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Old 25-09-19, 06:31 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - September 28th, ’19

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September 28th, 2019




Cox Can't Get Discovery Sanction In Pirating Fight With Labels

There is no evidence the major record labels suing Cox Communications for turning a blind eye to pirating got rid of any data they were bound to keep in anticipation of litigation, a Virginia federal magistrate said Friday. It seemed to U.S. Magistrate Judge John F. Anderson that Cox's issues with the spreadsheets the record labels turned over in discovery might need to be taken up before a jury, not blocked from trial through a sanction, he said at the end of Friday's two-hour hearing.

"Doesn't that just go to the credibility or weight that should be given to the document, as opposed to striking it?" the judge asked.

Ultimately, Judge Anderson said he was unconvinced that Sony Music Entertainment and a handful of other record label plaintiffs had any obligation to keep the data Cox was seeking. Cox claims that produced spreadsheets showing songs that were allegedly pirated by Cox subscribers are incomplete, with certain information possibly being "sanitized" from the record labels' systems despite an obligation for them to hold onto the data.

The judge did, however, bristle at the suggestion from the record labels that he didn't have the authority to issue the type of sanction Cox was requesting.

"No, no," he said, cutting off that line of argument. "I can enter a sanction no greater than I think is necessary to cure prejudice."

Friday's discovery hearing was the most recent bout in a dispute brought by the record labels seeking to hold Cox accountable for the pirating carried out by its users. The labels argue the internet service giant has turned a blind eye to illegal downloading despite multiple warnings from the music companies.

Record labels in recent years have shifted their legal attention away from the peer-to-peer file sharing sites that make illegal downloading quick and easy, instead choosing to focus on the internet providers they argue make the pirating possible through negligence.

Charter was hit with a similar suit earlier this year, accusing the internet service provider of profiting by ignoring users' pirating. The argument goes that service providers are hesitant to stop infringement because they don't want to lose out on the subscription fees that will disappear if they start cancelling the accounts of those caught illegally downloading.

The record labels were represented by Matthew J. Oppenheim of Oppenheim & Zebrak LLP.

Cox was represented by Thomas Buchanan of Winston & Strawn LLP.

The case is Sony Music Entertainment et al. v. Cox Communications Inc. et al., case number 1:18-cv-00950, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

--Additional reporting by Bonnie Enslinger and Hailey Konnath. Editing by Daniel King.
https://www.law360.com/media/article...ht-with-labels





How Neil Young’s Failed Anti-Streaming Business Helped the Music Industry
Patrick Flanary

Toward the end of music legend Neil Young’s recent memoir, he makes an admission: “I was wrong.”

The book, To Feel the Music: A songwriter’s mission to save high-quality audio, is something of a postmortem on the musician’s high-resolution download service which folded in 2017.

PonoMusic, Young’s short-lived company (it lasted five years) was something of an anti-iTunes, offering uncompressed, studio-quality downloads and a trademarked player that “sounded like God,” (although some reviewers disputed this assessment).

PonoMusic was also anti-streaming. “My aversion to streaming was not only because of its effect on music quality,” he writes in his book, “but because of how poorly record companies and streaming deals treat the artists.”

Young’s failure to embrace that technology early on—even as consumers abandoned downloads in droves for Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music—was, in his words, “one of my biggest mistakes.”

To Feel the Music is co-authored by Young and PonoMusic’s former COO (now CEO of the Neil Young Archives) Phil Baker. It gifts readers with a sort of roadmap to help navigate the complex music industry—mostly in terms of where we should not go, via their own failures.

Young and Baker alternate chapters, with Baker’s under-the-hood tech analysis supplementing Young’s eager, straight-shooter narrative. Together they describe familiar startup issues, like revolving CEOs and production setbacks, chronicling Young’s seven years as a scrappy Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

A lot has happened in the business since I first reported the news of PonoMusic’s launch in 2012. After the company shuttered, Young has since renewed his focus on audio quality with his own high-resolution streaming service, Xstream, as well as the Neil Young Archives website, where fans pay $1.99 a month for access to his deep catalog.

Young and the PonoMusic team made some big mistakes. But Young also did a lot for progress in the music business. It was his concept that got the industry rolling on high-resolution music, even though it also indirectly unraveled his own company.

To take a page out of Young’s book, for lack of better expression, people looking to survive and innovate in the industry would be wise to pay attention to these three major blunders in particular, if they want to avoid becoming the next PonoMusic.

Don’t dismiss the value of an industry trend

As Young told an investor early on, “There’s nobody who can stream the true quality of music.” The way he saw it, streaming companies couldn’t afford to offer high-resolution recordings, and consumers couldn’t afford to buy them anyway. But, as he concludes in his book, he was wrong. Young, who turns 74 in November, has long crusaded against inferior audio, arguing that streaming deprives music fans of a true listening experience. But that’s where most people get their music today, with 61 million paying subscribers in the US alone. And while services like Deezer and Tidal introduced users to high-resolution streaming, PonoMusic continued to offer only downloads.

Young’s fight to rescue the sound of recorded music dates back more than 50 years. Upon listening to his first solo album in 1968, he demanded that the record company re-release it; it had mixed Neil Young using tech designed to enhance stereo recordings played on mono equipment. Young hated it.

From this disgust came his vision. Young quietly began developing PonoMusic in 2010 and filed several applications for trademark names, including “21st Century Record Player” and “Thanks for Listening.” Warner Music Group was the first record company to convert its thousands of albums for the project, and also invested $500,000. Sony and Universal soon followed. Young secured the endorsements of dozens of fellow musicians, including the late Tom Petty, who claimed PonoMusic “would save the music business.”
Steve Jobs was not so enthusiastic. Before he died in 2011, Apple’s CEO “had no interest in hi-res for his products,” Young writes. “He told me his customers were perfectly satisfied with MP3 quality.” (This August, the company launched its high-resolution streaming offering, Apple Digital Masters.)

In 2013, Young found his CEO in John Hamm, a tech veteran who swiftly assembled a team, budget, and product schedule. PonoMusic’s engineers and developers came from places like Apple and Google, and Hamm set them up in a third-floor office in San Francisco.

Don’t fire your CEO when the stakes are high

High-resolution players and services already existed, but were mostly unaffordable and catered to a niche market. What would set PonoMusic apart was its digital-to-analog conversion software, developed by UK-based Meridian Audio. That crucial tech would restore brittle MP3s to the warm clarity of the original studio recordings. Everything depended on it. But once the PonoMusic players were manufactured and ready to go, two years’ worth of discussions with Meridian stalled and never materialized.

Hamm found another audio engineer and PonoMusic was saved. But as the team found, Young’s fame was taking the project only so far; attracting investors was a slog. By March 2014, PonoMusic was running out of money and turned to Kickstarter.

PonoMusic became one of Kickstarter’s most successful campaigns, with pledges of $6.2 million from 15,000 backers. This amount “equated to 2.6 million real dollars,” Baker writes, adding that offering the player at $300 was a mistake. “It gave us too little margin to effectively sell at retail and barely enough profit to pay for all of the development.”

Before those players were shipped, in late 2014, Hamm was fired. PonoMusic’s board named its attorney as CEO, after he convinced Young that Hamm was trying to take over the company. But, as Baker writes, “Neil now believes that losing Hamm was a pivotal moment for the company and regrets what happened.”

Don’t negotiate for too long with a partner (they may leave you for Tidal)

At the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, critics got their first look and listen to PonoMusic and served up mixed reviews.

That year, the streaming space grew cluttered, if not downright incestuous: Apple bought Dr. Dre’s Beats Music, whose platform was acquired from a former PonoMusic consultant; Apple Music was born from that deal. Meanwhile, Jay-Z launched Tidal, a high-resolution streaming service that runs on the software developed by none other than Meridian, PonoMusic’s former partner. (Young’s catalog streams on Tidal and other platforms.)

Young and the team were blindsided by what happened next, in mid-2016. PonoMusic’s download store operator, Omnifone, alerted Baker that the company had a new owner: Apple. The PonoMusic store was shuttered days later, which effectively ended Young’s venture.

The unexpected Apple purchase and shutdown of the site was insurmountable. But what ultimately doomed PonoMusic was Young’s dismissal of streaming until it was too late.

More than anything, To Feel the Music is a case study in business hindsight. Young’s initial vision was too stubborn; he was stuck in the past. He refused to see the value in the changing technology, and he tried to yank the industry back, and force it to stay there, in the name of uncompromising quality.

But just this week, Young signaled that the future for quality audio sound is bright.

When Amazon announced its forthcoming high-quality streaming service Amazon Music HD, he proclaimed the company is “the leader now” on his website.

“Now it will be possible for you to feel all my records the way I made them, in their highest resolution,” he wrote. “I always knew this day would come!”
https://qz.com/1711629/how-neil-youn...usic-industry/





‘Seinfeld’ for $500 Million? ‘The Big Bang Theory’ for $1 Billion? The Streaming Arms Race has a Big Problem.
Steven Zeitchik

The numbers are enough to make you think it’s 1995 and George is first getting mad at Jerry for breaking their pact.

