Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - September 19th, ’20

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September 19th, 2020




Publishers Are Taking the Internet to Court

In a lawsuit against the Internet Archive, the largest corporations in publishing want to change what it means to own a book.
Maria Bustillos

When Covid-19 struck, hundreds of millions of students were suddenly stranded at home without access to teachers or libraries. UNESCO reported that in April, 90 percent of the world’s enrolled students had been adversely affected by the pandemic. In response, the Internet Archive’s Open Library announced the National Emergency Library, a temporary program suspending limits on the number of patrons who could borrow its digital books simultaneously. The Open Library lends at no charge about 4 million digital books, 2.5 million of which are in the public domain, and 1.4 million of which may be under copyright and subject to lending restrictions. (This is roughly equivalent to a medium-sized city library; the New York Public Library, by comparison, holds 21.9 million books and printed materials and 1.78 million e-books, according to 2016 figures from the American Library Association.) But the National Emergency Library wound up creating an emergency of its own—for the future of libraries.

Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive’s founder and digital librarian, wrote in March that the National Emergency Library would ensure “that students will have access to assigned readings and library materials…for the remainder of the US academic calendar.” He acknowledged that authors and publishers would also be harmed by the pandemic, urged those in a position to buy books to do so, and offered authors a form for removing their own books from the program, if they chose.

More than 100 libraries, archives, and other institutions signed on to a statement of support for the program, including MIT, Penn State, Emory University, the Boston Public Library, Middlebury College, Amherst College, George Washington University, the Claremont Colleges Library, and the Greater Western Library Alliance. Writing in The New Yorker, Harvard history professor and author Jill Lepore joined many media observers in praising the National Emergency Library as “a gift to readers everywhere.”

A number of other authors, however, took to Twitter to complain.

“Guys. Not helpful,” tweeted novelist Neil Gaiman.

“They scan books illegally and put them online. It’s not a library,” novelist Colson Whitehead tweeted in March. (I wrote last week to ask Whitehead what laws he thought were being broken, or whether he’d since altered his views on this matter, and he declined to comment.)

On June 1, Whitehead’s publisher, Penguin Random House, together with fellow megapublishers Hachette, HarperCollins, and Wiley, filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive alleging “mass copyright infringement.” The Internet Archive closed the National Emergency Library on June 16, citing the lawsuit and calling for the publishers to stand down. But the plaintiffs are continuing to press their claims, and are now seeking to close the whole Open Library permanently.

The trial is set for next year in federal court, with initial disclosures for discovery scheduled to take place next week. The publishers’ “prayer for relief” seeks to destroy the Open Library’s existing books, and to soak the Internet Archive for a lot of money; in their response, the Archive is looking to have its opponents’ claims denied in full, its legal costs paid, and “such other and further relief as the Court deems just and equitable.” But what’s really at stake in this lawsuit is the idea of ownership itself—what it means not only for a library but for anyone to own a book.

The Internet Archive is far more than the Open Library; it’s a nonprofit institution that has become a cornerstone of archival activity throughout the world. Brewster Kahle is an Internet pioneer who was writing about the importance of preserving the digital commons in 1996. He built the Wayback Machine, without which an incalculable amount of the early Web would have been lost for good. The Internet Archive has performed pioneering work in developing public search tools for its own vast collections, such as the television news archive, which researchers and journalists like me use on an almost daily basis in order to contextualize and interpret political reporting. These resources are unique and irreplaceable.

The Internet Archive is a tech partner to hundreds of libraries, including the Library of Congress, for whom it develops techniques for the stewardship of digital content. It helps them build their own Web-based collections with tools such as Archive-It, which is currently used by more than 600 organizations including universities, museums, and government agencies, as well as libraries, to create their own searchable public archives. The Internet Archive repairs broken links on Wikipedia—by the million. It has collected thousands of early computer games, and developed online emulators so they can be played on modern computers. It hosts collections of live music performances, 78s and cylinder recordings, radio shows, films and video. I am leaving a lot out about its groundbreaking work in making scholarly materials more accessible, its projects to expand books to the print-disabled—too many undertakings and achievements to count.

For-profit publishers like HarperCollins or Hachette don’t perform the kind of work required to preserve a cultural posterity. Publishers are not archivists. They obey the dictates of the market. They keep books in print based on market considerations, not cultural ones. Archiving is not in the purview or even the interests of big publishers, who indeed have an incentive to encourage the continuing need to buy.

But in a healthy society, the need for authors and artists to be compensated fairly is balanced against the need to preserve a rich and robust public commons for the benefit of the culture as a whole. Publishers are stewards of the right of authors to make a fair living; librarians are stewards of cultural posterity. Brewster Kahle, and the Internet Archive, are librarians, and the Internet Archive is a new kind of library.

I first spoke with Kahle in 2013, when he became one of just a handful of people in the United States permitted to discuss his receipt of a National Security Letter from the NSA. Hundreds of thousands of these letters were sent out, but only the three that had been successfully challenged in court, and thus rescinded, could be discussed in public without risking imprisonment. The NSA had demanded that the Internet Archive divulge personal information about a library patron, and the only way to refuse to comply (without being jailed) was to sue the government, so that’s what Kahle decided to do. The Internet Archive won that lawsuit, with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU.

“I’m a librarian!” he told me, back then. “Libraries have had a long history of dealing with authoritarian organizations demanding reader records—just, who’s read what—and this has led to people being rounded up and killed.”

Now Kahle finds himself on the other side of a lawsuit. The key issue in this one is the as-yet-untested legal theory of Controlled Digital Lending (CDL), which the Internet Archive and partner libraries have been working out over the last few years, in order to deal fairly with the new question of lending digitized books within the parameters of existing copyright law. CDL was designed to mirror the age-old library practice of (1) buying or otherwise acquiring a physical book, and (2) loaning it out to one patron at a time.

Like a traditional library, the Internet Archive buys or accepts donations of physical books. The archive scans its physical books, making one digital copy available for each physical book it owns. The digitized copies are then loaned out for a limited period, like a traditional library loan. The physical books from which the scans were made are stored and do not circulate, a practice known as “own-to-loan.”

Harvard copyright scholar and lawyer Kyle Courtney has explained this reasoning very clearly. “Libraries do not need permission or a license to loan those books that they have purchased or acquired,” he said at a recent conference. “Copyright law covers those exact issues.… Congress actually placed all of these specialized copyright exemptions for libraries in the Copyright Act itself.”

The for-profit publishers in the lawsuit, however, do not care for this idea. What they allege in the complaint is this: “Without any license or any payment to authors or publishers, IA [the Internet Archive] scans print books, uploads these illegally scanned books to its servers, and distributes verbatim digital copies of the books in whole via public-facing websites.”

What this ominous description fails to acknowledge is that all libraries that lend e-books “distribute verbatim digital copies of the books in whole via public-facing websites.” Yet the publishers claim later in the same document that they have no beef with regular libraries. They love libraries, they say (“Publishers have long supported public libraries, recognizing the significant benefits to the public of ready access to books and other publications”), and are “in partnership” with them: “This partnership turns upon a well-developed and longstanding library market, through which public libraries buy print books and license ebooks (or agree to terms of sale for ebooks) from publishers.”

The real issue emerges here: The words “license ebooks” are the most important ones in the whole lawsuit.

