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Old 09-12-20, 07:31 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 12th, ’20

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December 12th, 2020




Want Vaccines Fast? Suspend Intellectual Property Rights

Otherwise, there won’t be enough shots to go around, even in rich countries.
Achal Prabhala, Arjun Jayadev and Dean Baker

As some reports would have it, this is the beginning of the end. Three coronavirus vaccines have posted excellent results, with more expected to come.

But this is not the beginning of the end; it is only the beginning of an endless wait: There aren’t enough vaccines to go around in the richest countries on earth, let alone the poorest ones.

That’s why it makes little sense that the United States, Britain and the European Union, among others, are blocking a proposal at the World Trade Organization that would allow them, and the rest of the world, to get more of the vaccines and treatments we all need.

The proposal, put forward by India and South Africa in October, calls on the W.T.O. to exempt member countries from enforcing some patents, trade secrets or pharmaceutical monopolies under the organization’s agreement on trade-related intellectual property rights, known as TRIPs.

It cites the “exceptional circumstances” created by the pandemic and argues that intellectual property protections are currently “hindering or potentially hindering timely provisioning of affordable medical products”; the waiver would allow W.T.O. member countries to change their laws so that companies there could produce generic versions of any coronavirus vaccines and Covid-19 treatments.

The idea was immediately opposed by the United States, the European Union, Britain, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, Canada, Australia and Brazil. It was opposed again at another meeting in November, and again last week.

By our count, nearly 100 countries favor the proposal, and yet because almost all decisions at the W.T.O. are made by consensus, a small number of countries can thwart the will of the majority, even a super majority. (The organization has 164 members.)

The U.S. trade representative is reported to have said that protecting intellectual property rights and otherwise “facilitating incentives for innovation and competition” was the best way to ensure the “swift delivery” of any vaccines and treatments. The European Union has argued that there was “no indication that intellectual property rights issues have been a genuine barrier in relation to Covid-19-related medicines and technologies.” The British mission to the W.T.O. agrees, characterizing the waiver proposal as “an extreme measure to address an unproven problem.”

In fact, the novel technology at the heart of the Moderna vaccine, for example, was developed partly by the National Institutes of Health using U.S. federal funds. Moderna then received a total of some $2.5 billion in taxpayer money for research support and as preorders for vaccines; by the company’s own admission, the $1 billion contribution it received for research covered 100 percent of those costs.

Moderna has pledged not to enforce its “Covid-19 related patents against those making vaccines intended to combat the pandemic.” But as Doctors Without Borders has pointed out, that offer is less generous than it seems since other types of intellectual property, such as know-how or trade secrets, typically are needed to develop and produce vaccines.

Pfizer, for its part, received a $455 million grant from the German government to develop its vaccine, and then, by our count, nearly $6 billion in purchase commitments from the United States and the European Union.

AstraZeneca benefited from some public funding while it was developing its vaccine, and received a total of more than $2 billion from the United States and the European Union for both research and in purchase commitments. It also signed a deal worth $750 million to supply the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance with a total of 300 million doses.

In other words, the vaccines developed by these companies were developed thanks wholly or partly to taxpayer money. Those vaccines essentially belong to the people — and yet the people are about to pay for them again, and with little prospect of getting as many as they need fast enough.

We calculate, based on Pfizer’s and Moderna’s stated vaccine-production capacity and their supply deals with the United States and the European Union, as well as Japan and Canada, that these countries can expect, at best, to have about 50 percent of their populations covered by the end of 2021. Considering that 82 percent of the vaccines Pfizer says it can produce through next year and 78 percent of Moderna’s have already been sold to rich countries, according to the advocacy group Global Justice Now, imagine the likely shortages and delays for the rest of the world. (Canada is said to have placed so many preorders that it could end up with 10 doses per capita.)

AstraZeneca, to its credit, has struck deals with manufacturers in India and Latin America, as well as with Gavi, to help poor countries get access to its vaccine. (It has also committed not to make a profit from its vaccine during the pandemic — though, according to a Financial Times report based on company documents, AstraZeneca has retained the right to declare the end of the pandemic as early as July 2021.) That said, the company estimates that it will be able to make three billion doses by the end of 2021; that’s enough for only 20 percent of the world’s population.

Poor countries have faced such problems before. The W.T.O.’s creation in 1995 coincided with a surge of H.I.V./AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. By 1996, new treatments were developed that made AIDS a mostly manageable condition — though only for people who could afford them. Nongeneric drugs cost about $10,000 a year at the turn of the century, and were well out of the reach of many people in, say, South Africa. It took the South African government almost a decade to break the monopolies held by foreign drug companies that kept the country hostage, and kept people there dying.

In Brazil, Gilead Sciences, the monopoly owner of sofosbuvir, a breakthrough treatment for hepatitis C, has been in a deadlock with the government over expanding and cheapening access to the drug for Brazilians. By several accounts, when Gilead Sciences obtained patents for sofosbuvir in early 2019, it hiked the price for Brazilian public agencies from $16 to $240 a capsule. Yet that would drop to about $8 if the drug were produced locally under a compulsory licensing scheme that the TRIPs agreement already allows in some circumstances.

Countries in which drugs are relatively cheap, such as India, face another kind of challenge: attempts to overturn the laws that make those drugs accessible there. Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, fought a decade-long battle to secure monopoly control in India over its treatment for leukemia, and in the process tried to have a key provision of Indian patent law struck down as unconstitutional. (It failed on both fronts.)

What’s more, the crisis of access to affordable medicines also affects countries whose governments defend extensive intellectual property protections for companies: Insulin, for example, can be punishingly expensive in the United States.

Remdesivir, a drug used to treat Covid-19 (with mixed results), is now in short supply in the United States and Europe. Gilead Sciences, remdesivir’s manufacturer, has retained its monopoly over the drug in rich countries, but in May it signed licensing agreements with companies in 127 countries so that they could produce generic versions for sale there. The result? While there have been shortages of the drug in the West, it has been available in increasingly stable supplies in several poor countries, sometimes at one-tenth of the price.

