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Old 13-05-20, 06:13 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 16th, ’20

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May 16th, 2020




Brazilian Youtuber Convicted in Court for Publishing Tutorials on Piracy

Joel Pinto
Via translation

Bruno Gustavo, a well-known Brazilian Youtuber whose channel already has more than 15.5 million views with almost 650,000 subscribers, was found guilty by a Brazilian court for instructing people to access various pirated content including IPTV.

The court ordered the Youtuber to hand over 10% of all revenue earned on its channel to the Brazilian Pay TV Association.

The Youtube Channel is managed by Bruno Gustavo Januário and is full of technology-focused videos where it offers reviews, unboxing videos, tips and tutorials, most of which do not violate any laws. However, the decision to publish advice on how to obtain TV channels via pirated IPTV services attracted the attention of ABTA, the powerful Brazilian Pay TV Association.

ABTA, which represents the country's major cable operators including Globosat, Sky, NBC Universal, Fox and Discovery, filed a lawsuit against Bruno Gustavo alleging that his videos violated its rights.

Already in court, the judge found that the videos improperly reproduced the trademarks of the channels, infringed their copyright and constituted unfair competition against the members of ABTA. The exact amount of compensation is yet to be determined, but the Court says that since illegal content was first published in February 2017, 10% of all revenue stemming from the channel has since been handed over to TV companies.

As such, the owner of the jorgedejorge channel will have to pay about R$ 50,000 ($8,650.00) in compensation to the broadcasters, adjusted for interest at the rate of 1% for the month from the publication of the first content, which points to February 2017. In addition, the defendant was ordered not to publish more content that violates the rights of pay TV broadcasters, and was also instructed to pay the costs of the action, plus the attorneys' fees.

The matter will not end there however, since Bruno Gustavo's lawyers say they will appeal to the Superior Court of Justice, which is the highest appellate court in Brazil.
https://noticiasetecnologia.com/yout...ais-pirataria/





Cord-Cutting Tracker: Q1 Results Herald Awful 2020 for Pay-TV
Gavin Bridge

Now that Pay-TV has reported their latest losses, one thing stands out: it’s ugly.

The subscriber decline of 1.7 million from the previous quarter, a figure VIP predicted, is the greatest decline ever seen in the first quarter, and sees Pay-TV well on track to meet VIP’s estimated total 2020 decline of 8 million subscribers.

In terms of losses by individual providers, AT&T continues to lead the pack, shedding 710,000 subscribers in the first three months of 2020. Comcast and Dish are close together, with the pair losing 770,000 subs. Given the size of their subscriber footprint, Charter did very well in Q1 to lose only 70,000 video customers, one-tenth that of AT&T.

Comparing the losses against Q1 2019 paints a grim picture for most providers, but especially for AT&T, who lost a massive 3.6 million video customers in a year. Comcast has the second highest losses, down by 900k, with Dish down 600k and Charter losing 400,000 customers versus Q1 2019.

This all points to a miserable 2020 for Pay-TV. The VMVPD market has stopped growing just as the bottom has fallen out of traditional MVPDs. The temptation is to say that the increase in subscription cancellations is due to Coronavirus. But recall that COVID-19 only began to hit the country in a big way in the last 2-3 weeks of Q1. If Coronavirus is to blame for the declines, then Q2 will be appalling, with the industry well on track to meet VIP’s estimate of 8 million subscribers lost across 2020.

It’s easy to lay the blame at the door of COVID-19, but there may be other factors at play. The consumer shift to wanting content on-demand at their fingertips, ready to binge, was even addressed by ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish this week, and is something that traditional TV networks have resolutely refused to adapt, even in SVOD services such as Hulu and CBS All Access. We may be witnessing the turning of the tide as more consumers move to models that support their consumption pattern; and it will be accelerated by COVID-19’s dual-prong of a production shutdown (less new content) and massive unemployment (less money to spend).
https://variety.com/vip/cord-cutting...tv-1234602309/





Cord-Cutting Hit Record Levels in First Quarter

Virtual MVPDs also lost subscribers
Jon Lafayette

Traditional pay TV subscriptions fell by a record-setting 1.8 million in the first quarter, according to an analysis by Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson Research.

The 7.6% decline includes a 14.3% plunge for satellite, compared to a 4% drop for cable.

With sports off the air, and with the pain of the tsunami of unemployment just beginning to hit as the quarter ended, all these numbers will get worse in Q2,” Moffett said.

But Moffett noted that even more depressing than the drop in traditional pay-TV subs was a surprising decline in subscribers to streaming virtual MVPs like YouTube TV and Sling TV. Moffett said those vMVPs lost 341,000 subscribers in the first quarter.

“The vMVPDs, once viewed as the last line of defense for cable networks, imploded in Q1,” he said.

Moffett said that when Sony’s PlayStation Vue service closed in January, its subscribers appear to have gone nowhere. And AT&T Now, Sling, fubo all lost subscribers.

The Walt Disney Co.’s Hulu Live TV grew by just 100,000 subscribers.

Total pay-TV subscribers, including both traditional and vMVPDs are shrinking at a rate of 5.3% per year, Moffett said.

