Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - November 11th, ’23

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November 11th, 2023




Don’t be Fooled: Net Neutrality is About More Than Just Blocking and Throttling
Tom Wheeler

• On October 19, the FCC voted to begin reinstating net neutrality rules, reigniting a longstanding controversy about how the internet should be regulated.
• Internet service providers characterize net neutrality as a simple prohibition of “blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization,” which they claim they don’t do.
• However, net neutrality is much more important: The question is whether the companies that provide the internet, a vital service, should be accountable for behaving in a “just and reasonable” manner.

On October 19, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 3-2 to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to reinstate the agency’s 2015 decision that brought internet service providers (ISPs) under the agency’s jurisdiction as Telecommunications Carriers. This action is necessary because the Trump FCC repealed the previous rule in 2018 at the request of the ISPs. Predictably, the telecom industry and its allies in Congress have come out with guns blazing in opposition to the recent FCC proposal.

Also, predictably, the debate is being mischaracterized around a few tried-and-true buzz phrases that obscure the importance of what is being proposed.

The term “net neutrality” was coined in 2003 by Columbia professor Tim Wu. It was an innovative nomenclature that picked up on the ability of the ISPs to discriminate for their own economic advantage. Net neutrality became commonly described as whether the companies could create “fast lanes” and “slow lanes” for internet traffic. That such a problem was not hypothetical was demonstrated five years later when the Republican FCC fined Comcast for slowing the delivery of video content that could compete with cable channels.

For the longest time, both advocates and opponents of net neutrality have spoken in terms of preventing “blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization” by ISPs. It is, however, a mischaracterization of the policy challenge that cheapens the importance of the real issue: that the nation’s most important network has no public interest supervision.

Mischaracterizing net neutrality as “blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization” also creates an opening for ISPs to proclaim they are now against such practices. “We do not block, slow down or discriminate against lawful content,” Comcast’s web page proclaims. It is interesting to note that “paid prioritization”—the ability to provide a better connection for Netflix, for instance, if it is willing to pay extra for it—has been dropped from the litany of things the company promises never to do.

When I was Chairman of the FCC at the time of the 2015 rules, the ISPs kept saying they would accept a rule that was limited to “blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.” In support of this position, I was summoned to Capitol Hill by the leaders of the Republican-controlled House and Senate Commerce Committees—the committees with oversight of the FCC. In polite but forceful language, they told me that if the FCC enacted a rule dealing with anything other than “blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization,” they would use their authority to make my life uncomfortable. When the FCC enacted a rule creating broad regulatory authority over ISPs, they kept their promise.

In order to broaden the public’s understanding of the issue beyond what the ISPs wanted to talk about, we tried a new name for the proceeding and the subsequent rule. In place of “net neutrality,” we talked about the “open internet.” It was an effort to remind everyone that open access to essential networks is an age-old proposition.

As far back as England’s emergence from feudalism around 1500, there has been a common law concept that essential services have a “duty to deal.” The operator of the ferry across the river, for instance, could not favor one lord’s traffic over another’s; everyone had access, and everyone had to pay. When the telegraph was introduced in the United States 350 years later, the concept was applied to that new essential service. The Pacific Telegraph Act of 1860 provided, “messages received from any individual, company, or corporation, or from any telegraph lines connecting with this line at either of its termini, shall be impartially transmitted in the order of their reception.” When the telephone came along, the same concept was applied to it as a common carrier.

The Communications Act of 1934, under which the FCC operates today, established in Title II’s statutory language, “It shall be the duty of every common carrier engaged in interstate or foreign communication by wire or radio to furnish such communication service upon reasonable request therefor.” The Communications Act also established the concept that the actions of Title II carriers must be “just and reasonable.” That is the hidden agenda of the ISPs: to be allowed to make their own rules without any review as to whether those actions are “just and reasonable.”

The effort to define the open internet as being about “blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization” is a misleading head fake, a definitional misdirection that allows the ISPs to claim they would never block or throttle while leaving wide open their ability to make their own rules for everything else.

The issue isn’t “net neutrality.” The issue isn’t even about an “open internet.” The issue that is once again before the FCC is whether those that run the most powerful and pervasive platform in the history of the planet will be accountable for behaving in a “just and reasonable” manner.

It is the conduct of the ISPs that is in question here. Because telephone companies were Title II common carriers, their behavior had to be just and reasonable. Those companies prospered under such responsibilities; as they have morphed into wired and wireless ISPs, there is no reasonable argument why they, as well as their new competitors from the cable companies, should not continue to have public interest obligations.

