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Old 06-06-18, 07:08 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - June 9th, ’18

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June 9th, 2018




Study Again Shows 'Pirates' Tend to Be The Biggest Buyers of Legal Content

A new report out of the UK once again deflates the common narrative that pirates are exclusively looking to obtain free stuff.
Karl Bode

Over the years, users that dabble in obtaining copyrighted content via services like BitTorrent have routinely been maligned as irredeemable freeloaders by the entertainment industry, despite the fact that studies repeatedly show these users tend to be among the biggest purchasers of legitimate, legal content.

A new report out of the UK once again deflates the common narrative that pirates are exclusively looking to obtain free stuff.

According to a paywalled survey of 1,000 UK residents by anti-piracy outfit MUSO first spotted by Torrent Freak, 60 percent of those surveyed admitted that they had illegally streamed or downloaded music, film, or TV shows sometime in the past.

But the study also showed that 83 percent of those questioned try to find the content they are looking for through above board services before trying anything else. And while the study found that 86 percent of survey takers subscribe to a streaming subscription service like Netflix, that total jumped to 91 percent among those that admit to piracy.

The survey found that the top reason that users pirate is the content they were looking for wasn’t legally available (34 percent) was too cumbersome or difficult to access (34 percent), or wasn’t affordable (35 percent).

“The entertainment industry tends to envisage piracy audiences as a criminal element, and writes them off as money lost – but they are wrong to do so,” MUSO executive Paul Briley said of the study’s findings.

“The reality is that the majority of people who have gone through the effort of finding and accessing such unlicensed content are, first and foremost, fans – fans who are more often than not trying to get content legally if they can,” Briley added.

The firm’s study echos the findings of countless, similar reports over the last decade.

For example, a 2012 study by UK regulator Ofcom found that pirates tend to buy far more legitimate content than their non-pirating counterparts. The same conclusion was drawn in a 2011 study by French government anti-piracy agency HADOPI, which noted that copyright infringers tend to also be the entertainment industry’s biggest customers.

Similarly, a study conducted last year by Launchleap found that while more than half of Millennials view illegal live streams of content, the lion’s share would prefer accessing that content via legit services if it was legally available.

Firms like Jupiter Research were noting as far back as 2002 that music file sharing actually drove those users to spend more money on legitimate music purchases than before they began trading music files with their friends. Similar studies in 2005 and again in 2009 routinely told the same story in terms of film and TV content. Rinse, wash and repeat.

The idea that pirates are the entertainment industry’s biggest customers tends to be ignored by some entertainment companies that balk at adjusting their business models for the broadband era. And despite routine claims that piracy would demolish music sector revenues, the music industry has proven to be more profitable than ever.

The reports continue to highlight an important lesson that that many in the entertainment industry have been resistant to learn: they’re better served by treating pirates not as criminals eager to get everything for free—but as potential customers that simply aren’t satisfied by the options currently being made available to them.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...-legal-content





83% of All Music, Film & TV Piracy Is Motivated by a Lack of Paid Options, Study Claims
Daniel Sanchez

According to research group Muso, most people know that piracy is wrong, but do it anyway.

Want to know the reason why people pirate media content? Because they can’t find any legal alternatives. That’s according to a new study published by British anti-piracy firm, Muso.

Apparently, this is a bigger problem than the industry thinks. The group previously found that piracy rose 1.6% around the world in 2017.

Surveying 1,000 UK adults via CitizenMe, an app that rewards users for completing surveys, Muso found that 60% admitted to illegally downloading or streaming music, film, and TV programs. Of those, a whopping 83% they had tried to find the content on existing streaming services before pirating.

Of course, these are self-reported surveys, which can lead to serious inaccuracies. That’s especially true when it comes to piracy, given that the activity being self-reported is illegal. Still, a very large percentage admitted to piracy.
53% felt that accessing content illegally is wrong, but did it anyway. But, why?

Simple.

35.2% of respondents cited a cost barrier as the reason behind illegal downloads and content streaming. Basically, they can’t afford to download or stream music, movies, and TV series legally.

34.9% claimed they couldn’t find their preferred media content on existing subscription services or channels. 34.7% said that companies simply hadn’t made the content available where they live. They had only pirated media content to circumvent that problem.

Speaking on the study’s surprising results, Paul Briley, CCO of Muso, said,

“The reality is that the majority of people who have gone through the effort of finding and accessing such unlicensed content are, first and foremost, fans – fans who are more often than not trying to get content legally if they can.”

In fact, the survey’s next findings support his hypothesis.

A whopping 86% of all respondents have already subscribed to a streaming service, including Netflix and Amazon Prime to watch their favorite movies and TV shows. To stream their favorite music, a large percentage had an existing subscription to Spotify Premium or Apple Music. Among admitted ‘pirates,’ the number jumped to 91%.

The study underscores one key fact. The growing availability of streaming services – whether music, film, or television – has yet to eliminate existing piracy habits. In fact, music and media companies may never completely eradicate piracy.

Briley continued,

“There is a prevailing myth that streaming services have killed piracy, but unfortunately this just isn’t the case… The fact that nine out of ten people who are accessing unlicensed content also have legal subscription services, simply supports the fact that subscription services haven’t solved the problem for content owners or consumers.”

So, how can music and media companies fix this problem in the long run? According to Bailey, they should make an effort to engage with their existing audience.

“If content owners accept that these are high-intent audiences, they can explore new ways of making their content more readily discoverable, engage these audiences, and create new revenue opportunity in the process.”
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/201...-piracy-study/





'Solo: A Star Wars Story' Plummeting at the Box Office
AP

"Solo: A Star Wars Story" is losing momentum quickly at the box office, even with a relatively quiet weekend free of any new blockbuster competition. After an underwhelming launch, the space saga fell 65 percent in weekend two with $29.3 million from North American theaters, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

"Solo" has now earned $148.9 million domestically, which is still shy of "Rogue One's" December 2016 opening weekend of $155.1 million and over $135 million short of where "Rogue One" was in its second weekend.

The 65 percent drop off is one of the highest in recent "Star Wars" history, although it is less steep than the second week fall of the franchise's last film, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," which slid 67.5 percent in weekend two this past December -- but, that was also after a $220 million debut.

Internationally, "Solo" added $30.3 million, and globally the film has netted $264.2 million.

Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for comScore, thinks that all the media attention given to "Solo's" less-than-impressive opening weekend numbers could have actually negatively affected its second weekend earnings.

"Box office got conflated with perceived value of the movie and that might have affected its second weekend," Dergarabedian said. "Sometimes news of the box office can impact a movie's bottom line."

He noted that in comScore's audience survey, most of the over 1,000 people polled "really liked" the movie.

"Solo's" tumble brought it even closer to "Deadpool 2," which is now in its third weekend in theaters and still managed to reel in an estimated $23.3 million to take second place. With a domestic total of $254.7 million and a crowded marketplace with both "Solo" and "Avengers: Infinity War" surrounding it, "Deadpool 2" is still only about $30 million behind where the first film was in its third weekend.

Shailene Woodley's lost-at-sea drama "Adrift" fared the best of the three newcomers, which included the horror pic "Upgrade" and a Johnny Knoxville comedy "Action Point." "Adrift," from STX Entertainment, washed up in third place with $11.5 million, while the others struggled to make a significant impact.

"Upgrade" opened In sixth place with $4.5 million, behind both "Avengers: Infinity War" ($10.4 million) and "Book Club" ($6.8 million), and "Action Point," which was not screened for critics, landed in ninth place with a dismal $2.3 million.

This weekend also saw a few smaller studio landmarks for Magnolia Pictures, whose Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary "RBG" became its highest grossing film ever with $7.9 million, and Pantelion Films, which scored a similar feat with "Overboard," which is now up to $45.5 million.
'Solo: A Star Wars Story' holds its star-studded world premiere in Hollywood.

Even with "Solo's" stumble, the year-to-date box office is still up 6.2 percent as June kicks into gear with some big movies on the horizon, including "Ocean's 8," "Incredibles 2" and "Jurassic World."

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to comScore. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. "Solo: A Star Wars Story," $29.3 million ($30.3 million international).

2. "Deadpool 2," $23.3 million ($41.6 million international).

3. "Adrift," $11.5 million.

4. "Avengers: Infinity War," $10.4 million ($24.3 million international).

5. "Book Club," $6.8 million ($1.1 million international).

6. "Upgrade," $4.5 million.

7. "Life of the Party," $3.5 million.

8. "Breaking In," $2.8 million ($300,000 international).

9. "Action Point," $2.3 million.

10. "Overboard," $2 million ($1.5 million international).

------

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada), according to comScore:

1. "Deadpool 2," $41.6 million.

2. "Solo: A Star Wars Story," $30.3 million.

3. "Avengers: Infinity War," $24.3 million.

4. "Doraemon the Movie: Nobita's Treasure Island," $23.7 million.

5. "How Long Will I Love U," $15.8 million.

6. "Believer," $9.2 million.

7. "Happy Little Submarine 20000 Leagues," $8.9 million.

8. "Sherlock Gnomes," $3.3 million.

9. "Truth or Dare," $2.5 million.

10. "A Quiet Place," $2.4 million.

------

Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by 21st Century Fox; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment...ox-office.html





Britain Clears Way for Murdoch to Battle Comcast for Sky
Paul Sandle

Rupert Murdoch faces a 22 billion pound ($29.3 billion) fight with U.S. cable company Comcast for European pay-TV company Sky after Britain cleared his bid providing he sells off its TV news business.

A sale of Sky News to Disney or another third party would be enough to allay concerns over the 87-year-old media mogul’s influence, Britain said on Tuesday.

Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox launched a 10.75 pound-a-share bid to buy all of Sky in December 2016, but the takeover has been held up by politicians and regulators who fear it will give him too much sway when combined with his newspaper interests.

Comcast took advantage of the delay to make its own move on Sky, with a 12.50 pounds-a-share bid in April trumping the long-standing Fox offer.

Shares in Sky were trading up 0.5 percent at 13.55 pounds at 1510 GMT on Tuesday, indicating that investors think the drama has a long way to run.

Analysts at Credit Suisse said that having pursued Sky for 16 months through a long regulatory process, they would expect Fox to make an increased bid for Sky in excess of the Comcast bid.

“In our view the Sky share price is already anticipating such an outcome with the shares closing on June 4 at 13.50 pounds, 8 percent ahead of the Comcast bid,” they said.

Even if Fox beats Comcast, Murdoch’s control of the whole group is unlikely to last long because he has agreed to sell many of his TV and film assets, including Sky, to Walt Disney Co in a separate $52 billion deal.

Culture Secretary Matt Hancock said Fox’s final proposal made to divest Sky News to Disney, or to an alternative suitable buyer, with funding secured for at least 10 years, was likely to be the best remedy for the public interest concerns that had been identified.

But he said he needed to be sure that Sky News remained financially viable over the long term, was able to operate as a major UK-based news provider and was able to take its editorial decisions independently.

The extra commitments will be the subject of consultation in the next 15 days with a view to agreeing an acceptable remedy, he said.

“I am optimistic that we can achieve this goal, not least given the willingness 21st Century Fox has shown in developing these credible proposals,” he told lawmakers.

Comcast announced its firm offer for Sky in April, resulting in Sky’s independent board members withdrawing their recommendation of the offer from Fox, which already owns 39 percent of Sky.

Hancock confirmed on Tuesday that he would not intervene in regards to Comcast, either on the grounds of broadcasting standards or on media plurality.

Sky was formed in 1990 when Murdoch merged his fledgling British satellite TV service with a rival.

The company is chaired by Murdoch’s son James, who played a key role in building the company into a major European broadcaster with operations in Germany, Austria and Italy as well as Britain.