But the governments of rich countries can push back against Big Pharma, too, and sometimes have done so — despite the pharmaceutical industry’s sometimes colossal financial clout. (Campaign and lobbying contributions from drug makers to the U.S. federal government totaled some $4.7 billion between 1999 and 2018, according to one recent study.) In the aftermath of 9/11, the United States feared an anthrax attack and needed unusually large supplies of ciprofloxacin from Bayer; when the government threatened to bypass the company’s patent and buy generic alternatives, the company lowered the price of the antibiotic and increased supplies.

In Britain last year, families of children with cystic fibrosis petitioned the government to suspend a company’s monopoly over Orkambi, the first significant treatment for the disease. After political parties threw their weight behind the petition, Vertex, the maker of Orkambi, agreed to sell the drug at a much lower price than it had been holding out for.

As for coronavirus vaccines and Covid-19 treatments, another meeting of the TRIPs Council is scheduled for Dec. 10; on Dec. 16 and 17 the W.T.O.’s general council, one of the organization’s highest decision-making bodies, will meet. The United States, the European Union and Britain are expected to dig their heels in.

Yet mounting pressure from poor countries at the W.T.O. should give the governments of rich countries leverage to negotiate with their pharmaceutical companies for cheaper drugs and vaccines worldwide. Leaning on those companies is the right thing to do in the face of a global pandemic; it is also the best way for the governments of rich countries to take care of their own populations, which in some cases experience more severe drug shortages than do people in far less affluent places.

Last month, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal denounced the TRIPs waiver proposal put forward by India and South Africa as a “patent heist,” adding that “their effort would harm everyone, including the poor.” In fact, the effort would help everyone, including the rich — if only the rich could see that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/o...s-patents.html





Bob Dylan Sells His Songwriting Catalog in Blockbuster Deal

Universal Music purchased his entire songwriting catalog of more than 600 songs in what may be the biggest acquisition ever of a single act’s publishing rights.
Ben Sisario

Bob Dylan’s memoir “Chronicles: Volume One” opens in 1962 with the signing of his first music publishing deal — a contract for the copyrights of the budding songwriter’s work. The terms of that agreement, brokered by Lou Levy of Leeds Music Publishing, met young Dylan’s approval.

“Lou had advanced me a hundred dollars against future royalties to sign the paper,” he wrote, “and that was fine with me.”

Fifty-eight years, more than 600 songs and one Nobel Prize later, the cultural and economic value of Dylan’s songwriting corpus have both grown exponentially.

On Monday, the Universal Music Publishing Group announced that it had signed a landmark deal to purchase Dylan’s entire songwriting catalog — including world-changing classics like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and “Like a Rolling Stone” — in what may be the biggest acquisition ever of the music publishing rights of a single act.

The deal, which covers Dylan’s entire career, from his earliest songs to the tunes on his latest album, “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” was struck directly with Dylan, who has long controlled the majority of his own songwriting copyrights.

The price was not disclosed, but is estimated at more than $300 million.

“It’s no secret that the art of songwriting is the fundamental key to all great music, nor is it a secret that Bob is one of the very greatest practitioners of that art,” Lucian Grainge, the chief executive of the Universal Music Group, said in a statement announcing the deal.

Jody Gerson, the chief executive of Universal’s publishing division, added, “To represent the body of work of one of the greatest songwriters of all time — whose cultural importance can’t be overstated — is both a privilege and a responsibility.”

The deal is the latest and most high-profile in this year’s buzzing market for music catalogs, as artists both young and old have sold their songs, while publishers and investors have raised billions of dollars from both public and private sources to close those deals.

Last week, Stevie Nicks sold a majority stake in her songwriting catalog for an estimated $80 million to Primary Wave Music, an independent publisher and marketing company. Hipgnosis Songs Fund, a British company that has made a rapid run in the market in just two and a half years, recently disclosed that it had spent about $670 million from March to September acquiring rights in more than 44,000 songs by Blondie, Rick James, Barry Manilow, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders and others.

Dylan’s catalog, however, is one of the music world’s ultimate jewels — a trove of songs that reshaped folk, rock and pop and inspired countless artists. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”

Dylan is also the kind of writer whose work music publishers especially salivate over. Not only has his work stood the test of time, but most of his songs were written by Dylan alone and have been frequently covered by other artists — with each use generating royalties. According to Universal, Dylan’s songs have been recorded more than 6,000 times.

Music publishing is the side of the business that deals in the copyrights for songwriting and composition — the lyrics and melodies of songs, in their most fundamental form — which are distinct from those for a recording. Publishers and writers collect royalties and licensing fees any time their work is sold, streamed, broadcast on the radio or used in a movie or TV commercial. (The recent sale of Taylor Swift’s first six albums covered only that material’s recording rights. Swift signed a separate publishing deal with Universal in February.)

Streaming has helped lift the entire music market — publishers in the United States collected $3.7 billion in 2019, according to the National Music Publishers’ Association — which has drawn new investors attracted to the steady and growing income generated by music rights.

Dylan’s deal includes 100 percent of his rights for all the songs of his catalog, including both the income he receives as a songwriter and his control of each song’s copyright. In exchange for its payment to Dylan, Universal, a division of the French media conglomerate Vivendi, will collect all future income from the songs.

Music publishing has been a little-known cornerstone of much of Dylan’s career. The songs he recorded with the Band in 1967, for example, which were widely bootlegged at the time and later collected in Dylan’s 1975 album “The Basement Tapes,” were intended as demos to be shopped to other recording artists. And much of Dylan’s business empire is operated through the Bob Dylan Music Company, a small office in New York that administers his publishing rights in the United States. (Elsewhere around the world, his catalog has been administered by Sony/ATV.)

The deal includes more than 600 songs spread across a number of publishing companies that Dylan has had over the years. With the exception of his original Leeds Music deal — which included seven songs, among them “Song for Woody” and “Talkin’ New York” — Dylan eventually took full control of all his copyrights from those catalogs; Leeds was sold in 1964 to MCA, which became Universal.

The new deal with Universal does not include any songs Dylan writes in the future, leaving open the possibility that he could choose to work with another publisher for that material.