“It is perhaps some comfort that some of the same companies losing distribution for their traditional cable networks – we’re looking at you, Disney and Comcast – have launched direct-to-consumer 'lifeboats' that are rapidly gaining traction with distraction-starved, shut-in consumers,” Moffett said. “AT&T will join this club in a few weeks with the launch of HBO Max. But it is increasingly clear that as consumers climb into these lifeboats, they are leaving the (sinking) motherships behind.”
https://www.broadcastingcable.com/ne...-first-quarter





Cord-Cutting Is Accelerating Because of Coronavirus. Could This Be the End of Cable TV?
Eric J. Savitz

Cord-cutting—people dropping their cable and satellite TV subscriptions—predates the onset of Covid-19. But the pandemic is exaggerating the trend, creating deeper issuers for programming that relies on those services for distribution.

For one thing, it has long been the conventional wisdom that one of the few reasons people have hung on to their pay-TV subscriptions is access to live sports. With almost all professional and college sporting events shut down, that argument carries no weight.

Meanwhile, with U.S. unemployment at the highest rate since the Great Depression, and so many options for free or low-cost subscription streaming video, Americans are fleeing pay TV at a record rate.

The exact numbers depend a little on what you count and who is doing the counting, but the overall picture is clear.

LightShed Partners analyst Richard Greenfield counts a loss of 1.96 million subscribers to cable, satellite TV, and virtual cable services combined in the first quarter, the worst combined quarterly drop ever, down 6% from a year ago.

That includes year-over-year subscriber declines of 18.9% for the various video services of AT&T (ticker: T), 4.6% at Comcast (CMCSA), 2.5% at Charter Communications (CHTR), 4.1% at Dish Network (DISH), and 5.8% at Verizon Communications (VZ). On a combined basis, he notes, the virtual cable bundles—also known as virtual MVPDs, or vMVPDS—had subscriber losses for the first quarter ever.

Greenfield said in an interview with Barron’s that what is especially sobering is that most of the first quarter activity pre-dated the virus—the numbers are likely to get considerably worse in the second quarter.

He says a return of sports would help, but that the biggest issue is that “the best content is on streaming services at a fraction of the price” of pay TV. Greenfield argues that there is simply no reason to subscribe to cable for entertainment programming—and that the core sports audience might be under 50 million, too low to support the current cost structure of the sports programming networks like ESPN, owned by Walt Disney (DIS), with both advertising and affiliate fees likely in secular decline. (Note that Greenfield recently cut his rating on ESPN parent Disney to Sell.)

Craig Moffett, telecom and cable analyst at Moffett Nathanson, estimates the first-quarter subscriber losses at 1.8 million for the traditional pay TV services, bringing the 12-month loss rate to a worst-ever 7.6%. Satellite TV service subscriptions fell by over 1 million for the third quarter in a row. He notes that both satellite and cable services had their worst-ever quarter for subscriber losses. Pay-TV households, he notes, have dropped back to a level last seen in 1995.

And Moffett warns that “with sports off the air, and with the pain of the tsunami of unemployment just beginning to hit as the quarter ended, all these numbers will get worse in Q2.”

He sees trouble in the weakness in virtual MVPD subscribers. “The vMVPDs, once viewed as the last line of defense for cable networks, imploded in Q1,” Moffett writes. Collectively, he estimates they lost 341,000 subscribers in the quarter. “Sony’s PlayStation Vue service shut down at the end of January. Their ~500,000 subscribers appear to have gone ...nowhere. AT&T TV Now (formerly DirecTV Now), Sling TV, and (we believe) fuboTV all lost subscribers. Disney’s Hulu Live TV appears to have hit a wall in the wake of multiple price increases, growing by only ~100,000 subscribers in Q1, an abrupt deceleration from their recent torrid growth. Even YouTube TV, by far the fastest-growing of the lot, couldn’t pick up all the slack. Total subscriptions, including both traditional and vMVPDs, are now shrinking by 5.3% per year. Yes, that, too, is the worst ever.”

Moffett notes that some of the most affected companies have launched streaming services to help offset the issue, pointing to Disney+, Comcast’s Peacock and AT&T’s HBO Max. But he thinks it is clear that as consumers shift to those services, they are never coming back to traditional pay TV—and he adds that those direct-to-consumer services are unlikely “to ever come close to matching the profitability of the business they are ostensibly designed to replace.”

Moffett adds that while it is a little early to declare the cable sector dead, he says it isn’t actually too early to draft the industry’s obituary.

So he wrote one: “The cable network business, once among the world’s most profitable industries, succumbed today after a long and painful slide into irrelevance ...When the coronavirus crisis hit in early 2020, sports went off the air, and that was the beginning of the end. By the time sports came back, the damage had been done. The patient was unresponsive. The deceased is survived by Disney+ and Peacock. A shiva will be held over Zoom.”

The cable and telecom companies like Comcast, Charter, Verizon, and AT&T have some offsetting benefits—they are the largest providers of broadband internet service. But the accelerating demise of pay TV is bad news indeed for companies that rely on cable and satellite TV services to distribute programming, including Disney’s ESPN and ABC, Discovery Communications (DISCA), AMC Networks (AMCX), ViacomCBS (VIAC), and Comcast’s own NBCUniversal, among others.

Netflix, meanwhile, signed up more than 15 million new subscribers in the first quarter. When it comes to cable companies, the trend is not their friend.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/cor...tv-51588954999





Shuttered Restaurants, Bars, Hotels Speed up TV Cord-Cutting Even More

No customers to come in, and no sports to put on for them, so why pay for cable?
Kate Cox

Everyone is stuck at home, which you would think would mean a lot more TV watching, not less. And up to a point, that's true: millions of us are putting millions of hours into streaming content from Netflix, Disney+, and others. What we aren't doing, though, is watching cable—especially sports, which aren't happening in the bars and restaurants we aren't going to.

