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Old 28-02-18, 08:52 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - March 3rd, ’18

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"Just because the FCC claims it has the power to preempt state laws doesn’t mean that it actually does." – Washington State Rep. Drew Hansen, D-23






































March 3rd, 2018




Site-Blocking Hinders Fewer than Half of Australia's Would-Be Pirates
Adam Turner

Court-enforced online roadblocks, demanded by movie studios, appear to be stopping only half of Australia's would-be pirates from reaching The Pirate Bay; even fewer once you allow for Aussies hiding behind a virtual private network, or VPN.

Australian internet service providers have blocked a range of piracy websites since December 2016, including The Pirate Bay and SolarMovie, after the Federal Court enforced site-blocking laws at the behest of a consortium of copyright holders headed by Village Roadshow.

Since then visits from Australia to these blocked sites have fallen by 53 per cent, according to the Australian Site-Blocking Efficacy Report from UK-based intellectual property research company Incopro.

The report "offers proof to all the naysayers who decried site-blocking," Creative Content Australia executive director Lori Flekser tells Fairfax Media.

Flekser, responsible for the ongoing 'Price of Piracy' awareness campaign, views halving the traffic to these piracy sites as a win for Australian copyright holders, rather than dwelling on the fact that half of all would-be pirates still slip past the blocks. There are still hundreds of thousands of visits to piracy sites each month, not counting those behind VPNs.

"We believe that the research shows that site-blocking is effective, VPNs and all the other ways that people mask their activities notwithstanding, as there is clearly a move away from those pirate sites," Flekser says, as the Federal government launches an inquiry into the effectiveness of site-blocking.

"I suspect that site-blocking would not exist in 42 countries around the world if it were totally ineffective."

The figures look worse for copyright holders when you do allow for the fact that 20 per cent of Australia's pirates use a VPN to hide their tracks when pirating content, according to Creative Content Australia's own research.

Incopro's figures rely on reports from web traffic analytics company Alexa, which attempts to trace the origin of website visitors. The report concedes that Alexa's figures can not account for Australians who have masked their location using a VPN, bypassing site-blocking and appearing to be located in another country.

Those Australians which do show up in local piracy figures are mostly relying on proxy sites which bypass site-blocks without masking the visitor's true location. The vast majority of this traffic is destined for The Pirate Bay, Flekser says, with Creative Content Australia calling on search giants like Google to do more to discourage the use of proxy sites.

While Flekser downplays the use of VPNs by Australian pirates, a 2015 study found that 16 per cent of Aussies had used a VPN. This was amid copyright holders pursuing Australian pirates who downloaded the movie Dallas Buyers Club.

VPN provider NordVPN says its Australian subscriber numbers doubled in 2016, and then doubled again in 2017. Along with efforts to mask piracy, a NordVPN spokesperson says the interest has been driven by privacy concerns over the introduction of Australia's mandatory metadata retention scheme and talk of forcing communication providers to provide law enforcement access to encrypted messages.

Regardless, Flekser says VPN usage has not grown considerably in Australia.

"There seems to have been a spike in 2015, which may well have had something to do with the Dallas Buyers Club, but it's very hard to actually know because once they've got a VPN they mask not only their identity but also their location," she says.

"But if Google Analytics is any indication then it's not a massive spike, and if our annual research is to be believed and is consistent then there doesn't seem to be a big spike in the use of VPNs."

Rather than accessing file-sharing sites like The Pirate Bay, Flekser says the number one reason Australians search on Google for VPNs is to bypass geo-blocking and access the US Netflix library, paying for content in US dollars.

These Australians are paying for content which is available for free via piracy websites, but Flekser disputes claims by Google and others that piracy is primarily an issue of "availability and pricing".

"Our research has told us pretty consistently, for many years now, the key reason that people pirate is because it's free," Flekser says, "and it's incredibly hard for any business model to compete with free."

"We also need to help people understand that there are ways that they can legitimately consume content, some of them may involve paying, some of them may involve this bizarre concept called waiting."
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/si...28-p4z23q.html





How BitTorrent Spurred the Streaming Revolution
David Pierce

Bram Cohen, the mastermind behind BitTorrent, claims he didn’t set out to build a pirate ship when he launched the file-sharing product in 2003. All he wanted to do was make it easier to move big stuff around the web—video#game updates, maybe, or the Linux distros that developers liked to swap. But within a year of starting the company, files shared on BitTorrent made up more than a third of all traffic on the internet. While Netflix was still stuck in the mail-order business, BitTorrent was changing how and why we watch things online.

At first, Cohen was simply solving a puzzle: There was this logistical problem of how to move large files around, he says. “I figured out how to make it happen.” Unlike other peer-to-peer platforms, where downloaders had to rely on one person’s computer and their sharing largesse to access a file—remember Napster?—BitTorrent divided the uploading work among the masses, with each “seed” computer providing only a small part of the total file. Suddenly files moved faster, and uploaders could share files without killing their bandwidth or raising eyebrows at Comcast.

Many early BitTorrent users had perfectly legit and legal goals, like the Phishheads and Deadheads who grabbed entire concerts with the bands’ blessings. But shaky, low-res versions of summer blockbusters and Must See TV soon started flying around the web, and Cohen’s tech became synonymous with the illegal-download industry. Didn’t want to pay for a new movie? Torrent it. Missed last week’s episode? It’s already up on KickassTorrents. Hollywood executives, who had been spared the existential threat of Napster only because video files are much bigger and more annoying to transmit than music files, saw their own bogeyman approaching.

The execs sicced their lawyers on BitTorrent users, hoping to sue the pirates into oblivion. In 2012, industry lobbyists even pushed for a bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act, which would have let the government essentially shut down any website hosting pirated content. But these efforts failed, in part because “breaking big files into smaller, more distributed pieces and tracking their assembly” is not itself illegal, and BitTorrent Inc. couldn’t be held responsible for how its platform was being used. BitTorrent survived the worst that Hollywood could throw at it, and Hollywood realized it couldn’t stop anyone from torrenting—it could only hope to learn from those who had come before.

The music industry had concluded in the early aughts that the only way to compete with free is better. So just as record companies worked with Apple et al. to sell high-quality audio files free of the glitches and viruses that marred so much Napster content, entertainment executives countered BitTorrent by creating or partnering with platforms where people could pay for crisp, trouble-free HD video. Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video all owe at least part of their existence to BitTorrent and its messy, malware-lousy downloads.

Piracy remains a massively popular global pastime—BitTorrent Inc. tells potential advertisers it has 170 million users per month. And entertainment execs have more or less made peace with its inevitability: When top brass at HBO see that Game of Thrones is the internet’s most pirated show, they wear the distinction like a badge of honor (while sending out perfunctory cease-and-desist letters). Then they make sure HBO Go’s back-end streaming tech serves up dragons that are brighter, sharper, and more terrifying than anything you could see for free.

Fast broadband and cheap server space largely have rendered Cohen’s original problem irrelevant, and most users have plenty of legal ways to download or stream video. But BitTorrent continues to shape how we think about storing and moving big things around the web. It’s easy to draw a straight line between BitTorrent’s decentralization of file-sharing and today’s blockchain-based cryptocurrencies—different technologies trying to spread control so wide that no single entity can break the system. Meanwhile, BitTorrent and its fellow pirate ships still loom as quality-control phantoms, hovering over the entertainment world and reminding those in charge what’ll happen if they stop doing right by viewers. Free content is just a download away.
https://www.wired.com/story/how-bitt...ng-revolution/





How Bands are Escaping the Music Industry Snake Pit
Chris Johnston

Music streaming - playing songs over the internet "on demand" - is widely regarded as having saved the music industry, following an era of music piracy marked by falling CD and vinyl sales.

Yet songwriters and musicians have long complained that they're not getting their fair share of the spoils, but now a number of tech start-ups are trying to help them receive what they're owed and give them more control.

Dan Haggis, drummer with Liverpool band The Wombats, is a happy man. The band's fourth album, Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life, recently entered the UK chart at number three - a career best.

And this time around, they stand to make more money from their success.

This is because they've signed to Kobalt, a technology-driven music services company that gives songwriters and bands complete ownership of their work and a greater share of income than has traditionally been the case in the industry.

"We never used to make any money because we were always paying off our advances," recalls Haggis, whose band formed in 2003. "We'd get about a 20% share of revenues and the label would keep the rest.

"Now we get to keep about 90% of what we earn ...it's such a difference, it just made sense."

Other tech start-ups such as Mycelia and Choon are also trying to use new technology, such as blockchain, to give more financial power back to music creators and help them track down what they're owed.

Mycelia, a "think and do tank" of music professionals set up by London-based artist Imogen Heap, argues that having a verified global registry of artists and their works would help make the payment process more transparent.

And Choon, a new streaming service and payments platform, is based on the Ethereum blockchain and promises to get more cash to artists by paying 80% of the revenues generated by their streams to them directly.

It was the byzantine nature of the music industry's payments system that inspired Kobalt's Swedish founder, Willard Ahdritz, to set up his music publishing and technology platform, with the aim of collecting and tracking artists' song royalties much more quickly and accurately.

Clients can see on an app how much revenue their works are generating globally in real time.

"Transparency is probably the key word," says Haggis.

One of the problems to date has been the lack of metadata accompanying song information, argues music writer Stuart Dredge. If a recording lacks the necessary credits for the writers, performers and producers, they may not get their cut.

"Streaming isn't the villain," he says, "but it's shining a light on some of the music industry's historic problems around data and attribution and making sure the right people get paid."

But music analyst Mark Mulligan is highly sceptical of blockchain's potential to become a force in the music business.

"No label or rights association is going to allow blockchain to gain any momentum because they rely on a lack of transparency - there's a huge amount of revenue that's never attributed properly because of messy data and that just goes straight to the bottom line of record labels and publishers," he says.

While so-called collection agencies will try to track down royalty payments for artists and protect their copyright, they acknowledge that this isn't always easy given the complex nature of a global industry that now has so many distribution platforms.

PRS for Music, one of the UK's biggest music licensing societies, is involved in a multinational project with Berlin-based ICE Operations, which is attempting to automate copyright processing using cloud computing and machine learning.

"There's an awful lot more to creating a successful song than most people realise," explains PRS chief executive Robert Ashcroft, "it doesn't just happen. From the idea to the crafting, from the engineering to the sound production and promotion - it's the result of a lot of professional effort."

Better technology enabling royalty tracking and payments means that artists and writers are starting to get paid for the first time in markets such as China, where piracy has previously dominated.

Streaming is now raking in more than $5bn (£3.6bn) globally for the three major music groups - Universal, Sony Music and Warner, considerably more than the $3bn from sales of CDs and vinyl records. Services such as as Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, Apple Music, YouTube and Amazon Music have become the de facto way many of us now source our favourite tunes.

Spotify dominates, accounting for around two-thirds of all song streams. But it pays many music labels less than a cent per stream. How much of that the songwriter or band gets depends on the deal it has with the label, but the ratio of label income to artist income is roughly 4:1.

But last month, the US Copyright Royalty Board ruled that streaming services - Google, Amazon, Apple, Spotify and Pandora - would have to increase the share of their income they pay songwriters and publishers from 10.5% to 15.1%.

Good news for songwriters.

Meanwhile Kobalt continues to grow in popularity. The firm now manages about one million songs and accounts for roughly 40% of the songs on the UK and US top 100 charts.

Its roster of artists includes Max Martin, who co-wrote hits such as Shake It Off for Taylor Swift and Roar for Katy Perry, as well as household names such as Lorde, Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, Sir Paul McCartney, Pet Shop Boys and Enrique Iglesias. And it is now moving into music recording as well.

The Wombats' Dan Haggis hopes that better technology will help secure the band's future.

"With any luck we will start having some money from each of the streaming services each month to keep the band going so that we don't have to rely on playing live and selling merchandise," he says.

"It's kind of an exciting time really, putting that power back in bands' hands, giving you control of your career and where you're going with it."
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43156285





Spotify Is Getting Paid to Save the Music Industry
Peter Eavis

Spotify is certainly getting paid to be the music industry’s savior.

Perhaps more than any other streaming service, Spotify has revived the fortunes of recording artists. It is funneling billions of dollars from its subscribers to music companies, which, for the most part, faced a bleak future. But a charity Spotify is not. The company appears to be taking a bigger and bigger cut of the revenue it receives from listeners, according to numbers first made public on Wednesday.

The numbers are included in Spotify’s financial filing with Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of listing its shares on the United States stock market. They strongly suggest that Spotify has successfully flexed its muscle as it negotiates the price it pays record companies for music. This shows up starkly in the filing’s discussion of an expense item called cost of revenues, which, the filing says, “consists predominately of royalty and distribution costs related to content streaming.”

The filing says Spotify had €3.67 billion of premium streaming revenue last year. The cost of that revenue last year was €2.87 billion. The difference between those numbers, the gross profit on streaming revenue, was equivalent to 22 percent of that revenue. That is well up from 16 percent in 2016 and 15 percent in 2015. And how did Spotify bolster its margins? A big factor: It signed more advantageous licensing agreements with music companies. “This decrease in cost of revenue as a percentage of premium revenue was driven largely by a reduction in content costs pursuant to new licensing agreements,” the filing said.

But can Spotify keep turning the screw? The music companies might be willing to compromise on price because the overall amount of dollars they receive is going up, making life easier for the first time in years. But, with Apple, Amazon and others adding subscribers, competition is intensifying. The music industry might be able to exploit that.

Spotify’s cash flow mystery

Accounting nerds delving into Spotify’s filing will have stumbled on an odd discrepancy.

Two metrics that attempt to capture how much cash a company is taking in had very different totals for 2017. Ebitda, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, was negative to the tune of €324 million last year. But net cash flows from operations totaled €179 million in 2017. Both totals benefited from adding back large noncash financing costs. So what items bolstered operating cash flows but not Ebitda?