The Universal deal also includes Dylan’s shares in a number of songs he has written with other songwriters, although of the more than 600 titles included in the deal, there is only one in which Dylan is not a writer, but still owns the copyright: Robbie Robertson’s “The Weight,” as recorded by the Band.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/a...ublishing.html





Proposed U.S. Law Could Slap Twitch Streamers With Felonies For Broadcasting Copyrighted Material
Nathan Grayson

The United States government is, as we all know, extremely functional. It’s so functional, in fact, that it regularly struggles to pass spending bills in order to prevent itself from shutting down. The latest “must-pass” bill, like many of its predecessors, includes controversial measures that wouldn’t be able to pass on their own, negotiated with the high stakes of this particular bill in mind. One of them would turn unauthorized streaming of copyrighted material into a felony.

According to Politico offshoot Protocol, the felony streaming proposal is the work of Republican senator Thom Tillis, who has backed similar proposals previously. It is more or less exactly what it sounds like: A proposal to turn unauthorized commercial streaming of copyrighted material—progressive policy publication The American Prospect specifically points to examples like “an album on YouTube, a video clip on Twitch, or a song in an Instagram story”—into a felony offense with a possible prison sentence. Currently, such violations, no matter how severe, are considered misdemeanors rather than felonies, because the law regards streaming as a public performance. With Twitch currently in the crosshairs of the music industry, such a change would turn up the heat on streamers and Twitch even higher—perhaps to an untenable degree. Other platforms, like YouTube, would almost certainly suffer as well.

“A felony streaming bill would likely be a chill on expression,” Katharine Trendacosta, associate director of policy and activism with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The American Prospect. “We already see that it’s hard enough in just civil copyright and the DMCA for people to feel comfortable asserting their rights. The chance of a felony would impact both expression and innovation.”

According to Protocol, House and Senate Judiciary Committees have agreed to package the streaming felony proposal with other controversial provisions that include the CASE act, which would establish a new court-like entity within the U.S. Copyright Office to resolve copyright disputes, and the Trademark Modernization Act, which would give the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office more flexibility to crack down on illegitimate claims from foreign countries.

Alongside the felony streaming proposal, these provisions have drawn ire from civil rights groups, digital rights nonprofits, and companies including the aforementioned Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive, the American Library Association, and the Center for Democracy & Technology. Collectively, these groups and others penned a letter to the U.S. Senate last week.

“As creators, innovators, small businesses, online service providers, libraries, educators, and civil society organizations, we are concerned with including controversial copyright or trademark bills in a must-pass piece of legislation,” the organizations wrote (via TorrentFreak). “We respect Congress’s intent to improve our intellectual property system and protect the rights of creators and entrepreneurs. However, certain aspects of this package of bills will have negative impacts on small- and medium-sized businesses, creators, libraries and their patrons, students, teachers, educational institutions, religious institutions, fan communities, internet users, and free expression...We ask that you decline to include this package of bills in the funding bill.”

It’s not difficult to see why Tillis would push a proposal that benefits big companies in the entertainment industry to the detriment of regular people; The American Prospect points out that in the past couple years, Tillis’ campaign committee and leadership received donations totaling out to well over $100,000 from PACs with ties to the Motion Picture Association, Sony Pictures, Universal Music Group, Comcast & NBC Universal, The Internet and Television Association, Salem Media Group, and Warner Music, among many others.

Today, the House passed a stopgap spending bill to keep the lights on until December 18. For now, then, the government will continue to deliberate over these issues and many others, including the much-talked-about coronavirus relief package that has yet to materialize, even with numbers in the U.S. at an all-time high.
https://kotaku.com/proposed-u-s-law-...elo-1845846012





Trading Box Office for Streaming, but Stars Still Want Their Money

If studios are no longer trying to maximize ticket sales, what will that mean for often lucrative pay packages tied to a film’s performance in theaters?
Brooks Barnes and Nicole Sperling

Last month, Warner Bros. quietly approached Hollywood’s two biggest talent agencies, William Morris Endeavor and Creative Artists. The studio wanted to release the much-anticipated “Wonder Woman 1984” simultaneously in theaters and on the streaming service HBO Max on Christmas Day. And they wanted to get the film’s star, Gal Gadot, and director, Patty Jenkins, on board with the plan.

WME, which counts Ms. Gadot as a client, and CAA, which represents Ms. Jenkins, had a lot of questions, but the biggest involved money: How are you going to pay them?

With “Wonder Woman 1984,” agents argued that Ms. Gadot, Ms. Jenkins and the producer Charles Roven (among others) needed to be paid what they most likely would have received had the sequel been released in a traditional manner (an exclusive run in theaters before arriving online) and not during the height of a pandemic. After all, that was what they signed up for, and Warner Bros. and HBO Max, its corporate sibling, wanted their help in promoting the film, did they not?

After a tense negotiation, Warner Bros., which is owned by AT&T, agreed that Ms. Gadot and Ms. Jenkins would each get more than $10 million, according to two people with knowledge of the deals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private agreements.

The upshot: Warner Bros. kept crucial talent and their powerful representatives on its side.

Last week, when Jason Kilar, WarnerMedia’s chief executive, announced that 17 more Warner Bros. movies would each roll out on HBO Max and in theaters à la “Wonder Woman 1984,” talent was handled in a very different manner. To prevent the news of the 17-movie shift from leaking (and to make the move speedily rather than get mired in the expected blowback), WarnerMedia kept the major agencies and talent management companies in the dark until roughly 90 minutes before issuing a news release. Even some Warner Bros. executives had little warning.

The surprise move left agencies on a war footing. Representatives for major Warner Bros. stars like Denzel Washington, Margot Robbie, Will Smith, Keanu Reeves, Hugh Jackman and Angelina Jolie wanted to know why their clients had been treated in a lesser manner than Ms. Gadot. Talk of a Warner Bros. boycott began circulating inside the Directors Guild of America. A partner at one talent agency spent part of the weekend meeting with litigators. Some people started to angrily refer to the studio as Former Bros.

“For the longest time, Warner Bros. has been known as the best home for talent, and that has been a significant competitive advantage,” Michael Nathanson, a founder of the MoffettNathanson media research firm, said in a phone interview. “With this move, they alienated the very talent they have worked so hard to attract. These aren’t engineers you can just replace.”

The company cited the pandemic as the primary reason for moving the entire 2021 Warner Bros. slate to a hybrid release model, although some films — notably the big-budget “Dune” and “Matrix 4” — are not scheduled to arrive until the fourth quarter, long after vaccines are expected to be deployed.

