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Old 14-11-18, 07:44 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - November 17th, ’18

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Volume XVII, Issue Number I



























November 17th, 2018




YouTube CEO Calls EU’s Proposed Copyright Regulation Financially Impossible

‘No company could take on such a financial risk’
Julia Alexander

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has once again decried the European Union’s proposed copyright directive, arguing in a new blog post that it’s impossible for a platform like YouTube to comply with the suggested regulations.

This is the second blog post Wojcicki has published on Article 13, a part of the copyright directive that calls for stricter copyright infringement enforcement that puts the responsibility on the platform instead of the user. This marks the first time the CEO has vehemently stated that YouTube does not have the technical or financial capabilities to enforce the kind of copyright restriction the European Union is seeking.

There are more than 400 hours of video uploaded every minute to the platform, and putting the onus of responsibility on platforms like YouTube to catch every video isn’t fair, according to Wojcicki. She used “Despacito,” the most watched video on YouTube, as an example of how complicated the process can become.

“This video contains multiple copyrights, ranging from sound recording to publishing rights,” Wojcicki wrote. “Although YouTube has agreements with multiple entities to license and pay for the video, some of the rights holders remain unknown. That uncertainty means we might have to block videos like this to avoid liability under article 13. Multiply that risk with the scale of YouTube, where more than 400 hours of video are uploaded every minute, and the potential liabilities could be so large that no company could take on such a financial risk.”

YouTube has gone on the offensive over the last month to garner support in opposing the EU’s copyright directive. The company’s creators account on Twitter has tweeted out multiple videos from creators condemning the directive, and a site dedicated to informing users about Article 13 launched last month.

It’s not just a campaign to appease creators, either. The company has released a number of updated statistics regarding its Content ID system, which pays copyright holders for their original work if used in another creator’s video.

“To date, we have used the system to pay rights holders more than €2.5B for third party use of their content,” Wojcicki wrote. “We believe Content ID provides the best solution for managing rights on a global scale.”

YouTube has invested more than $100 million into its Content ID system since it launched in October 2007. Wojcicki still sees it as the best way of tracking copyright infringement and ensuring that copyright owners are paid when their material is used.

“Platforms that follow these rules, and make a good effort to help rights holders identify their content, shouldn’t be held directly liable for every single piece of content that a user uploads,” Wojcicki wrote.

Wojcicki’s note also includes some information about YouTube viewing habits in Europe, acknowledging how restrictions imposed by a copyright directive that YouTube will have to enforce to protect itself could affect European users and creators.

“EU residents are at risk of being cut off from videos that, in just the last month, they viewed more than 90 billion times,” Wojcicki wrote. “Those videos come from around the world, including more than 35 million EU channels, and they include language classes and science tutorials as well as music videos.”

Although the EU’s copyright directive will affect creators and their ability to use copyrighted content — even under the Fair Use Act — YouTube’s primary concern seems to be the financial burden associated with complying. The European Union will have its final vote on whether to pass the copyright directive in January.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/12/...european-union





DOD File Sharing Tool Disabled Due to Vulnerability
Mark Pomerleau  

Department of Defense leaders have disabled a secure file sharing system due to security risks and have not set a date to reinstate the technology.

The Army Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center Safe Access File Exchange, or AMRDEC SAFE site was disabled as a preventative measure after outside agencies identified potential security risks, a statement from AMRDEC to Fifth Domain said.

The statement also said it is uncertain if the site will be reinstated, although DoD officials are not aware of any other government-run secure file transfer sites.

“AMRDEC SAFE was initially developed to facilitate the exchange of large data files between AMRDEC and its industry partners and customers. We recognize that the service provided by SAFE is now used by a variety of government agencies, and will continue to work with our higher headquarters to determine the appropriate way ahead,” the statement said.

The tool was created as an alternate to the traditional File Transfer Protocol or email, and operates much like the popular commercial file-sharing system Dropbox. SAFE supported file sizes up to 2 gigabytes.

Anyone could use SAFE to send unclassified files a .mil or .gov email address, however, only users with valid DoD Common Access Card (CAC) can send files to other addresses such as .com or .edu.
https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/2018...vulnerability/





Oh Look, Wireless Sector Investment Is Declining Despite Tax Cuts, Repeal Of Net Neutrality
Karl Bode

You'll recall that one of the top reasons for killing popular net neutrality rules was that it had somehow killed broadband industry investment. Of course, a wide array of publicly-available data easily disproves this claim, but that didn't stop FCC boss Ajit Pai and ISPs from repeating it (and in some cases lying before Congress about it) anyway. We were told, more times that we could count, that with net neutrality dead, sector investment would spike.

You'll be shocked to learn this purported boon in investment isn't happening.

A few weeks ago, Verizon made it clear its CAPEX would be declining, and the company's deployment would see no impact despite billions in tax cuts and regulatory favors by the Trump FCC. Trump's "tax reform" alone netted Verizon an estimated $3.5 billion to $4 billion. A recent FCC policy order, purporting to speed up 5G wireless deployment (in part by eliminating local authority over negotiations with carriers), netted Verizon another estimated $2 billion. And that's before you even get to the potential revenue boost thanks to the repeal of net neutrality and elimination of broadband privacy rules.

Ironically, Verizon's dip in CAPEX came right on the heels of the wireless industry and Ajit Pai, in perfectly coordinated unison, trying to claim that a CAPEX rise in 2017 was directly due to the repeal of net neutrality. They ignored an important point however: net neutrality wasn't even repealed until June of this year. If this endless roster of favors was to impact network investment, accelerate network deployment, and unleash a magical wave of "innovation," that should all be happening right now. And yet, the opposite is happening. And of course it's not just Verizon. AT&T and Sprint are also reducing overall CAPEX:

"Sprint, Verizon and AT&T have all reduced their overall capex numbers for 2018. The operators cite a variety of reasons, from timing issues to more efficient network technologies. But the ultimate result is the same: Where there was once excitement, now there’s a decided sense of pragmatism."

Now there's a number of different reasons for this, including some cost savings in moving from legacy hardware to more efficient virtualization technologies. But again, a decline is not what was promised ahead of the sales pitches for the tax cuts and the attack on net neutrality. The nation was, time and time again, promised unrivaled "innovation and investment boosts" if the nation's companies received a multi-billion-dollar tax cut, and net neutrality and other "regulatory underbrush" was cleared out of the way. That didn't happen.

