Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - October 21st, ’23

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"I’m not going to pay it." – Mr Voitenko, T411


































October 21st, 2023




French Court Order Operators of Defunct File-Sharing Site to Pay €489 Million in Damages

A French court has handed down jail sentences to two men involved in running a long defunct file-sharing service called T411 - and also ordered them to pay €489 million in damages, €18 million to French collecting society SACEM
Chris Cooke

A French court has handed down jail terms to two people previously involved in running a popular file-sharing service and awarded copyright owners a staggering €489 million in damages.

The French authorities managed to shut down T411 - a torrent tracker with over five million registered users - back in 2017. Although it primarily catered towards a French-speaking audience, and had moderators within France, the service's founder was based in Canada and a key system operator was a Ukrainian living in Sweden.

Criminal proceedings then began and they recently reached their conclusion in the Criminal Court in Rennes. Both the founder - identified as Mr Jolicoeur in the French press - and the system operator Mr Voitenko were found guilty of crimes in relation to the running of the copyright infringing file-sharing operation.

Jolicoeur was sentenced to three years in jail and ordered to pay a €150,000 fine. However, he remains in Canada and wasn't present in court for the sentencing. The French authorities are now relying on their Canadian counterparts to respond to an international arrest warrant that has been issued.

Voitenko was handed over to the French authorities as they began their criminal investigation back in 2017 and, as a result, he was detained in France for a few months in that year. He was handed an eighteen month jail term, though most of it was a suspended sentence meaning that - given the time he has already spent in detention - he won't return to prison.

However, there remains the matter of the mega-damages also awarded by the French court. Given the scale of the T411 operation, judges decided to set damages at a massive €489 million.

That is more than ten times the damages awarded when the founders of The Pirate Bay were found guilty of copyright crimes in the Swedish courts, and is significantly more than the $105 million Limewire's founder agreed to pay in an out of court settlement.

Most of the money - if it's ever paid - will go to the movie and TV studios, as most of the content shared via T411 was video-based, although €18 million of the damages are due to French song rights collecting society SACEM.

Voitenko is liable for 30% of the damages, so in excess of €146 million. However, he has said he plans to appeal the ruling and, even if that fails, it seems unlikely he will ever be able to pay anywhere near that sum.

He told Torrentfreak: “I’m not going to pay it, but even if I am forced to do so, I will quit the job and live on social benefits for jobless people instead. Otherwise, I need to work 3500 years to pay [damages of that scale]".
https://completemusicupdate.com/fren...on-in-damages/





Five Eyes Intelligence Chiefs Warn on China's 'Theft' of Intellectual Property
Zeba Siddiqui

The Five Eyes countries' intelligence chiefs came together on Tuesday to accuse China of intellectual property theft and using artificial intelligence for hacking and spying against the nations, in a rare joint statement by the allies.

The officials from the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - known as the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network - made the comments following meetings with private companies in the U.S. innovation hub Silicon Valley.

U.S. FBI Director Christopher Wray said the "unprecedented" joint call was meant to confront the "unprecedented threat" China poses to innovation across the world.

From quantum technology and robotics to biotechnology and artificial intelligence, China was stealing secrets in various sectors, the officials said.

"China has long targeted businesses with a web of techniques all at once: cyber intrusions, human intelligence operations, seemingly innocuous corporate investments and transactions," Wray said. "Every strand of that web had become more brazen, and more dangerous."

In response, Chinese government spokesman Liu Pengyu said the country was committed to intellectual property protection.

"We firmly oppose to the groundless allegations and smears towards China and hope the relevant parties can view China’s development objectively and fairly," the spokesperson for China's embassy in Washington said in a statement to Reuters.

The U.S. has long accused China of intellectual property theft and the issue has been a key sore point in U.S.-China relations. But this is the first time the Five Eyes members have joined publicly to call out China on it.

"The Chinese government is engaged in the most sustained scaled and sophisticated theft of intellectual property and expertise in human history," said Mike Burgess, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation's director-general.

While China's intention to innovate for its own national interest was "fine and entirely appropriate", Burgess said "the behaviour we're talking about here goes well beyond traditional espionage."

Last month, his department busted a Chinese plot to infiltrate a prestigious Australian research institution that involved planting an academic there to steal secrets, he said.

"This sort of thing is happening every day in Australia, as it is in the countries here," Burgess said.

The Five Eyes statement follows the group's warning in May of a widespread Chinese spy operation it said was targeting critical infrastructure and various other sectors.