“Our content is extremely valuable, unless it’s sitting on a shelf not being seen by anyone,” Mr. Kilar said in the news release. “We believe this approach serves our fans, supports exhibitors and filmmakers, and enhances the HBO Max experience, creating value for all.”

The 97-year-old studio, the ancestral home of Humphrey Bogart (“Casablanca”) and Bette Davis (“Now, Voyager”), suddenly finds itself at the uncomfortable center of a Hollywood that is changing at light speed. Even before the pandemic, streaming services like Netflix, Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video were upending how movies get seen and their creators are compensated. Now, with theaters struggling because of the coronavirus and the public largely stuck at home, even traditional film companies are being forced to evolve.

It’s not that all actors and directors are against streaming. Plenty of big names are making movies for Netflix. But last week’s move by Warner Bros. raised fundamental financial questions. If old-line studios are no longer trying to maximize the box office for each film but instead shifting to a hybrid model where success is judged partly by ticket sales and partly by the number of streaming subscriptions sold, what does that mean for talent pay packages?

How studios compensate A-list actors, directors, writers and producers is complicated, with contracts negotiated film by film and person by person. But it boils down to two checks. One is guaranteed (a large upfront fee) and one is a gamble: a portion of ticket sales after the studio has recouped its costs.

If a film flops, the second payday never comes. If a film is a hit, as is often the case with superheroes and other fantasy stories, the “back end” pay can add up to wheelbarrows full of cash. That money trickles down through Hollywood’s financial ecosystem to agents, lawyers and managers — funding Pacific Palisades mansions, the latest Porsche and $1,000-per-person Urasawa dinners.

But are the days of the jackpot back-end payoffs now coming to a close?

“Precedent is being set over the value of talent and what kind of transparency is essential to creating equitable partnerships,” Bryan Lourd, a co-chairman of Creative Artists, said in an email. “We will do everything necessary to make sure artists are fairly compensated for the value they are creating, and that their creative and artistic work and rights are protected.”

William Morris Endeavor declined to comment for this article.

It is unclear whether Warner Bros. has a legal requirement to renegotiate back-end arrangements for the 17 movies, as it did with “Wonder Woman 1984” heavyweights. Mr. Kilar said in a phone interview on Friday that, while these changes might be jarring to those who expected one thing for their movie and were now getting something very different, the end goal was to honor talent relationships as the studio had done in the past.

“The most important statement to make is we endeavor to be generous,” he said. “It has served us well for 97 years, and I think it will serve us well going forward.”

WarnerMedia has called its hybrid movie distribution plan a one-year-only strategy. But most people in Hollywood believe it will prove permanent. Mr. Kilar publicly positioned the move as being all about fans, many of whom have chafed at Hollywood’s traditional rollout of movies (first in theaters for an exclusive period, then online for rental and purchase, then on streaming services and television). He’s just going to take that away in 2022?

Each movie Warner Bros. releases next year will appear on HBO Max for only one month before leaving the service. At that point, films will cycle through the usual release “windows,” leaving theaters when interest has run out and heading to iTunes, DVD and points beyond.

Under the WarnerMedia plan, HBO Max will pay Warner Bros. a licensing fee for the 31-day concurrent rights. The fee will be equal to the studio’s portion of ticket sales in the United States. (Ticket sales are generally split 50-50 between studios and theaters.)

Other factors could influence the fee, including the percentage of theaters that are operating. HBO Max and Warner Bros. also agreed to a floor for these fees: $10 million or 25 percent of the film’s net production cost, whichever is greater.

In the eyes of some agents, this is unfair self-dealing. They believe that WarnerMedia had an obligation to maximize value for the profit participants — to make a good-faith effort to see what prices other companies might have paid for the Warner Bros. movies before selling them to itself. The licensing fee does not appear to be connected to the value each movie will create for HBO Max in the form of subscriptions or engagement.

Litigation over self-dealing has been relatively common in Hollywood since the 1990s, when industry consolidation led to media superconglomerates.

WarnerMedia’s aggrieved partners include Legendary Entertainment, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Owned by China’s Dalian Wanda Group, Legendary produced the upcoming “Dune” and “Godzilla vs. Kong” under a deal that required Legendary (and its affiliates) to ultimately shoulder 75 percent of the production costs, with Warner Bros. paying for the balance. Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune,” a science-fiction epic starring Timothée Chalamet and an array of other big names (Zendaya, Jason Mamoa), cost an estimated $165 million. “Godzilla vs. Kong” cost about $155 million.

Not only did Warner Bros. blindside Legendary about the distribution shake-up, but HBO Max immediately began advertising itself using footage from “Dune” and other movies. Stars involved with the much-anticipated project were stunned: Some had agreed to lower their upfront fees (to reduce production costs) in return for expected back-end paydays. In success, “Dune” could spawn multiple sequels.

Legendary was already upset with Warner. In recent months, Netflix had offered the partners a huge sum — at least $250 million — to buy “Godzilla vs. Kong.” Legendary was in favor of the deal, which seemed to optimize the film’s value. But Warner had blocked the Netflix sale.

Legendary declined to comment, as did Warner Bros.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/b...ovies-pay.html





Who’s Behind the Fight Between Warner Bros. and Hollywood? It’s AT&T

The town is mad about the studio’s decision to put movies on HBO Max and in theaters at the same time. But with a telecom giant running an entertainment company, things were bound to get weird.
Edmund Lee

Even a small sample of the Warner Bros. 2021 film slate suggests the studio’s big-screen ambitions: a desert-planet messiah who can kill with a word (“Dune”); a colossal clash between mutant monsters (“Godzilla vs. Kong”); a local hero who whips up frenzied dance routines across uptown rooftops (“In the Heights”).

They’re the kind of movies that families, couples and teenagers once watched on three-story screens from the comfort of stadium-style seats, with the soundtrack’s bass notes rumbling at their feet. But last week Warner Bros. broke with tradition by announcing that it would release its entire lineup of 2021 films on HBO Max — its struggling streaming service — on the same day they were scheduled to appear in theaters.

