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Old 02-05-18, 07:20 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 5th, ’18

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May 5th, 2018
















Microsoft Attempts to Spin its Role in Counterfeiting Case
Devin Coldewey

Earlier this week Eric Lundgren was sentenced to 15 months in prison for selling what Microsoft claimed was “counterfeit software,” but which was in fact only recovery CDs loaded with data anyone can download for free. The company has now put up a blog post setting “the facts” straight, though it’s something of a limited set of those facts.

“We are sharing this information now and responding publicly because we believe both Microsoft’s role in the case and the facts themselves are being misrepresented,” the company wrote. But it carefully avoids the deliberate misconception about software that it promulgated in court.

That misconception, which vastly overstated Lundgren’s crime and led to the sentence he received, is simply to conflate software with a license to operate that software. Without going into details (my original post spells it out at length) it maintained in court that the discs Lundgren was attempting to sell were equivalent to entire licensed operating systems, when they were simply recovery discs that any user, refurbisher, or manufacturer can download and burn for free. Lundgren was going to sell them to repair shops for a quarter each so they could hand them out to people who needed them.

Hardly anyone even makes these discs any more, certainly not Microsoft, and they’re pretty much worthless without a licensed copy of the OS in the first place. But Microsoft convinced the judges that a piece of software with no license or product key — meaning it won’t work properly, if at all — is worth the same as one with a license.

Lundgren had already pleaded guilty to infringing Dell’s trademark by copying the look of its discs, but the value Microsoft convinced the judges those discs have (a total of $700,000) directly led to his 15-month sentence.

Anyway, the company isn’t happy with the look it has of sending a guy to prison for stealing something with no value to anyone but someone with a bum computer and no backup. It summarizes what it thinks are the most important points as follows, with my commentary following the bullets.

“Microsoft did not bring this case: U.S. Customs referred the case to federal prosecutors after intercepting shipments of counterfeit software imported from China by Mr. Lundgren.”

This is perfectly true, however Microsoft has continually misrepresented the nature and value of the discs, falsely claiming that they led to lost sales. That’s not possible, of course, since Microsoft gives the contents of these discs away for free. It sells licenses to operate Windows, something you’d have to have already if you wanted to use the discs in the first place.

“Lundgren established an elaborate counterfeit supply chain in China: Mr. Lundgren traveled extensively in China to set up a production line and designed counterfeit molds for Microsoft software in order to unlawfully manufacture counterfeit discs in significant volumes.”

Microsoft is trying to make it sound like the guy is some criminal mastermind running some big time Windows pirating empire. He literally gave a Dell recovery disc to a duplication shop and told them to make exact copies of it, including the label and paper sleeve.

“Lundgren failed to stop after being warned: Mr. Lundgren was even warned by a customs seizure notice that his conduct was illegal and given the opportunity to stop before he was prosecuted.”

I can’t speak to this one, but Lundgren told me that the first notice he had that this was being pursued by anyone was when they raided his house. The monetary value of the discs was so small and the counterfeiting piece so minor (fake labels for duplicates of discs that Dell doesn’t even provide any more) that if anything it would be a fine and confiscation of the shipment, not a 5-year case alleging millions in damages.

“Lundgren pleaded guilty: The counterfeit discs obtained by Mr. Lundgren were sold to refurbishers in the United States for his personal profit and Mr. Lundgren and his codefendant both pleaded guilty to federal felony crimes.”

Lundgren pleaded guilty to counterfeiting the Dell discs, not to counterfeiting Microsoft software. It’s an important distinction because the discs are nearly worthless and copyright crimes are sentenced based on the value of the infringed item.

“Lundgren went to great lengths to mislead people: His own emails submitted as evidence in the case show the lengths to which Mr. Lundgren went in an attempt to make his counterfeit software look like genuine software. They also show him directing his co-defendant to find less discerning customers who would be more easily deceived if people objected to the counterfeits.”

Printing an accurate copy of a label for a disc isn’t exactly “great lengths.” Early on the company in China printed “Made in USA” on the disc and “Made in Canada” on the sleeve, and had a yellow background when it should have been green — that’s the kind of thing he was fixing.

“Lundgren intended to profit from his actions: His own emails submitted as evidence before the court make clear that Mr. Lundgren’s motivation was to sell counterfeit software to generate income for himself.”

The plan was to sell these nearly worthless discs —remember, anybody can make one for free — for a quarter each to refurbishers. Records, however, show that Lundgren had sold several thousand to one buyer for $3-4 each, which is contrary to this assertion. I’ve asked him for clarification on this.

“Microsoft has a strong program to support legitimate refurbishers and recyclers: Our program supports hundreds of legitimate recyclers, while protecting customers.”

The implication is that that Lundgren is not a legitimate refurbisher or recycler. He pointed out earlier, however, that his company, which handles recycling for Lenovo, Nintendo, and others, takes care of more e-waste in a year than Microsoft has in a decade.

“When a refurbisher installs a fresh version of Windows on a refurbished PC, we charge a discounted rate of $25 for the software and a new license – it is not free.”

But if they’re not installing a fresh version of Windows, because the machine already has a licensed copy on it, as so many do, the software is free. There’s no limit on how many a company can make on its own; Microsoft only charges for the licenses. Here, go make one yourself in case you need to do it.

“Mr. Lundgren’s scheme was simple. He was counterfeiting Windows software in China and importing it to the United States. Mr. Lundgren intended the software to be sold to the refurbisher community as if it was a legitimate, licensed copy of Windows.”

There’s the key right there. “As if it was a legitimate, licensed copy of Windows.”

These are not licensed copies of Windows! They’re discs anyone can make, and that manufacturers and refurbishers can print as many of as they like, to give to customers who already have a copy of Windows. These discs are for repairing or re-installing a copy of the OS. They did not come with licenses and Lundgren was not selling or providing licenses.