Don’t be misled by the all-too-convenient framing that net neutrality is all about blocking and throttling. The real issue is why such an important pathway on which so many Americans rely should be without a public interest requirement and appropriate oversight.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/d...nd-throttling/





How the Meandering Legal Definition of 'Fair Use' Cost Us Napster but Gave Us Spotify

From DMCA takedowns to Content ID filters, labels continue to crack down on online music sharing.
Andrew Tarantola

The internet's "enshittification," as veteran journalist and privacy advocate Cory Doctorow describes it, began decades before TikTok made the scene. Elder millennials remember the good old days of Napster — followed by the much worse old days of Napster being sued into oblivion along with Grokster and the rest of the P2P sharing ecosystem, until we were left with a handful of label-approved, catalog-sterilized streaming platforms like Pandora and Spotify. Three cheers for corporate copyright litigation.

In his new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, Doctorow examines the modern social media landscape, cataloging and illustrating the myriad failings and short-sighted business decisions of the Big Tech companies operating the services that promised us the future but just gave us more Nazis. We have both an obligation and responsibility to dismantle these systems, Doctorow argues, and a means to do so with greater interoperability. In this week's Hitting the Books excerpt, Doctorow examines the aftermath of the lawsuits against P2P sharing services, as well as the role that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's "notice-and-takedown" reporting system and YouTube's "ContentID" scheme play on modern streaming sites.

Excerpted from by The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation by Cory Doctorow. Published by Verso. Copyright © 2023 by Cory Doctorow. All rights reserved.

The harms from notice-and-takedown itself don’t directly affect the big entertainment companies. But in 2007, the entertainment industry itself engineered a new, more potent form of notice-and-takedown that manages to inflict direct harm on Big Content, while amplifying the harms to the rest of us.

That new system is “notice-and-stay-down,” a successor to notice-and-takedown that monitors everything every user uploads or types and checks to see whether it is similar to something that has been flagged as a copyrighted work. This has long been a legal goal of the entertainment industry, and in 2019 it became a feature of EU law, but back in 2007, notice-and-staydown made its debut as a voluntary modification to YouTube, called “Content ID.”

Some background: in 2007, Viacom (part of CBS) filed a billion-dollar copyright suit against YouTube, alleging that the company had encouraged its users to infringe on its programs by uploading them to YouTube. Google — which acquired YouTube in 2006 — defended itself by invoking the principles behind Betamax and notice-and-takedown, arguing that it had lived up to its legal obligations and that Betamax established that “inducement” to copyright infringement didn’t create liability for tech companies (recall that Sony had advertised the VCR as a means of violating copyright law by recording Hollywood movies and watching them at your friends’ houses, and the Supreme Court decided it didn’t matter).

But with Grokster hanging over Google’s head, there was reason to believe that this defense might not fly. There was a real possibility that Viacom could sue YouTube out of existence — indeed, profanity-laced internal communications from Viacom — which Google extracted through the legal discovery process — showed that Viacom execs had been hotly debating which one of them would add YouTube to their private empire when Google was forced to sell YouTube to the company.

Google squeaked out a victory, but was determined not to end up in a mess like the Viacom suit again. It created Content ID, an “audio fingerprinting” tool that was pitched as a way for rights holders to block, or monetize, the use of their copyrighted works by third parties. YouTube allowed large (at first) rightsholders to upload their catalogs to a blocklist, and then scanned all user uploads to check whether any of their audio matched a “claimed” clip.

Once Content ID determined that a user was attempting to post a copyrighted work without permission from its rightsholder, it consulted a database to determine the rights holder’s preference. Some rights holders blocked any uploads containing audio that matched theirs; others opted to take the ad revenue generated by that video.

There are lots of problems with this. Notably, there’s the inability of Content ID to determine whether a third party’s use of someone else’s copyright constitutes “fair use.” As discussed, fair use is the suite of uses that are permitted even if the rightsholder objects, such as taking excerpts for critical or transformational purposes. Fair use is a “fact intensive” doctrine—that is, the answer to “Is this fair use?” is almost always “It depends, let’s ask a judge.”

Computers can’t sort fair use from infringement. There is no way they ever can. That means that filters block all kinds of legitimate creative work and other expressive speech — especially work that makes use of samples or quotations.

But it’s not just creative borrowing, remixing and transformation that filters struggle with. A lot of creative work is similar to other creative work. For example, a six-note phrase from Katy Perry’s 2013 song “Dark Horse” is effectively identical to a six-note phrase in “Joyful Noise,” a 2008 song by a much less well-known Christian rapper called Flame. Flame and Perry went several rounds in the courts, with Flame accusing Perry of violating his copyright. Perry eventually prevailed, which is good news for her.