Residential customers have been cutting the cord for years, but now commercial subscribers to pay-TV companies have started jumping into the cancellation heap, The Wall Street Journal reports. Restaurants, bars, hotels, and airlines aren't continuing to pay for pricey channel bundles when nobody is coming in, and even if they could, those viewers would have nothing to watch.

Cable operators continue to charge fees for sports programming that currently doesn't exist thanks to a fairly tangled web of rights and contracts. And while some customers could receive rebates down the line, managing cash flow today may be easier if you just cancel the package altogether. That's even truer for small businesses, which are trying to shore up enough resources to survive long-term.

One bar and grill in Arizona told the WSJ cutting off its cable plan is saving the business $1,600 per month. Although the restaurant does anticipate opening for in-person dining in the next weeks, tables will be spaced farther apart, capacity will be limited and the screens dark, as there are no professional or college sports to show.

Companies' results for the first quarter were only in small part affected by widespread pandemic shutdowns; most stay-at-home orders and school closures came in mid-to-late March, affecting only the last three weeks of the three-month period beginning January 1. Even so, in Q1, AT&T hemorrhaged 900,000 customers, Dish Network was down by 413,000, and Comcast by about 409,000.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who is expected to leave the company at the end of June, last month described small-business subscriptions as "the most disconcerting, troubling area" of AT&T's pay-TV business.

Competitors echoed the sentiment. Charter Chief Financial Officer Chris Winfrey said in April of commercial subscriptions, "it will likely take time for this part of the business to recover," noting that restaurants, bars, and hotels have nixed service until they fully reopen.

Fully reopening, however, is a dicey proposition that will take months. Although some states are already declaring themselves open for business, consumer demand for in-person business remains low in most areas as individuals shelter at home and practice social distancing. Several surveys in the past two weeks—by universities and multiple media outlets—have found that most Americans, by a significant majority, do not think reopening retail, dining, and entertainment establishments is a good idea at this time.
https://arstechnica.com/information-...d-cutter-woes/





Inside HBO Max, the $4 Billion Bet to Stand Out in the Streaming Wars
Cynthia Littleton, Daniel Holloway

A starry group came together for a meeting at Courteney Cox’s Malibu beach house on Oct. 5, 2019. Had the papa#razzi gotten wind, pandemonium would have surely ensued.

Cox invited her five “Friends” co-stars — Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer — for a rare reunion dinner. The gathering was memorialized in a grainy six-shot selfie that Aniston posted a week later when she joined Insta##gram.

Before the former co-stars got down to reminiscing, however, there was business to attend to. The top brass from WarnerMedia had made the trek earlier in the day to Cox’s home to discuss the latest plans for the Warner Bros. TV sitcom that made its stars household names in the mid-’90s.

Bob Greenblatt, Kevin Reilly and Sarah Aubrey — the executives leading the charge for WarnerMedia’s ambitious HBO Max streaming venture that bows May 27 — came by to explain exactly what the company’s new on-demand streaming service was and how it would showcase the 236-episode library of “Friends.” They outlined their vision for a global platform to compete with Netflix, Amazon, Disney and others in TV’s new frontier of the direct-to-consumer cavalcade.

Then the trio broached the idea of some form of “Friends” reunion event to propel the service.

“We didn’t talk a lot of business, but we did talk about how maybe this could happen,” says Reilly, chief content officer for WarnerMedia Entertainment and Direct to Consumer.

Courting the “Friends” cast was one of the more glamorous tasks on what has been a 14-month marathon to get HBO Max off the ground.

The investment is the biggest bet to date made by AT&T to realize the promise of its $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner. The directive last year from then-WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey — the AT&T veteran set to become CEO of the telco giant in July — was a galvanizing force for company insiders at a time when HBO, Turner and Warner Bros. rocked by management upheaval and the exit of top executives from the previous regime.

Bringing WarnerMedia boldly into the streaming wars has been job one for Greenblatt ever since the NBC, Showtime and Fox veteran was recruited to lead WarnerMedia Entertainment and Direct to Consumer in March 2019. The timetable for HBO Max’s target spring 2020 launch date was incredibly aggressive — a challenge that Greenblatt believes helped Team Max power through its planning even as it faced a huge curve#ball with the pandemic lockdowns that began in mid-March.

“We didn’t have the luxury of spending three to six months figuring out what product we wanted to build and what the service should or shouldn’t be,” Greenblatt says. “All of our decisions had to be made quickly.”

AT&T has pledged to invest $4 billion in HBO Max over the next three years. That includes the cost of programming for the service as well as lost WarnerMedia earnings from steering movies and TV shows to HBO Max that otherwise would have been licensed to outside buyers.

“AT&T is a massive company. They’ve got the scale and the financial resources to back a direct-to-consumer platform that really does compete head-to-head with the big boys,” says John Hod#ulik, the UBS telecom analyst who has covered AT&T for 20 years. “It’s the right thing for them to do from a capital allocation standpoint. Do you continue to invest in the distribution that is slowly dying, or do you invest in the growth area? Generally, you invest in growth.”