Don’t let Microsoft fool you the way they helped fool the judges. A recovery disc is something you or I or a refurbisher can make right now for free. A license to operate Windows comes from Microsoft and costs good money. They’re not the same thing and Lundgren was going to sell the former, not the latter.

I’ve asked Microsoft to explain this last point and will update the post if I hear back.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/27/mi...rfeiting-case/





A Landslide of Classic Art Is About to Enter the Public Domain

For the first time in two decades, a huge number of books, films, and other works will escape U.S. copyright law.
Glenn Fleishman

The Great American Novel enters the public domain on January 1, 2019—quite literally. Not the concept, but the book by William Carlos Williams. It will be joined by hundreds of thousands of other books, musical scores, and films first published in the United States during 1923. It’s the first time since 1998 for a mass shift to the public domain of material protected under copyright. It’s also the beginning of a new annual tradition: For several decades from 2019 onward, each New Year’s Day will unleash a full year’s worth of works published 95 years earlier.

This coming January, Charlie Chaplin’s film The Pilgrim and Cecil B. DeMille’s The 10 Commandments will slip the shackles of ownership, allowing any individual or company to release them freely, mash them up with other work, or sell them with no restriction. This will be true also for some compositions by Bela Bartok, Aldous Huxley’s Antic Hay, Winston Churchill’s The World Crisis, Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Pigeons, e.e. cummings’s Tulips and Chimneys, Noël Coward’s London Calling! musical, Edith Wharton’s A Son at the Front, many stories by P.G. Wodehouse, and hosts upon hosts of forgotten works, according to research by the Duke University School of Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

Throughout the 20th century, changes in copyright law led to longer periods of protection for works that had been created decades earlier, which altered a pattern of relatively brief copyright protection that dates back to the founding of the nation. This came from two separate impetuses. First, the United States had long stood alone in defining copyright as a fixed period of time instead of using an author’s life plus a certain number of years following it, which most of the world had agreed to in 1886. Second, the ever-increasing value of intellectual property could be exploited with a longer term.

But extending American copyright law and bringing it into international harmony meant applying “patches” retroactively to work already created and published. And that led, in turn, to lengthy delays in copyright expiring on works that now date back almost a century.

Only so much that’s created has room to persist in memory, culture, and scholarship. Some works may have been forgotten because they were simply terrible or perishable. But it’s also the case that a lack of access to these works in digital form limits whether they get considered at all. In recent years, Google, libraries, the Internet Archive, and other institutions have posted millions of works in the public domain from 1922 and earlier. With lightning-fast ease, their entire contents are now as contemporary as news articles, and may show up intermingled in search results. More recent work, however, remains locked up. The distant past is more accessible than 10 or 50 years ago.

The details of copyright law get complicated fast, but they date back to the original grant in the Constitution that gives Congress the right to bestow exclusive rights to a creator for “limited times.” In the first copyright act in 1790, that was 14 years, with the option to apply for an automatically granted 14-year renewal. By 1909, both terms had grown to 28 years. In 1976, the law was radically changed to harmonize with the Berne Convention, an international agreement originally signed in 1886. This switched expiration to an author’s life plus 50 years. In 1998, an act named for Sonny Bono, recently deceased and a defender of Hollywood’s expansive rights, bumped that to 70 years.

The Sonny Bono Act was widely seen as a way to keep Disney’s Steamboat Willie from slipping into the public domain, which would allow that first appearance of Mickey Mouse in 1928 from being freely copied and distributed. By tweaking the law, Mickey got another 20-year reprieve. When that expires, Steamboat Willie can be given away, sold, remixed, turned pornographic, or anything else. (Mickey himself doesn’t lose protection as such, but his graphical appearance, his dialog, and any specific behavior in Steamboat Willie—his character traits—become likewise freely available. This was decided in a case involving Sherlock Holmes in 2014.)

The reason that New Year’s Day 2019 has special significance arises from the 1976 changes in copyright law’s retroactive extensions. First, the 1976 law extended the 56-year period (28 plus an equal renewal) to 75 years. That meant work through 1922 was protected until 1998. Then, in 1998, the Sonny Bono Act also fixed a period of 95 years for anything placed under copyright from 1923 to 1977, after which the measure isn’t fixed, but based on when an author perishes. Hence the long gap from 1998 until now, and why the drought’s about to end.

Of course, it’s never easy. If you published something between 1923 and 1963 and wanted to renew copyright, the law required registration with the U.S. Copyright Office at any point in the first 28 years of copyright, followed at the 28-year mark with the renewal request. Without both a registration and a renewal, anything between 1923 and 1963 is already in the public domain. Many books, songs, and other printed media were never renewed by the author or publisher due to lack of sales or interest, an author’s death, or a publisher’s shutting down or bankruptcy. One estimate from 2011 suggests about 90 percent of works published in the 1920s haven’t been renewed. That number shifts to 60 percent or so for works from the 1940s. But there are murky issues about ownership and other factors for as many as 30 percent of books from 1923 to 1963. It’s impossible to determine copyright status easily for them.

It’s easier to prove a renewal was issued than not, making it difficult for those who want to make use of material without any risk of challenge. Jennifer Jenkins, the director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, says, “Even if works from 1923 technically entered the public domain earlier because of nonrenewal, next year will be different, because then we’ll know for sure that these works are in the public domain without tedious research.”

Jenkins’s group was unable, for instance, to find definitive proof that The Great American Novel wasn’t renewed, but that doesn’t mean there’s not an undigitized record in a file in Washington, D.C. While courts can be petitioned to find works affirmatively in the public domain, as ultimately happened following a knotted dispute over “Happy Birthday to You,” most of the time the issue only comes up when an alleged rights holder takes legal action to assert that copyright still holds. As a result, it’s more likely a publisher would wait to reissue The Great American Novel in 2019 than worry about Williams’s current copyright holders objecting in 2018.