Hollywood agents and filmmakers were angered by the move — but they may have forgotten something crucial: Warner Bros. belongs to WarnerMedia, which is part of AT&T. And AT&T is a telecommunications company whose interests are sometimes at odds with those of the old entertainment business. Despite joining Hollywood in a big way last year, when it bought Time Warner for more than $80 billion, AT&T may not mind so much if it speeds the demise of the century-old moviegoing habit.

For AT&T, HBO Max isn’t just a convenient way to get films and television shows to the public. Instead, the platform is a key part of its wireless business. HBO Max is included in packages for some high-end phone and internet subscribers, and it exists, in part, to create consumer loyalty to AT&T.

The Warner Bros. films will also play in theaters — but seeing them that way would cost a family of four about $50 (excluding gas, parking and concessions). That makes the monthly $15 fee for HBO Max a steal. Or even a no-brainer. Especially at a time of dread caused by being part of a crowd during the coronavirus pandemic.

The studio’s emphasis on streaming certainly puts AT&T at risk of losing money on its 2021 films. But the box office has already been hollowed out because of the pandemic, with every major studio stutter-stepping its way into various release strategies.

Jason Kilar, the WarnerMedia chief executive who helped craft the strategy, could have settled on a more patient distribution scheme, given that coronavirus vaccines might salvage some of the 2021 box office. Instead, he did something audacious by potentially sacrificing billions in box office receipts to boost the $15-a-month streaming platform.

Mr. Kilar was early to streaming, starting his run as the chief executive of Hulu in 2007. For those who knew him then, his moves at WarnerMedia have not been much of a surprise.

In its early incarnation, Hulu was wholly free, with limited commercial interruptions. It relied on television fare for its content, but it was better than broadcast TV because it was divorced from network schedules. Watch what you want, when you want, for free.

But Hulu’s many corporate owners — Comcast, the Walt Disney Company and Fox — eventually forced Mr. Kilar to impose a subscription fee when they saw that the service wasn’t making real money. A monthly subscription cost, on top of the ads that were already running on the service, effectively mimicked cable, cutting into Hulu’s advantage.

In 2011, Mr. Kilar got Hollywood’s attention by posting a memo assailing the entertainment industry for failing to take advantage of the internet. He left Hulu to start his own company and eventually found his way back to Hollywood via AT&T, his digital-first approach having impressed John Stankey, who became the telecom giant’s chief executive in the summer.

Mr. Kilar’s latest move has rankled a powerful group: the talent, whose back-end payouts are contingent on box office earnings. And the fact that WarnerMedia kept its plan under wraps until the unveiling didn’t help.

“We see an opportunity to do something firmly focused on the fans, which is to provide choice,” Mr. Kilar wrote in a blog post announcing the move.

Mr. Stankey, his boss, vigorously defended the change in strategy on Tuesday. “I think when we just are being really honest about this, there’s a win-win-win here,” he said at the UBS banking conference.

He added: “We think it’s a great way for us to penetrate the market faster and quicker.”

The director Christopher Nolan, who made “Tenet” for Warner Bros. and is known as a proponent of theatrically released movies, swiftly condemned the studio’s plan to release its movies simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max.

“Their decision makes no economic sense, and even the most casual Wall Street investor can see the difference between disruption and dysfunction,” he said in a statement Monday to The Hollywood Reporter. He went on to call HBO Max “the worst streaming service.”

But a strategy that strikes auteurs and cinema die-hards as dysfunctional makes perfect sense to Mr. Kilar and Mr. Stankey. AT&T’s primary focus is its wireless service, a $71 billion business. WarnerMedia generates half that.

More important, the wireless industry brings in significantly more money than the entertainment business — and it does so in a much more efficient manner. AT&T’s wireless division makes three times the pretax profit brought in by WarnerMedia.

Mr. Kilar did not endear himself to the entertainment establishment during his time at Hulu, and now he seems to have aggravated the content creators who make Hollywood run. But the company he works for has very little in common with other entertainment outfits.

For AT&T, HBO Max isn’t just a way to make money, but serves as an incentive to keep phone customers from defecting to its rivals. Every 0.01 percent of customers who stay glued to AT&T are worth about $100 million to the company.

A pricing war among AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile has lowered mobile phone bills and cut into profits. Wireless providers have taken to stealing subscribers away from one another — a costly practice that includes discounting.

AT&T still wants HBO Max to be as profitable as possible. But even if its balance sheet suffers, the platform can still be valuable if it helps the company hang on to wireless subscribers.

In the streaming competition that has heated up in recent years, HBO Max finds itself up against some serious heavyweights. Netflix is closing in on 201 million customers around the world, with nearly 70 million in the United States. Disney+ has had a fast rise to more than 73 million. Hulu, also controlled by Disney, has about 37 million.

As of this week — six months after its introduction — HBO Max had 12.6 million subscribers, or “activations,” as the company calls them. Those subscribers are, in effect, getting free tickets to the 2021 slate of Warner Bros. films. And it’s not just them — members of their family are also able to watch, as well as anyone else who shares their login information.

People who are interested in seeing “Wonder Woman 1984” or “Dune” without risking a trip to a movie theater have a strong incentive to plunk down $15 for a month of HBO Max. They can watch what they want to see and quickly cancel. Or maybe they will stick around for all 17 films on the 2021 slate.

But how will AT&T make up for the inevitable loss of revenue from theatrically released movies?

WarnerMedia’s average box office revenue tops $1.8 billion annually, according to estimates by the research firm MoffettNathanson, an amount that the studio must split with theater chains. That means AT&T will have to make up about $900 million in 2021 film revenue.

To be sure, AT&T will rake in some box office dollars next year. But the pandemic has dampened even the best-laid marketing plans. When WarnerMedia released “Tenet” in theaters in September, the $200 million project generated only about $57 million domestically.

It will also make some money through online rentals and purchases, as well as in cable syndication.

Mr. Kilar could come out ahead, pleasing Mr. Stankey and AT&T shareholders while potentially upsetting much of the Hollywood establishment. He needs to get only five million more HBO Max customers to make up for box office losses (or 60 million customers paying for only a single month). That would be on top of the 25 million subscribers it’s already on pace to gather by May.