It looks like operating cash flows did better in part because Spotify waited to pay some of its bills. Such items make up what is often called working capital. Spotify wrung €439 million of cash out of working capital in 2017. The question for investors is whether the company can do that every year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/b...icks-guns.html





'Black Panther' Stays Strong with $108M in Second Weekend
Jake Coyle

"Black Panther" has scored one of the best second weekends ever with an estimated $108 million in ticket sales.

Studio estimates Sunday say "Black Panther" is still performing as one of the top blockbusters of all time. This weekend's result makes Ryan Coogler's Marvel sensation only the fourth film to earn $100 million in its second weekend, along with "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," ''Jurassic World" and "The Avengers."

Of those, only "The Force Awakens" had a better second weekend.

In two weeks of release, "Black Panther" has grossed $400 million domestically and $704 million worldwide.

Of new releases, faring the best is the Warner Bros. comedy "Game Night," starring Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams. It debuted with $16.6 million.

The well-reviewed sci-fi thriller "Annihilation" opened with $11 million.
http://www.courant.com/entertainment...225-story.html





Oscar Contender 'The Shape of Water' Facing Copyright Infringement Lawsuit
Nardine Saad and Christie D'Zurilla

Fox Searchlight, Guillermo del Toro and others associated with the Oscar contender “The Shape of Water” are facing a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the estate of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Zindel.

The Academy Awards-adjacent timing of the lawsuit — filed last week by David Zindel, acting as a trustee of his and his sister Lizabeth’s trusts, which equally share the rights to their father’s literary works — is a point of contention between the sides.
Fox Searchlight Pictures, in a statement to The Times, called the claims baseless and said the suit “seems timed to coincide with the Academy Award voting cycle in order to pressure our studio to quickly settle.”

A lawyer for the plaintiffs said the Wednesday filing was based on when David Zindel became aware of alleged similarities between “The Shape of Water” and his father’s 1969 play “Let Me Hear You Whisper,” and the studio’s reaction after Zindel made his concerns known.

"The timing is of their own making," Marc Toberoff said in response to Fox's statement. "They knew about it and did nothing." He said in an interview Thursday that Zindel contacted the studio "about five weeks ago" about the alleged similarities in response to a “groundswell” of public comments to that effect.

Del Toro directed the Oscar-nominated movie, has a “story by” credit and shares the screenwriting credit with Vanessa Taylor. The film is up for 13 Academy Awards this Sunday and has already earned Golden Globes for director and original score, the PGA Award for best picture and four Critics’ Choice Awards.

The studio said it would “vigorously defend ourselves and, by extension, this groundbreaking and original film.” It intends to file for a dismissal. Del Toro’s rep did not provide a separate statement from the four-time Oscar nominee, though the director told Deadline last week that he had never seen or read “Whisper,” nor had any of his collaborators mentioned the play.

Toberoff said there was no accusation that Del Toro by himself had done anything; rather, the attorney said, with most copyright situations, “someone in the chain” introduces the idea on the way to the final product.

The suit points to defendant Daniel Kraus, a producer on “The Shape of Water,” who reportedly pitched the idea to Del Toro.

“Kraus is both on record as an admirer of Zindel’s work, and came up with the ‘idea’ for the Picture the very year the A&E production of Zindel’s Play first aired on national television,” the lawsuit said. “These and other telling details from the writing and production of the Picture strongly evidence that Defendants knowingly infringed Zindel’s Play.”

Both play and movie tell stories of a lonely female janitor working in a laboratory where an intelligent sea creature is being held and ultimately threatened. The lawsuit alleges more than 60 similarities between the works, including oddball elements such as a decapitated cat and a record player in a science lab.

Paul Zindel’s play has been widely read and performed for decades and has been adapted into two made-for-TV productions that ran on public television in 1969 and on A&E in 1990 and have been rebroadcast since, the suit said.
http://www.courant.com/entertainment...227-story.html





Say Goodnight to Net Neutrality as AT&T Just Rolled Out 'Internet Fast Lanes'
Walter Einenkel

AT&T spent the better part of last year pretending to shake its fist along with the majority of Americans in support of net neutrality rules being kept. This protesting included CEO Randall Stephenson doing some damage control by slyly asking the Republican Congress to create an “Internet Bill of Rights” that would allow his company to get around the predictable rise in state laws that try to protect their citizens from predatory telecoms, now that telecoms have gotten their way.

AT&T may also have trouble getting consumer advocates on board. Stephenson didn't provide any specifics, including whether the bill of rights would block controversial "fast lanes" for services and sites that pay broadband companies for preferential treatment.

[...]

"We don't block websites. We don't censor online content. And we don't throttle, discriminate, or degrade network performance based on content. Period," Stephenson wrote.


Well, that’s good. I guess we should just take your word for it. Or not. As BGR writes today, AT&T sent out some texts to their customers explaining how they are “expanding” their sponsored data program to allow other companies to “sponsor” data. What’s important about this is that their “sponsored” data plan means that companies will pay AT&T in order to have their content streamed on AT&T customers’ devices without hitting against their data plans. As BGR rightly points out, this is the promotion of internet “fast lanes” by almost any definition.

As of right now, the only three services using AT&T’s sponsored data program are DirecTV, UVerse, and Fullscreen. By a huge coincidence, those are three video services owned by AT&T. “Now your plan includes sponsored data. This means, for example, that customers who have DirecTV or U-verse TV can now stream movies and shows … without it counting against their plan data,” AT&T told customers in a text message earlier today.

This flies directly in the face of a statement AT&T made just last year, when it was trying to persuade consumers that the FCC’s net neutrality repeal wouldn’t be the end of a free and open internet. “AT&T intends to operate its network the same way AT&T operates its network today: in an open and transparent manner. We will not block websites, we will not throttle or degrade internet traffic based on content, and we will not unfairly discriminate in our treatment of internet traffic,” executive Bob Quinn said at the time.


The next step will be telecoms taking away and throttling your data until the point where you can only afford to stream the data that AT&T gets paid to allow you to watch.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...net-fast-lanes





FCC Commissioner: Our Policy Is ‘Custom Built’ for Right-Wing Sinclair Broadcasting

A body meant to foster a diversity of viewpoints is taking major steps to promote just one.
Michael Tomasky

Sometime this spring, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to take a step without precedent in the history of U.S. communications policy. Once upon a time a watchdog agency, the FCC is going to approve a near-$4 billion merger between two companies that will result in the parent company’s programming—and probably not coincidentally, its right-wing politics—being broadcast into 72 percent of American homes.

They teach us in journalism school never to write “is going to,” because, well, there might be an earthquake. OK. There might be an earthquake. But I’m not even sure that would stop Donald Trump’s FCC, and commissioner Ajit Pai, from giving the kiss of approval to this merger that would be horrible for America even if the company were a liberal agitprop machine rather than a conservative one.

The company, as you might have guessed, is Sinclair Broadcasting. It seeks approval to join forces with Tribune Media. The merger would eviscerate the principles the FCC was created to uphold and defend—principles such as diversity of ownership to foster competition, diversity of viewpoints to foster public debate, and localism to foster service to the community. All three have been perched precariously on the sill since the Reagan administration. But once this is approved, out the window and down to the sidewalk they’ll tumble.

Recently, I sat down with FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to talk about this. She’s shocked at what is happening on the commission, to which President Obama appointed her in 2011. Since Trump became president and Pai took over, she told me, “All of our media policy decisions have one thing in common: They are all custom built for the business plans of Sinclair Broadcasting.”

Rosenworcel walked me through six votes the commission has taken in the Trump era. All were concluded along partisan lines, and all have in common the fact that they were good for Sinclair.

1. Reinstatement of the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) discount. If you’re of a certain age you may remember that there were always one or two UHF channels that you tuned in with that other dial on your TV (in my childhood, it was Pittsburgh’s WPGH Channel 53). Those stations were harder for customers to get then, so the FCC counted them in ownership terms only half as much as they counted Very High Frequency (VHF) channels (your old Channel 2, Channel 4, etc.). But when everything became digital, the discount increasingly became an anachronism. The Obama-era FCC finally got rid of it in 2016, but Pai’s FCC restored it last July. Interestingly enough, Sinclair owns a large number of UHF stations, Rosenworcel says. “It makes no technical sense,” she added. “It benefits Sinclair Broadcasting.”

2. Change in media ownership rules to allow a company to own two of the top four stations in any given market. I remember the quaint old days when the same company wasn’t allowed to own a newspaper and a TV station in the same market. But last November, the FCC said broadcasters could own two of the top four stations in a market. Variety, which really covers this stuff, called the new ownership rules “the most significant changes to media ownership regulations in a generation.” Rosenworcel says that Sinclair has or will have two stations in markets such as Des Moines, Seattle, Richmond, Salt Lake City, and others.

3. Easing of the 39 percent ownership cap. The old limit said no single broadcaster can reach more than 39 percent of the population. Last December, the FCC voted to remove that cap. It may impose a new cap, or it may decide no cap is needed at all! Making this one even more curious is the fact that this overrides not just a previous regulatory decision but an actual law of Congress, passed in 2004.

4. Rescinding of merger advice. This involved two party-line votes that relaxed the rules govern companies’ responsibilities when mergers occur. Republican commissioners said at the time of the vote that the Obama-era rules were onerous, but Rosenworcel and Mignon Clyburn, the other Democratic commissioner, argued that it takes companies like Sinclair off the hook for assuming certain shared costs under merger agreements that companies have had to shoulder in the past.

5. Voting to end the “main studio” rule. For 77 years, the FCC had a rule that a broadcaster maintain studios in a city where it is licensed—it’s a sign of commitment to cover the local community. But as of last October, it does not.

6. Launching next-generation transmission standards. This is called ATSC 3.0, and it’s the future of television that will allow for much more interactive viewing experiences. One concern of Rosenworcel and Clyburn is that this coming format change will force everyone to buy a new TV in the next few years. But the larger concern is that Sinclair owns key patents related to the new format. Sinclair defenders say it hold only 12 key patents so would not stand to benefit overwhelmingly. News reports suggest otherwise. Rosenworcel, likewise, said that Sinclair owns some of the “most essential patents” and would stand to make billions.

That’s six votes. But the collective impact is profound. “Every element of our media policy is custom-built for the business plan of Sinclair Broadcasting,” says Rosenworcel. “That is stunning, it is striking, and it looks like something’s wrong. And I’m not the only one to think that. We’re burning down the values of media policy in this agency in order to service this company.”
Get The Beast In Your Inbox!

She’s not alone in thinking it looks like something’s wrong. Democratic lawmakers have thought so too. And just last week, the FCC Inspector General’s office opened up an investigation into the commission’s moves and Chairman Pai’s relationship with Sinclair. A New York Times investigation last summer found extensive meeting and correspondence between Pai and his staffers and Sinclair officials.

And who is Ajit Pai, anyway? As it happens you may have seen him in the news over the weekend. He attended the CPAC conference last week, and was given by the NRA something called the Charlton Heston Award for “courage under fire” for his anti-net neutrality stance.

Okay. First of all, what’s a regulatory commissioner even doing at CPAC? It’s one thing for someone like Pai to go to a Heritage Foundation conference and give a policy speech. That’s a conservative gathering, but that’s fine because it’s a think tank. But CPAC? It’s a hyper-partisan political event that this year happens to have featured an actual fascist. It’s not the right place for an officially nonpartisan public servant. The two other Republican commissioners, Michael O’Reilly and Brendan Carr, also went.

An award from the NRA? The FCC commissioner? Once upon a time, this would have gotten an FCC chairman fired. Now it’s apparently something to brag about. “Chairman Pai was asked to speak at CPAC and join a policy panel discussion with his fellow commissioners,” says Pai spokesman Brian Hart, who responded to my emailed questions Sunday. “The CPAC award was a complete surprise, and the chairman was honored. He did not actually receive the musket and the presenters announced onstage that they will keep it at their museum.”

The fact that Pai doesn’t have the musket doesn’t mean he didn’t earn it. He and his fellow Republican commissioners killed net neutrality last year—provoking a huge uprising among the public that may yet force a reversal someday (topic for a future column). They’ve transformed the FCC from watchdog to lapdog.

But back to Sinclair: Rosenworcel wouldn’t discuss Sinclair’s politics, but I will. Here’s a useful, brief history of Sinclair’s on-air partisanship going back to the Bush years. These days, it’s very Trumpy. Remember Boris Epshteyn, the particularly oily Trump surrogate who left the White House after a short spell? He now does commentaries on Sinclair—“The Bottom Line with Boris.” Politico reported last year that the Epshteyn segments are “must-runs,” meaning all Sinclair stations must run them (several times a week), along with commentary from another conservative, Mark Hyman, and something called Terrorism Alert Desk segments.

Imagine all that, in 72 percent of American homes—a huge percentage of them, of course, totally unsuspecting, because millions of people have barely even heard of the FCC let alone given any thought to the communications regulatory policy that determines the flow of information that comes into their homes.

The potential Big Brother/Dear Leader ramifications of a Trump propaganda network getting into nearly three-quarters of all American homes is disturbing. But the right-wing politics isn’t even the main point. The point is that all this consolidation is going to kill any remaining notion of the commons. “Broadcasting is a public trust,” Rosenworcel told me. “In exchange for being given a license to use our airwaves, you have a duty.”

The assault on those duties started in the 1980s, when Sen. Bob Packwood (R-OR) led the charge to end the Fairness Doctrine, which he used to refer to as the “fearness doctrine” (it was the end of the doctrine that gave us Rush Limbaugh). The assault has continued ever since and will behold its greatest triumph this spring—unless there really is an earthquake, in the form of the massive public uprising this outrage deserves.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/fcc-co...r-broadcasting





The FCC’s New Broadband Map Paints an Irresponsibly Inaccurate Picture of American Broadband

At the core of the problem is, unsurprisingly, the influence of deep-pocketed telecom operators on lawmakers and regulators.
Karl Bode

How do you fix a problem when you’re not capable of admitting you have one?

