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Old 26-11-14, 08:04 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - November 29th, '14

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"All the traffic has to be treated equally. The Internet has to stay open for everybody." – Andrus Ansip


"When I step back and think about what will get people off a couch, in a car, down the road and into a theater, the answer is not postage stamp-sized screens and old seats. Why would they bother? What the hell, stay in the house." – Gerardo I. Lopez, CEO AMC Entertainment













































November 29th, 2014




Australian Government Minister Admits P2P File Sharing Isn't Always A Bad Thing
Angus Kidman

When the Australian government is determined to side with content providers rather than consumers, it’s a little surprising to hear a government minister admit that file sharing isn’t always a bad thing. But that happened this morning.

Speaking at the GovInnovate conference in Canberra today, Minister for Justice Michael Keenan discussed the challenges of dealing with cybercrime. “Tools that have legitimate uses such as peer-to-peer file sharing and encryption are also used by criminals to conceal their activities,” he said.

It was a passing remark, but even acknowledging the reality that P2P has plenty of other uses besides accessing movies and TV is an unusual shift. We doubt you’ll hear Senator George Brandis singing the praises of BitTorrent any time soon, so we had better take what we can get.
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/11/au...s-a-bad-thing/





China's Popular YYet File-Sharing Website Is Shut Down
Chaojie Zhou and Ed Flanagan

Fans of American television shows and movies will have to scramble to find a new way to illicitly watch their favorites after one of China's most popular websites for downloading such content was shut down.

With more than 1.8 million unique visitors in August alone, the YYeT website had become a popular destination for Chinese looking to freely and illegally download the latest episodes of hit shows like "The Big Bang Theory," "Sherlock" and "House of Cards."

The site went offline on Monday and the company released a letter to its millions of users thanking them for their support over the past 10 years. The note did not say why the file-sharing sharing platform closed so suddenly.

State-run newspaper Liberation Daily reported that China’s regulatory body — the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio Film and Television — called the website a known copyright infringer and ordered it shut down. The move mirrored the downfall of Napster,the American file-sharing program forced to shut down in 2001 amid similar allegations. Calls to the regulator for comment on the closures went unanswered.

The action against YYeT follows a report given by the Motion Picture Association of America to the office of the United States Trade Representative last month which accused the site of being “the most popular dedicated download site for copyrighted content in China.”

News of YYeT’s closure did not sit well with China’s netizens, who set social media ablaze with complaints.

“Authorities are closing doors again and forcing us to watch those low-quality domestic movies and TV series,” wrote one furious user on China’s twitter-like service, Weibo. “That’s the last thing I will do."

Bob Xin, a student from Beijing’s Communication University of China, has been using YYeT for six years to access movies and shows such as "The West Wing." Xin said he understood that the content he downloads is illegal, but told NBC News he "really needs it."

"It provides me the latest shows with high definition and accurate subtitles faster than you can imagine," he said.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/china/ch...t-down-n255641





Website Blocking Injunction Issued for Trade Mark Infringement

The importance of trade marks to luxury brands has always been a happy coincidence for this IP Whiteboard blogger, so when Justice Arnold handed down his latest decision in relation to counterfeit goods in the UK High Court, I (momentarily) ceased flicking through the latest issue of Vogue and switched over to Bailii (the UK’s case law database, and equally as stylish as Vogue) to see what had happened.

The claimants (Cartier, Montblanc and Richemont International) sought orders requiring five major UK ISPs (British Sky Broadcasting, British Telecom, EE, TalkTalk Telecom and Virgin, who together hold 95% of the UK retail broadband market) to block or impede access to six websites which advertised and sold counterfeit goods, on the basis of trade mark infringement. The ISPs were ordered block the websites on the basis of their IP addresses, but in circumstances where an unlawful website shared an IP address with a legitimate website, the ISP were only required to engage in ‘DNS blocking’ (blocking on the basis of specific domain names).