But solving the market may not be as easy as it looks. HBO Max is the most expensive streamer, at $180 a year.
Correction: Dec. 8, 2020

An earlier version of this article misstated the percentage of customers who are worth $100 million to AT&T. Every 0.01 percent of customers who stay glued to AT&T are worth about $100 million to the company, not every 1 percent of customers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/b...ce-losses.html





New Report Suggests FCC Massively Overstated Gigabit Coverage in U.S.
Joanna Nelius

A report released today by BroadbandNow reveals the FCC grossly overreported the availability of gigabit internet in the U.S. As of 2020, the FCC reported gigabit internet was available to 84% of Americans, up from just 4% in 2016. But according to BroadbandNow, those numbers are closer to 56% in 2020, up from 2.4% in 2016, and could be even less.

The disparity has to do with how the FCC has reported internet coverage in the past. Up until recently, there was a major flaw in Form 477 that ISPs use to report what kind of coverage they offer and where. The old version of the form, which all current internet data provided by the FCC is based on, allowed ISPs to mark an entire census block as “covered” by a specific service even if only one home in that census block actually had that service.

The form did not require ISPs to provide more granular data than that, and as a result, the FCC would count every single house within each census block as having that service. “This has led to widespread issues of over-reporting when it comes to where plans are actually available at the neighborhood level,” said the report.

According to Tyler Cooper, editor-in-chief of BroadbandNow, “Even the number 56% is likely overstated. Meanwhile, the increase from single-digit availability to more than 50% is good news, but this research finds further evidence of the flaws in Form 477 deployment data, which the FCC relies on from ISPs.”

To get that 56% number, BroadbandNow randomly selected 75 addresses across 15 zip codes in Texas, Florida, and Ohio where the FCC’s data indicates that gigabit coverage is available. It manually entered those addresses into the “check availability” option on various ISPs’ websites that provide gigabit service in those areas or called the providers directly. The entire methodology is explained in the report, but the organization discovered that none of those addresses had an active gigabit plan available as of 2020.

I did the same for where I currently live. I can get Spectrum gigabit cable broadband (940 Mbps). AT&T Fiber, or “true” gigabit internet, is not available. In fact, AT&T only provides speeds of up to 18 Mbps of cable broadband to my address, but the neighborhood across the street gets speeds of up to 50 Mbps for the same price according to AT&T’s website. The neighborhood across the street from that neighborhood doesn’t get AT&T at all. Both of the neighborhoods are a five-minute walk from where I live. AT&T Fiber is only available in my city if the homes or apartment complexes were built within the last five years because the cables were being put into the ground at the same time. Anywhere else would need to be dug up, which would be expensive.

To add insult to injury, it seems like the FCC is also aware that despite expanding gigabit coverage across the U.S., be it fiber or cable broadband, the actual adoption rate is low. According to its most recent broadband deployment report that was released on Jun. 8, 2020, the FCC has not changed its definition of what it considers high-speed internet, 25/3 Mbps, because the “Commission’s data shows that in the areas where gigabit service is available, only 4% of Americans living in those areas are in fact subscribing to it.” This is according to the FCC own fixed broadband deployment data from 477 as of December 31, 2018—the same form that has the aforementioned flaws.

So not only is gigabit internet available to less Americans than the FCC previously reported, it seems that few have actually subscribed to it either because of cost or need. Gizmodo reached out to BroadbandNow for further clarification on this part of the FCC’s report. According to Cooper, it has to do with what information the FCC makes public:

The FCC does in fact collect subscriber rate information alongside census block-level availability data from providers as part of the 477 release. The only difference is that subscription data is not openly released in its entirety like the mainline 477 figures. It seems almost certain to me that the FCC is aware of the inconsistencies in their own methodology, as the 477 dataset has been the subject of constant criticism dating back to its inception. It’s my hope that the incoming administration will take a comprehensive look at how this data is being collected by the agency, as there is much to be gained from reporting a more accurate portrait of gigabit availability and adoption on the ground in the U.S.

Regardless of why only 4% of Americans have access to gigabit internet, the larger issue is internet access as a whole. A generously estimated 42 million households lack access to high-speed broadband internet, and the majority of those households are located in rural areas and low-income urbans areas, with Black and brown residents more likely to lack access than whites. Local municipal broadband providers help residents in those areas get around the monopoly strongholds a single ISP can have over them, but many states have laws that roadblock those types of internet providers.
https://gizmodo.com/new-report-sugge...-co-1845842681





SpaceX Gets $886 Million from FCC to Subsidize Starlink in 35 States

Charter also wins big; FCC fund will bring service to 5.2M homes and businesses.
Jon Brodkin

SpaceX has been awarded $885.51 million by the Federal Communications Commission to provide Starlink broadband to 642,925 rural homes and businesses in 35 states. The satellite provider was one of the biggest winners in the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, the results of which were released today. Funding is distributed over 10 years, so SpaceX's haul will amount to a little over $88.5 million per year.

Charter Communications, the second-largest US cable company after Comcast, did even better. Charter is set to receive $1.22 billion over 10 years to bring service to 1.06 million homes and businesses in 24 states.

FCC funding can be used in different ways depending on the type of broadband service. Cable companies like Charter and other wireline providers generally use the money to expand their networks into new areas that don't already have broadband. But with Starlink, SpaceX could theoretically provide service to all of rural America once it has launched enough satellites, even without FCC funding.

One possibility is that SpaceX could use the FCC money to lower prices in the 642,925 funded locations, but the FCC announcement didn't say whether that's what SpaceX will do. We asked SpaceX and the FCC for more details and will update this article if we get any answers. Starlink is in beta and costs $99 per month, plus a one-time fee of $499 for the user terminal, mounting tripod, and router.

The 35 states where SpaceX won FCC funding are Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Charter is getting funding in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

180 ISPs get funding in 49 states

Overall, the FCC announced $9.2 billion ($920 million per year) in funding for 180 bidders in 49 states and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Windstream, Frontier, and CenturyLink were also among the winners.

Combined, the 180 providers will "deploy high-speed broadband to over 5.2 million unserved homes and businesses. Moreover, 99.7 percent of these locations will be receiving broadband with speeds of at least 100/20Mbps, with an overwhelming majority (over 85 percent) getting gigabit-speed broadband," the FCC said. In addition to wireline and satellite, the winning ISPs included fixed-wireless providers.

