and lower cost.

The construction crews for Google Fiber in Louisville were digging trenches only two inches deep on the edges of roads, laying the fiber cables and then filling in the trench with a rubbery liquid that would solidify when it dried.

Within several months, though, some of the fiber cables started popping out of the trenches and were lying exposed in the streets. In other cities, such as San Antonio, Google Fiber has switched to "microtrenching," which uses a similar technique but goes at least six inches deep. The Google Fiber rollout will proceed in San Antonio.

It should be noted that AT&T has been using various forms of shallow trenching since 2009 and hasn't seen similar issues. Google Fiber's build quality and customer service also got called into question when a number of Kansas City customers lost service for over a week during a January snowstorm.

The Google Fiber team indicated that it didn't have any plans to continue operations in Louisville, because it would have to rebuild its entire Louisville network from scratch to bring it up to the same standard of service of its other gigabit cities.

In notifying its Louisville customers of the shutdown, Google FIber is also letting them know they won't be billed for the final two months of service. That could be of little consolation to consumers who were thrilled to get the upgrade to an internet connection that features both upload and download speeds that can reach up to 1 gigabit per second -- far faster and more consistent than the cable and DSL connections most users will have to go back to.

AT&T Fiber operates in some of the same neighborhoods where Google Fiber deployed in Louisville, so it may provide a comparable alternative for some customers. An AT&T spokesperson confirmed that AT&T Fiber will continue to expand its network in Louisville. AT&T also noted that in late 2018 Louisville was one of the first 12 cities where it deployed its 5G network with mobile hotspots, which can rival some of the lower-speed fiber connections.

When Google Fiber goes into a city, it usually spurs competition from other internet providers to increase their connection speeds and provide better customer service. That's been the case in Louisville, where AT&T and Spectrum have stepped up and offered their own forms of gigabit service, though AT&T charges more for its version and Spectrum's service features much lower upload speeds.

With nanotrenching off the table for Google Fiber, it's going to have to play the long game more like a traditional telecom provider. Companies like AT&T take a much slower, more measured approach in rolling out new networks, and AT&T thinks of fiber as an investment with a 100-year return.
https://www.cnet.com/news/google-fib...ck-has-failed/





Google Warns News Sites May Lose 45% of Traffic if EU Passes its Copyright Reform
Már Másson Maack

The EU is still plowing ahead with its highly contested Copyright Reform. Trilogue negotiations between the union’s pillars have started again to reach an agreement on the finalized version, and pass the law in March or April this year.

A myriad of EU politicians and companies are troubled by parts of the reform, including big players like Google. Kent Walker, Google‘s SVP of Global Affairs, laid out Google’s opposition and called for a fix before it’s too late. Google warns Article 11 and Article 13 could have catastrophic effects on the creative economy in Europe by hampering user uploads and news sharing.

Article 11 in its current form will limit news aggregators’ abilities to show snippets of articles. According to Google‘s own experiments, the impact of it only showing URLs, very short fragments of headlines, and no preview images would be a “substantial traffic loss to news publishers.”

“Even a moderate version of the experiment (where we showed the publication title, URL, and video thumbnails) led to a 45 percent reduction in traffic to news publishers,” Walker explained. “Our experiment demonstrated that many users turned instead to non-news sites, social media platforms, and online video sites — another unintended consequence of legislation that aims to support high-quality journalism.”

A bit of background

For those who are not completely up to date on the minutia of proposed EU legislation, the upcoming Copyright Reform is meant to modernize the continent’s outdated legislation to better reflect our current digital reality. Pretty much everybody is happy it’s being updated, but many strongly disagree on what the new legislation should look like.

Opponents of the current proposal argue that Article 11 (a.k.a. link tax) would force anyone using snippets of journalistic online content to get a license from the publisher first — essentially outlawing current business models of most aggregators and news apps.

Article 11 has been seen as a way to counter the influence of big companies like Google by forcing them to fairly compensate publishers for their intellectual property — so it’s not surprising Google doesn’t like it. However, other opponents without a direct stake in the matter, like MEP Julia Reda, have argued Article 11 is actually doing the bidding of big publishers rather than protecting quality journalism, and will ultimately threaten freedom of speech.