There’s one more bit of wiggle, too: Libraries were granted special dispensation in the 1998 copyright revision over work in its last 20 years of its copyright so long as the work isn’t being commercially exploited, such as a publisher or author having a book in print or a musician actively selling or licensing digital sheet music. But hundreds of thousands of published works from 1923 to 1941 can be posted legally by libraries today, moving forward a year every year. (The Internet Archive assembles these works from partners at its ironic Sonny Bono Memorial Collection site.)

It’s possible this could all change again as corporate copyright holders start to get itchy about expirations. However, the United States is now in harmony with most of the rest of the world, and no legislative action is underway this year to make any waves that would affect the 2019 rollover.

A Google spokesperson confirmed that Google Books stands ready. Its software is already set up so that on January 1 of each year, the material from 95 years earlier that’s currently digitized but only available for searching suddenly switches to full text. We’ll soon find out more about what 1923 was really like. And in 2024, we might all ring in the new year whistling Steamboat Willie’s song.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...opy-me/557420/





Massive Revenge Porn Site Anon-IB Shut Down by Dutch Police

After seizing the website's servers, police discover hundreds of women fell victim to hackers who stole their photos.
Alfred Ng

One of the internet's most notorious revenge porn websites has been shut down after a year-long investigation by Dutch police Politie.

Police in the Netherlands announced Thursday that they seized Anon-IB's server and discovered that hundreds of women were targeted by hackers on the website. The investigation is ongoing, even after officers shut down the forum.

Officers arrested three men from the Netherlands, aged 35, 28, and 31. They are charged with computer intrusion and spreading nude photos. Police also confiscated data from two other suspects, aged 19 and 26, linked to the forum.

Revenge porn runs rampant online, as websites like Facebook and Google, as well as lawmakers, look for ways to stop its spread. Anon-IB was one of the largest websites serving as a central hub for revenge porn. The website became infamous in 2014 because of its involvement with leaking nude photos of celebrities.

Since then, AnonIB has only grown, with users flocking to the website to post revenge porn, as well as images of women taken without their permission. Some categories on AnonIB included photos of passed out women, and peeping Toms, according to Sophos, a security company.

But not only were people posting photos they obtained as revenge porn, users on AnonIB were actively hacking women and posting stolen images on the website, Dutch police said.

Hackers would break in to their victims' emails, social media accounts and cloud storage. On the forum, they would ask each other for help getting nude photos of specific people and share the stolen images with each other.

"These were not properly secured and therefore relatively easy to hack," police said. "The suspects were able to capture sexually explicit footage from a few hundred women without the victims being aware of it."

The investigation began in March 2017 after a woman discovered that her private images were posted online and reported it to Dutch police. The report lead to the first arrest, and officers discovered the suspect's computer had a stash of stolen photos from multiple women.

Four suspects had personal data on a large number of women they targeted, officers said. Belgian police discovered a massive cloud database on a New Zealand server, which it will share with Dutch police. Investigators are researching the seized data and will be informing all the women who have been targeted by Anon-IB, police said.
https://www.cnet.com/news/massive-re...-dutch-police/





Sprint and T-Mobile to Merge, in Bid to Remake Wireless Market
Michael J. de la Merced and Cecilia Kang

Sprint and T-Mobile announced on Sunday that they had reached a deal to merge, moving to create a new telecommunications giant — and betting that regulators will finally allow the American wireless market to shrink to just three national players.

A combined company, they said, would have more than 100 million subscribers — and the resources to build out a next-generation wireless network and challenge the longtime market leaders, Verizon and AT&T.

Sprint and T-Mobile also said the merged company — which would keep the T-Mobile name and be run by T-Mobile’s chief executive, John Legere — would create thousands of jobs by building out that next-generation network and opening hundreds of new stores in rural areas.

But for consumer advocates and regulators, the big questions are these: Will there be enough competition with one fewer national wireless carrier? And will prices go up?

Sprint and T-Mobile have tried unsuccessfully to merge before. They were effectively blocked four years ago by regulators in the Obama administration who worried that shrinking the market for wireless providers would give consumers fewer choices and lead to higher prices.

This time, the two companies have a very specific message for the Trump administration. A combination, they argue, would allow them to create a better so-called 5G network than either company could alone, at a time when the White House views a 5G wireless network as crucial for the country’s economic and national security.

The two companies also contend that the wireless business is changing, with new competitors like Comcast finding ways to enter the mobile sector. And thanks to the recent tax cuts, the companies said, they would have the financial means to keep prices low for their consumers.

“All the stars have aligned,” Marcelo Claure, Sprint’s chief executive, said in an interview. He added that the deal “allows this company to offer the best product at better prices, lower prices.”

The heads of the two companies acknowledged that winning over regulators was a top priority. In an interview, Mr. Legere said that he and Mr. Claure planned to head to Washington this week. Mr. Legere added that they did not try to “pre-sell” the transaction, although they said they had called officials at both the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department to inform them of the agreement before it was officially announced.

Under the terms of the deal — the companies described it as a merger but T-Mobile would effectively be buying Sprint for about $26.5 billion — T-Mobile’s controlling shareholder, Deutsche Telekom, would own 42 percent of the combined company. Mr. Claure would join its board. SoftBank of Japan, which controls Sprint and whose founder, Masayoshi Son, has long dreamed of merging the two carriers, would own 27 percent. Public shareholders would own the remainder.

Putting together the country’s third- and fourth-largest mobile service providers would be one of the most significant consolidations in the American wireless market in years. A combined T-Mobile and Sprint, with almost 100 million retail subscribers as of Dec. 31, would put it ahead of AT&T, with 93.6 million, and not far behind Verizon’s 116.3 million. (Or, as the colorful Mr. Legere put it, the transaction would help it better compete against the companies that he has previously referred to as “dumb and dumber.”)

