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Old 12-09-18, 06:25 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - September 15th, ’18

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"In conclusion, let’s go back to DVDs." – Casey Johnston






































September 15th, 2018




Apple Can Delete Purchased Movies from Your Library Without Telling You

Turns out cloud storage is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Casey Johnston

When you buy a movie on iTunes, it’s yours forever, until such a time as when Apple maybe loses the rights to distribute it, and then it will disappear from your library without a trace. This is what happened to Anders G. da Silva, who goes by @drandersgs on Twitter, and who tweeted about losing three movies bought on the iTunes Store.

When da Silva wrote to Apple to complain about the missing movies, Apple wrote back to him that “the content provider has removed these movies from the Canadian Store. Hence, these movies are not available in the Canada iTunes Store at this time.” For his trouble in notifying Apple that it had disappeared three of his ostensible belongings for incredibly dubious legal reasons, Apple offered da Silva not even a refund, but two credits for renting a movie on the iTunes Store “priced up to $5.99 USD.” After he argued that he was not in the market for rentals and would just like the movies he purchased, please, Apple tried to appease him with two more rental credits.

To be completely fair, the iTunes Store’s Terms of Service, which surely no one has ever read, do address this kind of incident. Years ago, Apple began offering “cloud storage” for content purchased from its store, meaning that if a user deleted the content from any device, it could be re-downloaded to that same device, or a different authorized device, later.

Me: Hey Apple, three movies I bought disappeared from my iTunes library.
Apple: Oh yes, those are not available anymore. Thank you for buying them. Here are two movie rentals on us!
Me: Wait... WHAT?? @tim_cook when did this become acceptable? pic.twitter.com/dHJ0wMSQH9
— Anders G da Silva (@drandersgs) September 10, 2018

Me: I see... So, that "Buy" button is meaningless? It should maybe be called: "Feelin Lucky?"

Apple: I see you are unhappy. Have two more rentals on us.

3/7
— Anders G da Silva (@drandersgs) September 11, 2018

“You may be able to redownload previously acquired Content (‘Redownload’) to your devices that are signed in with the same Apple ID (‘Associated Devices’),” says the TOS, but also, “Content may not be available for Redownload if that Content is no longer offered on our Services.” For reasons that are easy to guess, Apple has never widely advertised that, by deleting locally stored content, users are actually rolling the dice as to whether they will ever be able to get it back.

This is not the first time tech overlords have made digital content rights inconsistent with any person’s normal understanding of what a “purchase” is. Back in 2009, Amazon customers noticed that their copies of 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell were suddenly missing. It turned out the copies were created by a seller that did not have the rights to the books, and when Amazon found this out, it pulled the books directly off of all the Kindles that had downloaded them. Later, the company acknowledged this was maybe not the best course of action.

In 2012, Amazon decided to terminate the account of another user who then lost access to 43 Kindle books she had purchased. When she protested, Amazon’s UK arm chided her, “Amazon.co.uk and its affiliates reserve the right to refuse service, terminate accounts, remove or edit content, or cancel orders at their sole discretion.”

As da Silva and others have pointed out before, the “Buy” button in digital stores is, at best, mislabeled. You cannot truly buy any digital thing online; you can only rent it, and any online video store is little more than an expensive, glorified, extremely convenient Blockbuster. In conclusion, let’s go back to DVDs. We have requested comment from Apple and will update if we hear back.
https://theoutline.com/post/6167/app...ut-telling-you





Prisons to Take Florida Inmates’ MP3 Players
Ben Conarck

For the last seven years, inmates have stocked the libraries of their personal MP3 players with $2 downloads. Come January, they’ll be forced to hand it all over because the Florida Department of Corrections signed a new deal with a competing company.

In April last year, the Florida Department of Corrections struck a deal with JPay. The private company, spearheading a push to sell profit-driven multimedia tablets to incarcerated people across the country, would be allowed to bring the technology to every facility in the nation’s third-largest prison system. But there was a catch.

Inmates had already been purchasing electronic entertainment for the last seven years — an MP3 player program run by a different company: Access Corrections. For around $100, Access sold various models of MP3 players that inmates could then use to download songs for $1.70 each, and keep them in their dorms.

The demand was clear. More than 30,299 players were sold, and 6.7 million songs were downloaded over the life of the Access contract, according to the Department of Corrections. That’s about $11.3 million worth of music.

Because of the tablets, inmates will have to return the players, and they can’t transfer the music they already purchased onto their new devices.

Scott Larsen is the sole provider for his 68-year old brother, who is incarcerated at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford.

"My brother was a musician, and music is very important to him," said Scott Larsen. "The MP3 player was a good source of entertainment and peace of mind for him."

Larsen said he will be able to help his brother rebuild his music library, but there are many other inmates, especially elderly ones, who don’t have the money or family support to do so.

The Department of Corrections, meanwhile, has collected $1.4 million in commissions on each song downloaded and other related sales since July 2011.

The multimedia tablet contract with JPay presents another money-making opportunity.

JPay already operates banking accounts and facilitates phone calls at the state-run prisons, charging inmates and their loved ones steep fees for the services. With the introduction of tablets, JPay will add a wide swath of new spending incentives for its incarcerated customers, offering purchases of music, emailing and other virtual fare.

The resulting download spree will funnel more dollars back to the Department of Corrections, which gleans $2.75 from each inmate money transfer onto the JPay-controlled bank accounts used to purchase the services. The department has already been bringing in record commissions from JPay money transfers, even before the introduction of the tablets. The agency received $3.9 million in commissions from JPay account transfers between April 2017 and March 2018.

In the Access Corrections contract, revenue left over after paying to run the program went back in a general fund controlled by the Legislature. But in the JPay contract, the Department retains any excess revenue in its Administrative Trust Fund.

The Times-Union has for the last several months requested line-item expenditures from the fund, but has yet to receive anything more detailed than general categories. In the 2016-2017 fiscal year, about $718,000 from the fund was used to pay out settlements.

Sales of the Access Corrections MP3 players in Florida prisons were halted in August 2017, when the department began implementing the new JPay tablet program.

Inmates were caught off guard when they learned they would not be able to keep their music or transfer it to the new tablets. Hundreds wrote grievances.

The volume of complaints was such that, in December 2017, the Department of Corrections created a new code to track the complaints. Since then, more than 260 additional appeals have been received.

Patrick Manderfield, spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said the switch is meant to introduce updated technology that will help inmates connect with their families and provide educational opportunities, whereas the MP3 players offered only entertainment. He said the songs cannot be transferred because the "devices/services are provided by two different vendors."

"We have made every effort to ensure inmates can retain non-transferable music by sending their devices and music to an outside address," Manderfield said.

Inmates who owned the players can also receive the mini version of the JPay tablet at no cost, Manderfield added.

At least one department response to sent directly to an inmate contained an additional explanation: money.

Katherine Freeman, who is housed at Homestead Correctional Institution, filed a grievance saying she purchased more than $2,200 of music since January 2014. She complained last year that she was not informed until October that the music she owns would not transfer to the new tablets.

Freeman said in her grievance that the transfers were not being allowed in an attempt "to increase profits to JPay at the expense of hardworking taxpayers (the inmate families)."

Timothy Hoey, the assistant warden, did not deny the financial incentives at play in his response to Freeman, saying that it was "not feasible to download content from one vendor’s device to another, not only due to incompatibility reasons, but the download of content purchased from one vendor to another vendor’s device would negate the new vendor’s ability to be compensated for their services."

"It is the Department’s hope that the inmate population will see the value and promise in the services offered with the Multimedia Kiosk and Tablet Program as a step in the right direction," Hoey wrote. "Grievance Denied."

It is unclear whether Hoey crafted the response himself or received it from another corrections official.

As part of the multimedia tablet contract, JPay received a list of inmates who used the MP3 player.

William Demler, who is incarcerated at South Florida Reception Center, also filed a grievance. He said he purchased 335 songs "under the understanding that these purchases would belong to me forever."

"The DOC promoted the MP3 Program and encouraged participation to ensure a larger share in the profits made by Access Corrections," Demler wrote. "Discontinuing the program and forcing inmates to give up their players without compensation amounts to an act of fraud."