But YouTube’s filters struggle to distinguish Perry’s six-note phrase from Flame’s (as do the executives at Warner Chappell, Perry’s publisher, who have periodically accused people who post snippets of Flame’s “Joyful Noise” of infringing on Perry’s “Dark Horse”). Even when the similarity isn’t as pronounced as in Dark, Joyful, Noisy Horse, filters routinely hallucinate copyright infringements where none exist — and this is by design.

To understand why, first we have to think about filters as a security measure — that is, as a measure taken by one group of people (platforms and rightsholder groups) who want to stop another group of people (uploaders) from doing something they want to do (upload infringing material).

It’s pretty trivial to write a filter that blocks exact matches: the labels could upload losslessly encoded pristine digital masters of everything in their catalog, and any user who uploaded a track that was digitally or acoustically identical to that master would be blocked.

But it would be easy for an uploader to get around a filter like this: they could just compress the audio ever-so-slightly, below the threshold of human perception, and this new file would no longer match. Or they could cut a hundredth of a second off the beginning or end of the track, or omit a single bar from the bridge, or any of a million other modifications that listeners are unlikely to notice or complain about.

Filters don’t operate on exact matches: instead, they employ “fuzzy” matching. They don’t just block the things that rights holders have told them to block — they block stuff that’s similar to those things that rights holders have claimed. This fuzziness can be adjusted: the system can be made more or less strict about what it considers to be a match.

Rightsholder groups want the matches to be as loose as possible, because somewhere out there, there might be someone who’d be happy with a very fuzzy, truncated version of a song, and they want to stop that person from getting the song for free. The looser the matching, the more false positives. This is an especial problem for classical musicians: their performances of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart inevitably sound an awful lot like the recordings that Sony Music (the world’s largest classical music label) has claimed in Content ID. As a result, it has become nearly impossible to earn a living off of online classical performance: your videos are either blocked, or the ad revenue they generate is shunted to Sony. Even teaching classical music performance has become a minefield, as painstakingly produced, free online lessons are blocked by Content ID or, if the label is feeling generous, the lessons are left online but the ad revenue they earn is shunted to a giant corporation, stealing the creative wages of a music teacher.

Notice-and-takedown law didn’t give rights holders the internet they wanted. What kind of internet was that? Well, though entertainment giants said all they wanted was an internet free from copyright infringement, their actions — and the candid memos released in the Viacom case — make it clear that blocking infringement is a pretext for an internet where the entertainment companies get to decide who can make a new technology and how it will function.
https://www.engadget.com/echo-will-b...172206411.html





Legacy HBO Max Ad-Free Subscribers will Lose Access to 4K Streams Soon

They will have to pay for the $20-a-month subscription to access higher-quality streaming.
Mariella Moon

In just a bit over a month, legacy HBO Max subscribers paying for ad-free streaming will be losing a couple of perks they're enjoying. One of those is 4K streaming. According to The Verge, the streaming service has started sending affected subscribers an email, notifying them that they won’t be able to stream in 4K anymore after December 5th. Warner Bros. Discovery promised existing subscribers when it rebranded the service into "Max" back in May they they would still have access to their plan's features over the next six months. After that period ends, their only option to retain 4K streaming is to let go of their $16-a-month subscription plan to switch to Max’s Ultimate Ad-Free tier that costs $20 a month.

The service introduced the tier when Max launched, promising users access to 1,000 4K movies and TV show episodes, some of which support Dolby Atmos and Vision. Subscribers who choose to keep their legacy plan will have to make do with Full HD resolution. In addition, legacy subscribers will no longer be able to stream on three devices at once, because Max will only allow them access to two concurrent streams. Both changes bring the legacy $16 subscription in line with the new Max Ad Free tier, which costs the same amount.

An Ultimate Ad Free subscription allows subscribers to stream on up to four devices at once, aside from giving them access to 4K content. It costs quite a bit more than the regular ad-free subscription, but those who want higher-quality streaming and can afford to plunk down $200 in one go will be seeing their yearly expenses for Max go up by just a few cents per month. Max also has a $10-a-month ad-supported tier for those who don’t mind their viewing experience interrupted by commercials.
https://www.engadget.com/legacy-hbo-...092315829.html





Consumers are Paying More than Ever for Streaming TV Each Month and aNalysts Say there’s No Reason for the Companies to Stop Raising Prices
Rachyl Jones

After years of inflation, Americans are used to sticker shock. But nothing compares to the surging price of streaming video.

Last week, Apple TV+ became the latest streaming service to raise its price—up from $6.99 to $9.99 per month—following the example of Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, and Netflix, which all hiked their prices in October.