The Chinese government dismissed those allegations as a "collective disinformation campaign."

Wray said China had "a bigger hacking program than that of every other major nation combined" that together with Beijing's physical spies and stealing of trade secrets from private businesses and research institutions gave the country enormous power.

"Part of what makes it so challenging is all of those tools deployed in tandem, at a scale the likes of which we've never seen," Wray said.

The officials called for private industry and academia to help in countering those threats, chief among which they said were artificial intelligence tools.

"We worry about AI as an amplifier for all sorts of misconduct," Wray said, accusing China of stealing more personal and corporate data than any other nation by orders of magnitude.

"If you think about what AI can do to help leverage that data to take what's already the largest hacking program in the world by a country mile, and make it that much more effective - that's what we're worried about," he said.

Reporting by Zeba Siddiqui in Stanford, California; Editing by Jamie Freed
https://www.reuters.com/world/five-e...ty-2023-10-18/





Universal Music Sues AI Start-up Anthropic for Scraping Song Lyrics

Chatbot not only offers up lyrics but incorporates them into replies to prompts.
Anna Nicolaou

Universal Music has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic, as the world’s largest music group battles against chatbots that churn out its artists’ lyrics.

Universal and two other music companies allege that Anthropic scrapes their songs without permission and uses them to generate “identical or nearly identical copies of those lyrics” via Claude, its rival to ChatGPT.

When Claude is asked for lyrics to the song “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor, for example, it responds with “a nearly word-for-word copy of those lyrics,” Universal, Concord, and ABKCO said in a filing with a US court in Nashville, Tennessee.

“This copyrighted material is not free for the taking simply because it can be found on the Internet,” the music companies said, while claiming that Anthropic had “never even attempted” to license their copyrighted work.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit comes as the music industry is grappling with the rise of AI technology that can produce “deepfake” songs that mimic the voices, lyrics, or sound of established musicians. The issue drew attention earlier this year after an AI-produced song that mimicked the voices of Drake and The Weeknd spread online.

Anthropic, a leading AI start-up, was founded in 2021 by a group of researchers who left Microsoft-backed OpenAI over a dispute over the company’s direction. It has drawn investments from Amazon and Google.

In addition to regurgitating lyrics, Claude responded to prompts asking for writing in the style of popular musicians with unlicensed lyrics, the music companies alleged. “When we asked the AI model to write a piece of short fiction in the style of Louis Armstrong, it uses the lyrics for ‘What a Wonderful World,’” the companies said in the filing.

The concern over AI technology has echoes of the music industry’s copyright battles in the 2000s against new technology services including Napster, which enabled pirating of music.

Universal, home to Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish, earlier on Wednesday announced a partnership with music platform BandLab to approach copyrights “ethically” for use in AI, with proper copyrights and permission.

Universal is separately working with Google to license its artists’ voices and melodies to be used in AI-generated songs, the Financial Times reported in August.

“Publishers embrace innovation and recognize the great promise of AI when used ethically and responsibly. But Anthropic violates these principles on a systematic and widespread basis,” the music groups said in Wednesday’s lawsuit.

Universal earlier this year asked Spotify and other streaming services to cut off access to its music catalogue for developers using it to train AI technology.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...g-song-lyrics/





Google Drive Makes File Sharing More Complicated in the Name of Privacy

Not requiring third-party cookies for downloading files will also change how you share files
Karandeep Singh

• Google Drive is dropping support for third-party cookies when using a download URL for file integrations, prioritizing user privacy and security.
• Sharing files will become more complicated, requiring them to use the Google Docs publishing URL instead of the existing, simpler method.
• Admins will likely face challenges in updating older integrations to accommodate the new file-sharing process.

Google Drive and all the associated Workspace apps come with a bunch of handy collaborative tools that make it easy for you to share files with your team or friends. Its integration with Android smartphones and the top Chromebooks is remarkably good when compared to other cloud storage services. However, Google Drive is making some tweaks starting next year that will affect how you use download URLs in specific workflows, as it prepares to drop support for third-party cookies.

As has been the trend with web browsers, Google Drive has now also decided to stop requiring third-party cookies when you use a file's download URL for third-party integrations — it won't affect how you currently download files from Drive. With only first-party cookies in use during the process, your information or metadata won’t reach other companies that may be prying on you, making the process much more privacy-conscious and secure for end users. This is set to come into effect on January 2, 2024. However, this implementation will change how you share files and could turn out to be an inconvenience for many longtime Drive users.