The Department of Corrections sent blunt responses to inmate complaints about the MP3 program’s sudden departure.

"To address your concerns about the inability to transfer music from the MP3 player to the new tablet, unfortunately the download of content from one vendor’s device to another is not allowed," wrote an official from the Bureau of Contract Management.

Boilerplate language sent to inmates also read that the department is "aware that family members over the years have provided funds to their loved ones to add music to their current MP3 player.

"It is unfortunate that the music cannot be transferred, however, we hope that overtime (sic) the family and the inmate will see the added value of the new program."

The Department of Corrections negotiated an extension with Access Corrections to allow inmates to keep their MP3 players until January 23, 2019 if they choose not to participate in the tablet program.

Manderfield, the department spokesman, said that a department code prohibits inmates from owning more than one MP3 player at a time, but even without that, inmates would be able to keep the players because the contract is ending and there would be no way to service them.

Once returned, the inmates can pay a $25 fee to have their device unlocked or their music downloaded onto a CD before being shipped out to a non-prison address.

It is unlikely the inmates see any value in that option.

"I did purchase my MP3 player in order to keep it, and use it until I go home, not to send it to my family," wrote Felipe Avila in his complaint. "Indeed my family does not have a use for such obsolete device, nor do I want it upon my release."

___

Information from: The (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union, http://www.jacksonville.com
https://www.tampabay.com/news/Prison...yers_171459625





Four Arrested in Illegal Online TV Streaming Investigation

Seventeen bank accounts into which €700,000 has been lodged have been frozen
Conor Lally

Gardaí have arrested four people and frozen bank accounts into which €700,000 has been lodged for illegal online TV streaming services.

The gang involved had been selling pirate versions of pay-per-view television. They had built up an extensive client base in Ireland and abroad, with users paying into the bank accounts monthly for the illegal pirate services.

The bank accounts that have now been put beyond use by gardaí contained €84,000 when detectives moved and effectively froze them.

However, an examination of the accounts reveals the organised crime gang, trading in the illegal media products, had collected more than €700,000 in three years; or almost €20,000 per month.

Six bank accounts and two credit union accounts were frozen under anti-money laundering legislation and nine other accounts were also part frozen.

The arrests, of two men and two women, took place in Crumlin, Co Dublin, and in Ashbourne, Co Meath. Although the suspects were detained on Tuesday morning, news of the operation has only just emerged.

Unusual

Operations of this kind are unusual in Ireland, though police forces in other jurisdictions have been dealing with such criminality for many years.

Garda sources say white collar technology-based organised crime is now becoming a major issue for the force.

In recent weeks a series of raids have been conducted into invoice redirection fraud. The skimming and cloning of bank payment cards has also long been an issue.

The latest operation targeted those selling pirate internet-based TV services. It was part of a Europe-wide day of action against those involved in this particular form of organised crime.

Indeed Europol officers were on the ground in Ireland on Tuesday when the Irish raids took place, in conjunction with similar searches in Scotland and England.

Garda sources said while many people may view paying for cheaper pirated TV services as a victimless crime, it was very damaging to the legitimate economy.

They added many of those who engaged in this crime were also operating outside the tax net. The proceeds of these crimes were often diverted into more traditional forms of organised crime, such as the drugs trade.

Pirating services

The operation in Dublin and Meath on Tuesday was part of an inquiry being conducted by the Intellectual Property Crime Unit (IPCU) of An Garda Síochána’s serious crimes squad, the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI).

Det Supt George Kyne of the NBCI said pirating services were very damaging to the legitimate companies providing the same products.

“This is an organised criminal enterprise where consumers are funding criminality and depriving genuine industry of legitimate revenue,” he said.

“Consumers are providing their payment details to unknown individuals and leaving themselves open to being the victims of fraud and/or data theft.

“The security around these devices and illegal streaming platforms exposes customers and leaves their home systems vulnerable. It is important that the public is aware of the impact of illegal streaming and its consequences.”

The four suspects were arrested under Section 4 Criminal Justice Act, 1984. They were questioned at Crumlin and Ashbourne Garda stations and have since been released. They were detained on suspicion of copyright-related offences and money laundering.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crim...tion-1.3626837





‘The Nun’ Becomes Latest Box-Office Winner from Warner Bros.

Studio’s movies finish 1-2 for fourth straight week
Mike Murphy

The Warner Bros. horror movie "The Nun" earned more than $50 million in its opening weekend.

“Crazy Rich Asians” finally gave up its box-office crown, but Warner Bros. was still a winner for a fifth weekend in a row, as “The Nun” scared up $53.5 million to post a heathy start to the fall movie season.

The R-rated horror film, a spinoff of “The Conjuring,” opened to the best weekend yet for the franchise, and posted the second-best September debut ever in North America, behind last year’s “It.” Coming in with a production budget of about $22 million, “The Nun” banked another $77 million overseas.

“We knew heading into the weekend that anticipation for ‘The Nun’ was extremely high across multiple demos, but these results surpassed all our expectations,” Jeff Goldstein, head of domestic distribution for Warner Bros., told Variety.

In its fourth week, Warner’s hit rom-com “Crazy Rich Asians” finally slipped from the No. 1 spot, but earned $13.6 million, good enough for second place and $136 million total in its domestic run.

It was the fifth week in a row that a movie from AT&T’s T, -0.19% Warner Bros. topped the box-office charts, following the success of “The Meg” and “Crazy Rich Asians,” and the fourth week in a row its films placed Nos. 1 and 2 — becoming the first Hollywood studio to do so in 25 years.

The Jennifer Garner revenge thriller “Peppermint” from STX finished third, with $13.3 million, followed by “The Meg” with $6 million and the John Cho-fronted mystery “Searching” fifth at $4.5 million.

“Mission: Impossible — Fallout,” from Viacom’s VIA, +1.22% Paramount Pictures, took in $3.8 million as it topped the $700 million mark and became the top-grossing installment of the franchise.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/th...ros-2018-09-09





Local News Is Dying, and It’s Taking Small Town America With It

Less than one-fifth of stories have anything to do with your city or neighborhood, carrying serious consequences for social cohesion, voting and even bonds.
Riley Griffin

America is overrun with “news deserts,” cities and towns where local coverage is lacking or altogether absent. As newspaper circulation continues to decline along with ad revenue and newsroom employment, a common casualty is the expensive, time-consuming practice of original reporting.

Without journalists digging through property records or attending city council meetings, looking for official wrongdoing and revealing secret deals, local politicians will operate unchecked—with predictable consequences. But the fallout is much bigger than just keeping municipal government honest.

Studies have shown that communities without quality local news coverage see lower rates of voter turnout. Cities where newspapers shut down have even seen their municipal bond costs rise, suggesting an increase in government expense due to a lack of transparency. More broadly, towns without serious local news coverage demonstrate less social cohesion, corroding any actual sense of community.

A study published last month by Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy found that the quantity and quality of local news stories is lacking across the country. Only 17 percent of stories produced by local outlets are based on events that actually occurred nearby. And more than half of their news reports originated somewhere else, such as a wire service. With television, segments often come from a network or parent, easily repurposed by affiliates anywhere in the country. (Moreover, only 56 percent of all local reports addressed a critical informational need—such as crime or infrastructure—rather than celebrity gossip or sports.)

The study used U.S. Census data to identify almost 500 communities with 20,000 to 300,000 residents and randomly selected 100 of them. The analysis surveyed 16,000 stories produced by print, radio, television and digital media from both English and non-English outlets, found through media databases and manual searches.

“It’s the job of these outlets to focus on the civic, political and economic issues that are uniquely relevant to these geographic communities, because they will not be covered by out-of-market media outlets,” said Philip Napoli, a professor at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the lead author of the study. “Local government is exactly the kind of place where journalistic resources are being cut.”

But Napoli doesn’t blame the media for the lack of quality local journalism. Rather, he empathizes with their financial struggles. To keep pace with a changing and consolidating media ecosystem, local news outlets have dedicated their limited resources to covering and aggregating national stories reported by national news organizations.

As a result, only 11 percent of the surveyed news stories were local, original and addressed hard news, the report shows. And some outlets stopped producing stories about their local communities altogether.

