Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - August 15th, ’20

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August 15th, 2020




Research Shows Post-Release Digital Movie Piracy Can Boost Ticket Sales
J. Merritt Melancon

Movie studios estimate that they lose billions of dollars to digital movie piracy. But a new marketing study from the University of Georgia finds that piracy can actually boost ticket sales in certain situations.

The reason: pirates talk.

Pirated movies circulated online after their theatrical release saw about 3% higher box office receipts because of the increase in word-of-mouth advertising, according to Neil Bendle, an associate professor of marketing at the Terry College of Business.

Bendle is quick to point out that pre-release piracy is still financially damaging for movie studios. But post-theatrical release piracy was connected to more word-of-mouth and higher ticket sales.

"We don't want to give the impression that piracy is a good thing, but there is something to the argument that piracy can increase markets," Bendle said. "We wanted to find out when that might be the case."

Bendle and his co-authors—Shane Wang of the University of Western Ontario and Shije Lu of the University of Houston—published their findings in a recent issue of Management Science.

They analyzed movie ticket sales, piracy rates and crowdsourced movie reviews between July 2015 and June 2017, using data from Russia, where authorities have blocked the popular Pirate Bay torrent since 2015.

Pirate Bay was one of the most significant digital piracy sites on the internet for several years between 2010 and 2020 but is now banned in many countries. The research team used activity on the site as a benchmark for piracy rates. They analyzed movie revenues before and during 2015, after a late 2014 law enforcement raid shut down the Pirate Bay website for about a year.

During Pirate Bay's hiatus, word-of-mouth and movie revenues both dipped.

"When the Pirate Bay was taken down by the Swedish police, we see a drop in word-of-mouth because people can't watch these movies on the Pirate Bay," Bendle said. "And then, we see a contemporaneous decline in ticket sales. When we see that associated fall in word-of-mouth, and then a decline in movie sales, it was a nice bit of evidence that we were moving in the right direction."

Though it sounds counterintuitive, Bendle's team connected the dips to a decline in movie fans talking about the titles online. With the reduction in online buzz, fewer people were interested in seeing the movies in theaters or streaming them legally.

"With post-theatrical release piracy, people who are super keen on it or would have gone anyhow have already gone," Bendle said. "People who are not going on the opening weekend can be drawn to it by people who have watched the movie and blogged about it. Bloggers don't have to produce their ticket before they write about it. Pirates can still give a useful, valid opinion for consumers."

Movies only benefitted from the boost in word-of-mouth advertising if the title was pirated and circulated after its theatrical release. Films that were pirated before their release dates saw an 11% decline in their overall revenue, despite increased word-of-mouth.

"There's a key distinction between pre- and post-release piracy," Bendle said. "We substantiate that pre-release piracy is very bad. It can undermine a film before it comes out."

The takeaway for movie studios is that they should target their anti-piracy efforts to prevent pirated copies of their movies from leaking onto the internet before their theatrical release, Bendle said.

"They've got limited resources to try to track down movie pirates," he said. "We're saying that the best use of those resources should be put toward controlling digital copies of the movie pre-release and not at who's pirating it after the theatrical release."
https://phys.org/news/2020-08-post-r...acy-boost.html





Liam Neeson Thought Taken Would Be a Direct-to-Video Action Movie

Before Taken became a global phenomenon, star Liam Neeson expected the movie to go direct-to-video, rather than blow up at the box office.
Holden Walter-Warner

Before Taken became a global phenomenon, star Liam Neeson expected the movie to go direct-to-video, rather than blow up at the box office. With a then-55-year-old Neeson starring in a rare action film, expectations were low for the movie, especially when it was only released in France to start. But it slowly made its way around the world, becoming one of the most quotable action films of the century, turning Neeson into a bonafide action star.

Neeson was a star long before Taken, perhaps best known for his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Oskar Schindler in 1993's Schindler's List. He also played Qui-Gon Jinn in The Phantom Menace. Still, it wasn't clear if he would be able to carry an action film on his own, especially since that was a role he was unfamiliar with at the time Taken came around. Low expectations for the movie are something Neeson has expressed in the past and is continuing to be forthcoming about now.

In an interview with EW, Neeson admitted he expected Taken to go direct-to-video, stating that he thought it would play well in France for a short spell before ending its theatrical run. He only started to understand the pull of the movie when his nephews in Ireland admitted to illegally pirating the movie from South Korea. Neeson also noted the role the trailer and marketing of the movie in the United States played in its success, with the movie grossing $226 million worldwide against a $25 million budget.

The rest is history, as Taken entered the pop culture zeitgeist and has remained relevant since its 2009 premiere. The movie spawned two sequels starring Neeson and a spinoff television series that aired for two seasons on NBC, ending its run in 2018. Meanwhile, the Taken memes coming from the original movie are still bandied about today. While Neeson has insisted there will be no Taken 4, his desire to keep making action films keeps the dream of another sequel alive and well.

Given the popularity of the franchise, it comes as a bit of a surprise that Neeson initially had such little faith in the movie. In the decade that has followed Taken, Neeson has become one of the biggest action stars of his generation, starring in films such as The Commuter and Non-Stop. Neeson has slowly moved away from action films in recent years, with his EW interview serving as a promotion for the dramedy Made in Italy, which was released to VOD platforms on Friday. Still, Taken remains at the forefront of people's minds as it has become the film Neeson is most associated with for a generation of action fans - not bad for a potential direct-to-video movie.
https://screenrant.com/liam-neeson-t...-direct-video/





Sony, Others Look To Revive Pirating Claim At 11th Circ.
August 07, 2020

The music labels, which include Sony Music Entertainment and UMG Recordings Inc., asked the Middle District of Florida for permission to appeal a July 8 decision that dismissed their claim that BHN is vicariously liable for the copyright infringement committed by customers who download pirated music.

An interlocutory appeal now would potentially reduce the amount of litigation necessary on remand and eliminate inefficiencies, according to the music labels. Without an appeal now, the court risks having two trials on the two counts asserted in the complaint, according to the labels.

"The efficiencies are magnified in a case like this one, which involves a large number of parties, and the trial of which is likely to span several weeks," the music labels said.

The labels claim BHN failed to address "rampant, repeated infringements" of their copyrighted works on its network despite receiving more than 100,000 notices between 2012 and 2016 detailing specific acts of infringement by subscribers.

In their lawsuit, which alleges contributory copyright infringement and vicarious liability against BHN, the music labels say BHN looked the other way in order to continue to reap millions in profits from subscribers.

In January, BHN asked the court to dismiss only the vicarious liability claim, arguing the music labels had failed to plausibly allege the telecommunications provider received a direct financial benefit from the alleged infringement. The company argued the music labels were required to plead that customers were drawn to BHN's internet service because of the ability to engage in infringing activities as opposed to just wanting to access the internet efficiently.

The court agreed and on July 8 dismissed the vicarious liability claim after holding the music labels would have to allege the availability of infringing content was the main customer draw to the BHN service in order to proceed on that claim.

But the music labels said Thursday that other courts, including the Ninth Circuit, have reached the opposite conclusion, justifying certification of an immediate appeal of the nonfinal order. Without this appeal, the Eleventh Circuit will not review the dismissal of the vicarious liability claim until after a trial on the contributory infringement claim.

"In the event that the Eleventh Circuit adopts the contrary legal theory that plaintiffs have urged, this court will need to hold a second trial, before a second jury, on substantially overlapping factual issues, concerning the same instances of copyright infringement by BHN's subscribers and supported by much of the same evidence and witnesses that will be presented at the trial on contributory liability," the music labels said. "Certification at this stage would avoid this resource-intensive, inefficient outcome."

An attorney for the music labels declined to comment on Friday. An attorney for BHN did not respond to a request for comment.

The labels are represented by Jonathan M. Sperling, Mitchell A. Kamin and Neema T. Sahni of Covington & Burling LLP; David C. Banker and Bryan D. Hull of Bush Ross PA; and Matthew J. Oppenheim, Scott A. Zebrak, Jeffrey M. Gould and Kerry M. Mustico of Oppenheim & Zebrak LLP.

BHN is represented by Michael S. Elkin, Thomas Patrick Lane, Seth E. Spitzer, Erin R. Ranahan, Shilpa A. Coorg and Jennifer A. Golinveaux of Winston & Strawn LLP and William J. Schifino Jr., John Schifino and Ryan Lee Hedstrom of Gunster.

The case is UMG Recordings Inc. et al. v. Bright House Networks LLC, case number 8:19-cv-00710, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

--Editing by Abbie Sarfo.
https://www.law360.com/ip/articles/1...-at-11th-circ-





Google Beats Song Lyric Scraping Lawsuit

Google may have been caught "redhanded," but a federal judge rules that Genius hasn't alleged any viable claims not be preempted by copyright law.
Eriq Gardner

Genius Media Group was pretty clever when it used digital watermarks to show that Google had been using its huge collection of song lyrics. One of those watermarks spelled "redhanded" in Morse code. That Google was caught with another site's song lyric transcriptions made international news — and even merited a mention during Congress' Big Tech hearing late last month. But was there anything unlawful about Google's alleged scraping (direct or indirect)? On Monday, a New York federal judge dismissed claims by Genius.

Genius doesn't own copyrights to the song lyrics. Those rights belong to publishers and songwriters. Genius does have a license to the song lyrics in question. Additionally, Genius spends a lot of time and millions of dollars facilitating collaborative lyric transcription. Can't it protect its sweat? Genius believed so. Genius prohibits its users from transmitting its transcriptions for commercial purpose. Google breached the Terms of Service, claimed a complaint filed in New York state court. Genius' suit also targeted LyricFind for what it was allegedly provided Google (which sourced lyrics to third parties).