The hope is that HBO Max is built up over the next few years to be a multipurpose platform for the global distribution of WarnerMedia content as well as an engine for bundling subscriptions to AT&T’s wireless and data services. The fear is that an underwhelming HBO Max would tarnish or, worse, be a financial strain on HBO proper. The pay TV pioneer generated operating income of $2.3 billion from revenue of $6.8 billion in 2019.

“Everyone involved in [HBO Max] feels the pressure of doing something that is worthy of the title of the network,” says Greg Berlanti. The prolific Warner Bros.-based multi-hyphenate is shepherding numerous series for HBO Max, including a big-budget take on “Green Lantern.”

The team behind HBO Max has had to roll with the pandemic punches in the last mile before its scheduled start. Plans for the “Friends” reunion to launch the service were scuttled by the lockdown, but the special (with a payday of $2.5 million per star) remains a go, as soon as shooting in person is practical and schedules align. Nor will there be the same quantity of HBO Max originals as expected for the launch and on through early 2021.

Marketing campaigns had to be rebuilt almost from scratch when key events including the March Madness college basketball tournament, which is carried by Turner networks, were hastily scrapped.

“All of a sudden all of our marketing organized around sporting events, Comic-Con — now all these events were not happening,” says Andy Forssell, a Hulu and Otter Media veteran who is executive VP and general manager of HBO Max. “Those plans were redone from the bottom up at the last minute.” Warner#Media chief marketing officer Chris Spadaccini led the charge.

On the production side, more than 30 HBO Max projects were shuttered as a result of the pandemic. Aubrey spent her last Friday in the office — HBO Max for now has set up shop in Turner’s Burbank office building, around the corner from the Warner Bros. lot — and called producers for those shows to discuss the extraordinary circumstances and commiserate. They also scrambled to get a few projects set up with remote editing tools.

“It’s important for them to hear directly that we’re here to support the production,” Aubrey says. “Some people were like, ‘Oh, are you going to use this as a reason to cancel the show?’ We all felt it was really important to put a personal message of assurance behind that.”

Greenblatt admits he was worried that the widespread shutdowns would present a bigger hardship than it’s been to have executive teams communicating by Webex video meetings and text messages.

“Can the last lap of this all be done at home? Miraculously, the answer is yes,” Greenblatt says. “It’s still shocking to me that it was all still able to carry on, even the tech side of it.”

On March 20, early in the lockdown, Stankey convened a videoconference call with Greenblatt and other key lieutenants. The group had settled on May 27 as the launch date months before but still hadn’t made it official to the public. On the call, Stankey observed that “the world has changed” and asked the team how it was feeling about the launch. “Across the board everyone was like, ‘Let’s go,’” Forssell recalls. “There really wasn’t a lot of debate about it.”

Stankey marvels at the progress that has been made in barely a year. He first started thinking about how Time Warner assets could be used to support a Netflix-esque streaming platform at the time that AT&T began the secret due diligence process on the Time Warner acquisition in the summer of 2017.

“Imagine sitting here today without having this opportunity in front of us,” Stankey says. “Imagine [AT&T] walking into this industry not being in a position to do what we need to do to compete.”

Four years ago, it was clear to Stankey and outgoing AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson as they weighed the purchase of Time Warner that the pay TV foundation of the company’s television businesses was in a state of transition.

“We had to change the business model, and we had to change our mindset around it,” Stankey says of the reengineering required within HBO, Turner and to a lesser degree Warner Bros. “It wasn’t just the arrival of Netflix. Any [consumer-centric] industry that is going to be relevant moving forward is going to have to have a direct relationship with its customers.”

The question of the price tag for HBO Max was a parlor guessing game until WarnerMedia unveiled the $14.99 target as part of its Oct. 29, 2019, Investor Day presentation. The company had little choice, because to go much lower than $15 would cause HBO to be in breach of its traditional MVPD carriage agreements, which still generate the lion’s share of HBO’s revenue.

Existing HBO customers will get HBO Max as an add-on at no extra charge. This means that HBO Max needs to grow subscribers at a steady clip from the HBO-only starting point to make the investment pay off. AT&T has forecast reaching 50 million HBO Max subs in the U.S. by 2025 and 75 million to 90 million worldwide.

Stankey was amused by the intense focus on HBO Max’s price amid the streaming wars. “There are all kinds of opinions about price. Every member of the board of directors had an opinion about the price,” he says. But in his experience, “price is the easiest attribute to change in a product. It’s the 20-pound sledgehammer in marketing.”

Jeremy Legg had heard it all before, many times. WarnerMedia’s chief technology officer counts himself as among the few surviving executives who came to Time Warner through the AOL acquisition in 2001. Over the years, Legg has worked up many a Power Point and spreadsheet presentation for combining content from Time Warner divisions with cutting-edge distribution platforms.

When HBO decided to go over the top with the stand-alone HBO Now broadband app in 2014, consideration was given to the possibility of adding more Time Warner-related content to the service. In the end, in part because HBO, Turner and Warner Bros. operated as separate entities, the decision was made to keep HBO Now exclusive.

When Legg met with Stankey after AT&T reached its agreement to buy Time Warner in October 2016, the prospect of creating a streaming service was the first thing the incoming boss wanted to talk about. Legg couldn’t help noticing Stankey’s determination to get it done.

All of the enthusiasm about the merger possibilities was put on ice for 20 months while AT&T battled the Justice Department’s efforts to block the acquisition. In June 2018, two days after AT&T prevailed in the antitrust trial in D.C. federal court, the telco closed the deal, although it was under orders to keep the Turner assets separate from the rest of what AT&T renamed WarnerMedia while the government pursued its appeal.