That’s the problem that continues to plague the United States, where consumers not only pay some of the highest prices in the developed world for broadband, but enjoy some of the worst customer service imaginable. Efforts to actually fix this problem remain stuck in limbo, in part because we’re still not accurately tracking where broadband is available, or how much it costs.

Back in 2011 the Obama FCC announced the creation of a $300 million broadband map using the Form 477 data ISPs provide the agency. At the time the map was heralded as a novel way to highlight the coverage gaps and competitive shortcomings of what is pretty clearly a broken US telecom market.

But users quickly discovered that despite the project’s steep price tag and good intentions, the map itself was almost useless. Before the map was mothballed due to a lack of funding, it spent a few years hallucinating competitors out of whole cloth, over-stating both speed and availability, while failing utterly to mention service pricing whatsoever.

At the core of the problem is, unsurprisingly, the influence of deep-pocketed telecom operators on lawmakers and regulators. The data ISPs submit to the FCC is rarely independently verified by objective third parties, and because companies like Comcast don’t want to emphasize the obvious lack of competition, data they provide tends to be overly-optimistic.

As a result, the FCC has long used an ISP-approved, census-tract-based approach to measuring broadband. And the results are comical: according to current FCC logic, if a single home in a census tract has broadband, the entire neighborhood is declared served. This rose-colored glasses approach to data integrity has fueled policy for decades.

Fast forward to this week when the Ajit Pai run FCC announced they were relaunching a “new” version of the map as part of Pai’s (already arguably hollow) dedication to closing the digital divide. You can check out the updated map here.

“As it works to close the digital divide, the Federal Communications Commission has updated and modernized its National Broadband Map so the map can once again be a key source of broadband deployment information for consumers, policymakers, researchers, and others,” the FCC proclaimed in a statement.

“The new, cloud-based map will support more frequent data updates and display improvements at a far lower cost than the original mapping platform, which had not been updated in years,” it added.

The agency also took to Twitter to declare that the revamped map would provide “a robust tool for closing the digital divide.”

Except the FCC’s map actually does the exact opposite. Anybody interested in using the FCC’s map to identify broadband coverage gaps—would walk away believing the digital divide doesn’t actually exist.

While the “new” map has received a modest graphical overhaul, all of the problems inherited from its initial iteration remain. Users were quick to highlight on Twitter that the map still dramatically overstates available ISPs (often to a comical degree), inaccurately lists the speeds they can provide, and fails to mention service pricing whatsoever.

For example, at my home in Seattle (one of America’s purported technology leadership hubs) Comcast is the only real broadband option. Yet the FCC’s new broadband map tries to inform me that seven different ISPs are actually available.

One company (CenturyLink) is listed as two competitive choices for both fiber and DSL, despite neither being actually available. Another fixed-wireless option is also not actually available at my address. Three of the listed competitors are for satellite broadband, a service routinely plagued by high prices, low usage caps, and high latency (read: it’s not real broadband).

Even if many of these services were actually available to me, four of the seven don’t meet the FCC’s own definition of broadband: 25 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up. In short, the FCC’s map is utterly useless in helping users determine just what options are available.

And again, this is an intentional feature, not a bug.

ISPs have spent decades fighting against more accurate broadband mapping, worried that the public might just discover how solidly this industry has shafted them for the better part of a generation. And well-heeled regulators are eager to embrace this flawed data, especially if it helps them justify the blind-deregulatory policies routinely favored by industry.

Efforts to improve mapping accuracy by shifting from the overly-generous census-tract approach to address-based data has been routinely shot down by industry lobbyists. And ISPs consistently pressure the FCC to weaken the definition of broadband, since it’s easier to be an expert high jumper when the bar is set to ankle height.

More accurate data would not only reveal that the lion’s share of American broadband is painfully uncompetitive, but that it’s actually getting worse. Many US telcos are simply refusing to upgrade aging DSL lines, giving incumbent cable providers like Charter and Comcast a growing monopoly over huge swaths of America.

The end result of this dance of dysfunction isn’t just higher prices, but punitive usage caps, overage fees, substandard customer service, and a rotating crop of net neutrality and privacy violations. And with the recent death of net neutrality and consumer broadband privacy protections, you can expect it to get worse before it gets better.

But before we can fix the problem, we need lawmakers and regulators actually capable of admitting we have one. Both parties have a long, proud history of defending the rose-colored glasses approach to broadband data collection, terrified of upsetting some of the most powerful campaign contributors in America.

After all, if the public can easily see how uncompetitive, unavailable and expensive decent broadband is, somebody might just get the crazy idea to actually do something about it.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...-broadband-map





The FCC’s Repeal Of Net Neutrality Is Causing Unprecedented Spikes In VPN Usage

Who's really getting the last laugh? Americans are losing trust in corporations and the government, and taking matters into their own hands. There was a whopping 170 percent increase in VPN sales in the US.
Damir Mujezinovic

In December 2017, the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal net neutrality, giving the world wide web back to internet service providers. This maneuver aims to deregulate the industry and allow companies such as AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon to slow down, block, and throttle websites, and charge consumers more for particular internet services. The FCC’s “Restoring Internet Freedom Order,” which repealed the net neutrality protections, was officially published on February 22.

While most American internet users still haven’t fully felt the effects of the repeal, an ongoing online campaign has not lost momentum. As the Inquisitr reported in January, net neutrality activism has even found its way into the Senate. Still, besides raising public awareness about this issue, campaigning hasn’t really produced tangible results; public revolt has not made Ajit Pai and the FCC reconsider their decision, as of yet.

Net neutrality activism has, however, at least played a part in the unusual, enormous, and unprecedented spike in VPN usage in the United States.

A VPN, or a Virtual Private Network, is a service that masks and spoofs the end user’s IP address, recounting internet traffic through a third party server, and therefore circumventing censorship and government firewalls. In countries like China and Russia, where the world wide web is heavily monitored, government-controlled, and censored, VPNs have become synonymous with privacy and freedom of information. These shifts have even led Putin to sign a new law effectively banning anonymous browsing tools in Russia. Wired ran an article about this back in April 2017.

VPN providers might be losing their grip on the Russian market, but VPNs are becoming so popular in the United States that HotSpot Shield, one of the most popular VPNs in the world, saw more than 100 million downloads in 2017 alone, exceeding all expectations and breaking previous records.

HotSpot Shield is a product of a software company called AnchorFree. The company’s CEO, David Gorodyansky, discussed these interesting developments with Business Insider. Mr. Gorodyansky saw unprecedented spikes in new users immediately after the FCC repealed net neutrality. He thinks the FCC’s crackdown on net neutrality, in combination with high-profile hacks, is why Americans are losing trust in corporations and the government.

“Over the last 18 months, people are starting to realize that the government won’t protect them and that Google and Facebook want to use their data as currency. People are realizing that they need to take this into their own hands,” Gorodyansky said, adding that “Americans are starting to realize that security and privacy are important.”

Gorodyansky claims to have witnessed three major spikes. The first one happened after Congress voted to allow ISPs to sell web and app usage to third parties without asking users for permission. The second spike occurred along with the Equifax hack. And lastly, the third surge of new users happened after the FCC repealed net neutrality.

“If the FCC doesn’t want to regulate net neutrality. That’s fine. We wish they did, but they don’t want to, that’s OK. We’re basically going to solve this from a technology point of view,” AnchorFree’s CEO said, “I think there’s been this transition where people are starting to trust big corporations and the government less with their information.”

According to App Annie, an app market research company, Virtual Proxy Networks make up five of the top 10 highest-grossing productivity apps on Apple’s App Store.

This begs the question: Who’s really getting the last laugh?

Former Gmail marketing manager at Google, internet entrepreneur, and VPNmentor writer Ariel Hochstadt recently wrote an interesting blog post, pointing out the irony that seems to be mockingly emerging amidst the net neutrality repeal backlash.

According to Hochstadt, VPN sales have skyrocketed in Australia, which experienced a 470 percent increase in VPN sales. In the United States, there was a 170 percent increase in VPN sales. Likewise, Turkey experienced a rise of 89 percent.

“It appears the drive for an uncensored, untampered and neutral internet couldn’t be stronger. The actions of Ajit, Tayyip and George (The 3 Amigos?) made them an unlikely, but impressive sales team for the VPN community. With VPN companies getting the last laugh, and with more awakened internet users taking their privacy seriously, we can pretty much say that a VPN is a thorn in the side of this gargantuan force seeking to monopolize a free and open internet.”

In Australia, April 13 has been dubbed the “National get a VPN day” by various internet privacy organizations and activists. Similarly, Ariel Hochstadt declared Ajit Pai “VPN Industry Man of the Month.”

U.S. citizens can virtually browse a neutral internet — they can at least avoid the “slow traffic lanes” by geo-shifting their IP locations — just like the Turks can avoid government censorship this way. In fact, anyone who cares about their privacy can easily protect it with a Virtual Proxy Network. The unintended consequences of the FCC’s net neutrality repeal are slowly manifesting into reality, and at a tremendous pace. For VPN providers, business is clearly booming.
https://www.inquisitr.com/4801558/th...-in-vpn-usage/





Washington Just Passed the Country’s Toughest Net Neutrality Legislation
Sean Captain

Just days after the Trump administration finalized its repeal of national net neutrality regulations, Washington State has passed sweeping legislation to regulate internet access for its residents. The bill cleared the state senate on a 35-to-14 vote, with bipartisan support. It had already blown through the house of representatives by 93-to-5 on February 9, and governor Jay Inslee is on record as ready to sign it.

“It’s swift bipartisan action to protect net neutrality, which is terrific,” the bill’s main sponsor, Democratic representative Drew Hansen, tells Fast Company.

Other state governments have issued executive orders or proposed legislation in response to the FCC’s vote on December 14 vote to scrap federal net neutrality regulations, but Washington’s policy is the most ambitious. Governor’s orders in states like Montana, New Jersey, and New York make adherence to net neutrality policies a precondition for ISPs that want state government contracts.

Washington’s law applies to all ISPs that serve residents, whether or not they have state deals. All internet service offered in Washington would have to be free from blocking or throttling of legal online content. Nor could it be subject to a system of premium-priced “fast lanes” that offer better bandwidth to content providers that pay extra for the privilege.

The next step is almost certainly the courts. In its “Restoring Internet Freedom” order that abolished net neutrality regulations, the FCC claimed that its policy preempts the authority of state governments. Washington State is challenging that.

“Just because the FCC claims it has the power to preempt state laws doesn’t mean that it actually does,” says Hansen. “I can claim that I have the power to manifest unicorns on the Washington State Capitol lawn. But if you look outside right now, there are no unicorns.”
https://www.fastcompany.com/40537222...ty-legislation





Dozens of Mayors Sign Letter Supporting Resolution to Restore Net Neutrality

A bipartisan group of mayors and senior officials are voicing support for a resolution that would "fully restore" net neutrality rules.
Colin Wood

In an attempt to save Obama-era net neutrality rules, more than 75 U.S. mayors and elected officials have signed a letter supporting a congressional review of the FCC's recent net neutrality rollback.

The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to overrule an agency, with a majority vote, within 60 days of their submission to the Federal Register. Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts announced the resolution Tuesday that he says would "fully restore" net neutrality rules. With 49 votes from the Democratic Senate caucus and one Republican vote, the resolution needs just one additional supporter to pass the Senate.

The letter represents yet another gesture by big city mayors, including those in Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Washington D.C., to support net neutrality standards that require internet providers to provide uniform access to online content and prohibits them from favoring or blocking particular products or websites.

“A free and open Internet forms the backbone of the 21st Century economy, and as leaders of local communities we are acutely aware of the threat to education, innovation, and economic growth posed by the [Restoring Internet Freedom Draft Order],” the letter states, referring to the proposal advanced by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai that reversed net neutrality rules.

This resolution has drawn criticism from large internet providers like Verizon and Comcast. If the resolution passes the Senate, the House will also need to pass it. The House bill currently has about 150 supporters, which is not enough to pass. If the resolution passes both houses, President Trump would then have to sign off which is fairly unlikely as the FCC repeal was instated while he was in office.
https://statescoop.com/dozens-of-may...net-neutrality





Cisco Says Most Network Gear Needed for 5G is Ready Now and Can Cut Costs
Eric Auchard

Cisco Systems (CSCO.O) said on Sunday it aims to disrupt the wireless radio access market led by Huawei HWT.UL, Ericsson (ERICb.ST) and Nokia (NOKIA.HE) by backing challengers who make more flexible software versions of traditional mobile gear.

Cisco, known for making networking gear that moves big volumes of data around the internet, wants a bigger share of the mobile market by backing these alternative providers rather than by making radio access equipment itself.

Its radio access network push is part of Cisco’s efforts to prove to mobile network operators that investing in modern infrastructure and automation tools can help them to cope with increased data demands, while lowering costs.

The Silicon Valley company made the announcement ahead of this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where hundreds of telecom operators are looking for new ways to deal with exploding customer data demands and intense pricing pressures.

Cisco said it is working with more than 20 network operators to offer next-generation 5G services, which promise to deliver not just faster phones and video, but also connected cars and internet-connected industrial sensors over the next decade.

“Many of the things we enable you to do, you can do before 5G,” Yvette Kanouff, general manager of Cisco’s business unit for telecom service providers, told Reuters in an interview.

Ray Mota, an industry analyst at ACG Research, said Cisco was looking to convince operators to spend more on what he called “precursors to 5G”, which solve pressing network issues but won’t need to be replaced once 5G rolls out in earnest starting around 2020.

Ovum, another research firm, said Cisco’s message was that “an operator can deliver much of the functionality of 5G, with up to 85 percent of its features, today.”

So-called virtual Radio Access Network (vRAN) providers include mobile industry outsiders like Intel (INTC.O), Red Hat RHAT.O, Mavenir, Phazr, and Tech Mahindra which seek to replace proprietary wireless radios made by the mobile industry’s big three with cloud-based software.

Virtual radio gear enables customers to rely on commodity computer hardware, cutting out big costs for mobile networks.