After the case was filed last December, Google had it removed to federal court on the basis that Genius' state claims were preempted. As federal court provides the exclusive jurisdiction for copyright controversies, the initial question in this case was whether Genius was doing anything more than disguising copyright claims. That's the subject of a new 36-page opinion from U.S. District Court Judge Margo Brodie.

There's little doubt that the transcribed song lyrics fit within the types of works protected by the Copyright Act and thus satisfy subject matter of a preempted claim. However, under precedent, state contract claims can nevertheless survive so long as there's an "extra element" at play. That could be contractual obligations that are qualitatively different from a copyright claim.

Here, Brodie rejects the proposition that Genius' attempt to guard against scraping for profit constitutes an extra element.

"Plaintiff’s breach of contract claims are nothing more than claims seeking to enforce the copyright owners’ exclusive rights to protection from unauthorized reproduction of the lyrics and are therefore preempted," writes the judge. "Although Plaintiff describes the rights it seeks to enforce as 'broader and different than the exclusive right existing under the Copyright Act,' based on 'the substantial investment of time and labor by [Plaintiff] in a competitive market,' and asserts breach of contract claims based on alleged violations of Plaintiff’s Terms of Service, Plaintiff’s own ability to transcribe and display the lyrics on its website arises from the licensing rights Plaintiff has in the lyrics..."

Judge Brodie goes on to add that Genius' transcriptions are really just "derivative works," and even if Genius created them and retains some ownership, "Plaintiff’s claim is preempted by the Copyright Act because, at its core, it is a claim that Defendants created an unauthorized reproduction of Plaintiff’s derivative work, which is itself conduct that violates an exclusive right of the copyright owner under federal copyright law."

Additionally, the opinion finds that Genius' unfair competition claim is also preempted. Brodie writes that Google isn't accused of having "breached any fiduciary duty or confidential relationship," and that the lawsuit essentially accuses Google of "passing off" its own work product as its own. She concludes, "Unfair competition claims involving allegations of reverse passing off are preempted by the Copyright Act," and Genius' "unfair competition claims are not saved from preemption by its allegations of bad faith, unfairness, and deceptive, unethical, and immoral conduct."

Rejecting Genius' motion to remand the case back to a state court, Brodie dismisses the complaint for failure to state a claim.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/th...awsuit-1306788





Can Neil Young Block Trump From Using His Songs? It’s Complicated

Musicians have complained about politicians playing their music at events for years. Now, with Mr. Young suing for copyright infringement, they are trying a new strategy.
Ben Sisario

On Election Day in 2018, Neil Young posted a frustrated statement about President Trump.

Three years earlier, Mr. Trump had used Mr. Young’s song “Rockin’ in the Free World” — a protest against injustice — when announcing his campaign, drawing Mr. Young’s ire. With the divisive midterms underway, Mr. Young once again complained, yet said he had no legal recourse to stop Mr. Trump from using his music.

“Legally, he has the right to,” Mr. Young wrote on his website, “however it goes against my wishes.”

Last week, Mr. Young finally sued Mr. Trump’s campaign over the use of “Rockin’ in the Free World” and another song, “Devil’s Sidewalk,” both of which were played at Mr. Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Okla., in June. In his suit, the musician accused the campaign of copyright infringement for playing the tracks without a license, and asked for the campaign to be ordered to stop using them, as well as for statutory damages.

Mr. Young’s complaint said he “in good conscience cannot allow his music to be used as a ‘theme song’ for a divisive, un-American campaign of ignorance and hate.”

What changed in the intervening years, intellectual property experts say, is a new strategy by musicians to stop political candidates from using their songs without permission, though the legality of their approach is uncertain.

For years, musicians and songwriters have balked when politicians play their songs at public events, like campaign rallies. A politician’s embrace of their work can imply an endorsement, they say, or distort a song’s meaning — as when Ronald Reagan praised Bruce Springsteen in a speech in 1984, after a conservative columnist’s misinterpretation of the bleak “Born in the U.S.A.”

In the Trump era, this conflict has only grown more intense, as the president has drawn condemnations from a huge range of acts for using their music — like Rihanna, Elton John, Pharrell Williams, Axl Rose, Adele, R.E.M., the estates of Tom Petty and Prince — though Mr. Trump has often responded to their complaints with defiance.

“I think he is just extending a big middle finger to musical artists to say, ‘You can’t stop me,’” said Lawrence Y. Iser, a lawyer who has handled several prominent lawsuits over political campaigns’ use of copyrighted songs, including one filed in 2010 by David Byrne against Charlie Crist, then the governor of Florida.

Yet artists have often had little power to block political use of their songs. Most campaigns have the same kind of legal cover to play songs that radio stations or concert halls do — through blanket licensing deals from entities like ASCAP and BMI, which clear the public performance rights for millions of songs in exchange for a fee. ASCAP and BMI even offer special licenses to political campaigns, letting them use songs wherever they go.

For artists like Mr. Young and the Rolling Stones — whose 1969 song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” has been the closing theme for countless Trump rallies — their involvement in those deals meant they could not take legal action.

But in June, the Stones said they would sue if Mr. Trump used their music again, and both ASCAP and BMI said that at the band’s request they had removed its songs from the list of works offered to political campaigns. (The rules for using a song in a film or commercial are clearer: direct permission from a writer or their publisher is needed.)

ASCAP and a lawyer for Mr. Young both said that “Rockin’ in the Free World” and “Devil’s Sidewalk” had similarly been removed from ASCAP’s political license.

Yet it is not clear whether such withdrawals are allowed under ASCAP and BMI’s regulatory agreements with the federal government, which were instituted decades ago to prevent anticompetitive conduct.

Known as performing rights organizations, ASCAP and BMI act as clearinghouses for the legal permissions that any radio station, digital music service or shopping mall needs to play copyrighted songs. The organizations’ agreements with the Justice Department, known as consent decrees, set out strict rules meant to preserve a fair marketplace, like offering their catalogs of songs to any “similarly situated” party that wants to use their music.

“Artists are faced with an uphill legal battle for asserting their rights to prevent politicians with whom they disagree from performing their sings,” said Christopher J. Buccafusco, a professor at Cardozo Law School. “They may have some options to do so, via the withdrawal of the political license, but those have dubious validity.”

ASCAP and BMI both believe their consent decrees allow the writers and publishers they represent to withdraw material under certain conditions, including if a particular use could damage the economic value of a song’s copyright.

“BMI does not remove a song from the license in order to achieve higher rates or for any reason other than that the rightsholders believe the association of their song with a campaign is an implied endorsement and diminishes the value of that work,” said Stuart Rosen, BMI’s general counsel.

A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Young’s case is being closely watched as a test of artists’ power to protect their work against political use.

Last month, an advocacy group, the Artists’ Rights Alliance, released a public letter demanding that campaigns seek the consent of artists, songwriters and copyright owners before using their songs in a campaign. The letter was signed by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, John Mellencamp, Lionel Richie, Sheryl Crow and dozens of others.

Some artists, like Steven Tyler, have had success sending cease-and-desist letters that cite trademark and publicity rights, though those claims are untested as well. And though Mr. Trump has stopped using some songs, like Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” he often still asserts rights to use them.

Mr. Young’s case also comes as the Justice Department is reviewing ASCAP and BMI’s consent decrees, which have been a potent battleground in the industry for years.

Although songwriters earn royalties from the performing rights organizations, they — and their publishers — have often argued that the regulations are outdated and put too many limits on how works are licensed. On the other side, broadcasters and digital services say the decrees are needed to preserve a fair marketplace, and point to instances in which the groups were found to have violated their decrees.

“The copyright system is flawed; it can’t protect creators,” said Dina LaPolt, a lawyer who represents Mr. Tyler and other songwriters. “Part of it is because of the consent decrees.”

With the pandemic shutting down most rallies and many convention events, it is possible that the issue will be moot for the remainder of the 2020 campaign. But it may just be a matter of time before the issue flares up again, and artists as well as lawyers are watching the moves by Mr. Young and the Stones for clues.

Professor Buccafusco, a specialist in intellectual property issues, said that the best avenue for artists’ complaints may be outside the law — and that a politician’s use of their song can serve as an opportunity for those artists to articulate their own positions and clarify the messages in their work.

“Their best recourse is probably one that they have been using for many years,” he said, “which is to complain publicly and engage in shaming sessions, which very often have won.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/a...p-lawsuit.html





5G Just Got Weird

Industry group 3GPP takes 5G in new directions in latest set of standards
Michael Koziol

The only reason you’re able to read this right now is because of the Internet standards created by the Internet Engineering Task Force. So while standards may not always be the most exciting thing in the world, they make exciting things possible. And occasionally, even the standards themselves get weird.

That’s the case with the recent 5G standards codified by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the industry group that establishes the standards for cellular networks. 3GPP finalized Release 16 on July 3.

Release 16 is where things are getting weird for 5G. While earlier releases focused on the core of 5G as a generation of cellular service, Release 16 lays the groundwork for new services that have never been addressed by cellular before. At least, not in such a rigorous, comprehensive way.

“Release 15 really focused on the situation we’re familiar with,” says Danny Tseng, a director of technical marketing at Qualcomm, referring to cellular service, adding, “release 16 really broke the barrier” for connected robots, cars, factories, and dozens of other applications and scenarios.

4G and other earlier generations of cellular focused on just that: cellular. But when 3GPP members started gathering to hammer out what 5G could be, there was interest in developing a wireless system that could do more than connect phones. “The 5G vision has always been this unifying platform,” says Tseng. When developing 5G standards, researchers and engineers saw no reason that wireless cellular couldn’t also be used to connect anything wireless.