Publishers approve of libraries paying for e-book licenses because they’re temporary, just like your right to watch a movie on Netflix is temporary and can evaporate at any moment. In the same way, publishers would like to see libraries obliged to license, not to own, books—that is, continue to pay for the same book again and again. That’s what this lawsuit is really about. It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that publishers took advantage of the pandemic to achieve what they had not been able to achieve previously: to turn the library system into a “reading as a service” operation from which they can squeeze profits forever.

Their argument also hinges on the notion that it’s illegal to scan a book that you own. Note that this is what’s being claimed in the complaint: that the books are “illegally scanned,” as Whitehead tweeted back in March. It’s not just the distribution of “pirated” copies they’re trying to prevent. It’s doing as you wish with your own property.

This runs deeper than the question of digital format. NYU law professor Jason Schultz, co-author of The End of Ownership, explained it in an e-mail: “The key here is that our law and cultures have always distinguished between owning something and temporarily purchasing access to something. Most people know the difference between owning a home and renting one, or owning a tuxedo or renting one. We also know this with most media, for example the difference between buying a copy of a film on DVD and going to see it in the theater.”

The Internet is 31 years old, and in those three short decades the virtual world we’ve come to depend on has slowly eroded the idea of private ownership—literally, your right to call your belongings your own. Things you used to buy just once, such as your own private copies of software like Photoshop or Word, your privately owned vinyl discs and CDs, or movies on VHS—have increasingly begun to come through dispensing services you pay for every month, from vendors like Adobe, Netflix, Hulu, and Spotify. And you’ll never stop paying.

That rentier mentality is now reaching into the world of books. As Schultz elaborated: “For each physical book that a library owns, it can lend it out to whomever it chooses for as long as it wants and the copyright owner has no say in how such lending happens. But here, because digital technology is involved, the publishers are asserting that they can control how/when/where/why libraries lend out digital copies.… In other words, they want to change the rules in their favor and take away one of the most cherished and valuable contributions that libraries make to society—allowing members of the public to read for free from the library’s collection.”

The oldest surviving library in England was founded in 1653 through the bequest of Humphrey Chetham, a Manchester textile merchant and banker, “for the use of schollars and others well affected to learning, the books to remain as a public library for ever.” Chetham’s Library has been in continuous operation as a free public library for more than 350 years. The first keeper was charged with opening “from 8 till 11 in the morning, and from one till four in the afternoon,” and “to require nothing of any man that cometh into the library.”

We’ve come a long way since then—for good or ill—but the Internet isn’t as inherently democratic as Silicon Valley would like us to believe. Technology at the end of the 20th century advanced too quickly to prevent all kinds of unwanted consequences and threats to laws and long-held principles, like a boom town built with no zoning, ramshackle and rowdy, by people more intent on finding gold than on creating a worthwhile community in which to live.

It’s not easy getting anyone at the Internet Archive to discuss these matters in the middle of litigation, but I did manage to speak with Brewster Kahle for a few moments.

“Libraries buy, preserve, and lend,” he said. “That’s been the model forever. [Libraries] actually supply about 20 percent of the revenue to the publishing industry. But if they cannot buy, preserve, and lend—if all they become is a redistributor, a Netflix for books—my God, we have a society that can get really out of control. Because if a publisher maintains control over every reading event, who’s allowed to read it, when are they allowed to read it, if they’re allowed to read it, and be able to prevent anybody, or particular regions, from being able to see something, we are in George Orwell world.

“What libraries do, is they buy, preserve, and lend. What this lawsuit is about—they’re saying the libraries cannot buy, they cannot preserve, and they cannot lend.”

Libraries have operated on those principles for thousands of years, collecting, preserving, and sharing knowledge not for profit but as a public good—requiring nothing. For many centuries, young people of limited means have been the explicitly intended beneficiaries and users of libraries. Some of those young people grew up to write books themselves. It would be a tragedy if the profit motive were to succeed at last in putting an end to that.
https://www.thenation.com/article/so...rnet-to-court/





Bedford Residents Charged with Pirating Copyrighted TV Programming
Allan April

Nova Scotia RCMP has charged a pair of Bedford, N.S., residents with pirating copyrighted television programming in connection with a federal investigation into piracy called ‘Operation Hotwire’.

In June 2019, the Nova Scotia RCMP’s Federal Serious and Organized Crime (FSOC) division began an investigation after receiving a complaint from a telecommunications company of an individual streaming large amounts of television programming for profit.

The unnamed telecommunications company filed the complaint after it conducted a lengthy internal investigation.

On Aug. 14, 2019, officers searched a home on Shore Drive in Bedford, and seized electronic equipment and financial documents. A 35-year-old man from Bedford was arrested at the home without incident and later released from police custody.

On Aug. 13, 2020, the RCMP FSOC division filed charges against two individuals in Bedford. A restraint order and special search warrant were issued on Sept. 3.

On Sept. 9, 14 properties were restrained, including two houses and 12 plots of land. Two vehicles were seized.

On Sept. 1, the Nova Scotia RCMP FSOC laid 25 copyright-related charges against two people.

Riad Thomeh, 36, from Bedford has been charged with:

• Possession of a device to obtain use of telecommunication facility or service
• Laundering the proceeds of crime
• 18 counts of possession of property obtained by crime
• Distribute copyrighted material – Copyright Act
• Re-transmit encrypted programming signal – Radiocommunication Act
• Decode encrypted programming signal – Radiocommunication Act

Kayla Thomeh, 33, from Bedford, has been charged with:

• Laundering the proceeds of crime
• Possession of property obtained by crime

Three companies operated by Riad and Kayla Thomeh are also facing 44 charges, including possession of a device to obtain use of telecommunication facility or service, laundering the proceeds of crime and possession of property obtained by crime, as well as charges under the Copyright Act and the Radiocommunication Act.

Infringement of Canada’s Copyright Act is a federal offence. Maximum penalties are a five-year sentence, a $1-million fine, or both.
https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/bedford-...ming-1.5105215





Move Over Torrents, Indians Now Use Telegram to Pirate Movies and TV Shows

Due to easy accessibility and a feature that allows sharing of large files, Telegram has become the new hub to access TV shows and movies. But it is not legal.
Yasmin Ahmed

• Telegram introduced Channels in 2015 where users can share videos, other content for broadcasting.
• Now, Telegram Channels are used by users to watch their favourite movies and shows for free.
• Some Telegram channels have links that stream Netflix, Amazon, and Voot videos.

Do you know an app where you can watch the latest TV shows and movies? Maybe you are thinking Netflix. Or Amazon Prime. Or Apple TV+. But there are hundreds of thousands of users in India who think of Telegram. It is not legal. Though that is no bar for many who use the chat app and its feature called Channels to access latest movies and shows.

In a way, in India, particularly with the younger internet users, teens and those who watch stuff on mobile phones, Telegram has replaced torrenting when it comes to pirating movies and shows.

These users have either not used a torrent app or network, or are just more comfortable using chat apps. For such users Telegram has become the go to app to pirate content.

A media professional recently saw her Netflix subscription expire. But she wanted to watch a movie I'm Thinking of Ending Things. A few chats with friends pointed her to Telegram. Soon she discovered a channel on Telegram, found the link of the movie she wanted to watch, and streamed it from there.

There are many like her. Shrutika Sahu, a final year literature student says that she watches shows like Asur and Mirzapur on Telegram channels. She says the process can be a bit tedious at times because often some channels offer only one episode. The trick is to find a channel that has all episodes of a series. But then it is all free so the hassle is apparently worth for some.