The case is significant because Justice Arnold held that the court’s power to grant ‘blocking injunctions’ could extend to websites engaged in trade mark infringement, even though the court did not have a specific statutory power to do so. Effectively, Justice Arnold found that the court’s general power to order injunctions extended to circumstances in which a third party became aware that its services were being used to infringe an intellectual property right.

Counterfeiting is increasingly big business, much to the distress of luxury brands who rely on the exclusivity of their goods to increase demand. In his judgement, Justice Arnold cited a 2011 report which estimated that the value of internally traded counterfeit and pirated goods would increase to US$960 billion by 2015. In this case, each website in issue incorporated the brand name into its domain name (e.g. www.cartierloveonline.com) and while some of the websites made it very clear the goods offered were replicas, others were less clear. Each targeted consumers in the UK (e.g. by offering prices in sterling currency) and each site used the claimant’s trade marks in various respects (e.g. on various sections of the website, on packaging and branding, etc).

Did the court have jurisdiction to grant an injunction?

Website blocking injunctions for copyright infringement are now familiar in the UK under s 97A of the UK’s Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. Under that provision, the court can grant an injunction against a service provider, where the service provider has actual knowledge that another person is using the service to infringe copyright. Justice Arnold is certainly no stranger to making website blocking orders, having ordered the vast majority of injunctions pursuant to s 97A.

However, there is no such express statutory power to grant a blocking injunction on the basis of trade mark infringement –so the claimants had to rely on the court’s general power to issue injunctions. Counsel for the ISPs submitted that this general jurisdiction to grant an injunction was limited to two situations –where one party to an action could show that the other party had invaded or threatened to invade a legal or equitable right of the former, or where one party to an action had behaved or threatened to behave in a manner which is unconscionable. Because the ISPs were only providing access to a service, and were not infringing the trade marks themselves, the ISPs argued there was no basis on which to force them to block the infringing websites.

However, Justice Arnold found that the High Court’s power to order injunctions in ‘all cases in which it appears to be just and convenient to do so’[1] should not be so narrowly interpreted. He suggested that ISPs were under an equitable protective duty not to aid intellectual property infringement, and that once an ISP became aware that its services were being used by third parties to infringe an IP right, it became subject to a duty to take proportionate measures to prevent or reduce such infringements (despite the fact it would not be liable for infringement itself). He held the power of the court to issue injunctions against ISPs in respect of trade mark infringement could and should be interpreted in light of an EU Directive, which obliged Member States to ensure that rights holders were in a position to apply for an injunction against intermediaries, whose services were used by a third party to infringe ‘an intellectual property right’.[2]

Were the orders sought proportional?

The main issue in the case was whether issuing an injunction to block the websites would be proportionate. In making this assessment, Justice Arnold considered many of the same relevant factors as his Honour had previously considered in the s 97A website blocking cases, including whether there were alternative, less onerous measures available to the rights holders to counter the infringement, the efficacy of an injunction, whether an injunction was likely to have a dissuasive effect, the difficultly and costs of compliance with an injunction for the ISPs, and whether safeguards against abuse of the orders could be included.

Ultimately, Justice Arnold found that the orders sought struck a fair balance between all of the respective rights that were engaged, and that he was not persuaded that there were equally effective but less onerous options available. This was primarily on the basis that although website operators could switch IP addresses, blocking technologies could allow for automatic and efficient updating of those addresses.

His Honour found that the costs of implementing a blocking injunction were not so high as to make the orders disproportionate. This was because the ISPs were already blocking websites to facilitate parental control technology, as well as to comply with Internet Watch Foundation guidelines (which aim to prevent images of sexual abuse being published online). The ISPs were also already required to block websites on the basis of copyright infringement. The costs faced by the ISPs were described as ‘part of the costs of carrying on business in the sector’. Justice Arnold observed that ISPs had the option to pass on any such increase in costs to consumers.