It is unclear how hard Verizon and AT&T will try to fight the deal, if they will at all. A spokesman for AT&T declined to comment, while a spokesman for Verizon said in a statement that it was focused on building its own 5G network, “not just a proposal that may or may not happen in the next couple of years.”

For the moment, consumers are unlikely to see much change, apart from an agreement by Sprint and T-Mobile that customers of either company could use the other company’s network. Until the deal is completed, which the carriers said they hoped would be by July of next year, they must continue to compete. That means they could potentially be adversaries in a government-run auction of 5G network airwaves, known as spectrum, that is scheduled to begin this fall.

Some Democratic lawmakers quickly questioned the merits of the deal. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said in a statement, “I remain concerned that increased consolidation could undermine benefits to consumers.” But Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat from T-Mobile’s home state of Washington, tweeted that he welcomed the news of potential job creation.

T-Mobile and Sprint contend that the market looks different than it did when they last tried to combine in 2014. The need to build out 5G requires tens of billions of dollars in investments that T-Mobile and Sprint, especially, would be hard-pressed to put up on their own. And there are fresh competitors in the sector. Comcast, for example, has quickly drawn hundreds of thousands of wireless service customers by bundling mobile phones with their cable plans, even if it loses the company money.

A huge part of T-Mobile and Sprint’s push is emphasizing the future of 5G. Proponents say the superfast wireless standard would not only make downloading movies faster, but underpin huge advances in autonomous vehicles, internet-connected devices and more.

The White House has declared 5G wireless a vital national priority. In March, the Trump administration blocked a hostile bid by Singapore-based Broadcom for San Diego-based Qualcomm, citing national security concerns. Some analysts questioned whether the predominantly foreign ownership of the combined company — including SoftBank, which has business ties to Chinese companies like Huawei — poses possible national security risks.

Investing in new 5G networks as separate companies would be difficult for T-Mobile and Sprint, given their current financial situations. Sprint has about $32 billion in debt on its books, while T-Mobile generates a fraction of the cash that Verizon and AT&T do. But combining would yield some $6 billion in cost savings, especially because the companies would need to pay to run just one network instead of two, allowing them to spend more money on infrastructure.

“We can change the nature of the curve in the way the U.S. and others are investing in 5G,” Mr. Legere said in the interview. He added that he shared worries “that the U.S. is on the verge of losing the leadership it has attained” in 5G.

For consumer advocates, however, the chief worry is that a shrinking number of providers would bring an end to the innovations that T-Mobile introduced to the American wireless market since the Justice Department blocked its plan to sell itself to AT&T in 2011. Under Mr. Legere, T-Mobile cut prices, ended long-term contract requirements and promised to simplify customer bills by eliminating hidden fees and surprise taxes.

Those policies helped T-Mobile add nearly 40 million customers over the last five years, with 5 million new customers added last year alone. AT&T, Verizon and Sprint all followed suit, and in recent years the overall price of basic wireless plans has stayed flat or fallen, according to Obama-era regulators.

“The success of the four-firm market is proven for consumers in lower prices and better offerings,” said Tom Wheeler, who was the chairman of the F.C.C. when he opposed a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile in 2014. “It is hard to see how removing the competition that created improves things for consumers.”

His successor atop the F.C.C., Ajit Pai, has indicated that he is more open to letting companies join together. He has said that he was not wedded to an ideal number of wireless carriers in the market, and that his job is to approach his analysis with “humility” and an open mind.

The Trump-appointed antitrust chief at the Justice Department, Makan Delrahim, is more of a wild card, having shown concern about antitrust violations in the telecommunications industry. His team has sued to block AT&T’s bid for Time Warner, arguing that it would force consumers to pay more for content like CNN and HBO. He has also opened an investigation into allegations that Verizon and AT&T had made it difficult for consumers to switch to another provider.

And many of the Justice Department’s antitrust staff members are holdovers from 2014, when Mr. Delrahim’s predecessor also opposed Sprint and T-Mobile’s first attempt to merge. Representatives of the F.C.C. and the Justice Department declined to comment.

But the analyst Craig Moffett of the research firm MoffettNathanson said the issue of what is best for consumers is not merely a question of numbers.

“Is it lower prices,” he asked, “or more availability of advanced consumer technology?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/29/b...bile-deal.html





Comcast Won’t Give New Speed Boost to Internet Users Who Don’t Buy TV Service

Comcast keeps losing TV subscribers, but it has a new way to fight cord cutting.
Jon Brodkin

As streaming video continues to chip away at cable TV subscriber numbers, Comcast is making some of its Internet speed increases available only to customers that pay for both Internet and video service.

Last week, Comcast announced speed increases for customers in Houston and the Oregon/SW Washington areas. The announcement headlines were "Comcast increases Internet speeds for some video customers."

Customers with 60Mbps Internet download speeds are being upped to 150Mbps; 150Mbps subscribers are going to 250Mbps; and 250Mbps subscribers are getting a raise to 400Mbps or 1Gbps.

Comcast says speed increases will kick in automatically without raising the customers' monthly bills—but only if they subscribe to certain bundles that include both Internet and TV service.

"Cord cutters are not invited to the [speed increase] party," the Houston Chronicle wrote. "Only those who bundle Internet with cable television and other services... will see their speeds go up at no extra charge."

Presumably, Internet-only customers can get the new speeds by paying more or by bundling their Internet subscriptions with video.
Cord cutters take a toll

Comcast lost 96,000 video customers and saw video revenue decrease 0.8 percent, "primarily due to a decline in the number of residential customers," the company said in its latest quarterly earnings results last week.

Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, now has 26.2 million Internet customers and 22.3 million video customers. The company keeps adding broadband subscribers while losing video subscribers.

Comcast's net loss in video subscribers was 151,000 in calendar year 2017, according to Leichtman Research Group. Industry-wide, the top pay-TV providers representing 95 percent of the market lost 1.5 million video subscribers in 2017, nearly double the loss in 2017, Leichtman wrote.