Tanyia Gaba, a dentist, who is currently spending time in quarantine, too is making use of a Telegram channel to watch shows she wants to see. “I am currently watching Bandish Bandits on Telegram. I have also watched Sadak 2 and Shakuntala Devi on Telegram,” she says.

This is pirating of copyrighted content, sharing of which can be considered illegal. But many Telegram users, just like the internet users who utilise torrents and file sharing websites, don’t realise it. Though some do. When India Today Tech asked a Telegram user, who streams shows and movies on the chat app, if he knew whether this was legal or illegal, he said, “100 per cent illegal.”

The reason why Telegram has become popular among pirates is because of its Channels feature and how the app allows people to share large files. Telegram is a messaging app used by people for its privacy, sharing capabilities and cloud-based encrypted storage. Telegram has an option to create large groups with bot services for easy management and large channels that can be used by subscribers to get updates.

WhatsApp allows users to upload media as documents up to 100 MB whereas, in Telegram, that size is capped at 1.5 GB.

Using Telegram to share pirated or stolen material violates the app's terms and services, which clearly states the company has a zero-tolerance policy. But the encryption means it is nearly impossible for the app to find out what people are sharing.

Telegram app also has a feature called Global Search that enables users to reach all of its channels and groups. The shows and movies are shared through Channels. Channels feature was introduced in 2015 for broadcasting messages to large audiences, as Telegram put it at that time.

Channels can have an unlimited number of members, they can be public with a permanent URL and each post in a channel has its view counter.

“Channels were brought in to broadcast messages and videos. The app also has an option to create large groups with bot services for easy management and large channels which can be used by subscribers to get updates,” says Anant, a tech and gaming enthusiast. “This, however, has brought about an increase in sharing of otherwise copyrighted content including movies and TV series, simply by searching the name of the TV show. There are several channels where you can simply press play and watch the entire show without license requirements or downloads.”

Vibhuti, a final year advertising student who just got her Netflix subscription renewed says it is “not fair” for the creators of shows or the users of OTT platforms who pay to watch content online.
https://www.indiatoday.in/technology...374-2020-09-16





Mozilla Shuts Down Firefox Send File Transfer Service after Malware Abuse

Expanding beyond the Firefox browser to online services isn't simple.
Stephen Shankland

Mozilla permanently shut down its Firefox Send service for transferring files after people used it to launch online attacks, the nonprofit announced Thursday.

"Firefox Send was a promising tool for encrypted file sharing," Mozilla said in a statement. "Unfortunately, some abusive users were beginning to use Send to ship malware and conduct spear phishing attacks." Spear phishing is a personalized attack designed to fool you into sharing sensitive information like passwords.

Mozilla paused the Send service during the summer when it detected the problem, then decided it's not worth the expense of relaunching.
online privacy

Mozilla just laid off a quarter of its 1,000 employees to try to cope with shrinking revenue from search-engine partners like Google during the coronavirus pandemic. The nonprofit is trying to expand into new areas, but the Firefox Send service's fate shows it's not easy to branch out beyond its core product, the Firefox web browser.

Two key services that Mozilla will continue to push are designed to improve your online privacy: its $5 per month virtual private network, or VPN, and its simpler $3 per month Firefox Private Network.

Also canceled is the Firefox Notes service, which let people synchronize notes across multiple devices. The Notes app for Android will be removed in November, and although the browser extension will remain longer, Mozilla won't develop it beyond adding an option to export notes.
https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-sh...malware-abuse/





North American Box Office Muted; ‘Mulan’ Fizzles in China
Lindsey Bahr

Moviegoing audiences in North America are not rushing back to the theater just yet and “Mulan” is also faltering in its China release as the global box office slowly comes back online in the COVID-19 era.

In the second major weekend for U.S. and Canadian movie theaters, Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” earned only $6.7 million from 2,910 locations, according to studio estimates Sunday. Warner Bros’ sci-fi thriller was viewed as the main litmus test for whether audiences were ready to embrace the theatrical experience again, after nearly six months of shuttered theaters due to the pandemic.

Although it was enough to top the scattershot domestic releases, it also isn’t enough to jumpstart the struggling exhibition industry. Warner Bros. has already pushed back its next major release, “Wonder Woman 1984,” even further.

The weekend’s only major new opener was Sony’s PG-13 rom-com “The Broken Hearts Gallery,” which earned an estimated $1.1 million from 2,204 North American locations. The film, from first-time writer director Natalie Krinsky and executive produced by Selena Gomez, is about a 20-something gallerist played by Geraldine Viswanathan who creates an art exhibit with souvenirs from her past relationships.

The studio is optimistic about its performance and potential.

“The early numbers are really encouraging,” said Adrian Smith, the president of president of Sony Pictures domestic distribution.

Smith noted that the film will have a slow roll out as more theaters continue to open in the U.S.

Roughly two-thirds of the domestic market is open and theaters are operating at limited capacity and with limited showtimes. Two of the country’s biggest markets, New York and Los Angeles, remain closed. Other still-closed markets include North Carolina, Michigan, New Mexico and the cities of Seattle and Portland.

Other notable domestic weekend numbers include Disney’s “The New Mutants,” which added $2.1 million from 2,704 locations in its third weekend and Solstice’s Russell Crowe pic “Unhinged,” which earned an additional $1.5 million in week four.

“Every week is a bit of a litmus test about how potential moviegoers are feeling about going to the theater,” said Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore’s senior media analyst. “I think audiences are slowly going back.”

But, he noted, “you can’t apply the norms of how we analyze or report the box office.”

Comscore has not even been able to report a traditional “Top 10” chart because of the unusual marketplace which Dergarabedian likened to a “relaunch” or a “reboot” of the movie theater.

The landscape is more encouraging internationally, where “Tenet” this weekend added over $30 million, pushing its global total to $207 million.

But new movies are not enough on their own. In China, The Walt Disney Co.’s “Mulan” had a disappointing debut of only $23.2 million. The low launch nonetheless claimed the film the No. 1 spot in the country where an estimated 91% of theaters are open but limited to 50% capacity. The studio noted that its opening is around the same level as “Cinderella” and “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil.”

Globally, “Mulan” has earned $37.6 million to date, although that number is not representative of the total earnings. The live-action epic, which has also been embroiled in controversy over its filming location, is not playing in North American theaters. Instead, it is available for a $29.99 rental on the company’s Disney+ service. The streaming earnings were not made available.

But pre-COVID metrics of success and failure are difficult to apply, especially to the first films out of the gates. And, according to Dergarabedian, it might be that way for a while.

“We are not in a traditional marketplace and we are not in a traditional mode of analyses,” Dergarabedian said. “It’s going to take some time to properly assess the long-term impact of the pandemic.”
https://apnews.com/5caf9eddc030cd2a90b4c217192048ab





Movie Theaters Returned. Audiences Didn’t. Now What?

People aren’t going to the movies at anywhere close to the numbers that Hollywood hoped, prompting studios to postpone more big releases. Marvel’s “Black Widow” could be the next to retreat.
Nicole Sperling and Brooks Barnes

“Tenet” was supposed to mark the return of the movie theater business in the United States. Instead, it has shown just how much trouble the industry is in.

After five months of pandemic-forced closure, the big movie theater chains reopened in roughly 68 percent of the United States by Labor Day weekend, in large part so they could show the $200 million film, which Warner Bros. promoted as “a global tent pole of jaw-dropping size, scope and scale.” But “Tenet,” directed by the box office heavyweight Christopher Nolan, instead arrived with a whimper: It collected $9.4 million in its first weekend in North America and just $29.5 million over its first two weeks.