This week, Netflix paid a reported $500 million for streaming rights to all 180 episodes of “Seinfeld.” A day later, Warner Media, looking to beef up its imminent HBO Max service, paid a reported $1 billion for streaming rights to the nearly 300 episodes of “The Big Bang Theory.” This came on top of the estimated $425 million the company already paid for “Friends.”

And all of this comes on the heels of Comcast’s $500 million purchase of “The Office” for its new NBC Universal streaming service, named Peacock.

The money will certainly make some studios rich and assure fans the shows will exist online, somewhere, for the foreseeable future. But it ignores a fundamental question: How exactly are these shows valued?

More important, it ignores the fact that nobody seems to know the answer.

“It’s the biggest problem people aren’t talking about: We have no actual information about what creates or reduces churn,” said Dan Rayburn, an expert on streaming media technology. “So we have no way of knowing how much a show is really worth.”

The problem, Rayburn and others say, is that the profit-and-loss statement is out the window, being replaced by … nobody knows.

The value of classic shows was once easily quantified, via the syndication model. There was practically a formula. A buyer calculated the ratings in first-run and repeats. Then they looked at how much ad money a show thus rated could garner. Then they agreed to prices accordingly.

The equation was simple: You wanted to sell enough ads to justify your cost. It didn’t always work out, of course. But there was a road map.

Streaming now, though, appears to be a total gamble. How do you measure the value of a show to a streamer? The number of people who signed up for the service specifically because of that show? Well, that’s probably not very many, at least who are documentable. What about the general luster a top-tier comedy hit accrues back to a streaming brand? Sure, but how exactly do you measure that, let alone put a dollar figure on it?

Yet the dollar figures are indeed enormous. To give a sense of scale, just over 20 years ago, TBS shocked the industry with a $200 million syndication deal for “Seinfeld.” Four years ago, the numbers were considered equally giant when Hulu paid Sony $160 million for the comedy. Netflix’s number is more than three times that — without any ads to defray the cost.

“Where’s the business model? What’s the argument to business affairs that says any of these shows, even ones that people binge a lot, is worth it?” said a Hollywood veteran who has worked extensively in syndication, speaking on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize industry relationships. (At least Peacock and HBO Max are paying sister companies. Netflix is not.)

It’s one thing, the person noted, for new content to command sky-high prices — like overall creative deals Warner made with J.J. Abrams and Netflix sealed with Kenya Barris, Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy, all of which totaled at least $100 million. Those are for a slate of new shows, with theoretically high upside. These buys are for old shows — proven, yes, but with a cultural moment and mass viewership well behind them. (Disney and Apple, incidentally, remain the outliers; they’re among the few not joining the classic-TV buying frenzy.)

Making the problem worse is that nobody really knows how to define what a binge-worthy show is in the first place.

“Big Bang” does well in reruns on TBS, but will it stream well? “Seinfeld” has long been a 10 and 11 p.m. television powerhouse, but does that mean people will want to watch it repeatedly on-demand?

“Seinfeld is better artistically and infinitely more influential and generally more culturally important than Friends,” wrote culture pundit Adam Sternbergh, who has covered both shows. “It is not remotely, however, as binge-friendly. Not even close.” He said the distinction was that the show was “innovative and hilarious and brilliantly constructed and spiky" but unlike “Friends” had “no hugging, no learning.”

The shows that are most repeatable — if Netflix’s pronouncements are accurate, “Friends” and “The Office” — do have likable characters you mainly just really want to hang out with, almost more than you’re interested in their ultimate fates. (That’s one reason “Big Bang” seems like it might, at least theoretically, fit into this group.) But likeability alone hardly seems enough to give you repeatability. As Sternbergh notes, hitting the sweet spot, in which people want to watch a show over and over again, each episode interchangeable with the next, is extremely difficult.

With so little information about whether a show will work, the answer for streaming services simply may be to just spend a lot on a major hit — any major hit. After all, HBO Max and Peacock need something notable to offer at launch.

“I think Warner and Comcast are just moving a thousand miles an hour, buying whatever they can no matter the cost just so they can go to consumers with brand names,” Rayburn said. Netflix, for its part, then simply needs to counter the competition.

In a new study, the research group Reach3 found that just 20 percent of consumers would “absolutely subscribe to Disney+” — a service that already has all the franchises and name recognition these competitors are seeking. Just 7 percent said they would subscribe to Apple TV+.

That puts Warner Media, Comcast and even Netflix at a disadvantage, paying ever-escalating costs for shows that may not be watched and wouldn’t necessarily drive subscriptions if they were. Like Jerry and the pact, it might not be long before some of them think twice about shaking any hands.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...s-big-problem/





As Netflix Loses TV Favorites Like 'The Office' to New Rivals, DVD and Blu-Ray Sellers see a Big Opportunity
Alyssa Meyers

• As new streaming services launch from legacy giants like Disney and WarnerMedia, back catalog TV content is leaving streamers like Netflix and Hulu.
• It's a boon for stores and sites that sell DVDs and Blu-rays, who say their customers rely on box sets to make sure they always have access to their favorite shows.
• Shows on disc are also more accessible to audiences in countries outside of the US and come with unique packaging and extra features.

First, we learned "Friends" would leave Netflix for the upcoming streaming service, HBO Max.

Now, "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation" are on their way out, as NBCUniversal prepares to launch its new streamer, Peacock.

With legacy media brands like Disney, WarnerMedia, and NBCUniversal launching streaming services of their own, Netflix and Hulu subscribers face losing access to the shows they've grown accustomed to binge-watching to their heart's content.

But there's an industry that is embracing that uncertainty: stores that sell DVDs and Blu-rays.

Blake Lindberg, a manager at Academy Records — one of the few shops in New York City that still buys and sells second-hand DVDs — told Business Insider that even though streaming services continue to bring in significantly more money than DVD sales, some of his patrons are frustrated with the increasingly fleeting nature of content on streaming services.

"What we notice from talking to clientele is that these items might be on Netflix or Hulu this month, but they might not be next month," said Lindberg, who's worked at Academy Records for over 20 years.

Academy Records mostly carries uncommon films and niche finds for dedicated collectors, Lindberg said, but the store keeps box sets of classic TV shows and new releases that might not be streaming yet available as well.

'No one can take it away from you': The perks of DVDs

Despite the growing market of streaming services, Lindberg said be believes people will continue to see the value of owning physical media like DVDs. Physical discs of your favorite shows won't become unavailable and they often come with added features like director commentary that aren't included elsewhere.

"When you have a hard copy it's a done deal," he said. "You own it, and no one can take it away from you."

Kevin Murray, the social content manager at SecondSpin, a site that buys and sells pre-owned DVDs and Blu-rays, said TV shows from newer hits like "Game of Thrones" and "Arrow" to classics like "Seinfeld" and "Friends" bring in consistent business.

"TV shows are one of our top categories both in sales and in trade-ins," he said. "People trade in older seasons, but they go right back out the door so quickly."

In addition to benefits like bonus features, Murray said DVD enthusiasts also value packaging because it puts a unique twist on their favorite content, like the "Charmed" box set he bought just because it was packaged as a replica of the "Book of Shadows" from the show.

Some SecondSpin customers, who range from 30 to 50 years old on average, find DVDs easier to use than streaming services, Murray said. International customers in particular tend to favor SecondSpin over streaming, likely because not all US-based streaming services are available in other countries.

Murray said streaming has not affected business at SecondSpin, but the company plans to capitalize on the reliability of discs as more streaming services launch and swap content.

"We're going to keep our eye on those TV shows to see what the interest level is and see if we can capture that over the next few months once these platforms start to launch," he said.
https://www.businessinsider.com/netf...rs-2019-9?IR=T





Netflix Goes Negative for the Year, Giving Up a 46% Gain
Yun Li

• Shares of Netflix erased all of its 46% gain for the year at its peak and officially entered negative territory on Monday.
• The newcomers in the streaming space, including Apple and Disney, are already winning in terms of pricing.
• Some Wall Street analysts have started losing faith in their darling stock.

What a difference the past two months made for Netflix.

It was just early July when the streaming video giant's stock was flirting with new record highs. Now after an unexpected loss of subscribers and increased competition in the streaming war, shares of Netflix erased all of its 46% gain for the year at its peak and officially entered negative territory on Monday.

Netflix has been haunted by nonstop bad news in the past few months. First, its most popular show "The Office" was stripped from its platform by NBC. Then, Netflix was hit by a rare loss in U.S. subscribers and a large miss on international subscriber adds in the second quarter, which sent the stock plunging and suffering its longest losing streak in five years.

A slew of announcements from media companies launching their own streaming services — Apple, Disney, AT&T's WarnerMedia, NBC — came as a last straw for the struggling stock.

Some Wall Street analysts started losing faith in their darling stock. Barclays analyst Kannan Venkateshwar said Monday Netflix is "very expensive" under a new valuation framework for growth companies as Netflix needs millions more subscribers than it can get.

Most of Netflix's gains for 2019 came from a big pop in January when the company flexed its pricing power. It raised prices by 13% to 18% then and the stock soared. In a more crowded streaming space today, hiking prices may not be so welcomed by investors again.