Cisco’s effort is supported by Indian operator Reliance Jio, which since 2016 has up-ended the country’s mobile market by building a state-of-the-art 4G network and giving away free voice and data services for six months to win a wide following.

Cisco’s bid to open up the market puts it in competition with the big mobile equipment vendors, including No. 2 ranked Ericsson. Cisco also has a two-year-old joint sales pact with Ericsson in which they cooperate on 160 current deals, Kanouff said.

Network market research firm Dell‘Oro estimates that revenue from Radio Access Network (RAN) equipment - which has declined in recent years - is set to stabilize before growing modestly to around $30.5 billion by 2022 as 5G commercial networks take off.

Reporting by Eric Auchard. Editing by Jane Merriman
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-te...-idUKKCN1G90D5





Nokia CEO Sees Europe Lagging China, U.S. in 5G Roll-Outs

Europe does not have the catalysts for rapid, large-scale rollouts for next-generation 5G networks, Nokia (NOKIA.HE) CEO Rajeev Suri said on Sunday.

“Far and away, the U.S. and China activity will dwarf Europe... It is just lower than the rest of the markets,” Suri told the Mobile World Congress.

He noted that existing 4G capacity in Europe needs to get soaked up before operators are prepared to invest in new networks.
Slideshow (3 Images)

Nonetheless, he held out hope for some European operators to start to move up to 5G next year.

“I think some 5G will be launched at some point in 2019, perhaps in second quarter or third quarter of next year.”

The first commercial 5G roll-outs are due to begin this year and next in the United States, Korea and Japan, creating new revenue streams for operators and equipment makers.

Nokia, once the world-leading mobile phone maker which is now focused on networks, competes with Sweden’s Ericsson (ERICb.ST) and China’s Huawei.

Reporting by Eric Auchard, editing by Jussi Rosendahl and Jane Merriman
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-te...-idUKKCN1G90JD





Qualcomm’s Simulated 5G Tests Shows How Fast Real-World Speeds Could Actually Be

The future of internet is really, really fast
Chaim Gartenberg

We’ve spent the last couple months hearing a lot about the kinds of speeds that 5G will theoretically be able to offer at its peak, but what about how the next-generation networks will work in actual, less than ideal real world conditions? That’s what Qualcomm is looking to answer with the 5G simulation tests it’s releasing at Mobile World Congress, and if the real world holds up anything close to the company’s simulations, then the future of mobile internet is going to be really, really fast.

Instead of just offering guesses as to the gigabit-plus speeds that 5G technology could one day offer, Qualcomm’s tests modeled real-world conditions in Frankfurt and San Fransisco, based on the location of existing cell sites and spectrum allocations in the two cities. The simulations factor in conditions like geography, different user demands on the network, a wide spectrum of devices with various levels of LTE and 5G connectivity for different speeds in order to accurately give an idea of what to expect when these networks launch. Additionally, the simulations are intended only to show the kind of 5G NR (New Radio) networks that could feasibly exist next year — the non-standalone networks built in tandem with existing 4G LTE technology, not the truly standalone 5G networks that will come later on.

The Frankfurt simulation is the more basic network, based on 100 MHz of 3.5GHz spectrum with an underlying gigabit-LTE network on 5 LTE spectrum bands, but the results are still staggering. Browsing jumped from 56 Mbps for the median 4G user to more than 490 Mbps for the median 5G user, with roughly seven times faster response rates for browsing. Download speeds also improved dramatically, with over 90 percent of users seeing at least 100 Mbps download speeds on 5G, versus 8 Mbps on LTE.

The San Francisco simulation was even more impressive. There, Qualcomm modeled a network operating in 800 MHz of 28 GHz mmWave spectrum, built on top of a gigabit-LTE network on four licensed LTE bands in addition to License Assisted Access (LAA) bands.

Browsing speeds went up from 71 Mbps for the median 4G user to 1.4 Gbps for the median 5G user (in mmWave coverage), with response times roughly 23 times faster. Download speeds for 90 percent of users went from at least 10 Mbps to 186 Mbps on 5G, with the median speed clocking in at 442 Mbps. Video quality also improved dramatically in both tests, with median 5G users seeing 8K, 120 FPS, 10-bit color video streaming.

Obviously, we still have a ways to go before these kinds of speeds become reality. As much effort as Qualcomm has put into its simulations, they’re still only tests. Plus, device manufacturers and cellular companies will need to build devices that can take advantage of the faster speeds, as well as actually build out the infrastructure of the non-standalone 5G and gigabit-LTE networks.

But still — if 5G networks only manage half of the speeds Qualcomm’s simulation is showing, then it’ll still be a massive leap forward that could fundamentally change how we use mobile devices.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/25/1...kfurt-mwc-2018





Neighbors Pirating Your Wi-Fi? Comcast's New Alerts Will Tell You

Comcast is now giving Xfinity xFi customers push notifications that will alert them to changes on their home network, like password updates or new devices joining.
Dan Dziedzic

Comcast's Xfinity xFi customers will get more insight into their home network starting today with a new push notification feature.

These real-time alerts will pop up on a smartphone or TV screen to let you know when someone has made changes to your network. Comcast launched xFi last year, which gave customers a digital dashboard that's accessible via an app, browser or TV from which they can customize and monitor their networks.

The new notifications will tell you when:

• A new device joins your network, allowing you to name it and assign it to someone in your home.
• The Wi-Fi credentials are updated, so you can reconnect devices if you need to.
• Someone sets your network to "open" and removes the password or adds a password if it is set to "open."
• Your SSID/network name has been set to hidden or viewable among local networks.
• Xfinity Internet and xFi Gateway has been activated for the first time.
• Your IP address has changed.

Even if you don't enable this feature for push notifications, you can still monitor these activities in the xFi Notification Center.

xFi is available to 15 million Comcast subscribers with their fiber-ready xFi Advanced Gateway or the xFi Wireless Gateway. Customers can use it to quickly set up their internet, set parental controls, manage and organize network devices, use voice control with the X1 TV remote to monitor the network, and troubleshoot Wi-Fi issues.

These new alerts seem to be more security related, which is important with all the recent Wi-Fi security issues. Some other mesh Wi-Fi systems include apps with similar notifications, but the convenience of having everything tied into your ISP will be helpful, especially for troubleshooting.

With all the different internet service providers (ISPs) available, Comcast sounds like it is making strides with xFi to provide better service and security for its customers. It also said last year that it has no plans to offer fast lanes once net neutrality rules are rolled back. These fast lanes would allow companies, like Netflix or YouTube, to pay ISPs for faster service to customers.
https://www.cnet.com/news/neighbors-...will-tell-you/





Comcast Challenges Murdoch and Disney with $31 Billion Offer for Sky
Kate Holton

U.S. cable giant Comcast (CMCSA.O) offered to buy Sky (SKYB.L) for $31 billion (22.21 billion pounds) in an unsolicited approach, taking on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox and Bob Iger’s Walt Disney in the battle for Europe’s biggest pay-TV group.

The world’s biggest entertainment company, which owns NBC and Universal Pictures, said it proposed to offer 12.50 pounds per share, significantly higher than the 10.75 pounds Fox had agreed to pay for the British company

The offer pits Comcast’s Brian L. Roberts against Murdoch, the 86-year-old tycoon who helped to launch Sky and pioneer pay-TV in Britain. Iger is also a long time rival after Comcast tried and failed to buy Disney for $54 billion in 2004.

Disney had agreed to buy Sky from Fox at a later date along with other assets in a separate deal worth $52 billion.

Media owners have been forced to rethink their strategies and look for growth after the success of online groups Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN.O) prompted customers to start ditching their subscriptions.

Comcast bid $60 billion last year to clinch a deal with Murdoch’s Fox before losing out to Disney.

Shares in Sky soared 21 percent to 13.34 pounds, indicating that investors expect a bidding war for a company that provides sports programming, films and broadband to 23 million homes across Britain, Ireland, Germany, Italy and Austria.

“Sky and Comcast are a perfect fit: we are both leaders in creating and distributing content,” Comcast Chief Executive Officer Roberts, 58, said. “We think Sky is an outstanding company.”

Murdoch’s Fox agreed to buy the 61 percent of Sky it did not already own in December 2016 but the takeover has been repeatedly held up by regulatory concerns that the media tycoon holds too much influence in Britain.

The shares had been trading above the asking price since Sky this month agreed to pay less than expected for Premier League soccer rights, boosting its future earnings and prompting investors to demand a higher offer.

Formed in 1990, Sky has built its business by offering leading content and technology. It snapped up Murdoch’s pay-TV groups across Europe in 2014 to offer a distribution platform across the continent that is now proving attractive to the big U.S. content owners.

“LET BATTLE COMMENCE”

”Fox will have to sharpen their pencils now,“ said Neil Campling, at Mirabaud Securities. ”There is no way we can see that Fox will walk away given how advanced the regulatory clearance process is.

“This bid marks a floor not an end to this particular saga. Let the battle commence.”

Comcast said it had not yet engaged with Sky over the proposal and a spokesman for Sky declined to comment.
Slideshow (6 Images)

Sky’s chairman is Murdoch’s son James, who is the chief executive of 21st Century Fox, so Comcast will have to gain the support of the independent shareholders for its better offer if it does not make a hostile bid.

Comcast’s Brian Roberts, the son of Ralph who founded the company in 1963, called Sky’s deputy chairman Martin Gilbert just before 0700 GMT on Tuesday to notify him of the offer, and called Sky Chief Executive Jeremy Darroch shortly afterwards, minutes after its statement had been published.

Disney’s Iger, in Paris on a business trip, declined to comment on Tuesday.

Sky’s independent directors are expected to meet in the coming days to discuss the offer.

Comcast went public with the proposal to trigger the regulatory timetable on the deal because timing will be a key factor when investors choose which offer to take.

“We would like to own the whole of Sky and we will be looking to acquire over 50 percent of the Sky shares,” Roberts said, indicating he could be willing to share ownership of Sky as long as it has control.

“Innovation is at the heart of what we do: by combining the two companies we create significant opportunities for growth.”

MURDOCH TO LEAD THE CHARGE?

Murdoch’s Fox had been slowly edging towards a deal for Sky in recent weeks, eight years after he first made an offer for the whole company.

Britain’s competition regulator said in January that Murdoch’s planned takeover should be blocked unless a way was found to prevent him from influencing the network’s news operation, Sky News.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said that the deal would give Murdoch too much influence and so would not be in the public interest.

The Australian-born Murdoch holds a peculiar role in Britain where he started buying newspapers in 1969.

Critics, including many politicians, argue that he wields too much power in the country with his ownership of the Sun and Times newspapers and in 2011 he was forced to close the mass-selling News of the World tabloid after its journalists admitted hacking phones to get news.

Seeking to prove it would not influence Sky’s award-winning news channel in the future, Fox last week made further concessions, with a promise to maintain and fund a fully independent Sky-branded news service for 10 years.

Comcast sought to talk up its own strengths when it made its statement, saying it had only a minimal presence in the British market and did not see any regulatory concerns.

Comcast said it recognised that Sky News was an “invaluable part of the UK news landscape” and it intended to maintain its existing brand and culture.

“Our strong market positions are complementary with Sky’s leadership in Europe enhancing our preeminent position in the U.S.,” Comcast’s Roberts said.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-sk...-idUKKCN1GB0M8





Plenty of Smoke in European Telecoms M&A But Little Fire
Mathieu Rosemain, Pamela Barbaglia

The prospects of seeing a handful of telecoms giants take control of the European market as in China and the United States look remote as hopes for a new wave of large cross-border deals quickly run into cold reality.

Vodafone’s talks with Liberty Global about buying some of the cable company’s assets and a $6.7 billion (4.77 billion pounds) bid led by Australia’s Macquarie Infrastructure for Danish telecoms company TDC have rekindled expectations for further mergers.

However, none of them look set to transform Europe’s telecoms landscape -- a collection of national markets with typically three to four operators in each.

Tough anti-trust rules, wariness over politically-charged mergers involving former monopolies such as Deutsche Telekom, France’s Orange, Telecom Italia or Spain’s Telefonica and the investments needed to upgrade networks limit the appeal of the sector.

“There is no catalyst for a mega-deal, investors don’t see the synergies and see very well the integration risks of two traditional operators,” said a senior French telecoms banker.

“The conditions are not yet met for these complicated deals to happen,” he added.

Orange’s boss Stephane Richard dampened the idea that Europe’s fourth-biggest telecoms operator could tie-up with bigger rival Deutsche Telekom last week after a source confirmed in January that merger talks between the two fizzled last year.

“There is no hidden project. There is no hidden negotiation with anybody, neither with the Germans nor… with anybody else,” he said.

“There is no project today that make sense in terms of value creation, in terms of political feasibility, in terms of equity story for us,” he added.

LOW SPENDING

Several analysts and industry executives have long lamented the state of play in Europe, insisting the current fragmentation shrunk revenues for companies in a context of rising demand for data usage by consumers.

Europe’s average revenue per user (ARPU), a key indicator used within the industry, represents a third of that in the United States and half of Japanese levels.

“You need more consolidation in Europe, you need less regulation in Europe, you need higher data usage that gets monetized in Europe,” said Rajeev Suri, the chief executive of Nokia , one of the world’s top telecoms equipment makers, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Suri cited the relatively low European ARPU as a key factor that will explain the slow adoption of the next generation of mobile internet technology, or 5G.

A champion of competition within national markets and low prices for consumers, EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager would disagree.

Ever since she expressed concerns about a proposed merger of Telenor and TeliaSonera in Denmark in 2015 – leading to its collapse, Europe has not seen any big move on the M&A side.

The total value of deals in the European telecoms sector at large, including the debt of targets, halved over the last two years, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Shares of Europe’s benchmark telecoms stock index fell 17 percent over the same period, underperforming the broader Stoxx 600 index, which rose by 16 percent.