Half of the major streaming platforms in the U.S. now charge a monthly fee that’s double the price they charged when they initially came to market. And many of these streaming services haven’t even been around for 10 years.

Consumers have grumbled, but have so far been willing to keep paying up. It’s hard to say where their breaking point will be, but given that analysts believe the platforms are likely to continue raising prices even further, we’ll probably find out soon enough.

“Look at what Netflix continues to do,” MoffettNathanson analyst Robert Fishman told Fortune, referring to the company’s continued price increases despite recording profits for more than a decade. “I don’t think there will ever necessarily be an endpoint.”

Part of what’s driving the price hikes is how saturated the streaming market has become. For a company like Netflix, which has 77 million paid subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, finding new paying subscribers to keep revenue growing is not easy. Netflix has started clamping down on password sharing to boost its paid subscriber rolls, but that only goes so far. Raising prices for existing subscribers is an effective way to pump up the top line and keep investors happy.

For legacy media companies, increased streaming prices are a step toward recouping lost revenue from their slowly dying traditional television businesses. As consumers increasingly cancel their cable TV subscriptions in favor of streaming platforms, companies like Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Comcast, and Paramount are losing money on their once reliably profitable TV businesses.

On Thursday, Disney announced that it was acquiring the 33% of Hulu that it didn't already own from Comcast. The deal gives Disney full control of Hulu, which, along with Disney+ and ESPN+, rounds out the media company's lineup of streaming services. According to AllianceBernstein analyst Laurent Yoon, the incremental revenue that Disney generates from Disney+ and Hulu in 2024 will outpace the revenue decline in the company's linear TV business.

But that’s not the case for every company. “In the near future, the next three or so years, Peacock is not going to outpace the decline of NBC,” he told Fortune, referring to NBCUniversal's streaming platform. And Paramount+ revenue growth is not going to outpace the revenue decline of CBS, he said.

Pushing ads pushes profits

Some observers see another reason for the frequent price hikes: to push subscribers to their breaking point, and compel them to opt for a lower-priced, or even free, ad-supported plan instead.

Disney CEO Bob Iger said as much during an August earnings call: “We’re obviously trying, with our pricing strategy, to migrate more subs to the advertiser-supported tier.”

Why? Unlike a paid subscription, which brings in a fixed amount of revenue each month, there is no ceiling to advertising revenue. The number of ads displayed and the rates a streaming platform can charge marketers for the ads are constantly fluctuating, offering unlimited revenue upside.

“If you are Netflix, Hulu, and to some degree Amazon Prime and Max, you have the potential to generate advertising revenue to complement the discount on [the ad tier],” said Yoon, the Bernstein analyst.

The strategy is reflected in the numbers. While the $13.99 monthly price of the Disney+ ad-free plan is now double its 2019 launch price, the company has kept the same $7.99 price for the advertising option since introducing the tier last year. Hulu has a wider margin, costing a monthly $7.99 with ads or $17.99 without.

For the advertising strategy to pay off, however, a streaming company needs an audience that spends a lot of time on its platform watching shows, and ads. Despite being one of the newest platforms to show ads, Netflix is in a position to earn big because of its high engagement, Yoon told Fortune. Bernstein estimates that Netflix’s ad-based tier currently generates $8 per user in ad revenue each month, on top of the plan’s $6.99 subscription cost, which positions its average revenue per user for that tier roughly flush with that of its $15.49 ad-free service.

‘Someone is going to raise the white flag’

With so many streaming services, and no end in sight to price hikes, something will have to give at some point. The streaming industry is on the verge of losing some of its major players, analysts agree. “The macro, high-level view is that there are too many streaming services losing too much money, and someone is going to raise the white flag,” said Rich Greenfield, analyst at LightShed Partners.

Bundling services together is an option that provides a larger value to consumers and could drive subscriptions, but “it doesn’t fix the problem,” he told Fortune. “It can eliminate losses, but I’m not sure it makes it into a great business.”

What makes more sense, Greenfield said, is if companies shut down their streaming platforms and become “content arms dealers” to the highest bidder. Many streaming companies have been in the studio business for decades—including Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount—and they can continue to remain relevant in streaming by supplying films and television shows to other platforms, he said, rather than running their own.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/consu...181821039.html





YouTube’s Ad Blocking Crackdown is Facing a New Challenge: Privacy Laws

Privacy advocates argue YouTube’s ad blocker restrictions violate the European Union’s online privacy laws.
Emma Roth

As YouTube tightens its restrictions on ad blockers, privacy advocates in the European Union are betting that government regulations can put a stop to the crackdown.