Instead of investing all these tax breaks, perks, and savings back into the network, they were pocketed by investors and executives. Which, for anybody with half of a functional brain stem was the entire point of having a former Verizon lawyer running the FCC in the first place. This is a longstanding trend in telecom: promise the public the world if they get tax cuts, subsidies, and blind deregulation, then avoid doing pretty much all of those things while pocketing the savings. Perhaps someday America will actually learn some kind of lesson from the experience.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...utrality.shtml





Wireless Throttling: Senators Ask Four Major Carriers About Video Slowdowns

Research found throttling of YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, and Skype.
Jon Brodkin

Three US Senate Democrats today asked the four major wireless carriers about allegations they've been throttling video services and—in the case of Sprint—the senators asked about alleged throttling of Skype video calls.

Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent the letters to AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile, noting that recent research using the Wehe testing platform found indications of throttling by all four carriers.

"All online traffic should be treated equally, and Internet service providers should not discriminate against particular content or applications for competitive advantage purposes or otherwise," the senators wrote.

Specifically, the Wehe tests "indicated throttling on AT&T for YouTube, Netflix, and NBC Sports... throttling on Verizon for Amazon Prime, YouTube, and Netflix... throttling on Sprint for YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Skype Video calls... [and] delayed throttling, or boosting, on T-Mobile for Netflix, NBC Sports, and Amazon Prime by providing un-throttled streaming at the beginning of the connection, and then subsequently throttling the connection," the senators' letters said.

Much of the throttling can be explained by carriers' policies of limiting video throughput, particularly on lower-cost wireless plans, a practice that wouldn't necessarily have violated the net neutrality rules repealed by the Federal Communications Commission. Current FCC rules don't ban throttling or blocking, but the FCC still requires carriers to disclose throttling and other forms of network management.

We asked all four carriers for responses to the senators' letter today. Sprint confirmed to Ars that it received the senators' letter and said it will respond directly to the senators. AT&T questioned the accuracy of the research.

We'll update this story with any responses from the other carriers.

Sprint denied Skype throttling

Wehe, which we wrote about in January, was created by David Choffnes, a Northeastern University professor who researches distributed systems and networking. Wehe relies on an app for Android and iPhone; the throttling allegations are based on user tests run with these apps.

Sprint previously denied the allegation that it throttles Skype.

"We do not impose any restrictions on VoIP traffic or VoIP services," Sprint told Ars last week. "Sprint is not throttling Skype, and Sprint does not single out Skype or any individual content provider in this way."

Ars is working on a separate story about the Sprint/Skype allegations, which we expect to publish within the next week.

AT&T disputed the Wehe research, and pointed to an analysis made last month by mobile industry lobby group CTIA. "CTIA thoroughly debunked Wehe app last month," an AT&T spokesperson told Ars today.

But the CTIA did not dispute any specific Wehe data. The CTIA blog says, "The Wehe app is not measuring performance between users and content providers like Netflix or YouTube, but instead uses simulated data traffic to their own servers. This simulated traffic between artificial network end points is 1) not disclosed and 2) has nothing to do with actual network performance between mobile customers and actual content providers."

However, the CTIA blog did not say whether carriers treat the actual content providers differently than the Wehe app's simulation of those providers' traffic. CTIA acknowledged that the Wehe app detected "basic wireless network management... that reduce video resolution of data traffic flowing through their sites or apps depending on the consumer’s mobile device." CTIA argued that carriers put consumers "in the driver’s seat" by providing "the ability to alter video resolution settings or sign up for data plans that do or don’t use those features."

The senators' letters say that the throttling found by Wehe "would violate the principles of net neutrality and unfairly treat consumers who are unaware that their carriers are selecting which services receive faster or slower treatment."

The senators asked the carriers for written answers to a series of questions by December 6. The questions are as follows:

• Please provide a list of all applications or services that are subject to traffic discrimination.
• When did your company put into practice policies to throttle or prioritize Internet traffic for consumers? What is the purpose of these policies?
• Do you inform customers about differentiation in the treatment of Internet traffic, particularly video or communications services? If so, how? If no, Why not?
• Are consumers able to opt-in or opt-out of traffic differentiation? Does a customer's choice change the price or affect their service, such as data allocation or requiring a different plan?
• Does your company implement traffic differentiation policies based on a consumers' contract or the brand of service? If so, please describe which plans experience throttling or prioritization, including prepaid and lower‐cost plans.
• How do you determine which network traffic receives faster or slower treatment? Is it based on content, behavior, or IP address?
• Are applications or services provided notice regarding the throttling of their customers using your network? Does your company provide such companies the ability to avoid traffic discrimination, and if so, under what financial and operational conditions?
• Does your company engage in throttling or prioritization of services for subscribers of Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) that use your company's network? Are these MVNOs aware of such throttling or prioritization?

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai was asked about the allegations at a press conference after today's commission meeting. "My understanding is that the data and analysis that went into those conclusions have not been made available to the extent that others independently can verify those results," Pai said.

Allegations of throttling can be submitted to the Federal Trade Commission, Pai said. The FTC has no rule against throttling, but it could try to punish carriers if they mislead consumers about the existence of throttling.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...deo-slowdowns/





OK Google, Why was Your Web Traffic Hijacked and Routed through China, Russia Today?

BGP attack committed 'grand theft internet'
Shaun Nichols

People's connections in the US to Google – including its cloud, YouTube, and other websites – were suddenly rerouted through Russia and into China in a textbook Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijacking attack.

That means folks in Texas, California, Ohio, and so on, firing up their browsers and software and connecting to Google and its services were instead meandering through systems in Russia and China, and not reaching servers belonging to the Silicon Valley giant. Netizens outside of America may also have been affected.

The Chocolate Factory confirmed that for a period on Monday afternoon, from 1312 to 1435 Pacific Time, connections to Google Cloud, its APIs, and websites were being diverted through IP addresses belonging to overseas ISPs. Sites and apps built on Google Cloud, such as Spotify, Nest, and Snapchat, were also brought down by the interception.

Specifically, network connectivity to Google was instead routed through TransTelekom in Russia (mskn17ra-lo1.transtelecom.net), and into a China Telecom gateway (ChinaTelecom-gw.transtelecom.net) that black-holed the packets. Both hostnames have since stopped resolving to IP addresses.

The black-hole effect meant Google and YouTube, and apps and sites that relied on Google Cloud, appeared to be offline to netizens. It is possible information not securely encrypted could have been intercepted by the aforementioned rogue nodes, however, our understanding is, due to the black-hole effect, it's likely most if not all connections weren't spied on: TCP connections would fail to establish, and no information would be transferred. That's the best case scenario, at least.