Nomura Instinet analyst Mark Kelly told CNBC that increased competition could "take away engagement," "make content more expensive," "or diminish the price power Netflix has exhibited for several years."

The newcomers are already winning in terms of pricing. Apple announced its original TV service will cost $4.99 a month, while Disney will offer high definition streaming as part of its standard $6.99 plan for its new Disney+ channel. Netflix's basic plan in the U.S. is at $8.99 per month.

Wall Street analysts haven't given up on one of their favorite stocks, however. Of the 39 analysts covering Netflix, 28 have a buy rating, nine recommend holding the stock while two have a sell ratings, according to FactSet.

Piper Jaffray last week recommended buying the dip in the stock, while Credit Suisse recently praised the positive numbers from app downloads and a stellar slate of original content coming out of Netflix.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/23/netf...cent-gain.html





This Guy Made an Ad Blocker That Works on Podcasts and Radio

"Ads exploit the weaknesses of many defenseless souls," the creator of AdBlock Radio says.
Edward Ongweso Jr

Meet AdBlock Radio, an adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts. Its creator, Alexandre Storelli, told Motherboard he hopes to help companies "develop alternative business models for radio and podcast lovers that do not want ads."

“Ads exploit the weaknesses of many defenseless souls,” Storelli told Motherboard. “Ads dishonestly tempt people, steal their time and promise them a higher social status. Blocking them will be a relieving experience for many.”

Most audio ads exploit "auditory artifacts" to produce an ad that can’t be ignored or tuned out because it feels louder than it actually is—this has gotten so bad that there has actually been a “sonic arms race” where ads have been made increasingly louder over the years.

“Adblock Radio detects audio ads with machine-learning and Shazam-like techniques,” Storelli wrote about the project.

He said he’s been working on it for more than three years and that it uses techniques such as speech recognition, acoustic fingerprinting, and machine learning to detect known ad formats. It uses a crowdsourced database of ads and “acoustic fingerprinting,” which converts audio features into a series of numbers that can be combed by an algorithm. Storelli says this is the same technology used by Shazam to identify songs. He notes that the algorithm isn’t perfect, and that hip-hop music, for example, is often misidentified as an advertisement. It also has trouble with “native” advertisements, in which a podcast host reads an ad (this type of advertisement has become increasingly popular.)

By now, we are all aware of how intrusive ads can be, especially when they rely on the personal data they’ve been able to harvest from our online activity.

For now, we can’t escape the fact that many of our largest businesses and platforms rely on advertisements for revenue, capital, or profits—this sits at the root of the capitalist logic that guides our economy. That arrangement has a fundamental effect on everything from mass media to the structure of the internet itself. We can, however, try to change the quality and content of these ads and maybe end up realigning that economic arrangement along the way.

To that end, Storelli has made AdBlock Radio open-source and given detailed instructions on how to build on it, integrate it into user devices, and deploy it in a way that pressures radio stations (and podcasts) to self-regulate the quality of their ads.

James Williams, co-founder of the Time Well Spent movement, once made the case that "[the ultimate benefit of adblockers is] better informational environments that are fundamentally designed to be on our side, to respect our increasingly scarce attention, and to help us navigate under the stars of our own goals and values." Storelli goes a little further, quoting Jean-Marc Jancovici, a French energy expert, to argue "Climate change being one of the consequences of the modern mass consumption lifestyle, wishing a firm action against this process implies, for a part, to question the perpetual increase of the material consumption otherwise encouraged by ads."

It's not likely that ad blocking will avert a climate apocalypse. Ad blocking, however, may serve as a good salvo in the war against consumerism.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/k...asts-and-radio





Locast, a Free Streaming Service, Sues ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox
Edmund Lee

Locast, a little-known nonprofit behind a free streaming service, sued ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox on Friday, alleging that the television networks colluded in an effort to chill its business.

Locast streams network shows and sports programs through a free app that relays broadcast feeds online. People can get the streams without a cable or satellite plan, potentially cutting off licensing fees to the broadcasters. (More traditionally, viewers can also receive broadcast signals over the air, at no charge, with a digital antenna.)

In July, the networks banded together to sue Locast, arguing that it had violated their copyrights and chipped away at the revenue they get from pay-television operators like AT&T and Comcast. The networks are expected to receive more than $10 billion in such fees this year.

The broadcasters’ lawsuit also named David Goodfriend, a former media executive and lawyer with stints in the Federal Communications Commission, who started Locast in January 2018.

Under federal law, broadcast stations must provide their signals free to the public, making network programming easily available through the use of an antenna. But broadcasters won a provision in copyright law in the 1990s that required pay-TV providers to negotiate what are known as retransmission-consent fees to carry those signals.

“We believe the broadcasters’ lawsuit was brought without basis as part of a larger plan to unlawfully limit the public’s right to access that free programming,” David Hosp, a lawyer for Locast, said in a statement.

Locast argues that its service complies with copyright law because, as a nonprofit entity, it is allowed to act as a so-called signal booster for the broadcasters’ programming.

The broadcasters disagree.

“We trust the courts to see right through this facade and recognize Locast for what it is — not a public service organization but a creature of certain pay-TV interests with an entirely commercial agenda,” said Gerson Zweifach, an attorney for the broadcasters, in a statement.

Locast’s countersuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, is the legal response to the broadcasters. In addition to denying their allegations, the nonprofit, led by Mr. Goodfriend, put a twist on the proceedings, arguing that the big broadcasters have “colluded” as part of an effort to undermine and shut down Locast by “threatening business retaliation” against any potential partners.

The Locast complaint cites YouTubeTV as one example of a company that got cold feet. YouTubeTV, which is owned by Google, sells a streaming service that replicates a cheap cable bundle.

According to the complaint, Google executives alerted Locast in April that the networks had warned the tech company not to allow YouTubeTV to provide access to Locast. If it did, according to the complaint, Google would be “punished by the big four broadcasters.”

The broadcasters — working together — could put pressure on Google (and other pay-TV operators) by refusing to sell rights to cable channels that are allied with the broadcast networks, the complaint suggests.

ABC and ESPN, for example, are both controlled by the Walt Disney Company. NBC and the USA cable channel are owned by NBCUniversal, while the broadcast station Fox and the cable network Fox News are controlled by the Murdoch family. CBS, which owns the Pop TV and Showtime cable networks, recently agreed to merge with Viacom, which owns MTV and Nickelodeon.

“This is classic copyright abuse,” the lawsuit reads. The networks have “misused copyrights to expand their market power beyond what those copyrights were intended to protect.”

The complaint also accuses the networks of failing to transmit their over-the-air signals with enough power, thereby “forcing consumers” to pay for cable or satellite service, or the broadcasters’ own direct streaming services.

Locast sits mostly under the radar, but it has gained in popularity at a time when more consumers are watching television digitally. More than 700,000 users are signed up in 13 cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Washington.

The networks have argued that the service is designed to rob them of licensing fees, calling Locast a “rogue streaming service skirting the law for the benefit of telecom giants” in their complaint, which was also filed in the Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Tensions around programming costs have increased as more viewers cut the cord. On Thursday, over 2.5 million Dish subscribers were blacked out of Fox broadcasts after Fox and Dish couldn’t agree on a contract renewal.

Although Locast relies on donations from viewers, it accepts money from corporations and recently received $500,000 from AT&T, which also operates the DirecTV satellite service. When a fee dispute blacked out CBS for more than 6.5 million AT&T television subscribers for a few weeks this summer, AT&T encouraged its users to try Locast.

The escalating legal fight is reminiscent of a courtroom showdown between the networks and Aereo, a start-up backed by the media tycoon Barry Diller. Aereo captured over-the-air TV signals and streamed them to subscribers for a monthly fee but did not pay the networks anything. Mr. Diller lost the legal challenge in 2014 when the Supreme Court ruled Aereo had violated copyright laws.

Mr. Goodfriend started Locast partly as a thought experiment on the Aereo case, which he taught in a law lecture at Georgetown University. He wanted to show how the ruling might affect the public interest.

“I had to teach them that more often than not, it’s through huge stakeholders battling it out that change happens,” Mr. Goodfriend told The New York Times in January. “There should be something that challenges the broadcasters.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/b...s-nbc-fox.html





Federal Court Strikes Down FCC Effort to Relax Media Ownership Rules

The Third Circuit once again chastises the agency for not considering how local media consolidation will affect women and minorities.
Marguerite Reardon

The Republican-led Federal Communications Commission hit a roadblock Monday in its effort to deregulate the media industry. A federal appeals court struck down the agency's latest attempt to loosen its media ownership rules, which would have made it easier for big companies to own newspapers and broadcast stations in the same market.

In November 2017, the FCC voted to eliminate rules that had been in place for more than 40 years restricting cross-ownership of a newspaper and TV station in the same major market. The FCC also voted to make it easier for media companies to buy additional TV stations and radio stations in the same market.

In a 2-1 decision, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals told the FCC that it "did not adequately consider the effect its sweeping rule changes will have on ownership of broadcast media by women and racial minorities."