Stefanie Murray, the director of the Center for Cooperative Media at Monclair State University, works with so-called hyperlocal media outlets in New Jersey that focus exclusively on providing news to small communities. But Murray said these bootstrap organizations are a long way away from filling the overarching local news gap that plagues the U.S.

Of course, the current economic reality facing local news operations makes it difficult to stay afloat, explained Joe Lanane, the executive editor of Community Impact Newspaper, which produces free hyperlocal papers for 45 communities in Texas. He said he understands the temptation to package news made elsewhere to cut costs, “but if we try to follow the rest of the news industry with national and state coverage, we’ll lose that battle,” he said.

And it’s not just rural America that’s seen a decline in local news. Communities closest to large media markets—such as New York, Washington or Los Angeles—have the least robust local journalism, the study found. “Content tends to flow from large markets to smaller markets, which can discourage consumption of local journalism,” Napoli said.

New Jersey, for example, lives in the shadow of both New York and Philadelphia. Sandwiched between large media markets, the state has struggled to lure journalists to cover local news for smaller outlets. Even inside the nation’s biggest media hub, outlets that cover local events are suffering. The New York Daily News halved its staff in July, and the Village Voice, a legendary investigator of malfeasance in New York City and Albany, officially died last weekend. In Washington, a slew of newspapers have shuttered, too.

Within urban, suburban and rural areas, minority communities remain the most underserved by local news coverage. The Duke study found that regions with large Hispanic populations in particular received less robust local journalism.

“Local news outlets play a vital role in the daily lives of communities who are often ignored by mega-media companies that are disconnected geographically and culturally,” said Hugo Balta, the president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, in an email. “The regionalization of content production, a failed one-size-fits-all practice, is irrelevant to already underserved communities like Hispanics, especially in small markets where information about local government, education, health and other important issues is indispensable.”

“The public is suffering,” Balta said.

There is some good news, though—local news media still garners more public trust than its national counterparts. More than 7 in 10 Americans report they trust their local newspapers and television stations, while barely half say the same about national outlets, according to the Poynter Institute. But this could change, warned Murray.

“Building trust is a human-to-human endeavor,” Murray said. “I’m worried we’re going to see an erosion of trust in local media as the number of journalists on the ground in local communities declines.”

In New Jersey, the crisis has spurred government leaders to allocate $5 million to revive and strengthen local media. “Long term, this is a drop in the bucket,” Murray said. “But short term this could spur some amazing projects.” Community Impact Newspaper has also attempted to fill the gaps in small communities surrounding media-rich cities including Houston, Austin and Dallas.

Report for America, a journalism nonprofit modeled after AmeriCorps and Teach for America, has sought to bolster understaffed regional outlets by deploying 1,000 journalists to their newsrooms by 2022. But news media experts said this only scratches the surface of what’s needed to rehabilitate local media. “We’ve seen foundations and universities jump into this space, but we need more at the policy level,” said Napoli, who believes public funding could alleviate the local news crisis.

There may be little chance of that in the current political environment. The U.S. already spends very little government money on the media compared with other countries. Norway spends about $140 per capita each year on its public broadcasters, according to media consulting firm Nordicity. The U.K. spends $88, and Canada spends $22. The U.S., however, spends under $3.

Executive editors at local news outlets across the country agree that there needs to be more economic incentives to cover their communities.

“At the local level, news doesn’t stop when the news coverage goes away,” Lanane said. “Somebody has to do this work.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...merica-with-it





Teens Would Rather Text Their Friends Than Talk to Them in Person
Hallie Detrick

Facebook is for olds. And so, apparently, is speaking to other people in person.

At least that seems to be the finding of Common Sense Media’s 2018 Social Media, Social Life survey, a nationally representative poll of more than 1,000 teenagers. Only 15% of teens said Facebook (fb) was their main social media site, down from 68% in 2012. Snapchat is now the main site for 41% of teenagers, followed by Instagram at 22%.

In addition, this year’s survey saw texting (35%) surpass in-person (32%) as teens’ favorite way to communicate with friends. In 2012, 49% preferred to communicate in person, versus 33% who preferred texting.

The findings will be fairly intuitive for anyone who has watched Facebook’s evolution from a campus-only network to the domain of sexagenerians—or the intensity with which teens text. But the survey offers some more surprising results about the impact social media has on teenagers’ mental health and self perception—or at least the impact they say it has. Indeed, most teens seem to feel that social media has enhanced their social lives and well-being. But there is some cause for concern.

For instance, more teens said that social media had a positive effect on their levels of loneliness, depression, and anxiety than those who said it had a negative one, but it seems to have the opposite effect on teens who score low on the authors’ social-emotional well-being scale. Of those, 70% said they sometimes feel left out when using social media, 43% feel bad if no one likes or comments on their posts, and 35% said they had been cyberbullied. They were also more likely to say that social media was “extremely” or “very” important, compared to their peers who score high on the scale.

But teens also seem to be a bit more savvy online than adults may give them credit for: 72% of those surveyed said they believe tech companies manipulate users to spend more time on their devices. And for as much hand-wringing as adults do over the amount of time teens spend on their phones, they’re looking right back across the void. A full 33% of those surveyed said they wished their parents would spend less time using their devices.
http://fortune.com/2018/09/10/teen-social-media-survey/





FCC Says it Needs More Time to Review Sprint-T-Mobile Deal

• The agency has paused an "informal" 180-day transaction clock "to allow for thorough staff and third-party review" of recently submitted materials.
• Sprint and T-Mobile have called off and resumed talks in the past but announced a tie-up in April.
• Shares of Sprint and T-Mobile were essentially flat in extended trading.

Sara Salinas

The Federal Communications Commission needs more time to review the proposed Sprint-T-Mobile deal, the agency said in a letter to the companies Tuesday.

The agency has paused an "informal" 180-day transaction clock "to allow for thorough staff and third-party review" of recently submitted materials.

Sprint and T-Mobile have gone down a rocky road to a merger, calling off and resuming talks. The companies announced that they would merge last April in a bid to cut costs and combine forces to develop a next-generation network called 5G, which would provide faster speeds, more capacity and lower response times.

But the companies could encounter hurdles to gaining regulatory approval for the tie-up. A deal between T-Mobile and Sprint, who are the third largest and fourth largest wireless carriers in the United States by subscribers, previously faced opposition from antitrust regulators under President Barack Obama's administration.

Shares of Sprint and T-Mobile were essentially flat in extended trading.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/11/fcc-...nd-sprint.html





Ajit Pai Helped Charter Kill Consumer-Protection Rules in Minnesota

State can't regulate VoIP phones—Pai predicts same outcome with net neutrality.
Jon Brodkin

A court ruling that limits state regulation of cable company offerings was praised by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, who says the ruling supports his contention that the FCC can preempt state-level net neutrality rules.

The new court ruling found that Minnesota's state government cannot regulate VoIP phone services offered by Charter and other cable companies because VoIP is an "information service" under federal law. Pai argues that the case is consistent with the FCC's attempt to preempt state-level net neutrality rules, in which the commission reclassified broadband as a Title I information service instead of a Title II telecommunications service.

The ruling was issued Friday by the US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, following a lawsuit filed by Charter Communications against the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MPUC). A three-judge panel ruled against Minnesota in a 2-1 vote—the FCC had filed a brief supporting Charter's position in the case.

"[F]ederal law for decades has recognized that states may not regulate information services," Pai said in response to the ruling. "The 8th Circuit's decision is important for reaffirming that well-established principle: '[A]ny state regulation of an information service conflicts with the federal policy of non-regulation' and is therefore preempted."

Pai said the ruling "is wholly consistent with the approach the FCC has taken under Democratic and Republican Administrations over the last two decades, including in last year's Restoring Internet Freedom order," which repealed net neutrality rules and reclassified broadband. While California and other states are imposing net neutrality rules, the FCC says the reclassification should preempt any such attempts at regulating broadband at the state level.

Despite Pai's contention, a lawyer involved in the net neutrality case against the FCC told Ars that the 8th Circuit ruling "has no bearing" on the net neutrality case.