The FCC had set aside $16 billion for this first phase of the RDOF but said it ended up covering nearly 99 percent of eligible locations with just $9.2 billion. Since the RDOF has $20.4 billion overall, there will be $11.2 billion available in the next phase of the RDOF.

"The auction used a multi-round, descending clock auction format in which bidders indicated in each round whether they would commit to provide service to an area at a given performance tier and latency at the current round’s support amount," the FCC said. "The auction was technologically neutral and open to new providers, and bidding procedures prioritized bids for higher speeds and lower latency." The FCC initially disputed SpaceX's contention that its low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites can provide latency under 100ms but eventually relented.

No other LEO satellite providers are getting the FCC funding. Hughes, a traditional satellite provider, got $1.27 million over 10 years to serve 3,678 locations in Rhode Island but did not get funding in any other states. Hughes relies on geostationary satellites that don't match Starlink on speed or latency, though Hughes is investing in LEO satellite operator OneWeb.

More big winners

Other winners include LTD Broadband, which was awarded $1.32 billion to serve 528,088 locations in 15 states; the Rural Electric Cooperative Consortium with $1.1 billion for 618,476 locations in 22 states; Windstream with $522.89 million for 192,567 locations in 18 states; AMG Technology Investment Group with $429.23 million for 206,136 locations in 12 states; Frontier with $370.9 million for 127,188 locations in eight states; Resound Networks with $310.68 million for 219,239 locations in seven states; Connect Everyone LLC (aka Starry) with $268.85 million for 108,506 locations in nine states; CenturyLink with $262.37 million for 77,257 locations in 20 states; GeoLinks with $234.89 million for 128,297 locations in three states; and Etheric Networks with $248.63 million for 64,463 locations in one state (California).

Like other universal service programs, the RDOF and Connect America Fund (its predecessor program) are paid for by Americans through fees imposed on phone bills. The first phase of the RDOF targets census blocks where there are no ISPs offering service with at least 25Mbps download and 3Mbps upload speeds.

That measure leaves out a lot of unserved homes because FCC data counts an entire census block as served even if only one home in the block can get service. The FCC has ordered ISPs to provide more precise data using geospatial maps and is on track to conduct the next RDOF auction after the data is collected. The $11.2 billion for Phase 2 would target partially served areas and unserved areas that didn't get funding in the first round.

The FCC has a separate $1.5 billion program for Alaska, which is not among the 49 states that will receive RDOF funding.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-in-35-states/





U.S. Senate Votes to Advance Nomination of Trump FCC Nominee
Reuters Staff

The U.S. Senate voted Tuesday by a 49 to 47 vote to advance the nomination of a senior Trump administration official who has helped lead an effort seeking social media regulations to a seat on the Federal Communications Commission.

The Senate is set to vote later on the nomination of Nathan Simington, a Commerce Department official, after U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly urged lawmakers to take action. If Simington is confirmed, the FCC could initially be deadlocked 2-2 between Democrats and Republicans when Democratic President-elect Joe Biden takes office next month.

Some officials think the Senate might not confirm a Biden appointee to the commission for months, if not longer. (Reporting by David Shepardson)
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-...-idINL1N2IO1ZP





Weather Service Faces Internet Bandwidth Shortage, Proposes Limiting Key Data

Agency floats a solution to problems that could hobble private companies and affect popular weather apps.
Jason Samenow and Andrew Freedman

For the past decade, the National Weather Service has been plagued by failures in disseminating critical forecast and warning information that is aimed at protecting lives and saving property. In some cases, its websites have gone down during severe weather events, unable to handle the demand.

Other agency systems, including information and data streams that deliver vital weather modeling data to broadcast meteorologists and commercial users, have also suffered periodic outages.

‘This is not rocket science.’ Years after a fix was promised, National Weather Service website still unreliable.

Now, during a year that featured record California wildfires and the busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record, the Weather Service says it has an Internet bandwidth problem and is seeking to throttle back the amount of data its most demanding users can access. The Weather Service, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), announced the proposed limits in a memo dated Nov. 18.

“As demand for data continues to grow across NCEP websites, we are proposing to put new limits into place to safeguard our web services,” the memo stated, referring to the Weather Service’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction. “The frequency of how often these websites are accessed by the public has created limitations and infrastructure constraints.”

The Weather Service’s proposed remedy is to limit users to 60 connections per minute on a large number of its websites that provide weather observations, forecasts, warnings, computer model data, air quality information, aviation weather support and ocean conditions.

“[W]e want to exceed the needs of our stakeholders and partners,” said Susan Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the Weather Service. “[H]owever, we are challenged with bandwidth limitations as models and observations improve and data size increases.”

“User requests for data continue to increase and without imposing some type of mitigation,” she continued, “the bandwidth situation will worsen, potentially impacting a larger number of users.”

According to companies that draw large amounts of this data, the proposed limit will substantially harm the services they provide to customers. The possible negative effect on forecasts has also raised concerns among congressional lawmakers.

Jonathan Porter, a vice president and general manager at the private forecasting firm AccuWeather, warns that the agency’s proposed solution would harm the timeliness and accuracy of forecasts and severe weather warnings. He said the collection, processing and distribution of weather information are the agency’s “most important services.”

“Limiting the amount of data that can be accessed conflicts with this vital mission and will negatively, and possibly catastrophically, impact individuals and businesses that rely on this data to make critical, lifesaving decisions when seconds count and lives are on the line,” Porter wrote in a statement.

Ordinary weather consumers who get their information primarily from weather apps on their phones also would be affected by this proposal because the forecasts and weather alerts they receive are based on computer modeling output and radar data, much of which comes from the Weather Service.

“For private industry, it’s a huge impact, especially for users that are adjusting a lot of National Weather Service models,” said Matt Rydzik, applications developer for Commodity Weather Group, which serves clients in the agricultural and energy market.

The Commodity Weather Group operates the website StormVistaWxModels.com, a hub of computer model and forecast data that customers rely on to make what are in many cases financially costly decisions. Weather hobbyists also pay to access the site’s rapidly updated modeling data for predicting weather.

The StormVista site draws in data from more than a dozen models, including the American GFS and European model, and Rydzik said simply pulling data from one of them would potentially exceed the Weather Service’s data limit. He called the impact of the Weather Service proposal potentially “devastating” because it would force his company to reduce services.