One privacy expert, Alexander Hanff, filed a complaint in October with the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC). Hanff argues that YouTube’s ad blocker detection system is a violation of privacy — a charge Google denies — and illegal under EU law. “AdBlock detection scripts are spyware — there is no other way to describe them and as such it is not acceptable to deploy them without consent,” Hanff tells The Verge. “I consider any deployment of technology which can be used to spy on my devices is both unethical and illegal in most situations.”

The fight against ad blocker detection isn’t anything new, but YouTube’s “global effort” to stop ad blockers has renewed interest in the topic. Sites like YouTube can detect ad blockers by either downloading JavaScript code that checks whether anything on the page has changed or by detecting when the elements required to load an ad are blocked, according to The New York Times.

While YouTube started blocking ad blockers as a “small experiment” in June, YouTube later confirmed to The Verge that the company has ramped up its efforts. That means more users with ad blockers enabled are finding themselves unable to watch videos on the platform. Instead of showing the video, YouTube displays a prompt that encourages users to either allow ads on YouTube or subscribe to YouTube Premium.

This move hasn’t gone over well with users and privacy advocates alike. A report from Wired reveals that people are installing and uninstalling ad blockers at a record pace as users search for an ad blocker that isn’t affected by YouTube’s restrictions. Meanwhile, YouTube maintains that ad blockers violate the platform’s terms of service and prevent creators from earning revenue from ads.

Hanff first reached out to the European Commission about the use of ad blocker detection tools in 2016. In response to his concerns, the commission confirmed that scripts used to detect ad blockers also fall under Article 5.3 of the ePrivacy Directive, a rule that requires websites to ask for user consent before storing or accessing information on a user’s device, such as cookies. “Article 5.3 does not limit itself to any particular type of information or technology, such as cookies,” the commission wrote at the time. “Article 5(3) would also apply to the storage by websites of scripts in users’ terminal equipment to detect if users have installed or are using ad blockers.”

It doesn’t seem like this had any meaningful impact on how websites detect ad blockers, though. The European Commission seemed to reverse its stance in a proposed reform of its privacy law in 2017, stating that website providers should be able to check whether a user is using an ad blocker without their approval.

“If YouTube continues to think they can get away with deploying spyware to our devices, I will bring them down too.”

Hanff’s most recent complaint to the commission references his earlier letter. It calls upon the DPC to take action against YouTube and stop it from using ad blocker detection tools. Hanff tells The Verge that in addition to violating Article 5.3 of the ePrivacy Directive, he believes it’s also a breach of the fundamental right to privacy under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other conventions. Since submitting his complaint, Hanff says the Irish DPC has already acknowledged it and that he has had a call and “a number of emails” exchanged with them. The Verge reached out to the DPC with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

Hanff isn’t the only advocate who opposes YouTube’s ad blocker clampdown, either. Patrick Breyer, a German digital rights advocate and member of the European Parliament, writes on Mastodon that “YouTube wants to force us into surveillance advertising and tracking with an anti-adblock wall.” Breyer says he is also asking the European Commission about the legality of ad blocker detection systems under the ePrivacy Directive.

YouTube spokesperson Christopher Lawton responded to Hanff and Breyer’s challenge by reiterating the same statement provided to The Verge last month, noting that YouTube has launched a “global effort” to crack down on ad blockers. Lawton adds that the company will “of course cooperate fully with any questions or queries from the DPC.”

If the European Commission finds that YouTube’s ad blocker detection system violates the EU’s ePrivacy Directive, the commission might hit the platform with a fine and force it to change the feature. It’s a bit too early to tell how the commission will respond to Hanff’s challenge, but the outcome likely won’t result in any changes to the existing system for those of us in the US.

For now, Hanff isn’t backing down. “I have been fighting for stronger protection of privacy and data protection rights for almost 2 decades,” he says. “If YouTube continues to think they can get away with deploying spyware to our devices, I will bring them down too.”

Additional reporting by Jon Porter.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/7/2...y-advocates-eu





Tech Groups Fear New Powers Will Allow UK to Block Encryption

Signal president urges ministers to clarify provisions in proposed legislation
Anna Gross and Cristina Criddle

Tech groups have called on ministers to clarify the extent of proposed powers that they fear would allow the UK government to intervene and block the rollout of new privacy features for messaging apps.

The Investigatory Powers Amendment Bill, which was set out in the King’s Speech on Tuesday, would oblige companies to inform the Home Office in advance about any security or privacy features they want to add to their platforms, including encryption.

At present, the government has the power to force telecoms companies and messaging platforms to supply data on national security grounds and to help with criminal investigations.

The new legislation was designed to “recalibrate” those powers to respond to risks posed to public safety by multinational tech companies rolling out new services that “preclude lawful access to data,” the government said.