To share a file on Drive right now, you can add collaborators within your organization or anyone with a Google account. Besides that, you can create a link for individual files that either everyone or the people you choose can access with or without editing restrictions. Certain third-party apps use these download links to import files or embed them in websites, but the existing flow will change from next year.

Instead of being able to easily share a URL to the file with a couple of clicks, you will have to rely on a slightly more complicated process. For files created in Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Forms, you will need something called a Google Docs publishing URL. You will have to first publish the file from its Share menu, after which you will get the URL to share with anyone. From the same screen, you will also find the iframe code for the file if you want to embed it into your website or blog.

The new way complicates the process with a few extra steps for people who are already used to their established workflows both on their personal and work accounts. While it is still easy to get used to the publishing method for new files, it will be difficult for admins to find older integrations and reroute them using the new flow.

This is going to be a widespread change coming to both Workspace and personal Google accounts early next year. At least you have a couple of months to locate any Drive integrations that may potentially affected by this change and fix them in time. This move puts Google on track to phase out third-party cookies completely by sometime next year, and Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox was a major step in that direction.
https://www.androidpolice.com/google...-file-sharing/





What is the Demoscene?

An Interview with Filipe Cruz on the Influential but Obscure Art Form
Kiefer Kazimir

Demoscene has influenced everything from video games to digital art – and yet, it’s still something of an obscure art form. Unless you’re a computer programmer or engineer, you probably haven’t even heard of it.

In this interview, we talk to Filipe Cruz, who uses the handle ps (@psenough on Twitter, etc. – as ps is too short of a username). Cruz is a long-time demoscener who runs a YouTube channel about demoscene.

Welcome to On the Arts, the guide to art and aesthetics. Join us as we explore fine art, architecture, fashion, film, and other art forms.

On the Arts: What is the demoscene, anyway? And what is a demo?

Filipe Cruz: The demoscene is a sub-culture of digital art, a community of people who focus on showcasing what their machine can do with audiovisual presentations, the so called demos. It has its roots in the game piracy scene that boomed in the late 80s with the proliferation of the early personal computers (Apple II, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Atari, Amiga, etc.), where people, mostly teenagers, would trade floppy disks with software and games and sometimes add small intros that would play in the beginning, communicating who had been responsible for breaking the copy protection or fixed/enhanced the game in some way, or how to get in touch for more trading.

These folks would gather regularly at physical events to trade disks and learn from each other how to use the machine to draw pixelart, produce music, code your own graphical routines, etc. When game trading became more dangerous, the groups became more focused on the artistic side of things and by extension, those LAN copy parties became known as demoparties, holding competitions for best new demos, music, and graphics.

The advent of the Bulletin Board Systems and then later the internet made the culture more international and there is still to this day an active community of people around the world who regularly release new demoscene productions and organize demoscene events.

It's very focused on Central and Northern Europe, with Revision during Easter in Germany being the biggest pure demoscene event. Assembly Summer in Finland during the summer being one of the events with the longest running tradition, despite also catering to other computer culture related scenes.

But it's worth mentioning the demoscene is also active outside Europe, in places like the United States, Argentina, Australia, Japan, etc. Some countries with a bit more tradition than others. For example here in Portugal, where I'm from, we only have a single demoscene event per year, the Inércia Demoparty that I help organize with some friends. It's quite small compared to other parties, but we are always looking for new blood to come learn about the culture and participate in the community.

OTA: Any favorites or recommendations for cool demos?

FC: Oh yes, I have a lot of favorites for a lot of different reasons. From the late 90s, releases from the Orange demogroup "Deesbab" and "Megablast" have a special place in my heart. Then from early 2000s "Incyber" from Satori, "Gerbera" by Moppi, "Barn" from TDA.

Also some of my own productions that I collaborated with in the past and am particularly proud of like "Your Song is Quiet pt 2" with Russian friends from CPU, "Anoxia Redux" with Greece-based ASD, "fr-045: life after with Finnish section of Farbrausch, "The Lost Religion of Light" with my Serbian friends of Kosmoplovci.

In more recent years, I’ve actually started recording a series of demoscene highlights videos, which covers the best demoscene releases by year. You can see them on my YouTube channel.

OTA: Why do demosceners create demos? Is it purely for artistic reasons, or more about pushing the limitations of computer hardware?