France and Germany make Article 13 worse

Article 13 is the other huge concern opponents have about the proposal. It’s argued Article 13 will lead to ‘censorship machines’ as platforms will be made responsible for monitoring user behavior to stop copyright infringements before they happen — possibly preventing content like Miley Cyrus wishing her husband a happy birthday.

This basically means only huge platforms will have the resources to let users comment or share content. Despite that, Google opposes Article 13’s implementation as it could have dire unintended consequences — although the company says it supports the “goals” of the article.

There’s a real worry that Article 13 could lead to broader censorship, leaving free speech vehicles — like parody, satire, or even protest videos — potentially untenable under this system. Similar legislation was trialed in Spain and Germany in 2014 and failed — but opposing sides argue over what exactly led to the failure.

That’s why people had high hopes when EU member states failed to agree on Article 13 earlier this year, leading to a hiatus of trilogue negotiations until now. But the disputed articles are even more likely to become law because France and Germany — the two power pillars in the EU — agreed on an even worse version of Article 13, which won’t exempt smaller platforms.

There’s still a possibility the Copyright Reform won’t become law as EU Parliament members will likely get to vote on it in March or April (many of whom are up for re-election this spring).
https://thenextweb.com/eu/2019/02/07...eu-article-11/





Article 13 is Back On – and it Got Worse, Not Better
Julia Reda

Let’s recall: On January 18, negotiations about the new EU copyright law came to an abrupt halt after member state governments failed to settle on a common position on Article 13, which would force internet platforms to censor their users’ posts using upload filters.

Without such an agreement, the final “trilogue” meeting, at which the law was supposed to be finalised together with representatives of the European Parliament, had to be called off – and time was running out, with EU elections that will reshuffle all the cards looming in May.

Contrary to some reports, though, Article 13 was not shelved because a majority of EU governments have come to understand that upload filters are costly, error-prone and threaten fundamental rights.

Without doubt, the unprecedented public opposition contributed to 11 member state governments voting against proceeding, up from just 6 last year. Still, there remained a majority in favour of Article 13 in general – just disagreement about details. This has now been resolved, and the process of enacting the law is back in motion – read on below.An agreement required a compromise between France and Germany, who due to their size can make or break a majority. Both support upload filters – they just couldn’t agree on exactly who should be forced to install them:

France’s position:

Article 13 is great and must apply to all platforms, regardless of size. They must demonstrate that they have done all they possibly could to prevent uploads of copyrighted material. In the case of small businesses, that may or may not mean using upload filters – ultimately, a court would have to make that call.

(This was previously the majority position among EU governments, before Italy’s newly elected government retracted their support for Article 13 altogether.)

Germany’s position:

Article 13 is great, but it should not apply to everyone. Companies with a turnover below €20 million per year should be excluded outright, so as not to harm European internet startups and SMEs.

(This was closer to the European Parliament’s current position, which calls for the exclusion of companies with a turnover below €10 million and fewer than 50 employees.)

What brought them together: Making Article 13 even worse

In the Franco-German deal [PDF], which leaked today, Article 13 does apply to all for-profit platforms. Upload filters must be installed by everyone except those services which fit all three of the following extremely narrow criteria:

1. Available to the public for less than 3 years
2. Annual turnover below €10 million
3. Fewer than 5 million unique monthly visitors

Countless apps and sites that do not meet all these criteria would need to install upload filters, burdening their users and operators, even when copyright infringement is not at all currently a problem for them. Some examples:

Upload filters required

• Discussion boards on commercial sites, such as the Ars Technica or Heise.de forums (older than 3 years)
• Patreon, a platform with the sole purpose of helping authors get paid (fails to meet any of the three criteria)
• Niche social networks like GetReeled, a platform for anglers (well below 5 million users, but older than 3 years)
• Small European competitors to larger US brands like Wykop, a Polish news sharing platform similar to Reddit (well below €10 million turnover, but may reach 5 million visitors and is older than 3 years)

On top of that, even the smallest and newest platforms, which do meet all three criteria, must still demonstrate they have undertaken “best efforts” to obtain licenses from rightholders such as record labels, book publishers and stock photo databases for anything their users might possibly post or upload – an impossible task. In practice, all sites and apps where users may share content will likely be forced to accept any license a rightholder offers them, no matter how bad the terms, and no matter whether they actually want that rightholder’s copyrighted material to be available on their platform, to avoid the massive legal risk of coming in conflict with Article 13.