Preemption questions

Arguing that VoIP is a telecommunications service, the MPUC tried to force Charter to collect fees from customers in order to contribute to state programs that help poor people and the hearing-impaired access telephone service. State officials also said that VoIP customers should be able to appeal to the MPUC in the event of disputes with Charter.

The FCC has never settled the regulatory status of VoIP, making it unclear whether VoIP is a telecommunications service or an information service. The MPUC asserted that VoIP is a telecommunications service as defined by federal law, but 8th Circuit judges agreed with a district court ruling that VoIP is more accurately defined as an information service.

Telecommunications, as defined by Congress in the Communications Act, transmits information of the user's choosing to and from endpoints specified by the user without making any changes to the user's information. An information service, by contrast, is defined in the Communications Act as "the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications."

Eighth Circuit judges concluded that Charter's VoIP technology is an information service because it "transforms" information by converting voice calls from one format to another. Specifically, Charter "transforms voice calls from analog electrical signals into IP 'packets,' which are then carried on Charter's network."

"How a service is classified affects a state's ability to regulate the service. Telecommunications services are generally subject to 'dual state and federal regulation,'" the 8th Circuit decision said, citing previous cases. "By contrast, 'any state regulation of an information service conflicts with the federal policy of non-regulation,' so that such regulation is preempted by federal law."

Effect on net neutrality case?

The ruling won't necessarily have an impact on the net neutrality case, in which Pai is defending the repeal and preemption of state laws against dozens of litigants including more than 20 state attorneys general.

The net neutrality case is being handled by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, so it will be decided by different judges. The details are also different in the net neutrality case, said attorney Andrew Schwartzman, who represents the Benton Foundation in the case against the FCC.

In the net neutrality case, "the Pai FCC definitively said that it has no jurisdiction under either Title I or Title II [of the Communications Act] to regulate broadband Internet access service," Schwartzman told Ars. "As the governmental parties explained at pp. 39-56 their brief, when an agency lacks authority to regulate, it also lacks authority to preempt."

The VoIP case also differs from the net neutrality case in that there was "no FCC decision at issue" because "the FCC has repeatedly refused to decide what regulatory classification... should be applied to VoIP," Schwartzman said. "Thus, it was left to the court to consider the question in a case between the state and Charter."

There is an FCC decision for net neutrality supporters to dispute in the DC Circuit case. State attorneys general argue that the FCC decision was arbitrary and capricious and that state regulation of information services isn't automatically preempted by federal law.

While Congress prevents the FCC from imposing strict regulations on information services, "a 'clear and manifest purpose' to preempt the States' sovereign powers cannot be inferred from a congressional decision to strip a federal agency of jurisdiction," attorneys general argued.

The attorneys general also argued:

No other provision of the 1996 [Telecommunications] Act clearly expresses Congress's intent to preempt state regulation of information services. For example, while the 1996 Act expressly authorizes preemption with respect to certain types of state regulation of telecommunications services... the Act includes no similar provision regarding information services. To the contrary, Congress expressly preserved state regulation of all communications services through consumer protection, tort, or other state law remedies, and warned against implied preemption.

Additionally, Mozilla and other organizations fighting the FCC repeal argue that the FCC's deregulation order "fundamentally mischaracterizes how Internet access works" due to "semantic contortions or simply an inherent lack of understanding" and that the FCC ignored the public record when making its decision.

The net neutrality case is still in the briefing stage and isn't likely to be decided this year. The next briefs are due on October 11; final briefs are due on November 27. Oral arguments have not yet been scheduled.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-in-minnesota/





Senator Claps Back after Ajit Pai Calls California’s Net Neutrality Bill ‘Radical’ and ‘Illegal’
Devin Coldewey

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has provoked a biting senatorial response from California after calling the “nanny state’s” new net neutrality legislation “radical,” “anti-consumer,” “illegal” and “burdensome.” Senator Scott Wiener (D-CA), in response, said Pai has “abdicated his responsibility to ensure an open internet” and that the FCC lacks the authority to intervene.

The political flame war was kicked off this morning in Pai’s remarks at the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a free market think tank. You can read them in full here, but I’ve quoted the relevant part below:

Of course, those who demand greater government control of the Internet haven’t given up. Their latest tactic is pushing state governments to regulate the Internet. The most egregious example of this comes from California. Last month, the California state legislature passed a radical, anti-consumer Internet regulation bill that would impose restrictions even more burdensome than those adopted by the FCC in 2015.

If this law is signed by the Governor, what would it do? Among other things, it would prevent Californian consumers from buying many free-data plans. These plans allow consumers to stream video, music, and the like exempt from any data limits. They have proven enormously popular in the marketplace, especially among lower-income Americans. But nanny-state California legislators apparently want to ban their constituents from having this choice. They have met the enemy, and it is free data.

The broader problem is that California’s micromanagement poses a risk to the rest of the country. After all, broadband is an interstate service; Internet traffic doesn’t recognize state lines. It follows that only the federal government can set regulatory policy in this area. For if individual states like California regulate the Internet, this will directly impact citizens in other states.

Among other reasons, this is why efforts like California’s are illegal.


The bogeyman of banning zero rating plans has been raised again and again, but everyone should understand now that the whole thing is a sham — just another ploy by telecoms to parcel out data the way they choose.

The legal question is far from decided, but Pai has been crowing about a recent court ruling for a week or so now, despite the fact that it has very little to do with net neutrality. Ars Technica went into detail on this ruling; the takeaway is that while it is possible that the FCC could preempt state law on information services in some cases, it’s not clear at all that it has any authority whatsoever to do so with broadband services. Ironically, that’s because Pai’s FCC drastically reduced the FCC’s jurisdiction with its reclassification of broadband in Restoring Internet Freedom.

At any rate, more consequential legal challenges and questions are still in the works, so Pai’s jubilation is somewhat premature.

“The Internet should be run by engineers, entrepreneurs, and technologists, not lawyers, bureaucrats, and politicians,” he concluded. Odd then that those very engineers, entrepreneurs and technologists almost unanimously oppose his policy, while he — literally seconds earlier — justified that policy via the world of lawyers, bureaucrats and politicians.

Senator Wiener was quick to issue a correction to the Chairman’s remarks. In an official statement, he explained that “Unlike Pai’s FCC, California isn’t run by the big telecom and cable companies.” The statement continued:

SB 822 is necessary and legal because Chairman Pai abdicated his responsibility to ensure an open internet. Since the FCC says it no longer has any authority to protect an open internet, it’s also the case that the FCC lacks the legal power to preempt states from protecting their residents and economy.

When Verizon was caught throttling the data connection of a wildfire fighting crew in California, Chairman Pai said nothing and did nothing. That silence says far more than his words today.

SB 822 is supported by a broad coalition of consumer groups, groups advocating for low income people, small and mid-size technology companies, labor unions, and President Obama’s FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler. I’ll take that support over Ajit Pai any day of the week.


The law in question has been approved by the state legislature, but has yet to be signed by Governor Jerry Brown, who has another two weeks to consider it.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/14/se...l-and-illegal/





About a Quarter of Rural Americans Say Access to High-Speed Internet is a Major Problem
Monica Anderson

Roughly one-in-four rural residents say access to high-speed internet is a major problem in their areaFast, reliable internet service has become essential for everything from getting news to finding a job. But 24% of rural adults say access to high-speed internet is a major problem in their local community, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted earlier this year. An additional 34% of rural residents see this as a minor problem, meaning that roughly six-in-ten rural Americans (58%) believe access to high speed internet is a problem in their area.

By contrast, smaller shares of Americans who live in urban areas (13%) or the suburbs (9%) view access to high-speed internet service as a major problem in their area. And a majority of both urban and suburban residents report that this is not an issue in their local community, according to the survey, conducted Feb. 26-March 11. (The survey categorized Americans as urban, suburban or rural based on their own description of their community type.)

Concerns about access to high-speed internet are shared by rural residents from various economic backgrounds. For example, 20% of rural adults whose household income is less than $30,000 a year say access to high speed internet is a major problem, but so do 23% of rural residents living in households earning $75,000 or more annually. These sentiments are also similar between rural adults who have a bachelor’s or advanced degree and those with lower levels of educational attainment.