By the fall of 2018, Stankey had given Legg a new mission and job — overseeing technology for HBO and Turner. That would facilitate the larger goal of having the units collaborate on the tech and content to power the new streaming platform.

Another key decision was to build the infrastructure for HBO Max on the back of the existing HBO Now streaming platform rather than starting from scratch.

“John’s analogy to me was, ‘We’ve got a 200-horsepower car. I need you to build me an 800-horsepower car,’” Legg says.

In late November 2018, around the time Stankey outlined the broad strokes of what he called “a software experience wrapped around creative excellence” at an AT&T investor day presentation, AT&T marketing executive Brad Bentley was tapped to serve as general manager of WarnerMedia direct-to-consumer.

Bentley, who had worked with Stankey in his previous job at AT&T Entertainment, was not destined for a long run, leaving after eight months as it became clear he was not a good fit, according to sources. But Stankey’s other significant streaming appointment at the time was well-equipped to seize the moment.

Reilly’s expansion of duties in December 2018 from chief content officer for Turner to steering programming for HBO Max was the first of many signals that AT&T was reallocating resources from Turner’s TNT, TBS and TruTV to the new service. Barely six weeks after Reilly’s appointment, he enlisted Aubrey, who had served as head of development for TNT, to do the same job on a larger scale for HBO Max.

By the time Greenblatt arrived at WarnerMedia three months later, the content roster in the works for HBO Max was growing — Reilly and Aubrey were taking eight to 10 pitches a day at one point last spring — but the new entity needed a permanent creative team to call its own.

“Everyone was lending a hand because they had to and because it was exciting,” Greenblatt says. “But we knew we couldn’t move quickly if we were asking people to do two jobs. We had to fire up a network, in old-fashioned terms.”

The decision to organize the offering around the HBO brand did not come immediately. Thought was given at the outset to creating a Warner Bros.-branded service.

“We knew that Warner Bros. had a very high recognition in terms of the shield itself; people understand that it means quality,” Reilly says. “But Warner Bros., unlike, say, Disney, has never been a consumer-facing brand. You know, you don’t go to ‘Warners Land’ for vacation.”

Over the first few months of 2019, the burgeoning streaming team went into deep research mode, examining the pay-TV marketplace and HBO’s place in it. That gave Reilly and Aubrey a direction to go in developing original programming and curated library product that would appeal to demographics beyond HBO’s affluent adult stronghold.

“HBO speaks to certain audiences and demos, but there are lots of demos they don’t speak to,” says Greenblatt. “Kevin and Sarah did really good work defining what the Max originals should be. It’s younger and with a more female skew. We’re focused on filling out the kids and family audience in a big way.”

With moves such as ordering a new iteration of the millennial sudser “Gossip Girl,” which aired on The CW from 2007-12, HBO Max’s originals strategy early on was pegged by many as being geared to young women. Aubrey waves that off.

“We tend to lean female just to be complementary to HBO’s statistically male bent, but that’s only like a slight tip off 50%,” Aubrey says.

Similarly, she dismisses as overblown the sentiment that there’s confusion in the creative community over having two different HBOs in the marketplace competing for product. (HBO is based in Santa Monica, while the HBO Max team is in Burbank.) She notes that she and Francesca Orsi, HBO’s executive VP of drama, have even taken pitch meetings together, working out between them afterward who would pursue a project. One such program was an adaptation of Alice Hoffman’s novel “The Rules of Magic,” which ultimately was ordered to series as a Max original.

One producer who has been working with HBO Max on a project says the infrastructure for productions and talent was a little chaotic at first as the company staffed up quickly under Greenblatt.

Reilly and Aubrey have been very hands-on with development and on multiple shows ordered straight to series, in contrast to the lighter-touch approach found across town at Netflix. That’s been grating to some — one producer was said to have been asked to change the color scheme of a credits sequence — but refreshing to others. “They definitely feel like they are making art there,” says the producer. “It’s not bad. They care about what they are doing.”

On Feb. 26, 2019, AT&T got the news it was waiting for out of Washington, D.C. The Justice Department’s appeal of the antitrust trial ruling was denied. There were no more obstacles to the complete the integration of Turner into WarnerMedia. Stankey ensured that the sledgehammer came out to tear down the walls that had historically divided HBO, Turner and Warner Bros.

“How does somebody make a decision about where the next incremental dollar of programming goes and what platform it should be put toward? It’s hard to do that when you have three separate [bottom lines],” Stankey says.

As Greenblatt oversaw HBO and Turner integration efforts, the technical work and content development for HBO Max continued apace. For many, it’s been months and months of seven-day workweeks. But there’s a strong spirit of mission and a recognition that AT&T leaders see HBO Max as the beacon of WarnerMedia’s future profits.

“If you can’t get excited about launching a multibillion-dollar global product with all the best content we have, why do you work in media?” Legg says. “When are any of us going to get a chance to do something like this again?”

AT&T needs HBO Max to click with consumers to help justify its Time Warner purchase, especially as the telco’s 2015 acquisition of DirecTV has widely been seen as a costly misstep.

Otter Media CEO Tony Goncalves, who has led the technical development of HBO Max for WarnerMedia, reiterates the unique opening that HBO Max represents for a company with the content assets on the scale of WarnerMedia.