“I’m assuming it would be impossible to bring in half the model runs,” Rydzik said. “It’s like a store rationing a family to one loaf of bread per week.”

Levi Cowan, who runs the popular weather model website TropicalTidBits.com, said the data limit would also result in delays in the delivery of certain model information by up to “a few hours.” In a worst-case scenario, he said, this would compromise the timely delivery of vital data to consumers during extreme weather events.

Rydzik said that the Commodity Weather Group is exploring how it might work around these issues but that it may be costly.

“It is not clear why the NWS is considering these harmful bandwidth restrictions given the massive scalability of content delivery network (CDN) technology, cloud infrastructure and other technology solutions that are currently available,” AccuWeather’s Porter said. “It’s truly unfortunate that the NWS apparently does not recognize that this proposal is 100 percent contrary to its mission and its obligation to the American people.”

Porter said the amount of data available to predict the weather continues to grow, making it more crucial than ever that the Weather Service ensure the timely flow of information.

The Weather Service’s Buchanan said Internet bandwidth demand is “very dynamic” and hard to plan for.

“[P]roblems are most prevalent during peak model data delivery times and can be cyclical such as during a landfalling hurricane or a potent winter storm,” she said. “We plan for expanded user data inquiries as best as we can, but user interest in NWS information is increasing faster than our infrastructure can sustain at times.”

Buchanan added that the Weather Service is “in the planning process of moving certain components of its dissemination system to the cloud” through

NOAA’s Big Data Program.

“It is pretty obvious that the National Weather Service has failed to keep up with IT infrastructure needs,” said Troy Kimmel, a meteorologist and lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin who closely monitors Weather Service website performance. “They don’t need to be shutting people off. They need to increase the bandwidth.”

Many private weather companies develop their own computer models for forecasting but still use some Weather Service data. Boston-based ClimaCell, which specializes in weather intelligence, said that it also would be affected by this proposal, but that the bigger picture concerns how NOAA would fall behind its competitors in Europe and elsewhere. Rei Goffer, a co-founder and chief strategy officer of the company, said the move could hurt the Weather Service’s competitiveness if it is not limited to the short term.

“Hopefully, NOAA is using this temporary limitation to set up a state-of-the-art delivery platform,” Goffer said in a statement. “Yet, if this will be longer than a short limitation, NOAA will very quickly lose ground to competing agencies (namely UK Met and ECMWF) as the go-to source for governmental weather data.”

The Weather Company, which is owned by IBM and is one of the largest providers of weather information, declined to comment on the proposal but said it was submitting feedback directly to NOAA and Congress.

Only $1.5 million to fix?

The Weather Service held a public forum Tuesday to discuss the proposal and answer questions. When asked about the investment in computing infrastructure that would be required for these limits to not be necessary, agency officials said a one-time cost of about $1.5 million could avert rate limits. The NOAA budget for fiscal 2020 was $5.4 billion.

Buchanan, however, stated the actual cost to address the issue would be higher because the $1.5 million “would comprise just one component of what has to be a multifaceted solution.”

The officials at the forum also said that senior management at the Weather Service was aware of the relatively small cost of addressing the issue but that the agency faced “competing priorities.”

Buchanan said data dissemination is a priority for Weather Service leadership but that it is “continuously weighed” against others.

When officials at the forum were asked if Congress was aware of the agency’s data dissemination challenges, they said that they did not know.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (Wash.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees NOAA, said a request to upgrade the Weather Service’s computing infrastructure would probably find bipartisan support.

“From wildfires in Washington to hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, seconds count to save lives and property, and weather data plays a critical role in getting our emergency managers and first responders the information they need,” she said. “The United States should be striving to be the best in the world when it comes to weather data and forecasts, and with everything we’ve seen this year, a request to upgrade servers at the National Weather Service would find support on both sides of the aisle in Congress. Telling people to limit their use of this critical data is not an acceptable answer.”

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee “is aware of the proposal” and monitoring its potential impacts, according to the committee’s staff. “We are looking into how these proposed restrictions could impact NOAA’s ability to ensure free and open public access to the Agency’s data and models,” a spokesperson said.

The Weather Service is accepting public comments on its proposal through Dec. 18. Buchanan said that the agency believes 75 percent of its users will not be affected by the proposed change.

“If we learn differently, we will change our approach,” Buchanan said. “We are committed to work with users to mitigate to the maximum extent feasible the impacts of any necessary changes.”

If changes are ultimately made, officials at the forum assured users they would be rolled out slowly with advanced notification, probably starting in about three months.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weath...net-bandwidth/





Pornhub Ends Unverified Uploads and Bans Downloads

It's no longer a tube site.
Karissa Bell

Pornhub is making major changes to its service following a New York Times article that highlighted how the site’s lax enforcement of its policies has enabled child exploitation.

Among the changes: Pornhub is ending uploads from unverified users and banning the ability of users’ to download much of the site’s content. The company is also implementing new moderation policies and will release a transparency report in 2021. The changes come a day after Visa and Mastercard pledged to “investigate” their relationship with Pornhub parent company MindGeek.

The new rules will significantly alter key dynamics of the service, which will now impose limits on who is able to upload content to the site and block the ability for most of its content to be downloaded. Though the company will still allow users to upload their own videos, beginning next year it will first require people to complete an “identification protocol” in order to verify their identity. The site will also block all downloading of content “effective immediately,” except for “paid downloads within the verified Model Program.”

The company says it has expanded its content moderation work, creating a “Red Team” that’s “dedicated solely to self-auditing the platform for potentially illegal material.” Next year, Pornhub will release its first transparency report with more details on “content that should and should not appear on the platform,” as well as its work with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).

Pornhub’s moderation practices came under renewed scrutiny after a disturbing New York Times investigation reported that the company doesn’t adequately enforce its own rules, and has offered little recourse to rape victims whose assaults are later uploaded to the site. The article alleged that Pornhub has monetized videos of child rape and assaults, as well as other illegal content like revenge porn and spy cam videos. After the story was published, Visa and Mastercard said they were investigating the claims and suggested they may end Pornhub’s ability to accept payments.
https://www.engadget.com/pornhub-ban...215344129.html

















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