There are, however, some differences by age and by race and ethnicity. Rural adults ages 50 to 64 are more likely than those in other groups to see access to high-speed internet as a problem where they live. Nonwhites who live in a rural area are more likely than their white counterparts to say this is a major problem (31% vs. 21%). (Racial and ethnic differences are also present across a number of other perceived problems for communities, ranging from traffic to crime.)

For years, policymakers and advocates have looked to address broadband-related gaps between rural and non-rural communities in subscriptions, infrastructure, performance and competition. Data from the Federal Communications Commission show that rural areas are less likely to be wired for broadband services and tend to have slower internet speeds compared with other areas of the country. There are also fewer broadband providers operating in rural areas, which means consumers tend to have limited options when subscribing to high-speed services.

Rural adults are less likely than those in other areas to have high-speed internet at home, own a smartphoneAnd while the broadband gap between rural and non-rural Americans has narrowed over time, rural adults remain less likely to have a high-speed internet connection at home. Seven-in-ten suburban residents and two-thirds of urban dwellers say they subscribe to broadband services at home, compared with 58% of rural adults, according to a separate Pew Research Center survey conducted in January.

Beyond lower home broadband adoption rates, adults in rural areas also are less likely to own mobile devices or to use the internet. While around two-thirds of rural Americans have a smartphone, those shares rise to around eight-in-ten among those living in cities (83%) or the suburbs (78%), according to Center data. At the same time, some rural Americans do not use the internet in any capacity: 22% of adults living in a rural area say they never go online, a share that is more than double that among urban or suburban residents.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...major-problem/





US Govt Confirms FCC's Broadband Speeds and Feeds Stats are Garbage

GAO report on tribal land may open up rigged system
Kieren McCarthy

A report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has confirmed what others have reported for years: that official data on internet access across the country greatly over estimates availability and competition.

The report is focused specifically on tribal lands – small semi-autonomous areas of the United States governed by indigenous tribes – but its conclusions are directly applicable to the rest of the country.

The GAO's key finding is that broadband data gathered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from reports compiled by internet services providers (ISPs) "do not accurately or completely capture broadband access."

The report mirrors numerous other complaints about so-called Form 477 data: most importantly that it over estimates the availability of internet access because, as the GAO notes, "FCC considers broadband to be 'available' for an entire census block if the provider could serve at least one location in the census block." [Its emphasis.]

In other words, even if an ISP does not serve anyone within a given census block (which typically covers between 30 and 500 people), it can claim 100 per cent availability if just one person can sign up to its service. The system also doesn't consider the speed or price of that service.

The large cable companies in America have become expert in analyzing their business at the census-block level so observers have little doubt that the flaws in the official data-gathering approach are used to restrict competition and inflate prices while painting an entirely different picture – one of healthy competition - to regulators.

That approach "leads to overstatements of service for specific locations like tribal lands", says the GAO, adding: "Because FCC uses these data to measure broadband access, it also overstates broadband access - the ability to obtain service - on tribal lands."

Fail

It also notes the FCC's failure to gather additional data that could mitigate the issue: "FCC does not collect information on several factors - such as affordability, quality, and denials of service - that FCC and tribal stakeholders stated can affect the extent to which Americans living on tribal lands can access broadband services."

And it flags that the faulty data can have a significant real-world impact: "Overstatements of access limit FCC’s and tribal stakeholders’ abilities to target broadband funding to such areas. For example, some tribal officials stated that inaccurate data have affected their ability to plan their own broadband networks and obtain funding to address broadband gaps on their lands."

It's worth noting that the FCC was recently blocked by a court from limiting subsidies through its long-standing Lifeline program; a program that is frequently used by residents of tribal lands.

The report also notes that the cable companies are not exactly helpful when it comes to providing information about the availability of their own services. Many of the people it spoke to complained that they could not get relevant information.

"A representative from one tribe stated that a provider declined his requests to meet more than once a year to discuss the provider's deployment of broadband services on the tribe's land," the report notes.

"A representative from another tribal government stated that some providers are very focused and transparent about their broadband plans and work with the tribe, while other providers treat tribal engagement as a 'box to check' and send the tribe broadband deployment information that is not useful because it is redacted."

And the FCC doesn't appear interested in doing what the GAO has done and talking to actual people on the ground, it noted. "FCC does not have a formal process to obtain tribal input on the accuracy of provider-submitted broadband data," the report red flags.

"About half of the tribal stakeholders GAO interviewed raised concerns that FCC relies solely on data from providers, and most stated FCC should work with tribes to improve the accuracy of FCC’s data."
It's fixable, but takes will

As a result the GAO issued three main recommendations of the FCC chair Ajit Pai:

• That he come up with new ways "for collecting and reporting accurate and complete data on broadband access specific to tribal lands."
• That he "develop a formal process to obtain tribal input on the accuracy of provider-submitted broadband data."
• That he "obtain feedback from tribal stakeholders and providers on the effectiveness" of an earlier FCC promise to make sure tribal lands were listened to when it comes to internet access.

Although the GAO report was specifically focused on tribal lands and has been careful not to step outside those boundaries, the report is sure to be used by others advocating for greater competition across the US as a whole.

A recent deep-dive into one US city - Rochester in Minnesota – revealed that while ISPs and local politicians claimed near-blanket broadband coverage with multiple providers, the reality was that less than one per cent of the people in the area had a choice of four or more ISPs. Nearly 20 per cent of residents had no wired option at all, and a further 36 per cent had the choice of a single provider.

A report back in July took a national look at the broadband market and concluded "the market has spoken: the market is broken." It found that it was impossible to tell what the real level of competition was but that the extraordinary percentage take-up of particular company's services was a strong indicator that real competition was an illusion.

Fail

Comcast, for example, manages to scoop up an extraordinary 60 per cent of all the people that could theoretically access its services – 65 million of a potential 110 million customers. That would an amazing achievement for any company but considering Comcast consistently ranks as one of the most disliked companies in America, it is clear that the official picture bears little relation to the reality on the ground.

Awareness of the problem has grown so large that even members of Congress have started complaining about the situation.

"The maps stink," Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) said to FCC chair Ajit Pai at a recent hearing, referring to the widely panned coverage maps produced by the FCC that are built from the flawed Form 477 data. "You've got to target those maps."

And while Pai acknowledged flaws in the process, his failure to put forward any changes when he is so conscientious about changes to other aspects of the FCC's functioning speaks volumes.

With this GAO report, Pai will now be forced to review how the FCC deals with that same data when it comes to tribal lands. And you can be sure that whatever changes are made, critics will then ask why they are not applied across the rest of the country.

In short, those advocating for real competition and fast internet access at a reasonable price in the United States have just been given a useful tool in the GAO report to force the federal regulator to do its job properly.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/0..._data_garbage/





Are New York’s Free LinkNYC Internet Kiosks Tracking Your Movements?
Ava Kofman

LinkNYC kiosks have become a familiar eyesore to New Yorkers. Over 1,600 of these towering, nine-and-a-half-foot monoliths — their double-sided screens festooned with ads and fun facts — have been installed across the city since early 2016. Mayor Bill de Blasio has celebrated their ability to provide “the fastest and largest municipal Wi-Fi network in the world” as “a critical step toward a more equal, open, and connected city for every New Yorker, in every borough.” Anyone can use the kiosks’ Android tablets to search for directions and services; they are also equipped with charging stations, 911 buttons, and phones for free domestic calls.

But even as the kiosks have provided important services to connect New Yorkers, they may also represent a troubling expansion of the city’s surveillance network, potentially connecting every borough to a new level of invasive monitoring. Each kiosk has three cameras, 30 sensors, and heightened sight lines for viewing above crowds.

Since plans for LinkNYC were first unveiled, journalists, residents, and civil liberties experts have raised concerns that the internet kiosks might be storing sensitive data about its users and possibly tracking their movements. For the last two years, the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a small but vocal group of activists — including ReThink LinkNYC, a grassroots anti-surveillance group, and the anonymous Stop LinkNYC coalition — have highlighted the kiosk’s potential to track locations, collect personal information, and fuel mass surveillance.