With that in mind, here’s an overview of what’s new and weird in Release 16. If you’d rather pour through the standards yourself, here you go. But if you’d rather not drown in page after page of technical details, don’t worry—keep reading for the cheat sheet.

Vehicle-to-Everything

One of the flashiest things in Release 16 is V2X, short for “Vehicle to Everything.” In other words, using 5G for cars to communicate with each other and everything else around them. Hanbyul Seo, an engineer at LG Electronics, says V2X technologies have previously been standardized in IEEE 802.11p and 3GPP LTE V2X, but that the intention in these cases was to enable basic safety services. Seo is one of the rapporteurs for 3GPP’s item on V2X, meaning he was responsible for reporting on the item’s progress to 3GPP.

In defining V2X for 5G, Seo says the most challenging thing was to provide high data throughput, reliability, and low latency, both of which are essential for anything beyond the most basic communications. Seo explains that earlier standards typically deal with messages with hundreds of bytes that are expected to reach 90 percent of receivers in a 300-meter radius within a few hundred milliseconds. The 3GPP standards bring those benchmarks into the realm of gigabytes per second, 99.999 percent reliability, and just a few milliseconds.

Sidelinking

Matthew Webb, a 3GPP delegate for Huawei and the other rapporteur for the 3GPP item on V2X, adds that Release 16 also introduces a new technique called sidelinking. Sidelinks will allow 5G-connected vehicles to communicate directly with one another, rather than going through a cell-tower intermediary. As you might imagine, that can make a big difference for cars speeding past each other on a highway as they alert each other about their positions.

Tseng says that sidelinking started as a component of the V2X work, but it can theoretically apply to any two devices that might need to communicate directly rather than go through a base station first. Factory robots are one example, or large-scale Internet of Things installations.

Location Services

Release 16 also includes information on location services. In past generations of cellular, three cell towers were required to triangulate where a phone was by measuring the round-trip distance of a signal from each tower. But 5G networks will be able to use the round-trip time from a single tower to locate a device. That’s because massive MIMO and beamforming allow 5G towers to send precise signals directly to devices, and so the network can measure the direction and angle of a beam, along with its distance from the tower, to locate it.

Private Networks

Then there’s private networks. When we think of cellular networks, we tend to think of wide networks that cover lots of ground so that you can always be sure you have a signal. But 5G incorporates millimeter waves, which are higher frequency radio waves (30 to 300 GHz) that don’t travel nearly as far as traditional cell signals. Millimeter waves means it will be possible to build a network just for an office building, factory, or stadium. At those scales, 5G could function essentially like Wi-Fi networks.

Unlicensed Spectrum

The last area to touch on is Release 16’s details on unlicensed spectrum. Jing Sun, an engineer at Qualcomm and the 3GPP’s rapporteur on the subject, says Release 16 is the first occasion unlicensed spectrum has been included in the 5G’s cellular service. According to Sun, it made sense to expand 5G into unlicensed spectrum in the 5 and 6 GHz bands because the bands are widely available around the world and ideal for use now that 5G is pushing cellular service into higher frequency bands. Unlicensed spectrum could be key for private networks as, just like Wi-Fi, the networks could use that spectrum without having to go through the rigorous process of licensing a frequency band which may or may not be available.

Release 17 Will “Extend Reality”

Release 16 has introduced a lot of new areas for 5G service, but very few of these areas are finished. “The Release 17 scope was decided last December,” says Tseng. “We’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s in there.” In general, that means building on a lot of the blocks established in Release 16. For example, Release 17 will include more mechanisms by which devices—not just cars—can sidelink.

And it will include entirely new things as well. Release 17 includes a work item on extended reality—the catch-all term for alternate reality and virtual reality technologies. Tseng says there is also an item about NR-Lite, which will attempt to address current gaps in IoT coverage by using the 20 MHz band. Sun says Release 17 also includes a study item to explore the possibility of using frequencies in the 52 to 71 GHz range, far higher than anything used in cellular today.

Finalizing Release 17 will almost certainly be pushed back by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, which makes it difficult if not impossible for groups working on work items and study items to meet face-to-face. But it’s not stopping the work entirely. And when Release 17 is published, it’s certain to make 5G even weirder still.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/.../5g-release-16





Cities Lose Lawsuit Against FCC's 5G Rules
Kim Hart

A federal appeals court upheld the Federal Communications Commission's rules that limit municipalities' ability to negotiate with telecom companies such as AT&T and Verizon that are seeking to deploy thousands of 5G antennas on city streets and neighborhoods.

Why it matters: The ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is a blow to dozens of cities that sued the agency, claiming the FCC's 2018 rules takes away their leverage and autonomy in deciding how the telecom industry can install "small-cell" antennas to build 5G networks.

The other side: The FCC maintains that its rules — which prohibit excessive fees and permitting delays by municipal governments — will speed up the deployment of 5G networks throughout the country by removing burdensome barriers to telecom providers.

"The wind is at our backs: With the FCC's infrastructure policies now ratified by the court, along with pathbreaking spectrum auctions concluded, ongoing and to come, America is well-positioned to extend its global lead in 5G and American consumers will benefit from the next generation of wireless technologies and services."

— FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in a statement

The big picture: How quickly telecom providers can deploy the 5G antennas throughout cities is a critical factor in reaching more ubiquitous 5G coverage throughout the country.

• Because of the technical limitations of 5G airwaves, 5G networks require hundreds of thousands of small-cell antennas to carry wireless signals from across cities and towns.
• Some major cities, however — including San Jose, Los Angeles and Portland — have argued that they should have more say over how those small-cell antennas are installed on public right-of-ways and city property.

https://www.axios.com/fcc-lawsuit-5g...d9afa1094.html





Charter Can Charge Online Video Sites for Network Connections, Court Rules

Court kills ban on interconnection fees because FCC didn't defend merger condition.
Jon Brodkin

Charter can charge Netflix and other online video streaming services for network interconnection despite a merger condition prohibiting the practice, a federal appeals court ruled today.

The ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturns two merger conditions that the Obama administration imposed on Charter when it bought Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in 2016. The FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai did not defend the merits of the merger conditions in court, paving the way for today's ruling. The case was decided in a 2-1 vote by a panel of three DC Circuit judges.

The lawsuit against the FCC seeking to overturn Charter merger conditions was filed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a free-market think tank, and four Charter users who claim they were harmed by the conditions. The FCC unsuccessfully challenged the suing parties' standing to sue, and it did not mount a legal defense of the conditions themselves.

Though Charter did not file this lawsuit, the ISP separately asked the FCC to let the network-interconnection condition and a condition prohibiting data caps expire on May 18, 2021, two years earlier than scheduled. Today's court's ruling seems to render Charter's petition moot as far as the network-interconnection condition goes, but the court ruling did not overturn the data-cap prohibition.

Charter is the second biggest cable company in the US after Comcast and offers service in 41 states under the Spectrum brand name.

ISPs extract payments from online video

The Obama-era FCC required Charter to provide free interconnection to large online providers until 2023. The condition was intended to prevent business disputes that have a history of harming consumer-broadband performance when companies refuse to pay fees demanded by ISPs.

"Many interconnection agreements are made between broadband Internet providers and 'edge providers' such as Netflix—i.e., those who provide content to consumers through the Internet," today's ruling noted. "Since broadband providers allow edge providers to reach their subscribers, the broadband providers often can extract payments from edge providers. The disputed condition prohibits New Charter [the post-merger entity] from doing so."

The CEI lawsuit argued that requiring Charter to forgo revenue from interconnection agreements caused Charter to increase broadband prices after the merger. Of course, Charter could have simply pocketed extra interconnection revenue and still raised Internet prices, as it faces little competition from other high-speed broadband providers in its cable territory. But DC Circuit judges agreed with the plaintiffs' argument:

To begin, the condition plainly caused New Charter to forgo revenue from edge providers. Before the merger, Time Warner, the largest broadband provider among the merging companies, raised substantial revenue from paid interconnection agreements. So did Bright House. But the merger condition prohibits New Charter from using those same revenue sources.

It is also clear that the consumers' bills increased shortly after the merger. Before the merger, France and Haywood [two of the lawsuit filers] subscribed to Bright House's broadband service, and Frank subscribed to Time Warner's. Shortly after, New Charter raised their monthly bills: France's bill increased about 20 percent, from $84 to $101, Haywood's about 40 percent, from $51 to $71; and Frank's about 5 percent, from $75.99 to $79.99.

“Small financial injury” enough to prove standing

The case turned largely on the question of whether the consumers who sued had standing to challenge the conditions. Even if other factors besides interconnection contributed to the price increases, "the subscribers need not show that prohibiting paid interconnection agreements caused the entirety of the price increases, or even that it caused price increases of some specific amount," judges wrote. "For standing purposes, even a small financial injury is enough, and the consumers have shown a substantial likelihood that their bills are higher because of the prohibition on paid interconnection agreements."

The lawsuit targeted four merger conditions, and judges ruled that the plaintiffs had standing to challenge two of them: the interconnection-payment ban and a condition requiring Charter to offer a discount Internet service to people with low incomes. The litigants have standing to challenge the discount-service condition based on the argument that a low-income service causes higher prices for other consumers, the judges found.

With the consumers' having standing to challenge those two conditions, the FCC's refusal to defend the conditions on their merits made the judges' decision easier. Judges wrote that they "need not resolve" all the thorny questions of the case because "there is a simpler ground of decision. The lawfulness of the interconnection and discounted-services conditions are properly before us, yet the FCC declined to defend them on the merits. The agency's only explanation for doing so was its view that we cannot reach the merits. Having lost on that question, the FCC has no further line of defense." The two conditions are "vacate[d] given the FCC's refusal to defend on the merits," the judges wrote.