But Meredith Whittaker, president of private messaging group Signal, urged ministers to provide more clarity on what she described as a “bellicose” proposal amid fears that, if enacted, the new legislation would allow ministers and officials to veto the introduction of new safety features.

“We will need to see the details, but what is being described suggests an astonishing level of technically confused government over-reach that will make it nearly impossible for any service, homegrown or foreign, to operate with integrity in the UK,” she told the Financial Times.

Previously, Meta and Apple, which offer encryption on WhatsApp, and iMessage and FaceTime, respectively, have warned that they will remove any services from the UK if the government seeks to compromise those features.

Meta plans to extend encryption, which prevents anyone other than the users communicating with each other from accessing the messages, to Facebook Messenger by the end of the year.

The messaging platforms have tens of millions of users in Britain.

Whittaker said it was “imperative” for tech groups to improve privacy settings to “defend core technical infrastructure from hackers and other hostile actors”, which was “clearly not comprehended by those behind these changes”.

She added that the “lack of judicial due process” from the government was “deeply alarming”, although “sadly not out of character”.

TechUK, a trade group, warned in its response to the government’s consultation that new investigatory powers legislation as envisaged could oblige companies to comply with a warrant from the Home Office to hand over user data even while a review into the appropriateness of the request is ongoing.

Julian David, chief executive of TechUK, said that the Home Office had “simply not engaged sufficiently with businesses” over the legislation, “driving concerns that changes to the regime could be expansive and disproportionate”.

He added: “This must be rectified at the earliest opportunity to ensure that any changes . . . are effective, informed and focused on addressing any capability gaps the Home Office is able to evidence.”

The threats to remove services come amid a wider sector backlash against a range of government policies, which tech groups say threaten to undermine the privacy and the integrity of their products, including the online safety bill, which passed into law last month.

Apple warned the government in its response to the consultation on the proposed legislation in July, that certain elements of the investigatory powers bill could force tech companies “to publicly withdraw critical security features from the UK market, depriving UK users of these protections”.

WhatsApp has also threatened to exit the UK if forced by the government to break encryption.

The Home Office said the bill would “deliver urgent and targeted changes needed to protect the British public from criminals . . . by enabling intelligence agencies and law enforcement to keep pace with these evolving threats”.

It added: “We have always been clear that we support strong encryption where public safety is designed in, but this cannot come at a cost to public safety and we will not outsource the security of our citizens to unaccountable multinational companies.”

Meta declined to comment. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Additional reporting by Tim Bradshaw
https://www.ft.com/content/b9f92f62-...a-659d217dc9af





A New Decentralised VPN Aims to Patch a Gaping Security Hole

The NymVPN is entering a rapidly expanding market
Thomas MaCaulay

VPNs have become popular means of protecting personal data, but there’s a big vulnerability in their defences: the service provider.

These companies can technically gain access to all your unencrypted traffic. Consequently, they can see all the data on your browsing habits.

This frailty has sparked interest in decentralised VPNs. Instead of funnelling all user data through a single server, they disperse the traffic across a network run by multiple users. In theory, this makes the shield more difficult to breach, because there’s no central authority controlling the service.

It’s a theory that Nym Technologies wants to prove true. The Swiss startup today announced that it will launch a new decentralised (dVPN) in the first quarter of next year. Named NymVPN, the service promises to provide an “unparalleled” level of privacy and security.

At the core of the system is a so-called “network of nodes.” A collection of hundreds of gateways, this obfuscates the flow of data by transmitting internet traffic through entry and exit points.

The nodes are run by independent individuals in various countries. Each of these operators routs a user’s internet traffic through various stages of the information pathway, known as hops. According to Nym, this reduces the risk of data breaches, surveillance, identity theft, and censorship.

“We believe that privacy is a fundamental right, and our vision has always been to empower individuals to take full control over their online security,” said Harry Halpin, Nym’s CEO and co-founder. “The NymVPN offers just this.”

Risks of centralisation

The principal appeal of dVPNs is preventing access to unencrypted traffic. However, even encrypted traffic can’t fully conceal metadata, which can expose the sites you visit and the apps you use.

“Don’t just take our word for it,” Jaya Klara Brekke, Chief Strategy Officer at Nym, told TNW. “As former NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker said: ‘Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content’.”

Users of centralised VPNs, therefore, must place great faith in the provider. If a centralised VPN is asked to hand over data to third parties, the trust could be severely tested.

Even ostensibly private centralised VPNs could turn over information to authorities. NordVPN, for instance, has acknowledged that it complies with law enforcement data requests. Free VPNs, meanwhile, can sell user browsing habits and data to anyone they like.