However, in respect of the costs of the application for the injunction itself, Justice Arnold found that it was appropriate for the rights holders to bear the costs of the application and monitoring implementation of the injunction, while ISPs had to bear the costs of implementing the injunction, and any updates notified by the rights holders.

The ISPs raised concerns that that the ‘flood-gates’ would be opened –there were potentially hundreds of thousands of infringing websites that rights holders could apply to block. This would substantially increase all of the costs that the ISPs were required to bear. Justice Arnold considered this argument, but did not give it much weight, as he considered it probable that rights holders would concentrate resources on seeking relief in respect of the more egregious infringers. He also acknowledged the freedom of internet users to receive information but held this did plainly not extend to a right to engage in trade mark infringement, particularly where it involved counterfeit goods.

In relation to the form of the website blocking orders that were granted, safeguards were built into the orders in order to mitigate the risk that lawful websites would be affected. For example, the orders permitted the ISPs to apply to the court to discharge or vary the orders in the event of any material change in circumstances, including changes in costs, consequences for the parties or effectiveness of the blocking orders. The orders also permitted operators of the targeted websites, or subscribers of the ISPs, to apply to the court to discharge or vary the orders. The page displayed to users attempting to access blocked websites was required to state that the site had been blocked by court order, to identify the parties which obtained the order and to inform users about their right to vary or discharge the order. Finally, a ‘sunset clause’ was incorporated into the orders – in order to review the practical operation of the injunctions, the orders will cease to have effect at the end of a defined period (provisionally, two years).

Impact of the decision

Justice Arnold observed that the case was a test case, which if successful, would be likely to be followed by trade mark owners, both in the UK and in other countries. Significantly, the injunctions granted by Justice Arnold were not based on any finding of liability of the ISP at all. It is unclear whether the Australian courts would similarly consider that the general power to issue injunctions extends to such circumstances.

In Australia, the Government recently released a Discussion Paper in relation to Online Copyright Infringement (see our alert on this discussion paper here). As one of several proposals, the Discussion Paper explored an option to introduce legislation to permit rights holders to apply for injunctions similar to the ones granted in the UK was explored.

Under the proposal, ISPs would be forced to block access to a particular website, without the need for the rights holder to establish first that the ISP had authorised infringement. The proposal was limited to blocking websites operating out of Australia, as the discussion paper noted that rights holders would not be prevented from taking direct action against website operators (and not ISPs) for websites operating within Australia. Rights holders would have to establish that the ‘dominant purpose’ of the website was to infringe copyright, and, in contrast to the UK, rights holders would be required to meet any reasonable costs associated with an ISP giving effect to an order, and to indemnify the ISP against damages claimed by a third party.

In considering the Government’s proposal, it is certainly interesting to consider the factors that Justice Arnold took into account in reaching his Honour’s decision, as well as the technical details in deciding upon the appropriate form of order.

There have been some recent media reports that legislation will be before Cabinet before Christmas –what a treat for all IP lawyers!
https://www.lexology.com/library/det...f-24093eaa84a8





Online Piracy Websites Set to be Blocked: Sources

A submission to block websites that host or link to copyright infringing movies and TV shows could be before cabinet by Christmas.
Ben Grubb

Websites that host or link to copyright infringing movies and TV shows could soon be blocked if cabinet approves a government submission to tackle online copyright infringement.

Sources tell Fairfax Media Attorney-General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull are canvassing a range of options put forward in response to their online copyright infringement discussion paper released in late July and intend to present cabinet with their own submission before Christmas.

The ministers will likely recommend government put a requirement on internet service providers to forward letters about alleged copyright infringement from movie and TV studios to their customers. It's also likely they will recommend making it possible for rights holders to seek an injunction in court to require multiple internet providers block websites hosting infringing content.

Blockers: Attorney-General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull will soon present cabinet with a proposal to tackle online piracy. Illustration: michaelmucci.com

This would mean access to websites such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents would be blocked if a rights holder successfully convinced a judge to block them. Savvy internet users could still circumvent the blocks if they used virtual private networks (VPNs) though – an issue the government and industry is fully aware of.