“We’re doing this in a historical fashion” for a Hollywood heavyweight, Goncalves says. “The ingredients have been laid out, and we have the opportunity to make a gourmet meal.”

The expectations for the HBO Max feast are high as it follows on the heels of the heralded debut of Disney Plus and the entrance of Apple TV Plus, as well as Comcast’s fledging ad-supported Peacock service and ViacomCBS’ revved-up CBS All Access and Pluto TV services, to name a few. Consumers have been bombarded with streaming options in recent months.

The quality-not-quantity approach extends to the curation efforts of the vast libraries that HBO Max can draw from. Although WarnerMedia has some 45,000 hours of programming available in its own vault, the focus is on serving up the cream of the crop. HBO Max will launch with roughly 10,000 hours of library content. There will be films from Warner Bros., Turner Classic Movies and the Criterion Collection; Warner Bros. Television sitcoms; grown-up animation from Adult Swim; and, of course, the entirety of HBO.

“We didn’t want to just throw thousands of hours at the wall and hope we hit everybody,” Greenblatt says. “We spent a lot of time looking at and curating all of these different libraries.”

For Warner Bros., HBO Max is not only a new vehicle for showcasing its vast movie and TV vault, it’s also a hungry new mouth in the family to feed. The studio is producing a slew of original series — including numerous kid- and family-friendly titles, for HBO Max as well as a slate of feature-length movies. Among the first up is the Berlanti-produced “UNpregnant,” from up-and-coming helmer Rachel Lee Goldenberg.

To Ann Sarnoff, who was named CEO of Warner Bros. last summer, HBO Max offers an outlet that allows the studio to take more chances on projects from rising stars like Goldenberg.

“We have expandable capacity to produce,” Sarnoff says. “It’s not like we’re in a zero-sum game where we have to take things away from other buyers. HBO Max is a big priority for the company. We want to give them excellent product but continue serving our other clients at the same time.”

WarnerMedia expects to add technical features and applications to HBO Max every six to eight weeks after launch. The look of the service on May 27 is only the beginning. WarnerMedia is preparing to slowly introduce HBO Max in overseas markets. And it has been built in a modular fashion to allow for livestreaming and ad-supported content.

That’s just for starters.

“We’re now in the new era of aggregation platforms — whether it’s a Netflix or an Amazon or an HBO Max,” Stankey predicts. “You’re going to see all content eventually move to these platforms with multiple forms of monetization. That’s how you offer the best content to consumers at the best value-oriented price. That’s how this matures over the next couple of years.”
https://variety.com/2020/tv/features...ia-1234604475/





Democrats Try to Ban Internet Shutoffs Until Pandemic is Over

Democrats also pitch $50 monthly discounts with low-income broadband fund.
Jon Brodkin

A proposed US law would make it illegal for telecom providers to terminate Internet or phone service during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill was submitted in the Senate today by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

"Now—as millions of Americans hunker down, work from home, and engage in remote learning—would be the absolute worst time for Americans to lose a critical utility like Internet service," Merkley said in an announcement.

Separately, House Democratic leadership today unveiled a $3 trillion relief package that includes at least $4 billion for an "emergency broadband connectivity fund." That money, if approved, would be given to ISPs that provide discounts to low-income households and people who lose their jobs. Subsidies would be up to $50 a month for most low-income households and up to $75 for households in tribal areas. Another $1.5 billion would be allotted to Wi-Fi hotspots and other telecom equipment for schools and libraries.

The relief package also includes a provision that "prohibits telephone and broadband service providers from stopping service to consumers unable to pay during the duration of the emergency," according to House Democrats.

Bill goes beyond FCC’s voluntary pledge

Merkley's Senate bill would impose actual requirements with penalties for ISPs that disconnect customers during the pandemic, whereas the Federal Communications Commission merely asked ISPs to sign a voluntary pledge not to terminate service to residential or small-business customers who aren't able to pay bills because of the pandemic. The FCC's authority to protect consumers from ISPs was gutted in 2017 when Chairman Ajit Pai deregulated the broadband industry as part of his net neutrality repeal.

The FCC pledge was signed by more than 700 companies but left ISPs wiggle room to disconnect customers who don't notify the provider that their inability to pay was caused by the pandemic. NBCNews reported last month that some unemployed people were losing service despite the FCC pledge; Verizon clarified at the time that "customers need to proactively reach out to us to seek relief."

Merkley, Sanders, and Wyden want to prevent the shutoffs from happening at all and force ISPs to reconnect customers who were disconnected after the pandemic began. The bill would be retroactive to March 13, 2020. Any provider that terminated voice or Internet service on or after that date "shall immediately resume providing the service upon the date of enactment of this Act," the bill says.

Law would be in effect at least six more months

The bill's provisions would remain in effect until "180 days after the date on which the COVID–19 emergency [declared by President Trump] terminates." During this time, telecoms would not be allowed to disconnect voice or Internet service except "at the request of the customer; to protect the network of the provider from abuse," or to comply with legal requirements.

On the latter point, ISPs would be allowed to disconnect service "in cooperation with a law enforcement agency to protect life and safety in exigent circumstances," to comply with a "valid court order," or "in accordance with" the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe harbor provision.

Telecoms that terminate service in other circumstances, such as when a customer cannot pay the bill, would have to pay fines of up to $100 for each day of the violation. The Federal Communications Commission would be required to use proceeds from such fines "to provide assistance to low-income individuals who lack access to affordable broadband service due to the COVID–19 emergency," the bill says.