The low-income condition required Charter to offer 30Mbps broadband service for no more than $14.99 in service fees and no more than $5 in router rental fees each month, and to enroll at least 525,000 qualifying low-income households by May 2020. Charter complied with the condition with its Spectrum Internet Assist program, which is similar to a low-income program offered by Time Warner Cable before the merger. Under the merger condition, Charter was allowed to raise the base price to $17.99 a month last year. Charter hasn't announced any plans to stop offering the low-income service.

The judges rejected the lawsuit's challenge to the data-cap condition, writing that "there is scant evidence that New Charter would offer usage-based pricing if allowed to do so." The judges also rejected the challenge to a requirement that Charter extend its network to 2 million additional homes and businesses, saying that "New Charter already has built much of the required infrastructure, and its sunk costs in doing so cannot be recovered." The litigants "offer no reason to think that New Charter will abandon the project if now allowed to," and "no reason to think that if New Charter were to abandon the project at this late date, thus ensuring a wasted investment, the decision to do so would somehow lower the prices for its broadband customers," the judges wrote.

“Prices go up because of mergers”

Charter told the FCC in a filing that it doesn't "currently" plan to impose data caps or charge video providers for interconnection, but the company wants the prohibitions lifted because they "put Charter at a competitive disadvantage" and "forc[e] Charter to run its network based on arbitrary merger conditions instead of market conditions." Charter's filing also claimed that broadband plans with data caps are "often popular" with consumers.

We contacted Charter about the court decision today and will update this article if we get a response.

Matt Wood, VP of policy at consumer-advocacy group Free Press, said in response to the court decision that "prices go up because of mergers, not the tame conditions imposed on them. That's the whole point of taking out competitors and concentrating power."

Wood pointed to a Free Press filing to the FCC that he said shows "Charter was delivering better value and getting better financial results for itself than any other big wired ISP. So the notion that either Charter or its customers have suffered from the conditions is a joke, as is any claim by the litigants that unconditioned mergers and monopolies are somehow better for people."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...s-court-rules/





Report: Most Americans Have No Real Choice in Internet Providers
Christopher Mitchell and Katie Kienbaum

The 2020 edition of ILSR’s Profiles of Monopoly: Big Cable and Telecom report analyzes the latest data available from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate broadband competition in communities across the country. Thanks largely to the power of monopoly corporations like Comcast, Charter, and AT&T, millions of Americans still do not have a real choice when it comes to their Internet service. As millions of families attempt to navigate school during a pandemic, and more people than ever before are seeking telehealth solutions, our broken broadband market is a major problem.

The report breaks down statistics for the service territories of the United States’ largest Internet Service Providers: Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, Frontier, and Windstream. Each section features maps and charts that illuminate the dire lack of real competition in the broadband market.

Download Profiles of Monopoly here.

Important Findings

• Comcast and Charter maintain an absolute monopoly over at least 47 million people and another 33 million people only have slower and less reliable DSL as a “competitive” choice.
• Over the past two years, federal stats suggest that Charter and Comcast have an absolute monopoly over fewer households, but we think this is mostly a mirage resulting from how the FCC reports data. A significant number of the census blocks showing new competition are likely only partially served.
• The big telecom companies have largely abandoned rural America — their DSL networks overwhelmingly do not support broadband speeds — despite many billions spent over years of federal subsidies and many state grant programs. The Connect America Fund ends this year as a failure, leaving millions of Americans behind after giving billions to the biggest firms without requiring significant new investment.
• At least 49.7 million Americans live in an area with only one choice of broadband Internet service.

Read the full report.
https://ilsr.org/report-most-america...net-providers/





SpaceX Starlink Speeds Revealed as Beta Users Get Downloads of 11 to 60Mbps

Ookla tests aren't showing the gigabit speeds SpaceX teased, but it's early.
Jon Brodkin

Beta users of SpaceX's Starlink satellite-broadband service are getting download speeds ranging from 11Mbps to 60Mbps, according to tests conducted using Ookla's speedtest.net tool. Speed tests showed upload speeds ranging from 5Mbps to 18Mbps.

The same tests, conducted over the past two weeks, showed latencies or ping rates ranging from 31ms to 94ms. This isn't a comprehensive study of Starlink speeds and latency, so it's not clear whether this is what Internet users should expect once Starlink satellites are fully deployed and the service reaches commercial availability. We asked SpaceX several questions about the speed-test results yesterday and will update this article if we get answers.

Links to 11 anonymized speed tests by Starlink users were posted by a Reddit user yesterday. Another Reddit user compiled some of the tests to make this graphic.

Beta testers must sign non-disclosure agreements, so these speed tests might be one of the only glimpses we get of real-world performance during the trials. SpaceX has told the Federal Communications Commission that Starlink would eventually hit gigabit speeds, saying in its 2016 application to the FCC that "once fully optimized through the Final Deployment, the system will be able to provide high bandwidth (up to 1Gbps per user), low latency broadband services for consumers and businesses in the US and globally." SpaceX has launched about 600 satellites so far and has FCC permission to launch nearly 12,000.

While 60Mbps isn't a gigabit, it's on par with some of the lower cable speed tiers and is much higher than speeds offered by many DSL services in the rural areas where SpaceX is likely to see plenty of interest. On the Reddit thread, some Internet users said they'd love to get the speeds shown in the Starlink tests as they are currently stuck at 1Mbps or even less. An Ookla report on fixed-broadband speeds in December 2018 found average download speeds in the US of 96.25Mbps and average uploads of 32.88Mbps. SpaceX is planning for up to 5 million home-Internet subscribers in the US.

SpaceX latency

In March, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said, "We're targeting latency below 20 milliseconds, so somebody could play a fast-response video game at a competitive level." SpaceX satellites have low-Earth orbits of 540km to 570km, making them capable of much lower latency than geostationary satellites that orbit at about 35,000km.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai doubted Musk's latency claims and in May 2020 proposed to classify SpaceX and all other satellite operators as high-latency providers—i.e. above 100ms—for purposes of a rural-broadband funding distribution. The FCC backed off that plan but said companies like SpaceX will have to prove they can offer low latencies, and it continued to express "serious doubts" that SpaceX and other similar providers will be able to deliver latencies of less than 100ms.

Ping and latency are the same thing in Ookla speed tests, one of the service's help documents says. It measures the round-trip time in milliseconds when a client device sends a message to a server and the server sends a reply back. "This test is repeated multiple times with the lowest value determining the final result," Ookla says.

As the FCC wrote, the latency of a satellite network "consists of the 'propagation delay,' the time it takes for a radio wave to travel from the satellite to the earth's surface and back, and the 'processing delay,' the time it takes for the network to process the data." The FCC also noted that "propagation delay in a satellite network does not alone account for latency in other parts of the network such as processing, routing, and transporting traffic to its destination." FCC tests found that "Cable latencies ranged between 18ms to 24ms, fiber latencies between 5ms to 12ms, and DSL between 27ms to 55ms." Traditional broadband satellites using geostationary orbits have FCC-measured latency of about 600ms, but that is not indicative of the lower latencies to be expected from low-Earth orbit satellites.

Although the Ookla speed-test latencies for Starlink don't hit Musk's target of below 20ms, they are below the FCC's 100ms threshold. For competitive online gaming, Ookla says players should be in "winning" shape with latency or ping of 59ms or less, and "in the game" with latency or ping of up to 129ms. The 35 best cities in the world for online gaming have ping rates of 8 to 28ms, an Ookla report last year said.

Latency tests are affected by the distance between the user and the server. The Ookla tests revealed on Reddit showed the tests going to servers in Los Angeles and Seattle; SpaceX's beta tests are slated for the northern US and southern Canada, but a Stop the Cap story says that testers so far are in rural areas of Washington state only.
https://arstechnica.com/information-...s-low-as-31ms/





Is the US About to Split the Internet?
James Clayton

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he wants a "clean" internet.

What he means by that is he wants to remove Chinese influence, and Chinese companies, from the internet in the US.

But critics believe this will bolster a worrying movement towards the breaking up of the global internet.

The so called "splinternet" is generally used when talking about China, and more recently Russia.

The idea is that there's nothing inherent or pre-ordained about the internet being global.

For governments that want to control what people see on the internet, it makes sense to take ownership of it.

The Great Firewall of China is the best example of a nation putting up the internet equivalent of a wall around itself. You won't find a Google search engine or Facebook in China.

What people didn't expect was that the US might follow China's lead.

Yet critics believe that is the corollary of Mr Pompeo's statement on Thursday.

Mr Pompeo said he wanted to remove "untrusted" applications from US mobile app stores.

"People's Republic of China apps threaten our privacy, proliferate viruses, and spread propaganda and disinformation," he said.

The first question that sprang to mind was: what are the Chinese apps that Mr Pompeo does trust? The assumption is very much that he's talking about ALL Chinese apps.

"It's shocking," says Alan Woodward, a security expert based at the University of Surrey. "This is the Balkanisation of the internet happening in front of our eyes.

"The US government has for a long time criticised other countries for controlling access to the internet… and now we see the Americans doing the same thing."

That might be a slight exaggeration. Mr Pompeo's reasons for "cleaning" the US network of Chinese companies is very different to authoritarian government's desire to control what is said online.

But it's true that if Mr Pompeo were to go down this road, it would be reversing decades of US cyber-policy.

If there is one country that has championed a free internet, based on the constitutional tenets of free speech, it is America.

President Donald Trump's administration has taken a different approach though, in part because of the legitimate security concerns that some Chinese companies operating in the US raise.

WeChat warning

Alex Stamos, former chief security officer at Facebook, told me that much-mentioned TikTok was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Chinese apps to worry about.