Its customer base now numbers nearly 23 million homes, a major prize for media groups that want to scale up against online groups Netflix and Amazon .

The already complex deal permutations around Sky became even more complicated last month when Comcast said it was preparing a higher, all-cash offer for all of the assets Fox had agreed to sell to Disney.

Fox welcomed Hancock’s announcement, and noted that it had already proposed divesting the platform’s 24-hour news channel to Disney regardless of the fate of its bid for the wider Fox assets.

“We now look forward to engaging with DCMS (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) and we are confident that we will reach a final decision clearing our transaction,” Fox said in a statement.

Sky noted the decision regarding both Fox and Comcast, and said its independent directors were mindful of their fiduciary duties and remained focused on maximising value for Sky shareholders.

Hancock’s decision came after an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) into whether controlling Sky would give Murdoch, who also owns the Times and Sun newspapers, too much influence on Britain’s news media. ($1 = 0.7495 pounds)

Editing by Stephen Addison/Keith Weir
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-fo...-idUKKCN1J10UQ





Antiquarian Booksellers Adapt to the 21st Century (Gradually)
Scott Reyburn

Johannes Gutenberg or Tim Berners-Lee? Movable type or the World Wide Web?

There’s no way of knowing which of these will ultimately prove more influential, but nowadays there’s no disputing that people are spending more time browsing the internet than reading printed text. This has had any number of knock-on effects, both positive and negative. Take, for instance, the age-old business of buying and selling rare books.

Rare Books London is a sprawling umbrella promotion of auctions, fairs, talks and tours that takes place here from May through June. The “jewel in the crown” of the event, according to its website, was the A.B.A. Rare Book Fair, whose 61st edition, featuring 175 British and international dealers, closed on Saturday. More than a third of the exhibitors were based outside Britain.

After 19 years at the Victorian-era Olympia exhibition center in West London, the three-day fair had moved to Battersea Evolution, a more up-to-date temporary venue on the south side of the River Thames. This latest incarnation of the A.B.A. fair was opened by David Attenborough, narrator of the BBC’s acclaimed “Life on Earth,” “The Living Planet” and “Blue Planet” natural history series.

“Olympia was associated with old stuff,” said Andrea Mazzocchi, a senior specialist at the London-based exhibitor Bernard Quaritch, founded in 1847. “We need to get away from people feeling that old books are dusty and boring,” he added.

But this rare book fair in a London park remained a world away from the V.I.P. glitz of high-end art fairs like Frieze or Masterpiece. Traffic congestion created by the ever-popular annual Chelsea Flower Show nearby made it difficult for visitors to reach the fair. Those who did make it, and who sought refreshment, could buy a small plastic cup of English sparkling wine for 8 pounds, or about $11.

Sophie Schneideman, a London dealer specializing in fine 20th-century privately printed books, was offering one of 500 copies on paper of the Doves Bible, with red initial letters by Edward Johnston, published by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker at the Doves Press in Hammersmith, west London, from 1903 to 1905. Revered by many as the supreme achievement of Arts and Crafts typography, it was priced at £15,000. Ms. Schneideman said she sold half a dozen items priced between £50 and £10,000, but not the Doves Bible.

“The atmosphere and buzz was nonexistent. Many of the older customers couldn’t face getting there,” she said in an email.

But other exhibitors were more upbeat about the new venue. Once a clash with the Chelsea Flower Show is avoided, and a new subway stop opens nearby in 2020, the event will come into its own, they suggested. “It’s definitely better than the old venue,” said Bernard Shapero, another London-based exhibitor, who specializes in fine illustrated books.

The rare book trade faces plenty of challenges. Unlike great robber-baron bibliophiles such John Pierpont Morgan and Andrew Carnegie, today’s super-wealthy prefer to build art collections rather than libraries. Art has become a globalized alternative investment, generating a top-performing yield of 21 percent in 2017, according to the latest wealth report published by the realtors Knight Frank. Rare books do not feature in the report’s basket of “luxury investments.”

Dealers and auctioneers tend to refer to books instead as “stores of value,” reflecting a generally static price structure and customer base, which doesn’t excite alternative investors. As result, the rare book trade depends on knowledgeable collectors and institutions — and fellow dealers — to drive sales.

And there were sales at the A.B.A. fair, such as when Aquila Books of Calgary in Canada sold an 1871 first edition of Charles Darwin’s “The Descent of Man,” in which the author used the word “evolution” for the first time. Mr. Attenborough bought it, for £4,000.

Aquila, which specializes in exploration and evolution, made about £30,000 of sales at the A.B.A. fair, according to its founder, Cameron Treleaven. “I’m happy with that,” said Mr. Treleaven, who explained that fairs accounted about 40 percent of his annual sales, with another 35 percent generated through online trading.

“The arrival of the internet was the defining moment of my career,” added Mr. Treleaven. “It allowed us to find clients we never knew existed.”

As in the art market, live auctions are the other main channel through which rare books are sold. But unlike contemporary art, books tend to sell in line with pre-sale estimates.

On Wednesday, Bonhams put under the hammer the natural history library of the Wassenaar Zoo in the Netherlands. Founded in 1937 by Pieter W. Louwman, father of the Bonhams co-owner Evert Louwman, the zoo closed in 1985. The belated sale of its library, comprising 234 lots, featured some of the 19th century’s most sumptuously illustrated ornithological books.

Most valuable of these was a seven-volume first edition of John Gould’s “The Birds of Australia,” which started publication in 1840. This copy also included three of the work’s five supplementary volumes and was illustrated with more than 600 hand-colored lithographs, mainly based on drawings by the ornithologist’s wife, Elizabeth Gould. It is still regarded as the most comprehensive work on the subject — the Goulds discovered more than 300 new species during their research in Australia in 1838-1840.

The Wassenaar Zoo copy of “Birds of Australia” sold, much as estimated, for £187,500 with fees, or about $249,000. A first edition with one supplement, but in better condition, sold, much as estimated, for $295,000 at Christie’s last year, according the database Rare Book Hub, based in San Francisco.

“Books are never going to be like contemporary art. They don’t go gangbusters,” said Matthew Haley, director of the book department at Bonhams. “It’s slow and steady.”

Gould’s “Birds of Australia,” like the Doves Bible or Gutenberg’s first printed Bible, is an exceptional work of art, but unfortunately, being bound as a book, it lacks the wall power of a big-name modern or contemporary painting. The subtlety of books as status symbols has also hindered them from attracting the new wealth that has followed art.

How, then, can the rare book trade thrive in the 21st century?

That is where Tim Berners-Lee’s invention might come in. Dealers have complained that for many buyers, browsing on the internet has replaced browsing in shops, resulting in the closure of countless used book stores, but the web does allow dealers to show off their books to a new, visually minded audience.

Bernard Quaritch, for instance, took a rare single leaf from Gutenberg’s epoch-making 1450 Bible to the A.B.A.A. fair in New York and the A.B.A. one in London, priced at £100,000. It didn’t manage to sell at these fairs, but it is out there on the company’s Instagram account. As of Thursday the post had attracted 98 likes.

The dusty old book trade is evolving. Gradually.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/a...-internet.html





‘A Pain in the Ass for Users’: Subscription Publishers Wrestle with Delivering Exclusive Audio
Max Willens

In theory, premium podcasts should be a great tool for publishers that want to retain and grow their subscriber bases. In practice, they’re mostly a headache.

The New York Times and Slate (and, yes, Digiday) offer either early or exclusive podcast access to their subscribers, but there is no easy way to deliver that kind of content through Apple and Google, the two dominant podcast platforms.

Workarounds are labor-intensive, expensive or leaky. And while only a handful of publishers have this problem — less than 5 percent of the 44,000 podcasts hosted by Liberated Syndication, better known as Libsyn, offer a premium tier, said Rob Walch, the company’s vp of podcaster relations — the lack of a simple solution also means some publishers have dropped exclusive podcasts out of their subscription offerings or may hesitate to include them in the future.

“It is a pain in the ass for us, and more importantly, it’s a pain in the ass for users,” said Gabriel Roth, the editorial director of Slate Plus, which made ad-free, exclusive podcast content the linchpin of the paid membership program when it launched in 2014. “What we have, essentially, is a customer service challenge.”

Over the past five years, podcasting has grown from a desktop-dominant medium to a mobile-dominated one. More than three-quarters of podcast listeners say they typically listen to podcasts on a mobile device rather than a desktop, up from 42 percent in 2013, according to Edison Research.

While there are a number of podcast hosting and distribution solutions, Apple and Google don’t have the option of paywalling or gating content. Creators are left to deliver the content through a standalone mobile app; create a separate RSS feed, then share it only with subscribers; or hide an embeddable player on an owned and operated site.

Those options strain a publisher’s resources. Slate’s only dedicated customer service representative for Slate Plus spends a large portion of her day helping people add the Slate Plus podcast feeds to their preferred podcast app. Roth said a majority of Slate Plus’ podcast listeners access shows through those feeds, and the podcast player landscape is so varied that someone has to help people figure out the process. “It doesn’t feel very digital,” Roth said. “But that’s what the subscriber model makes you do.”

Many people also access the podcast through Slate’s mobile app, which means the publisher has to maintain the show in two different environments. Moving to a standalone app comes with its own problems. The New York Times, for example, didn’t set out to make its app able to deliver paywalled audio content to its users. So when the Times decided it wanted to give subscribers early access to “Caliphate” through its mobile app, its engineering team had to figure out a plug-in that would detect if a mobile app user was a subscriber or not.

A Times spokesperson declined to share specifics about how many of its subscribers listened to the show in this way, saying only that the publisher was encouraged by how “Caliphate” had been received by both subscribers and the general public.

Just setting up and hosting a separate feed adds extra costs as well. While there are a number of hosting solutions, the costs for a paywalled or private feed are “just ridiculous,” said Mathew Passy, a podcasting consultant and the head of content at podToPod, a podcasting industry news site.

Having to wrestle with imperfect solutions also creates dissonance for some publishers that work hard to keep their content behind a paywall. Subscription sports site The Sports Capitol recently moved its podcasts out from behind the paywall and made them widely available. The Athletic, another subscription sports site, also offers its podcasts widely. It’s the only content either site offers to nonsubscribers.

Publishers simply looking for a way to extract consumer revenue from their podcasts have more options at their disposal, like setting up a Patreon or adding themselves to a bundle such as Stitcher Premium. But for publishers that haven’t made podcasts a centerpiece of their content, the hurdles may discourage some from including premium shows in their subscription packages.

“If you weren’t trying to build a program around successful podcasts,” Roth said, “the technical challenge is an additional hurdle.”
https://digiday.com/media/pain-ass-u...clusive-audio/





White House Plans to Nominate Conservative Documentarian, Bannon Ally, to Lead Government Media Agency
Hadas Gold

Late Friday, the White House announced its intent to nominate Michael Pack, a former president of the conservative Claremont Institute, to lead the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The board controls US government-funded media outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe and is considered the country's largest public diplomacy program. It reaches an audience of 278 million in more than 100 countries and 61 languages.

If confirmed, Pack would replace current CEO John Lansing, who was appointed by the board and confirmed by Congress in 2015.

Pack's nomination has been expected for more than a year, but it was tied up as he disentangled himself from conflict of interest issues, according to two sources with knowledge of the process.

Pack did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Pack is a former Corporation for Public Broadcasting executive, and an ally of Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and head of Breitbart. The two worked on two documentaries together and Pack wrote an op-ed last year praising Bannon as a pioneer in conservative documentary filmmaking. As head of the Claremont Institute, he also acted as publisher of the Claremont Review of Books, which the New York Times once dubbed the "bible of highbrow Trumpism."