FC: A little bit of both. In the late 80s and early 90s the technical aspect was definitely a driving force behind the culture. It was easier to compare things when everyone had the same machine, so it was down to the programming skills and artistic talent to get the most out of the platform. When the IBM PC clones became highly adopted by the masses, some of the active demoscene lost a bit of its charm in that regard, but people kept making demos and gathering at demoparties.

Back in the 90s, it was still relatively possible for small groups of people to develop technology for a demo that was superior to what you would see in most games released in the market, which was a strong contribution to the popularity of the demoscene in the computer culture of the 90s. Nowdays it's much harder to compete as a hobby with the professional research and artists from AAA studios and commercial engines. Even though a lot of those companies carry demosceners in their ranks.

There are still plenty of demos being regularly released though, both for vintage machines and more recent platforms. The Meteoriks awards tries to highlight some of the best releases of the year and their website is a good place to start if you're looking for recent demos. The more impressive demos tend to have a mix of interesting technology with a focus on style / direction / message / artistic expression.

Also worth mentioning is that during the last couple of decades, the demoscene seems to have become more known in the mainstream computer media outlets for its achievements in procedural programming and size-limited productions. Releases where your entire program executable must fit within a certain ridiculously small size. The more popular categories being 4 kilobytes and 64 kilobytes, but there is also a very active tiny size intro community in even smaller categories like 128 bytes, 256 bytes, 512 bytes, etc. The Lovebyte Demoparty online event that started during the pandemic being one of the major factors for that particular boom of popularity. Nano Gems is a website / online gallery that highlights demoscene tiny size coding productions.

For me personally, demomaking is mostly about artistic expression, I try to use the technology I have available instead of focusing on developing new tech. But for a lot of other demosceners, exploring new technology to make something impressive is still the main driving force. And then there is a large aspect of demomaking that is also just about having fun doing something creative with your friends, sharing it, and talking about it with other friends in the demoscene.

OTA: Demos are usually created by teams, but are there individual artists too?

FC: There are individual artists too, they are more rare because you typically need a broader range of skillsets to fulfill your vision when you're doing things alone but they do exist in the demoscene.

Doing things in teams is a bit more common. In a team you can typically focus on what you are more naturally inclined to do and then ask your friends to help you out for the other aspects of making the demo that they are more comfortable with. Sometimes you have to relinquish your vision or spend a lot of time and energy debating things that were already locked in your head though, but at the same time you can also end up with something interesting beyond your expectations. So there are pros and cons to both ways of doing things.

OTA: Demoscene seems very much driven by the “scene” (hence the name) of events, called demoparties. How does that work? Do teams typically work on a demo together and only share it at events? And is it a competition, with winners, or just a place to show work? Do creators have portfolios of their work, or is it mostly an event-based art form?

FC: Yes, most social aspect happens at the demoparties. There are typically competitions for many different categories where you submit your latest work. The competition format is a bit of a cultural thing. A lot of the participants don't really care about the position their entry gets and they just enter it to the competition to have it shared on the big screen / livestream for others to see.

After the event the party organizers typically upload all the releases and results online, usually to scene.org. There are people actively trying to preserve all of this demoscene metadata and keep it publicly available, with demozoo.org as the most generalist complete demoscene website, where you can find all the releases, results and history. For example, here is my scener page, listing all the events I’ve helped organize, all the productions I’ve ever released, the demogroups that I am or was a part of in the past, etc.

There are other demoscene websites doing similar work like pouet.net, csdb.dk, or janeway.exotica.org.uk. Some of them focus on specific platforms or just certain aspects of the demoscene. Demozoo tries to cover it all but is still an ongoing process, the database is not complete.

OTA: What do demo creators use to make demos? Are these graphics entirely made with code, or do people use programs like After Effects or Blender too?

FC: Depends on the person and the project. Some people develop their own tools and frameworks to work with or to help their group members collaborate making a production. Particularly if you're targetting size limited categories like 4kb or 64kb you need specialized tools which don't exist commercially. But there is a bit of a culture of sharing your tool and framework for others to reuse / learn from after you have released your production. For example, in4k gathers resources for creating productions of 4kb.

Others do all the code by hand, for example, there are executable graphics categories where you have to generate a single static image under 4kb within 30 seconds of precalculation time. This allows you to use rendering techniques that you wouldn't be able to do at 30 frames per second and can get quite impressive. Executable.graphics is a website / online gallery that showcases these kind of productions.