"TikTok isn't even in my top 10," he told me.

The app Mr Stamos suggests the US should be more wary of is Tencent's WeChat.

"WeChat is one of the most popular messaging apps in the world… people run companies on We Chat, they have incredibly sensitive information."

Mr Pompeo has also namechecked WeChat as a potential future target.

It's hard not to view this through the prism of the US elections in November. Mr Trump's anti-China rhetoric isn't limited to tech.

Policy or posture?

So is this a policy position - or simply posture?

Mr Trump may also of course lose in November. The Democrats would probably take a more moderate position on Chinese tech.

But, as it stands, Mr Trump's vision of the US internet - an internet in the main free of China - makes it a far more divided place.

The great irony is that the internet would then look a lot more like China's vision.

Just look at TikTok itself. If Microsoft does buy the US arm there will be three TikToks.

A TikTok in China (called Douyin). A rest of the world TikTok. And a TikTok in the US.

Could that be a model for the future of the internet?
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53686390





China is Now Blocking All Encrypted HTTPS Traffic that Uses TLS 1.3 and ESNI

The block was put in place at the end of July and is enforced via China's Great Firewall.
Catalin Cimpanu

VPNs aren't essential only for securing your unencrypted Wi-Fi connections in coffee shops and airports. Every remote worker should consider a VPN to stay safe online. Here are your top choices and how to get set up.

The Chinese government has deployed an update to its national censorship tool, known as the Great Firewall (GFW), to block encrypted HTTPS connections that are being set up using modern, interception-proof protocols and technologies.

The ban has been in place for at least a week, since the end of July, according to a joint report published this week by three organizations tracking Chinese censorship -- iYouPort, the University of Maryland, and the Great Firewall Report.

China now blocking HTTPS+TLS1.3+ESNI

Through the new GFW update, Chinese officials are only targeting HTTPS traffic that is being set up with new technologies like TLS 1.3 and ESNI (Encrypted Server Name Indication).

Other HTTPS traffic is still allowed through the Great Firewall, if it uses older versions of the same protocols -- such as TLS 1.1 or 1.2, or SNI (Server Name Indication).

For HTTPS connections set up via these older protocols, Chinese censors can infer to what domain a user is trying to connect. This is done by looking at the (plaintext) SNI field in the early stages of an HTTPS connections.

In HTTPS connections set up via the newer TLS 1.3, the SNI field can be hidden via ESNI, the encrypted version of the old SNI. As TLS 1.3 usage continues to grow around the web, HTTPS traffic where TLS 1.3 and ESNI is used is now giving Chinese sensors headaches, as they're now finding it harder to filter HTTPS traffic and control what content the Chinese population can access.

Per the findings of the joint report, the Chinese government is currently dropping all HTTPS traffic where TLS 1.3 and ESNI are used, and temporarily banning the IP addresses involved in the connection, for small intervals of time that can vary between two and three minutes.
Some circumvention methods exist... for now

For now, iYouPort, the University of Maryland, and the Great Firewall Report said they were able to find six circumvention techniques that can be applied client-side (inside apps and software) and four that can be applied server-side (on servers and app backends) to bypass the GFW's current block.

"Unfortunately, these specific strategies may not be a long-term solution: as the cat and mouse game progresses, the Great Firewall will likely to continue to improve its censorship capabilities," the three organizations also added.

ZDNet also confirmed the report's findings with two additional sources -- namely members of a US telecommunications provider and an internet exchange point (IXP) -- using instructions provided in this mailing list.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/china-...-1-3-and-esni/





How Malicious Tor Relays are Exploiting Users in 2020 (Part I)

>23% of the Tor network’s exit capacity has been attacking Tor users
nusenu

Figure 1: Confirmed malicious Tor exit capacity (measured in % of the entire available Tor exit capacity) over time (by this particular malicious entity). Graph by nusenu (raw data source: https://metrics.torproject.org/onionoo.html)

In December 2019 I wrote about The Growing Problem of Malicious Relays on the Tor Network with the motivation to rise awareness and to improve the situation over time. Unfortunately instead of improving, things have become even worse, specifically when it comes to malicious Tor exit relay activity.

Tor exit relays are the last hop in the chain of 3 relays and the only type of relay that gets to see the connection to the actual destination chosen by the Tor Browser user. The used protocol (i.e. http vs. https) by the user decides whether a malicious exit relay can actually see and manipulate the transferred content or not.

In this post I want to give you an update on the malicious Tor relay situation for the first seven months of 2020 by looking at a single large scale malicious actor that is of ongoing concern. It demonstrates once more that current checks are insufficient to prevent such large scale attacks.

The Scale of the malicious Operator

So far 2020 is probably the worst year in terms of malicious Tor exit relay activity since I started monitoring it about 5 years ago. As far as I know this is the first time we uncovered a malicious actor running more than 23% of the entire Tor network’s exit capacity. That means roughly about one out of 4 connections leaving the Tor network were going through exit relays controlled by a single attacker.

Figure 1 shows what accumulated fraction of the Tor network’s exit capacity was controlled by the malicious actor and how many confirmed malicious relays were concurrently running (peak at over 380 relays). Figure 1 also tells us that we opened up Tor Browser at the peak of the attack on 2020–05–22 you had a 23.95% chance to end up choosing an attacker controlled Tor exit relay. Since Tor clients usually use many Tor exit relays over time the chance to use a malicious exit relay increases over time.

Temporary removal

The relay count line in Figure 1 shows that they added relays in big junks, which gives OrNetRadar (a relay group detector) the opportunity to detect them and it did in multiple cases (see Appendix). Most notably you can see a spike in relay count in March 2020. On 2020–03–16 OrNetRadar and the Tor Project’s Sybil Attack detection reported a sudden spike of over 150 new relays. Something that basically never happens in such a short period of time. They got removed at the time, but were allowed to join the network 3 days later after the malicious operator contacted the bad-relays mailing list and configured the so called “MyFamily” setting to declare themselves as a group. Currently there are no further requirements to run such a large group of Tor relays.

Persistent

The 3 sharp drops in figure 1 (marked with 1, 2, 3) depict the events when some of these malicious Tor exits got detected, reported and removed from the network by the Tor directory authorities. This also shows us how fast the malicious entity recovered from a single removal event and that we didn’t detect all of them at the same time. It took them less than 30 days to recover after a removal and reach 22% exit probability again (starting at 4%). It also gives us an idea that they apparently will not back-off after getting discovered once. In fact they appear to plan ahead for detection and removal and setup new relays preemptively to avoid a complete halt of their operations.

Faking multiple independent relay groups

The temporary removal event served them as a training and all relays that followed had presumably perfect MyFamily configuration, with one important caveat: Instead of declaring all of their relays in a single group they pretended to be multiple relay groups without linking them directly together. A strategy they followed from the beginning (January 2020). Figure 2 shows their exit probability by family contact information (stacked graph).

Figure 2: Confirmed malicious Tor exit fraction over time by ContactInfo (all of them are run by the same entity). Graph by nusenu (raw data source: https://metrics.torproject.org/onionoo.html)

Figure 3 shows how many malicious exit relays this particular actor operated split by given relay ContactInfo (stacked graph).

Figure 3: Confirmed malicious Tor exit relay count over time by ContactInfo. Graph by nusenu (raw data source: https://metrics.torproject.org/onionoo.html)

Contact information can be arbitrarily set by a relay operator so this information needs to be take with some caution, but since multiple of these email addresses interacted with the Tor Project’s bad-relays mailing list, there is some confidence that all these addresses actually exists and are controlled by the malicious relay operator. They even impersonated the FBI by creating an address “fbirelays@…” (This email address was never used to contact the bad-relays mailing list. No, I don’t believe the FBI has anything to do with these relays). We can see that the attacker likes to use common email providers (hotmail, protonmail and gmail).

Used Infrastructure

One key question of malicious relay analysis always is: What hosting companies did they use? So here is a break down by used internet service provider. It is mostly OVH (one of the — generally speaking — largest ISPs used for Tor relays). Frantech, ServerAstra and Trabia Network are also known providers for relays. “Nice IT Services Group” looks interesting, since I’ve never seen relays on this obscure network before the attacker added some of his relays there on 2020–04–16.

Figure 4: What ISPs did the attacker use? Mostly OVH and FranTech Solutions. Graph by nusenu (raw data source: https://metrics.torproject.org/onionoo.html)

What is this attacker actually exploiting and how does it affect Tor users?

The full extend of their operations is unknown, but one motivation appears to be plain and simple: profit.
They perform person-in-the-middle attacks on Tor users by manipulating traffic as it flows through their exit relays. They (selectively) remove HTTP-to-HTTPS redirects to gain full access to plain unencrypted HTTP traffic without causing TLS certificate warnings. It is hard to detect for Tor Browser users that do not specifically look for the “https://” in the URL bar. This is a well known attack called “ssl stripping” that exploits the fact that user rarely type in the full domain starting with “https://”. There are established countermeasures, namely HSTS Preloading and HTTPS Everywhere, but in practice many website operators do not implement them and leave their users vulnerable to this kind of attack. This kind of attack is not specific to Tor Browser. Malicious relays are just used to gain access to user traffic. To make detection harder, the malicious entity did not attack all websites equally. It appears that they are primarily after cryptocurrency related websites — namely multiple bitcoin mixer services. They replaced bitcoin addresses in HTTP traffic to redirect transactions to their wallets instead of the user provided bitcoin address. Bitcoin address rewriting attacks are not new, but the scale of their operations is. It is not possible to determine if they engage in other types of attacks.