Several sources within the BBG have been privately expressing concern over Pack's nomination. Previous BBG CEOs, a relatively new position, have been more mainstream newsroom leaders, like Lansing, who is a former president of Scripps Network, or current NBC News head Andy Lack, who briefly led the agency in 2015.

Related: Bannon ally wants to turn government media agency into "legacy" for former Trump adviser

There is also concern Pack will turn what has been considered America's voice abroad toward a decidedly more pro-Trump bent, though the agencies under the BBG are independent of the presidential administration, with the board acting as firewall. Several staffers at the BBG have told CNN they plan to leave if Pack is confirmed.

Other critics have said the BBG's media outlets are undermining the administration's efforts at home and abroad.

Once Pack takes over, the structure of the BBG governance changes.

Should Pack be confirmed, he'd have more unilateral power over the agency because of a provision enacted in the last weeks of the Obama administration that would disband the bipartisan board in favor of an advisory board, which supporters saw as a firewall between the administration and the agency. Proponents promoted the move as one to make the organization more efficient.

Beyond Pack, there are others who feel Bannon's influence has already reached deep into the agency.

A Trump appointee already working in the BBG, Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, a former investigative reporter who has ties to Bannon, has told colleagues that his goal is to turn the agency into a "Bannon legacy," according to three sources within or familiar with the agency.

In March, the top Democrat of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Rep. Eliot Engel said he had come forward to allege that Shapiro and others were seeking to push the agency's journalism toward a viewpoint more favorable with the Trump administration by overthrowing the current leadership before Pack's nomination went out.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/02/medi...mination-plan/





70 Long-Lost Japanese Video Games Have Been Discovered in a 67GB Folder of ROMs on a Private Forum

They were found in a folder called "DO NOT UPLOAD."
Deidre Olsen

Until yesterday, rare Japanese PC game Labyrinthe, developed by Caravan Interactive, was long thought to be lost forever. That is until the almost mythical third game in the already obscure Horror Tour series was found on a 67GB folder of ROMs on a private forum. Other rare games from the folder are expected to become public soon.

Since its release in 1998, retro gaming fanatics have scoured the web for this game but come up empty. The game has a listing on Amazon Japan where the cover appears, but where it has never been in stock. A May 2014 post on Hardcore Gamer 101 reads “Labyrinthe is completely lost, and begs the question as to whether it was released at all.”

Labyrithe’s prequels have also proven difficult to find. Horror Tour, also known as Zeddas: Servant of Sheol in the West, was playable on Sega Saturn and PC. In the game, you are trapped in the confines of a castle where you must solve puzzles in order to proceed and inevitably kill an evil demon named Zeddas. Horror Tour 2 was released solely in Japanese for PC and was rediscovered in 2014. The game ends on a cliffhanger, and gamers have been desperate to find out what happens next for two decades.

Now, they’ll finally know what happens, even if we don’t yet know where the newly leaked Labyrinthe came from. According to a YouTuber called Saint, who posted a video of him playing the game and a link to download it on Mega, Labyrinthe and as many as 70 other rare or never-before-released Japanese titles have been circulating in a file sharing directory on a private torrent site.

Labyrinthe, alongside other rare titles including Cookie's Bustle, Yellow Brick Road and Link Devicer 2074 were in a folder called “DO NOT UPLOAD.” Members of the private forum hesitated to upload Labyrinthe in the fear that the private collector would take down the folder and leave the collection out of reach once again. This hesitation demonstrates the often tense relationship between game preservationists and private collectors. According to a screenshot uploaded by Saint, the private collector threatened to pull the entire folder of content from the directory and stop uploading games altogether if anyone leaked Labyrinthe.

In uploading the game to Mega, it’s possible the folder will be pulled from the internet. But in doing so, the person advanced the interests of game preservationists worldwide by leaking the this game and others.

Phil Salvador, a librarian and digital archivist who runs the The Obscuritory, a blog about little-known games, told Motherboard in an online chat that the existence of many of the games that have surfaced weren’t even known to Western gamers.

“It's odd because when people talk about finding ‘lost games,’ there's usually a few notable titles that folks have been trying to track down,” he said. “This collection has a ton of games that there's nearly no English language information about, that people didn't even know to look for, so it's exciting almost in a quiet way.”

Salvador wrote on Obscuritory that the games have been circulating since earlier this year, but have only now been uploaded to "avoid any interpersonal harm," considering their private nature. Salvador has uploaded Labyrinthe and several other games to the Internet Archive, and he hopes there are more to come.

“It's a weird situation because this really is not a great way to be preserving games, just collecting things that leak out,” he said. “Ideally we should be collaborating with collectors to share games like these. But unfortunately a lot of game collecting and preservation happens in the margins like this.”

Additional reporting by Jason Koebler.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...-private-forum





The EU's Copyright Proposal is Extremely Bad News for Everyone, Even (Especially!) Wikipedia
Cory Doctorow

The pending update to the EU Copyright Directive is coming up for a committee vote on June 20 or 21 and a parliamentary vote either in early July or late September. While the directive fixes some longstanding problems with EU rules, it creates much, much larger ones: problems so big that they threaten to wreck the Internet itself.

Under Article 13 of the proposal, sites that allow users to post text, sounds, code, still or moving images, or other copyrighted works for public consumption will have to filter all their users' submissions against a database of copyrighted works. Sites will have to pay to license the technology to match submissions to the database, and to identify near matches as well as exact ones. Sites will be required to have a process to allow rightsholders to update this list with more copyrighted works.

Even under the best of circumstances, this presents huge problems. Algorithms that do content-matching are frankly terrible at it. The Made-in-the-USA version of this is YouTube's Content ID system, which improperly flags legitimate works all the time, but still gets flack from entertainment companies for not doing more.

There are lots of legitimate reasons for Internet users to upload copyrighted works. You might upload a clip from a nightclub (or a protest, or a technical presentation) that includes some copyrighted music in the background. Or you might just be wearing a t-shirt with your favorite album cover in your Tinder profile. You might upload the cover of a book you're selling on an online auction site, or you might want to post a photo of your sitting room in the rental listing for your flat, including the posters on the wall and the picture on the TV.

Wikipedians have even more specialised reasons to upload material: pictures of celebrities, photos taken at newsworthy events, and so on.

But the bots that Article 13 mandates will not be perfect. In fact, by design, they will be wildly imperfect.

Article 13 punishes any site that fails to block copyright infringement, but it won’t punish people who abuse the system. There are no penalties for falsely claiming copyright over someone else's work, which means that someone could upload all of Wikipedia to a filter system (for instance, one of the many sites that incorporate Wikpedia's content into their own databases) and then claim ownership over it on Twitter, Facebook and Wordpress, and everyone else would be prevented from quoting Wikipedia on any of those services until they sorted out the false claims. It will be a lot easier to make these false claims that it will be to figure out which of the hundreds of millions of copyrighted claims are real and which ones are pranks or hoaxes or censorship attempts.

Article 13 also leaves you out in the cold when your own work is censored thanks to a malfunctioning copyright bot. Your only option when you get censored is to raise an objection with the platform and hope they see it your way—but if they fail to give real consideration to your petition, you have to go to court to plead your case.

Article 13 gets Wikipedia coming and going: not only does it create opportunities for unscrupulous or incompetent people to block the sharing of Wikipedia's content beyond its bounds, it could also require Wikipedia to filter submissions to the encyclopedia and its surrounding projects, like Wikimedia Commons. The drafters of Article 13 have tried to carve Wikipedia out of the rule, but thanks to sloppy drafting, they have failed: the exemption is limited to "noncommercial activity". Every file on Wikipedia is licensed for commercial use.

Then there's the websites that Wikipedia relies on as references. The fragility and impermanence of links is already a serious problem for Wikipedia's crucial footnotes, but after Article 13 becomes law, any information hosted in the EU might disappear—and links to US mirrors might become infringing—at any moment thanks to an overzealous copyright bot. For these reasons and many more, the Wikimedia Foundation has taken a public position condemning Article 13.

Speaking of references: the problems with the new copyright proposal don't stop there. Under Article 11, each member state will get to create a new copyright in news. If it passes, in order to link to a news website, you will either have to do so in a way that satisfies the limitations and exceptions of all 28 laws, or you will have to get a license. This is fundamentally incompatible with any sort of wiki (obviously), much less Wikipedia.

It also means that the websites that Wikipedia relies on for its reference links may face licensing hurdles that would limit their ability to cite their own sources. In particular, news sites may seek to withhold linking licenses from critics who want to quote from them in order to analyze, correct and critique their articles, making it much harder for anyone else to figure out where the positions are in debates, especially years after the fact. This may not matter to people who only pay attention to news in the moment, but it's a blow to projects that seek to present and preserve long-term records of noteworthy controversies. And since every member state will get to make its own rules for quotation and linking, Wikipedia posts will have to satisfy a patchwork of contradictory rules, some of which are already so severe that they'd ban any items in a "Further Reading" list unless the article directly referenced or criticized them.

The controversial measures in the new directive have been tried before. For example, link taxes were tried in Spain and Germany and they failed, and publishers don't want them. Indeed, the only country to embrace this idea as workable is China, where mandatory copyright enforcement bots have become part of the national toolkit for controlling public discourse.

Articles 13 and 11 are poorly thought through, poorly drafted, unworkable—and dangerous. The collateral damage they will impose on every realm of public life can't be overstated. The Internet, after all, is inextricably bound up in the daily lives of hundreds of millions of Europeans and an entire constellation of sites and services will be adversely affected by Article 13. Europe can't afford to place education, employment, family life, creativity, entertainment, business, protest, politics, and a thousand other activities at the mercy of unaccountable algorithmic filters. If you're a European concerned about these proposals, here's a tool for contacting your MEP.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/0...ally-wikipedia





FCC Emails Show Agency Spread Lies to Bolster Dubious DDoS Attack Claims
Dell Cameron

As it wrestled with accusations about a fake cyberattack last spring, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) purposely misled several news organizations, choosing to feed journalists false information, while at the same time discouraging them from challenging the agency’s official story.

Internal emails reviewed by Gizmodo lay bare the agency’s efforts to counter rife speculation that senior officials manufactured a cyberattack, allegedly to explain away technical problems plaguing the FCC’s comment system amid its high-profile collection of public comments on a controversial and since-passed proposal to overturn federal net neutrality rules.

The FCC has been unwilling or unable to produce any evidence an attack occurred—not to the reporters who’ve requested and even sued over it, and not to U.S. lawmakers who’ve demanded to see it. Instead, the agency conducted a quiet campaign to bolster its cyberattack story with the aid of friendly and easily duped reporters, chiefly by spreading word of an earlier cyberattack that its own security staff say never happened.

The FCC’s system was overwhelmed on the night of May 7, 2017, after comedian John Oliver, host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, directed his audience to flood the agency with comments supporting net neutrality. In the immediate aftermath, the agency claimed the comment system had been deliberately impaired due to a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS). Net neutrality supporters, however, accused the agency of fabricating the attack to absolve itself from failing to keep the system online.

The system similarly crashed after Oliver ordered his viewers to the FCC website in 2014. The FCC, at the time led by Democrat Tom Wheeler, determined that the comment system had been affected by a surge of internet traffic. The issue was compounded, sources told Gizmodo, by a weakness in the system’s out-of-date software.

Importantly, the agency never blamed a malicious attack for the system’s downtime in 2014—not in any official statement.

But in May 2017, under the Trump-appointed chairman, Ajit Pai, at least two FCC officials quietly pushed a fallacious account of the 2014 incident, attempting to persuade reporters that the comment system had long been the target of DDoS attacks. “There *was* a DDoS event right after the [John Oliver] video in 2014,” one official told reporters at FedScoop, according to emails reviewed by Gizmodo.