Theaters remain closed in New York and Los Angeles, the two biggest markets in the United States and the center of Mr. Nolan’s fan base. In the areas where “Tenet” did play, audience concern about safety — even with theater capacity limited to 50 percent or less in most locations — likely hurt ticket sales. Box office analysts also noted that “Tenet” is a complicated, cerebral movie with little star power; a frothier, more escapist offering may have had an easier time coaxing people back to cinemas.

Whatever the reason, the bottom line was strikingly clear: People aren’t going to the movies at anywhere close to the numbers that Hollywood hoped, and things are not expected to improve in the near term. Studios are postponing big movies again — “Wonder Woman 1984” retreated last week, prompting at least three studios to convene meetings on Monday to discuss how to proceed with other scheduled releases — leaving theater owners without much new to offer for the next two months. Some analysts have started to re-sound alarm bells about the future of the theater business.

“We have no way of forecasting how long it will take for consumer comfort with indoor movie theaters to return,” Rich Greenfield, a founder of the Lightshed Partners media research firm, wrote in a report on Monday.

In recent days, Warner Bros. shifted “Wonder Woman 1984” to Christmas Day from Oct. 2, and MGM/Universal pushed back the slasher remake “Candyman” to next year. STX announced it was moving its Gerard Butler-starring disaster movie “Greenland” out of September to later this year. Marvel’s “Black Widow” and Pixar’s “Soul” are two films supposed to come out in November whose future now seems in question.

“I’m disappointed that the marketplace is still 30 percent unopened,” Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros. president of distribution, said. “The markets we are missing are key markets where Chris Nolan movies have really performed well in the past.” Mr. Nolan’s last three non-franchise movies — “Inception,” “Interstellar” and “Dunkirk” — opened in the $50 million range in North America and went on to collect between $527 million and $837 million worldwide, with the bulk of sales coming from overseas.

Theater owners now must put their faith into two factors out of their control: studios staying the course with end-of-year releases, and New York and Los Angeles (along with San Francisco, the No. 3 market in the country) allowing theaters to reopen.

“Death on the Nile” from Disney’s Twentieth Century division is the biggest-budgeted movie still scheduled to come out in October. If “Black Widow” (Nov. 6) or the James Bond spectacle “No Time to Die” (Nov. 20) get pushed back or moved online — as Disney did recently with “Mulan” — theaters are likely to face arduous conversations about their futures with investors and lenders.

In addition, the longer the pandemic drags on, the more that streaming becomes a threat to theaters. At least a dozen movies originally destined for big screens, including “Hamilton,” “Trolls World Tour” and “Greyhound,” have been redirected to streaming services or online rental platforms. The move has kept money flowing to studios, but analysts say that it has undercut theaters by training consumers to expect new films to be instantly available in their homes.

“We’re learning that markets being opened, cinemas having safety protocols and studios releasing movies are all tied together,” John Fithian, chief executive of the National Association of Theatre Owners, said in an email. “Open markets need safe cinemas, movies need open markets, cinemas need movies. All these things raise audience awareness and comfort in returning to movies. You can’t do one at a time.”

Wall Street’s reaction to the “Tenet” opening and the “Wonder Woman” postponement is telling. AMC shares climbed to about $7 on Sept. 4, the day “Tenet” arrived in U.S. theaters, up from about $2 in April. They have since declined by about 17 percent. Cinemark has declined 18 percent since Sept. 4. Cineworld, the parent company of Regal Cinemas, is down 14 percent. (For context, the S&P 500 is flat for the period.)

“From a cash standpoint, we can see this thing through way into next year if need be,” Mark Zoradi, Cinemark’s chief executive, said by phone. The company, based in Texas, operates about 5,977 screens in the United States and Latin America. “The fourth quarter is getting our feet back on the ground. Next year is a transition year. 2022 is back to a sense of normality.”

He added that recent customer surveys had shown 97 percent satisfaction with safety protocols. “We’ve spent millions and millions of dollars getting this stuff right,” he said. “If we can convince the consumer that we have done all of these things, they are much more likely to want to come back.”

The nation’s largest multiplex chain, AMC Entertainment, declined to comment.

When it comes to the three largest film markets, expectations are tempered for both Los Angeles and San Francisco given the strict metrics California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced as part of its reopening plans. For New York though, exhibitors and studio executives alike are incensed that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has given no specific time table for when movie theaters can reopen, coupling them with other large-crowd places like concert venues and amusement parks, while allowing bowling alleys and restaurants to resume indoor operations. Not only is New York City crucial for sales, much of the media coverage and online buzz surrounding new movies is generated from there. (The New York Times typically does not review films that are not playing in New York.)

“The industry needs New York to open as soon as possible,” said Ken Thewes, Regal Cinemas’ chief marketing officer. “Governor Cuomo has done a great job getting it under control, but we really need him to give cinemas the same thought that he’s given to the restaurant industry and let us resume operations.”

If those markets don’t open, and the studios get skittish, theater operators may have to take some dramatic steps to weather the storm. Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at Box Office Pro, said cinemas may start reducing operating hours to minimize expenses — perhaps going down to 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. screenings only, and foregoing matinees and early-evening screenings. In some cases, theaters have leases that require them to operate seven days a week. For those that don’t, showing movies only on weekends may be an option.

“The next stretch is going to be extremely hard,” Mr. Robbins said.

“Tenet” was not the only movie released in August, but the others — “The New Mutants”($15 million) and “Unhinged” ($14 million) — haven’t fared much better at the box office, although they cost less than half as much to make.

For Mark Gill, the chief executive of Solstice Studios, the studio behind “Unhinged,” the film’s grosses are not nearly at the level he hoped for five weeks after release. Yet he says the international performance of “Tenet” — it has brought in $177 million worldwide — illustrates that if the United States can get its public safety issues under control, people will start going out to movie theaters again.

“You can see that this just links to the public health situation here,” he said. “The longer it takes us to get that under control, the tougher it’s going to be. It’s not a permanent problem but it’s a large temporary problem.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/b...ronavirus.html





Warner Bros. Won’t Share ‘Tenet’ Box Office Data, Angering Rival Studios
Melinda Sue Gordon

People who closely follow box office earnings have noticed a surprising lack of transparency surrounding ticket sales for “Tenet,” the $200 million-budgeted sci-fi epic from director Christopher Nolan that released last weekend in U.S. theaters.

Since “Tenet” premiered, Warner Bros., the studio behind the film, has parceled out carefully selected breadcrumbs of data to reporters and rival studios. Traditionally, studios share box office information on a daily basis. That’s not the case with “Tenet.”

Though it started playing in theaters on Thursday, Sept. 3, Warner Bros. waited until Sunday, Sept. 6 to officially announce opening weekend grosses. “Tenet” earned $20 million over the long weekend, a middling result for a film of its size.

Industry observers presumed that Warner Bros. wanted initial box office receipts for “Tenet” to look as robust as possible — and waiting until Sunday for the full weekend figure would make earnings sound stronger than they might if the studio had dribbled out daily numbers.

The studio, however, was concerned that reporters and rivals would misinterpret or unfairly analyze the results — leading to headlines that may incorrectly label “Tenet’s’ debut as a flop. Warner Bros. urged journalists to provide context by noting that ticket sales would automatically be lower than normal given the fact that theaters in major markets like New York and Los Angeles aren’t open and cinemas that have reopened have done so at reduced capacity. With those caveats in mind, Warner Bros. was never banking on a splashy opening weekend and instead hoped “Tenet” would play in theaters for months without much in the way of competition.