I’ve reached out to some of the known affected bitcoin sites, so they can mitigate this on a technical level using HSTS preloading. Someone else submitted HTTPS-Everywhere rules for the known affected domains (HTTP Everywhere is installed by default in Tor Browser). Unfortunately none of these sites had HSTS preloading enabled at the time. At least one affected bitcoin website deployed HSTS preloading after learning about these events.
Is the attack over?

If we look at the overall advertised exit bandwidth on the Tor network and highlight the malicious capacity, that got removed by Tor directory authorities, we can see a significant increase in advertised exit capacity after the latest removal around 2020–06–21. This part of the curve actually looks similar to the previous month when the attacker recovered it’s capacity after they got removed for the first time around 2020–05–22. I added an “expected” line to the graph to show where I would roughly expect the overall capacity to be without unusual growth (approximately calculated by adding the amount of advertised bandwidth known operators did add after the removal event).

Figure 5: Overall advertised exit bandwidth in the Tor network over time shows unusual growth after removal of malicious relays. Graph by nusenu (raw data source: https://metrics.torproject.org/onionoo.html)

Figure 6 shows the impact the malicious operator had on the probability that a Tor Browser user would choose one of the known organizations running Tor exit capacity (like those mentioned on https://torservers.net/partners.html and others active in the tor-relay community since an extended amount of time). The attacker was able to reduce their exit probability from usually around ~60% to bellow 50%. This graph also shows that the fraction of these known organizations is decreasing despite the fact that their absolute advertised exit capacity is actually increasing.

Figure 6: Exit fraction and advertised exit bandwidth by known operators/organizations. Graph by nusenu (raw data source: https://metrics.torproject.org/onionoo.html)

The fraction of known operators is decreasing, so who’s share is increasing? Figure 7 and 8 show the exit fraction by unknown operators by autonomous system (figure 7) and by relay ContactInfo (figure 8). The graphs only show networks and ContactInfos with a significant fraction (>0.5% exit probability). The graphs show that the network fraction by the hosters OVH (heavily used by this attacker previously) and Liteserver Holding did significantly increase after the removal event around 2020–06–21 and that two huge (>5% exit capacity each), new and unknown ContactInfos showed up.

Figure 7: Exit fraction from unknown operators since the last removal of malicious exits (2020–06–21) by Autonomous System (showing ASNs >0.5% exit probability only). Two networks are significantly growing: OVH (again) and Liteserver Holding. Graph by nusenu (raw data source: https://metrics.torproject.org/onionoo.html)

Figure 8: Exit fraction by unknown operators since the last removal of malicious exits (2020–06–21) grouped by exit relay contact information (stacked). Showing ContactInfos with >0.5% exit probability only. Exits with no ContactInfo are not included. Graph by nusenu (raw data source: https://metrics.torproject.org/onionoo.html)

These and some additional indicators, which I’m not publishing to avoid burning them, suggest that the attacker is not gone, but since exploitation of known victims became harder, the attacker might has chosen new victims or other types of attacks. This is an ongoing analysis and details might get published in a follow-up blog post.

Countermeasures

Bad-Relay Handling Situation

After the blog post from December 2019 the Tor Project had some promising plans for 2020 with a dedicated person to drive improvements in this area, but due to the recent COVID19 related layoffs that person got assigned to an other area. In addition to that, Tor directory authorities apparently are no longer removing relays they used to remove since 2020–06–26. It is unclear what triggered this policy change but someone apparently likes it and is adding undeclared relay groups (that used to get removed due to missing ContactInfo and MyFamily). This means the discovery of the attacker that did run over 10% of the Tor network’s guard capacity in December 2019 apparently did not lead to any improvements. Since previous reports have not been acted or responded upon yet since over a month I’ve stopped reporting relays for removal, but let’s leave that issue aside for the moment (topic for a separate blog post) and let’s just keep in mind that the Tor Project has no dedicated resources to tackle this (relevant information when trying to make some progress).

Better visualizations for “known” vs. “unknown” network fractions

“we lack the tools for tracking and visualizing which relays we trust” — Roger Dingledine

It is crucial to notice when the Tor network’s known vs. unknown fractions significantly change. I’m aiming to tackle this by incorporating graphs like figure 6 and 7 into the daily generated OrNetStats, but I’m only able to accomplish that when verification of some static operator identifier can be automated since manual verification is too time consuming on the long run. I’m working on version 2 of the ContactInfo Information Sharing Specification to provide Tor relay operators with two easy to implement options to allow for automated verification of the “operatorurl” field. Verified fields can then be used as an input for the manual assignment (done once) of a “known” label which is then used for the graphs. Once version 2 of the specification is released (that should happen before the end of August 2020) and deployed by enough relay operators, such graphs can be added to OrNetStats and other tools. This is also aiming to help with Roger Dingledine’s plans on this matter. One crucial factor will be the adoption of the version 2 specification by relay operators.

Short term harm reduction

How do we make it more expensive and time consuming for malicious actors to run such a big chunk of the the Tor network on an ongoing basis? Currently there are no requirements for (large scale) Tor relay operators. So currently there is nothing that stops a malicious actor from adding 150 malicious relays, as has been demonstrated by this attack in March 2020.

The following suggestions are taking into account that the Tor Project has no dedicated resources to address this issue.

As an immediate countermeasure against this ongoing issue the Tor Project could require physical address verification for all new (joined in 2020) Tor relay operators that run more than 0.5% of the Tor network’s exit or guard capacity. Why 0.5%? It is a balance between the risk of malicious Tor relay capacity and the required effort for verification. Using 0.5% as a threshold is a realistically low number of operators to verify. As of 2020–08–08 there are just five exit and one guard operator that match these criteria (new and big). Some of them have similarities to previously detected malicious groups. Others are somewhat known with a good reputation already. So the amount for this initial verification is limited to sending 6 letters to a provided physical address (more likely actually 3 since some might not request the physical address verification).

This is also about empowering those that have to make difficult decisions when handling suspicious relays.

Long term: Limiting attackers by allocating a minimal network fraction to known operators

Roger Dingledine’s plan is to allocate a fixed lower boundary to the “known” operators pool. This limits the damage a malicious operator can do, no matter how good they are at hiding their individual relays / relay groups. This approach is strong but should be combined with the following to further increase the efforts required by an attacker:

1. require a verified email address to gain the exit or guard relay flag.

Email verification can be fully automated. Since the malicious relay operators can easily register email addresses, this is combined with the second point.

2. require a verified physical address for large operators (>=0.5% exit or guard probability)

Summary

• Since the disclosure of large scale attacks on the Tor network (malicious operator did run >10% of Tor’s guard capacity) in December 2019, no improvements with regards to malicious Tor relays have been implemented.
• The malicious Tor relay operator discussed in this blog post controlled over 23% of the entire Tor network exit capacity (as of 2020–05–22)
• The malicious operator demonstrated to recover their capacity after initial removal attempts by Tor directory authorities.
• There are multiple indicators that suggest that the attacker still runs >10% of the Tor network exit capacity (as of 2020–08–08)
• The reoccurring events of large scale malicious Tor relay operations make it clear that current checks and approaches for bad-relays detection are insufficient to prevent such events from reoccurring and that the threat landscape for Tor users has changed.
• Multiple specific countermeasures have been proposed to tackle the ongoing issue of malicious relay capacity.
• It is up to the Tor Project and the Tor directory authorities to act to prevent further harm to Tor users.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank the person who initially reported some of the malicious relays, which allowed for the broader discovery of this huge malicious Tor exit relay fraction. (The reporting person asked to remain anonymous.)

Appendix

OrNetRadar references to known malicious Tor exit relays by this actor:

https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/01/29/a5
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/02/05/a3
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/02/11/a4
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/02/16/a2
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/02/29/a4
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/03/16/a5
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/03/30/a6
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/03/30/a7
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/04/11/a4
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/04/13/a8
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/04/14/a3
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/04/16/a7
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/04/21/a4
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/05/04/a9
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/05/06/a2
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/05/09/a2
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/05/22/a7
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/05/25/a4
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/05/28/a1
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/06/02/a1
https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2020/06/13/a2

https://medium.com/@nusenu/how-malic...i-1097575c0cac





NJ Supreme Court: No 5th Amendment Right Not to Unlock Your Phone

Courts are split on whether phone unlocking orders violate the Fifth Amendment.
Timothy B. Lee

New Jersey's Supreme Court has ruled that compelling a suspect to unlock his or her cell phone doesn't violate the Fifth Amendment. The courts continue to be deeply split on this question. Back in June, Indiana's Supreme Court reached the opposite conclusion, and several other state and federal courts have reached divergent positions on the issue over the last few years.

This case focuses on an allegedly corrupt cop named Robert Andrews. Andrews is a former Essex County Sheriff who allegedly tipped off a suspect named Quincy Lowery about a pending police investigation. Under police questioning, Lowery testified that Andrews had advised him to get a new phone to avoid a police wiretap. He also said Andrews helped Lowery identify an undercover police officer and an unmarked police vehicle. These allegations were corroborated by data from Lowery's phone.

The police seized two iPhones belonging to Andrews, but investigators were unable to unlock them. Andrews refused to unlock the phones based on the Fifth Amendment, which protects against self-incrimination.

On Monday, the New Jersey Supreme Court rejected that Fifth Amendment claim. The Fifth Amendment only protects defendants against self-incriminating testimony, not the production of incriminating documents. While "testimony" usually refers to speech, that's not always the case. Sometimes, a defendant can reveal information by his or her actions. For example, if the government doesn't already know who owns a phone, then forcing a defendant to unlock it amounts to forced testimony that the defendant is the owner.

But that reasoning doesn't apply in this case. The phones were registered in Andrews' name and were in his possession. There's little doubt that Andrews knows the passcodes. So if he's forced to enter the passcodes to his own phones, the New Jersey Supreme Court reasoned, he's not revealing any information that the government doesn't already know.