It's understood the most contentious issue being pushed by some in the content industry – a requirement that internet providers slow the download speeds of customers who repeatedly breach copyright – will not be given the green light, nor will disconnection of customers who breach copyright, which few advocate.

Asked about the cabinet submission at the CommsDay NBN Rebooted conference on Monday, Mr Turnbull told Fairfax: "I think our work on [online copyright infringement] is fairly well advanced but I regret to say I'm a traditionalist here; I don't comment on what happens in the cabinet let alone what is being brought to the cabinet."

Mr Turnbull added that it was "no secret" government was looking at online copyright infringement, but wouldn't respond to rumours legislation could be introduced in Parliament before Christmas.

One source told Fairfax the submission to cabinet was "nearly complete" and was likely to be discussed in front of other senior ministers "before the end of the year". They emphasised that the final details were yet to be signed off on but that government was looking to act quickly on it.

Australian internet service providers TPG and Exetel are believed to be the only internet providers in the country that presently forward notices from rights holders to customers alleging copyright infringement. The Brandis-Turnbull cabinet submission would effectively extend a similar "notice on notice" scheme to other internet providers and be more educational than threatening.

The cabinet submission follows broad industry consultation and criticism that the Attorney-General's Department is withholding the release of approximately 630 submissions made to the discussion paper from members of the public. While a number of submissions received from rights holders, academics, industry groups and other organisations were published on the Attorney-General Department's website, many others from citizens were not despite government indicating that it would publish all submissions unless it was requested by the submitter for them to be made private.

The cabinet submission also follows what some have described as "intense" lobbying of the front and back benchers of both major political parties by the content industry to do something about copyright infringement.

Meanwhile, the movie studio behind Dallas Buyers Club has sought in the Federal Court details from Australian internet providers, including iiNet, about the identities of those it alleges breached the copyright of its film by downloading it over the internet using peer-to-peer file-sharing technology.

The case is the first time a copyright holder has taken Australian internet service providers to court in an attempt to identify alleged infringers, but is not the first time legal action has been used to identify end-users in Australia.

In 2003, Sony Music Entertainment took action against the University of Tasmania, University of Melbourne and University of Sydney that led to Sony being given access to the universities' computer systems to identify alleged infringers. It's unclear whether the alleged infringers were sued.
http://www.theage.com.au/digital-lif...17-11o8pz.html





Blocked Piracy Site List More Than Doubles After Ruling
Leo Kelion

The High Court has ordered the biggest batch yet of piracy websites to be blocked.

The latest rulings cover 53 services in total and apply to the country's six leading net providers.

It brings the tally of blocked sites providing access to copyright-infringing content to 93 since the first restrictions began in 2012.

But one expert warned that workarounds and alternatives would probably mean users continued to break the law.

A spokesman for the Motion Picture Association - which had made 32 of the requests - said that several lists of sites had been processed at the same time, accounting for the large number involved.

They include:

• BitSoup
• IP Torrents
• Isohunt
• Sumotorrent
• Torrentdb
• Torrentfunk
• Torrentz
• Warez BB
• Rapid Moviez

"Securing court orders requiring ISPs [internet service providers] to block access to illegal websites is an accepted and legitimate measure to tackle online copyright infringement," said Chris Marcich, president of the MPA's European division.

"It carefully targets sites whose sole purpose is to make money off the back of other people's content while paying nothing back into the legitimate economy."

Twenty-one of the sites were a result of a court order prompted by the BPI, a music industry group.

Many of the services hosted links to pirated software, TV shows and ebooks in addition to films and songs.

The ISPs affected are Sky, BT, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin.

"BT will only block access to websites engaged in online copyright infringement when ordered by a court to do so," said the UK's biggest broadband provider, reflecting a stance shared by the other firms.