INTERNAL DEALS

In Italy, the arrival of French telecoms maverick Iliad is expected in the next few weeks, a move favoured by EU regulators in the wake of the merger of CK Hutchison Holdings and Veon’s Italian businesses.

Iliad triggered a protracted mobile price war in France and intends to grab a quarter of the market share through low-cost offers, sources have said.

”Is any consolidation really relevant when the implied costs of the remedies are higher than any benefit derived from the consolidation?” said a fund manager at a French bank with a stock-picking strategy.

Still, the Vodafone-Liberty Global talks could lead to other deals within major European markets, according to several M&A bankers.

If the deal goes through, it would greatly reinforce Vodafone’s presence in Germany and provide Liberty with fresh cash to spend.

“By selling EU assets Liberty will have options to do deals in the UK,” a Britain-based telecoms banker said.

“Selling continental Europe means they will focus on building their UK business.” Liberty controls the Virgin Media business in Britain.

Markets were also surprised by the bid for TDC, which is backed by consortium that include Danish pension funds and could be an example for Altice’s struggling French unit SFR, were it to be put on sale, several bankers said.

Yet cross-border transactions remain a distant prospect, for now at least.

“In a couple of years I think we will see more cross-border consolidation - and I think it would be good for this industry,” said Marie Ehrling, the chair of the board of Nordic telecoms operator Telia.

Additional reporting by Pamela Barbaglia in London, Douglas Busvine and Eric Auchard in Barcelona; Editing by Keith Weir
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-te...-idUKKCN1GA22J





Europe Seeks Power to Seize Overseas Data in Challenge to Tech Giants
Julia Fioretti

The European Union is preparing legislation to force companies to turn over customers’ personal data when requested even if it is stored on servers outside the bloc, a position that will put Europe at loggerheads with tech giants and privacy campaigners.

The EU executive has previously indicated it wanted law enforcement authorities to be able to access electronic evidence stored within the 28-nation bloc. But the scope of the planned legislation will extend to data held elsewhere, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

Digital borders are a growing global issue in an era where big companies operate “cloud” networks of giant data centres which mean an individual’s data can reside anywhere.

The EU push comes as a landmark legal battle in the United States nears its climax. The U.S. Supreme Court will this week hear oral arguments in a case pitting Microsoft against U.S. prosecutors, who are trying to force the company to turn over emails stored on its servers in Ireland in connection with a drug-trafficking investigation.

Many law enforcement officials argue such powers are necessary for crime-fighting in the digital age. But campaigners say giving governments so-called extra-territorial authority to reach across borders and access data would erode individuals’ privacy rights. Technology firms like Microsoft, Apple and IBM say it would undermine consumer trust in cloud services.

The planned law, which would apply to all companies around the world that do business in the European Union, is an apparent shift in position for the European Commission, the EU executive, which has stood on the side of privacy advocates in the past.

In 2014, it said in relation to the Microsoft case that “extraterritorial application of foreign laws (and orders to companies based thereon) ... may be in breach of international law”.

Asked about the extra-territorial authority rules in the planned law, European Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova told Reuters the current method for accessing cross-border evidence was “very slow and non-efficient” and that law enforcement had to be quicker than criminals.

CONFLICTING LAWS

The proposed law would apply to the personal data of people of all nationalities, not just EU citizens, as long as they were linked to a European investigation, one of the sources said.

The legislation is still in the drafting stage and is expected to go before lawmakers and member states at the end of March. It can take up to two years for a law to be finally agreed.

Extra-territorial authority rules are however fraught with complexity, legal and privacy experts warn, as they could conflict with existing data protection laws.

In the United States, for example, certain companies are prohibited from disclosing information to foreign governments while in Europe itself, consumers’ data privacy is strictly protected and companies are restricted in how they can transfer data outside the bloc.

The sources said the EU executive acknowledged such complexities and that the decision to include extra-territorial authority in the law was partly aimed at strengthening its hand in negotiating a bilateral deal with the United States on the issue.

Jourova recognised the challenges.

“Of course when we look at the transatlantic regime there we have to agree on the reciprocity with the American authorities,” she said in an interview. “This issue of reciprocity in the law enforcement area is highly necessary to discuss in order to avoid the problem of conflict of laws.”

KEEPING PACE WITH TECH

The proposed rules are the latest attempt by authorities around the world to update regulations to keep pace with technology. In May the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into effect, requiring firms to give customers more control over their online information.

The planned law would give European prosecutors the power to compel companies to hand over data, bypassing existing legal channels known as mutual legal assistance treaties (MLAT).

Jourova said the law would apply to crimes which carry a minimum penalty of three years to ensure serious crimes like terrorism and drug trafficking are covered, however discussions are still ongoing.

Under MLAT, which is widely criticised for being unwieldy and slow, a European prosecutor would have to go to the government of the country where the data was stored and ask for a local subpoena or search warrant.

Some privacy campaigners agree that the MLAT system needs to be changed to speed up the process, but oppose any moves to requisition personal data across borders.

“The Commission’s main course of action is once again to circumvent this process ... rather than proposing to reform the problem they have identified,” Estelle Masse, Senior Policy Analyst at Access Now, a digital rights advocacy group, said at a conference in late January.

Asked about the Commission’s plans, John Frank, vice president for EU government affairs at Microsoft, said he thought it was generally “a bad idea.”

“I think the international law is pretty clear that police jurisdiction exercised outside your territory infringes the sovereignty of other countries,” he said at the same Brussels conference.

“If every country asserts extraterritorial jurisdiction ... then everybody gets everybody’s data.”

Editing by Pravin Char
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu...-idUKKCN1GA0LN





U.S. Supreme Court Weighs Microsoft Overseas Data Fight
Lawrence Hurley

A major privacy rights fight between Microsoft Corp(MSFT.O) and the Justice Department reaches the Supreme Court this week, with the justices considering whether U.S. law allows prosecutors to compel technology companies to hand over data stored overseas.

The nine justices will hear arguments on Tuesday in a case that pits the interests of tech companies and privacy advocates in safeguarding customer data against the demands of law enforcement in obtaining information crucial to criminal and counterterrorism investigations.

The case began with a 2013 warrant obtained by prosecutors for emails of a suspect in a drug trafficking investigation that were stored in Microsoft computer servers in Dublin. The company challenged whether a domestic warrant covered data stored abroad. The Justice Department said because Microsoft is based in the United States, prosecutors were entitled to the data.

The case is being closely watched by other countries wrestling with similar concerns, including members of the European Union. A ruling is due by the end of June.

A 2016 decision by the New York-based 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals siding with Microsoft marked a victory for tech firms that increasingly offer cloud computing services in which data is stored remotely. President Donald Trump’s administration appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.

Globally dominant American tech companies have expressed concern that customers will go elsewhere if they think the U.S. government’s reach extends to data centres all around the world without changes being made to the law.

Microsoft, which has 100 data centres in 40 countries, was the first American company to challenge a domestic search warrant seeking data held outside the United States.

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, told reporters last week the U.S. government should not be able to act unilaterally to access such data without taking into account the laws and interests of other countries.

“It’s more likely to be a recipe for international tension and chaos,” Smith said.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco, the administration’s top lawyer in Supreme Court cases, said in court papers that a ruling for Microsoft “would hamper domestic law enforcement and counterterrorism efforts.”

If the Supreme Court were to rule in favour of Microsoft, the government could still gain access data held overseas, but the process would be more cumbersome and potentially take longer.

Lawmakers are considering making changes to the 1986 law.

Bipartisan legislation has been introduced in Congress to update the statute, a move backed by both Microsoft and the administration. The measure would let U.S. judges issue warrants while giving companies an avenue to object if the request conflicts with foreign law. If Congress were to pass the bill before the Supreme Court rules, the case would likely become moot.

BEYOND REACH

Though Microsoft is based in the United States - Redmond, Washington, to be precise - the appeals court said the emails were beyond the reach of domestic search warrants obtained under a 1986 U.S. law called the Stored Communications Act.

The Microsoft customer whose emails were sought told the company he was based in Ireland when he signed up for his account.

Other companies including IBM Corp(IBM.N), Amazon.com Inc(AMZN.O), Apple Inc(AAPL.O), Verizon Communications Inc(VZ.N) and Alphabet Inc‘s(GOOGL.O) Google filed court papers backing Microsoft. Google has mounted challenges similar to Microsoft‘s.

The administration has the support of 35 states led by Vermont who say they routinely seek access to data stored overseas, especially in cases involving child pornography.

Several foreign governments, including Ireland and Britain, filed court papers raising concerns about the U.S. government’s position.

Ireland’s government said in its brief that the question of how law enforcement authorities can access such information is already covered by a 2001 treaty with the United States that allows for information sharing and enforcement of court orders.

The treaty’s procedures “represent the most appropriate means to address requests such as those which are the object of the warrant in question,” Ireland’s brief said.

The European Commission, representing the 28-country European Union, filed a brief saying that when a country is seeking data from outside its jurisdiction “the interests and laws of that foreign jurisdiction must be taken into account.”

The Supreme Court has ruled twice in recent years in major cases concerning how criminal law applies to new technology, both times ruling against law enforcement. In 2012, the court held that a warrant is required to place a GPS tracking device on a vehicle. In 2014, the court ruled that police need a warrant to search a cellphone seized during an arrest.

In the court’s current term, which ends in June, the justices are due to rule on another privacy issue on whether police need search warrants to access cellphone location information held by wireless carriers. Based on the Nov. 29 oral argument, the justices appear likely to rule against law enforcement again.

Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-us...-idUKKCN1G90I9





Apple Moves to Store iCloud Keys in China, Raising Human Rights Fears
Stephen Nellis, Cate Cadell

When Apple Inc (AAPL.O) begins hosting Chinese users’ iCloud accounts in a new Chinese data centre at the end of this month to comply with new laws there, Chinese authorities will have far easier access to text messages, email and other data stored in the cloud.

That’s because of a change to how the company handles the cryptographic keys needed to unlock an iCloud account. Until now, such keys have always been stored in the United States, meaning that any government or law enforcement authority seeking access to a Chinese iCloud account needed to go through the U.S. legal system.

Now, according to Apple, for the first time the company will store the keys for Chinese iCloud accounts in China itself. That means Chinese authorities will no longer have to use the U.S. courts to seek information on iCloud users and can instead use their own legal system to ask Apple to hand over iCloud data for Chinese users, legal experts said.

Human rights activists say they fear the authorities could use that power to track down dissidents, citing cases from more than a decade ago in which Yahoo Inc handed over user data that led to arrests and prison sentences for two democracy advocates. Jing Zhao, a human rights activist and Apple shareholder, said he could envisage worse human rights issues arising from Apple handing over iCloud data than occurred in the Yahoo case.

In a statement, Apple said it had to comply with recently introduced Chinese laws that require cloud services offered to Chinese citizens be operated by Chinese companies and that the data be stored in China. It said that while the company’s values don’t change in different parts of the world, it is subject to each country’s laws.

“While we advocated against iCloud being subject to these laws, we were ultimately unsuccessful,” it said. Apple said it decided it was better to offer iCloud under the new system because discontinuing it would lead to a bad user experience and actually lead to less data privacy and security for its Chinese customers.

As a result, Apple has established a data centre for Chinese users in a contractual arrangement with state-owned firm Guizhou - Cloud Big Data Industry Co Ltd. The firm was set up and funded by the provincial government in the relatively poor southwestern Chinese province of Guizhou in 2014. The Guizhou company has close ties to the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party.

The Apple decision highlights a difficult reality for many U.S. technology companies operating in China. If they don’t accept demands to partner with Chinese companies and store data in China then they risk losing access to the lucrative Chinese market, despite fears about trade secret theft and the rights of Chinese customers.

BROAD POWERS

Apple says the joint venture does not mean that China has any kind of “backdoor” into user data and that Apple alone – not its Chinese partner – will control the encryption keys. But Chinese customers will notice some differences from the start: their iCloud accounts will now be co-branded with the name of the local partner, a first for Apple.

And even though Chinese iPhones will retain the security features that can make it all but impossible for anyone, even Apple, to get access to the phone itself, that will not apply to the iCloud accounts. Any information in the iCloud account could be accessible to Chinese authorities who can present Apple with a legal order.

Apple said it will only respond to valid legal requests in China, but China’s domestic legal process is very different than that in the U.S., lacking anything quite like an American “warrant” reviewed by an independent court, Chinese legal experts said. Court approval isn’t required under Chinese law and police can issue and execute warrants.

“Even very early in a criminal investigation, police have broad powers to collect evidence,” said Jeremy Daum, an attorney and research fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center in Beijing. “(They are) authorized by internal police procedures rather than independent court review, and the public has an obligation to cooperate.”

Guizhou - Cloud Big Data and China’s cyber and industry regulators did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Guizhou provincial government said it had no specific comment.

There are few penalties for breaking what rules do exist around obtaining warrants in China. And while China does have data privacy laws, there are broad exceptions when authorities investigate criminal acts, which can include undermining communist values, “picking quarrels” online, or even using a virtual private network to browse the Internet privately.

Apple says the cryptographic keys stored in China will be specific to the data of Chinese customers, meaning Chinese authorities can’t ask Apple to use them to decrypt data in other countries like the United States.

Privacy lawyers say the changes represent a big downgrade in protections for Chinese customers.

“The U.S. standard, when it’s a warrant and when it’s properly executed, is the most privacy-protecting standard,” said Camille Fischer of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

WARNED CUSTOMERS

Apple has given its Chinese users notifications about the Feb. 28 switchover to the Chinese data centre in the form of emailed warnings and so-called push alerts, reminding users that they can choose to opt out of iCloud and store information solely on their device. The change only affects users who set China as their country on Apple devices and doesn’t affect users who select Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan.

Apple doesn’t require an iCloud account to set up and use an iPhone. But if the user enables iCloud during set up, the default settings on the iPhone will automatically create an iCloud back-up. Apple declined to comment on whether it would change its default settings to make iCloud an opt-in service, rather than opt-out, for Chinese users.