Suspicious

Essentially, someone advertised to the core systems that direct the internet's highways that packets bound for Google IP addresses would be best served by going through TransTelekom and into China Telecom. A third rerouting attempt through an ISP in Nigeria was attempted, though it doesn't appear to have succeeded. How exactly routes are commandeered is explained here, and the technique is not new – it's just that the world's backbone networks hope it doesn't happen too often. It's usually by accident, with one network inadvertently acting as a conduit for someone else's traffic, although it typically lasts a few seconds rather than more than an hour.

"Throughout the duration of this issue Google services were operating as expected and we believe the root cause of the issue was external to Google," said the web ad giant, which declined to name names. "We will conduct an internal investigation of this issue and make appropriate improvements to our systems to help prevent or minimize future recurrence."

The search goliath earlier noted:

We've received a report of an issue with Google Cloud Networking as of Monday, 2018-11-12 14:16 US/Pacific. We have reports of Google Cloud IP addresses being erroneously advertised by internet service providers other than Google. We will provide more information by Monday, 2018-11-12 15:00 US/Pacific.

While Google was hesitant to draw any conclusions, cloud security experts have little doubt that the BGP hijacking was intentional, rather than a brief typo in a config file or a fat finger in a terminal, and that the people behind it were almost certainly up to no good by intercepting Google Cloud connections.

"Our analysis is, given the size and scope and given the countries involved, it is highly unlikely it was accidental," Ameet Naik, senior technical marketing manager at cloud networking monitoring biz ThousandEyes, told The Register today.

"When you have an attack involving Google in countries like Russia and China, you might call that grand theft internet."

Naik said the packet thieves could have been looking to do anything from temporarily disabling Google platforms and APIs, to potentially snooping on traffic from users on Google's services. He noted that the same technique was used back in April to reroute Amazon cloud traffic in an attempt to get at crypto-currency wallets. China Telecom also has form in misdirecting traffic by advertising new routes.

Such BGP attacks can be trivial to pull off for miscreants within ISPs, or governments holding guns to telco admins' heads, given the open nature of BGP, which networks use to effectively route traffic between service providers around the world.

"The internet is built on such an open chain of trust that it is not hard for anybody to inject fake information," Naik said. "It really is that simple."
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/1...ussia_routing/





Nigerian Firm Takes Blame for Routing Google Traffic Through China
Jane Lanhee Lee, Paresh Dave

Nigeria’s Main One Cable Co took responsibility on Tuesday for a glitch that temporarily caused some Google global traffic to be misrouted through China, saying it accidentally caused the problem during a network upgrade.

The issue surfaced on Monday afternoon as internet monitoring firms ThousandEyes and BGPmon said some traffic to Alphabet Inc’s Google had been routed through China and Russia, raising concerns that the communications had been intentionally hijacked.

Main One said in an email that it had caused a 74-minute glitch by misconfiguring a border gateway protocol filter used to route traffic across the internet. That resulted in some Google traffic being sent through Main One partner China Telecom, the West African firm said.

Google has said little about the matter. It acknowledged the problem on Monday in a post on its website that said it was investigating the glitch and said it believed the problem originated outside the company. The company did not say how many users were affected or identify specific customers.

Google representatives could not be reached on Tuesday to comment on Main One’s statement.

Even though Main One said it was to blame, some security experts said the incident highlighted concerns about the potential for hackers to conduct espionage or disrupt communications by exploiting known vulnerabilities in the way traffic is routed over the internet.

The U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission, a Washington-based group that advises the U.S. Congress on security issues, plans to look into the issue, said Commissioner Michael Wessel.

“We will work to gain more facts about what has happened recently and look at what legal tools or legislation or law enforcement activities can help address this problem,” Wessel said.

Glitches in border gateway protocol filters have caused multiple outages to date, including cases where traffic from U.S. internet and financial services firms was routed through Russia, China and Belarus.

Yuval Shavitt, a network security researcher at Tel Aviv University, said it was possible that Monday’s issue was not an accident.

“You can always claim that this is some kind of configuration error,” said Shavitt, who last month co-authored a paper alleging that the Chinese government had conducted a series of internet hijacks.

Main One, which describes itself as a leading provider of telecom and network services for businesses in West Africa, said that it had investigated the matter and implemented new processes to prevent it from happening again.

Reporting by Jane Lanhee Lee and Paresh Dave in San Francisco; Editing by Jim Finkle, Tom Brown and Frances Kerry
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-a...-idUSKCN1NI2D9





Elon Musk's SpaceX Wins FCC Approval to Deploy 7,518 Satellites
Todd Shields

Elon Musk’s SpaceX won permission to deploy more than 7,000 satellites, far more than all operating spacecraft currently aloft, from U.S. regulators who also moved to reduce a growing risk from space debris as skies grow more crowded.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. has two test satellites aloft, and it earlier won permission for a separate set of 4,425 satellites -- which like the 7,518 satellites authorized Thursday are designed to provide broadband communications. It has said it plans to begin launches next year.

Space companies riding innovations that include smaller and cheaper satellites -- with some just 4 inches long and weighing only 3 pounds -- are planning fleets that will fly fast and low, offering communications now commonly handled by larger, more expensive satellites.

Right now there are fewer than 2,000 operating satellites, and the planned additional space traffic demands vigilance, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said before the agency voted Thursday on a variety of space-related matters including SpaceX’s application, debris rules, and other space matters.

“Even a centimeter-wide object can wreak devastating damage to satellites,” Pai said. He pointed to the 2013 film “Gravity” that portrayed devastating consequences including a spacecraft’s destruction from a debris strike.

The agency on a 4-0 vote advanced rules to require more calculations to demonstrate a planned spacecraft poses a minimal risk of collisions, and to minimize new orbiting debris -- for instance, from devices that remain aloft after releasing a satellite.

Read more: Musk Dares to Go Where Others Failed With Space-Based Web

About 500,000 small pieces of debris were estimated to be in orbit in 2012, roughly five times the total in 2004, the FCC said in a notice.

The number of satellites orbiting Earth from all nations stood at 1,886 in August, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists policy group.

“Certain orbits are getting crowded,” Henry Hertzfeld, director of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, said in an interview. “It is a problem that’s getting magnified in low Earth orbit by the proliferation” of small satellites.

The FCC gets involved with satellites as part of its role regulating the airwaves that spacecraft use to communicate.

The FCC also approved access to the U.S. market for satellites from Kepler Communications Inc., Telesat Canada and LeoSat MA.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...000-satellites





Directors Claim Small Victory in Bid to Save Classic Movie Service FilmStruck
Rebecca Keegan

"Round up your buddies," Steven Spielberg told Edgar Wright, when a campaign was launched to save FilmStruck. Now, a free-standing streaming service featuring The Criterion Collection is set to be launched.