Many of the torrents used to provide downloads of the copied media are listed on multiple services, so taking a specific site offline does not necessarily prevent access to the files themselves.

However, it can make them harder to find, as well as reducing the number of advert views a blocked site received, which in turn hits the amount of income that goes to their administrators.

The UK's net providers first began blocking such sites in in May 2012 after the music industry requested the action against the Pirate Bay under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act.

"It deters a few people who can't access their usual sites, but most people will try to find ones that are not yet blocked or use VPNs [virtual private networks] or proxy sites to get the same content," said Ernesto Van Der Sar, editor of the Torrentfreak news site.

"It's making it harder - some people will decide it's just too much trouble and give up - but the overwhelming majority will still find ways to download material illegally."

The action has also spurred piracy services to become more innovative.

Recently one released code that adds film torrent links to the Motion Picture Association's own search engine, undermining its effort to inform the public where to purchase or rent legal copies.

"The Internet Services Providers' Association has long argued that web blocking is a relatively blunt tool," said the organisation's spokesman Craig Melson.

"The entertainment industry should continue to adapt its business models as consumption habits evolve with technology."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30234790





Music Publishers Finally Pull the Trigger, Sue an ISP Over Piracy

Lawsuit says Cox blew off copyright notices from two Rightscorp clients.
Joe Mullin

BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music have sued Cox Communications for copyright infringement, arguing that the Internet service provider doesn't do enough to punish those who download music illegally.

Both BMG and Round Hill are clients of Rightscorp, a copyright enforcement agent whose business is based on threatening ISPs with a high-stakes lawsuit if they don't forward settlement notices to users that Rightscorp believes are "repeat infringers" of copyright.

There's little precedent for a lawsuit trying to hold an ISP responsible for users engaged in piracy. If a judge finds Cox liable for the actions of users on its network, it will have major implications for the company and the whole cable industry. It's one thing to terminate an account on YouTube, but cable subscribers can pay well over $100 per month—and BMG and Round Hill claim that they've notified Cox about 200,000 repeat infringers on its network.

In their complaint (PDF), the music publishers describe the Cox network as an out-of-control den of piracy. "Today, BitTorrent systems are like the old P2P systems on steroids," BMG lawyers write. "Despite its published policy to the contrary, Cox's actual policy is to refuse to suspend, terminate, or otherwise penalize subscriber accounts that repeatedly commit copyright infringement through its network in any meaningful numbers."

Cox has ignored "overwhelming evidence," and the complaint lists a few examples. A "Cox subscriber account having had IP address 70.168.128.98 at the time of the infringement, believed to be located in Fairfax, Virginia, was used to infringe twenty-four particular copyrighted works 1,586 times since December 9, 2013," they note. "Cox subscriber having IP address 24.252.149.211 engaged in 39,432 acts of copyright infringement over 189 days."

BMG and Round Hill, through Rightscorp, told Cox about all these infringements, but to no avail. The complaint states that Cox "actually has taken measures to avoid and stop receiving those notifications," suggesting the ISP was basically treating e-mails from Rightscorp like spam.

Who's a repeat infringer?

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed in 1998, does require ISPs to have a policy to terminate "repeat infringers," but there's not a lot of clarity as to exactly what that means.

Does someone become a "repeat infringer" when a judge rules they have repeatedly violated copyrights? If so, the music publishers and Rightscorp have many more hoops to jump through before they have any hope of beating Cox in court. Conversely, if a judge believes Rightscorp's notifications are enough to find a user is a repeat infringer, then Cox could be in trouble.

It's a question most big rightsholders haven't been eager to resolve in court, because it's a huge gamble. A copyright-maximalist outcome could give them more enforcement tools, but if legal precedent gets set in a defense-friendly way, they could end up with far less leverage over ISPs than they have now. Since most major ISPs are compromising on the issue and slowly moving forward with a "six strikes" system, there've been incentives on both sides not to go to the mat on this issue.