“It’s better to eliminate the risk of holding unnecessary data at all,” Brekke said. “This is what actual decentralisation offers.”

Nym’s approach

In the NymVPN app, the decentralisation comes in two different levels.

The first is VPN mode, which is better for streaming, browsing, and other use cases that require high performance but only moderate privacy. Data is transmitted through two hops, each of which is hosted by an independent node operator. The operators are rewarded with NYM tokens, which are used to incentivise good governance.

For extra protection, the app has a mixnet option. This mode is designed for messaging, sensitive file sharing, transactions, and other use cases that require high levels of privacy but only mid-range performance. Data is divided into small, identically-sized packets that are encrypted with a novel system called Sphinx. It travels through five ‘hops’ in the network before reaching its destination.

To further obscure communications, Nym generates fake dummy traffic, which is indistinguishable from the real thing.

“Even in the presence of global network observers or advanced machine learning attacks, this mode ensures your online activities remain confidential and shielded from prying eyes,” Brekke said.

“Thus, it surpasses the privacy properties of traditional VPNs and Tor and is the fastest, most secure mixnet available today, keeping your online activities truly private.”

The VPN market

A dVPN remains a specialist product, but Nym argues that it has mainstream potential. The company is initially targeting four different user groups. The first is privacy enthusiasts, who are typically interested in emerging technologies.

Once that establishes a solid user base, Nym will target journalists, activists, and whistleblowers. B2B and B2G clients are also “definitely on the radar,” according to Brekke. “We’ve received interest,” she said.

In time, Brekke expects the general public to also become customers. As evidence, she can point to the sector’s rapid growth. Industry researchers predict that the global VPN market alone will be worth $358bn by 2032. The value of the worldwide data privacy market, meanwhile, is projected to reach $30bn by 2030.

Investors have also made bullish predictions. In 2020, Fred Wilson, a prominent venture capitalist, warned that mass surveillance by both governments and corporations “will become normal and expected this decade.” This, Wilson continued, will spark a market boom.

“The biggest consumer technology successes of this decade will be in the area of privacy,” he concluded.

Unsurprisingly, it’s a view that Nym welcomes.

“With the shifting sands of censorship and companies threatening to pull their services in the wake of regulations like the Online Safety Bill, it may come to pass that the internet looks like a very different place indeed,” Brekke said.

“In this scenario, a VPN would be an essential part of anyone’s toolkit in order to access the internet as we are used to.”
https://thenextweb.com/news/nym-acco...acy-protection





Elon Musk Says SpaceX's Starlink Business ‘Achieved Breakeven Cash Flow’
Michael Sheetz

Key Points

• SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced Thursday that the company's Starlink satellite internet business "achieved breakeven cash flow."
• Musk did not specify whether the milestone was hit on an operating basis or for a different specified time period.
• SpaceX's valuation has soared to about $150 billion, with Starlink seen as a key economic driver of the company's goals.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced Thursday that the company's Starlink satellite internet business "achieved breakeven cash flow."

"Excellent work by a great team," Musk said in a post on his social media platform, X, formerly known as Twitter.

Musk did not specify whether that milestone was hit on an operating basis or for a specified time period.

Earlier this year, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said Starlink "had a cash flow positive quarter" in 2022, and the overall SpaceX company reportedly turned a profit in the first quarter of 2023.

SpaceX's valuation has soared to about $150 billion, with Starlink seen as a key economic driver of the company's goals. Two years ago, Musk emphasized that making Starlink "financially viable" required crossing "through a deep chasm of negative cash flow."

Musk has discussed spinning off Starlink to take it public through an initial public offering once the business was "in a smooth sailing situation." But timing of a Starlink IPO remains uncertain. Last year, Musk told employees that taking the business public wasn't likely until 2025 or later.

"Being public is definitely an invitation to pain," Musk told SpaceX employees in 2022. "And the stock price is just distracting."

Sign up here to receive weekly editions of CNBC's Investing in Space newsletter.

Starlink is the global communications network that Musk's company has been building, with more than 5,000 satellites launched and counting.

It began offering Starlink service about three years ago, initially targeting the consumer market. Most recently, SpaceX has said Starlink has upward of two million subscribers, having expanded into other markets — including national security, enterprise, mobility, maritime and aviation — and disrupted the existing satellite communications sector.

Last month, SpaceX announced the opening of a new satellite antenna manufacturing facility in Bastrop, Texas, which is near Austin.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/02/elon...cash-flow.html





After Big Drop in ISP Competition, Canada Mandates Fiber-Network Sharing

Bell claims it will cut fiber spending by $1 billion in protest of CRTC ruling.
Jon Brodkin

In an attempt to boost broadband competition, Canada's telecom regulator is forcing large phone companies to open their fiber networks to competitors. Smaller companies will be allowed to buy network capacity and use it to offer competing broadband plans to consumers.