They rode in like John Sturges’ Magnificent Seven — or Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai — choose your classic film reference. A loosely organized group of filmmakers and actors, some scattered on sets, some engaged in the promotional march for their new films, one displaced by fire, has banded together to try and save a tiny, besieged streaming service.

WarnerMedia plans to shut down FilmStruck, an art house and classic film subscription-streaming service launched in 2016. Though beloved in the Hollywood creative community for the way it makes hard-to-track-down cinematic masterpieces accessible to a broad audience, FilmStruck was dismissed as "subscale" by the company’s new corporate parent, AT&T, which plans to launch a large streaming service in late 2019.

The news of its closure inspired filmmakers to lobby the company, and Friday, The Criterion Collection revealed a plan to launch a free-standing streaming service in the spring featuring its vast collection of classics, the source of much of FilmStruck’s vaunted library. Additionally, the library will be part of the larger WarnerMedia’s platform due next year 2019.

When Turner and Warner Bros. Digital Networks revealed the plan to shutter FilmStruck on Oct. 26, many filmmakers took to Twitter to express their dismay and sign a “Keep FilmStruck Alive” Change.org petition, currently at more than 55,000 signatures. Edgar Wright did, too, but he also emailed Steven Spielberg, for whom he had co-written the Adventures of Tintin screenplay.

"I heard Steven and Martin Scorsese were talking to Warner about it, and I asked what I could do,” Wright told The Hollywood Reporter, speaking by phone from the Los Angeles set of a documentary he’s shooting about the pop-rock band Sparks. “[Spielberg] said, 'Well, if you want to, round up your buddies.'"

Wright quickly launched the auteur equivalent of a disaster call chain, enlisting Guillermo del Toro and Rian Johnson to track down their friends, and starting on the draft of a letter to Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman Toby Emmerich, which was ultimately signed by 21 people including Leonardo DiCaprio, Barbra Streisand, Christopher Nolan and Alfonso Cuaron. They sent the letter to Emmerich Monday night.

Emmerich does not have responsibility for FilmStruck, which is under the Turner division at WarnerMedia. While Wright speculated that the email might have ended up in Emmerich’s spam folder, the executive saw the letter and addressed it internally, a source close to the matter says.

As the clock ticked down, the filmmakers were trying to force the issue. "I reached out to five or seven filmmakers and actors at dinners, phone calls or emails," del Toro said, speaking from the Vancouver set of the horror film Antlers, which he’s producing. "The letter took a while so we kept at it at social occasions." The directors passed along edits on the letter to Emmerich, not unlike sharing notes on a script. Del Toro said he worked on the letter while being honored at the LACMA Art + Film Gala earlier this month, and while evacuating his home in Thousand Oaks due to the wildfires.

Wright contacted Karyn Kusama, who was in the midst of finishing a script and promoting her film Destroyer, which opens in a month. "How are we going to see these movies?" Kusama said. "It’s an incredibly important part of film history and understanding the language of cinema. To not have access to these movies, to imagine that they’ll disappear into this black hole. It was a no brainer to say, 'Oh, yeah, as filmmakers let’s try and do something.'" Wright also direct-messaged Barry Jenkins on Twitter, and Sunday night, Jenkins discussed the letter with Paul Thomas Anderson when they met up for a Q&A about Jenkins’ latest, If Beale Street Could Talk. "I’m just so glad that we all were able to come together,” Jenkins said. “I don’t know if it will do anything, but we have to at least try."

After the filmmakers shared their letter with Deadline, it was subsequently followed by yet another missive, signed by more than 30 other directors and producers. The outpouring had at least one very happy audience at WarnerMedia, within Turner, where a group of staffers were quietly cheering on their unexpected Hollywood cavalry, "We were pleasantly surprised by it," said a Turner source. "It’s a sign, hey, you did something good. People who are important artists cared about it pretty passionately. For a phone company based in Dallas, why are you making Barry Jenkins and Martin Scorsese mad if you don’t have to? So don’t."

Minutes after The Criterion Classic movie channel was unveiled Friday, del Toro told THR that the compromise is a "perfect not-missing-a-beat solution."
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...ictory-1162149





Pirate Studios Raises $20M from Talis Capital for its ‘Self-Service’ Tech-Enabled Music Studios
Steve O'Hear

Pirate Studios, the music technology company that operates fully automated and self-service 24 hour music studios, has secured $20 million. The investment was led by Talis Capital, the London-based VC family office.

Talis was already an existing backer of Pirate Studios, with Talis’ Matus Maar also named as a co-founder of the startup. Other investors include Eric Archambeau (Spotify investor and ex-partner at Benchmark and Wellington Partners), Bart Swanson of Horizons Ventures, and partners of Gaw Capital, the $20 billion Hong Kong-headquartered proptech fund.

The new funding will enable Pirate Studios to continue to expand across the U.K., Germany and the U.S., where it has been building what the startup describes as a community of musicians, DJs, producers and podcasters who need access to professional rehearsal, production and recording studios at affordable rates. The company charges as little as £4 per hour, depending on what kind of music studio space and facilities you book.

However, what really sets Pirate Studios apart from a lot of existing rehearsal rooms and music production and recording studios, is that the startup is employing a lot of tech to power the logistics around its service and, in theory, make it a lot more scalable. This includes online booking, 24 hour keycode access, and other IoT controls for managing facilities.

Perhaps even smarter, Pirate Studios offers “automated recording” and live streaming from many of its studios. This means that bands or DJs rehearsing in one of the company’s rooms can easily record their session via built in room mics and other inputs, and the studio’s cloud software will handle mixing and mastering afterwards. Likewise, rooms are set up to be able to video and audio stream sessions, too.

Both options tap into the YouTube, SoundCloud, and Spotify generation’s unstoppable appetite for more content from their favourite upcoming and established acts, as well as the dreaded music industry’s favourite new metric: how much social media reach an act has, which can in turn make or break a recording contract opportunity or the chance to get booked at larger, more lucrative live events.

I say all of the above as someone who was previously in quite a serious band and used to book rehearsal rooms on a regular basis. I’m also still in touch and collaborating with a number of gigging musicians and professional acts. However, during the last ten years, I’ve seen quite a few studios in London go out of business as property owners look to cash in, and even though there is something a little WeWork about Pirate Studios’ model (and being backed by relatively large amounts of VC cash at this stage) which makes me slightly uneasy, overall I’m very bullish on what the company offers.