This was the fourth time the Third Circuit rejected some or all of the FCC's efforts to deregulate the media ownership rules for failing to study the effect the policy change would have on underserved groups. In Monday's ruling, the judges characterized the FCC's analysis as "so insubstantial that it would receive a failing grade in any introductory statistics class."

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai was critical of the court's decision, stating that the Third Circuit was thwarting the agency's attempts to modernize the rules as Congress had intended.

"For more than twenty years, Congress has instructed the Federal Communications Commission to review its media ownership regulations and revise or repeal those rules that are no longer necessary," he said in a statement. "But for the last 15 years, a majority of the same Third Circuit panel has taken that authority for themselves, blocking any attempt to modernize these regulations to match the obvious realities of the modern media marketplace."

Pai added that "there is no evidence or reasoning -- newspapers going out of business, broadcast radio struggling, broadcast TV facing stiffer competition than ever -- that will persuade them to change their minds."

The FCC will challenge the decision, Pai said.

The decision comes as Pai, appointed by President Donald Trump, has aggressively worked to roll back many of the marquee regulations adopted under President Barack Obama's administration. The agency is awaiting another big decision in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals over the dismantling of Obama-era net neutrality rules adopted in 2015. These popular regulations bar internet service providers from blocking or slowing online content or allowing broadband companies to charge internet companies to deliver web content to their customers faster. The FCC voted to get rid of those rules in 2017.

As for the media ownership rules, Democrats and consumer advocates argued the FCC's changes would result in less diversity in local news media, inferior phone and broadband services in some areas, and an ineffective social safety net for poor Americans.
The court agreed.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, said "over my objection, the FCC has been busy dismantling the values embedded in its ownership policies." She added that the "court rightly sent the FCC's handiwork back to the agency because the FCC's analysis was so 'insubstantial.'"

The consumer watchdog group Free Press said that court's decision shows the importance of protecting the public from harmful media consolidation.

"Congress put broadcast-ownership limits in place for a reason: to promote a diversity of viewpoints among local stations. Jessica J. González, counsel for Free Press, said in a statement. "Media consolidation leaves communities with far less of the local news and information people need to stay informed."

The one judge who dissented, Judge Anthony Scirica, agreed with Pai and the Republicans on the FCC, which argue that media ownership rules are out of date and out of sync with the current media market.

"Rapid technological change had left the framework regulating media ownership ill-suited to the marketplace's needs," Scirica wrote in his dissent. "The public interest analysis at the heart of the FCC's ownership rules is as dynamic as the media landscape."

The National Association of Broadcasters said it was disappointed in the decision, arguing, as Scirica pointed out in his dissent, that the media marketplace has changed significantly in recent decades with TV broadcasters and newspaper publishers competing with online entities like Facebook and Google.

"The media marketplace has undergone massive changes over the past few decades, let alone since 2004," Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the trade group said in a statement. "We strongly encourage the FCC to appeal this misguided decision so that broadcasters can compete on an even playing field with tech giants and pay TV conglomerates."
https://www.cnet.com/news/federal-co...nership-rules/





Study Proves The FCC's Core Justification for Killing Net Neutrality Was False

The biggest study yet finds Ajit Pai’s repeated claims that net neutrality hurt broadband investment have never been true.
Karl Bode

A new study has found the FCC’s primary justification for repealing net neutrality was indisputably false.

For years, big ISPs and Trump FCC boss Ajit Pai have told anyone who’d listen that the FCC’s net neutrality rules, passed in 2015 and repealed last year in a flurry of controversy and alleged fraud, dramatically stifled broadband investment across the United States. Repeal the rules, Pai declared, and US broadband investment would explode.

“Under the heavy-handed regulations adopted by the prior Commission in 2015, network investment declined for two straight years, the first time that had happened outside of a recession in the broadband era,” Pai told Congress last year at an oversight hearing.

“We now have a regulatory framework in place that is encouraging the private sector to make the investments necessary to bring better, faster, and cheaper broadband to more Americans,” Pai proclaimed.

But a new study from George Washington University indicates that Pai’s claims were patently false. The study took a closer look at the earnings reports and SEC filings of 8,577 unique companies from Q1 2009 through Q3 2018 to conclude that the passage and repeal of the rules had no meaningful impact on broadband investment. Several hundred of these were telecom companies.

“The results of the paper are clear and should be both unsurprising and uncontroversial,” The researchers said. “The key finding is there were no impacts on telecommunication industry investment from the net neutrality policy changes. Neither the 2010 or 2015 US net neutrality rule changes had any causal impact on telecommunications investment.”

While the study is the biggest yet to do so, it’s not the first to reach this conclusion.

Last year a deep analysis of industry financial data from consumer group Free Press found some ISPs actually invested more heavily in their broadband networks while net neutrality rules were active. Journalists had similarly found no meaningful impact on network investment from net neutrality, something confirmed by the public statements of numerous ISP CEOs.

While this latest study took a more detailed look at ISP capital expenditures than previous efforts, all have been quick to note there’s a universe of factors that can impact broadband investment that have nothing to do with net neutrality, from natural disasters to a lack of competition in broadband markets.

Many phone companies, for example, have refused to upgrade or even repair their aging DSL lines because they’re now focused on more profitable ventures like wireless advertising. Given huge swaths of America only have the choice of one ISP to choose from, there’s often little organic pressure for ISPs to put soaring profits back into the network or customer service.

Despite clear evidence disproving the “net neutrality killed broadband investment” theory, both Pai and the telecom industry have repeatedly made the claim the cornerstone of public relations efforts for years, apparently hoping that repetition would forge reality.

Last year, telecom lobbying group US Telecom released a study it claimed showed that broadband investment had spiked dramatically in 2017 thanks to “positive consumer and innovation policies” and a “pro-growth regulatory approach” at the FCC.

The problem? The FCC’s net neutrality rules weren’t formally repealed until June of 2018.

Gigi Sohn, a former FCC lawyer who helped craft the FCC’s 2015 rules, told Motherboard she hoped the comprehensive study would finally put an end to the debate.

"This paper once again validates what the FCC found in 2015 and what net neutrality advocates have said for years—that neither the net neutrality rules nor Title II classification had any impact on ISP investment,” Sohn said.

“Not surprisingly, the ISPs and their friends at the FCC and the Hill keep saying the opposite, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary,” she added. “Hopefully this comprehensive study, which studies ISP investment over nearly a decade, will put this matter to rest.”

Derek Turner, research director for consumer group Free Press, told Motherboard he doubted that would actually happen.

“We don’t expect this study to kill the ISPs' zombie lies about net neutrality and investment,” he said. “The telecom companies and their defenders in Congress have long operated unmoored from reality, and no smoking gun is going to change that, certainly not one they’ll never bother to read and consider fairly.”

The problem for the Pai FCC is that while industry may be ok with the agency playing fast and loose with the facts to the benefit of telecom giants, the courts have not been. The FCC has had three different major policy efforts reversed by the courts in as many months for being factually unsound, something that looms large over the net neutrality debate.

23 state attorneys general sued the FCC last year, claiming the agency ignored the public and hard data during its repeal of net neutrality. If the courts find the FCC justified its decision using falsified data (a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act) the repeal could be reversed and net neutrality restored. A ruling in that case is expected any day now.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/k...lity-was-false





Poll: Two-Thirds of Americans Want to Break Up Companies like Amazon and Google

Turns out breaking up Big Tech is super popular.
Emily Stewart

Americans are pretty on board with breaking up Big Tech, especially if it means companies such as Amazon and Google stop showing them search results they make money off of first.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans would support breaking up tech firms by undoing recent mergers, such as Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, if it means ensuring more competition in the future.

Another tech company issue appears to strike a chord with people even more: Almost seven in 10 Americans say it’s a good idea to break up big tech companies when the content they’re showing people is ranked depending on whether the company is making money off of it or not. Basically, when you search for a suitcase to buy on Amazon, it might show you options from its proprietary AmazonBasics line instead of from a company it doesn’t own.

That’s according to polling from progressive think tank Data for Progress in partnership with YouGov Blue shared exclusively with Vox.

And the results hold across most age groups, education levels, demographics, and political ideologies.

Across political party identification, Americans are pretty consistent about breaking up Big Tech. The poll shows that on the more extreme ends of both the left and the right, there is more enthusiasm on the matter.

Forty-two percent of Americans who consider themselves very liberal and 40 percent of those who say they’re very conservative strongly support breaking up tech companies to foster competition, while about 30 percent of those who identify as liberal or conservative say the same. (Moderates and people unsure of their political affiliation showed the lowest support). On breaking up for content, 56 percent of people who say they’re very liberal and 47 percent of people who say they’re very conservative back breaking up Big Tech.

This isn’t particularly surprising — politicians on both sides of the aisle have been ramping up their scrutiny of Big Tech recently. But it’s not entirely clear what we (or many of those lawmakers) really mean when we talk about breaking up tech companies. How to address technology companies — not only in terms of antitrust but also on items such as security and data privacy — is in its policy infancy.