In summary:

• France’s and Germany’s compromise on Article 13 still calls for nearly everything we post or share online to require prior permission by “censorship machines”, algorithms that are fundamentally unable to distinguish between copyright infringement and legal works such as parody and critique.
• It would change the web from a place where we can express ourselves (with some moderation applied after-the-fact on platforms) into one where big corporate rightholders are the gatekeepers of what can and can’t be published in the first place. It would allow these rightholders to bully any commercial site or app that includes a posting function.
• European innovation on the web would be discouraged by the new costs and legal risks for startups – even if they only apply when platforms turn 3 years old, or achieve some success. Foreign sites and apps who can’t afford armies of lawyers would be incentivised to just geoblock all EU-based users to be on the safe side.

Now everything hinges on the European Parliament

With this road block out of the way, the trilogue negotiations to finish the new copyright law are back on. With no time to lose, there will be massive pressure to reach an overall agreement within the next few days and pass the law in March or April.

Most likely, Germany’s and France’s compromise will be rubber-stamped by the Council on Friday, 8 February, and then a final trilogue negotiation will take place with the Parliament on Monday, 11 February.

MEPs, most of whom are fighting for reelection, will get one final say. Last September, a narrow majority for Article 13 could only be found in the Parliament after a small business exception was included that was much stronger than the foul deal France and Germany are now proposing – but there’s unfortunately no reason to believe that Parliament negotiator Axel Voss will stand his ground and insist on this point in trialogue. Instead, it will come down to the final vote in the plenary in March or April, where all MEPs have a say.

Whether MEPs will reject this harmful version of Article 13 (like they initially did last July) or bow to the pressure will depend on whether all of us make clear to them:

If you break the internet and enact Article 13, we won’t reelect you.
https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/article-13-worse/





Bezos Selfie Controversy Triggers Alarm For Billionaires Worldwide
Devon Pendleton and Anders Melin

• Wealthy too often think ‘I’m untouchable,’ consultant says
• Affluent focus on physical safety, overlook digital security

Even the world’s richest person couldn’t stop a nude selfie leak.

When Jeff Bezos alleged in a blog post Thursday that he was the victim of blackmail attempts by the publisher of the National Enquirer, he underscored risks particular to billionaires in the digital age.

“The perception among very affluent people is often ‘I have this level of wealth, I’m untouchable,’" said Mark Johnson, chief executive officer of Sovereign Intelligence, a McLean, Virgina-based risk analytics firm. “But the systems they have in place for protecting their personal identifiable information are very weak.”

Ask any family office about its biggest fears and cybersecurity is near the top. Personal protection no longer involves just bodyguards and a top-notch alarm system. The internet age has seen a massive shift in people storing their most sensitive and personal data online, where it’s vulnerable to hacking and intrusion.

‘Absolute Disconnect’

Ultra-wealthy individuals are particularly susceptible because so much of their data are often centralized through family offices, which typically lack the robust firewalls and encryption capabilities of banks and large corporations.

Johnson, a former case officer with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said he’s worked with clients with more than $40 billion in assets who had a “Secret Service-type physical security -- probably even better -- and yet there was an absolute disconnect between that physical security and the digital protection."

It’s unclear how the tabloid obtained Bezos’s texts. The Amazon.com Inc. founder, who has a net worth of $133.9 billion, said in his blog post that he’d authorized security chief Gavin de Becker “to proceed with whatever budget he needed” to get to the bottom of the leak.

Security experts say potential entry points for a digital invasion are numerous.

‘Legacy Risks’

“We all have devices we carry and they each have their own point of vulnerability,” said Kris Coleman, founder of intelligence-services firm Red Five Security.

Banking information, identity data, even health information and travel schedules can expose someone to a breach. Those in billionaires’ inner circles are a particular risk for the information they have access to and could share, either maliciously or inadvertently.

“Private, affluent families need to consider themselves targets that are on par with nation states,” Coleman said.

Coleman and Johnson are both members of RANE, a network of risk-management professionals from banks, law firms, family offices and corporation.