David Bray, who served as the FCC’s chief information officer from 2013 until June 2017, assured reporters in a series of off-the-record exchanges that a DDoS attack had occurred three years earlier. More shocking, however, is that Bray claimed Wheeler, the former FCC chairman, had covered it up.

According to emails from Bray to reporters, Wheeler was concerned that if the FCC publicly admitted there was an attack, it would likely incite “copycats.”

“That’s just flat out false,” said Gigi Sohn, former counselor to Chairman Wheeler. “We didn’t want to say it because Bray had no hard proof that it was a DDoS attack. Just like the second time.”

Bray’s exchanges with reporters, which took place via email, were obtained by American Oversight, a watchdog group, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Gizmodo reviewed the more than 1,300 pages of records last week.

The FCC has not responded to requests for comment.

In August, Gizmodo revealed that Bray had been the anonymous source behind reports that the FCC had been “hacked” in 2014. Multiple FCC sources—including a security contractor who worked on the comment system at the time—confirmed that no evidence was ever found showing a malicious attack caused the system’s downtime during Oliver’s show.

Multiple sources said that Bray, the senior official responsible for maintaining the comment system, had alone pushed the cyberattack narrative internally. When he was unable to produce proof, they said, he reached out to a reporter. After requesting anonymity, Bray contradicted the agency’s official story, claiming an attack was responsible. The conflicting accounts led to confusion in the press over whether Oliver’s call to action was actually responsible for the FCC’s technical failures.

“The security team was in agreement that this event was not an attack,” a former FCC security contractor told Gizmodo of the 2014 outage. “The security team produced no report suggesting it was an attack. The security team could not identify any records or evidence to indicate this type of attack occurred as described by Bray.” The contractor’s statements were supported by Sohn and confirmed by two other sources with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named or quoted.

“I have seen no evidence of a DDoS attack on the FCC comment system,” FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel told Gizmodo. “But I did see millions of Americans write in to the FCC to stop its misguided effort to roll back net neutrality. It’s time for the agency to own up to what really happened.”

Bray is not the only FCC official last year to push dubious accounts to reporters. Mark Wigfield, the FCC’s deputy director of media relations, told Politico: “there were similar DDoS attacks back in 2014 right after the Jon Oliver [sic] episode.” According to emails between Bray and FedScoop, the FCC’s Office of Media Relations likewise fed cooked-up details about an unverified cyberattack to the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal apparently swallowed the FCC’s revised history of the incident, reporting that the agency “also revealed that the 2014 show had been followed by DDoS attacks too,” as if it were a fact that had been concealed for several years. After it was published, the Journal’s article, authored by tech reporter John McKinnon, was forwarded by Bray to reporters at other outlets and portrayed as a factual telling of events. Bray also emailed the story to several private citizens who had contacted the FCC with questions and concerns about the comment system’s issues.

In doing so, the FCC was apparently using the Journal as a way to bolster its own unsubstantiated claims, which the agency’s security staff, and its former leadership, had internally dismissed.

In several emails, the FCC encouraged journalists to compare the 2017 incident to a DDoS attack on the Pokémon Go mobile game a year before. Michael Krigsman, a columnist for ZDNet, took the bait, despite the FCC continuing to withholding any proof an attack occurred. Krigsman wrote, unqualifiedly: “It’s similar to the distributed denial of service attack on Pokemon Go in July 2016.”

(In later exchanges with Bray, Krigsman turned on one of his own colleagues, who had published a story about the FCC’s refusal to release proof there was an attack. In one email, Krigsman encouraged the FCC to demand a correction for the story, while instructing Bray to complain to his colleague’s boss. Amazingly, Krigsman then encouraged the FCC to publicly admonish his own publication.)

Krigsman’s own flattering piece about Bray was, like the Journal’s report, circulated to security reporters and described as a “good article that does get the technical facts correct on what happened.”

Bray’s claim that Wheeler knew that DDoS attacks had occurred, but withheld it from the public “out of concern of copycats,” is an allegation that has never been made publicly. It is also refuted by numerous former and current FCC officials with whom Gizmodo spoke recently and over the past year.

Wheeler declined our request to comment.

Bray’s claim about Wheeler also appears in a draft copy of a blog post written by Bray on Chairman Pai’s behalf. It appears to have never been published online. One line from the draft reads: “This happened in 2014, though at the time we chose not to talk about the automated programs denying service to the commenting system since we didn’t want to invite copycats.”

As with Bray’s claim about a 2014 attack, the FCC has repeatedly failed to present any evidence that its servers—which, unlike in 2014, now reside on a cloud infrastructure—were bombarded by malicious traffic following Oliver’s net neutrality segment last year. However, in response to inquiries from Senators Ron Wyden and Brian Schatz last year, the FCC stated that the disruption was caused by what it called “a non-traditional DDoS attack.” (Bray was also the first official to claim a DDoS attack occurred in May 2017.)

The agency said it detected “patterns of disruptions that show abnormal behavior outside the scope of a lobbying surge,” which it said included an “extremely high level of atypical cloud-based traffic” directed toward the comment system’s API interface. “From our analysis of the logs, we believe these automated bot programs appeared to be cloud-based and not associated with IP addresses usually linked to individual human filers,” the agency said.

The FCC has refused to release any documentation showing an investigation into the comment system’s downtime occurred. According to the FCC, the FBI declined to investigate the matter, saying it “did not appear to rise to the level of a major incident that would trigger further FBI involvement.” The FBI declined to confirm or deny any contact with the FCC about the issue.

The fact that an investigation at the FCC would have been carried out by an official who had earlier refused to accept the formal findings of the FCC’s own security professions, and then anonymously leaked claims contradicting them, only further casts suspicion on the FCC’s story.

Last July, the agency refused to release more than 200 pages of documents related to the incident in response to a FOIA request filed by Gizmodo. In a formal letter, the agency claimed that while its IT staff had observed a cyberattack taking place, those observations “did not result in written documentation.” A federal watchdog investigation, which is ongoing, followed in October.

In the more than 1,300 emails released to American Oversight last month, the FCC redacted every internal conversation about the 2017 incident between FCC employees, citing either attorney-client communications or deliberative process privilege. (The FOIA exemption appears to be very liberally applied, as it is typically reserved for discussions in which “governmental decisions and policies are formulated.”)

The agency also redacted every discussion between staff last year regarding how to respond to inquiries about the incident from U.S. senators; all internal discussions about how to respond to members of the press; as well as an internal newsletter from the day after the agency claims it was attacked.

Demonstrating how overeager the agency is to redact emails from public records, its attorneys also redacted a year-old Politico newsletter in full:

In addition to being acquired by American Oversight, the records were produced in a lawsuit brought by BuzzFeed reporter Kevin Collier, who told Gizmodo that he intends to challenge the redactions in court. (Collier is represented pro bono by New York attorney Dan Novack, who also represents Gizmodo in an ongoing case against the FBI.)

“Some of these messages are probably correctly redacted, but avoiding potential embarrassment is not a legitimate reason for the government to conceal an email,” Austin Evers, American Oversight’s executive director, said. “We were skeptical of the FCC’s explanations about its online comment system issues last May, and it’s clear that we still don’t have the full story about what happened.”
https://gizmodo.com/fcc-emails-show-...s-d-1826535344





Net Neutrality will be Repealed Monday Unless Congress Takes Action

Senate voted to save net neutrality, but the House hasn't scheduled a vote.
Jon Brodkin

With net neutrality rules scheduled to be repealed on Monday, Senate Democrats are calling on House Speaker Paul Ryan to schedule a vote that could preserve the broadband regulations.

The US Senate voted on May 16 to reverse the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of net neutrality rules, but a House vote—and President Trump's signature—is still needed. Today, the entire Senate Democratic Caucus wrote a letter to Ryan urging him to allow a vote on the House floor.

"The rules that this resolution would restore were enacted by the FCC in 2015 to prevent broadband providers from blocking, slowing down, prioritizing, or otherwise unfairly discriminating against Internet traffic that flows across their networks," the letter said. "Without these protections, broadband providers can decide what content gets through to consumers at what speeds and could use this power to discriminate against their competitors or other content." The letter was spearheaded by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai led a commission vote to repeal the rules in December 2017, but the rules remain on the books because the repeal was contingent on US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approval of modified information-collection requirements. The OMB approval came last month, allowing Pai to schedule the repeal for Monday, June 11.

Democrats need more votes in House

In the Senate, the entire Democratic Caucus and three Republicans voted in favor of restoring net neutrality rules. The vote was 52-47. Republicans hold a 235-193 advantage in the House.

When contacted by Ars, a spokesperson for Speaker Ryan declined to comment. The House's Republican leadership doesn't appear likely to seek a vote of the full House.

Even if Republican leadership doesn't want to schedule a vote, the House would be required to vote on the resolution if a majority of representatives sign a discharge petition.

"More than 170 representatives have already indicated their support for the same resolution in the House," advocacy group Demand Progress said. "Two hundred and eighteen signatures are needed in order to force the [Congressional Review Act] resolution to the floor, increasingly within reach following the bipartisan vote in the Senate."

Trump could veto the bill if it passes the House.

Republicans are pushing alternate net neutrality bills with much weaker rules. One Republican bill would let Internet service providers charge online services for priority access to Internet users and prevent the FCC and state governments from imposing stricter net neutrality rules.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-takes-action/





States Defy FCC Repeal of Net Neutrality
Harper Neidig

States are pushing their own net neutrality laws and rules in defiance of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) repeal, heightening the possibility that supporters will be waging another legal battle over the popular Obama-era regulations.

Washington and Oregon have already passed their own laws to fill the void left by the FCC’s repeal, and California appears to be close behind after the state Senate passed a net neutrality bill on Wednesday.

A total of 29 states have proposed their own open internet legislation, according to Gigi Sohn, a fellow at Georgetown Law who’s been tracking the initiatives.

And five Democratic governors have gone with another tactic: issuing executive orders that prohibit the state from doing business with any broadband company that violates the principles of net neutrality.

The FCC’s repeal order included a provision preempting states from creating their own net neutrality rules, and this movement could lay the groundwork for a court battle over states’ rights to implement their own consumer protections.

A potential industry lawsuit against the states that have passed net neutrality laws could hold some promise for net neutrality supporters, says Marc Martin, a communications and technology lawyer at Perkins Coie.

“It’s not a slam dunk” despite the preemption clause, Martin said. “It’ll be interesting, I think that is one of the more vulnerable parts of the repeal overall.”

If companies like AT&T and Verizon do decide to sue California or Washington, it would open up yet another front in the fight over the net neutrality repeal, which has already prompted a lawsuit from a coalition of state attorneys general and consumer groups, as well as a Democratic legislative campaign in Congress to preserve the popular rules.

Even if some of the efforts face long odds of succeeding, Democrats see plenty of reasons for fighting back against the repeal.

Numerous polls have shown that the rules are extremely popular, and supporters warn that leaving a regulatory void over the broadband industry could give providers the ability to abuse their power over internet access by discriminating against certain sites or prioritizing ones with which they are affiliated.

The California bill that’s being considered by the state’s assembly was written by Sen. Scott Wiener (D), who says that state legislators now have a responsibility to regulate the industry and preserve an open internet.

“The FCC’s action left a huge void with real-life ramifications in terms of the [internet service providers] being able to pick winners and losers on the internet, which is exactly what net neutrality prohibits,” Wiener said in a phone interview with The Hill.

Wiener’s bill would put in place the restrictions against blocking sites, throttling connection speeds and creating so-called internet fast lanes that were in the 2015 order. But it would also go a step further in banning “zero rating,” a practice by which wireless providers let consumers use certain services without it counting against their data limit. The legislator argues that zero rating is used to steer consumers away from smaller competitors.

The California state Senate passed another net neutrality bill in January, but supporters say that Wiener’s is more comprehensive. Sohn, who served as an adviser to former Democratic FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, says it’s the strongest bill being considered at the state level.