Box office reports are one of the most public-facing activities that studios undergo. A hit opening weekend allows them to trumpet the good news in advertisements and through internal communications. But there’s a downside to those bragging rights. It also forces studios to own their mistakes — a miss is a miss, after all. With streaming rivals such as Netflix and Amazon keeping a tight grip on the number of times films are watched and refusing to reveal box office data about their films, more traditional studios have grown frustrated. Some studio executives have even publicly carped about the need to report grosses, suggesting they’d rather forgo the process all together.

Though it is unusual for a major studio like Warner Bros. to shield grosses for perhaps the buzziest movie of the year, other Hollywood players had given the company a pass for opening weekend because “Tenet” was the first significant movie to debut since coronavirus struck. Rival studios are closely watching the Nolan film as a test to see if people would go to the movies during the pandemic. The results, in effect, would help Hollywood decide whether or not to continue releasing big-budgeted tentpoles in the middle of a global health crisis.

Numerous insiders at rival studios emphasized that they wanted Warner Bros. and “Tenet” to succeed, citing the aphorism that rising tides lift all boats. But given the importance of the movie theater business, Hollywood executives at other studios have privately complained about the lack of transparency.

In normal times, executives that are involved in distributing films get access to grosses by the hour. Studios work with the research company Rentrak and its parent company Comscore to report daily numbers and publish box office charts each weekend that are widely distributed across the entertainment industry. Studios pay a lot of money to get down-to-the-minute updates, with the agreement that rivals have access to info from other distributors.

According to individuals familiar with the situation, Rentrak had to get permission from major studio heads before concealing daily numbers for “Tenet.” Though executives were initially reluctant, they ultimately agreed for the first weekend as a courtesy, believing that Warner Bros. was taking a bold bet in testing the waters and needed their support.

But as “Tenet” continues into its second weekend in theaters, there has still been a dearth of information regarding box office data. The studio has yet to report daily figures, and is expected to wait until this Sunday to divulge ticket sales.

Warner Bros. and Comscore declined to comment on this report. However, studio sources argue they aren’t obligated to share numbers with anyone else and stress that there’s no precedent for releasing a movie in a pandemic. Comparing “Tenet” to any other movie, one source said, is “apples and kumquats.” By distributing numbers in the traditional fashion, anyone on the outside could jump to conclusions and categorize “Tenet” has a financial disaster. They argue that there’s no difference between reporting numbers on Friday afternoon or Sunday morning.

Sources at other studios pointed out that some cinema owners, particularly those with drive-in locations, don’t report weekend earnings to studios until Sunday. While normally that wouldn’t make a notable dent in a final tally, drive-ins have become popular during the pandemic.

Adding to anxieties for Hollywood is the concern that other studios might make similar agreements to conceal grosses for upcoming releases — pushing box office revenues behind a curtain of inscrutability. Sony Pictures is already following suit, waiting until the end of this weekend to share sales for its romantic comedy “The Broken Hearts Gallery.”

That could signal that Warner Bros. decision to withhold information and tightly control its box office reporting may no longer be the exception to the rule. It could signal a new precedent for media companies always eager to avoid scrutiny.
https://variety.com/2020/film/box-of...os-1234767113/





Europe’s Top Court Says Net Neutrality Rules Bar ‘Zero Rating’
Natasha Lomas

The European Union’s top court has handed down its first decision on the bloc’s net neutrality rules — interpreting the law as precluding the use of commercial ‘zero rating’ by Internet services providers.

‘Zero rating’ refers to the practice of ISPs offering certain apps/services ‘tariff free’ by excluding their data consumption. It’s controversial because it can have the effect of penalizing and/or blocking the use of non-zero-rated apps/services, which may be inaccessible while the zero rated apps/services are not — which in turn undermines the principal of net neutrality with its promise of fair competition via an equal and level playing field for all things digital.

The pan-EU net neutrality regulation came into force in 2016 amid much controversy over concerns it would undermine rather than bolster a level playing field online. So the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU)’s first ruling interpreting the regulation is an important moment for regional digital rights watchers.

The #ECJ interprets, for the first time, the #EU regulation enshrining #InternetNeutrality with regards to the #Internet users’ rightshttps://t.co/ATb3CgbPxg

— EU Court of Justice (@EUCourtPress) September 15, 2020

Despite the existence of a net neutrality regulation, European carriers have continued offering packages that ‘zero rate’ certain apps, such as Facebook-owned WhatsApp, for example — raising questions over whether such offers comply with the rules. Today’s ruling suggests they do not.

In another example from Hungary, one of carrier Telenor’s 1GB data tariffs (screengrabbed below) touts unlimited domestic data consumption for a number of social apps, including Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Twitter — meaning all other apps/services are at a disadvantage as usage is throttled by the user’s 1GB allowance.

A Budapest court hearing two actions against Telenor, related to two of its ‘zero rating’ packages, made a reference to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling on how to interpret and apply Article 3(1) and (2) of the regulation — which safeguards a number of rights for end users of Internet access services and prohibits service providers from putting in place agreements or commercial practices limiting the exercise of those rights — and Article 3(3), which lays down a general obligation of “equal and non-discriminatory treatment of traffic”.

The court found that ‘zero rating’ agreements that combine a ‘zero tariff’ with measures blocking or slowing down traffic linked to the use of ‘non-zero tariff’ services and applications are indeed liable to limit the exercise of end users’ rights within the meaning of the regulation and on a significant part of the market.

“Such packages are liable to increase the use of the favoured applications and services and, accordingly, to reduce the use of the other applications and services available, having regard to the measures by which the provider of the internet access services makes that use technically more difficult, if not impossible. Furthermore, the greater the number of customers concluding such agreements, the more likely it is that, given its scale, the cumulative effect of those agreements will result in a significant limitation of the exercise of end users’ rights, or even undermine the very essence of those rights,” the court writes in a press release.

It also found that no assessment of the effect of measures blocking or slowing down traffic on the exercise of end users’ rights is required by the regulation, while measures applied for commercial (rather than technical) reasons must be regarded as automatically incompatible.

The full CJEU judgement is available here in French and Hungarian. (Update: And in English here.)
https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/15/eu...rating/?repost





Smaller Internet Providers In Canada Just Got A Big Win In Court

"This is a massive win for Canadians," Distributel's CEO says.
Canadian Press

The Federal Court of Appeal dismissed appeals by some of Canada’s largest telephone and cable companies Thursday, handing an interim victory to the country’s independent internet providers.

The court also ordered the network owners including Bell, Rogers and others to pay costs of the appeal to TekSavvy Solutions Inc., which is the largest of Canada’s independent ISPs, and an industry association.

“This is a massive win for Canadians,” said Matt Stein, chair of the Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) and CEO of Distributel, one of about 30 CNOC members.

He said that the court’s decision ends a “pivotal chapter” in a fight that challenged “Canada’s longstanding practice of appropriate oversight to ensure fair pricing and competition.”

TekSavvy refuses to pay more

The court’s 3-0 ruling concluded by saying the award of costs to TekSavvy and CNOC reflects the fact that the appellants were not successful in convincing the three judges on any of the issues they raised.

There were several appeals before the court, including one filed by Bell Canada on behalf of BCE, and another for most of Canada’s largest cable operators, including Rogers, Shaw, Quebecor’s Videotron and Cogeco.

But the Federal Court of Appeal is only one way in which the big network owners have been fighting to prevent the CRTC from reducing the wholesale rates they charge to independent internet providers, which compete for some of the same customers.