The net subscriber loss for the top six cable companies in 2017 was 660,245, leaving the six companies with a combined 48.1 million video subscribers.

It isn't just on-demand video services like Netflix and Amazon that are taking customers away from cable. Linear TV services delivered over the Internet like Sling TV and DirecTV Now are also surging. Sling TV added 711,000 customers in 2017 to bring its total to 2.2 million. DirecTV Now added 888,000 customers in 2017, and they weren't just people switching from the DirecTV satellite service. DirecTV's satellite TV lost 554,000 customers in the same period.

Using broadband to prop up TV business

Comcast frequently boasts of the speed increases it provides to customers at no extra charge. An announcement that Maine customers would get faster speeds last month said, "We've increased speeds 17 times in the last 17 years."

But the speed increases have generally benefited Internet customers regardless of whether they also subscribe to TV service. Comcast offers the fastest Internet speeds in much of its 39-state territory. By making the "no-extra-charge" speed increases contingent on TV subscribership, Comcast is using its broadband dominance to try to prop up its declining TV business.

Comcast's increasing deployment of data caps may also help reduce the decline of the TV business. Heavy TV watchers binging on Netflix or Amazon video may repeatedly go over the 1TB monthly data cap, leaving them with a choice of paying overage fees, reducing online video watching, or subscribing to a non-streaming TV service.

We could see Comcast use its data caps more aggressively in the future. AT&T, for example, has provided unlimited data to customers who purchase both home Internet and TV service while charging overage fees to Internet-only customers who exceed their data caps. Comcast hasn't done that yet, but it lets customers pay an extra $50 per month to remove the 1TB monthly data cap and get unlimited data.

Comcast does partner with Netflix on billing, letting it take a cut when a customer signs up for both Comcast Internet and Netflix and chooses to be billed only by Comcast. Still, Comcast takes in a lot more money when customers sign up for its cable TV service.

We've asked Comcast a few questions, including whether it will continue making speed increases contingent on TV subscribership. We'll update this story if we get a response.
https://arstechnica.com/information-...uy-tv-service/





'Anti-Authority' Tech Rebels Take on ISPs, Connect NYC with Cheap Wi-Fi

NYC Mesh, run by volunteers, is offering New Yorkers affordable wireless internet
Steven D'Souza

It's a promise that seems almost too good to be true: super-fast internet that's cheap, and free of the contracts and hassles that come with major service providers.

That's not a pipe dream for Brian Hall, it's his goal.

The lead volunteer behind the community group NYC Mesh aims to bring affordable internet with lightning-quick downloads to everyone in New York, one building at a time.

"Our typical speeds are 80 to 110 megabits a second," Hall says, pointing out that streaming something like Netflix only requires about 5 Mbps.

CBC News joined him one afternoon on a roof in the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Greenpoint. Hall was installing the latest addition to the mesh network that will deliver his vision.

The worksite is one of the group's latest customers, a converted warehouse that houses a video production company. The regular commercial internet providers were going to charge tens of thousands of dollars to get them online.

NYC Mesh took on the job for a small installation fee of a few hundred dollars and a monthly donation.

Mesh networks explained

So what is a mesh network?

Picture a spiderweb of wireless connections. The main signal originates from what's called the Supernode. It's a direct plugin to the internet, via an internet exchange point — the same place Internet Service Providers get their connection.

The signal from the supernode, sent out wirelessly via an antenna, covers an area of several kilometres.

From there, a mesh of smaller antennas spread out on rooftops or balconies receive that signal. They're connected to Wi-Fi access points that allow people to use the internet.

Each supernode can connect thousands of users.

And the access points talk to the others around them, so if one goes down for some reason the rest still work.

"Mesh networks are an alternative to standard ISP hookups. You're not provided with an internet connection through their cable, but through — in our case —Wi-Fi networks," says Jason Howard, a programmer and actor who's helping with the latest installation.

NYC Mesh bought an industrial-strength connection to the internet right at an Internet Exchange Point (IXP), in this case a futuristic-looking tower in downtown Manhattan. It's the same place that internet service providers (ISPs) like Verizon and Spectrum connect to the internet, accessing massive amounts of wired bandwidth.

NYC Mesh then installed an antenna on the roof of the IXP. That became the supernode, the heart of its mesh network.

From there it beams out and receives Wi-Fi signals, connecting to receivers on rooftops spread through the East Village and Chinatown, and across the river into parts of Brooklyn.

Myth of the ISP

Zach Giles is one of the brains behind the network and one its busiest volunteers. When he's not working his day job in finance, he's maintaining the supernode. The rooftop has become his second office.

He's a mesh network evangelist who says most people don't realize they don't need to rely on traditional ISPs to get online.

"That's the myth of the ISP," Giles says in between installing another antenna.

"The internet doesn't really cost you anything, it's just the connection [that has a fee]. So however you can get plugged in — then you're on the internet. Nobody owns the internet, there's no one to pay."

Staring out over a city of millions with so many potential users, Giles says he wishes he could shout out that message for everyone to hear that there are other — and cheaper — ways to connect to the internet than corporate ISPs.

One person who has heard the message is Jessica Marshall. A mechanical engineer, she's been watching NYC Mesh's growth for a while.

On the day CBC News joined Hall and Howard, Marshall tagged along as well, ready to take a more hands-on role. Like Giles and the other volunteers, she sees the work as a mission.

Marshall says she's driven by, "the fact that I didn't have to rely on a gigantic company that's headquartered somewhere else — that's run by people who don't care about me or the internet necessarily, but profits."

She adds that, "You can build your own internet [connection] and have control over it."

Net neutrality

Since 2013, NYC Mesh has installed 154 antennas around New York, offering service to thousands of people.