“If it passes the general assembly, it automatically becomes the de facto standard by which every other net neutrality law is measured, which is why the [internet service providers] are so desperate to block it,” she said.

The industry and most Republicans have also been pushing for Congress to pass a replacement to the FCC rules that would codify some of the net neutrality principles and put an end to the uncertainty that broadband providers are facing now that they’ve pushed through the repeal.

“If the states prevail, you’re going to have a patchwork quilt of regulations,” said Martin. “It’s just calling out for a federal solution.”

But those who supported the 2015 rules don’t believe that federal legislators can come up with protections that go far enough.

“With this Congress and this president, my confidence level is not high,” Wiener said. “I would love to have one uniform, robust federal standard protecting net neutrality, but given that the FCC has left a void, the states have to fill it.”
http://thehill.com/regulation/techno...net-neutrality





Google’s Free Wifi is Becoming a Way of Life in India
Sushma U N

American internet search giant Google has completed the rollout of one of the world’s biggest public wifi projects in India.

On June 07, Google said it now offers free high-speed public wifi at 400 railway stations in Asia’s third-largest economy, in partnership with the government-owned Indian Railways and RailTel, which operates a fibre network along the country’s massive network of train tracks.

The company had announced the initiative back in 2015 during prime minister Narendra Modi’s visit to its headquarters in Mountain View, California. The Mumbai Central station in India’s financial capital was the first to get the facility in January 2016.

Now, over 8 million people use the service, Google said in a blog post. “On average, people consume 350MB of data per session, roughly the size of a half-hour television episode, and over half of the people using Google Station engage in multiple online sessions a day,” the company said.

The internet speed Google provides at the stations is faster than several paid services available in India. Free public wifi “has a time limit, not a download limit. I believe you get timed out after an hour or so. But with these speeds, you can download a hell of a lot in an hour,” a Reddit user noted in January 2016.

Although India is the world’s second-largest smartphone market and internet costs here have been falling, speed remains a big problem. The country’s 4.1 megabits per second (mbps) average internet speed is Asia’s slowest.

In the blog post announcing the completion of the project, Google shared stories of people who have benefitted from it. The list includes Shrinath, a porter at the Ernakulam Junction station in the southern state of Kerala, who used the facility to study online and prepare for the Kerala Public Service entrance examination.

Very cool to hear the story of Shrinath, a porter at a train station in Cochin, India who passed the civil service exam with hard work and studying using wifi at the station. Proud of our partnership with @railminndia @PMOIndia to bring wifi to 400 stations across India https://t.co/FRSa8b5QiL

— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) June 7, 2018

In recent months, the company has been working to take its Google Stations programme outside railway stations to spaces like gardens, hospitals, police stations, and offices. In January, it said it had piloted the project with hotspots in the western Indian city of Pune, Maharashtra.

“We realise that not everyone in India lives or works near a train station,” Google said in the blog post, “So we’re moving beyond train stations and into the rest of the cities.”
https://qz.com/1300522/googles-free-...llion-indians/





The 13,000 'Savage' Layoffs at BT could be Preparing the Company for a Sale, Insiders Say
Jim Edwards

• Insiders at BT say the 13,000 layoffs announced on May 11, 2018, are much more "savage" than expected.
• Gavin Patterson, BT's CEO, will also step down later this year.
• The company is rife with the rumour that management is trying to dress the company up for some kind of transaction, possibly involving Deutsche Telekom.
• BT is hobbled by years of technical debt. Its main internal database is decades old.
• It is so fragile that a fire in a Rochdale datacentre crippled the company internally for 10 days in 2016.
• Any acquiring company that can free itself of BT's £11 billion pension deficit obligation might inherit a nice little monopoly over Britain's internet.

In years past, when Gavin Patterson, the CEO of BT, has wanted to launch a major new initiative, he broadcast an all-hands video to BT's 106,000 employees.

Internally, the events have been a big deal: When BT launched its new brand values effort in 2017, the video was presented by Clare Balding and Jake Humphrey, the BT Sport channel's most famous TV presenters. Large screens were erected in BT's major offices. Balloons and food were provided. The whole company stopped to watch together.

Last week, however, "it was basically just Gavin sat at his desk looking into his webcam. It was a funereal atmosphere. There was no razzmatazz, no fun," a source who has worked at the phone, internet and cable TV provider for over a decade told Business Insider. "Everyone stopped work and watched Gavin for an hour."

That's because Patterson was telling his staff that 13,000 of them were about to be laid off — 12% of the entire workforce of 106,000 people, based in 180 different countries. It is one of the biggest rounds of corporate layoffs a British company has ever seen.

"The job cuts are a lot more savage than people expected," our source says.

"People inside the company were expecting another round of 5,000 this time last year. But 13,000 is a lot." Inside BT right now, stress levels have gone through the roof. "Nobody has done any work today because everyone is just in meetings about the announcement, or is talking about it. For weeks, no decisions will get made about anything," the source says.

The cuts are expected to fall most heavily on BT's "management" layer. That word is in quotes because almost anyone who is not an actual telecoms engineer — "a man in a van," so to speak — is regarded as a "manager" at BT. Many of these managers don't actually manage anyone underneath them. They are "singleton managers." Those are the jobs most at risk. They are also the people doing all the work, our source says.

It's not just about layoffs and redundancies.

What if the job cuts are preparation for the sale of BT?

The gossip inside BT is that the entire future of the company is at stake, and what form it will survive in. Although BT is essentially Britain's monopoly internet provider — a description its management would doubtless aggressively dispute — it is also beset by decades of intractable "technical debt" and an actual financial debt to its pension fund of £11 billion.

Insiders believe the cuts — along with the depressed stock price — are part of a plan to prepare the company to be sold, possibly in a transaction involving Deutsche Telekom. A spokesperson for BT told Business Insider that the company did not comment on rumours and gossip. The spokesperson did say that the company has reached a funding agreement with the pension trustees. Deutsche Telekom did not respond to a request for comment.

To get an idea of just how extreme BT's problems are, consider this little-publicised episode from the company's history:

In 2016, a fire broke out in a BT datacentre in Rochdale, England, and it paralysed large parts of the company internally for about 10 days, a source tells Business Insider. "A contractor put a battery in the wrong way round in a storage array, and it burned through some discs. No data was lost. People could still make phone calls. But the company couldn't operate on a normal basis, people couldn't use the internal services." The intranet was down for a week, says our source (who worked at the company for 19 years).

BT said the fire was not that serious. “In 2016 a storage array at our Rochdale data centre overheated following routine maintenance work. This affected a proportion of BT’s back-office systems. All business critical systems were restored within a day,” a spokesperson said.

Either way, it's an example of BT's "technical debt," the concept which describes the toll in time and expenses it takes companies to maintain legacy technology that should have been replaced years ago. Or, in BT's case, decades ago.

The mere act of running BT as a company cost £16 billion in 2017, according to its financial statements, and that's one of the factors that drove Patterson's decision to lay off 13,000 people.

The technical debt at BT is extreme, our source says.

For instance, many of BT's exchanges — the local sites that connect your house to BT's "trunk line" phone and internet services — are still dependent on VAX minicomputers, a technology that dates back to the 1970s. VAX machines have less computing power than your mobile phone.

Most people don't notice BT's exchanges. They are small buildings, about the size of a church hall, probably built in 1940s, 50s, or 60s. There is one every three or four miles in urban areas. You can recognise them by the BT sign on the front and a load of BT vans parked outside. "That's the bit that connects the copper wire from your house to the phone network," our source says.

"The exchanges are pretty filthy and badly looked after," our source says. "This ancient stuff in the exchanges gets covered in dust and dirt because everything is so filthy and old. Dust gets into them and the vibrations [from traffic] pushes chips out of the memory boards, so you have to hoover it. It sounds ludicrous," our source says.

This is why Asian countries like South Korea have fibre optic broadband, with internet speeds up to a gigabit per second, while Britain struggles along on copper wires that typically deliver only 76 megabits per second. Asia built an entirely new infrastructure from scratch. Britain is trying to use a copper-wire phone system initially installed in the 1920s to run the web.

But that's how BT keeps the phones and internet working.

VAX machines are "in half a dozen exchanges around the city, if one goes down loads of people lose their internet access. There is stuff like that all over the company. No one has really had the guts to tackle that. This is why BT is so slow to market. Every time they build a new product they have to integrate with all these old systems."

The situation is so bad that "people would refuse to speak to me if I mentioned the words 'technical debt,'" our source says. "They'd say, 'we're not talking about that.'"

A BT spokesperson said the company was investing £3.7 billion over the next two years into an "all-IP fibre network that enables seamless converged access across fixed, WiFi, and mobile."

Among the oldest systems at BT is its "CSS" mainframe.

"The main company database is CSS, it runs on an ancient mainframe. It's literally ancient. That's the database that holds all the records of all BT customers and all of the phone calls anyone makes. That's the centre of the company's IT." The CSS data goes back years. Our source says the system is so old that he doesn't even know what the initials CSS originally stood for. "In 20 years [of working at the company] no one has ever said what it stands for!" (It originally stood for "Customer Service System.")

"It was old in 1998. You had to log in via a special terminal, via special text. No one has ever tackled it. Somebody new buying the company would just go, 'let's scrap this piece of shit.'"

Inside BT right now, the gossip is that the layoff plan is about exactly that — preparing the company to be acquired by someone bold enough to actually say, "let's scrap this piece of shit."

The gossip — which obviously cannot be confirmed because it is speculation — runs like this:

Deutsche Telekom owns 12% of BT and has a seat on the board through BT's acquisition of EE, the wireless service provider that is a joint venture under Deutsche Telekom. BT, for all its troubles, controls a virtual monopoly on British phone and internet service provision. BT informally controls Openreach, the service infrastructure company that provides the wire from your home to BT's exchanges. Because of Openreach's dominant market position it has a legal duty to provide everyone in the UK with a phone line and to sell its services to other companies like Sky or Vodafone on equal terms to BT.

Although Openreach is a different company to BT, everyone inside BT knows that BT basically controls it. "The Openreach split is very odd. It's not really a split in truth because everyone in the company [BT] works on stuff that Openreach are doing. The regulators must know. There is formal legal separation but there isn't real separation." Last year, BT and Ofcom (the UK government telecom regulator) agreed a framework to make sure that Openreach would treat all customers fairly. Sharon White, Ofcom's chief executive, said at the time: "Ofcom will keep a careful eye on whether Openreach is working for telecoms users, ensuring BT and Openreach live by the letter and spirit of their commitments."

All that infrastructure — some of it consisting of actual tunnels between exchanges and BT — is valuable because to compete against BT, other companies would have to start building from scratch.

So BT maintains a virtual monopoly on British phone and internet provision, despite the comically outdated technical infrastructure.
If BT could ditch its pension obligations, its finances would be fundamentally different

Monopolies are valuable if you can control their costs. BT's revenues may be in decline (down 1% to £24 billion) but it is profitable (£7.5 billion EBITDA). Those profits are spoiled by one of the biggest costs BT is wrestling with: the pension plan deficit. There is a £11 billion hole between the plan's funding and its future obligations to retired BT workers.

That pension scheme is subject to a "crown guarantee." When the government privatised the former General Post Office in 1984, it promised it would back the pension fund even in the unlikely event that BT went bankrupt.

Put all this together and you can see what an aggressive acquirer might do with BT:

• Wait until the share price is depressed (it's currently at a low of around £2.19, less than half what it was in 2015).
• Cut out as much of the workforce as you can (making the earnings per share look a bit better).
• Use a legal manoeuvre to technically end the company known as "BT."
• Orphan the pension fund to the government.