The poll was conducted from September 11 to September 13 and is based on 1,280 interviews conducted by YouGov online of self-identified voters.
Big Tech is a popular target for everybody right now

Tech companies have come under heavy scrutiny, seemingly from every angle, as of late.

In July, the Department of Justice announced a sweeping antitrust review that, while it didn’t name names, made clear that Facebook, Google, and Amazon were on the menu. The department said it would look into “whether and how market-leading online platforms have achieved market power and are engaging in practices that have reduced competition, stifled innovation, or otherwise harmed consumers.”

The FTC is also investigating Facebook over antitrust matters. This summer, it hit Facebook with a $5 billion fine for violating user privacy as part of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. And earlier this month, it fined Google’s YouTube $170 million over violating children’s privacy laws. (To be sure, these fines aren’t particularly effective in the grand scheme of how much money these companies make.)

And it’s not just the federal executive branch. Politicians and government officials from both parties are upping their criticism of tech companies.

On the left, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has proposed breaking up Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has clashed with Amazon on multiple occasions, criticized Facebook and Google for destroying local media, and said he will “absolutely” look into breaking up tech companies. Sen. Amy Klobuchar has a long history of scrutinizing technology companies.

On the right, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has postured himself as an anti-tech crusader. He has proposed multiple pieces of legislation on that front, including one bill that would take away protections for companies regarding the content users post on their platforms and another that would limit time on social media platforms to 30 minutes a day. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other Republicans continually lambaste Big Tech over alleged bias.

At the state level, attorneys general across the country from both parties have announced investigations into Facebook and Google.

Vox’s Matt Yglesias earlier this year did a deep dive into the wave of calls to break up big tech comanies and why this is happening right now. His findings: Antitrust regulators have been asleep at the wheel and let tech companies “move fast and break things” perhaps too much. That’s let them do harm to suppliers and competitors. Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp instead of having to compete with them. Google ranks its restaurant review results over Yelp’s. Per Yglesias:

Beyond the economic and legal details, there’s also a larger struggle over the cultural meaning of Big Tech. After a period in which technology entrepreneurs in particular were often celebrated as “good guys” of the business world — especially in contrast with the bankers of Wall Street — critics are aiming less at a specific legal point and more at a general sense that the richest companies in the world (and the billionaires who own them) are part of the problem. At the same time, antitrust law is a blunt-force weapon, having been developed over the decades to deal with a set of concerns that only partially overlap with the nexus of issues people have about modern technology conglomerates.

It appears as though the backlash against big tech companies isn’t going anywhere — and Americans are getting on board with the idea that something needs to be done.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ok-amazon-poll





Google to Stop Showing News Snippets for French Users

Alphabet Inc’s Google will stop showing news snippets from European publishers on search results for its French users, complying with a new European copyright law, the company said on Wednesday.

The change means French users will only see the headlines and not the first few lines or a thumbnail image for news content unless European publishers specifically request to show previews, the company said. (bit.ly/2l7a3YO)

Thousands of European publishers are expected to be affected by the changes, but French publishers will be the most hit.

The move may impact publishers’ revenue stream as visibility on Google drives traffic to their websites, potentially boosting advertising and subscriptions.

Spain and Germany in recent years tried to force Google to pay publishers for taking snippets of their news articles, but that backfired after Google News pulled out from Spain and traffic of German publisher Axel Springer plunged after it sought to block the search engine.

France is the only EU country so far to implement the bloc’s far-reaching copyright reforms, which were adopted earlier this year. The countries have a year or so to follow suit.

Reporting by Ayanti Bera in Bengaluru and Foo Yun Chee in Brussels; Editing by Maju Samuel and Sriraj Kalluvila
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-a...-idUSKBN1WA1FK





Europe’s Top Court Limits ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ Privacy Rule

The European Court of Justice said the landmark privacy law cannot be enforced beyond the European Union.
Adam Satariano

Europe’s highest court limited the reach of the landmark online privacy law known as “right to be forgotten” on Tuesday, restricting people’s ability to control what information is available about them on the internet.

In a decision with broad implications for the regulation of the internet, the European Court of Justice ruled that the privacy rule cannot be applied outside the European Union. French authorities had sought to force Google and other search engines to remove links to users globally.

The decision more carefully defines the scope of the right to be forgotten, which is a centerpiece of the European Union’s internet privacy laws. The standard, which was established in 2014, can be used to force Google and other search engines to delete links to websites, news articles and databases that include personal information considered old, no longer relevant or not in the public interest.

The decision is likely to head off international disputes over the reach of European laws outside the 28-nation bloc. The court said Europe could not impose the right to be forgotten on countries that do not recognize the law.

The case cannot be appealed, and national courts across the European Union must abide by the decision.

“The balance between right to privacy and protection of personal data, on the one hand, and the freedom of information of internet users, on the other, is likely to vary significantly around the world,” the court said in its decision.

The court said the right to be forgotten “is not an absolute right.”

Google praised the decision. “Since 2014, we’ve worked hard to implement the right to be forgotten in Europe, and to strike a sensible balance between people’s rights of access to information and privacy,” Peter Fleischer, Google’s senior privacy counsel, said in a statement. “It’s good to see that the Court agreed with our arguments.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/t...forgotten.html





A Nevada Law That Fines Companies for Selling Private Data Is About to Go Into Effect
Dell Cameron

Starting next Tuesday, Nevada residents may choose to opt-out of having their personal information resold by online businesses. A privacy bill, signed into law this May, requires website operators to respond to requests from consumers and halt the sale of their personal information within 60 days—or potentially face strict fines.

The law, passed as Senate Bill 220, was modeled after the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), though it’s more limited in some areas. Companies are still permitted to exchange personally identifiable information (PII) with their own business affiliates, for example. To be eligible for an opt-out, the operator must intend to actually sell the information.

California’s idea of PII is also somewhat broader, encompassing essentially any information that could be reasonably linked to a particular individual or household. Conversely, the Nevada law describes particular examples of information considered private, such as a consumer’s name, address, telephone number, Social Security number, and so on.

Formally in effect on October 1, SB 220 authorizes Nevada’s attorney general to bring legal action against operators of websites and apps that violate its requirements. Violators may be subject to injunctions and civil penalties of up to $5,000 per violation.

The CCPA, meanwhile, goes into effect on January 1, 2020.

The laws are a direct response by state lawmakers to sweeping privacy violations in recent years; from the litany of scandals at Facebook to the massive data breach at Equifax in 2017. The U.S. Congress has so far failed to pass any comprehensive legislation to protect American consumers’ data, despite public outcry and a series of record-breaking fines from regulators.

Tech companies have stepped up pressure on Congress to enact a national privacy law, arguing that the patchwork of state-level policies is expensive and too burdensome to follow. Privacy advocates say, however, that any law that makes it through Congress will be considerably weaker than those crafted by states. They also accuse major tech companies of pushing for a overriding federal law specifically for that reason.
https://gizmodo.com/a-nevada-law-tha...e-d-1838369549





At Least 70 Countries Have Had Disinformation Campaigns, Study Finds
Davey Alba and Adam Satariano

In Vietnam, citizens were enlisted to post pro-government messages on their personal Facebook pages. The Guatemalan government used hacked and stolen social media accounts to silence dissenting opinions. Ethiopia’s ruling party hired people to influence social media conversations in its favor.

Despite increased efforts by internet platforms like Facebook to combat internet disinformation, the use of the techniques by governments around the world is growing, according to a report released Thursday by researchers at Oxford University. Governments are spreading disinformation to discredit political opponents, bury opposing views and interfere in foreign affairs.

The researchers compiled information from news organizations, civil society groups and governments to create one of the most comprehensive inventories of disinformation practices by governments around the world. They found that the number of countries with political disinformation campaigns more than doubled to 70 in the last two years, with evidence of at least one political party or government entity in each of those countries engaging in social media manipulation.

In addition, Facebook remains the No. 1 social network for disinformation, the report said. Organized propaganda campaigns were found on the platform in 56 countries.

“Social media technology tends to empower propaganda and disinformation in really new ways,” said Samantha Bradshaw, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, a department at Oxford University, and co-author of the study. The institute previously worked with the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate Russian interference around the 2016 campaign.

The report highlights the continuing challenge for Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as they try to combat disinformation, particularly when the perpetrators are governments. The companies have announced internal changes to reduce social media manipulation and foreign interference.

But the research shows that use of the tactics, which include bots, fake social media accounts and hired “trolls,” is growing. In the past two months, the platforms have suspended accounts linked to governments in China and Saudi Arabia.

Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at Graphika, a company that specializes in analyzing social media, said the growing use of internet disinformation is concerning for the 2020 United States election. A mix of domestic and foreign groups, operating autonomously or with loose ties to a government, are building from the methods used by Russia in the last presidential election, making it difficult for the platforms to police, he said.

“The danger is the proliferation” of the techniques, he said. “Anybody who wants to influence the 2020 election may be tempted to copy what the Russian operation did in 2016.”

China’s emergence as a powerful force in global disinformation is one of the most significant developments of the past year, researchers said. The country has long used propaganda domestically, but the protests this year in Hong Kong brought evidence that it was expanding its efforts. In August, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube suspended accounts linked to Beijing that were spreading disinformation about the protests.