And Cox, which declined to comment for this story, will surely fight back hard. YouTube came under legal fire from Viacom for not doing enough to boot out copyrighted material, and Google spent $100 million defending the case—even though the economic consequences of shutting down YouTube accounts is almost always inconsequential. Cable companies often bundle Internet with television and phone services, and a subscription can cost well over $100 per month. Since BMG and Round Hill have accused 200,000 Cox accounts of being "repeat infringers," the consequences of a loss on Cox's side could be massive.

BMG and Round Hill are seeking damages for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement and a judicial order requiring Cox to "promptly forward plaintiffs' infringement notices to their subscribers."

The lawsuit takes place against the background of serious difficulties at Rightscorp. The company is near bankruptcy, having lost $6.5 million since its founding in 2011. Last week, a proposed class-action suit accused Rightscorp of violating federal law by using "robocall" equipment to demand $20-per-song settlements from Internet users.

Cox is far from alone in blowing off Rightscorp's notices, so it isn't clear why the Atlanta-based provider was chosen as the test case. In a recent earnings call, Rightscorp CEO Christopher Sabec said the 150 or so ISPs that work with Rightscorp cover only about 15 percent of US Internet users.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...p-over-piracy/





Record-Breaking Prosecution in File-Sharing Case
Google Translate

A man accused of having driven an illegal file-sharing networks and illegally made 2250 movies available online. Now he can be forced to pay millions in damages.

- How many movies we have not indicted the former, says the prosecutor Frederick Ingblad.

It was in December 2010 as the Anti-Piracy Office received an anonymous tip about a file sharing server known as the Devil.

According to preliminary investigations, the network of 200 users and server, a data set of more than 250 terabytes.

This is equivalent to 500 ordinary home computers with 500 GB of hard drive space.

Henrik Pontén on the Rights Alliance, Anti-Piracy Office has been renamed, believes that this type of file sharers spend enormous amounts of time on the business.

- This is a segment of pirates called the "Stage". They compete to be the first to put out new movies, he says.

Anti-Piracy Office managed by IP address find the network's main computer at an electronics company. The server itself was placed in the company's data center in central Stockholm.

A Väsbybo in his 50s who was working at the company admitted that it was he who took the server. Now he was prosecuted for having driven file-sharing network where about 2,250 movie titles, of which many American blockbusters, made available.

- There is a very big issue and it is this type of crime that is the foundation of all illegal file sharing. The films are available on The Pirate Bay circulates only in these smaller networks, says Henrik Pontén.

Rights owners of the scattered films will later address the possible claims for damages.

Henrik Pontén says that the damages usually end up at 5-20 million per movie.

- For Swedish films tend to land at 5 million and up per title. In order not to burden the judicial process usually seek damages for one or a few titles, he says.

Frederick Ingblad, as a prosecutor in the case, has previously run several other fildelningsmål. He says that about 15-20 people this year will be prosecuted for file sharing, which is more than in the past.

- The trend that I can see is that it is often quite low penalties, but the high compensation. Only if the defendant has earned big money in the business, we can get up the sentence to prison, he says.

The preliminary investigation shows that Väsbybon invested at least 250 000 on equipment.

However, there is no indication that he has earned some money.

Frederick Ingblad says that the case is the largest when it comes to this type of network.

- There are many movies and large amount of data. How many movies have we not prosecuted for past and it is also the largest analysis of computers that have been made in an individual case, says Fredrik Ingblad.

During the investigation, Väsbybon cooperated with police. But his lawyer, Henrik Olsson Lily, do not want closer comment on his client's attitude to the crimes he is now being prosecuted.

- I want to await trial, but there is no intent in the sense that the prosecutor is looking for, says Henrik Olsson Lilja, who is critical of the high compensation claims.

- In practice, this punitive damages of the American model.

How has your client dimensions of this long lawsuit?