Apple said it will not switch customers’ accounts to the Chinese data centre until they agree to new terms of service and that more than 99.9 percent of current users have already done so.

Until now, Apple appears to have handed over very little data about Chinese users. From mid-2013 to mid-2017, Apple said it did not give customer account content to Chinese authorities, despite having received 176 requests, according to transparency reports published by the company. By contrast, Apple has given the United States customer account content in response to 2,366 out of 8,475 government requests.

Those figures are from before the Chinese cyber security laws took effect and also don’t include special national security requests in which U.S. officials might have requested data about Chinese nationals. Apple, along with other companies, is prevented by law from disclosing the targets of those requests.

Apple said requests for data from the new Chinese data centre will be reflected in its transparency reports and that it won’t respond to “bulk” data requests.

Human rights activists say they are also concerned about such a close relationship with a state-controlled entity like Guizhou-Cloud Big Data.

Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China, said the Chinese Communist Party could also pressure Apple through a committee of members it will have within the company. These committees have been pushing for more influence over decision making within foreign-invested companies in the past couple of years.

(This version of the story corrects paragraph 7 to read “contractual arrangement” instead of “joint venture”; corrects paragraph 21 to show that Apple does not require an iCloud account to set up an iPhone)

Reporting by Stephen NellisEditing by Jonathan Weber and Martin Howell
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ch...-idUKKCN1G805Z





China Banned the Letter N from the Internet after People Used it to Attack Xi Jinping's Plan to Rule Forever
Alexandra Ma

• China censored the letter N from its internet for at least a day.
• The ban came as China cracked down on online discussion over the Chinese Communist Party's proposal to scrap presidential term limits.
• Abolishing term limits would allow President Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely.
• It's not entirely clear why the government targeted N, but we have a few theories.

China temporarily banned the letter N from being published online after people started using it to criticize a plan which paves the way for Xi Jinping to rule the country indefinitely.

The Chinese Communist Party on Sunday proposed to abolish the two-term term limit for the president and vice-president, sparking an online backlash which it has been trying to control.

Critics flooded Weibo and WeChat — China's version of Twitter and WhatsApp — to protest the plan, but were swiftly met by the country's censors.

Various Chinese characters for terms like "emigrate," "lifelong," and "I disagree" were banned, alongside ... the letter N.

The screenshot underneath shows a user on Sunday attempting to type "N" into Weibo, and receiving an error message that the "content is illegal."

The other words that appeared to be banned in the screenshot are: "Xi JinP," "emigrate," and "indefinite control."

As of Tuesday morning local time (CST), China had lifted its ban on N again.

The letter is used in China to represent unknown numerical values, like the letter X in algebra.

Professor Victor Mair, a China expert at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a Monday blog post it was "probably out of fear on the part of the government that 'N' = 'n terms in office,' where possibly n > 2."

CA Yeung, a Perth-based China bogger, also posited that "N = infinity."

It could also represent "no" in Y/N select items. As Twitter user Kasumi Shen said: "You can't choose N in a (Y/N) select item as long as you are still living in China."

Xi Jinping Barack Obama Winnie the Pooh@vinayak_jain/Twitter

Images of Winnie the Pooh were also banned on Chinese social media. Xi critics often mock him by posting images like the one above which imply that he looks like the fictional, honey-loving bear.

Chinese state media, for its part, has been trying to play down China's latest crackdown on internet communication.

In a Tuesday editorial, state-run newspaper the Global Times accused Western critics of "hysteria" over the government's latest round of censorship.

"The biggest reason for all this is that the rise of China has reached a critical point where some Westerners cannot psychologically bear it any longer. They wish to see misfortune befall the country," the Global Times said.
https://www.newstimes.com/technology...r-12716096.php





Sweeping Georgia Cybercrime Bill Would Target 'Snoopers'
R.j. Rico

Lying about your weight on an online dating site? Checking out who won the Falcons game from your work computer? Using your computer hacking knowledge as an "ethical hacker?" Those actions may become illegal if a Georgia bill gets voted into law, civil liberty advocates say.

Supporters of a bill making its way through the state legislature say it's designed to give law enforcement the ability to prosecute "online snoopers" — hackers who break into a computer system but don't disrupt or steal data. The legislation came in response to a recent data breach at a Georgia university in which unauthorized cybersecurity experts noticed the vulnerability of Georgia's voting records.

But opponents say the legislation is so sweeping it could allow prosecutors to go after people who violate their user agreements or use a work computer for personal reasons. They also argue the bill will criminalize the "gray hats" of the cybersecurity world who use their hacking talents to find network weaknesses so they can be fixed, even if they never received permission to probe.

"This bill is not intended in any way, shape or form to criminalize legitimate behavior," said Republican Attorney General Chris Carr, whose office helped craft the measure.

Carr said only three states — Georgia, Virginia and Alaska — have no law against online "snooping," in which a hacker neither disrupts nor steals data. To remedy this, the measure criminalizes "any person who accesses a computer or computer network with knowledge that such access is without authority." The bill does not apply to parents who monitor their children's computer use, as well as those who are conducting "legitimate business."

The bill is specifically meant to stop criminal hacking, Carr said. Lawmakers backing the bill, which passed the Senate on Feb. 12, point to the acts of two unauthorized cybersecurity experts who in 2016 and 2017 discovered that a server at Kennesaw State University had left Georgia's 6.7 million voter records dangerously exposed. The men reported the vulnerabilities, but Carr said they should never have been snooping in the first place.

"If the research is legitimate, why should you not require someone to get permission on the front-end?" Carr said, arguing that it's hard to know what a snooper's intentions are.

Carr said the bill was drafted with the help of business groups and after conversations with the University System of Georgia, which has not taken a position on it. Carr said he is open for more input, especially from academics concerned it could hurt their ability to conduct research.

Andy Green is an information security lecturer at KSU. Green said that by alerting people at KSU's Center for Election Systems, the men prevented the data from falling into the wrong hands. Criminalizing such acts will only deter "ethical hackers" and not stop malicious ones, Green argued.

Independent security research is the "backbone" of efforts to protect consumers' data, said Camille Fischer, a fellow at Electronic Frontier Foundation, an international digital rights nonprofit advocacy group opposing the measure. Software vulnerability experts can be too expensive for some businesses, so the work of unauthorized researchers — who may be trying to raise their professional profile — is vital for the "ecosystem" to survive, she said.

But the measure's lead sponsor, Sen. Bruce Thompson, R-White, said some hackers have unethical or illegal intentions.

"When you go out and discover that there's a problem, but you aren't going to freely give it — you're going to make a business of it — that's extortion," Thompson said.

Fischer said many other states have anti-snooping laws that are modeled after the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which can be more narrowly worded by focusing on what cybersecurity experts do with the unauthorized access or what their intent was.

Other opponents said the bill is worded in such a way that any time a user violates a website's terms-of-service agreement or an employer's web-use guidelines, the user could be prosecuted.

"We should not be giving businesses the authority to determine what is criminal and what is not," Sen. Jen Jordan, D-Atlanta, told The Associated Press in an interview. She says the bill should only apply to those who act "maliciously."

The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia has called the proposal "draconian and unnecessary."

"Something as simple as fudging your age on social media could land you in jail," said Sean J. Young, Legal Director for the ACLU of Georgia.

Jessica Gabel Cino, a professor at the Georgia State University College of Law, said user-agreement violations, technically speaking, would go against the "letter of the law." But she doubted anyone would ever actually be charged for such innocuous acts, something Carr also called "absurd."

"Our district attorneys with their limited time and resources are not going to spend any time trying to prosecute a roommate using the Netflix password," Carr said.
https://www.newstimes.com/business/t...t-12707080.php





The Feds Can Now (Probably) Unlock Every iPhone Model In Existence
Thomas Fox-Brewster

In what appears to be a major breakthrough for law enforcement, and a possible privacy problem for Apple customers, a major U.S. government contractor claims to have found a way to unlock pretty much every iPhone on the market.

Cellebrite, a Petah Tikva, Israel-based vendor that's become the U.S. government's company of choice when it comes to unlocking mobile devices, is this month telling customers its engineers currently have the ability to get around the security of devices running iOS 11. That includes the iPhone X, a model that Forbes has learned was successfully raided for data by the Department for Homeland Security back in November 2017, most likely with Cellebrite technology.

The Israeli firm, a subsidiary of Japan's Sun Corporation, hasn't made any major public announcement about its new iOS capabilities. But Forbes was told by sources (who asked to remain anonymous as they weren't authorized to talk on the matter) that in the last few months the company has developed undisclosed techniques to get into iOS 11 and is advertising them to law enforcement and private forensics folk across the globe. Indeed, the company's literature for its Advanced Unlocking and Extraction Services offering now notes the company can break the security of "Apple iOS devices and operating systems, including iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, iPad Pro and iPod touch, running iOS 5 to iOS 11." Separately, a source in the police forensics community told Forbes he'd been told by Cellebrite it could unlock the iPhone 8. He believed the same was most probably true for the iPhone X, as security across both of Apple's newest devices worked in much the same way.

iOS 11 was only released in September last year and was even praised by Cellebrite competitor Elcomsoft for new features that were designed to make it harder for forensics experts to hack into an iPhone. That included protections against forced unlocks with fingerprints, a tactic previously used by U.S. police in the field.

Though it's always wise to take the claims of profit-focused vendors with a pinch of salt, whatever flaws Cellebrite found in Apple's tech in the last half year, they're likely significant; just last year, the company warned about a decline in its ability to break into iPhones.
Recommended by Forbes

To take advantage of the Cellebrite service, which "can determine or disable the PIN, pattern, password screen locks or passcodes on the latest Apple iOS and Google Android devices," cops have to send the device to Cellebrite first. In its labs, the company then uses whatever secret exploits it has to crack the lock and either hands it back to investigators so they can take data from the device, or Cellebrite can do that for them. As Forbes previously detailed, this can be relatively inexpensive, costing as little as $1,500 per unlock. Given there's a $1 million price tag for a single iPhone vulnerability, that's cheap.

Cellebrite could put its latest iPhone unlocking tech into the software it sells to customers. But that would mean Apple could test the tool and potentially figure out a way to stop it working, explained Don Vilfer, a partner at private forensics firm VAND Group, who welcomed the new services. Vilfer said his company has already had some success with the iOS 11 service, in a case where a client's employee wouldn't give over their passcode for their work iPhone, though he recalled it was an iPhone 6 model, not one of the most recent devices.

Neither Apple nor Cellebrite had provided comment at the time of publication.

iPhone X examined

It also appears the feds have already tried out Cellebrite tech on the most recent Apple handset, the iPhone X. That's according to a warrant unearthed by Forbes in Michigan, marking the first known government inspection of the bleeding edge smartphone in a criminal investigation. The warrant detailed a probe into Abdulmajid Saidi, a suspect in an arms trafficking case, whose iPhone X was taken from him as he was about to leave America for Beirut, Lebanon, on November 20. The device was sent to a Cellebrite specialist at the DHS Homeland Security Investigations Grand Rapids labs and the data extracted on December 5. (Saidi's case is due to go to trial on July 31. His legal team didn't respond to requests for comment).

From the warrant, it wasn't clear just how the police got into the iPhone X in the first place, nor does it reveal much about what data was inside. Back when the iPhone X was launched, some fears were raised about the possibility for investigators to simply lift the device to a suspect's face to unlock it via Apple's Face ID facial recognition. Researchers also claimed to have found ways to dupe the Face ID tech into unlocking with a mask. The DoJ prosecutor on the case declined to comment, whilst the DHS didn't respond to requests for comment.

But the ability to crack open almost any iDevice on the market is a significant moment for law enforcement, not just in America, but across the globe. Police have been left scrambling for ways into iPhones ever since Apple started improving its security with each new release. Layers of encryption have become increasingly difficult to penetrate, as highlighted in the now-infamous tussle between the Cupertino giant and the FBI in San Bernardino, where the feds wanted an unwilling Apple to help them access the iPhone 5C of San Bernardino murderer Syed Rizwan Farook.

'Hoarding iPhone vulnerabilities'

Cellebrite has no doubt benefited from the cat and mouse game being played out by the government and Silicon Valley giants. Many U.S. policing and intelligence agencies, including the FBI and the Secret Service, are customers. As detailed by Forbes last year, the company scored record contracts with a variety of agencies, most notably the Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch of the DHS, which spent $2 million on one deal alone. Customs and Border Protection is also a client.

At the time of the ICE contract, civil rights activists raised concerns over the use of such powerful technology to search Americans' devices. Speaking about the latest developments, Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Adam Schwartz said the way in which the government did business with the likes of Cellebrite was "of great concern." He said it was clear that Cellebrite was hoarding vulnerabilities rather than disclosing them to vendors like Apple, which would lead to patches and better security for the general public. "All of us who're walking around with this vulnerability are in danger," he added.

"When it comes to the international border, as the EFF has argued in court and in Congress, the government really needs to get a warrant before it searches our phones. It's all the more true when we see the ever expanding power of governments to get into those phones."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasb.../#86fc17c667a0





Tor Funded by US Government
Yasha Levine

The Tor Project, a private non-profit that underpins the dark web and enjoys cult status among privacy activists, is almost 100% funded by the US government. In the process of writing my book Surveillance Valley, I was able to obtain via FOIA roughly 2,500 pages of correspondence — including strategy and contracts and budgets and status updates — between the Tor Project and its main funder, a CIA spinoff now known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). These files show incredible cooperation between Tor and the regime change wing of the US government. The files are released to the public here.
https://www.documentcloud.org/public...r-the-Dark-Web





Coinbase: We Will Send Data on 13,000 Users to IRS

Bitcoin startup says if concerned, “seek legal advice from an attorney promptly.”
Cyrus Farivar

After over a year of legal wrangling, Coinbase has now formally notified its customers that it will be complying with a court order and handing over the user data for about 13,000 of its customers to the Internal Revenue Service. The company, which is one of the world's largest Bitcoin exchanges, sent out an email to the affected users on Friday, February 23.