Without a place to practice, hone your craft, in addition to somewhere to perform, rock ‘n’ roll really would be dead.

To that end, in just three years, Pirate has grown to 350 studios in 21 locations, including London, New York, and Berlin.

Cue statement from David Borrie, co-founder and CEO of Pirate Studios: “When we founded Pirate Studios our dream was to create innovative spaces to support emerging talent. We want to see music thrive and help musicians get their music out to their fans, through whatever route they think is most appropriate. We are building both the physical space to create, as well as the technology to record and share, that puts power back into the hands of musicians in a period when the digitisation of music continues to radically upset the old order of this industry”.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/14/pirate-studios/





How The Beatles Made 'The White Album'
Bob Boilen

Fifty years ago, just before the holidays in 1968, The Beatles put out not just a new album, but a double album, something relatively unheard of at the time. The album art was a stark, white, glossy cover with raised, slanted lettering that simply said, "The Beatles." That self-titled album, with its 30 songs that span genres from American country music to avant-garde tape collage, has come to be known as "The White Album." And in celebration of it's birth 50 years ago, The Beatles label Apple Records has scoured the archives for a new deluxe edition of the album that, for the first time, includes previously unreleased, early demo recordings, studio outtakes and stunning remixes in both stereo and 5.1 surround.

Today we've got a conversation with the man who produced this 100-plus song celebration, Giles Martin, whose father, George Martin, produced "The White Album" back in '68 (along with most everything else The Beatles ever made). In this interview with Giles Martin, you'll hear some of the early demos, outtakes and remixes. But he begins by describing the process of making of the "The White Album," how it turned out to be a much-less planned and much more organic process than ever, and how that frustrated George Martin.

Giles Martin on how "The White Album" grew out of an almost free-form period of creativity for the band.

"'The White Album' was built brick-by-brick, with no idea what it would be like in the end. So they went to Rishikesh in India and they wrote songs. Don't forget they were no longer touring, so before Sgt. Pepper they were touring and they toured for four years constantly. But they recorded demos for pretty much everything. And we discovered these demos, the "Esher demos" [and they] are the template that became "The White Album." You get that sense of the demos, which is almost 'round the campfire, each one of them singing a song to the other.

"The difference of 'The White Album' is that you can hear the fact they have that freedom. You have to remember that they lost their manager, Brian Epstein, the year before. They had this foundation of confidence. They wanted to be the biggest pop band in the world and they became that, and then they wanted to be the most respected band in the world and they became that. They had this force of nature."

About inviting Eric Clapton to play on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

"I think Eric Clapton was [George Harrison's] best friend. And I think he asked Eric to come to the sessions because it's like, 'listen guys. Eric Clapton is my best friend. He's the best guitarist in the world. If he thinks I'm good surely you guys must.'"

On why he decided to remix "The White Album"

"What I am trying to do is, I'm trying to get you closer to the band. So I'm peeling off the layers of compression that [were] on there. I don't have to worry so much about [the] needle jumping out of the groove as they did in 1968."
https://www.npr.org/sections/allsong...he-white-album





Was this the Biggest Mistake in the History of the Music Business?
Tim Ingham

Question: what is entertainment’s highest-grossing weekend debut of all time?

Perhaps, what with reading this on a music industry publication, your mind goes straight to some of the biggest record launches in history: Michael Jackson’s Thriller? Adele’s 25?

Maybe your inner voice immediately rifles though cinema’s most dominant franchises: Star Wars? What about a Disney movie, or a global smash action flick like Fast & The Furious?

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Entertainment’s highest-grossing weekend debut, in fact, only took place two weeks ago.

It was claimed by a Western-themed video game called Red Dead Redemption 2 – the second in a series dubbed ‘Grand Theft Auto on horseback’ – which generated over $725m in just three days.

The wording above (‘highest-grossing weekend debut’) has been carefully chosen. Because the highest-grossing entertainment launch of all time actually kicked off on a Tuesday, in September, 2013. That launch was Grand Theft Auto V, another video game, which grossed more than $1bn during its opening 72 hours on sale.

Both Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto are made by Rockstar Games – a New York-HQ’d interactive entertainment company famed for its ability to bring filmic sophistication to the world of PlayStations and Xboxes, and for its ability to generate billions upon billions of dollars by doing so.

Ready for this?

The Grand Theft Auto franchise, and the core team behind Rockstar’s success, were, unbelievably, both once part of the music business.

They were allowed to leave 20 years ago. For an absolute pittance.

Let’s rewind.

Back in 1990, London-born Sam Houser, aged 19, landed a dream first job – working in the post-room at BMG’s UK HQ. Houser then supplemented his university studies by continuing to work at BMG for the next four years, focusing on pop music videos and VHS releases.

By 1994, he’d graduated, and took a full-time role within BMG’s new interactive entertainment division.

Houser, it turned out, had a natural talent for ‘A&R’ing’ video games – spotting titles that would sell big and signing them up as a label would an artist – and, by 1996, he was named Head of Development at BMG Interactive in the UK.

Got your palm located somewhere roughly near your forehead? Good. Prepare for the two to forcibly meet.

In late 1997, BMG Interactive released Grand Theft Auto, a 2D action-adventure game, which saw players fulfilling the objectives of criminal overlords across three cities.

The title was a commercial smash in the US and Europe – yet it emerged amid serious corporate turbulence.

In March 1998, convinced that its foray into video games had been a waste of time and money, BMG – under the instruction of owner Bertelsmann – agreed to sell off BMG Interactive.

According to Sam Houser, BMG let the company go, to New York-based Take Two Interactive, for a total consideration of $9m.

This deal included the BMG Interactive staff, plus all rights to the Grand Theft Auto franchise.

(For those who can see where this narrative is going: Red Dead Redemption 2 generated that $9m back within an hour of going on sale last month.)

Before we return to the story of Sam Houser, his brother Dan, and arguably the most successful entertainment company in history, let’s introduce an interesting voice to proceedings.

Strauss Zelnick had a ring-side seat for the BMG Interactive story in the mid-to-late-nineties.

Zelnick was hired as President and CEO of BMG Entertainment’s North American operations in 1995. By 1998, he’d impressed enough to get promoted into the same position worldwide at the major music company.

We’ll come back to what Zelnick is doing with his life today later on, because: (a) it pretty much backs up his version of events; and (b) it’s far too good a kiss-off for us to waste it here.

Suffice to say, MBW caught up with Zelnick recently for an interview about his time in music, which ended, quite abruptly, in 2000.