The bill would also let individual customers or state attorneys general sue providers that disconnect service during the pandemic. The bill doesn't seem to address what would happen after the pandemic, when ISPs could disconnect customers who don't pay the full past-due amounts, however.

Merkley's announcement pitched the no-telecom-shutoffs bill as "a complement" to legislation submitted by Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) that would impose a "moratorium on water, electricity, and gas disconnections. Together in a COVID-19 package, the legislation would ensure that Americans have access to the utilities that are even more essential during the COVID-19 pandemic."

Also today, Democratic senators including Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pitched a $4 billion plan to expand home-Internet access for K-12 students.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...demic-is-over/





Senate Privacy Hawks Score a Win that Delays Surveillance Renewal

Changes that senators adopted to domestic spying provisions of FISA could "unravel" a months-old House compromise, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner said.
Martin Matishak

Congressional privacy hawks scored a critical victory on Wednesday that deepens the uncertainty about the fate of expired federal surveillance powers.

Senators voted 77-19 — well over the 60-vote threshold — to adopt a bipartisan amendment bolstering legal protections for targets of federal surveillance. The move means that Congress' attempt to reauthorize key sections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will detour back to the House, where it could face more delays or tinkering at the hands of privacy advocates and Republicans.

It’s also unclear if President Donald Trump would sign the legislation, even though Attorney General William Barr helped negotiate it. Trump has railed against the Obama administration's use of FISA to surveil supporters of his campaign in 2016, and has complained on Twitter about the bill's House-backed version.

FISA is a Watergate-era law that serves as the foundation for national security probes and governs federal surveillance, both domestically and of Americans abroad. Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) offered the amendment that lawmakers adopted Wednesday.

“BREAKING: BIG win tonight for the protection of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties!” Leahy tweeted after the vote. “Tomorrow we turn to the underlying bill, and then on to House.”

Approval of the amendment marked a legislative coup for privacy advocates and civil libertarians, who have struggled lately to maintain the legislative gains they had achieved after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked details about the government’s most secret spying programs.

Wednesday’s successful push also adds a new wrinkle to what has become a months-long saga to renew intelligence authorities that expired on March 15 after Congress left town in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic without reaching an agreement.

Once the bill returns to the House, it’s unclear if the change will mollify privacy advocates enough to allow for a quick approval. House Republicans, who have spent weeks demanding that the chamber return to normal business, could also push to reopen a broader debate over changes to FISA.

“My sense from my House counterparts was this is a carefully crafted compromise and that it could potentially unravel if it comes back with this amendment,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told POLITICO.

But Warner, who voted against the reform measure, noted that 75 House Democrats voted against the renewal bill the first time in March and that with the amendment, “maybe it could pick up more.”

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the former GOP whip, said that “it could be the House will just take it up and pass it,” but declined to speculate on when that might be.

Lee, who had lobbied Trump to veto the House bill if it reached his desk, said in a statement that the reform measure “will help bring some much-needed oversight and accountability” to FISA.

“More work still needs to be done, but this is good reform in the right direction, and I look forward to final passage of this FISA reform legislation,” the Utah Republican added.

The Senate is expected to pass its version of the bill on Thursday, but first lawmakers will have to vote on an amendment by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), which is expected to fail. Paul, a close Trump ally, has also pushed the president to veto the legislation.

Paul has indicated that he would continue to urge a veto unless all three reform amendments were adopted.

Before notching their victory, privacy-minded lawmakers were dealt a setback Wednesday, when they came up one vote shy of approving an amendment that would have protected Americans’ internet browsing and search history from federal surveillance.

“As far as I can tell we lost because there were some people absent,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who co-sponsored the measure with Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), told POLITICO. “I intend to keep coming back to make sure that any administration can’t spy on [Americans] and violate the Constitution.”

The bill incorporates new privacy provisions into FISA and imposes new requirements on the FISA court system. It also permanently ends a deactivated NSA program that had allowed the country’s largest intelligence organization to obtain, with judicial approval, Americans’ phone records in terrorism probes.

Under an agreement struck in March, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can introduce up to three amendments of his own to undercut or weaken the others. However, he declined to do so Wednesday.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...es-fisa-254970





Senate Passes Surveillance Bill Without Ban on Web History Snooping

The original rules expired in March
Adi Robertson

The Senate has voted to reauthorize the USA Freedom Act, bringing the surveillance bill closer to becoming law. The USA Freedom Reauthorization Act restores government powers that expired in March with Section 215 of the Patriot Act. While the Senate adopted an amendment to expand oversight, it shot down a proposal that would have restricted warrantless collection of internet search and web browsing data.

The USA Freedom Reauthorization Act lets law enforcement collect “tangible things” related to national security investigations without a warrant, requiring only approval from a secret court that has reportedly rubber-stamped many requests. It passed the House of Representatives earlier this year, but it stalled in the Senate during the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Today, senators approved it with 80 votes for and 16 votes against, according to The Hill. The House of Representatives will need to approve the amended version of the bill before sending it to the president’s desk.

The USA Freedom Act was designed to reform the Patriot Act and limit large-scale phone record collection, following leaks from NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013. But surveillance critics wanted to extend its limits in the reauthorized version. Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) successfully passed an amendment that would expand the role of independent advisers to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.