Now an undergraduate researcher has discovered indications in LinkNYC code — accidentally made public on the internet — that LinkNYC may be actively planning to track users’ locations.

You’re the Product

Plans to replace the city’s payphone booth network with Wi-Fi-enabled kiosks were first announced by de Blasio in 2014. Less than a year later, the city awarded a contract to a chameleon-like consortium of private companies known as CityBridge. It was an attractive deal: LinkNYC kiosks, at no cost to the city, would provide free internet coverage to anyone walking by. CityBridge, in turn, would be responsible for the installation, ownership, and construction of the devices, with plans to earn back its expenses through advertising. The twin 55-inch displays will eventually carry targeted ads derived from the information collected about kiosk users.

These terms raised alarms among internet researchers and privacy experts, who were quick to point out that nothing in life is truly free. “As we know,” Benjamin Dean, a technology policy analyst, told attendees at a New York hacking conference in 2016, “When you’re not paying, you’re not the customer — you’re the product.”

The key player in CityBridge is known as Intersection, and one of Intersection’s largest investors is Sidewalk Labs, with whom it also shares the same offices and staff. Sidewalk Labs CEO Daniel Doctoroff is the chair of Intersection’s board. Sidewalk Labs is owned by Google’s holding company, Alphabet Inc. In other words, the plan to blanket New York City with 7,500 camera-equipped obelisks has been largely underwritten by the company formerly known as Google — a corporation whose business model depends on selling your personal information to advertisers. As Doctoroff, who was also the city’s former deputy mayor of economic development, has said of the kiosks: “By having access to the browsing activity of people using the Wi-Fi — all anonymized and aggregated — we can actually then target ads to people in proximity and then obviously over time, track them through lots of different things, like beacons and location services, as well as their browsing activity. So in effect, what we’re doing is replicating the digital experience in physical space.”

In March 2016, the New York Civil Liberties Union raised multiple concerns with the mayor’s office about LinkNYC’s vast and indefinite data retention and the possibilities for unwarranted NYPD surveillance. The NYCLU asked whether environmental sensors and cameras would be hooked up to NYPD systems, including the Domain Awareness System (built by Microsoft). LinkNYC has since updated its policy to state that it will take reasonable efforts to notify users if their information is being shared with law enforcement.

In May of this year, Charles Meyers, an undergraduate at New York City College of Technology, came across folders in LinkNYC’s public library on GitHub, a platform for managing files and software, that appear to raise further questions about location tracking and the platform’s protection of its users’ data. Meyers made copies of the codebases in question — “LinkNYC Mobile Observation” and “RxLocation” — and shared both folders with The Intercept.

According to Meyers, the “LinkNYC Mobile Observation” code collects the user’s longitude and latitude, as well as the user’s browser type, operating system, device type, device identifiers, and full URL clickstreams (including date and time) and aggregates this information into a database. In Meyers’s view, this code — along with the functions of the “RxLocation” codebase — suggests that the company is interested in tracking the locations of Wi-Fi users in real time. If such code were run on a mobile app or kiosk, he said, the company would be able to make advertisements available in real time based on where and who someone was, and that this would constitute a potential violation of the company’s privacy policy. In 2016, LinkNYC’s privacy policy made it clear that it did not collect information about users’ precise locations. “However,” it states, “we know where we provide WiFi services, so when you use the services we can determine your general location.”

LinkNYC disputes these speculations. David Mitchell, Intersection’s chief technology officer, told the Intercept that the code was never intended to be released and was part of a longer-term research and development process. “In this instance,” he explained over email, “Intersection was prototyping and testing some ideas internally, using employee data only, and mistakenly made source code public on Github. This code is not in use on the LinkNYC network.” An Intersection spokesperson added that LinkNYC does not collect users’ clickstream data or browsing history, and that it has not used the “RxLocation” codebase to collect user data. LinkNYC did not respond to repeated questions about the function or purpose of the code.

The Intercept asked four technologists, including a computer forensics investigator and an expert on Wi-Fi location tracking, to independently review the code. Each confirmed that the code could execute commands as Meyers had described, but they emphasized that it was not possible to determine the purpose of the code and whether it was actually running on any kiosks or devices based on the information given. They concluded that it was unlikely that the code was currently in use, as its unfinished security features pointed to the fact that it appeared to be in progress, possibly for a mobile product. “We don’t know why it exists, but the fact that it exists is creepy,” explained Surya Mattu, a research scientist and artist. “There’s no way properly to interrogate this further as a third party.”

For many researchers and privacy experts, this lack of third party oversight represents the most significant issue. Privacy experts told The Intercept that the lack of clarity surrounding LinkNYC’s leaked code points to the larger lack of transparency surrounding the kiosk’s operations. Despite their omnipresence in the city’s major public spaces, LinkNYC’s pervasive data collection is not constrained by any auditing mechanisms, explained Daniel Schwarz, a technology fellow at the NYCLU. “Without transparency and external auditing of the source code, as well as what data is collected, for what purpose, and how it is being monetized by the company,” he said, “there is no way to verify whether the privacy policy is working to protect users’ data.”

A few hours after The Intercept contacted LinkNYC for comment, the company demanded that Github remove Meyer’s copy of its code due to copyright violations.

Connecting — and Controlling — Communities

As LinkNYC expands across the globe — Intersection has unveiled plans for kiosks in Philadelphia, Toronto, and the U.K. — so too does the scope of the concerns surrounding it. Shahid Buttar, the EFF’s director of grassroots advocacy, has warned of the possibility of mission creep — that is, the expansion of LinkNYC’s uses beyond its stated purpose to provide free Wi-Fi. “There’s no reason to presume that a current statement of policy will constrain the consortium of the future,” Buttar said.

LinkNYC’s current privacy policy already shows that the company sweeps up enormous amounts of sensitive data. When kiosk users register for LinkNYC and submit their email addresses, CityBridge retains the right to collect information about what websites they visit, how long they linger on a webpage, and what they click on. The company also collects from all users “MAC address (anonymized), IP address, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, device type, and device identifiers.” LinkNYC’s privacy policy classifies this information as technical, rather than personal, data. It may occasionally “supplement anonymized Technical Information we collect from you with information collected by third parties. Third parties may include advertising partners or other providers that help us understand our users.

This distinction, privacy experts say, ignores the fact that device identifiers — even when anonymized — provide more than enough information to tell advertisers, law enforcement, or malefactors who we are, since most phones and computers are used by the individuals who own them. Knowing that a device has been in multiple locations, along with the history of the Wi-Fi networks it has visited, can provide enough information for someone to find out where individuals live, work, commute, shop, and so on. A recent Associated Press investigation found that many Google services for Android devices and iPhones were storing location data even if when users had turned on a privacy setting to prevent Google from doing so.

According to privacy watchdogs, the rollout of the kiosk’s cameras have shown how the mission has already expanded beyond its initial purview. In 2016, LinkNYC disclosed that the kiosks “may” contain cameras; by 2017, the cameras were operational. LinkNYC’s privacy policy states that cameras do not keep video records for more than seven days and that the camera footage is used to “improve the services.” But opting out is not an option: Just by walking down the block, it is possible to be swept into its audio or video feeds, which can capture a nearly 360-degree view of their surroundings. Civil liberties experts have concerns about the circumstances under which CityBridge will share its ongoing taping with law enforcement. What’s more, according to documents obtained by ReCode, Sidewalk Labs is selling kiosks to other cities that will be able to “monitor pedestrian, bike and car traffic, track passing wireless devices, listen to street noise and use the kiosks’ built-in video cameras to identify abandoned packages.” Intersection’s chief innovation officer told MIT Tech Review that it was considering upgrading kiosks to support augmented reality and autonomous vehicles.

The NYCLU and EFF stated that the ambiguity surrounding Meyer’s discovery of the code underscores the need for community-driven initiatives to protect the privacy and civil liberties of users. As EFF has noted, there are no means for New Yorkers to participate in decisions about how data from LinkNYC kiosks will be used, with whom they will be shared, for how long they will be retained, or whether the parameters under which they are initially collected might expand in the future. In response to Meyer’s findings, ReThink LinkNYC is calling for third-party oversight to confirm that the company’s software does what it says it does. The New York City Mayor’s Office did not respond to a request for comment on the calls for auditing and stronger oversight. “We don’t know if it’s being held to its standards because there is so much opacity and not enough transparency surrounding the system,” explained Buttar. “There needs to be some designated processes with public accountability and participation before the kiosk system and private organizations that constitute the consortium can propose changes unilaterally on millions of users.”