Evidence received during a comment period "shows that competition in the Internet services market is declining," the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said in its announcement Monday. The CRTC said the "decrease is most significant in Ontario and Quebec, where independent competitors now serve 47 percent fewer customers than they did just two years ago. At the same time, several competitors have been bought out by larger Internet providers. This has left many Canadians with fewer options for high-speed Internet services."

The CRTC hasn't made a final decision on fiber resale. But in the meantime, until a more permanent ruling is made, large telcos in Ontario and Quebec will be "required to provide competitors with access to their fibre-to-the-home networks within six months," the CRTC said. The six-month period is intended to give companies time to prepare their networks and develop information technology and billing systems, the agency said.

"On a temporary and expedited basis, the CRTC is providing competitors with a workable way to sell Internet services using the fibre-to-the-home networks of large telephone companies in Ontario and Quebec, where competition has declined most significantly," the agency said. "The CRTC is also setting the interim rates that competitors will pay when selling services over these fibre-to-the-home networks. These rates were chosen to allow Canada's large Internet companies to continue investing in their networks to deliver high-quality services to Canadians."

Advocates for wholesale fiber access welcomed the interim ruling but said that Canada's regulator should have acted more quickly and forcefully to preserve competition.

Bell protests, says it will cut fiber spending

Fiber-provider Bell protested the ruling by announcing "its intention to reduce capital expenditures by over $1 billion in 2024-25, including a minimum of $500 to $600 million in 2024, money the company had planned to invest in bringing high-speed fibre Internet to hundreds of thousands of additional homes and businesses in rural, suburban and urban communities."

"Rolling back fibre network expansion is a direct result of the CRTC's decision," Bell claimed. The telco said the CRTC's decision "is arbitrary and capricious" because it doesn't apply outside Ontario and Quebec.

Telus, another major fiber provider, "said the company is reviewing the interim decision and looking forward to participating in the remainder of the CRTC proceeding," according to The Globe and Mail.

For over 20 years, the CRTC has "required large incumbent telephone and cable companies to sell access to their networks under specific rates, terms, and conditions," the agency said. But fiber access wasn't previously included.

"In 2015, the CRTC set out separate rules for accessing fibre, which have been so unworkable that 8 years later we still don't have wholesale access to fibre," according to an April 2023 post by OpenMedia, a nonprofit that advocates for open and affordable networks.

Many small ISPs “have already sunk”

OpenMedia called yesterday's CRTC decision "a small step forward for affordable Internet."

"The decision will require Bell and Telus to sell access to their fibre network in those provinces to small providers within the next 6 months," the group said. But despite declining competition, "the CRTC's decision will not apply to other provinces, and will only hold until the CRTC reaches a more permanent decision about their failing wholesale Internet rates regime," the group said.

OpenMedia Executive Director Matt Hatfield said the "decision should be a lifeline for small ISPs—but it comes so late, most have already sunk. Fibre Internet is the high-speed Internet gold standard Canadians now demand, and the CRTC's indifference to that reality has led to most small ISP players being edged out or absorbed by telecom giants over the last few years."

In March 2023, the CRTC denied a request from a trade group representing small ISPs seeking wholesale fiber access. But the agency opened a proceeding that resulted in yesterday's interim action.

Call for “national permanent framework”

Competitive Network Operators of Canada (CNOC), the trade group that lobbied the CRTC for wholesale access, offered tepid praise of yesterday's decision. "While this decision marks an important and essential step towards a fairer competitive landscape, CNOC has concerns about the application of the decision to only one class of wholesale service provider, [and the] lack of continued relief for [the] rest of Canada along with rates above those in market today," the group said.

CNOC President Paul Andersen called for "a national permanent framework applicable to all dominant carriers with just and reasonable rates."

Small ISPs in the US used to have similar access to large phone networks, but that changed in 2005 when the Federal Communications Commission reclassified DSL and eliminated a requirement to share networks with competitors. The current FCC is working on a plan to reinstate net neutrality rules and common-carrier regulation of broadband but is not proposing any "unbundling" rules that would force Internet providers to let competitors offer service over their networks.

In both the US and Canada, fiber Internet service is provided mostly by telephone companies. "By the end of 2022, 60 percent of Canadian homes and businesses reached by the large telephone companies, not including the territories, had access to fibre-to-the-home networks. By contrast, less than 5 percent of homes and businesses passed by cable companies have access to fibre-to-the-home networks," the CRTC said.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...l-competitors/
















Until next week,

- js.



















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