The case began back in November 2016 when the IRS went to a federal judge in San Francisco to enforce an initial order that would have required the company to hand over the data of all users who transacted on the site between 2013 and 2015 as part of a tax evasion investigation.

Coinbase resisted the IRS’ request in court. But by November 2017, after a hearing, US Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley narrowed the request to only cover 13,000 particular individuals.

The San Francisco-based startup is now required to provide "taxpayer ID, name, birth date, address, and historical transaction records for certain higher-transacting customers during the 2013-2015 period."

Coinbase reminded its users that it is “unable to provide legal or tax advice.” The company also noted, “If you have concerns about this, we encourage you to seek legal advice from an attorney promptly. Coinbase expects to produce the information covered by the court’s order within 21 days.”
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-users-to-irs/





GitHub Survived the Biggest DDoS Attack Ever Recorded
Lily Hay Newman

On Wednesday, at about 12:15 pm ET, 1.35 terabits per second of traffic hit the developer platform GitHub all at once. It was the most powerful distributed denial of service attack recorded to date—and it used an increasingly popular DDoS method, no botnet required.

GitHub briefly struggled with intermittent outages as a digital system assessed the situation. Within 10 minutes it had automatically called for help from its DDoS mitigation service, Akamai Prolexic. Prolexic took over as an intermediary, routing all the traffic coming into and out of GitHub, and sent the data through its scrubbing centers to weed out and block malicious packets. After eight minutes, attackers relented and the assault dropped off.

The scale of the attack has few parallels, but a massive DDoS that struck the internet infrastructure company Dyn in late 2016 comes close. That barrage peaked at 1.2 Tbps and caused connectivity issues across the US as Dyn fought to get the situation under control.

“We modeled our capacity based on fives times the biggest attack that the internet has ever seen,” Josh Shaul, vice president of web security at Akamai told WIRED hours after the GitHub attack ended. “So I would have been certain that we could handle 1.3 Tbps, but at the same time we never had a terabit and a half come in all at once. It’s one thing to have the confidence. It’s another thing to see it actually play out how you’d hope."

Akamai defended against the attack in a number of ways. In addition to Prolexic's general DDoS defense infrastructure, the firm had also recently implemented specific mitigations for a type of DDoS attack stemming from so-called memcached servers. These database caching systems work to speed networks and websites, but they aren't meant to be exposed on the public internet; anyone can query them, and they'll likewise respond to anyone. About 100,000 memcached servers, mostly owned by businesses and other institutions, currently sit exposed online with no authentication protection, meaning an attacker can access them, and send them a special command packet that the server will respond to with a much larger reply.

Unlike the formal botnet attacks used in large DDoS efforts, like against Dyn and the French telecom OVH, memcached DDoS attacks don't require a malware-driven botnet. Attackers simply spoof the IP address of their victim, send small queries to multiple memcached servers—about 10 per second per server—that are designed to elicit a much larger response. The memcached systems then return 50 times the data of the requests back to the victim.

Known as an amplification attack, this type of DDoS has shown up before. But as internet service and infrastructure providers have seen memcached DDoS attacks ramp up over the last week or so, they've moved swiftly to implement defenses to block traffic coming from memcached servers.

"Large DDoS attacks such as those made possible by abusing memcached are of concern to network operators," says Roland Dobbins, a principal engineer at the DDoS and network-security firm Arbor Networks who has been tracking the memcached attack trend. "Their sheer volume can have a negative impact on the ability of networks to handle customer internet traffic."

The infrastructure community has also started attempting to address the underlying problem, by asking the owners of exposed memcached servers to take them off the internet, keeping them safely behind firewalls on internal networks. Groups like Prolexic that defend against active DDoS attacks have already added or are scrambling to add filters that immediately start blocking memcached traffic if they detect a suspicious amount of it. And if internet backbone companies can ascertain the attack command used in a memcached DDoS, they can get ahead of malicious traffic by blocking any memcached packets of that length.

"We are going to filter that actual command out so no one can even launch the attack," says Dale Drew, chief security strategist at the internet service provider CenturyLink. And companies need to work quickly to establish these defenses. "We’ve seen about 300 individual scanners that are searching for memcached boxes, so there are at least 300 bad guys looking for exposed servers," Drew adds.

Most of the memcached DDoS attacks CenturyLink has seen top out at about 40 to 50 gigabits per second, but the industry had been increasingly noticing bigger attacks up to 500 gbps and beyond. On Monday, Prolexic defended against a 200 gbps memcached DDoS attack launched against a target in Munich.

Wednesday's onslaught wasn't the first time a major DDoS attack targeted GitHub. The platform faced a six-day barrage in March 2015, possibly perpetrated by Chinese state-sponsored hackers. The attack was impressive for 2015, but DDoS techniques and platforms—particularly Internet of Things–powered botnets—have evolved and grown increasingly powerful when they’re at their peak. To attackers, though, the beauty of memcached DDoS attacks is there's no malware to distribute, and no botnet to maintain.

The web monitoring and network intelligence firm ThousandEyes observed the GitHub attack on Wednesday. "This was a successful mitigation. Everything transpired in 15 to 20 minutes," says Alex Henthorne-Iwane, vice president of product marketing at ThousandEyes. "If you look at the stats you’ll find that globally speaking DDoS attack detection alone generally takes about an hour plus, which usually means there’s a human involved looking and kind of scratching their head. When it all happens within 20 minutes you know that this is driven primarily by software. It’s nice to see a picture of success."

GitHub continued routing its traffic through Prolexic for a few hours to ensure that the situation was resolved. Akamai's Shaul says he suspects that attackers targeted GitHub simply because it is a high-profile service that would be impressive to take down. The attackers also may have been hoping to extract a ransom. "The duration of this attack was fairly short," he says. "I think it didn’t have any impact so they just said that’s not worth our time anymore."

Until memcached servers get off the public internet, though, it seems likely that attackers will give a DDoS of this scale another shot.
https://www.wired.com/story/github-ddos-memcached/





U.S. House Passes Bill to Penalize Websites for Sex Trafficking

The legislation will make it easier to sue social media networks, advertisers and others that fail to keep exploitative material off their platforms
Dustin Volz

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed legislation to make it easier to penalize operators of websites that facilitate online sex trafficking, chipping away at a bedrock legal shield for the technology industry.

The bill's passage marks one of the most concrete actions in recent years from the U.S. Congress to tighten regulation of internet firms, which have drawn heavy scrutiny from lawmakers in both parties over the past year due to an array of concerns regarding the size and influence of their platforms.

The House passed the measure 388-25. It still needs to pass the U.S. Senate, where similar legislation has already gained substantial support, and then be signed by President Donald Trump before it can become law.

Speaker Paul Ryan, in a statement before the vote, said the bill would help "put an end to modern-day slavery here in the United States."

The White House issued a statement generally supportive of the bill, but said the administration "remains concerned" about certain provisions that it hopes can be resolved in the final legislation.

Several major internet companies, including Alphabet Inc's Google and Facebook Inc, had been reluctant to support any congressional effort to dent what is known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a decades-old law that protects them from liability for the activities of their users.

But facing political pressure, the internet industry slowly warmed to a proposal that gained traction in the Senate last year, and eventually endorsed it after it gained sizeable bipartisan support.

Republican Senator Rob Portman, a chief architect of the Senate proposal, said in a statement he supported the House's similar version and called on the Senate to quickly pass it.

The legislation is a result of years of law-enforcement lobbying for a crackdown on the online classified site backpage.com, which is used for sex advertising.

It would make it easier for states and sex-trafficking victims to sue social media networks, advertisers and others that fail to keep exploitative material off their platforms.

Some critics warned that the House measure would weaken Section 230 in a way that would only serve to further help established internet giants, who possess larger resources to police their content, and not adequately address the problem.

"This bill will only prop up the entrenched players who are rapidly losing the public's trust," Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, an original author of Section 230, said. "The failure to understand the technological side effects of this bill - specifically that it will become harder to expose sex-traffickers, while hamstringing innovation - will be something that this Congress will regret."

(Reporting by Dustin Volz; editing by Sandra Maler and Lisa Shumaker)
http://news.trust.org//item/20180227231940-ryz41/





That Teen Sexting Study: What Else You Need To Know Before Freaking Out
Tara Haelle

You’ve probably read about the new teen sexting research review published yesterday in JAMA Pediatrics: about one in four teens have received a “sext,” a text message with sexual content, and approximately one in seven have sent one. The findings are solid and come from a review of more than three dozen studies. But most outlets reporting on the study—and apparent alarm about it—have not dug deeply into the challenges of studying texting, what we still don’t know (a LOT) and why we should take a deep breath before freaking out about the findings.

What did the study find?

The researchers found 15% of teens have sent a sext, and 27% have received one. Unsurprisingly, the older teens were, the more likely they were to send or receive a sext. Also, the frequency of sexting among teens has been increasing over the past decade — again unsurprising since ownership and use of cell phones has also increased among adolescents. (Most of the sexting happened over cell phones, though some involved computers too.)

Potentially more concerning numbers are that 12% of teens said they’ve forwarded a sext without the permission of the person they received it from, and 8% of teens had one of their sexts forwarded without giving their consent.

How was the study done?

The researchers analyzed the findings of 39 studies involving 110,380 adolescents ranging from 12-17 years old. The studies had been published between 2009 and 2016 and most (34) measured how many teens have sent sexts. Another 20 measured receiving them, five looked at forwarding them without consent, and four examined having a sext forwarded without consent.

What are the risks of sexting?

According to a tip sheet for parents in the same journal, “Risks include emotional distress for those who are pressured to send these photos as well as those who receive these photos. Sexting can also cause harm if photos are distributed widely, causing increased distress or embarrassment.”

The tip sheet also notes that sexting can lead to legal repercussions, but few courts prosecute these anymore, particularly since the possibility of a lifetime label of sex offender — potentially for sending a half-nude photo of yourself just once to your boyfriend or girlfriend — can destroy a person’s life.

Why do teens sext?

If this is a serious question, you’ve never met a teenager and appear to have forgotten your entire adolescence. But if that’s the case, here’s what the experts have to say in their tip sheet for parents in JAMA Pediatrics: “Adolescence is a time of life in which teenagers are learning about their own bodies, how to take risks, and about romantic attractions. For some teenagers, engaging in sexting may feel like a way to explore their attraction to someone.”

What should parents do about it?

Talk to your kids, but be sensible, keep some perspective and consider the actual risks of different circumstances. For example, consider this statement from the study: “A higher rate among older youth is expected and generally corresponds to the age of sexual identity and exploration, which lends credence to the notion that youth sexting may be an emerging, and potentially normal, component of sexual behavior and development.” See how much we still don’t know below.

What data are we missing most?

We know almost nothing about tween sexting. The only study that looked at sexting in those under age 12 was done in 2010-2011, which might as well be a century ago in the digital age. How common sexting is in this age group is particularly important: “Relationships among tweens are often transient, which may make them more vulnerable to having sexts forwarded without consent,” the authors wrote. “Moreover, given their relative cognitive naïveté, tweens may be particularly vulnerable to sextortion (ie, nude images and/or videos are used as a form of threat or blackmail) and, like youth who report early sexual debut, may be at risk for a host of risky behaviors and negative consequences.”

But here’s the thing: Sexting is REALLY hard to study—too hard to draw broad conclusions yet.

This study’s numbers are a tiny slice of the picture. If your 12-year-old is sending photos of their naked body, yes, that’s a big reason to be concerned, and you should be regularly talking with your kids about the risks of that behavior (such as it ending up on the front page of Reddit). But here’s what those numbers obscure:

What counts as a sext?

There’s no standard definition in research or everyday experience. For some, it’s any message related to sex, even just written. Does telling a raunchy joke over text message count as sexting? Or does it need to discuss a body part or behavior of either the sender or recipient? Or does it need to be an explicit invitation?

For others, a sext must include a sexually explicit photo or video. But again: Does it need to show full nudity, or is partial nudity or suggestive clothing, such as lingerie covering all the relevant bits, also sexting? Does the photo need to be of the sender, recipient or one of their acquaintances? Or does any type of sexual content — a porn video, or a link to one — count as a sext? Does a link to a porn video only count if it’s accompanied by additional comments from the sender?

There’s no consensus on these answers, but it matters. “Psychologically, it is likely that the significance of sending nude photos or videos is quite different from sending sexualized text,” write Elizabeth Englander, PhD, and Meghan McCoy, EdD, in an accompanying editorial. Yet the study authors noted that most studies combine both types of sexting, making it harder to draw meaningful conclusions.

What are specific risks of specific types of sexting in specific populations?

Sexting has been linked to a greater likelihood of risky sex behaviors, such as unprotected sex, but are these behaviors associated with all types of sexting, or just those involving photos of the sender, or only photos of the recipient, or…? Are the risks higher or lower for girls versus boys versus teens who don’t identify with a male or female gender? Do the risks vary based on sexual preference?

Consider a 17-year-old girl sending her 17-year-old boyfriend this text: “I can’t wait to put my hands down your pants again.” Or his text that he “can’t wait to touch her tits again.” How worried about these text messages, without images, should parents be? Does it matter if the two have been dating for two weeks or two years? Does the answer change if they’re 16? Or 15? What are they more likely to do? Or does it just mean they’ve already done it?

Englander and McCoy also addressed this: “While several studies have noted that sexting within an existing relationship is potentially quite different than sexting between unattached individuals, clarifying the nature of frequently transient adolescent relationships is challenging.”

Is all sexting a bad thing?

Could sexting have positive effects for those involved? What if it’s simply a different way to communicate what teens have been communicating to one another for centuries? Or what if it’s a way to flirt without actually taking things to the next level, especially if it doesn’t involve photos? There’s evidence that it’s not all negative and even that the bad stuff isn’t that common.