To create graphic assets or music, I would say it's culturally accepted in the demoscene to use commercial tools if you want. It's all about the end result. Same for doing video releases. Using commercial engines for realtime demos is still a bit frowned upon by the demoscene purists though, because it removes or blurs the line a lot of what actual coding is involved in the process making it hard/unfair to judge, but overall demos using commercial engines are still allowed to participate in the competitions, as long as it is properly credited so people can try to vote accordingly.

OTA: In general, are there any real “rules” to demoscene, other than making a cool demo?

FC: Each demoparty has its own set of competitions. And for each of these competitions there are usually rules lined down, to ensure the competition is fair for everyone participating. Those are the main constraints when releasing something on the demoscene. That being said, most demoparties typically have a wild competition category where anything goes: video, weird platforms, live performances, whatever you can think of.

And you can also release your demo outside of any competition or party. It will get less visibility though, which is why most active demosceners prefer to release at demoparties where they or their friends are attending.

There are some conventions and tropes from the four decades of culture that reoccur a lot, like for example most demos have credits and greetings scenes. But there is no committee that gets to decide what is or is not a real demo and it's culturally accepted that anyone is free to release whatever they enjoyed doing. If it becomes praised by the community or not that's another story. Also party organizers sometimes disqualify from the competition screening some things that are in bad taste, but you can still release them outside of a demoparty.

OTA: Demoscene has recently been labeled as intangible culture by UNESCO in some countries. What effect do you think this will have, good or bad?

FC: I been closely following that effort and am part of the discussion group of demosceners who have been actively pushing for that to happen across the globe. We call it "The Art of Coding" initiative.

We are also trying to push for it in Portugal as one of the activities of our Associação Inércia, the nonprofit entity we have in place here in Portugal focused on promoting demoscene culture.

I think it's good. It can open some doors when you are trying to get some support from local municipality to help you organize future demoscene events. It gives your proposal a bit more legitimacy when you are actively promoting something that has been recognized internationally as intangible cultural heritage.

OTA: How long have you been involved in the demoscene? And how does your YouTube channel relate to it?

FC: I been active in the demoscene since 1997 after a neighbor / classmate of mine showed me some demos and challenged me to learn graphics programming. I did many different types of releases since then, mostly for the MS-DOS and Windows platforms. I also dabbled in audio production, am known as an experimental / noise artist of sorts in the demoscene for focusing on glitch audio aesthetics in many of my releases. But I also try other aesthetics now and again, depending on the project idea.

The demoscene was never that big in Portugal, so most of my early contact with it was by reading about it through diskmag articles. Diskmags are the equivalent of an independent news zine of sorts, but in an executable file format and fitting inside a single floppy disk, hence the name, a mag inside a disk. I became a bit obsessed with the medium, was even an amateur editor and co-editor of different number of demoscene publications throughout the years. So it was common for me to keep track of the active demoscene, what groups are active, the new parties coming up, the best latest releases that just came out. Getting to know all the different groups and platforms of activity and how they correlated with each other, did a whole bunch of interviews with all types of demosceners, etc.

Long story short, once the Internet became more prevalent the diskmag format kind of faded away, becoming replaced with online portals for news and forum discussions, blogs with specialized articles, event reports and interviews, etc. But it's kind of a bit all over the place and hard to follow if you don't know what you're looking for, so now with my YouTube channel, I try to do a continuation of what the diskmags used to bring to the table in that regard, consolidating the information into a single place that becomes a bit easier to keep up with the demoscene – with my monthly reports for example, or creating in depth discussion videos about specific demoscene topics, guides for new people getting into things, etc.

My channel is still a bit of a mess, in the sense that it's not strictly focused on just this one single demoscene promotion goal. It also caters to other things in my range of interest that might warrant the occasional video, such as games, technical help videos, book reviews, random things really. Which is a big no-no on all the "how to make your channel grow" tutorials out there, but it's been working for me so far, so I don't care.

OTA: If someone wants to get involved with demoscene, where should they start? Your guidebook and related video on “Teach Yourself Demoscene in 14 Days” is a good place to start for sure. Any other recommendations? And where can they find demoscene events to attend?

FC: Definitely “Teach Yourself Demoscene in 14 Days”, it was prepared especially with that goal in mind and peer reviewed by other demosceners. There are other resources out there of course, but it largely depends on your area of interest:

• If you are more into learning the livecoding shaders culture in the demoscene you can go to Demozoo’s Livecode

• If you are interested in coding small things you can go to Size Coding

• If you are more interested in textart there is 16 colors

• The Zine podcast radioshow is also a good way to get to know more about the demoscene.