On Friday, TekSavvy Solutions Inc. said it’s owed tens of millions of dollars in rebates from excessive wholesale internet fees and won’t pay more to Bell or Rogers until the balance is settled.

The CRTC is also reviewing its own decision, as part of the regulatory process, and the federal government has indicated it could step in at some point if it thinks the arms-length regulator doesn’t strike the right balance.

Coincidentally, BCE’s chief financial officer told an industry conference Thursday that sentiment seems to have shifted in favour of telecommunications network builders since the pandemic.

In response to questions in an interview-style session with a Bank of America analyst, BCE chief financial officer Glen LeBlanc said benefit of having strong, reliable wireless and internet networks was recognized during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He pointed to a federal government statement on Aug. 15, issued on the one-year anniversary of the CRTC’s wholesale prices decision, that suggested some errors in its process could undermine investments in Canada’s communications networks, particularly in rural and remote areas.

“On the basis of its review, the (cabinet) considers that the (August 2019) rates do not, in all instances, appropriately balance the policy objectives of the wholesale services framework and is concerned that these rates may undermine investment in high-quality networks, particularly in rural and remote areas,” Industry Minister Navdeep Bains said.

Bains said it was unnecessary to refer the decision back to the CRTC for reconsideration “at this time,” but said that the government will continue to monitor the CRTC proceedings to ensure it establishes the “right incentives” for both investment and competitive choice.

Canada’s small and mid-sized ISPs collectively serve about one million households using infrastructure they either own or rent. Although they have only about one-tenth of the market share, they argue that they provide an important alternative to the bigger carriers.

However, the independent ISPs depend on connecting their equipment to networks built and owned by the “facilities based” carriers.

The main message of the facilities-based carriers is that the CRTC’s proposed wholesale rates, which haven’t been put into effect because of the court appeal, were so low they didn’t cover the cost of providing the services purchased by their wholesale customers.

The independent ISPs argued the interim wholesale prices they’ve been paying since 2016 have always been excessively high and they’ll be able to lower retail rates if the CRTC’s decision is put in place.

The CRTC ordered the facilities-based carriers to cut their wholesale capacity rates by up to 43 per cent and chop their access rates up to 77 per cent.

A statement by VMedia Inc., a Toronto-based CNOC member, says that the appeal court’s decision appears to show the cabinet’s statement last month was “without foundation.”

It also said the threat of reduced investments in network infrastructure is a “staple in all rate-setting hearings” but they’ve not been borne out in previous decisions that went against the network owners-operators.
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/...b6b48507ff83e4





Ubicquia Raises $30M Series C To Scale Connected Streetlight Tools

Ubicquia is helping keep the streetlights on in cities across the country, and its smart cell and smart grid technologies have investors taking notice.
Christine Hall

The Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based company’s smart city platforms plug into existing streetlights to provide critical services, including light control, video artificial intelligence, and public WiFi. Ubicquia’s tools are now in more than 100 cities, as well as Mexico, Colombia and Chile.

Fuel Venture Capital participated in the $30 million Series C funding round, which gives Ubicquia approximately $60 million in total funds raised since being founded in 2014.

Ubicquia last raised funds two years ago, CEO Ian Aaron told Crunchbase News. Aaron joined the company in 2017, when it was making Internet of Things sensors and devices. He helped the company focus more on creating and commercializing products and building a team.

“We plan to leverage our position for streetlights to help develop 5G faster,” Aaron said. “It is a big challenge to find the sites and get the permitting. What we did is plug in a small cell, shorten the process by over a year, and reduce the cost by 25 percent of what they would have paid.”

Jeff Ransdell, founding partner and managing director at Fuel Venture, said in an interview that the firm has been “leaning in” on 5G and smart cities for the past two years, but was not able to find a company approaching it from an exponential perspective.

“It didn’t take long for us with Lowell [Kraff] and Ian,” Ransdell said. “Ian knows what he is doing, and his background speaks for itself. The theme of 5G smart cities is game-changing and we feel fortunate to be working with Ubicquia.”

The company is just now starting to deploy at scale and will go into 2021 with a sizeable backlog of booked orders pending installation, Aaron said.

“I love that we make cities more connected,” he added.
https://news.crunchbase.com/news/ubi...etlight-tools/





New Google Fiber Plan: $100 for 2Gbps, Plus Wi-Fi 6 Router and Mesh Extender

$100 plan in beta next month, should come to “most” Google Fiber cities in 2021.
Jon Brodkin

Google Fiber will soon offer 2Gbps service for $100 a month, a package that includes a Wi-Fi 6 router and mesh extender, the Alphabet-owned ISP announced yesterday.

Google fiber-to-the-home service never rolled out as far as many people hoped, but the ISP is still making improvements in cities where it does provide broadband. The new offering is double the download speed of Google Fiber's standard 1Gbps service and costs $30 more. While the new offer is 2Gbps on the download side, it will be 1Gbps for uploads.

In addition to fiber-to-the-home, Google Fiber offers wireless home Internet access in some cities through its Webpass service. Even the Webpass wireless service will get the 2Gbps plan, the announcement said. Webpass' standard speeds today range from 100Mbps to 1Gbps.

The 2Gbps service will initially be available to some customers through Google Fiber's Trusted Tester program next month, with plans to roll out across "most" Google Fiber and Webpass markets in 2021. The announcement didn't provide any details on the Wi-Fi 6 router and mesh extender that will be included in the $100 price. Google Fiber provides 1Gbps customers a gateway and router in a single device it calls a "Network Box."

1Gbps is plenty for most people, and there are millions of Americans without access to anything even remotely close to that. But Google Fiber expects interest from heavy users.

"Why 2 Gig? This year has made this need for more speed and bandwidth especially acute, as many of us are now living our entire lives—from work to school to play—within our homes, creating unprecedented demand for Internet capacity," the Google Fiber announcement said.

Where, when, and how to sign up

Details on timing are vague, but here's what Google Fiber had to say about 2Gbps availability and how to sign up:

We're looking for people to help us test 2 Gig, starting in Nashville and Huntsville next month and in our other Google Fiber cities later this fall. Game changers, super users, and families who need more from their Internet can join the Google Fiber Trusted Tester program to be among the first to put the extra speed to use... Sign up here for an opportunity to be among the first to test 2 Gig in your city.

2 Gig will roll out to all of our Nashville and Huntsville customers later this year, with plans to launch the service across most of our Google Fiber and Google Fiber Webpass cities in early 2021.

You can also visit this page and enter your email and street address to get updates on when 2Gbps will be available. Google Fiber offers either fiber or wireless service in 19 US markets; you can see the list at the ISP's website.
https://arstechnica.com/information-...mesh-extender/





Macron Slams Anti-5G Proponents as ‘Amish’, Causing Uproar in France
Anne Damiani

French President Emmanuel Macron defended 5G technology in his speech to a French startup gathering on Monday (14 September), providing a clear answer to a moratorium on the rollout of the super-fast broadband network wanted by leftist and green parties.

“France is the country of the Enlightenment, it is the country of innovation […] We are going to debunk all false ideas. Yes, France is going to take the 5G turning point because it is the turning point of innovation”, Macron insisted in front of a hundred French Tech entrepreneurs gathered at the Élysée.

“I hear a lot of voices saying that the complexity of contemporary problems should be addressed by returning to the oil lamp! I don’t think that the Amish model can solve the challenges of contemporary ecology,” the head of state said.