- Is the man suspected of such crimes here for a long time the person is in a locked position where it can be difficult to find new jobs, and so on. So
he has not felt good in this, says Henrik Olsson Lilja.

http://translate.google.com/translat...2/&prev=search





Class-Action Suit Says Rightscorp Makes Illegal, Harassing Phone Calls

Big music labels may ultimately be defendants in a case over robo-calls.
Joe Mullin

Morgan Pietz, one of the lawyers who wrapped "copyright troll" Prenda Law in a whirl of judicial sanctions, has set his sights on a new target: Rightscorp.

In a class action lawsuit filed on Friday, Pietz says the copyright enforcement company made illegal, harassing robo-calls to his clients, who were accused of illegal downloading. The lawsuit says that Rightscorp broke the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), a 1991 law which limits how automated calling devices can be used.

The suit also claims that Rightscorp met the legal definition of a "debt collector" but made harassing phone calls and didn't abide by federal or California debt collection laws. Rightscorp company managers, including CEO Christopher Sabec and COO Robert Steele, and Rightscorp's clients are all named as defendants in the lawsuit.

Violations of federal debt collection laws can result in damages of $1,000 and include provisions for paying attorneys' fees in successful cases. TCPA violations can cost $500 per incident, and that can be tripled if the violations were willful.

In an interview with Ars, Pietz says he doesn't know how many violations have occurred. But he says just one of his named plaintiffs was subject to enough illegal phone calls to add up to tens of thousands of dollars in damages.

"They robo-called Jeanie Reif's cell phone darn near every day for a couple of months," Pietz said. "And there could be thousands of members of this class."

If a judge agrees with Pietz that the phone calls were harassing and illegal, Rightscorp could be on the hook for many millions of dollars. That's a lot more money than Rightscorp actually has—the company has lost $6.5 million since its inception in 2011, and its stock price hovers near all-time lows.

The wild card in Pietz's case are the defendants not yet named: John Does 1-10. Those Does are Rightscorp's clients, who Pietz says are liable for Rightscorp's TCPA violations. If Pietz and his clients win big against near-bankrupt Rightscorp, there's a possibility that the enforcement company's marquee music clients—including BMG Rights Management and Warner Brothers—could end up holding the bag.

Calls from "Yaddy" and "Marina"

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles federal court on Friday, has two named plaintiffs: Karen J. Reif, who goes by her middle name Jeanie, and Isaac Nesmith.

Reif is a Charter Communications subscriber who lives in Saginaw, Michigan. She called Rightscorp in April of this year after she got a "settlement offer" consisting of an e-mail from Rightscorp, forwarded to her by Charter.

Starting around July, she started getting continuous calls from Rightscorp to both her home phone and her cell phone. Some of the calls were from people, including a woman who identified herself as "Yaddy." Many were automated with what sounded like "an artificial or pre-recorded voice."

According to the suit, Rightscorp left Reif a voicemail in September, saying:

This is an urgent message from Rightscorp regarding your Internet account. We have evidence that one or more of our clients’ copyrighted materials has been illegally distributed through your Internet connection in violation of U.S. Federal Law 17 U.S.C. 106. To settle this urgent matter you can reach one of our agents by pressing any number on your phone keypad now. Or, you can call us at 888- 851-3801 between 8am and 8pm Pacific Standard Time. This urgent message is from Rightscorp.

By late September, she was getting one robo-call per day, the lawsuit states.

Pietz says he's called Rightscorp personally about Reif's case and has been unable to get any details about the infringement accusations against her. He followed up via e-mail. "I asked for the documentation Rightscorp supposedly has substantiating the copyright claims against Ms. Reif," Pietz said. "I am still waiting."

Nesmith, who lives in Riverside County, California, is a customer of a smaller ISP called Greenfield Communications. He was first contacted by Rightscorp in September, when he received a letter to his home address accusing him of downloading two "tracks," without identifying the tracks or who owned them.