Hey presto — you'd be in charge of a monopoly internet provider with fewer legacy costs and a nicely dominant position in the UK market.

Our source thinks Deutsche Telekom may have something like this in mind. Deutsche Telekom has wanted to acquire BT since 2016, according to sources who spoke to Capacity Media.

BT staff are riven with speculation about who will get the axe and who will stay.

A BT spokesperson told Business Insider that was not the intention of the layoff plan. "The focus is on taking out layers of management in BT because there's too many of them, freeing up £1.5 billion of cost savings that can be reinvested ... in new networks such as ultra-fast broadband and 5G." BT wants to hire 6,000 more engineers as well, the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson did confirm that the pension fund is subject to a crown guarantee, however.

In the meantime, BT staff are speculating about who will get the axe and who will stay. Among the IT staff, the more highly qualified, ambitious workers will be tempted to take a voluntary redundancy package, which might typically consist of a week's pay for every year worked, up to a maximum of 48 weeks. BT has many longtime employees for whom the idea of nine months' pay in a lump sum would sound very attractive.

The people who won't be offered redundancy packages are those who are already close to retirement, on sick leave, maternity leave, or on BT's "performance plans" (for underperforming staff), our source speculates, based on past redundancy offers. "So the remaining workforce ends up being really weird. Everyone is in their late 50s, on performance plans, is sick, and people who wish they'd gone because now they're left with everyone else's work."

Our source says he won't miss trying to maintain BT's prehistoric architecture. "I don't miss the stress of something breaking and me going, 'I have no idea where we start with this.'"
https://www.newstimes.com/technology...e-12909131.php





Apple Approves Update to Messaging App Telegram Amid Russia Flap
Joseph Menn

Apple has approved an updated version of the Telegram messaging service, a day after Telegram complained that it had been prevented from getting software improvements into the hands of iPhone owners worldwide.

Telegram Chief Executive Pavel Durov announced the turnabout on Twitter, thanking Apple and CEO Tim Cook for getting the latest Telegram version “to millions of users, despite the recent setbacks.”

On Thursday, Durov had said Apple had refused to allow updates in its App Store since April. Apple has thus far resisted a Russian order that month to remove the application from the store entirely, and the update delay sparked concern that Apple was moving to appease authorities there.

Without an update, not all Telegram features worked on the latest iPhone software, and Telegram also said it was running afoul of new European data privacy laws.

If the ban had become permanent, Telegram would have grown unsafe over time as security flaws were discovered but unable to be patched through the normal update process.

Neither Apple nor Telegram explained the reason for the prior lack of approval or for the reversal. On Friday, Apple did not respond to requests for comment.

Apple’s control over the applications in its store enables it to inspect and approve or disapprove of every new version, including updates that fix minor technical issues. If it does not approve an updated version of the software, it cannot be distributed through the App Store.

“Russia banned Telegram on its territory in April because we refused to provide decryption keys for all our users’ communications to Russia’s security agencies,” Durov said Thursday. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it needed to guard against security threats.

After Russia’s decision to block the popular messaging service, protest rallies in Moscow against what demonstrators called internet censorship drew thousands. Telegram is challenging the block in Russian courts.

Governments have stepped up pressure on technology companies to more actively police content in more forms, including applications.

In China, Apple recently banned Virtual Private Network applications and removed the New York Times from its digital marketplace.

Apple has said publicly that it would notify developers when applications were removed at a government’s request, that it would limit takedowns to specific countries when possible, and that beginning in the second half of this year it would note in periodic transparency reports the number of requests for application removals.

None of that would necessarily cover restrictions on updates.

Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco, additional reporting by Jack Stubbs in London
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ru...-idUKKCN1IX61V





Facebook Fends Off New NYT Charges Over Data Access

Facebook Inc (FB.O) on Sunday rejected claims by the New York Times that it had allowed Apple and other major device makers “deep” access to users’ personal data saying any such links were tightly controlled and largely subject to users’ consent.

Facebook shares fell 1.3 percent to $191.50 before the bell on Monday, in what was otherwise an upbeat start for Wall Street.

The software referred to by the newspaper was launched 10 years ago and was used by about 60 companies, including Amazon (AMZN.O), Apple (AAPL.O), Blackberry (BB.TO), HTC (2498.TW), Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Samsung (005930.KS), Facebook’s vice president of product partnerships Ime Archibong wrote in a blog post.

The Times said that Facebook allowed companies access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such information with outsiders.

Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing, the newspaper said.

“Contrary to claims by the New York Times, friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends,” said Ime Archibong, Facebook’s vice president of product partnerships.

Facebook has been under scrutiny from regulators and shareholders after it failed to protect the data of some 87 million users that was shared with now-defunct political data firm Cambridge Analytica.

The data scandal was first reported in March by the New York Times and London’s Observer.

Archibong also said that these cases were “very different” from the use of data by third party developers in the Cambridge row.

Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-fa...-idUKKCN1J01HV





Facebook Confirms Data Sharing with Chinese Companies
David Shepardson

Facebook Inc (FB.O) said Tuesday it has data sharing partnerships with at least four Chinese companies including Huawei, the world’s third largest smartphone maker, which has come under scrutiny from U.S. intelligence agencies on security concerns.

The social media company said Huawei (002502.SZ), computer maker Lenovo Group (0992.HK), and smartphone makers OPPO and TCL Corp (000100.SZ) were among about 60 companies worldwide that received access to some user data after they signed contracts to re-create Facebook-like experiences for their users.

Members of Congress raised concerns after The New York Times reported on the practice on Sunday, saying that data of users’ friends could have been accessed without their explicit consent. Facebook denied that and said the data access was to allow its users to access account features on mobile devices.

More than half of the partnerships have already been wound down, Facebook said. It said on Tuesday it would end the Huawei agreement later this week. It is ending the other three partnerships with Chinese firms as well.

Chinese telecommunications companies have come under scrutiny from U.S. intelligence officials who argue they provide an opportunity for foreign espionage and threaten critical U.S. infrastructure, something the Chinese have consistently denied.

Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who asked Facebook if Huawei was among the companies that received user data, said in a statement that the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee had raised concerns about Huawei dating back in 2012.

“The news that Facebook provided privileged access to Facebook’s API to Chinese device makers like Huawei and TCL raises legitimate concerns, and I look forward to learning more about how Facebook ensured that information about their users was not sent to Chinese servers,” Warner said.

API, or application program interface, essentially specifies how software components should interact.

A Facebook executive said the company had carefully managed the access it gave to the Chinese companies.

“Facebook along with many other U.S. tech companies have worked with them and other Chinese manufacturers to integrate their services onto these phones,” Francisco Varela, vice president of mobile partnerships for Facebook, said in a statement. “Facebook’s integrations with Huawei, Lenovo, OPPO and TCL were controlled from the get-go — and we approved the Facebook experiences these companies built.”

Varela added that “given the interest from Congress, we wanted to make clear that all the information from these integrations with Huawei was stored on the device, not on Huawei’s servers.”

Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she would not comment on cooperation between companies and knew nothing of the situation.

“But we hope that the U.S. side can provide a fair, transparent, open and friendly environment for Chinese companies’ investment and operational activities,” Hua told reporters.

RESPONSE DEMANDED FROM ZUCKERBERG

Earlier on Tuesday, the Senate Commerce Committee demanded that Facebook’s chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, respond to a report that user data was shared with at least 60 device manufacturers, weeks after the social media company said it would change its practices after a political firm got access to data from millions of users.

Senators John Thune, the committee’s Republican chairman, and Bill Nelson, the ranking Democrat, on Tuesday wrote to Zuckerberg after The New York Times reported that manufacturers were able to access data of users’ friends even if the friends denied permission to share the information with third parties.

In April, the Federal Communications Commission proposed new rules that would bar purchases by government programs from companies that it says pose a security threat to U.S. telecoms networks, a move aimed at Huawei and ZTE Corp (000063.SZ), China’s No. 2 telecommunications equipment maker. The Pentagon in May ordered retail outlets on U.S. military bases to stop selling Huawei and ZTE phones, citing potential security risks.

ZTE was not among the firms that received access to Facebook data, but it has been the subject of U.S. national security concerns.

The letter asks if Facebook audited partnerships with the device manufacturers under a 2011 consent order with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It also asked if Zuckerberg wanted to revise his testimony before the Senate in April.

Facebook said it looks forward to addressing any questions the Commerce Committee has.

Facebook still has not answered hundreds of written questions submitted from members of Congress after Zuckerberg’s testimony in April, according to congressional staff.

The data sharing mentioned in the Times story was used over the last decade by about 60 companies, including Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Blackberry Ltd (BB.TO), HTC Corp (2498.TW), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS), Ime Archibong, Facebook vice president of product partnerships, wrote in a blog post on June 3.

The FTC confirmed in March that it was investigating Facebook’s privacy practices.

Facebook allowed Apple and other device makers to have “deep” access to users’ personal data without their consent, according to the Times.

The Times said Facebook allowed companies access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after it had declared it would no longer share the information with outsiders.

Archibong said the data was only shared with device makers in order to improve Facebook users’ access to the information. “These partners signed agreements that prevented people’s Facebook information from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences.”

Regulators and authorities in several countries have increased scrutiny of Facebook after it failed to protect the data of some 87 million users that was shared with now-defunct political data firm Cambridge Analytica.

Two Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee, Edward Markey and Richard Blumenthal, on Monday also wrote to Zuckerberg.

Archibong said the cases were “very different” from the use of data by third-party developers in the Cambridge row.

New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood said on Monday the “data-sharing partnerships with other corporations” is part of the ongoing investigation into the reported misuse of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica.

Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Leslie Adler
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-f...-idUSKCN1J11TY





'A Cellphone Taped to Someone's Wrist': Judge Finds Apple Watch Wearer Guilty of Distracted Driving
Shona Ghosh,

It's probably a bad idea to check your Apple Watch while driving.

That's the lesson from a Canadian judge who found a woman guilty of distracted driving for looking at her Apple Watch while stopped at a traffic light. He rejected her claim that she was only checking the time.

According to The National Post, part of the reason is because the Apple Watch has more features than your average watch. It is no safer to look at while driving than "a cellphone taped to someone’s wrist," the judge is quoted as saying.

The judge convicted Victoria Ambrose from Guelph, Ontario, of holding or using a hand-held communication device while driving, something that's illegal under Canadian law.

According to the Post, Ambrose was stopped at a red light in Guelph in April when a local police officer spotted the glow of her Apple Watch. He reportedly testified that she looked up and down four times and, when the light turned green, she stayed stationary while other vehicles moved forward. The officer gave her a ticket, and she was fined $400 ($309/£232) for the stop.

But Ambrose had said she was simply checking the time — which on an Apple Watch can involve waking it up by tapping the screen. She also argued that a smartwatch isn't a handheld device.

Justice of the Peace Lloyd Phillipps disagreed and said it was "abundantly clear from the evidence that Ms Ambrose was distracted when the officer made his observations."

According to 9to5Mac, Apple is already aware of the problem and may be working to fix it. The company was awarded a patent application last March for something that looks like a driving mode on Apple Watch, which would suppress "non-urgent" notifications such as email while the wearer is driving.
https://www.newstimes.com/technology...e-12965141.php





French School Students to be Banned from Using Mobile Phones

Pupils will not be allowed to use phones on schools grounds after September
Angelique Chrisafis

French school students will be banned from using mobile phones anywhere on school grounds from September, after the lower house of parliament passed what it called a “detox” law for a younger generation increasingly addicted to screens.

The centrist president Emmanuel Macron had promised during his election campaign that he would outlaw children’s phones in nursery, primary and middle-schools, until around the age of 15.

The new law bans phone-use by children in school playgrounds, at breaktimes and anywhere on school premises. Legislation passed in 2010 already states children should not use phones in class.