As for finding demoscene events to attend, Demoparty.net is the main resource, but the front page of Demozoo also lists upcoming events. I would also recommend to join some demoscene Discord servers and getting to know the active community depending on what you're most interested in.

Through that interaction it'll become clear what upcoming events people are looking forward to or preparing their releases for, and then just try to participate. If you can't attend physically, most events also welcome remote participation and usually have a livestream of the event available.
https://onthearts.com/p/what-is-the-demoscene





How Many Video Clips Does it Take to Upload All of Mean Girls on TikTok?

Answer: Twenty-three.
News Staff

As streaming services grow in number and expense, some have taken to pirating movies by uploading them as a series of separate video clips to platforms such as TikTok and YouTube so they can be watched for free. This gets around the platforms’ video length limits designed to prevent uploading entire movies — as long as you’re willing to deal with watching the film as multiple snippets.

While studios are likely not fans of this new method of piracy, there’s one that has decided to embrace it. Paramount Pictures has decided to help fans celebrate Mean Girls Day by uploading the popular 2004 teen comedy in its entirety to TikTok in bite-sized pieces. The movie’s unofficial official holiday falls on Oct. 3 because that’s the day heartthrob Aaron Samuels (Jonathan Bennett) asked Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) what day it was.

The film is 107 minutes long, so Paramount had to upload 23 different clips in order to get it all. It even labeled them to make it easy to keep track of which one to watch next.
https://www.govtech.com/question-of-...irls-on-tiktok





Netflix Jacks up the Price of its Premium Plan to $23 a Month

Grandfathered Basic subscribers will pay $12.
Will Shanklin

Netflix announced price hikes on two of its plans today. As the company relayed its quarterly earnings, it said it’s increasing rates for its Basic and Premium plans. The Basic plan, which Netflix killed earlier this year, moves from $10 to $12 for grandfathered customers, while Premium rises from $20 to $23.

Netflix said its ad-supported and Standard plans will remain the same at $7 and $15.49, respectively. Before Wednesday’s news, the company last raised prices in early 2022.

“While we mostly paused price increases as we rolled out paid sharing, our overall approach remains the same — a range of prices and plans to meet a wide range of needs, and as we deliver more value to our members, we occasionally ask them to pay a bit more,” Netflix wrote in its earnings report. “Our starting price is extremely competitive with other streamers and at $6.99 per month in the US, for example, it’s much less than the average price of a single movie ticket.”

The company’s move to limit password sharing appears to have paid off. Paid memberships are up to 247.15 million, a significant 10 percent annual increase. Paid net subscriber additions were 8.76 million for Q3, the biggest increase of the last year. In addition, Netflix’s advertising-supported plan seems to be off to the hot start it expected as it accounted for 30 percent of all new sign-ups in countries where it’s available.

Netflix has shifted its strategy as it adjusts from its peak-pandemic highs while facing increased competition. In addition to its price hikes, ad-supported plan and password-sharing crackdowns, the streaming service is even taking the peculiar step of moving into retail.

Netflix is hardly alone in raising prices. Disney+, Hulu and Max have all issued increases in the past 12 months. That isn’t limited to direct rivals: Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Plus, Spotify, YouTube Premium and Apple Music all jacked up their subscription costs in the last year.
https://www.engadget.com/netflix-jac...201116571.html





FCC Moves Ahead with Title II Net Neutrality Rules in 3-2 Party-Line Vote

FCC issues Notice of Proposed Rulemaking over Republican objections.
Jon Brodkin

The Federal Communications Commission today voted to move ahead with a plan that would restore net neutrality rules and common-carrier regulation of Internet service providers.

In a 3-2 party-line vote, the FCC approved Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), which seeks public comment on the broadband regulation plan. The comment period will officially open after the proposal is published in the Federal Register, but the docket is already active and can be found here.

The proposal would reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service, a designation that allows the FCC to regulate ISPs under the common-carrier provisions in Title II of the Communications Act. The plan is essentially the same as what the FCC did in 2015 when it used Title II to prohibit fixed and mobile Internet providers from blocking or throttling traffic or giving priority to Web services in exchange for payment.

The Obama-era net neutrality rules were eliminated during Trump's presidency when then-Chairman Ajit Pai led a repeal that reclassified broadband as an information service, returning it to the less strict regulatory regime of Title I. The current FCC likely would have acted much sooner but there was a 2-2 deadlock until last month when the Senate confirmed Biden nominee Anna Gomez to fill the empty spot.