Conversely, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Steve Daines (R-MT) failed by one vote to pass a rule prohibiting warrantless surveillance of internet search and browsing records. Wyden ultimately voted against the reauthorization. “The legislation hands the government power for warrantless collection of Americans’ web browsing and internet searches, as well as other private information, without having to demonstrate that those Americans have done anything wrong,” he said in a statement. “Without further reform of these vague and dangerous Patriot Act authorities, Congress is inviting more secret interpretations of the law and more abuses.”
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/14/2...horization-act





France to Force Web Giants to Delete some Content Within the Hour

Social networks and other online content providers will have to remove paedophile and terrorism-related content from their platforms within the hour or face a fine of up to 4% of their global revenue under a French law voted in on Wednesday.

For other “manifestly illicit” content, companies such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat will have 24 hours to remove it, according to the law, which sets up a specialised digital prosecutor at the courts and a government unit to observe hate speech online.

Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet told parliament the law will help reduce online hate speech.

“People will think twice before crossing the red line if they know that there is a high likelihood that they will be held to account,” she said.

Free-speech advocates criticised the new law.

Online civil liberties defence group La Quadrature du Net(LQDN) said in a statement the legislator should have instead targeted the Internet giants’ business models.

It said it was unrealistic to think content could be withdrawn within the hour and the law was unnecessary.

“If the site does not censure the content (for instance because the complaint was sent during the weekend or at night), then police can force Internet service providers to block the site everywhere in France,” it said.

Twitter France public affairs chief Audrey Herblin-Stoop said the company would continue to work closely with the government to build a safer Internet and fight against illegal hate speech, while protecting an open internet, freedom of expression and fair competition.

She said it was a top priority to ensure public debate was civil, adding Twitter’s investments in technologies that signal hate speech will reduce the burden on users of having to call out illicit content.

For one in two tweets on which the company has taken action, it had already been alerted by software, compared to 1 in 5 in 2018, she said.

Far-right National Rally party president Marine Le Pen said the law was “a serious violation of the freedom of expression”.

Facebook did not return calls and emails seeking comment, Google and Snapchat were not immediately available for comment.

Reporting by Elizabeth Pineau and Mathieu Rosemain; Writing by Geert De Clercq; Editing by David Evans and Barbara Lewis
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-f...-idUSKBN22P2JU





Danish High Court Dismisses Illegal Downloading and File Sharing Cases
Melissa Bolvig Christensen and Amalie Rosenbaum Petersen

The Danish Eastern High Court recently dismissed three appeal court cases on illegal downloading and file sharing due to the plaintiff’s lack of standing to pursue the claims on behalf of the copyright holders.

The rulings are a gamechanger for rightsholders and accused internet subscribers and have already led to numerous case dismissals by the district courts.

Several hundred cases of alleged illegal downloading and filesharing recently took a turn when three appeal court cases were dismissed by the Eastern High Court. The precedent in the majority of these cases has been based on a rule of presumption after which the violation must be presumed to be committed by the owner of the IP- address, if he or she had an access code on their internet connection.

Whilst the Eastern High Court does not set aside the rule of presumption, the court ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing to pursue the copyright holders’ claims, which led to the High Court revoking and dismissing all three court cases. The High Court rulings are likely to have immense consequences for several hundred similar district court cases, which have been put on hold while awaiting the appeal rulings. 39 cases in the District Court of Frederiksberg have already been dismissed.

The High Court’s dismissals

The three court cases were all appealed and processed together before the Eastern High Court. As argued in many similar previous court cases, the defendants claimed that the plaintiff lacked standing to pursue the matter due to the licensing agreements presented being inadequate and imprecise. The plaintiff, a British registered company acting on behalf of the copyright holders, claimed affirmation of the district court rulings by arguing that the company by virtue of the licensing agreements had acquired the necessary standing to sue. Despite the many previous district court rulings, the Eastern High Court found that the licensing agreements were in fact inadequate. Furthermore, the plaintiff had neither produced nor distributed the movies concerned and was therefore not the rightful owner of the copyrights and the associated standing to sue. The license agreements between the plaintiff and a Cypriot company, who had been assigned copyrights from an American film producer, did not prove that the rights had been assigned to the plaintiff. The license agreements were only partially submitted as evidence in the case and the plaintiff was mentioned by its previous name, which had been changed prior to the license agreement. Finally, an e-mail from the alleged director of the Cypriot company stating that the rights had in fact been assigned to the plaintiff did not change the High Court’s rulings.

Pending district court cases are being dismissed

With the dismissals from the Eastern High Court, the district courts have now commenced to process the numerous cases that have been put on hold. In the District Court of Frederiksberg alone, 39 cases out of a caseload of 150, have been dismissed on the grounds that the plaintiff is lacking standing to sue.

In the dismissals, the District Court of Frederiksberg further elaborates on the arguments that have long been conveyed by defendants’ counsel, including numerous issues with the evidence in these types of cases, such as problems with the technical documentation and the plaintiff’s management of such evidence towards individuals with no legal background or knowledge. Another issue pointed out by the district court, is the plaintiffs’ inactivity meaning that most claims are presented several years after the accused illegal actions. Moreover, the district court finds that the plaintiffs seek overcompensation both in trial and in settlements.

The cases of illegal downloading and file sharing might not be over just yet, as the plaintiff’s counsel has recently stated that the plaintiff might appeal the three cases to the Danish Supreme Court.
https://www.lexology.com/library/det...d-effc6fba41e3

















Until next week,

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