Philip N. Howard, director of the Oxford Internet Institute and one of the authors of the report, said that such online disinformation campaigns can no longer be understood to be the work of “lone hackers, or individual activists, or teenagers in the basement doing things for clickbait.”

There is a new professionalism to the activity, with formal organizations that use hiring plans, performance bonuses and receptionists, he said.

In recent years, governments have used “cyber troops” to shape public opinion, including networks of bots to amplify a message, groups of “trolls” to harass political dissidents or journalists, and scores of fake social media accounts to misrepresent how many people engaged with an issue.

The tactics are no longer limited to large countries. Smaller states can now easily set up internet influence operations as well. The Oxford researchers said social media was increasingly being co-opted by governments to suppress human rights, discredit political opponents and stifle dissent, including in countries like Azerbaijan, Zimbabwe and Bahrain. In Tajikistan, university students were recruited to set up fake accounts and share pro-government views. During investigations into disinformation campaigns in Myanmar, evidence emerged that military officials were trained by Russian operatives on how to use social media.

Most government-linked disinformation efforts were focused domestically, researchers concluded. But at least seven countries had tried to influence views outside their borders: China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Ms. Bradshaw said that in the case studies the Oxford team identified, advertising was not central to the spread of disinformation. Instead, she said, the campaigns sought to create memes, videos or other pieces of content designed to take advantage of social networks’ algorithms and their amplifying effects — exploiting the potential for virality on the platforms for free.

Ms. Bradshaw said both government regulation and the steps taken by Facebook to combat this kind of disinformation didn’t go far enough. A lot of the regulation “tends to focus on the content” or “problems at the edges of disinformation problems,” she said, pointing to efforts like Facebook’s transparency in its ads archive.

“But from our research, we know that this problem of microtargeting ads is actually only a very small part of the problems,” Ms. Bradshaw said. Facebook has not addressed deeper structural problems that make it easy to spread false and misleading information, she said.

“To address that you need to look at the algorithm and the underlying business model,” Ms. Bradshaw said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/t...er-troops.html





How the Climate Kids Are Short-Circuiting Right-Wing Media

Young people like Greta Thunberg are participating in the culture wars while also managing to float above the fray.
Charlie Warzel

The kids aren’t just all right — they’re scrambling the brains of their political enemies.

Last Friday, millions of people, many of them children and teenagers, took to the streets during the Global Climate Strike, a protest inspired by Fridays for Future, the international youth effort started by the 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. The protesters’ call for broad action to combat global warming was powerful, as was the message sent by their numbers: Dynamic, frustrated young people are instilling in the climate movement a new urgency.

Online, the climate kids’ impact can be measured in a different way — by how they’re short-circuiting the right-wing media ecosystem that’s partly responsible for the spread of climate skepticism. Since Friday’s strike, pro-Trump media and conservative cable news pundits have devoted significant resources to turning the children of the climate movement into Public Enemy No. 1.

Over the weekend, Alan Jones, an Australian broadcaster for Sky News, delivered a monologue calling the climate-striking youth “selfish, badly educated, virtue-signaling little turds.” Mr. Jones finished by reading a letter arguing that children concerned about climate change should “wake up, grow up and shut up until you’re sure of the facts before protesting.” The rant echoed other criticisms of the protest from the right. “I wish I could inject that letter into my veins,” a blogger for the conservative site RedState wrote.

Ms. Thunberg has been the primary target of this vitriol. On Saturday, the pro-Trump media figure Dinesh D’Souza likened Ms. Thunberg to models in Nazi propaganda. Videos of her speeches have been edited to replace her voice with Adolf Hitler’s. On Fox News on Monday evening, the Daily Wire pundit Michael Knowles called Ms. Thunberg — who is open about being on the autism spectrum — “a mentally ill Swedish child who is being exploited by her parents.” (Fox News issued an apology and called the comment “disgraceful.”)

A few hours later, the Fox News host Laura Ingraham likened her to children from the horror film “Children of the Corn.” A Breitbart contributor wrote that she deserved “a spanking or a psychological intervention.” And she’s attracted the ire of President Trump on Twitter — a jab with which Ms. Thunberg had some fun.

To be clear: battling Fox News and subtweeting the president are hardly the youth climate movement’s main goal. Still, it’s a notable case study in the limits of the right’s ability to wage an information war across the media.

Much like the Parkland students, who proved to be a formidable opposition to the pro-Trump media apparatus that accused them of being crisis actors, Ms. Thunberg and the climate kids seem immune to the usual tactics of right-wing media. As newcomers, they’re mostly impervious to the right’s tool of personal attacks. They don’t have the baggage of voting records or deep financial ties to political organizations.

This doesn’t mean their enemies aren’t trying — this week, a pro-Trump blog feebly attempted to tie Ms. Thunberg to the billionaire George Soros, who has been the subject of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Online, far-right trolls are mounting an effort to harass the young women of the climate movement. Some of the onslaught is believed to be inauthentic — 5,000 tweets by suspected bots have mentioned Ms. Thunberg, according to BuzzFeed News. Similarly, toxic pro-Trump communities have zeroed in on teenage climate protesters. As of this writing, three of the top 25 posts from Reddit’s The_Donald forum in the last week were direct attacks on Ms. Thunberg. And yet, the usual smears don’t seem to stick.

Growing up online doesn’t hurt either. In 2018, I wrote that a strength of the Parkland students was being “effectively born onto the internet and innately capable of waging an information war.” The activists of the climate youth movement are no different — they’re battle-hardened by the internet and they’ve found a way to turn online organizing into mobilization on the streets.

Perhaps most important is their instinctive understanding of attention and how to wield it as both a weapon and a tool. They understand how to attract attention: Their protests feature meme-able signs to capture interest across social media. Their events — from global strikes to sit-ins in the House speaker’s hallway — are tailored to garner media coverage. They also know how to spot enemies looking to divert attention and to ignore or dismiss them.

Simply put, they don’t seem to care what adults, skeptics, deniers and crusty politicians think of them. And they waste very little of their time, energy and focus work-shopping their message or bulletproofing it against criticism. They simply pay their enemies no attention. They’re participating in the culture wars while also managing to float above the fray.

None in the movement embody this like Ms. Thunberg, who suffers no fools in her unsparing and blunt statements to diplomats and members of Congress alike. Some of this may be the result of age, what Robinson Meyer at The Atlantic describes as the “unique moral position of being a teenager,” in which “she can see the world through an ‘adult’ moral lens” but “unlike an actual adult, she bears almost no conscious blame for this dismal state.”

She does not allow her message — that the youth of the world have been betrayed by past generations’ inaction on climate change — to be co-opted by fawning lawmakers, and she dismisses their praise for her as a tragic role reversal that forces her to be the adult in a room of well-dressed children. And she seems keenly aware that her rivals’ critiques are merely efforts to divert her attention. “It seems they will cross every possible line to avert the focus, since they are so desperate not to talk about the climate and ecological crisis,” she wrote of her “haters” on Twitter on Wednesday.

The usual tactics of the right-wing media break down in the face of this type of resolve. While outrage campaigns intended to work the refs and appeal to fears of appearing partisan may work with lawmakers or companies in Silicon Valley, the youth climate movement appears wholly unmoved. While the levers for climate progress proposed by solutions like a Green New Deal are undoubtedly political, the broader movement’s desire — an inhabitable earth for all — is far from partisan. The stakes, as the movement sees it, are too high to focus attention on the trolls. And the pressure, from conservative pundits and Breitbart contributors, doesn’t just get dismissed, it goes unnoticed.

Faced with a political enemy that pays it no attention, the right is palpably frustrated. They argue that children have become, as a headline on an essay by Commentary’s Noah Rothman put it, “Child Soldiers in the Culture wars,” are insulated against criticism because of their age and innocence. “How do you respond to statements like that?” the Fox News host Tucker Carlson said recently of Ms. Thunberg’s forthright speeches. “The truth is you can’t respond. And of course, that’s the point.”

But as the past week shows, the right is perfectly willing to attack the children. Instead, the problem is that, as Mr. Carlson seems to realize, there’s just not a very resonant counter message for a youth movement to protect the planet. Polling also suggests that there’s an increasingly shrinking pool of conservative listeners for it, with a majority of Republicans under age 45 now identifying as concerned about climate change. And so it feels increasingly likely that, when it comes to climate, the right-wing media, which is skewed toward an aging Republican audience, may simply be obsolete.

In other words, it’s not that the right can’t attack the climate kids because of their age. Rather, it’s that because of their age, the right’s attacks feel especially feeble.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/o...-thunberg.html





Mysterious Data Corruption Issue Knocks Out Mac Pro Workstations Across Hollywood
Janko Roettgers

Film and TV editors across Los Angeles were sweating Monday evening as their workstations were refusing to reboot, resulting in speculations about a possible computer virus attack. Social media reports suggested that the issue was widespread among users of Mac Pro computers running older versions of Apple’s operating system as well as Avid’s Media Composer software.