When net neutrality rules in the U.S. were repealed in December, interest in NYC Mesh spiked dramatically. The group went from 500 requests for installation all of last year to 1,300 so far this year.

The fear drawing some new users to NYC Mesh is that, with net neutrality rules gone — the Federal Communications Commission in the U.S. took them off the books on Monday — ISPs have the ability to block or slow down access to various websites or potentially charge for access to certain sites.

The new FCC rules do require ISPs to disclose any throttling, as well as when they prioritize the speed of some content over others. But for many users, the end of net neutrality goes against the spirit of the internet as something that should be open and accessible to all.

NYC Mesh promises they won't slow down internet speeds or limit access to sites, and will never store, track or monitor personal data.

The ability to get around the big internet providers gives a Robin Hood-esque feel to the volunteers at NYC Mesh, many of whom, like Howard, admit to a rebellious streak.

Howard says he doesn't see himself as a revolutionary — "maybe just anti-authority," he adds with a smile.

"The big companies would have you think that there's no option than them, especially in New York City," Howard says. "It's so refreshing to come across this ability to do something else as an alternative."

Still niche

But for all its growth, NYC Mesh is still very much in its infancy, says Motherboard science writer Kaleigh Rogers.

"It's still such a small sort of niche community."

She says mesh networks challenge the public's sense of how the internet operates.

"We are so used to the internet being this other thing, run by private businesses. But there's no reason why it has to be. You know, the core infrastructure that rigs up the whole planet with internet, anyone can connect to it," she says, echoing Gile's point.

Rogers does point out, however, that one of the barriers to entry for mesh customers can be the technical requirements.

Unlike signing up with a commercial ISP, which just involves a phone call to a major provider, a mesh network requires customers to invest a bit more time and effort.

"You have to understand a little bit about the technical aspects of it," Rogers says.

"So I think people are a little intimidated. And it's just not as widely known — we don't have any really good 'use' cases here in North America that show how active and how nice [mesh] can be if you actually have enough users."

While there are mesh networks dotting the U.S., she says the best working example of what mesh technology can do is in Spain. Guifi.net has more than 34,000 nodes covering an area of roughly 50,000 square kilometres across the Catalonia region.

Inside the mesh

Back in New York, most of NYC Mesh's users are clustered around the first supernode in downtown Manhattan, in Chinatown and the Lower East Side. The surge in interest has allowed the group to build a second supernode in Brooklyn, expanding coverage there.
Linda Justice has been using the network for about a year and a half. She read about the project in a local newspaper and was instantly drawn to the idea of a community-driven network.

"I love the idea of communities coming together and supporting each other. I think that's very good, because if it wasn't for them I wouldn't even have Wi-Fi, I'd have to go down to the park and sit out there," she says.

She adds that the difference in cost is remarkable. She gives NYC Mesh a donation of $20 a month, when she can. Justice was paying close to $100 a month with her old provider.

Justice admits she's not the most tech-savvy person, and doesn't always understand what Brian Hall and the other volunteers are saying. What she does know is that her speeds are a bit slower at times because her signal is being bounced through various nodes to get to her, but that's an acceptable tradeoff.

"It's worth it to take the time and learn about it," Justice says.

Bridging the digital divide

Affordability is one feature of mesh networks, another is resiliency.

Since the routers are interconnected, if one node goes down, the others can pick up the slack. So even if the main connection to the internet is lost during a power outage, the mesh network can maintain connectivity among its access points for basic functions like text messaging.

During Superstorm Sandy in 2012, a mesh network in Red Hook in Brooklyn managed to stay up, even when power and other utilities shut down. With limited service and a small number of connections, it allowed neighbours, and even FEMA, to stay connected during the storm.

The U.S. government is now funding mesh networks in various neighbourhoods to prepare for the next storm.

In Harlem, Clayton Banks jumped at the chance to provide his area with one. As head of community tech group Silicon Harlem, he sees the potential reaching far beyond the initial rollout to local businesses.

"We're going to help your kids learn a little bit more about technology. We're going to hire people in this community. We want to be able to give more digital literacy in here," Banks says, noting that close 40 per cent of residents in East Harlem don't have access to broadband internet.

Bridging the digital divide by providing low-cost, high-speed internet is the goal for his mesh network. He says he's tired of seeing kids in his neighbourhood forced to go to coffee shops and use Wi-Fi there to do homework.

"I had a 15-year-old young person come to me and say 'I don't have a computer at home and we don't have broadband. I'm falling behind because those who have those things are no smarter, but they just have the tools to get it done.' So that's why this is so vital."

What's next for mesh

NYC Mesh currently has two supernodes and estimates that with about a dozen more it could blanket the entire city with wireless internet.

Growth is ramping up and more users means more funding, but it's still a volunteer-driven organization — something that may have to change as it scales up.

There's also debate in the community about whether to start charging more for the service as more users join the network.

NYC Mesh currently operates two supernodes providing broadband internet to New York neighbourhoods. Its master plan is to keep adding supernodes - the group estimates it could blanket the city's whole population with about a dozen more. (Steven D'Souza/CBC)The group also knows there will be growing pains as they challenge the status quo and that it's only a matter of time before the big ISPs take notice, which could bring new challenges.

But Giles says his group is a return to the original idea of what the internet was supposed to be, free and accessible to all.

"I would think it's actually actually how it used to be - we are going back to simpler time. It looks complicated, lots of wires, but it's simple."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/wi...city-1.4617106





Senate Democrats Plan to Force Vote on Net Neutrality May 9th

They've got enough signatures to file the petition.
Rob LeFebvre

Democrats in Congress have been against the FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules from the beginning. They've had the signatures in favor of restoring the rules since January, along with a companion House bill (with 80 co-sponsors). Senator Edward J. Markey also introduced a formal Congressional Review Act "resolution of disapproval" in February. Now, Markey tweeted that Democrats will force a floor vote restore the rules on May 9th.