Of course, the information on the phone may be incriminating. But the courts have long held that forced production of documents—even incriminating ones—is not a violation of the Fifth Amendment. The government can order a defendant to unlock a safe even if the safe might have incriminating documents inside of it.

The other side

As we mentioned before, the Indiana Supreme Court took the opposite view just two months ago. And as I wrote at the time, that was just the latest example of a deep divide among courts on this issue:

“Earlier this year, a Philadelphia man was released from jail after four years of being held in contempt in connection with a child-pornography case. A federal appeals court rejected his argument that the Fifth Amendment gave him the right to refuse to unlock hard drives found in his possession. A Vermont federal court reached the same conclusion in 2009—as did a Colorado federal court in 2012, a Virginia state court in 2014, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 2014.

But other courts in Florida, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have reached the opposite conclusion, holding that forcing people to provide computer or smartphone passwords would violate the Fifth Amendment.”

Courts that have found the Fifth Amendment does shield defendants against unlocking their phones have focused not on the passcodes but on the information contained in the phone. They point to a 2000 ruling in the prosecution of Bill Clinton business associate Webster Hubbell for tax fraud. Prosecutors had ordered Hubbell to provide documents in several broad categories. The Supreme Court ruled that this violated the Fifth Amendment because Hubbell wasn't just being asked to turn over particular documents—he was using his own judgment to decide which documents fell into the broad categories the government asked about.

Courts like the Indiana Supreme Court have concluded that similar reasoning applies in cell phone unlocking cases. Governments aren't seeking specific files on a suspect's device, they're seeking unfettered access to a suspect's cell phone, giving them access to information they might not have known existed previously. Some courts have held that this kind of fishing expedition is analogous to the broad document requests in the Hubbell case.

But in Monday's ruling, the New Jersey supreme courts pointed out a key difference: Hubbell was required to use his own knowledge and judgments to decide which documents to turn over. That compelled exercise of judgment—not just the fact that the government might get incriminating documents it didn't know about before—was what made Hubbell's response self-incriminating testimony. By contrast, unlocking a cell phone doesn't require a suspect to make any judgments about the information on the cell phone.

The New Jersey Supreme Court points out that there's a different constitutional provision that's supposed to protect the privacy of people's private data. That's the Fourth Amendment, which protects "papers" against "unreasonable searches and seizures." The New Jersey Supreme Court argues that focusing on the phone's contents, rather than on the production of the passcode itself, "imports Fourth Amendment privacy principles into a Fifth Amendment inquiry." If the police are engaging in improper fishing expeditions, the way to deal with that is by challenging the search warrant on Fourth Amendment grounds.

Ultimately, the only way to resolve this dispute is for the US Supreme Court to get involved. The high court hasn't ruled on the legality of compelled decryptions of smartphones or other digital devices. Indeed, most of the Fifth Amendment caselaw in this era predates smartphones—and in many cases the personal computer, too. It would be helpful for the nation's highest court to take this issue on and provide clarity to courts that are struggling with how to apply these decades-old precedents.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ck-your-phone/





AMC Accuses AT&T of Doing What It Said It Wouldn't During Time Warner Merger Trial

The 'Walking Dead' network asks the FCC to punish AT&T for favoring HBO and TNT over non-owned channels.
John Stankey

It was called the "antitrust trial of the century," and AT&T prevailed in 2018. A federal judge allowed the telecom giant to swallow Time Warner for $108 billion over the U.S. Department of Justice's stated concern that AT&T shouldn't own networks like CNN, TBS, and TNT lest AT&T's cable and satellite rivals be terribly disadvantaged in licensing negotiations. The judge didn't buy the government's theory of the anticompetitive effect of increasing bargaining leverage from this vertical integration. The judgment survived appeal.

Now comes the next chapter as the Walking Dead network has filed a complaint at the Federal Communications Commission that accuses AT&T of engaging in the type of discriminatory conduct that it promised it wouldn't during the historic merger trial.

AT&T "is attempting to cause severe harm to the smaller and independent network AMC, which offers a fresh, independent and diverse voice on MVPDs’ channel lineups that is highly valued by subscribers, for the benefit of AT&T’s competing and similarly situated networks, TNT and HBO," states a complaint filed on Aug. 5, which until now has escaped public attention.

"This instant action requires AT&T to be held to its word that the Commission can use its regulatory powers – in this case, the program carriage rules – to address AT&T’s discriminatory and anticompetitive use of the disproportionate bargaining power that it now has as a result of the AT&T-Time Warner merger to unlawfully disadvantage a programming competitor," continues the complaint which claims a violation of Section 616 of the Communications Act of 1934.

AMC wants AT&T to be ordered to pay nondiscriminatory rates for carrying its programming plus pay a further penalty for violating communications law.

Although the 52-page document (plus more than a 100 pages of exhibits) is redacted with respect to the particulars of negotiations between the two companies, it appears the source of the friction comes down to two big things.

First, AMC is upset that AT&T is "increasing what it pays its own networks" and "pouring money into HBO’s programming content since its acquisition," while holding the line when it comes to a third party network like the one that airs Better Call Saul. The complainant points out that HBO and TNT's license agreements call for annual service fee increases. AMC asserts it's not getting equal treatment despite being a "must-have network."

Second, AMC objects to the online distribution restrictions that AT&T is apparently insisting upon in negotiations. The complaint notes that HBO content is carried on Hulu while TNT content can be accessed on Amazon Prime. The implication seems to be that AMC should be allowed to stream its content outside of AT&T's platforms without repercussions.

Asked for comment, an AT&T spokesperson says, " AMC Networks’ complaint is completely without merit. We treat all programmers fairly and will continue to work with AMC Networks to provide its content at a price that is reasonable to our customers."

An AMC spokesperson comments, "We have had a long and successful relationship with AT&T and we hope to continue our strong partnership well into the future. We are only asking AT&T to treat our networks fairly and not competitively disadvantage our programming and business interests as compared to the manner in which they treat their own networks like HBO and TNT.”

A separate petition from AMC warns that the license agreement is about to expire and that it could be forced into a decision about whether to take its networks off of AT&T or accept AT&T's demands. AMC wants the FCC to issue a standstill of the current licensing terms while negotiations continue and its main complaint is heard before the Commission.

Ironically, and noted in the newest complaint, the complaint comes as AT&T claims being the victim of vertical integration.

In late May, AT&T launched HBO Max, but the new streaming app is unavailable to customers using Amazon Fire devices. On a July 23 earnings call, AT&T CEO John Stankey hinted it might have something to do with Amazon wishing to favor its own streaming platform Prime. Stankey complained that " Amazon has taken an approach of treating HBO Max and its customers differently on how they’ve chosen to treat other services and their customers.”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/th...-trial-1306510





AT&T to Lay Off 600 at HBO and Warner Bros. after Revenue Decline

AT&T’s WarnerMedia suffered across-the-board revenue drops in Q2.
Jon Brodkin

AT&T's WarnerMedia division is planning to lay off hundreds of employees in AT&T's latest cost-cutting move. "Warner Bros. is expected to commence layoffs of around 650 people starting Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, while HBO is seen shedding between 150 and 175 staffers. A WarnerMedia spokesman declined to comment," Variety reported yesterday.

The numbers quoted in Variety may be a bit too high. A source with knowledge of the AT&T layoffs told Ars that the real number is about 600 jobs across all of WarnerMedia, which includes Warner Bros., HBO, and Turner.

The layoffs come days after WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar announced a shakeup including the departure of three executives and an increased focus on AT&T's new HBO Max streaming service. Kilar detailed the changes in an internal memo published by CNBC on Friday.

WarnerMedia revenue fell across the board

In its Q2 2020 earnings report, AT&T said that HBO revenue was "$1.6 billion, down 5.2 percent year over year, reflecting a decrease in subscription revenues and content and other revenues." HBO operating expenses were "$1.5 billion, up 32.5 percent year over year, primarily due to higher programming costs and expenses related to HBO Max." HBO operating income was $113 million, down 80.3 percent.

Warner Bros. revenue in Q2 was $3.3 billion, down 3.9 percent year over year partly because of "the postponement of theatrical releases due to closure of movie theaters," AT&T said. Warner Bros. operating income rose 43.9 percent to $633 million, however, as the unit's operating expenses declined 11.1 percent to $2.6 billion "primarily due to the production hiatus and lower marketing expenses."

Turner's Q2 revenue was $3 billion, "down 12.4 percent year over year due to a decrease in advertising and subscription revenues." Lower revenue from regional sports networks during the pandemic contributed to the decline. Turner operating expenses were $1.4 billion, down 37.2 percent year over year "primarily due to lower programming and marketing expenses associated with the suspension of sports." Turner operating income was $1.6 billion, up 36.2 percent.

Comcast's NBCUniversal division is also cutting jobs.

AT&T already cut over 41,000 jobs since 2017

AT&T acquired Time Warner Inc. in June 2018 after defeating a US Department of Justice lawsuit that alleged the merger would lessen competition and raise TV prices. AT&T currently faces a complaint from AMC Networks, which told the Federal Communications Commission last week that AT&T's DirecTV and U-verse TV services discriminate against AMC while favoring AT&T's own properties such as HBO. AT&T told the Hollywood Reporter that the AMC complaint is "completely without merit" and that AT&T "treat[s] all programmers fairly and will continue to work with AMC Networks to provide its content at a price that is reasonable to our customers."

Time Warner had about 26,000 employees at the end of 2017, five and a half months before its acquisition by AT&T was finalized.