During a parliamentary debate, lawmakers from Macron’s La République En Marche party said banning phones in schools meant all children now had a legal “right to disconnect” from digital pressures during their school day.

Some in Macron’s party had initially sought to go even further, arguing that adults should set an example and the the ban should be extended to all staff in schools, making teachers surrender their phones on arrival each morning.

But Macron’s education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, brushed this aside, saying it wasn’t necessary to extend the ban to teachers and staff.

The minister said that the school phone ban for children would “make us all reflect on our phone use in society, including adults”.

But the leftwing MP Hervé Saulignac pointed out that, during the debate about children being dangerously addicted to phones and unable to concentrate on their studies, scores of lawmakers were sitting through the session absent-mindedly tapping away on their own phones.

Opposition parties warned that major questions remained about how to enforce the ban, which will affect millions of children. The details of how schools could put the law in place have been left deliberately open.

Politicians estimate that more than 90% of French children aged between 12 and 17 have a phone. Blanquer had previously suggested that children could place their phones in lockers when they arrive at school in the same way that government ministers “place their phone in a box before cabinet meetings”.

But some schools have complained that setting up individual lockers in huge schools would be costly, impractical and difficult to police. Rights groups warned that schools would not have the legal right to confiscate phones.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-mobile-phones





Apple Shuns the Tech Industry’s Apology Tour
Farhad Manjoo

Sorry, Apple’s not sorry.

There has been a theme at the tech industry’s big conferences this year: Facebook and other tech giants keep telling us that they’ve learned from their mistakes and are going to be a lot more thoughtful about the far-out stuff they plan on doing in the future.

Apple has been cool to this narrative, and it was striking how the company’s executives danced around the tech backlash story line from the stage on Monday at its annual conference for developers.

Though Apple acknowledged the darker side of society’s obsession with the digital world, it didn’t go anywhere near the idea that its own technology might bear any of the blame.

Apple did announce several new ways of letting adults and children limit how much time they spend on their phones. A tool called Screen Time, for example, is meant to help iPhone customers manage the time they spend on their devices. You can also add limits to how much you use certain apps. And parents will be able to use Screen Time to place limits on how their children use their iPhones.

Apple’s software chief, Craig Federighi, said the company felt it was time to address smartphones’ oversize impact on everyday life. “For some of us, it’s become such a habit we might not even recognize how distracted we’ve become,” he said.

These features looked quite handy — we will know for sure once they’re released to users this year. If they do push users to quit wasting so much time on Facebook and YouTube (where getting people to waste time is a big part of the business plan), they are sure to roil Apple’s relationship with others in tech.

But that is not Apple’s problem; it is more concerned about selling you a new phone.

Apple is also putting considerable resources into making its Watch stand apart from its phone, a direction that in the long run will create more opportunities to go without a phone. Are you wearing an Apple Watch instead of carrying an iPhone? In time, Apple may not care.

But at its event here, Apple’s support for what’s being called “digital well-being” often awkwardly butted up against Apple’s larger goal: to make the digital world so awesome, you can’t resist it.

The next iPhone will let you turn your face into an emoji, and now it can even do “tongue detection” — an animated version of your face can stick out its tongue when you do. With Apple’s new augmented reality system, the iPhone can turn Legos into a video game. But if you can’t even play with some Legos without reaching for your phone, isn’t that kind of a problem?

Apple wants to stand apart from the techlash with its emphasis on privacy and its oft-stated distaste for the excesses of the internet ad industry. On Monday, the company said its Safari web browser would disable tracking software, or cookies, that advertising companies like Facebook and Google embed in websites to track users’ activity across the internet.

The new Safari feature is a direct swipe at the data-collection practices of big internet companies that Apple has tried hard to separate itself from.

Apple argues that it has always been one of the more high-minded of the big tech companies, so it shouldn’t be lumped in with outfits like Facebook.

But that argument has always been a little complicated. Apple benefits from our obsession with social software; people buy its powerful phones to use Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp. Google pays Apple billions of dollars a year for the privilege of being the iPhone’s default search engine.

“We aim to put the customer at the center of everything we do,” Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said several times Monday.

That seemed like a promise as well as a backhanded defense. Apple will give you the world. What you do with it is your own problem.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/t...logy-tour.html





Apple Is Testing a Feature That Could Kill Police iPhone Unlockers

Apple’s new security feature, USB Restricted Mode, is in the iOS 12 Beta, and it could kill the popular iPhone unlocking tools for cops made by Cellebrite and GrayShift.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

This is part of an ongoing Motherboard series on the proliferation of phone cracking technology, the people behind it, and who is buying it. Follow along here.

On Monday, at its Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple teased the upcoming release of the iPhone’s operating system, iOS 12. Among its most anticipated features are group FaceTime, Animoji, and a ruler app.

But iOS 12’s killer feature might be something that’s been rumored for a while and wasn’t discussed at Apple’s event. It’s called USB Restricted Mode, and Apple has been including it in some of the iOS beta releases since iOS 11.3.

The feature essentially forces users to unlock the iPhone with the passcode when connecting it to a USB accessory everytime the phone has not been unlocked for one hour. That includes the iPhone unlocking devices that companies such as Cellebrite or GrayShift make, which police departments all over the world use to hack into seized iPhones.

“That pretty much kills [GrayShift’s product] GrayKey and Cellebrite,” Ryan Duff, a security researcher who has studied iPhone and is Director of Cyber Solutions at Point3 Security, told Motherboard in an online chat. “If it actually does what it says and doesn't let ANY type of data connection happen until it's unlocked, then yes. You can’t exploit the device if you can't communicate with it.”

“That pretty much kills GrayKey and Cellebrite.”

The last two iOS beta releases, 11.4.1 beta and 12 beta, have USB Restricted mode on by default. The feature is included in the Touch ID, Face ID and Passcode settings.

The one-hour time limit is a significant change from earlier tests, where the time limit was one week, according to several security researchers. This is significant because GrayShift had been advising its customers to simply make sure they unlocked the iPhone soon after obtaining it, according to documents reported by Motherboard earlier this year. That’s easy with a week-long limit, much harder with a time limit of just an hour.

“Unlock iPhone to allow USB accessories to connect when it has been more than an hour since your iPhone was locked,” reads an explainer in the settings.

In the 11.3 beta release notes, this is how Apple described the feature:

“To improve security, for a locked iOS device to communicate with USB accessories you must connect an accessory via lightning connector to the device while unlocked—or enter your device passcode while connected—at least once a week.”

Apple did not respond to a request for comment, asking whether USB Restricted Mode will make it to the final release.

Until today, despite being in some of the betas, the feature did not make it to 11.3 nor 11.4, the latest public release of iOS.

“I think it's clear they want to include it but are just trying to figure out what the implications of it will be and are obviously taking their time to get it right,” Duff said. “It's a pretty radical security change and I'm sure they want to make sure it's the right move to make before pushing it. They definitely don't want the scandal of removing a security feature because of something they didn't anticipate.”

Got a tip? You can contact this reporter securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, OTR chat at lorenzo@jabber.ccc.de, or email lorenzo@motherboard.tv

In April, when USB Restricted Mode was first introduced and it looked like it was going to end up in the public release of iOS 11.3, the makers of GrayKey, a relatively cheap tool to unlock iPhones that police departments all over the United States are buying, got worried.

“If a full seven days (168 hours) elapse [sic] since the last time iOS saved one of these events, the Lightning port is entirely disabled,” Thomas wrote in a blog post published in a customer-only portal, which Motherboard obtained at the time. “You cannot use it to sync or to connect to accessories. It is basically just a charging port at this point.”

An employee of GrayShift did not respond to a request for comment. A Cellebrite spokesperson did not respond to a voicemail requesting comment.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...rite-grayshift





Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and the Feud Over Killer Robots

As the tech moguls disagree over the risks presented by something that doesn’t exist yet, all of Silicon Valley is learning about unintended consequences of A.I.
Cade Metz

Mark Zuckerberg thought his fellow Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk was behaving like an alarmist.

Mr. Musk, the entrepreneur behind SpaceX and the electric-car maker Tesla, had taken it upon himself to warn the world that artificial intelligence was “potentially more dangerous than nukes” in television interviews and on social media.

So, on Nov. 19, 2014, Mr. Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, invited Mr. Musk to dinner at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. Two top researchers from Facebook’s new artificial intelligence lab and two other Facebook executives joined them.

As they ate, the Facebook contingent tried to convince Mr. Musk that he was wrong. But he wasn’t budging. “I genuinely believe this is dangerous,” Mr. Musk told the table, according to one of the dinner’s attendees, Yann LeCun, the researcher who led Facebook’s A.I. lab.

Mr. Musk’s fears of A.I., distilled to their essence, were simple: If we create machines that are smarter than humans, they could turn against us. (See: “The Terminator,” “The Matrix,” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.”) Let’s for once, he was saying to the rest of the tech industry, consider the unintended consequences of what we are creating before we unleash it on the world.

Neither Mr. Musk nor Mr. Zuckerberg would talk in detail about the dinner, which has not been reported before, or their long-running A.I. debate.

The creation of “superintelligence” — the name for the supersmart technological breakthrough that takes A.I. to the next level and creates machines that not only perform narrow tasks that typically require human intelligence (like self-driving cars) but can actually outthink humans — still feels like science fiction. But the fight over the future of A.I. has spread across the tech industry.

More than 4,000 Google employees recently signed a petition protesting a $9 million A.I. contract the company had signed with the Pentagon — a deal worth chicken feed to the internet giant, but deeply troubling to many artificial intelligence researchers at the company. Last week, Google executives, trying to head off a worker rebellion, said they wouldn’t renew the contract when it expires next year.

Artificial intelligence research has enormous potential and enormous implications, both as an economic engine and a source of military superiority. The Chinese government has said it is willing to spend billions in the coming years to make the country the world’s leader in A.I., while the Pentagon is aggressively courting the tech industry for help. A new breed of autonomous weapons can’t be far away.

All sorts of deep thinkers have joined the debate, from a gathering of philosophers and scientists held along the central California coast to an annual conference hosted in Palm Springs, Calif., by Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos.

“You can now talk about the risks of A.I. without seeming like you are lost in science fiction,” said Allan Dafoe, a director of the governance of A.I. program at the Future of Humanity Institute, a research center at the University of Oxford that explores the risks and opportunities of advanced technology.

And the public roasting of Facebook and other tech companies over the past few months has done plenty to raise the issue of the unintended consequences of the technology created by Silicon Valley.

In April, Mr. Zuckerberg spent two days answering questions from members of Congress about data privacy and Facebook’s role in the spread of misinformation before the 2016 election. He faced a similar grilling in Europe last month.

Facebook’s recognition that is was slow to understand what was going on has led to a rare moment of self-reflection in an industry that has long believed it is making the world a better place, whether the world likes it or not.

Even such influential figures as the Microsoft founder Bill Gates and the late Stephen Hawking have expressed concern about creating machines that are more intelligent than we are. Even though superintelligence seems decades away, they and others have said, shouldn’t we consider the consequences before it’s too late?

“The kind of systems we are creating are very powerful,” said Bart Selman, a Cornell University computer science professor and former Bell Labs researcher. “And we cannot understand their impact.”

The Imperfect Messenger

Pacific Grove is a tiny town on the central coast of California. A group of geneticists gathered there, in the winter of 1975 to discuss whether their work — gene editing — would end up harming the world. In January 2017, the A.I. community held a similar discussion in the beachside grove.

The private gathering at the Asilomar Hotel was organized by the Future of Life Institute, a think tank built to discuss the existential risks of A.I. and other technologies.