We learned that, before Zelnick joined BMG in 1995, he’d done two jobs which are highly relevant to this narrative: he was President & CEO of video games company Crystal Dynamics from 1993-1995, and he was President and COO of 20th Century Fox from 1989-1993.

Zelnick didn’t know the music business when he arrived at BMG – but he really knew the movie business, and he really, really knew the video games business.

Which was precisely why Zelnick, alongside his colleague J Moses, convinced BMG’s owners to launch BMG Interactive in the first place.

How, then, could Strauss Zelnick have allowed the team who would become Rockstar Games – alongside the almighty Grand Theft Auto franchise – to slip away from BMG?

His blunt answer: he didn’t. He claims that he fought tirelessly against the decision, but that his professional superiors refused to listen.

Naturally, MBW asked Zelnick an obvious question: did the music business make an error allowing BMG’s interactive entertainment talent to leave?

“I’d say it much more strenuously,” says Zelnick. “When I joined BMG, we all were aware that recorded music was a mature business, and management said, ‘What do you think of [expanding into] the movie business?’ I said, ‘Look, I really enjoyed my seven years in the movie business, and I’m proud of my track record, but it’s a very challenged asset class. Let’s look at the next big growth business in entertainment – let’s get into video games.’ So we did.”

Zelnick’s game plan was to lean on BMG’s existing global network of music distribution and marketing infrastructure, but for interactive entertainment releases – ostensibly, for no incremental expense. He was excited by the possibilities.

“We hired a team, and we started acquiring properties for distribution, and just on the eve of watching our first release [hit the market], Thomas Middelhoff, who was then [head] of Bertelsmann, forced us to divest BMG Interactive – over my noisy objections,” says Zelnick.

“I didn’t carry the day and we sold BMG Interactive for a penny, essentially, to what was then a fledgling entertainment company called Take-Two Interactive.

“I couldn’t have protested more but, at the end of the day, I had a boss.”

Incredible.

Here’s what subsequently happened. Sam Houser, along with his brother Dan, took over development of Grand Theft Auto at Rockstar Games.

In 2001, the third game in the Grand Theft Auto series – Grand Theft Auto III – arrived, offering a revolutionary 3D ‘open-world’ style of gameplay which would set the pattern for the rest of the series.

Grand Theft Auto III has grossed approximately $500m (14.5m units-plus) worldwide. 2004’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, has done even better.

Grand Theft Auto IV smashed records when it arrived in 2008, and has grossed around a billion dollars worldwide (25m units-plus).

GTA V, as we’ve already established, blasted through the billion-dollar milestone in just three days. It has now sold over 100m copies worldwide, at an estimated total retail gross of $3bn – $5bn.

Rockstar’s critically acclaimed Red Dead Redemption was launched in 2011. It’s sold over 15m copies worldwide, suggesting a retail gross of over $600m.

And Red Dead Redemption 2, with the biggest opening weekend in entertainment history, just shifted more than 17m copies into retail during its first 13 days on the market.

It will, just like GTA V before it, easily top $1bn in sales.

Which just leaves us to clear up one mystery: whatever happened to Strauss Zelnick?

Music industry watchers may remember him for something of a public fallout involving Clive Davis at BMG – a thorny topic we discuss in our full interview, which will be published on MBW in the coming days.

Once Zelnick left BMG in 2000, he founded Zelnick Media Capital, which specializes in leveraged buyouts and growth capital, and which currently has over $14bn in assets under its control.

Last month, Zelnick was announced as the new Chairman of CBS.

Oh, and there’s that other thing.

In 2007, Zelnick Media Capital led the acquisition of New York-based Take-Two Interactive. As a result, Strauss Zelnick became the video game company’s CEO & Chairman, and its largest shareholder.

Today, Take-Two Interactive, run by Zelnick, is one of the biggest players in video games, with an approximate market cap of $13bn. It owns commercial smash franchises including Bioshock, Civilization, Mafia and NBA 2K.

It also – thanks to probably the worst seven-figure sale in the history of the music business – owns Rockstar Games, Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption.
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.c...usic-business/





Hitman 2’s Denuvo DRM Cracked Days Before the Game’s Release

But recent Denuvo variants can often ward off pirates for months.
Kyle Orland

Over the years, we at Ars have watched with interest as anti-piracy technology Denuvo has progressed from the seemingly unbeatable scourge of the cracking scene to a trivial security measure routinely defeated within a day of a game's release. But Denuvo protection wasn't even able to provide a few hours of security for this week's official launch of Hitman 2, which has seen its DRM cracked days before the official release.

The early crack, released on November 10, was made possible by publisher Warner Bros.'s decision to make Hitman 2 available on November 9 to those who preordered the game—four days before the official street date of November 13. The quick crack also comes despite Hitman 2's use of a brand-new "version 5.3" variant of Denuvo, the latest in a long line of changes intended to thwart the cracking community.

Hitman 2's DRM situation mirrors that of Final Fantasy XV's March release on PC. In that case, the preloading of unencrypted game executable via Origin let crackers remove Denuvo protection four days before the game's launch date.

The quick cracking of Hitman 2 comes shortly after the Denuvo protection for both Soul Calibur 6 and Football Manager 2019 were publicly cracked four days after their respective releases. Prior to those games, recent versions of Denuvo had generally provided a longer window between release and cracking. Mega Man 11 and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey were both available for over a month before being cracked, for instance, while both Jurassic World Evolution and Puyo Puyo Tetris enjoyed three months of Denuvo-protected sales after their releases earlier this year.

The length of that crack-free window is important, because publishers who buy Denuvo's protection are paying to ensure legitimate sales are the only way to play a new game "during the crucial initial sales window when most of the sales are made," as a company spokesperson put it to Ars last year. Denuvo owner Irdeto echoed that sentiment in a press release last week that "the most critical part of the release cycle is the first 14 days as the majority of activations occur during this period. For highly anticipated titles, this could include up to 80% of sales, 50% of which are within the first four days."

The Hitman 2 cracking comes months after the July criminal complaint against Voksi, a Bulgarian cracker responsible for breaking Denuvo protections in many titles. Since then, the Denuvo cracking scene has been joined by a new group called FCKDRM, which seems to take its name and logo from that of GOG's recent anti-DRM public relations campaign.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/...games-release/





Inside the Messy, Dark Side of Nintendo Switch Piracy

Doxing rivals, stealing each other’s files, and poking around Nintendo’s servers are all a normal part of the ballooning Nintendo Switch hacking and piracy scenes.
Joseph Cox

The source of the leak had no chance of being traced. Someone, perhaps a professional games reviewer, had just helped dump a copy of Diablo III, a hotly anticipated Nintendo Switch game at least several days before its official launch date. The source had used a middleman who ultimately released the game for pirates to distribute among themselves.