The wealthy aren’t just at risk of losing money through hacks. Their brands, reputations -- or, in family office parlance, “legacy” -- also can be damaged. On Tuesday, news website Splinter published a trove of racist emails sent and received by TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. founder Joe Ricketts that included anti-Muslim slurs and conspiracy theories. Ricketts, whose family owns the Chicago Cubs, issued a statement on his personal website, apologizing for remarks “that don’t reflect my value system."

Protecting Zuckerberg

Providing security services to the growing ranks of the super-rich is an expanding field. Federal agents and military personnel, including former Navy Seals, Secret Service and Mossad agents, SWAT team operators and Scotland Yard detectives, have found second careers protecting billionaires, where they can earn double what they did working for the government.

Facebook Inc. spent $7.3 million in 2017 on personal security for CEO Mark Zuckerberg, an expense the company defended as necessary considering his “position and importance.” Last year, the firm said it would give him an additional $10 million annually to beef up his security. Its executive protection program is run by an ex-Secret Service agent, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Amazon spent $1.6 million last year on security for Bezos, according to regulatory filings. His Bezos Family Foundation also has taken physical precautions. For example, the foundation’s mailing address is a post office box in a nondescript strip mall in the Seattle area.

De Becker, a best-selling author, made his name as a security consultant to Hollywood celebrities and co-created MOSAIC, an assessment tool that was originally used to analyze threats against Supreme Court justices and members of Congress. He describes himself on the firm’s website as “the nation’s leading expert on the protection of public figures.”

Red Five’s Coleman didn’t express shock that Bezos’s racy text messages were vulnerable.

“My message to affluent families: don’t assume you’re OK,” Coleman said. “Because most of them aren’t.”

— With assistance by Tom Metcalf, Suzanne Woolley, and Amanda L Gordon
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...res-everywhere





Millennials Prefer Music from 20th Century ‘Golden Age’ to the Pop of Today, Research Suggests
Jasper Hamill

Research has suggested that modern music really isn’t as good as the old classics. A study has found that golden oldies stick in millennials’ minds far more than the relatively bland, homogenous pop of today.

A golden age of popular music lasted from the 1960s to the 1990s, academics claimed.

Songs from this era proved to be much more memorable than tunes released in the 21st century.

Music from the vinyl era is still very popular among young people Scientists tested a group of millennials on their ability to recognise hit records from different decades.

The 643 participants, typically aged 18 to 25, maintained a steady memory of top tunes that came out between 1960 and 1999.

In contrast, their memory of 21st-century songs from 2000 to 2015 – while higher overall – diminished rapidly over time. Lead researcher Dr Pascal Wallisch, from New York University in the US, said: ‘The 1960s to 1990s was a special time in music, reflected by a steady recognition of pieces of that era-even by today’s millennials.’

During this period songs reaching the top of the US Billboard charts were significantly more varied than they were between 2000 to 2015, or the 1940s and 1950s, said the scientists.

Even so, certain songs were far more memorable than others, the study found.

Well known examples included ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’ by Percy Sledge (1966), ‘Baby Come Back’ by Player (1977) and ‘The Tide is High’ by Blondie (1980). Others, including ‘Knock Three Times’ by Dawn (1970), ‘I’m Sorry’ by John Denver (1975) and ‘Truly’ by Lionel Richie (1982) were all but forgotten.

Songs selected for the study included those that reached number one on the Billboard Top 100 between 1940 and 1957, and the top slot on the Billboard ‘Hot 100’ from 1958 to 2015.

Each participant was presented with short excerpts from a random selection of seven out of 152 songs and asked to say if they recognised them.

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2019/02/07/mille...3/?ito=cbshare

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/
https://metro.co.uk/2019/02/07/mille...veals-8462993/





The Internet Saved the Record Labels

As streaming surges, Vivendi is mulling a sale of Universal that could value the music group at $25 billion.
Angelina Rascouet and Lucas Shaw

When Vivendi SA took over Universal Music Group in 2000, the industry was riding high on bumper sales of CDs, though the investment soon soured as illegal downloads surged. CD revenue plunged by two-thirds over the next decade, and by the early 2010s, unloading Universal would’ve been a tough sell; who would pay a premium for a company whose main product—pop songs—was widely available for free? But today, Vivendi is considering the sale of a stake in Universal that could value the label at more than $25 billion.