Of course, this last-ditch attempt to save net neutrality can only help congressional supporters of as they move into mid-term elections. "We're in the homestretch in the fight to save net neutrality," Senator Chuck Schumer said in a statement. "Soon, the American people will know which side their member of Congress is on: fighting for big corporations and ISPs or defending small business owners, entrepreneurs, middle-class families and every-day consumers."

Still, even if the Senate passes the Democrat's proposal, notes Politico, it's unlikely it would get through the House or avoid a Trump veto. A senatorial aide told the site that Democrats are also organizing another day of action in support of net neutrality, as well.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/30/...ality-may-9th/





FCC Commissioner Broke the Law by Advocating for Trump, Officials Find
Colin Lecher

Republican FCC commissioner Michael O’Rielly broke a federal law preventing officials from advocating for political candidates when he told a crowd that one way to avoid policy changes was to “make sure that President Trump gets reelected,” according to a newly released letter from government officials. O’Rielly was warned by the officials about making similar comments in the future.

The Hatch Act bars many federal employees from using their offices to influence an election. During the conservative CPAC conference in February, which was also attended by FCC chairman Ajit Pai, O’Rielly was asked about how to avoid rapid swings in policy ushered in by a new administration. “I think what we can do is make sure as conservatives that we elect good people to both the House, the Senate, and make sure that President Trump gets reelected,” he responded, adding that there would also be a fight in the US Senate over net neutrality rules.

After he made the comments, the watchdog group American Oversight filed a letter with the Office of Special Counsel, which handles Hatch Act complaints. In response to the group’s letter, the Office of Special Counsel said today that O’Rielly did, in fact, violate the Hatch Act. The letter said O’Rielly responded that he was only trying to provide an explanatory answer to how those changes in policy could be stopped, but the office rejected that reasoning.

The office said it has sent a warning letter to O’Rielly this time, but will consider other infractions “a willful and knowing violation of the law” that could lead to legal action.

O’Rielly’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the letter.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/1/17...elly-trump-law





Mobile Phone Cancer Warning as Malignant Brain Tumours Double

The study has provoked fierce debate among scientists
Henry Bodkin

Fresh fears have been raised over the role of mobile phones in brain cancer after new evidence revealed rates of a malignant type of tumour have doubled in the last two decades.

Charities and scientists have called on the Government to heed longstanding warnings about the dangers of radiation after a fresh analysis revealed a more “alarming” trend in cancers than previously thought.

However, the new study, published in the Journal of Public Health and Environment, has stoked controversy among scientists, with some experts saying the disease could be caused by other factors.

The research team set out to investigate the rise of an aggressive and often fatal type of brain tumour known as Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM).

They analysed 79,241 malignant brain tumours over 21 years, finding that cases of GBM in England have increased from around 1,250 a year in 1995 to just under 3,000.

The study is the first recent effort of its kind to analyse in detail the incidence of different types of malignant tumours.

The scientists at the Physicians’ Health Initiative for Radiation and Environment (PHIRE) say the increase of GBM has till now been masked by the overall fall in incidence of other types of brain tumour.

Last night the group said the increasing rate of tumours in the frontal temporal lobe “raises the suspicion that mobile and cordless phone use may be promoting gliomas”.

Professor Denis Henshaw, scientific director of Children with Cancer UK, which is allied to PHIRE, said: “Our findings illustrate the need to look more carefully at, and to try and explain the mechanisms behind, these cancer trends, instead of brushing the causal factors under the carpet and focusing only on cures.”

In 2015 the European Commission Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks concluded that, overall, the epidemiologic studies on cell phone radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation exposure do not show an increased risk of brain tumors or of other cancers of the head and neck region.

This was despite a study published the previous year indicating long-term mobile and cordless phone use triples the risk of brain cancer, although this contradicted other similar investigations.

According to Cancer Research UK, it is “unlikely” that mobile phones increase the risk of brain tumours however “we do not know enough to completely rule out a risk”.

However, the organisation cautions that because phones are a relatively recent invention it may take many more years until the data is sufficient to make more robust conclusions.

Responding to the new resaerch, Kevin McConway, Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics at The Open University, said the significance of the trend may be less clear cut than the research group claim.

But he added: “This research does point to something that may well be worth investigating further.

“Other studies in other parts of the world have found similar increases.”

“It’s important, though, to understand that this new paper did not examine any new data at all about potential causes for the increase.”

The new study list causal factors aside from mobile phone use that may explain the GMB trend, including radiation from X-rays, CT scans and the fallout from atomic bomb tests in the atmosphere.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...umours-double/





Pirate Radio Stations Explode on YouTube

A trick of YouTube’s algorithms has led to the blossoming of hundreds of unlicensed, independent radio stations on the site, reminiscent of an age of underground broadcasts in the previous century.
Jonah Engel Bromwich

Luke Pritchard and Jonny Laxton were 13 when they met at a boarding school in Crowthorne, England, in 2011. They bonded over a shared love of underground music and in 2014 started a YouTube channel, College Music, to promote the artists they liked.

At first, the channel grew slowly. Then, in the spring of 2016, Mr. Pritchard discovered 24/7 live-streaming, a feature that allows YouTube’s users to broadcast a single video continuously.

College Music had 794 subscribers in April 2015, a year before Mr. Pritchard and Mr. Laxton started streaming. A month after they began, they had more than 18,440. In April 2016, they had 98,110 subscribers and as of last month, with three active live streams, they have more than triple that amount, with 334,000. They make about $5,000 a month from the streams.

The boys stumbled upon a new strategy, one that, in the past two years, has helped a certain kind of YouTube channel achieve widespread popularity. Hundreds of independently run channels have begun to stream music nonstop, with videos that combine playlists with hundreds of songs and short, looped animations, often taken from anime films without copyright permission.