Avid said in a statement Tuesday morning that it was aware of the issue, and that its engineers had made it a top priority to resolve the cause of it. On Tuesday afternoon, the company followed up with a video featuring its CEO Jeff Rosica and its CTO Tim Claman. Rosica said that the company has working “around the clock, whatever it takes” to solve the issue, and added that company engineers were on site “at a number of sites” to further investigate the problem.

Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment late Monday.

“A lot of L.A. post shops and people out on shows having their Macs slowly crash,” reported video post-production consultant Matt Penn on Twitter.

From what I gather there’s a massive failure of Macs with iLok/Avid that’s happening all over right now. A lot of L.A. post shops and people out on shows having their Macs slowly crash and wont boot again. Engineers are looking in to it. Don’t shut your machine off. #postchat

— Matt Penn (@mattpenndotcom) September 24, 2019

Freelance film editor Marcus Pun reposted a message from a popular Avid Facebook user group, advising users not to turn off their workstations.

BIG ALERT tonight regarding #Apple, and #MacOS running on the can. DO NOT SHUT DOWN!! #AvidEditors #Avid Apparently something is corrupting one of the UNIX root level folders. Back up everything, not just on the servers is you are in a connected environment. Refer to below FB pg pic.twitter.com/iLlfHVRfmp

— MarcusPun (@MarcusPun) September 24, 2019

Other users reported that multiple computers at their company were affected by the issue, with social media chatter indicating that a number of different companies, and even major shows like “Modern Family,” were affected by the issue.

Some analysis by affected users seemed to suggest that the outage may not have been caused by a virus, but by a recent software update that may have corrupted some data, with some suggesting a OS X reinstall that keeps the existing data to restart the machine.

On Tuesday afternoon, Avid’s Claman suggested that users running Avid should for the time being not reboot their computers, not install any software updates and back up all sensitive data.
https://variety.com/2019/digital/new...od-1203347033/





New ‘Unpatchable’ iPhone Exploit could Allow Permanent Jailbreaking on Hundreds of Millions of Devices

All devices from the iPhone 4S to the iPhone X are impacted
Chaim Gartenberg

A newly announced iOS exploit could lead to a permanent, unblockable jailbreak on hundreds of millions of iPhones, according to researcher axi0mX who discovered it. Dubbed “checkm8,” the exploit is a bootrom vulnerability that could give hackers deep access to iOS devices on a level that Apple would be unable to block or patch out with a future software update. That would make it one of the biggest developments in the iPhone hacking community in years.

EPIC JAILBREAK: Introducing checkm8 (read "checkmate"), a permanent unpatchable bootrom exploit for hundreds of millions of iOS devices.

Most generations of iPhones and iPads are vulnerable: from iPhone 4S (A5 chip) to iPhone 8 and iPhone X (A11 chip). https://t.co/dQJtXb78sG
— axi0mX (@axi0mX) September 27, 2019

The exploit is specifically a bootrom exploit, meaning it’s taking advantage of a security vulnerability in the initial code that iOS devices load when they boot up. And since it’s ROM (read-only memory), it can’t be overwritten or patched by Apple through a software update, so it’s here to stay. It’s the first bootrom-level exploit publicly released for an iOS device since the iPhone 4, which was released almost a decade ago.

In a follow-up tweet, axi0mX explained that they released the exploit to the public because a “bootrom exploit for older devices makes iOS better for everyone. Jailbreakers and tweak developers will be able to jailbreak their phones on latest version, and they will not need to stay on older iOS versions waiting for a jailbreak. They will be safer.”

Hundreds of millions of iPhone devices are affected by the exploit: any device starting with an iPhone 4S (A5 chip) through the iPhone 8 and iPhone X (A11 chip) is vulnerable, although it appears that Apple patched the flaw in last year’s A12 processors, meaning that iPhone XS / XR and 11 / 11 Pro devices won’t be affected.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

It’s still very early days for the checkm8 exploit. There’s no actual jailbreak yet, meaning that you can’t simply download a tool, crack your device, and start downloading apps and modifications to iOS.

Crucially, the vulnerability is also what jailbreakers refer to as a “tethered” exploit for now, meaning that it can only be triggered over USB. It would also have to be enabled each time through a computer, which limits the usefulness for a practical jailbreak right now. It’s possible that the exploit will lead an “untethered” jailbreak.

That said, assuming developers are able to use checkm8 as a starting point into iOS (which is a very big “if” right now), the possibilities are nearly endless: permanently jailbroken devices that won’t be reverted back due to Apple software updates or revoked signatures, downgradable iOS devices that could be easily rolled back to previous versions of the software, dual-booting between multiple versions of iOS, and more.

There are also security concerns. Nefarious actors could use the vulnerability to circumvent Apple’s iCloud account locks, which are used to render stolen or lost devices useless, or to install poisoned versions of iOS that steal user information. While Apple can patch the bootrom for its newer devices, the hundreds of millions of iPhones already out there can’t be patched without replacing hardware.

The iPhone jailbreaking scene isn’t nearly as big of a place as it once was, however. Back in the early days of the iPhone, cracking Apple’s devices to install custom software was far more appealing. Back then, there was no way to install third-party apps, and basic features — like customizable wallpapers for the home screen, simple multitasking, or the ability to copy and paste text — were missing, leaving jailbreaking as the only way to get those features. As time went on, iOS got more feature complete, giving most users less of a reason to jailbreak, and Apple got better at quashing the security holes that would allow developers to jailbreak phones.

The value of iOS exploits has also risen greatly, with Apple’s bug bounty program paying for exploits and shadier groups looking to use them to hack iOS devices. That means there’s less incentive for developers who do find jailbreakable exploits to release them. (A recent “flood” of exploits has pushed the price down on iOS exploits to a mere $2 million, compared to $2.5 million on Android.)

There’s still an active community of users who insist on having total control over their phones and tablets, but a combination of less demand for the benefits of jailbreaking and lack of major exploits (especially for newer devices / versions of iOS) has led to some stagnation in the community. Plus, there are now new alternatives like AltStore, a recently launched workaround for installing unsanctioned apps on iOS devices without the hassle of jailbreaking at all.

The new exploit isn’t the only recent development in the jailbreaking space. Over the summer, Apple accidentally unpatched a vulnerability in iOS, opening up modern devices for jailbreaks for the first time in years. And while the hole was quickly patched, it sparked a surge in jailbreaking iPhones.

It’s too early to say whether the checkm8 will lead to a new golden age for hackable iPhones, although many members of the jailbreak subreddit are extremely optimistic. One user proclaimed that is is “literally the biggest thing to ever happen in Jailbreaking” due to the scope of the exploit. Either way, given the nature of the exploit and the extent of the devices it impacts, it’ll be something to monitor going forward.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/27/2...nt-bootrom-ios





The Unsolved Case of the Most Mysterious Song on the Internet

Twelve years ago, a catchy New Wave anthem appeared on the internet with no information about who wrote or recorded it. Amateur detectives have spent thousands of hours since trying to figure out where it came from — with little luck. Inside the question that’s been driving the internet crazy for years
By David Browne

With its rigid beat and dry, monotone vocals, the song sounds like a synth-pop hit you would have heard in a dance club in the Eighties. (Or at least on an Eighties Spotify station.) Close your eyes and you can imagine a music video: awkwardly lip-synching musicians, exploding lightbulbs, foggy streets. It’s familiar. But the name of the artist or band doesn’t come to mind.

That’s because, right now, no one knows anything about it: who wrote it, who sang it, or even when it came out. And for about a dozen years, a dedicated gaggle of music obsessives from around the world has been searching for any information about these three minutes of music. Throughout this quest, which intensified this summer, thousands of man-hours have been devoted to unearthing anything at all about what these zealous investigators are calling “the most mysterious song on the Internet.”

The hunt embodies every conversation anyone has ever had with a devoted music nerd happy to share every morsel of information about an obscure song — in this case, one supposedly taped off European radio about 35 years ago. It’s the story of people longing for community in the digital era. But it’s also become something bigger. “Everything about this song is mysterious, from the creation to the lyrics to where it played on the radio,” says amateur song detective “Mkll,” who prefers to be identified only by his internet handle. “It’s not often that songs of this age are dug up, and the fact that a search has been happening for over a decade on the Internet really made this case unique.” Even if the case is never solved, it has briefly returned the pre-Google mystique to music, set to a Sprockets-appropriate beat.

If we are to believe the somewhat furtive people involved, we may know where the story starts. Between 1982 and 1984, Darius S. (who asked to use an abbreviation for this article for the sake of privacy) says he was a teenage music fan in the town of Wilhelmshaven on the north coast of Germany; like many in the pre-streaming era, he would record songs he heard on the radio onto a cassette deck. One of his go-to programs was Musik für junge Leute (“Music for Young People”) on the German public-radio station NDR 1. One of those tapes, which Darius calls “cassette 4,” includes then-new songs from 1984 by XTC, the Cure, and one of 25 cuts Darius deemed his “unknown pleasures” — songs he liked, but knew little about.