“The notion that recorded music has value was one that as recently as a decade ago was still in question,” says Bryan Gildenberg, an analyst at researcher Kantar Consulting. A sale of Universal would be “a remarkable testimony to the resurgence and the importance of content.”

The rebound can be traced to the same boogeyman that almost killed the business in the first place: the internet. These days, music fans have largely shifted from illegal downloads to paid streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Prime, and Pandora, which generally charge $5 to $10 a month for unlimited access to millions of songs. Even though the labels only get about 0.3¢ each time a tune is streamed, according to the Trichordist, a musician advocacy blog, the pennies add up. Since 2014, record company sales have jumped an average 7 percent annually and streaming has become the top source of revenue, generating $6.6 billion in 2017, up from $1.9 billion in 2014, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry estimates.

That return to growth has spurred Vivendi to mull a partial sale of Universal. While the idea has been floated for the past two years, the pace is picking up. In recent weeks the company has met with financial advisers and held informal talks with potential buyers, according to people familiar with the matter who declined to be identified discussing private conversations. Vivendi says it will update investors on its plans when it releases 2018 earnings on Feb. 14.

At least two private equity firms have met with Vivendi management, says one of the people. Other possible investors include Apple, billionaire John Malone’s Liberty Media, Japan’s SoftBank, and China’s Tencent and Alibaba—potentially dovetailing with Vivendi’s ambitions to expand in Asia. Lisbeth Barron, an adviser on music deals and chief executive officer of investment bank Barron International Group LLC, says Vivendi is seeking a valuation that’s about twice as high per dollar of operating profit as recent industry sales, potentially boosting other companies in a market that’s been heating up lately.

Sony Corp. last year paid $2.3 billion for the 60 percent of EMI Music Publishing that it didn’t already own. And in 2017, Songs Music Publishing (with rights to the likes of Lorde and the Weeknd) sold for more than $150 million, and Imagem (owner of songs by artists including Daft Punk and Pink Floyd) fetched $600 million, according to press reports. “A deal for Universal would show confidence that the recent boom in music isn’t just a short-term phenomenon,” Barron says.

One big concern is streaming’s durability. While the business is growing fast, expansion is slowing in Europe and North America, and in Asia streaming companies face continued piracy and regional rivals better attuned to local tastes. Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. don’t break out results for their services, but Pandora Media Inc. lost $310 million in the first nine months of 2018, and Spotify Technology SA reported a net loss of $520 million—even as it grew 40 percent, to 87 million paying customers.

Just as problematic for the labels, the services that have revived them are now trying to reduce their take, both by trimming the royalties they pay and by forging direct ties with musicians. Bands can upload music directly to Spotify and Tencent, which then release songs directly to listeners and split the proceeds. Cutting out record labels appeals to musicians, who grouse that only the biggest stars can count on streaming to cover much more than new guitar strings and burritos and beer for the tour bus.

“In working directly with artists, streaming companies will need to tread carefully,” says Mark Mulligan, an analyst at MIDiA Research. “If they move too fast, they risk losing their label partners, leaving them as empty vessels.”

Yet for investors seeking entree into the business, it may be hard to pass on a chance to buy into the No. 1 music company. Universal’s roster of stars ranges from ABBA and Bob Marley to Taylor Swift, U2, Van Halen, and Zucchero. Its artists had the top five tracks on Spotify and Apple Music last year, and it accounted for 30 percent of global music sales in 2017, vs. 22 percent for Sony Music Entertainment and 16 percent for Warner Music Group, according to industry blog Music & Copyright.

And Deutsche Bank is predicting continued expansion of streaming revenue—to $21 billion by 2023, triple its level in 2017—even as other sources of sales such as CDs and MP3 downloads shrink by more than half, to $4.4 billion. “Streaming is due to accelerate, not moderate in growth,” says Deutsche Bank analyst Laurie Davison. “The best years of the music business are ahead of us, not behind us.”

BOTTOM LINE - After a decade of plunging sales because of illegal downloads, big music labels have seen revenues climb since 2014—spurring Vivendi to consider selling a stake in music giant Universal.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...aming-behemoth

















Until next week,

- js.



















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