The reference to the Amish community, a group of traditionalist Christians known for simple living and slower to adopt many conveniences of modern technology, had been criticised on Twitter by Macron’s opponents.

“For Macron, questioning the health and ecological impact of 5G means wanting to go back to the time of the caves. Zero degree of political debate. Sounds like Trump,” tweeted European Parliament lawmaker Manon Aubry of the GUE/NGL group.

Green MEP Karima Delli joined in the criticism.

“It is always fun to be insulted as a sectarian by a President who thinks he is walking like a prophet, and who has humbly given his own initials to his political movement,” she tweeted.

NGO’s, such as Les Amis de la Terre (Friends of the Earth), reacted too, renaming their Twitter account “Les Amish de la Terre.”

Anti-5G, anti-OGM, anti-Amazon, anti-évasion fiscale, bref anti-tout, @EmmanuelMacron nous a ouvert les yeux.

À partir d'aujourd'hui, les Amis de la Terre deviennent les Amish de la Terre, dans une logique de transparence et de cohérence.

(non) pic.twitter.com/8WuT5J4dXf

— Les Amish de la Terre FR (@amisdelaterre) September 15, 2020

The remark comes a day after around 70 green and left politicians published an opinion column in Le Journal du Dimanche requesting a moratorium on 5G. The moratorium was also one of the demands of the Citizens’ convention for ecological transition, published in 2020.

They now reproach Macron for what they say was a lack of proper debate and for his condescendence towards his opponents.

“The President is acting like a little Napoleon, he is blocking the debate”, Green MEP Michèle Rivasi told EURACTIV. “The Citizens’ convention for ecological transition is a gadget to him.”

She explained her party’s point of view: “How does 5G bring human progress? France is not a start-up. We will not go out of the crisis thanks to technology. The party is in favour of connectivity and accessibility, but 5G will only bring waste and more consumption.”

The president agreed with his Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who said earlier in the day on the France 2 television network: “It would be a step backwards for France, and I prefer France to go forward, as a conqueror who is economically successful, rather than the fossilised France that doesn’t move”.

The allocation of 5G frequencies is due to start at the end of September in France. Macron also pointed out that €7 billion of the recovery plan will be granted to the digital sector, including for the state’s digital transformation.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]
https://www.euractiv.com/section/5g/...oar-in-france/





Exclusive: AT&T Considers Cellphone Plans Subsidized by Ads
Sheila Dang, Helen Coster, Krystal Hu, Kenneth Li

AT&T Inc T.N is considering offering wireless phone plans partially subsidized by advertising as soon as a year from now, Chief Executive John Stankey said in an interview on Tuesday.

The consideration, which has not been previously disclosed, underscores AT&T’s commitment to the advertising business as the U.S. phone carrier reviews its portfolio to identify assets to sell in order to reduce its debt load. AT&T is considering selling its advertising-technology unit Xandr, sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters.

“I believe there’s a segment of our customer base where given a choice, they would take some load of advertising for a $5 or $10 reduction in their mobile bill,” Stankey said.

Various companies including Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O, Virgin Mobile USA and Sprint's Boost Mobile have tested advertising supported phone services since the early 2000s but they have not caught on. AT&T is hoping that better advertising targeting could revive the idea.

The planned launch of an ad-supported version of AT&T’s video-streaming service HBO Max next year will serve as a “foundational element” that will provide new advertising inventory, and would be key to new phone plans supported by ads, Stankey said without offering details.

Stankey said ad-supported phone plans could be introduced in “a year or two.”

AT&T engineers are creating “unified customer identifiers,” Stankey said. Such technology would allow marketers to identify users across multiple devices and serve them relevant advertising.

The ability to fine tune ad targeting would allow AT&T to sell ads at higher rates, he said.

AT&T has invested in developing targeted advertising on its own media properties using data from its phone, TV and internet customers, but the company has been “slower in coming up the curve” on expanding its marketplace that allows advertisers to use AT&T data to target other media companies’ audiences, Stankey said.

In March, AT&T's Xandr struck a deal to partner with Walt Disney Co DIS.N and AMC Networks AMCX.O to let advertisers buy TV commercials across the networks.

AT&T’s advertising marketplace, which incorporates data from outside AT&T, could face privacy challenges as consumers express rising concern about tracking of their media use across platforms and laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act have been passed.

“I don’t know if we can count on it in perpetuity,” Stankey said, referring to the use of non-AT&T-owned data.

Stankey, who last week penned an op-ed for Politico stating that the U.S. government should provide subsidies to encourage companies to build fiber broadband networks in underserved areas, said in the Reuters interview that AT&T believes it could double its fiber footprint if it had the economic incentive.

Fiber or fiber optics are thin cables often installed underground that allow companies to deliver internet services to homes. AT&T uses fiber to deliver internet to homes and businesses as well as to power its 5G network.

AT&T’s fiber currently passes 18 million homes in the United States. The company could grow that number by 3 million to 5 million homes per year, he added.

Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas; Helen Coster, Krystal Hu and Kenneth Li in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-a...-idUSKBN2663HK





The Bumbling 1960s Data Scientists Who Anticipated Facebook and Google
Seth Mnookin

IF THEN
How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future
By Jill Lepore

In late December 1960, Harper’s Magazine hit the newsstands with a blockbuster of a story by a freelancer named Thomas Morgan: John F. Kennedy’s razor-thin victory over Richard Nixon the previous month had been orchestrated by a top-secret computer called the “People Machine.” This mysterious device, which had been invented by an equally mysterious company called the Simulmatics Corporation, had, according to Harper’s, concluded that taking a firm stand on civil rights and confronting anti-Catholic bigotry directly, both of which Kennedy did, would help the young senator from Massachusetts win the presidency.

In a period of rising anxiety about both communist brainwashing and automation, this was big news. The story of a “robot campaign strategist” analyzing voter rolls and public opinion polls was picked up by media across the country; one newspaper editorial described the People Machine as a device that would make “the tyrannies of Hitler, Stalin and their forebears look like the inept fumbling of a village bully.” For a brief period, the scandal threatened to delegitimize Kennedy’s presidency before it had even begun.

But the Harper’s story, it turned out, was little more than a hacky publicity stunt by a company propagandist: Within a few months, Morgan, who’d edited the very Simulmatics reports he’d described in his magazine story, had been given an ownership stake in the company to go along with his title of “information manager.” Therein lies the paradox at the heart of “If Then,” Jill Lepore’s fascinating but flawed new book about the company she says “invented the future”: Her attempt to use Simulmatics as a parable for and precursor to “the data-mad and near-totalitarian 21st century” is hamstrung by the fact that it failed at almost everything it tried to do — oftentimes spectacularly so.

Simulmatics, which opened up shop in 1959 and ceased operations in 1970, was the brainchild of a backslapping, glad-handing, résumé-faking huckster named Ed Greenfield. Frustrated that Adlai Stevenson, his preferred presidential candidate, kept losing, Greenfield dreamed of using a combination of “information extraction” and “voter prediction” to finally lead Stevenson, “the best man, even though he wasn’t the most electable man,” to victory. Stevenson, of course, didn’t even win the 1960 Democratic nomination — but no matter; by that time, Greenfield’s shop was up and running.
Image

And what a shop it was. Despite Lepore’s repeated references to the Simulmatics team as “the best and the brightest,” the group that Greenfield assembled was, well, not that. There was Bill McPhee, a manic-depressive mathematician who wrote some of Simulmatics’ early data analysis programs from a locked ward on Bellevue and had a habit of abusing and humiliating his wife in front of their 6-year-old daughter; Eugene Burdick, a political scientist / literary celebrity / Ballantine Ale pitchman whose writing, according to Lepore, was less subtle than a sledgehammer; and Ithiel de Sola Pool, “a numbers guy who taught at M.I.T. and walked the halls of the Pentagon” but who seemed to lack the basic competency and knowledge expected of a scientist. (Later in his career, Pool’s writings helped ensure the internet would be free of government regulation. In an interview with Lepore, Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers leaker and a onetime friend of Pool’s, called him “the most corrupt social scientist I had ever met, without question.”)