“In a few studies, researchers noted that most people who sext felt positively about the experience and that positive outcomes seem to be associated with sexting within established relationships,” the researchers wrote. “Other studies examining outcomes such as harassment or bullying by peers, lost opportunities, trouble with parents or school authorities or having the picture posted online found such outcomes to be unusual. Most were endorsed by less than 5% of people who sext.”

Obviously nonconsensual sexting is a bigger problem. Should it be considered more directly as harassment? Is consensual sexting without any forwarding something to wring our hands over? Or does it depend on the specific content and medium (words, images, videos, etc.), the child’s age, their relationship status, their maturity and other factors?

Bottom line: Every good study that attempts to answer one question will inspire more questions, and that’s certainly the case here. The real take-home from this new study is that there’s a LOT we still don’t know about teens and sexting, and maybe we should take it slow until we do.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahae...-freaking-out/





Children Struggle to Hold Pencils Due to Too Much Tech, Doctors Say

Children need opportunities to develop hand strength and dexterity needed to hold pencils
Amelia Hill

Children are increasingly finding it hard to hold pens and pencils because of an excessive use of technology, senior paediatric doctors have warned.

An overuse of touchscreen phones and tablets is preventing children’s finger muscles from developing sufficiently to enable them to hold a pencil correctly, they say.

“Children are not coming into school with the hand strength and dexterity they had 10 years ago,” said Sally Payne, the head paediatric occupational therapist at the Heart of England foundation NHS Trust. “Children coming into school are being given a pencil but are increasingly not be able to hold it because they don’t have the fundamental movement skills.

“To be able to grip a pencil and move it, you need strong control of the fine muscles in your fingers,. Children need lots of opportunity to develop those skills.”

Payne said the nature of play had changed. “It’s easier to give a child an iPad than encouraging them to do muscle-building play such as building blocks, cutting and sticking, or pulling toys and ropes. Because of this, they’re not developing the underlying foundation skills they need to grip and hold a pencil.”

Six-year-old Patrick has been having weekly sessions with an occupational therapist for six months to help him develop the necessary strength in his index finger to hold a pencil in the correct, tripod grip.

His mother, Laura, blames herself: “In retrospect, I see that I gave Patrick technology to play with, to the virtual exclusion of the more traditional toys. When he got to school, they contacted me with their concerns: he was gripping his pencil like cavemen held sticks. He just couldn’t hold it in any other way and so couldn’t learn to write because he couldn’t move the pencil with any accuracy.

“The therapy sessions are helping a lot and I’m really strict now at home with his access to technology,” she said. “I think the school caught the problem early enough for no lasting damage to have been done.”

Mellissa Prunty, a paediatric occupational therapist who specialises in handwriting difficulties in children, is concerned that increasing numbers of children may be developing handwriting late because of an overuse of technology.

“One problem is that handwriting is very individual in how it develops in each child,” said Prunty, the vice-chair of the National Handwriting Association who runs a research clinic at Brunel University London investigating key skills in childhood, including handwriting.

“Without research, the risk is that we make too many assumptions about why a child isn’t able to write at the expected age and don’t intervene when there is a technology-related cause,” she said.

Although the early years curriculum has handwriting targets for every year, different primary schools focus on handwriting in different ways – with some using tablets alongside pencils, Prunty said. This becomes a problem when same the children also spend large periods of time on tablets outside school.

But Barbie Clarke, a child psychotherapist and founder of the Family Kids and Youth research agency, said even nursery schools were acutely aware of the problem that she said stemmed from excessive use of technology at home.

“We go into a lot of schools and have never gone into one, even one which has embraced teaching through technology, which isn’t using pens alongside the tablets and iPads,” she said. “Even the nurseries we go into which use technology recognise it should not all be about that.”

Karin Bishop, an assistant director at the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, also admitted concerns. “It is undeniable that technology has changed the world where our children are growing up,” she said. “Whilst there are many positive aspects to the use of technology, there is growing evidence on the impact of more sedentary lifestyles and increasing virtual social interaction, as children spend more time indoors online and less time physically participating in active occupations.”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/...ch-doctors-say





Western Digital Demos SD Card with PCIe x1 Interface, 880 MB/s Read Speed
Anton Shilov

Western Digital demonstrated an experimental SD card featuring a PCIe Gen 3 x1 interface at Mobile World Congress. Meanwhile, the SD Card Association is calling upon the industry to adopt PCIe as a standard interface and to support the development of a complete SD PCIe standard.

Western Digital is demonstrating a system featuring an M.2-to-SD adapter with an SD card that offers 880 MB/s sequential read speeds as well as up to 430 MB/s sequential write speeds, according to the CrystalDiskMark benchmark. The drive uses the existing UHS-II/III pins to construct a PCIe 3.0 x1 interface with the system (via a mechanical adapter) and probably standard PCIe voltage with a converter. The company is not disclosing the type of memory or the controller that power the SD PCIe card, but it is clear that we are dealing with a custom solution. Meanwhile, Western Digital claims that the implementation costs of a PCIe interface is not high as one might expect, as a PCIe x1 PHY is not all that large.

Western Digital further notes that the SD card with a PCIe interface is not standard and will not hit the market any time soon, but is showing off the concept anyhow as they have seen interest from certain parties for this kind of removable storage solutions. For example, makers of industrial or special-purpose PCs could benefit from flexibility provided by removable industry-grade SD cards with PCIe 3.0 x1 performance (i.e., they are faster than SATA, easier to install than eMMC/UFS/BGA SSD).

The company believes that once the SD standard moves to PCIe, its evolutionary path will be pretty straightforward: after PCIe 3.0/3.1 come PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 that increase performance per lane from 8 GT/s to 16 GT/s and 32 GT/s, respectively.

In the meantime, the SD Card Association is calling for interested parties to participate in the creation of a proper PCIe SD/microSD card standard. The organization outlines key features of the upcoming standard on a banner in its booth:

• Existing form-factors.
• PCIe interface, NVMe protocol.
• Support of legacy SD interface for backward compatibility (since the existing SD/PCIe card uses UHS-II/III pins, it is logical to expect the upcoming standard to support appropriate signaling too).

The Secure Digital interface has evolved greatly over the time of its existence in terms of performance: from 54 – 104 MB/s supported by the UHS-I all the way to 624 MB/s (full duplex) supported by the UHS-III. PCIe 3.0/3.1 can increase performance further to around 985 MB/s, beating the UHS-III.

One of the key problems that the SD Card Association and its member face is support for UHS-II/UHS-III in host devices. Smartphone makers are reluctant to support the latest UHS standards and PC makers rarely incorporate fast card readers into their products as the only devices that use the UHS-II are higher-end DSLR cameras, so mainsteam users barely use/need UHS-II slots. When the SD standard adopts PCIe, manufacturers of various special-purpose PCs/servers will benefit, but producers of consumer electronics may (again) be unwilling to incorporate new controllers into their products due to lack of immediate benefits and power consumption concerns. Nonetheless, since there are applications that can benefit from fast SD/microSD cards, the standard will be developed several years down the road.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12487...pcie-interface





The Sublime and Scary Future of Cameras With A.I. Brains
Farhad Manjoo

Something strange, scary and sublime is happening to cameras, and it’s going to complicate everything you knew about pictures. Cameras are getting brains.

Until the past few years, just about all cameras — whether smartphones or point-and-shoots or CCTV surveillance — were like eyes disconnected from any intelligence.

They captured anything you put in front of them, but they didn’t understand a whit about what they were seeing. Even basic facts about the world eluded them. It’s crazy, for instance, that in 2018, your smartphone doesn’t automatically detect when you’ve taken naked pictures of yourself and offer to house them under an extra-special layer of security.

But all this is changing. There’s a new generation of cameras that understand what they see. They’re eyes connected to brains, machines that no longer just see what you put in front of them, but can act on it — creating intriguing and sometimes eerie possibilities.

At first, these cameras will promise to let us take better pictures, to capture moments that might not have been possible with every dumb camera that came before. That’s the pitch Google is making with Clips, a new camera that went on sale on Tuesday. It uses so-called machine learning to automatically take snapshots of people, pets and other things it finds interesting.

Others are using artificial intelligence to make cameras more useful. You’ve heard how Apple’s newest iPhone uses face recognition to unlock your phone. A start-up called Lighthouse AI wants to do something similar for your home, using a security camera that adds a layer of visual intelligence to the images it sees. When you mount its camera in your entryway, it can constantly analyze the scene, alerting you if your dog walker doesn’t show up, or if your kids aren’t home by a certain time after school.

It doesn’t take long to imagine the useful and very creepy possibilities of cameras that can decipher the world. Digital cameras brought about a revolution in photography, but until now, it was only a revolution of scale: Thanks to microchips, cameras got smaller and cheaper, and we began carrying them everywhere.

Now, A.I. will create a revolution in how cameras work, too. Smart cameras will let you analyze pictures with prosecutorial precision, raising the specter of a new kind of surveillance — not just by the government but by everyone around you, even your loved ones at home.

The companies making these devices are aware of the privacy dangers. Many are moving into the field gingerly, slathering their products with safeguards that they say reduce the creepiness.

Take Google’s Clips, which I’ve used for the past week and half. It’s one of the most unusual devices I’ve ever encountered. The camera is about the size of a tin of mints, and it has no screen. On its front, there’s a lens and a button. The button takes a picture, but it’s only there if you really need it.

Instead, most of the time, you just rely on the camera’s intuition, which has been trained to recognize facial expressions, lighting, framing and other hallmarks of nice photos. It also recognizes familiar faces — the people you’re with more often are those it deems most interesting to photograph.

Clips, which sells for $249, makes taking pictures unconscious and all but invisible. Carry it around wherever you go; the camera has a handy case with a big bendy clip, so it can be affixed to your jacket, set on a tabletop, carried in your palm or placed anywhere else with a view.

From there, it’s all A.I.

Clips watches the scene, and when it sees something that looks like a compelling shot, it captures a 15-second burst picture (something like a short animated GIF or Live Photo on your iPhone).

I took a trip with my family to Disneyland last week, and over two highly photographable days, I barely took a photo. Instead, this tiny device automatically did the work, capturing a couple hundred short clips of our vacation.

Some of them were quite good, getting the high points of our trip in the same way I might have with my phone. Here’s a clip of my son driving a car.

But what was really interesting was the stuff I wouldn’t have consciously captured. I got dozens of pictures like these:

Aesthetically, these pictures aren’t masterworks. Emotionally, they’re on a higher plane. Clips caught moments of my kids goofing off and fighting in Disney’s endless lines, playing catch at home, dancing like adorable maniacs — moments too spontaneous or seemingly slight for me to have caught with my camera, but which will probably paint a more accurate and edifying picture of our lives in 30 years.

Regular readers of this column know that capturing moments of my kids’ childhood is an acute anxiety of mine; I’ve even wired my home with cameras to preserve a kind of reality show of life in my house.

But you don’t have to be as crazy as I am to share slivers of this fear — that your kids or your pets are constantly doing things you’ll later want to remember, but which smartphones often miss. An intelligent camera gets these times because it doesn’t ask you to break the moment to capture it.

But, obviously, setting up a camera that doesn’t need to be specifically triggered to take a picture is problematic. It raises the worry of spying — both that Google can spy on you, or that you can use it to spy on others.

Google addresses that creepiness in two ways. The device is mostly unconnected from the internet. It can take pictures without a connection, and it requires your phone for viewing or saving the clips. But even then, all its A.I. happens on the device, and it doesn’t even need you to have a Google account, the company said.

“We spent a lot of time thinking about privacy, and making sure this was a device people would actually want,” said Eva Snee, who heads Google’s research on how people interact with Clips. “What we learned was that cameras don’t creep people out when they’re used deliberately and the person is part of the process.”

Clips also raises the memory of other products in this vein, including Snap’s Spectacles and Google Glass, the search company’s failed attempt to get consumers to use glasses that can take photos.

To ensure that, Clips is designed to look like a camera. When it’s on, it flashes a white LED to signal that it could be recording. It also does not record audio, because that might have felt too much like spying.

Lighthouse, which I’ve also used for a few weeks, is meant to be an upgrade over the internet-connected home security cameras that have become popular. Those devices can be annoying because they freak out every time they spot any movement.

Lighthouse’s special trick is a camera system that can sense 3D space and learn and recognize faces — intelligence meant to avoid false alarms. It also has a nifty natural-language interface, so you can ask it straightforward questions: “What did the kids do when I was gone?” will show you clips of your kids when you were gone.

Lighthouse, which sells for $299 and requires a $10 monthly subscription, feels like a work in progress. It was mostly accurate in differentiating people in my house, but it was also tripped up into thinking I had an intruder by a mylar balloon floating around my living room.

The company is young and I expect its software to improve. I can see it being of genuine use to people who wonder what’s happening at home when they’re away. Want to know if your dog is jumping on your couch? Ask Lighthouse; it can recognize dogs jumping around couches, and will instantly show you the clip. (Well, it can get close. I don’t have a dog, so when I asked Lighthouse that question, it pulled up a clip of my kid kicking his stuffed tiger off the couch.)

But what if it’s your spouse, not your pooch, you’re worried about? I trust my wife, but for the sake of this column, I asked the device to show me any clips of her in the house with an unfamiliar person. There she was one evening, with the babysitter, whom Lighthouse hadn’t seen before.

It was a case of straight-up spying on my family. But it’s an obvious possibility with a camera that understands the world so well.

Alex Teichman, Lighthouse’s chief executive, said it could add safeguards against inter-family spying, for instance by restricting face identification only to unrecognized faces. He also pointed out that the system has numerous fine-grained privacy controls that allow you to turn off any recording when certain family members are present.

I found his response credible. Both Lighthouse and Clips are well-crafted against abuse. It should be noted that neither one allows for much more spying than we can already accomplish with smartphones; constant social surveillance is the norm in 2018.

But they are guides to the future. Tomorrow, all cameras will have their capabilities. And they won’t just watch you — they’ll understand, too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/t...ai-brains.html

















Until next week,

- js.



















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