Darius isn’t certain that he taped the bleak but compelling tune off that particular broadcast, since the cassettes sometimes include tracks from different sources. But he knows he didn’t record an intro by a DJ or anything else that would identify it. “It was just one of many songs I recorded and didn’t know the artist,” he says. “I believe I didn’t hear an announcement. Maybe I heard it partially and missed the artist’s name. Everything is possible.” Combining the release dates of the other known songs on the tape and the fact that the Technics tape deck he says he owned at the time was manufactured in 1984, he’s fairly certain he made the recording that year.

For over two decades, Darius held onto his tapes. But in 2007, his sister Lydia H. (who has also requested anonymity) needed to know who was behind the song. “All the years of passively searching for the lyrics on the internet hadn’t brought any results, so I thought, it’s time to become more active and reach out for a bigger audience,” she says. Calling herself “Anton Riedel” (and alternately going by “bluuue”), she posted a digitized snippet of the song — one minute and 14 seconds, thinking this would help avoid copyright hassles — on a German site devoted to Eighties synth-pop as well as a Canadian music site, spiritofradio.ca, which enables fans to upload obscure songs for identification purposes. (In some ways, it’s a crowdsourced version of Shazam.) “I had just found out about newsgroups and Usenet,” she says, “and somehow got the idea this could be the place where people could help.” (A 2007 upload of the clip from bluuue is still available on the site.)

That portion of the song bounced around on the web — Nicolás Zúñiga of Dead Wax, an indie label that specializes in synth-pop and post-punk bands, was among those who heard it and were entranced by it — but no one stepped forward to claim credit or supply any useful background about its origins or creators. That same portion was uploaded to YouTube at least as early as 2011 but received fewer than 10,000 views.

This April, though, the mystery and the song gained traction — and more listeners — by way of a 16-year-old student in São Paulo, Brazil. Even though he was born decades after the birth of post-punk, Gabriel da Silva Vieira can hardly get enough of the genre and bands like the Sisters of Mercy and Fields of the Nephilim. “Guitar, synths and gothic vocals are something that always interested me,” he says. On Dead Wax’s YouTube channel, he heard the segment of the song and became equally fascinated with its unknown backstory. “I really liked the song,” Vieira says, “so I started searching intensively until I found something relevant.”

Vieira uploaded bluuue’s clip of the song onto his own YouTube channel and a handful of Reddit communities, with the hope that someone would be able to identify it. With that, the hunt went viral. The song became a subject of an episode of the YouTube series Tales from the Internet, which has been viewed over 390,000 times since July. Then, in July, came sonic paydirt: A Reddit user posted the entire song, which is just under three minutes long. The full song had apparently leaked out when Lydia says she received an email from someone asking for the full track; after uploading it using Lycos, she was still concerned about the legalities and quickly removed the link after the fan of the song downloaded it.

On Reddit and Discord (a popular chat-room site for gamers), several thousand users got in on the pursuit, posting theories and possible contact info, and dissecting the song in ways that would rival the most dedicated Dylanologists. Based on the singer’s accent, is the band from Germany or, perhaps, Poland or Austria? Is it even a band, or a one-man-group operation? Is the unknown singer intoning, “hear the young and restless dreaming” or “here you’re under arrest for screaming”? Is the song a comment on the Cold War? Is the song called “Like the Wind,” after its not entirely decipherable opening line? Or is that voice singing “Locked Away”?

One obvious source for information, the DJ who may have played it on the show Darius says he taped, is himself baffled. British-born Paul Baskerville, who still works at NDR, has no memory of the track and isn’t even sure he played it on his show. If he did, it could be sitting in his collection of 10,000 vinyl records, which includes the music he spun on-air. But, he adds, “If you’re a collector, you know most of what you have.”

Baskerville does recall playing tapes from underground Eastern rock bands, some mailed to him from over the Berlin Wall. Yet he’s not convinced the musicians heard on the tape are even Teutonic. “It sounds like the bad English that Germans might sing,” he says, “but it could be Polish or Russian. If [Eastern European musicians] sing in English, it can sound a bit austere and severe.” But he says that the typed-out-playlists from the period have long been trashed, and a fellow NDR DJ who could have played the song died three years ago.

Along with former record store workers and other radio station employees in Germany, Baskerville has been contacted by the “Mysterious Song” crowd. The names of these potential sources all appear on a detailed spreadsheet set up to keep track of leads: Deine Lakaien has been “ruled out” but someone claims to recognize it as “the B-side of a demo tape.” Another song detective lamented they’d been unable to reach out to a particular company that “managed in-store music for Whole Foods in 2003, where one YouTuber said they were ‘100 percent sure’ the song was played.” Phonebook-thick guides to Eighties New Wave records have been scrutinized. Others have scoured GEMA, a German music database, and have come up empty. Someone else transcribed it into sheet music, seemingly for the hell of it.

False leads have been rampant. Was it an early track or outtake from Joy Division or Depeche Mode? (No.) Other obscure, supposedly German or European bands — Mental Alchemy! Isurks! — have been floated but not confirmed. (A supposed friend of Isurks posted that the song is called “Check It In” and dates back to 1982, and that the lead singer is dead.) There are also many false leads generated by trolls: Hopes were raised when one poster said he knew the band and its name, but those dreams turned to despair when the person wrote it was the last song the mystery band made “before all being shot dead while attempting to climb over the wall and escape to West Berlin.”

In late August, Darius came home from work, switched on the radio and heard a report on German media about the search, followed by the song itself. “I nearly got a heart attack,” he says. “It was my song! The song I was trying to identify for 35 years!”(It should be noted that some were skeptical of these siblings when they emerged this summer claiming to own the original tape. “At this moment we cannot prove it all,” Lydia admits of the tape. “The pictures of the tape my brother took can be fake. And even the tape that still exists could (at least theoretically) could have been recorded only last week. But I am not one of those persons who only need some attention. There’s no need for my brother or me to create such a big hoax, which only takes plenty of time and efforts.” Vieira, for one, believes she didn’t make up any of this, “especially since she shared a file of this song with a slightly better quality.”)

“Mkll” says he devotes “three to four hours a day” to the hunt; Vieira says he has spent “many sleepless nights” on research, but now limits his time to “a few hours” every day. “I’m amazed at the energy devoted to this online,” says B. George of the Archive of Contemporary Music, a music library and research center in New York that was contacted by the Reddit group. “The posts read like the live commentary and betting strings that accompany bootleg sports sites.”

At this point, glimmers of sonic hope remain. NDR has found 21 recorded shows in its archive — out of hundreds — and are now in the process of listening back to them and hunting down playlists. Meanwhile, in Hamburg, Holger Roloff, currently the owner of the Amöbenklang label, taped hours and hours of music from NDR music shows that showcased rock from the West. He’s pretty sure his cassettes include some of Baskerville’s shows, but has no idea if the mystery song is on any of them. Nonetheless, Roloff has began the slow, laborious process of listening back to all his cassettes, most of which aren’t dated and simply have handwritten notations like “Deutsch New Wave” or “New Power Musik.” “This needs a lot of time,” he admits. “It will presumably last several years.”

Exactly why so many people are investing so much time and energy into this search baffles someone like Baskerville. “I don’t want to sound like a traitor to the cause, but I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” the DJ says. “If I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, I probably would be more interested, but I don’t think it’s a particular interesting song.” For his part, “Mkll” insists it’s about acknowlegement, that “the people behind the song get proper credits for their work.” A mysterious poster claimed credit for the song and put it on Spotify, but others determined he wasn’t even born when it was released.

But at a time when any tidbit about anything can be called up online in a matter of seconds, the song that may be “Like the Wind” is a source of fascination and wonder for thousands of people dedicated to finding the people who created it. “I think the fact that I’m so interested in this isn’t even because of the song itself — it’s understanding why this song is so mysterious and why nobody can find anything about it,” Vieira admits. “It’s simply surreal.” In other words, as Zúñiga puts it, “Apart from the song itself being so catchy, it’s exactly the fact that people cannot locate it in four seconds that makes it interesting.”

Should this who-sung-it be solved, some involved are already wondering about the harsh realities that could result. Would the singer and/or musicians involved (assuming they’re alive) be dragged out of obscurity and thrust in the limelight — only for fans of the song to realize they’re retired, out of practice and only had one decent song? What if the song was actually released on a small label in the Eighties? Would it then become an overpriced collector’s item out of reach of anyone who’d want to own it? “How many hundreds of people will have more money to spend than me and will ban me from purchasing an original?” Zúñiga asks. “Would that be fair?” What if everyone involved in the search simply moves on to something else once they know?

For his part, Vieira says he’ll be “very glad” if the song is identified, especially after so many fakes have infiltrated the chat rooms. In late August, one of the searchers reached out to Rolling Stone. “If we get a writer interested … would make a great article and boom maybe someone identifies it,” one of them posted in Discord. As of this moment, the search continues. But maybe it would be better if it remained unknown — if no one exposed the synth-man behind the curtain. In data-heavy 2019, perhaps the biggest contribution the makers of “Like the Wind” — or whatever it’s called — could make would be ensuring that something in the world remains a mystery.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/m...ternet-885106/

















Until next week,

- js.



















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