Update: September 10, 2018
Charles Meyers filed a counter notice with Github, challenging LinkNYC’s takedown demand, and he has made the code he found available again here.
https://theintercept.com/2018/09/08/...e-wifi-kiosks/





Popular Mac Apps Caught Stealing and Sharing Users’ Browser History

Apps including Dr. Unarchiver and Dr. Cleaner are culprits
Matt Hanson

It’s emerged that a number of apps from the Mac App Store have been secretly gathering user data and uploading it to remote servers.

What’s particularly worrying is that these apps, which come from a developer that claims to be 'Trend Micro, Inc.', are very popular, often appearing high in the App Store’s free software charts.

Trend Micro, Inc is a well-known name in virus protection, so users could be forgiven for thinking that downloading an app from the company would be safe. We’re trying to contact the company to verify its origins.

The apps in question include Dr. Unarchiver and Dr. Cleaner, and were billed as apps that could help protect and clean up your Mac, or be used to open archived files.

Instead, it appears the apps, which are installed with access to the home directory on macOS, would gather data from the Mac as a zip file and upload it to the developer’s servers.

Sharing is uncaring

According to reports on the Malwarebytes forum, the apps collected browsing history from Safari, Chrome and Firefox web browsers, as well as information about which apps have been installed on the Mac. The user is not alerted to this data gathering.

The 9to5mac.com website, which has reported on the issue, tried out one of the apps, Dr. Unarchiver, and confirmed that it was indeed collecting data from the home directory of the Mac it was installed on.

On using the app, 9to5mac.com found it had created a zip file which, when opened, contained browser history, Google search information, and a “file containing a complete list of all apps installed on the system, including information about where they were downloaded from, whether they are 64-bit compatible and their code signature”.

At no point did the app ask permission or inform the user that it was collecting this data. What’s really worrying is that if these apps have access to the home directory they could potentially gather even more personal data without consent.

The apps have now been removed from the Mac App Store, but if you have previously installed these apps, you should uninstall them straight away. This revelation follows similar stories of Mac apps gathering data without permission, and could point to a worrying trend.

Macs have a reputation for having better security than Windows machines, mainly thanks to the Mac App Store, and Apple’s supposedly stringent rules for allowing apps to be included there. If more apps are found to be covertly gathering user data, however, this reputation could be at risk.
https://www.techradar.com/news/popul...rowser-history





'Right to be Forgotten' Could Threaten Global Free Speech, Say NGOs

ECJ hears France’s data regulator wants to extend 2014 ruling to apply universally
Owen Bowcott

The “right to be forgotten” online is in danger of being transformed into a tool of global censorship through a test case at the European court of justice (ECJ) this week, free speech organisations are warning.

An application by the French data regulator for greater powers to remove out of date or embarrassing content from internet domains around the world will enable authoritarian regimes to exert control over publicly available information, according to a British-led alliance of NGOs.

The right to be forgotten was originally established by an ECJ ruling in 2014 after a Spaniard sought to delete an auction notice of his repossessed home dating from 1998 on the website of a mass circulation newspaper in Catalonia.

He had resolved his social security debts, he said, and his past troubles should no longer be automatically linked to him whenever anyone searched for his name on Google. The power to de-list from online searches was limited to national internet domains.

That judgment allowed European citizens to ask search engines to remove links to “inadequate, irrelevant or ... excessive” content. While the content itself remains online, it cannot be found through online searches of the individual’s name.

In the latest ECJ case to be heard in Luxembourg on Tuesday, the French data regulator is seeking to extend that power so that it applies universally. That would permit national regulators to hide articles deemed unacceptable not only from their own cyberspace such as google.fr, but also from global domains including google-com and from those of other countries.

Google is resisting the claim on the grounds that it would set a precedent for authoritarian regimes to limit free speech.

France’s data regulator, the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertės (CNIL), has argued that if it upholds a complaint by a French citizen, search engines such as Google should not only be compelled to remove links from google.fr but all Google domains.

Otherwise, it maintains, inaccurate data is still visible to the curious who can can simply fake their IP address to pretend they are searching from a non-EU country. CNIL believes that the right to be forgotten will become worthless if not applied universally.

Human rights organisation Article 19, whose name derives from the clause in the UN’s universal declaration of human rights which guarantees free speech, fears that access to all sorts of media and information could be severely restricted if states such as China, Russia and Saudi Arabia adopt a similar approach.

Thomas Hughes, the executive director of Article 19, said: “This case could see the right to be forgotten threatening global free speech. European data regulators should not be allowed to decide what internet users around the world find when they use a search engine. The [court] must limit the scope of the right to be forgotten in order to protect the right of internet users around the world to access information online.”

The right to privacy and right to freedom of expression must be balanced when deciding whether websites should be de-listed, he said. “If European regulators can tell Google to remove all references to a website, then it will be only a matter of time before countries like China, Russia and Saudi Arabia start to do the same. The [ECJ] should protect freedom of expression, not set a global precedent for censorship.”

Judgment is expected to be reserved until next year. The UK is still subject to ECJ rulings though the legal relationship is likely to change following Brexit.

In June last year, Canada’s supreme court ruled that Canadian courts did have the right to force Google to remove links globally. “The internet has no borders – its natural habitat is global,” the court declared. At the time, Google was hoping to be able to resist such orders where it could prove that complying would force it to violate other countries’ laws.
https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...peech-say-ngos





The EU Could Vote to Wreck the Internet Tomorrow

Link taxes and mandatory copyright filters are still points of contention.
Karl Bode

The EU is preparing to vote Wednesday on sweeping new copyright guidelines that could dramatically reshape the internet and potentially harm your ability to share content online.

As noted previously, the proposal is being driven by rights holders frightened by technological change, including brick and mortar publishers eager to blame companies like Google for their failure to evolve in the modern internet era.

And while the EU’s new Copyright Directive may be a well intentioned effort to modernize EU copyright rules, it still contains numerous provisions that could significantly harm the open internet. Most of those provisions remain largely intact despite a July vote that sent the proposal back to the drawing board in the wake of widespread activist backlash.

The most problematic provisions of the plan include new licensing fees for sharing anything more than “insubstantial” portions of content. Such a “link tax” could prove costly for small news outlets, and, depending on final wording, could put volunteer-centric organizations like Wikipedia at risk since the original proposal failed to include a noncommercial exception.

The most controversial component of the plan mandates that any website that lets users upload text, sounds, images, code, or other copyrighted works for public consumption (read: most of them) would need to employ automated copyright systems that filter these submissions against a database of copyrighted works at the website owner’s expense.

As we’ve consistently highlighted, such filters routinely don’t work very well.

Google’s Content ID system, for example, cost $100 million to develop, and routinely flags content for takedown that’s perfectly legitimate, and often not even covered by copyright. Earlier this year, a musician that uploaded a 10-hour video filled with nothing but white noise received five different takedown requests courtesy of companies that sell sleep therapy products.

Fighting these takedown requests can often be a costly and sisyphean affair, as recently documented by a German music professor who faced numerous takedown requests for classical music pieces that were in the public domain under German law.

“We already know that these systems are historically faulty and often lead to false positives,” the Wikimedia Foundation said in a blog post this week. “For example, consider the experience of a German professor who repeatedly received copyright violation notices when using public domain music from Beethoven, Bartók, and Schubert in videos on YouTube.”

It’s not hard to see how taking such a broken system and foisting it upon the better part of an entire continent could prove problematic.

And while there were more than 203 new amendments added to the EU copyright proposal ahead of tomorrow’s vote, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has complained that many of these changes are compromises in name only.

These non-improvements were courtesy of a “renewed lobbying campaign from the music and mainstream news industry” and “a conflicted and wavering set of Internet tech giants,” noted the EFF in a recent website post. The EFF has argued that Article 11 (the link tax”) and Article 13 (mandatory copyright filters) should be deleted from the text entirely.