Live streams come in many different genres. Two of College Music’s streams are part of a family of channels that broadcast what the broadcasters call lofi (low-fidelity) hip-hop, mellow music that would sound familiar to fans of J. Dilla and Nujabes.

Such videos, with subscriber counts in the hundreds of thousands, are some of most popular continuously streaming music stations on the site. Many are run by young Europeans, who may have only a passing familiarity with the history of the music they are spreading.

And they don’t know why, but their users really do insist on the anime images.

Mr. Laxton said fans protested when the imagery of the video was changed, and provided a screenshot of a particularly upset user requesting that an anime clip be restored to one of its three stations.

The channels occupy a precarious space between YouTube’s algorithm and its copyright policing, drawing comparisons to the unlicensed pirate radio stations of the 20th century, recreated in the digital sphere. Many of the channels blink in and out of existence within a week, but their presence has become a compelling part of the site’s musical ecosystem. And while competitors like Spotify are gaining, YouTube still dominates the streaming world, according to the latest Music Consumer Insight Report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

When Mr. Pritchard and Mr. Laxton started streaming, they ran the channel from Mr. Pritchard’s dorm, which was right above the housemaster’s room.

“Every other day he’d tell me to turn it down because he could hear the bass bumping,” Mr. Pritchard said.

Mr. Pritchard, now 20, said there are so many new competitors now that it has become far more difficult to get the kind of instant success that he and Mr. Laxton discovered two years ago.

Live streams like theirs succeed in part by exploiting user behavior. According to channel operators, YouTube users often click off a video after several minutes, before the clip has concluded. But users who listen to live streams tend to play them for a half-hour or more, often as background music. That boosts the videos’ retention rates, which compels YouTube to promote them more widely.

A YouTube spokeswoman, Veronica Navarrete, said that while YouTube Live had been available since 2011 and continuous live-streaming had been available since late 2012, the number of live channels that stream daily has quadrupled year over year since 2016.
One of the most popular channels in the lofi family is called ChilledCow. It’s run by Dimitri, a 23-year-old who lives on the outskirts of Paris. He started his live stream on Feb. 25, 2017, and his listenership, well, as you can see from the below image, it grew. (Dimitri asked that his last name not be used.)

YouTube disciplines stations that color outside the lines. Streams are shut down all the time and even veterans of the scene get dinged. Bas, 28, who runs one of the most popular channels in the lofi family, Chillhop Music, from his home in Rotterdam, was recently assessed a strike over a copyright violation. At the moment, he does not have an active live stream.

The platform’s willingness to enforce intellectual property rights, even casually, has forced stations like Chillhop Music, College Music, ChilledCow and others to form their own relationships with the artists.

“The artists don’t get angry with us cause we know them and a lot of the music is from our label,” said Bas, who refused to use his full name because he did not want people bothering him on his personal accounts. “They rightfully get angry at some other channels though as a lot of people are just capitalizing on the artists.”

Channels like College Music, ChilledCow, Chillhop Music and others are unlikely to have a broad impact on the music industry. But they represent an underground alternative to the streaming hegemony of Spotify and Apple Music. The industry commentator Bob Lefsetz said that while the stations were not likely to become a lucrative endeavor, they were a way for members of the public to seize power back from cultural gatekeepers.

Nico Perez, a founder of MixCloud, applauded the channels, and said they were a natural response to the homogeneity of traditional radio playlists. But he was troubled by the total power that YouTube yielded over the ecosystem.

“If they grow large enough, YouTube will have to decide whether they want to support it or if it’s not what they’re looking for on the platform,” he said.

These days, Mr. Pritchard runs College Music from his home in Reading, having dropped out of law school to pursue music full time. (He’s now dealing with two housemasters, his parents.) Mr. Laxton, 19, is at university in Leeds, where he scouts and signs artists for the record label the two have started together, also called College Music. On a good month, it brings in another $5,000, they said.

“I think a year down the line, the thing that we’ll be pushing most will be the label,” said Mr. Laxton.

But he said the new competition on YouTube was not the motivating factor. In fact, he said, he was happy that the scene had blown up so quickly.

“Me and Luke started out trying to get more people hearing the music that we thought deserved to be heard,” he said. “The more people there are in the market, I think that’s a better thing. It means there are more opportunities for the artists we came about to help.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/a...ing-radio.html





Top 10 Pirated Movies From Last Week
Chris Lange

Pirating movies has been a growing problem in recent years, costing studios millions of dollars in lost ticket sales. For example, in 2016 the Motion Picture Association of America says that nearly $1 billion worth of pirated movies and TV shows were downloaded.

It goes without saying that online streaming has been a growing trend as well. Netflix has led the charge, with Hulu, HBO and others also capitalizing on the trend. While these are the legitimate channels, online pirates subvert them to dodge subscription fees.

“Game of Thrones” is a wildly popular HBO series that was the target of hackers and pirates in 2017 and much of season was leaked online, whether it was plot points or actual episodes. Hackers even tried to press HBO to pay a ransom for the material but ultimately released it anyway.

One of the more popular mediums for downloading and watching content is BitTorrent, which operates as a peer-to-peer file-sharing service. It is capable of distributing a massive amount of data over the internet.

Although it is widely known that many files are shared and downloaded illegally over this service, it still manages to operate. Authorities use the site as well to track some users who don’t hide their IP addresses via a proxy and nab them for illegally distributing or downloading content.

24/7 Wall St. has taken a look at some of the more popular movies that were pirated this past week. These are the top 10 most pirated movies of the past week on BitTorrent:

• Avengers: Infinity War
• 12 Strong
• Pacific Rim Uprising
• Maze Runner: The Death Cure
• Den of Thieves
• Black Panther
• Fifty Shades Freed
• Red Sparrow
• The Greatest Showman
• What Happened to Monday

https://247wallst.com/media/2018/04/...-last-week-15/

















Until next week,

- js.



















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