In its decade of existence, Simulmatics helped this newspaper report early results of the 1962 midterm elections, developed strategies for “selling shampoo and dog food,” predicted where and when urban rioting would occur, analyzed communications in communist countries and helped direct the United States’ disastrously murderous counterinsurgency efforts in Vietnam. Or, rather, it tried to do those things; Lepore undermines her attempt to elide over the differences between Simulmatics’ ambitions and its accomplishments by quoting or summarizing post-mortems from the company’s clients: Its election-night collaboration with The Times was “a completely disorganized shambles”; its work in Vietnam was “dubious and its methods questionable”; the studies it put together for a national commission on civil disorders suffered from “poor design, lack of expertise and misrepresentation” and were “reprehensibly sloppy.” The coup de grâce comes courtesy of the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency during a period in which the department was responsible for 70 percent of Simulmatics’ annual revenue: “Simulmatics reflects discredit not only upon itself as an organization — it appears more a sham — but upon behavioral research in general.”

Over the last decade, Lepore, a Harvard history professor and New Yorker staff writer, has repeatedly shown herself to be an uncommonly astute and insightful interpreter of American history, and one of her many strengths is the moral clarity that infuses her writing. Lately, however, it feels almost as if she’s trying to stanch the flow of hatred, misinformation, racism and venality that threatens to overwhelm the country by the sheer volume of her work: “If Then” is her third book in three years, and that includes 2018’s “These Truths,” a monumental history of the United States. So far in 2020, she’s also released a 10-part podcast “about the history of truth” and published 12 articles in The New Yorker. (I’m overwhelmed thinking about consuming that much information, never mind producing it.)

This prolificness likely explains why her latest effort feels as if it was rushed out the door before it was ready. When she’s at her best, Lepore’s writing has a nimble fluency that can be exhilarating. Here, however, events are described out of order, crucial context is missing and stylistic tics become intrusive: McPhee “drank and he drank and he drank and he smoked and he smoked and he smoked”; his long-suffering wife was forever “demurring, demurring, demurring, demurring.” By the time Lepore describes Ed Greenfield’s hunger for McPhee’s “voting prediction machine” — he “wanted it, wanted it, wanted it” — I couldn’t resist penciling in the margin, “I get it, I get it, I get it.”

But the fact that Simulmatics can’t support Lepore’s narrative shouldn’t detract from the importance of the story she’s trying to tell. Lepore’s frustrations — with how what was once thought of as propaganda or psychological warfare was subsumed and legitimized by behavioral scientists, who rechristened the field with the anodyne label of “mass communication”; with the billions of dollars of Cold War funding that strangled the humanities and transformed American research universities into military-academic outposts dependent on federal grants; with the conservative opponents of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society who killed a proposal for a government agency to set up “ethical guidelines, safeguards and rules” for the use of the massive amount of personal data held by the federal government; with the fact that the Privacy Act of 1974 recognized that the aggregation of this data, “while essential to the efficient operations of the government, has greatly magnified the harm to individual privacy that can occur” but failed to protect that same data from private corporations; with the generations of mostly white, overwhelmingly male tech evangelists who lacked the imagination and the curiosity to consider the ways their simplistic libertarian fantasies might affect people who weren’t as privileged or as lucky as they were; with the billionaire leaders of Google and Facebook, whose “swaggering, devil-may-care ethical ambition” begins and ends with meaningless mottoes like “don’t be evil” because “doing good did not come into it”; with America in 2020, where “the only knowledge that counts is prediction, and … corporations extract wealth by way of the collection of data and the manipulation of attention and the profit of prophecy” — should be our frustrations as well.

“Simulmatics failed,” Lepore writes in her epilogue, “but not before its scientists built a very early version of the machine in which humanity would in the early 21st century find itself trapped, a machine that applies the science of psychological warfare to the affairs of ordinary life, a machine that manipulates opinion, exploits attention, commodifies information, divides voters, fractures communities, alienates individuals and undermines democracy.” That Lepore overstates Simulmatics’ role in this tale does not make her ultimate conclusions any less true, or any less terrifying.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/b...ll-lepore.html





Was Mozart the First Music Pirate?
Joe

Nowadays the music industry surrenders to the fact that unauthorized downloads and streaming of music happen, there is not much that can be done about this illegal activity on the Internet. You may think that this is a phenomenon of our highly technical time, but think again. Almost 250 years ago, one of the most musical secrets of the Vatican was pirated by a 14-year-old. Musical mystery in the Sistine Chapel, Rome, was a reality in the 17th and 18th centuries. For 140 years a composition by Gregorio Allegri called “Misere mei, deus” was performed only during Holy Week. Since 1630, the a-cappella score of the priest was guarded as a secret of the Vatican. Distribution and its performance anywhere else was strictly forbidden. Anyone who dared to do it would have been excommunicated. In the eyes and ears of the Pope, the choral work is so close to Heaven and perfection that sharing its sheet music would be criminal. And the Pope’s word was law.

Clerical secrecy

The prescribed “copy protection” is – so the Vatican believes – quite simple. After all, we are talking about the time from Baroque to Viennese Classicism. There is only one score written by hand and the voice set in Miserere is far too complex to memorise by ear and then perform or write out at home. Keeping it secret, therefore, should not be a problem. Secrecy does not protect against ingenuity. If it hadn’t been for this 14-year-old musical wonder child: It was written by Pope Clement XIV and was allowed to participate in a Wednesday service of the performance in the Sistine Chapel. He heard Allegri’s Miserere mei, Deus and then wrote it down almost perfectly.

The following Good Friday he sat again in church and made a few corrections. His name was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. When the youthful Mozart continued his journey to Italy, he revealed the secret of the heavenly choral piece, which had long since been shrouded in legend.

Congenial pirate, creative thief or whistle-blower?

Was Mozart really the first “music pirate“? Well, not according to today’s points of view. He had only written down a song without spreading it or making, or wanting to make, a profit out of it. Technologies had not yet been invented to spread the manuscript to thousands of people instantaneously, Internet music piracy was still centuries away. Mozart has given the “Miserere mei, deus” freedom, he released it from a cage of unnecessary protection with his ingenuity, perfect hearing and naïvety. Perhaps we will rather agree on the term “first musical whistle-blower“.

Honour & forgiveness instead of punishment

It is also interesting that Mozart was by no means punished; quite the contrary. The Pope was so impressed by his extraordinary abilities that he knighted the boy in the “Chivalric Order of the Golden Spur“. To illustrate the degree of difficulty: The Miserere is a choral movement for nine voices. While a five-part choir sings one version of the piece, another four-part choir sings on an ornamented variant elsewhere in the room. All that with a length of about 12 – 13 minutes, although there are several different versions. Storing all this in your head and transcribing it?! Respect!
https://www.thomann.de/blog/en/was-m...-music-pirate/

















Until next week,

- js.



















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