This approach of disguising the original source of the leak by using a middleman was the right way to release games early, or ‘pre-street,’ one of the pirates chimed in, according to chat logs from a private group of a few dozen Nintendo Switch pirates obtained by Motherboard. Whoever the source was, they had released other games over the last few months, including games up to two weeks in advance of their general sale; a big win. In another instance, pirates managed to get their hands on Dark Souls: Remastered, another much-anticipated game ported to the Switch.

“They keep on coming,” a source from one of the private, tight-knit Switch chat rooms told Motherboard in an online chat.

Behind every free, pirated game, there’s a lot more going on.

“Welcome to the Switch scene. The drama is crazyyyyy,” the source added. Motherboard granted a number of sources anonymity to speak more candidly about private communities and illegal activity, and to avoid repercussions from other members; other sources requested anonymity because they did not have permission from their employers to speak to the press.

The Switch piracy community—much of which operates on the gamer-focused chat app Discord—is full of ingenuity, technical breakthroughs, and evolving cat-and-mouse games between the multi-billion dollar Nintendo and the passionate hackers who love the company but nonetheless illegally steal its games. Pirates deploy malware to steal each other’s files so they can download more games themselves. Groups deliberately plant code into others' Switches so they no longer work. And some people in the scene have been doxed, meaning they’ve had their personal information published online.

HOW PIRATES GET SWITCH GAMES

Pirating games for the Switch is not technically straightforward. Instead, there’s a complex supply chain constantly grinding away that helps people source and play unreleased games. There are reverse engineers who figure out how Nintendo’s own tools work, so hackers can then use them for their own advantage. There are coders who make programs to streamline the process of downloading or running games. Reviewers, developers, or YouTubers with access to games before general Switch users often leak unlock codes or other information to small groups, which then may trickle out to the wider community. These smaller groups may also have access to more boutique or niche leaks which rarely become public, such as demos from the servers of Nintendo Kiosks, which are consoles set up at special events. One source showed Motherboard alleged prototype Switch documents obtained from a developer meeting held last year.

To release a game, pirates may dump a copy from the physical cartridge; they can do this before the game releases in the United States by sourcing the cartridge from an Australian store, which releases earlier because of the time difference. But this only gets a game out one or two days before official release. For the more sought-after and early dumps, pirates often manage to grab a copy from Nintendo’s eShop, the company’s digital download game store that is built into the Switch. Here, pirates will likely use a piece of hacker-made software on their computers to talk to Nintendo’s servers, one pirate who uploads large archives of games explained to Motherboard in an online chat. The files can sometimes be downloaded early by anyone (by design), and are encrypted and need a so-called “titlekey” to unlock them and make the game playable. But reviewers or pirates with connections often obtain titlekeys and then share them. Crucially, titlekeys are not unique, and once grabbed, can be re-used by anyone to unlock a game.

JJB, who was until recently the administrator of the largest Switch piracy-focused Discord chat room called WarezNX, said pirates have had success in gaining access to parts of Nintendo’s infrastructure that is usually closed-off from ordinary Switch users.

These include servers used internally by Nintendo, such as one which hosts different versions of the Switch operating system. The trick to connecting to these usually off-limits servers was using files contained within the Switch Development Kit, which is typically only available to game creators, JJB said.

Playing pirated games requires more work than just downloading them. Pirates need to put their Switch into recovery mode—which involves physically connecting two pins inside the Switch with a paperclip or other tool. From there, pirates can download a bootmenu, which lets them select and launch software not specifically authorized by Nintendo. They also need to grab another piece of software that lets them install the pirated games themselves.

The largest Switch piracy Discord servers have thousands of members. Some of them are highly organized and user-friendly; on some servers, there is a bot that, when asked, will automatically send users a direct message with Google Drive links to a slew of Nintendo games, updates, and DLC to download for free.

Nintendo did not respond to a request for comment.

But the company has been working to make it harder to play pirated games. At its launch, the Switch contained a fundamental flaw in one of its chips—the Nvidia Tegra X1—which allowed hackers to gain more control over the console. Since July, Nintendo has rolled out fixed versions of its console. And in October, Nintendo tweaked how devices communicate with its servers, cutting off an established route of piracy. Developers of tools designed for ripping data from the company’s servers are now keeping them private because they are afraid that wider distribution will mean Nintendo will patch any techniques they are using.

“It’s insane they only got around to patching it now, when the exact same vulnerability was exploited for piracy on 3DS and Wii U for years,” one pirate who uploads large archives of games said.

Got a tip? You can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

JJB told Motherboard his community of hackers reverse engineer “internal Nintendo content to help improve the scene.”

“We mostly stay in the dark due to the legality of what we do,” he added. “By providing such leaks from the shadows [...] we try to improve the rate of development.”

Nintendo is notorious for aggressively protecting its intellectual property, including taking down fan-made recreations of games or tackling piracy head-on.

“Video game piracy is illegal,” a post on Nintendo’s official website reads. “Nintendo opposes those who benefit and trade off the creative work of game developers, artists, animators, musicians, motion capture artists and others.”

The company is still lagging behind the pirates in some ways. The pirate who uploads archives of games says Nintendo only takes down files with a specific set of keywords, such as “Donkey Kong,” “Mario,” or “Zelda.” The pirate said they tweaked these just slightly—such as “Nintendo” to “Ninbendo”—and has faced no problems. The biggest issue, at least for this pirate, has been Google. He shares games using Google Drive, and the company takes swift action against users consuming a high amount of bandwidth.

Nintendo’s stance doesn’t ultimately stop piracy. It just shifts the dynamic of how the groups behind piracy tools operate.

But not all pirates are on the same side.

THE HONORLESS PIRATES

Simon develops a piece of software called DAuther which is used to generate an authentication token to then connect a computer to Nintendo’s servers. This can be used to receive game update notifications from Nintendo, Simon told Motherboard. But it can also be used for piracy.

Each Switch comes with its own, baked-in certificate for accessing Nintendo’s servers—this is how Nintendo knows which Switch it is talking to. If the company does catch someone downloading games they don’t own, then Nintendo can ban that certificate, and by extension, the pirate’s Switch, meaning the pirate can no longer officially download games or play online. So certificates are a hot commodity in the piracy community.

Recently, someone distributed a copy of DAuther on 4chan, according to Simon and several posts on 4chan and Reddit. This copy, it turned out, was malicious: it was designed to steal the user’s certificate and upload it to the hacker’s own server. Simon believes that the certificate-grabbing malware was going to be used for piracy en masse.