Company-wide, AT&T has cut more than 41,000 jobs since the end of 2017, despite lobbying for a tax cut that then-CEO Randall Stephenson claimed AT&T would use to create "7,000 jobs of people putting fiber in [the] ground." Those 41,000 jobs don't include contractors, which AT&T has been shedding as well.

In June 2020, the Communications Workers of America union said AT&T was cutting another 3,400 union jobs from its wireline broadband and phone network operations as well as closing 250 wireless retail stores. AT&T told Ars at the time that it was eliminating an even larger number of non-payroll workers.

AT&T had 243,350 employees as of its most recent earnings report. The company has been trying to reduce its debt load since buying Time Warner. The company's long-term debt was $153.4 billion as of June 30, 2020, down from $168.5 billion in mid-2018.
https://arstechnica.com/information-...-bros-and-hbo/





What Does It Cost to Binge-Watch 'Friends'? That Might Depend on What a Judge Says

A battle over California's net neutrality law suddenly heats up after remaining dormant for nearly two years.
Eriq Gardner

HBO Max costs $14.99 a month. It says so on the website. But those saying it costs more might not be wrong. For customers who don't use AT&T mobile service and consume a lot of data — by binge-watching Friends, for example — those HBO Max users are likely paying extra for exceeding their data allowances. As for AT&T customers, well, they too may be in for sticker shock — a possibility recognized in a declaration from one of AT&T's executives submitted in a California federal court on Wednesday.

"Customers who relied on AT&T’s Data Free TV feature for years, as well as those who only recently started enjoying the benefit of sponsored data when using the HBO Max service that launched in May of this year, will be upset that AT&T is no longer offering a service and may blame AT&T for their frustrated expectations," states Barbara Roden, vice president of mobile broadband network services. "Some may abandon AT&T’s mobile service, the relevant AT&T video service, or both, in favor of competitive alternatives."

It's not yet a given that AT&T will no longer be able to practice "zero rating," referring to how a telecom data provider can incentivize sign-ups by exempting the consumption of its owned content against an individual subscriber's data plan. That could depend on the outcome of a pair of cases examining SB-822, California's tough net neutrality law. Yesterday, after nearly two years of no action in either case, the U.S. Department of Justice along with much of the telecom industry renewed a call for a preliminary injunction.

In Oct. 2018, California agreed to hold off on enforcing its net neutrality rules until there was some clarity on the FCC's attempt to rollback federal rules. The following October, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals blessed the FCC's repeal with the foreshadowing caveat that the agency's attempt to preempt states was problematic. "[T]he Commission lacked the legal authority to categorically abolish all fifty States’ statutorily conferred authority to regulate intrastate communications," stated the D.C. Circuit opinion.

There won't be any attempted trip to the Supreme Court over the repeal of rules against blocking and throttling of digital traffic. Last month, those challenging the FCC's deregulation opted against a petition for review. The conservative makeup of the high court likely influenced the decision. Instead, the hot activity now returns to California and Vermont, another state getting sued over its attempt to fill the net neutrality void.

There, the telecom companies frame last year's D.C. Circuit opinion as best they can.

"Notably, the court did not hold that States could regulate interstate broadband or address the Communications Act’s preemption of any state efforts to do so," states a memorandum from various industry groups in favor of an order enjoining SB-822. "The D.C. Circuit also did not decide whether the [FCC's net neutrality rollback] preempted any particular state law, 'because no particular state law was at issue in that case' and so 'it would be wholly premature to pass on the preemptive effect...'"

The telecom industry believes now it's time to do so, which basically means taking a look at SB-822 and deciding whether it should be preempted as undermining and conflicting with federal law. And that depends on what SB-822 is doing. According to the Justice Department's own brief (read here), it does nothing less than "regulate the entirety of the Internet."

"California’s nullification of federal law—with the concomitant regulatory uncertainty and resulting instability of the Internet marketplace it creates—is not in the public’s interest, not otherwise justified, and thus should be enjoined," continues the DOJ.

The question will soon become whether U.S. District Court Judge John Mandez agrees with the assessment that California is regulating communications across state lines. In deciding, the judge will look closely at the particulars of SB-822 such as the ban on "zero rating," which not even the Obama-era FCC decided to stop.

Many net neutrality advocates believe that when a company like AT&T allows its mobile customers to consume as much Friends as their heart desires without respect to data caps, it creates unfair advantages for vertically aligned corporations while making it tougher for independent content producers to access a market. Power gets centralized and pricing is distorted in favor of the gatekeepers.

That's the view that California AG Xavier Becerra will likely expand upon when attempting to justify SB-822 as a means of intrastate regulation in accordance with the state's unfair competition laws. For now, his office says it is studying the just filed court papers while AT&T speaks about what this wonky net neutrality debate will mean to its bottom line.

"Because it may be difficult or impossible to win many of these consumers back within the foreseeable future, SB-822 would likely cost AT&T substantial revenues," continues Roden. "In addition, aggrieved customers will express their dissatisfaction to their friends and acquaintances. Their dissatisfaction will likely also attract widespread, negative media attention. This reputational damage could reduce the ability of AT&T to attract and retain wireless or video (or both) customers for many years."
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/th...e-says-1306232





Judge Agrees to End Paramount Consent Decrees

Gone are decades-old restrictions on how studios package movies for theaters, plus an end to a ban on vertical integration. Today, a federal judge addresses the possibility that a major studio will merge with a major theatrical chain.
Eriq Gardner

After nearly three quarters of a century being the quiet influence on how Hollywood operated, the Paramount Consent Decrees are officially over. On Friday, a New York federal judge granted a motion by the U.S. Department of Justice to terminate the movie industry's long-lasting licensing rules.

The Paramount Consent Decrees have been in effect since the late 1940s when the government pursued a major antitrust action against film studios, which in those days, were vertically aligned with national theater chains. As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1948 decision in United 
States v. Paramount Pictures, the studios had to divest themselves of their exhibition holdings. A court-approved settlement then established rules governing the licensing relationship between certain studios such as Paramount and Warner Bros. and theater owners. Other studios such as The Walt Disney Company weren't part of the original case, but have nevertheless been guided by those Paramount Consent Decrees.

But with some deregulatory fervor, the Trump-era DOJ has been taking a hard look at long-lasting behavioral remedies for older antitrust abuses. Last November, the DOJ moved to terminate the decrees. In the government's estimation, total bans on practices like "block-booking" (bundling multiple films into one theater license) and "circuit dealing" (the practice of licensing films to all movie theaters under common ownership, as opposed to licensing each film on a theater-by-theater basis) had outlived their usefulness. It was time to sunset them and get rid of other rules. Some indie theaters warned the move would usher in new consolidation with tech giants like Amazon swooping in to acquire theaters.

U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres agrees with the government that times have changed, and so must the rules.

"Given this changing marketplace, the Court finds that it is unlikely that the remaining Defendants would collude to once again limit their film distribution to a select group of theaters in the absence of the Decrees and, finds, therefore, that termination is in the public interest," she writes in a 17-page opinion.

She accepts that certain conduct once deemed per se illegal may now be pro-competitive as theaters fight to remain relevant in the tech age while lingering anticompetitive behavior would be better scrutinized through new legal actions absent of strict rules.

As for the possibility that terminating the ban on vertical integration would allow major movie studios to merge with large national theater circuits, the judge notes that such restrictions have never applied to certain studios like Disney and adds that "the Court finds that changes to antitrust administration, in particular, the HSR Act, provide federal antitrust agencies with notice and the opportunity to evaluate the competitive significance of any major transaction between a movie distributor and a theater circuit, which suggests a low likelihood of potential future violation."

The changes with surefire impact, though, will be a lifting of the ban on studios licensing their works on a packaged basis. Again, the judge looks to a shifting market as a justification for allowing this to happen two years hence when a sunset period expires.

"In today’s landscape, although there may be some geographic areas with only a single one-screen theater, most markets have multiple movie theaters with multiple screens simultaneously showing multiple movies from multiple distributors," states the order. "There also are many other movie distribution platforms, like television, the internet and DVDs, that did not exist in the 1930s and 40s. Given these significant changes in the market, there is less danger that a block booking licensing agreement would create a barrier to entry that would foreclose independent movie distributors from sufficient access to the market."
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/th...ecrees-1306387





In Japan, Punters Still Picking Plastic Over Pirating for Porn Perusal
Junji Matsumoto

Downloading and streaming — both legal and otherwise — may be here to stay when it comes to the consumption of films and music.

Yet for Japan, many adult video fans still hold the DVD in very high regard, making it their medium of choice.

To wit, Tokyo Metropolitan Police have busted an illegal mail order operation based in Osaka City that collected nearly 500 million yen in sales over a four-year period, reports TV Asahi (July 15).

According to police, Junji Matsumoto and seven other male and female suspects sold 26 adult DVDs in which genitalia was not obscured (as mandated by law) through their online service to two persons in Tokyo.

As well, the suspects were accused of possessing 218 illegal DVDs at a factory in Joto Ward, Osaka City. Police also seized computer equipment and about 105,000 illegal DVDs from that factory and another location this month.

Matsumoto and six other suspects admit to the allegations. The eighth suspect has declined to comment, police said.
Police seizes more than 100,000 illegal DVDs from two locations in Osaka City this month (Twitter)
NPO complaint

The illegal operation emerged after an NPO lodged a complaint with police on behalf of a woman who indicated one DVD for sale featured her when she was an actress.

Since 2016, the operation is believed to have accumulated 470 million yen in sales, police said.

The arrest is at least the second for Matsumoto. In 2015, he was accused of running a similar operation from a location in Naniwa Ward.
https://www.tokyoreporter.com/crime/...-porn-perusal/

















Until next week,

- js.



















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