After the comment period, the FCC is likely to finalize the rulemaking and put the 2015 rules back in place. The broadband industry will likely then sue the FCC in an attempt to nullify the rulemaking.

Chair: Broadband needs “expert agency”

"Today, there is no expert agency ensuring that the Internet is fast, open, and fair... Today, we begin a process to make this right. We propose to reinstate enforceable, bright-line rules to prevent blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization," Rosenworcel said at the commission meeting.

Title II regulation isn't just about net neutrality, Rosenworcel said, arguing that the reclassification will give the FCC more authority to protect national security on broadband networks. "When we stripped state-affiliated companies from China of their authority to operate in the United States, that action did not extend to broadband services, thanks to the retreat from Title II. This is a national security loophole that needs to be addressed," she said.

Without Title II, the FCC has "limited authority to incorporate updated cybersecurity standards into our network policies," she said. The same is true of protecting privacy on broadband networks, she said.

"The law requires telecommunications providers to protect the confidentiality of the proprietary information of their customers," Rosenworcel said. "That means that these providers cannot sell your location data, among other sensitive information. Those privacy protections currently extend to voice customers but not broadband subscribers. Does that really make sense? Do we want our broadband providers selling what we do online? Scraping our service for a payday from new artificial intelligence models? Doing any of this without our permission?"

Disputing claims that the FCC is overstepping its authority, Rosenworcel said the "rules are legally sustainable because they track those that were upheld in court in 2016—from front to back."

Republican: Internet already “free and open”

ISPs are expected to argue that the FCC is not allowed to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service even though courts did not block previous classification decisions. Courts upheld the FCC's 2015 Title II classification and the later reversal of that decision, saying the FCC is entitled to deference as long as it provides a reasonable justification.

Opponents of the broadband regulation claim the FCC is likely to lose this time because of the Supreme Court's evolving approach on whether federal agencies can decide "major questions" without explicit instructions from Congress. For much more on that topic, read our recent explainer: "Net neutrality's court fate depends on whether broadband is 'telecommunications.'"

FCC Republican Brendan Carr, a longtime opponent of common-carrier rules for broadband, has been vociferously arguing against Rosenworcel's plan. Yesterday, Carr issued a press release arguing that "the Title II debate was settled when the Internet didn't break."

"When my FCC colleagues and I voted in 2017 to overturn the Obama Administration's failed, two-year experiment with Title II, activists and politicians alike guaranteed the American public that the Internet would quite literally break without it," Carr said. Since that didn't happen, the FCC shouldn't reimpose the rules now, Carr says.

"We already have a free and open Internet today, without Title II," he said at today's meeting. But while the FCC hasn't been enforcing net neutrality the past few years, the broadband industry has had to follow similar rules in California and other states.

Carr today called the dire warnings in 2017 a "hoax" and denigrated the plan as imposing "1930s-era government controls to the modern Internet." He also disputed Rosenworcel's justifications for bringing back Title II, saying the FCC already has ample authority to handle national security and other matters.

Republican Commissioner Nathan Simington called the proposed rules "unnecessary, dangerously overbroad, and unlikely to survive judicial review." He said that free-market mechanics have resulted in "de facto net neutrality."

Democrats back chair

FCC Democrat Geoffrey Starks said the plan is "a framework that puts users in charge of what they do online—and not the companies they pay for a connection. It's a framework that protects consumers in their use of an essential service—instead of simply trusting ISPs to do the right thing."

Starks defended the FCC's authority to act, arguing that Supreme Court decisions show "that Congress very obviously gave us the authority to decide the question of what counts as a telecommunications service."

Gomez said the proposal "is not about controlling Internet content. Is not about stifling investment, regulating rates, or reducing competition. It is not about controlling the Internet." Instead, the goal is to prioritize consumers and ensure that the Internet is "open and accessible to all," she said.

Rosenworcel made it clear that she intends the FCC rules to apply nationwide and preempt state net neutrality laws, saying:

Restoring our open Internet policies will mean that a uniform legal framework applies to the whole country. Because if you hear cries that nothing has happened since the FCC retreated from net neutrality and are asking yourself what is the big deal, think again. Because when the FCC stepped back from having these policies in place, the court said states can step in. So when Washington withdrew, California rode in with its own regime. Other states, too. All in all, nearly a dozen put net neutrality rules in state law, executive orders, or contracting policies. So in effect, we have open Internet policies that providers are abiding by right now—they are just coming from Sacramento and places like it. But when you are dealing with the most essential infrastructure in the digital age, come on—it's time for a national policy.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...rty-line-vote/





Sealed in Glass

Project Silica’s coaster-size glass plates can store data for thousands of years, creating sustainable storage for the world.