Activist and author Cory Doctorow tells Motherboard that it’s impossible to know which direction the vote will go ahead of Wednesday’s vote, and that even if approved, it will still be some time before the law is fully imposed across the EU’s 28 member nations.

“After the vote, there's closed-door negotiations, another vote in January, and then national implementations in 28 member states,” Doctorow noted. Those individual countries will then have some leeway in interpreting the final directive and turning it into functional law. Said interpretations could result in measures that are better, or worse, than the original proposal.

The EU’s copyright plan was introduced in 2016, and has been bogged in confusing gamesmanship ever since. One thing remains clear: if passed with its most problematic components intact, the EU’s plan would not only impose new operational and cost burdens upon countless websites, but could also potentially harm free expression online.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...ernet-tomorrow





EU Approves Controversial Internet Copyright Law, Including ‘Link Tax’ and ‘Upload Filter’

Key provisions were amended to reduce potential harm, but critics say vote is ‘catastrophic’
James Vincent

The European Parliament has voted on changes to the Copyright Directive, a piece of legislation intended to update copyright for the internet age. In a session this morning, MEPs approved amended versions of the directive’s most controversial provisions: Articles 11 and 13, dubbed by critics as the “link tax” and “upload filter.”

Article 11 is intended to give publishers and newspapers a way to make money when companies like Google link to their stories, while Article 13 requires platforms like YouTube and Facebook to scan uploaded content to stop the unlicensed sharing of copyrighted material. Critics say these two provisions pose a dire threat to the free flow of information online, and will be open to abuse by copyright trolls and censors.

Defenders of the Copyright Directive and its controversial clauses say this is an unfair characterization. They point to existing laws and newly-introduced amendments that will block the worst excesses of this legislation (like, for example, a law that excuses parodies and memes from copyright claims). They say that the campaign against the directive has been funded by US tech giants eager to retain their control over the web’s platforms.

In remarks following the vote in Parliament this morning, MEP Axel Voss, who has led the charge on introducing Articles 11 and 13 thanked his fellow politicians “for the job we have done together.” “This is a good sign for the creative industries in Europe,” said Voss.

Opposing MEPs like Julia Reda of the Pirate Party described the outcome as “catastrophic.”

It’s important to note that this is far from the end of the story for the Copyright Directive and its impact on the web. The legislation approved today still faces a final vote in the European Parliament in January (where it’s possible, though very unlikely, it will be rejected). After that, individual EU member states will still get to choose how to put the directive in law. In other words, each country will be able to interpret the directive as they see fit.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/1...11-13-approved





The Man Behind the EU’s Copyright Law is “Surprised” by What’s in the Proposal
Ephrat Livni

The European Union Parliament on Sept. 12 voted to approve new copyright laws that will transform how people in Europe and beyond use and profit from the internet. But even the man behind the legislation, Axel Voss, was apparently unaware of what exactly he voted for.

Emanuel Karlsten, a reporter for Sweden’s Breakit news site, spoke with Voss, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and the EU’s copyright rapporteur, after the vote. Karlsten asked about a last-minute amendment that will bar the filming of sports events. The MEP replied in a recorded conversation, “This was kind of mistake I think by the JURI committee. Someone amended this. No one had been aware of this.”

European Parliament press officer John Schranz at that point broke in to explain that he was aware of the provision in question, calling it “amendment 76.” Schranz said that the amendment doesn’t bar individuals from filming sporting events. Rather, “the main target” is online betting companies enticing viewers to their sites with video that they have no right to film. He objected to the fact that the “Greens and others” interpret the provision as having a much wider application.

But the MEP Voss admitted, “I didn’t know that this was in the proposal so far, so of course I have to deal with it now. I do not consider that the commission and council will have this inside the proposal.” Voss added that “because of the time pressure” and general focus on other, more notable aspects of the law, it’s possible that the measure was insufficiently scrutinized. But he reassured Karlsten that MEPs will be meeting again to go over the law in its entirety. “Of course we have to discuss this,” he said of the provision in question.

Voss isn’t kidding when he says he’s been busy. The controversial Copyright Directive, which aims to compensate content creators and limit intellectual property violators, was rejected in July. Two sections of the legislation in particular have been in dispute—Article 11, which would charge a link tax to news aggregators, and Article 13, which would require platforms to install software that reviews content for copyright violations.

Vocal opponents, including tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple as well as internet pioneers like Vint Cerf, argue that the law will stifle the flow of information on the web and turn corporations into intellectual property police, using technology that’s insufficiently nuanced for the task. Meanwhile, supporters—musicians, filmmakers, news publishers—say the law would right an imbalance online and ensure that content creators are compensated for their contributions to culture.

Karlsten notes that MEPs complained at a press conference after the vote yesterday that Facebook and Google tried to manipulate their votes with email campaigns, ignoring the fact that messages were also sent by concerned individuals. “They do not believe people in Europe really are worried about what this directive will bring,” the Swedish reporter contends.

He tells Quartz that Voss’s surprise about the sport filming provision is indicative of a much larger problem. “I was actually flabbergasted by my time in the parliament. It exceeded my worst fears about the competence of the MEPs handling of this directive.” With over 250 amendments up for vote, the MEPs were likely overwhelmed. Karlsten suggests, “That is a lot more than they are used to. But still: [Schranz] knew about this very amendment, when Voss did not. So this is something that was meant to be there—for some reason, by someone’s concern. It is mind-boggling that Voss voted for it, when he really thought it was a bad idea.”

The reporter believes the copyright rapporteur was either deceived or indifferent. Either way, that’s not a great sign.
https://qz.com/1389385/article-11-an...copyright-law/





Sony Finally Admits It Doesn’t Own Bach and It Only Took a Bunch of Public Pressure

Here’s the thing about different people playing the same piece of music: sometimes, they’re going to sound similar. And when music is by a composer who died 268 years ago, putting his music in the public domain, a bunch of people might record it and some of them might put it online. In this situation, a combination of copyright bots and corporate intransigence led to a Kafkaesque attack on music.

Musician James Rhodes put a video of himself playing Bach on Facebook. Sony Music Entertainment claimed that 47 seconds of that performance belonged to them. Facebook muted the video as a result.

So far, this is stupid but not unusually stupid in the world of takedowns. It’s what happened after Rhodes got Sony’s notice that earned it a place in the Hall of Shame.

One argument in favor of this process is that there are supposed to be checks and balances. Takedown notices are supposed to only be sent by someone who owns the copyright in the material and actually believes that copyright’s been infringed. And if a takedown notice is wrong, a counter-notice can be sent by someone explaining that they own the work or that it’s not infringement.

Counter-notices have a lot of problems, not the least of which is that the requirements are onerous for small-time creators, requiring a fair bit of personal information. There’s always the fear that, even for someone who knows they own the work, that the other side will sue them anyway, which they cannot afford.

Rhodes did dispute the claim, explaining that “this is my own performance of Bach. Who died 300 years ago. I own all the rights.” Sony rejected this reasoning.

While we don’t know for sure what Sony’s process is, we can guess that a copyright bot, or a human acting just as mechanically, was at the center of this mess. A human doing actual analysis would have looked at a video of a man playing a piece of music older than American copyright law and determined that it was not something they owned. It almost feels like an automatic response also rejected Rhodes’ appeal, because we certainly hope a thoughtful person would have received his notice and accepted it.

Rhodes took his story to Twitter, where it picked up some steam, and emailed the heads of Sony Classical and Sony’s public relations, eventually getting his audio restored. He tweeted “What about the thousands of other musicians without that reach…?” He raises a good point.

None of the supposed checks worked. Public pressure and the persistence of Rhodes was the only reason this complaint went away, despite how the rules are supposed to protect fair use and the public domain.

How many more ways do we need to say that copyright bots and filters don’t work? That mandating them, as the European Union is poised to do, is dangerous and shortsighted? We hear about these misfires roughly the same way they get resolved: because they generate enough noise. How many more lead to a creator’s work being taken down with no recourse?
https://www.eff.org/takedowns/sony-f...ublic-pressure

















Until next week,

- js.



















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