“Whoever did this required lots and lots of certificates as they knew they’ll get caught out, pinpointed by Nintendo and banned quickly,” Simon told Motherboard. Simon fired back against the people who made the malicious copy of DAuther, and coded a tool that uploads “random shit” to the hacker’s server, potentially to overload it, according to Simon’s GitHub. One user on Reddit went further, and published the apparent personal details of the person running the server, which a moderator swiftly removed (an email sent to the uncovered email address by Motherboard was not returned.)

“The Switch scene is a bit of a dumpster fire at the moment, stuff like this is pretty common,” Simon told Motherboard.

And then there are rivalries and conflicts around more formal piracy gangs. Team Xecuter, an established piracy group that has also developed tools for the Xbox and Nintendo DS, released a version of their Switch tool that allows people to play pirated games and have more control over their console earlier this year. According to Mike Heskin, a security and Switch-focused researcher, Xecuter’s Switch tool included code that would disable, or ‘brick,’ the Switch of anyone who tried to copy the software without paying (Xecuter sells its software for profit). Heskin also accused Xecuter of stealing code from Atmosphere, a free Switch tool that he has worked on.

In an email, a representative of Team Xecuter denied the group deployed any bricking code, and said that the program locks Switch consoles with a password or until the software is updated (Heskin was able to circumvent this lock when he discovered the technique in June.) They also framed the lock as more of a challenge for hackers that may come across Xecuter’s own anti-piracy measures—a “harmless cat-and-mouse game” between hackers and competing piracy teams.

“Most of this was created by frustrated hackers that wanted to achieve what we did but did not like the fact that we make people pay for our product, as most hack software/products are free,” the representative added. As for stealing the Atmosphere code, Xecuter did not deny that claim out right, but said “we take inspiration from the work and documentation that is out there,” and “we are far from a ‘cut ‘n’ paste’ job.”

JJB, the former Discord admin, said there have been other cases of piracy tool code disabling Switches, but this was done by individuals to encourage others to “not run random shit of [off] the internet.”

Sometimes the scuffles between these piracy crews and researchers do trickle down to the ordinary consumer.

“Shit like this is why I’m gonna wait for the scene to die down a bit in hype, too much of a chance in my console getting maliciously hacked or bricked by assholes,” one Reddit user wrote in response to a thread on Simon’s tool.

The source with access to the chat logs of a private Switch group said “people are leaving and joining the scene left and right in response to bickering and feuds.”

”JUST REMARKABLY TOXIC, HONESTLY”

These sorts of tit-for-tat skirmishes are, as Xecuter said, rather harmless. At worst, someone’s Switch is going to become inoperable or they’ll be banned from Nintendo’s servers. But some sections of the community resort to aggressive, targeted harassment against other community members.

One Switch hacker Motherboard spoke to faced a wave of abuse in their Twitter direct messages after being doxed. They said they were also stalked, and other community members amplified the doxing, leading to more harassment. In this instance, the doxing appears to be motivated in part by transphobia towards the individual, judging by incendiary comments included with several of the doxing posts.

This hacker described the Switch hacking and piracy communities as “just remarkably toxic, honestly.”

“For a long time I thought the problem was the end users, i.e. people who wanted exploits for the purpose of piracy, and didn’t care past that. Thing is, a lot of the hackers, reverse engineers, [and] exploit devs are awful too,” they added. Multiple other sources also pointed to cases of doxing.

Some of those include unmasking people who have signed non-disclosure agreements with Nintendo, according to JJB, the former administrator of the WarezNX Discord, who shut down the server in October.

“Could not let any evidence stay up,” JJB explained to Motherboard just before closing the server. JJB did not elaborate on what specifically motivated the doxing, but said it was related to “disagreements internally, some people use it as a way to get things they otherwise would not.”

Communities can not last like this, with doxing, and hacking, at least in their current form. In part because of this, WarezNX has retreated to a more private setting, away from the thousands of other Nintendo fans who flooded the Discord.

“This does happen from time to time, almost like a cycle,” JJB added. “Once communities like WarezNX become as large and public as it did anyway, there will be a limited lifespan.”

That iteration of the server is currently offline.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...piracy-pirates





Couple Who Ran ROM Site to Pay Nintendo $12 Million

Crackdown on ROM sites and emulators could spell an existential threat to retro gaming.
Wajeeh Maaz

Nintendo has won a lawsuit seeking to take two large retro-game ROM sites offline, on charges of copyright infringement. The judgement, made public today, ruled in Nintendo’s favour and states that the owners of the sites LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co, will have to pay a total settlement of $12 million to Nintendo. The complaint was originally filed by the company in an Arizona federal court in July, and has since lead to a swift purge of self-censorship by popular retro and emulator ROM sites, who have feared they may be sued by Nintendo as well.

LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co were the joint property of couple Jacob and Cristian Mathias, before Nintendo sued them for what they have called “brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo’s intellectual property rights.” The suit never went to court; instead, the couple sought to settle after accepting the charge of direct and indirect copyright infringement. TorrentFreak reports that a permanent injunction, prohibiting them from using, sharing, or distributing Nintendo ROMs or other materials again in the future, has been included in the settlement. Additionally all games, game files, and emulators previously on the site and in their custody must be handed over to the Japanese game developer, along with a $12.23 million settlement figure. It is unlikely, as TorrentFreak have reported, that the couple will be obligated to pay the full figure; a smaller settlement has likely been negotiated in private.

Instead, the purpose of the enormous settlement amount is to act as a warning or deterrent to other ROM and emulator sites surviving on the internet. And it’s working.

Motherboard previously reported on the way in which Nintendo’s legal crusade against retro ROM and emulator sites is swiftly eroding a large chunk of retro gaming. The impact of this campaign on video games as a whole is potentially catastrophic. Not all games have been preserved adequately by game publishers and developers. Some are locked down to specific regions and haven’t ever been widely accessible.

The accessibility of video games and the gaming industry has always been defined and limited by economic boundaries. There are a multitude of reasons why retro games can't be easily or reliably accessed by prospective players, and by wiping out ROM sites Nintendo is erasing huge chunks of gaming history. Limiting the accessibility of old retro titles to this extent will undoubtedly affect the future of video games, with classic titles that shaped modern games and gaming development being kept under lock and key by the monolithic hand of powerful game developers.

Since the filing of the suit in July EmuParadise, a haven for retro games and emulator titles, has shut down. Many other sites have followed suit.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...llar12-million

















Until next week,

- js.



















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