Storing data on glass might sound futuristic, but it’s a concept that dates back to the 19th century when single photographic negatives were preserved on panes of glass. Fast forward to today, technology has remarkably expanded the storage capabilities of this sustainable material. A small sheet of glass can now hold several terabytes of data, enough to store approximately 1.75 million songs or 13 years’ worth of music.

Elire, a sustainability-focused venture group, has collaborated with Microsoft Research’s Project Silica team to harness this technology for their Global Music Vault in Svalbard, Norway. Using silica-based glass plates, they’re creating a durable archive that is not only resistant to electromagnetic pulses and extreme temperatures but also environmentally friendly. This vault will complement repositories like the Global Seed Vault and the Arctic World Archive, offering a comprehensive sanctuary for musical heritage—from classical operas to modern hits and indigenous compositions. Looking to the future, Elire plans to expand this enduring musical repository by establishing accessible locations worldwide, inviting the public to interact with this extensive and ever-growing archive.

Our vast needs for data storage heighten the need for sustainable solutions. Magnetic storage, although prevalent, is problematic. Its limited lifespan necessitates frequent re-copying, increasing energy consumption and operational costs over time.

“Magnetic technology has a finite lifetime,” says Ant Rowstron, Distinguished Engineer, Project Silica. “You must keep copying it over to new generations of media. A hard disk drive might last five years. A tape, well, if you’re brave, it might last ten years. But once that lifetime is up, you’ve got to copy it over. And that, frankly, is both difficult and tremendously unsustainable if you think of all that energy and resource we’re using.”

Project Silica aims to break this cycle. Developed under the aegis of Microsoft Research, it can store massive amounts of data in glass plates roughly the size of a drink coaster and preserve the data for thousands of years. Richard Black, Research Director, Project Silica, adds, “This technology allows us to write data knowing it will remain unchanged and secure, which is a significant step forward in sustainable data storage.”

Project Silica’s goal is to write data in a piece of glass and store it on a shelf until it is needed. Once written, the data inside the glass is impossible to change.

Project Silica is focused on pioneering data storage in quartz glass in partnership with the Microsoft Azure team, seeking more sustainable ways to archive data. This relationship is symbiotic, as Project Silica uses Azure AI to decode data stored in glass, making reading and writing faster and allowing more data storage.

Data is stored in glass via a four-step process: writing with an ultrafast femtosecond laser, reading through a computer-controlled microscope, decoding, and finally, storing in a library. The library is passive, with no electricity in any of the storage units. The complexity is within the robots that charge as they idle inside the lab, awakening when data is needed. They climb the shelves, fetch the glass, and then zip back to the reader. Black says, “Once we finish writing the glass and move it to the library, we design the system so it can never go back to the writer. It’s completely immutable.”

Initially, the laser writing process was inefficient, but after years of refinement, the team can now store several TB in a single glass plate that could last 10,000 years. For a sense of scale, each plate could store around 3,500 movies. Or enough non-stop movies to play for over half a year without repeating.

More data less space

One of the standout features of glass storage technology is its space efficiency. Datacenters today are large infrastructures. In contrast, glass storage solutions require a fraction of that space. The technology we’ve developed here at Project Silica can store an enormous amount of data in a very compact form. It’s a new paradigm of efficiency and sustainability,” Black explains.

In glass we trust

Glass storage is still emerging (experts predict it will require 3-4 more developmental stages before it’s ready for commercial use), but its benefits are clear: it’s durable, sustainable, and cost-effective. This aligns perfectly with Project Silica’s overarching commitment to sustainability. The main expenses come in the initial stage of embedding data into these highly resilient glass plate, but ongoing maintenance costs are minimal once stored.

Rowstron envisions this cutting-edge technology becoming a mainstay in Azure data centers across the globe. But the vision extends beyond mere data storage. For both businesses and individuals, adopting this form of archival means entrusting future generations with a treasure trove of invaluable information. Just like the Global Music Vault aims to preserve the world’s musical heritage, glass storage promises to securely—and sustainably—encapsulate a diverse range of data.
https://unlocked.microsoft.com/sealed-in-glass/
















Until next week,

- js.



















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