The heavy hitters of A.I. were in the room — among them Mr. LeCun, the Facebook A.I. lab boss who was at the dinner in Palo Alto, and who had helped develop a neural network, one of the most important tools in artificial intelligence today. Also in attendance was Nick Bostrom, whose 2014 book, “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies” had an outsized — some would argue fear-mongering — effect on the A.I. discussion; Oren Etzioni, a former computer science professor at the University of Washington who had taken over the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle; and Demis Hassabis, who heads DeepMind, an influential Google-owned A.I. research lab in London.

And so was Mr. Musk, who in 2015 had donated $10 million to the Cambridge, Mass., institute. That same year, he also helped create an independent artificial intelligence lab, OpenAI, with an explicit goal: create superintelligence with safeguards meant to ensure it won’t get out of control. It was a message that clearly aligned him with Mr. Bostrom.

On the second day of the retreat, Mr. Musk took part in a nine-person panel dedicated to the superintelligence question. Each panelist was asked if superintelligence was possible. As they passed the microphone down the line, each said “Yes,” until the microphone reached Mr. Musk. “No,” he said. The small auditorium rippled with knowing laughter. Everyone understood that Mr. Musk thought superintelligence was not only possible, but very dangerous.

Mr. Musk later added: “We are headed toward either superintelligence or civilization ending.”

At the end of the panel, Mr. Musk was asked how society can best live alongside superintelligence. What we needed, he said, was a direct connection between our brains and our machines. A few months later, he unveiled a start-up, called Neuralink, backed by $100 million that aimed to create that kind of so-called neural interface by merging computers with human brains.

Warnings about the risks of artificial intelligence have been around for years, of course. But few of those Cassandras have the tech cred of Mr. Musk. Few, if any, have spent as much time and money on it. And perhaps none has had as complicated a history with the technology.

Just a few weeks after Mr. Musk talked about his A.I. concerns at the dinner in Mr. Zuckerberg’s house, Mr. Musk phoned Mr. LeCun, asking for the names of top A.I. researchers who could work on his self-driving car project at Tesla. (That autonomous technology was in use at the time of two fatal Tesla car crashes, one in Florida in May 2016 and the other in March of this year.)

During a recent Tesla earnings call, Mr. Musk, who has struggled with questions about his company’s financial losses and concerns about the quality of its vehicles, chastised the news media for not focusing on the deaths that autonomous technology could prevent — a remarkable stance from someone who has repeated warned the world that A.I. is a danger to humanity.

The tussle in Palm Springs

There is a saying in Silicon Valley: We overestimate what can be done in three years and underestimate what can be done in 10.

On Jan. 27, 2016, Google’s DeepMind lab unveiled a machine that could beat a professional player at the ancient board game Go. In a match played a few months earlier, the machine, called AlphaGo, had defeated the European champion Fan Hui — five games to none.

Even top A.I. researchers had assumed it would be another decade before a machine could solve the game. Go is complex — there are more possible board positions than atoms in the universe — and the best players win not with sheer calculation, but through intuition. Two weeks before AlphaGo was revealed, Mr. LeCun said the existence of such a machine was unlikely.

A few months later, AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol, the best Go player of the last decade. The machine made moves that baffled human experts but ultimately led to victory.

Many researchers, including the leaders of DeepMind and OpenAI, believe the kind of self-learning technology that underpins AlphaGo provided a path to “superintelligence.” And they believe progress in this area will significantly accelerate in the coming years.

OpenAI recently “trained” a system to play a boat racing video game, encouraging it to win as many game points as it could. It proceeded to win those points but did so while spinning in circles, colliding with stone walls and ramming other boats.

It’s the kind of unpredictability that raise grave concerns about the rise of A.I., including superintelligence.

But the deep opposition to these concerns was on display in March at an exclusive conference organized by Amazon and Mr. Bezos in Palm Springs.

One evening, Rodney Brooks, a roboticist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, debated the potential dangers of A.I. with the neuroscientist, philosopher and podcaster Sam Harris, a prominent voice of caution on the issue. The debate got personal, according to a recording obtained by The Times.

Mr. Harris warned that because the world was in an arms race toward A.I., researchers may not have the time needed to ensure superintelligence is built in a safe way.

“This is something you have made up,” Mr. Brooks responded. He implied that Mr. Harris’s argument was based on unscientific reasoning. It couldn’t be proven right or wrong — a real insult among scientists.

“I would take this personally, if it actually made sense.” Mr. Harris said.

A moderator finally ended the tussle and asked for questions from the audience. Mr. Etzioni, the head of the Allen Institute, took the microphone. “I am not going to grandstand,” he said. But urged on by Mr. Brooks, he walked onto the stage and laid into Mr. Harris for three minutes, saying that today’s A.I. systems are so limited, spending so much time worrying about superintelligence just doesn’t make sense.

The people who take Mr. Musk’s side are philosophers, social scientists, writers — not the researchers who are working on A.I., he said. Among A.I. scientists, the notion that we should start worrying about superintelligence is “very much a fringe argument.”

Mr. Zuckerberg goes to Washington

Since their dinner three years ago, the debate between Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Musk has turned sour. Last summer, in a live Facebook video streamed from his backyard as he and his wife barbecued, Mr. Zuckerberg called Mr. Musk’s views on A.I. “pretty irresponsible.”

Panicking about A.I. now, so early in its development, could threaten the many benefits that come from things like self-driving cars and A.I. health care, he said.

“With A.I. especially, I’m really optimistic,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “People who are naysayers and kind of try to drum up these doomsday scenarios — I just, I don’t understand it.”

In other words: You’re getting ahead of reality, Elon. Relax.

Mr. Musk responded with a tweet . “I’ve talked to Mark about this,” Mr. Musk wrote. “His understanding of the subject is limited.”

In April, Mr. Zuckerberg testified before Congress, explaining how Facebook was going to fix the problems it had helped create.

One way to do it? By leaning on artificial intelligence. But in his testimony, Mr. Zuckerberg acknowledged that scientists haven’t exactly figured out how some types of artificial intelligence are learning.

“This is going to be a very central question for how we think about A.I. systems over the next decade and beyond,” he said. “Right now, a lot of our A.I. systems make decisions in ways that people don’t really understand.”

Tech bigwigs and scientists may mock Mr. Musk for his Chicken Little routine on A.I., but they seem to be moving toward his point of view.

Inside Google, a group is exploring flaws in A.I. methods that can fool computer systems into seeing things that are not there. Researchers are warning that A.I. systems that automatically generate realistic images and video will soon make it even harder to trust what we see online. Both DeepMind and OpenAI now operate research groups dedicated to “A.I safety.”

Mr. Hassabis, the founder of DeepMind, still thinks Mr. Musk’s views are extreme. But he said the same about the views of Mr. Zuckerberg. The threat is not here, he said. Not yet. But Facebook’s problems are a warning.

“We need to use the downtime, when things are calm, to prepare for when things get serious in the decades to come,” said Mr. Hassabis. “The time we have now is valuable, and we need to make use of it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/t...elligence.html





A War in Cyberspace is Already Raging and could Lead to 'Armageddon' if Banks get Hit
Michael Selby-Green,

• Too big to fail banks are major targets in a developing cyberspace war, experts told Business Insider.
• Defence of the banks from cyber attack is considered to be a national security issue with both US and UK authorities warning that cyber attackers could be met with "kinetic" and physical force.
• Dr Victor Madeira, senior fellow at the Institute for Statecraft, said Russia and China have aggressively used and developed their cyber capabilities.
• “Russia and China would look to undermine or even outright paralyse the international financial system if push came to shove. That’s really what’s underpinning a lot of this, it’s economic and financial competition, and two very different and competing worldviews, as to what those systems should be,” Madeira said.

A war is being fought in cyberspace with “ones and zeros” instead of bullets and too-big-to-fail banks are major targets, experts with cyber security and intelligence backgrounds have told Business Insider.

“It’s not a hypothesis. It’s unequivocally been proven, the next war will be fought in the cyberspace. And I actually would go as far as saying it’s already being fought,” said Justin Fier, director for cyber intelligence and analysis at Darktrace, formerly US government intelligence.

US and European authorities are concerned about a possible “armageddon” event caused by a successful cyber attack on western banks and other critical areas of infrastructure by hostile nation-states and other actors.

A successfully coordinated attack on a too-big-to-fail bank could have “cataclysmic” consequences for the global financial system and deal significant damage to the national security of the west, experts said.

“Let’s say you hit one of those banks that’s too big to fail, you’ve got global economic ramifications when that happens and I kind of worry then what the follow on from that would be. So now we’re talking national security, if not global security ramifications,” said Tim Rees, cyber strategy lead at Willis Towers Watson UK, and formerly British military intelligence.

Major threats originate from groups like hackers, hacktivists, organised criminals, terrorists and nation states like Russia and China, but attribution is notoriously difficult in the cyber world.

Dr Victor Madeira, a senior fellow at the Institute for Statecraft, and former strategic advisor on national security reform said that Russia and China have been aggressively developing and using their cyber capabilities against the west.

“The true battleground is usually the boardroom, it’s not the battlefield,” said Madeira.

“Russia and China would look to undermine or even outright paralyse the international financial system if push came to shove. That’s really what’s underpinning a lot of this, it’s economic and financial competition, and two very different and competing worldviews, as to what those systems should be,” he added.

There has also been concern in the west surrounding the use of Russian and Chinese electric equipment such as phones and routers which could potentially compromise national security.

Chinese company ZTE was accused in a US court of being used solely to spy on other countries, and Britain's GCHQ is currently analysing the dangers of allowing Huawei's products to be used across the UK's digital infrastructure.

Looking at a strategic geopolitical level a successful attack on the financial sector would have ”second and third order effect ramifications that are just not known, at this time,” said Rees, adding, “The financial institutions are extremely well developed, in terms of technical resilience for exactly that reason.”

“But this is exactly why here in London as I know the government works closely with financial institutions to ensure that they are as robust as possible. It is clearly an essential part of our national security in terms of protecting our economy.”

As technology develops more critical systems become electronic and interconnected, making cyber attacks increasingly potent in their potential, experts told Business Insider

The scale of the conflict is hinted at by the ballooning value of the cyber insurance industry which helps companies manage risk and resilience against major attacks. According to Statista the value of cyber insurance worldwide has increased by around $2.8 billion since 2014 and is projected to inflate by another 2 billion by 2020.

The consequences of weak cyber defences in critical infrastructure like water, wastewater, energy transport and financial services are severe if there’s a breach.

“If you're not securing your life support sectors from a cyber attack, cyber security becomes real in a very different way. It’s no longer about stolen data and passwords or health information. It’s about not being able to feed your family or go to work or turn the lights on, and we want avoid that kind of armageddon scenario,” said Tom Finan, WTW cyber strategy lead in the US, and a former senior cyber strategist at the Department of Homeland Security.

Banks are particularly vulnerable to attack because of the speed that trades are made, the amount of cash and data they hold, and the extreme sensitivity of financial markets.

As corporate spending on cyber defence has increased the dominant threat now comes from “insiders”who are employees or other trusted parties that either negligently or purposefully use privileged access to breach an organization's cyber defences.

Security of the banks is treated as national security issue because “ economic security is national security,” said Finan. That's why the US Department of Homeland Security is responsible for protecting 16 pillars of critical infrastructure which includes water, energy, transport and finance.

In Europe, the Network and Information Security Directive (NISD), a sibling act to GDPR was made enforceable law on May 9. It is designed to prevent the “armageddon” scenario by boosting cyber defences of the banks and other critical infrastructure through legislation. Similar measures have also been passed in the US.

“Without doubt it as an absolute current concern,” said Tim Rees. The fact that the EU has managed to pass a regulation on this is probably a good litmus test as to how seriously they’re are taking this as an issue.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/insid...-system-2018-5

















Until next week,

- js.



















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