That was followed up by repeated phone calls from "Marina" at Rightscorp, who identified herself as “the DMCA agent who is handling your unsettled copyright infringement case." One voicemail from "Marina" went as follows:

Hi Isaac. This is Marina contacting you from Rightscorp. I’ve contacted you on one other occasion, the 22nd of September, in regards to your copyright infringement case. You have two unsettled infringements at this point and we are contacting you on behalf of our client, which is the owner of this copyrighted material. If you’d like to settle with them to receive a liability release to protect yourself against litigation, contact me immediately. Otherwise, if we don’t hear back from you sir, we will have to escalate the case. We have obtained your information via subpoena against your Internet service provider in regards to the federal law being broken.

When Nesmith asked her to stop calling and provide written evidence of the allegations, she refused and kept asking for a $40 settlement.

"We do have that authorization to continue contacting you with the settlement option," said Marina. The "evidence of infringement" had been sent to his home already, she said, and it consisted of a spreadsheet that listed "the two separate file sharing incidents that occurred for the illegal distribution of Pearl and Not Like the Movies," both Katy Perry songs.

On Nov. 19, Marina called again, telling Nesmith she was "closing all escalated cases with a settlement on behalf of the copyright holder... If you are not capable of settling the matter yourself please have your attorney send in a letter of representation immediately.”

Copyright enforcer or debt collector?

The lawsuit makes the case that Rightscorp's monetary demands have to be classified as debt collection. They can't be threats of an actual lawsuit, because no lawsuit ever has taken place or could take place. Rightscorp doesn't have the authority to file a lawsuit on behalf of its clients, who keep control over their copyrights.

So when Rightscorp's calls to Nesmith and others talk about an "unsettled copyright infringement case," it's a bluff. The complaint states:

Rightscorp has threatened Plaintiffs and other members of the FDCPA Class that if they do not pay Rightscorp a “settlement,” their “case” will be “escalated.” Rightscorp has threatened Plaintiffs and other members of the FDCPA Class that if they do not pay settlements, their Internet connections will be disconnected. However, on information and belief, disconnection of consumers’ Internet connections is not an action that could have been legally taken nor was it intended to be taken.

The plaintiffs claim that Rightscorp's suggestion that Internet access will be terminated, as well as the implicit threat of a lawsuit, are both threats "to take action that cannot be legally taken," which violate federal debt collection laws.

As for the robo-calling, the TCPA bars the use of equipment "having the capacity to dial numbers without human intervention" to call cell phones.

The suit also includes abuse of process claims, saying that Rightscorp sent out 142 clerk-stamped subpoenas from the Central District of California that are legally invalid. When Grande Communications Networks, a Texas-based ISP, moved to quash one of those subpoenas in September, Rightscorp immediately withdrew it.

Grande's lawyer filed an advisory note with the court suggesting that it may want to consider "ordering Rightscorp and its counsel to show cause why they should not be sanctioned for misusing the federal court’s subpoena powers.... It appears clear that Rightscorp and its counsel are playing a game without regard for the rules, and they are playing that game in a manner calculated to avoid judicial review."

Rightscorp management didn't respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...g-phone-calls/





UK Recording Industry Seeks Review of Law Allowing Fans to Copy Music

Copyright legislation permits people who have legally purchased music to make duplicates, prompting legal action from industry bodies
Mark Sweney

The UK music industry is seeking a judicial review of new legislation allowing music fans to make copies of legally-purchased music, arguing that musicians must be compensated as a result of lost sales.

The Musicians’ Union, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors and industry body UK Music are taking legal action over the government’s new copyright legislation, which came into force on 1 October.

“We fully support the right of the consumer to copy legally bought music for their own personal and private use, but there must be fair compensation for the creators of the music,” said Vick Bain, chief executive of Basca.

The government has scrapped a law that made it technically illegal for music fans to download a legally-purchased CD onto a laptop, smartphone or MP3 player.

In the legal action submitted to the high court in London, the music industry bodies argue that the UK legislation is out of step with European Union law which requires “fair” compensation for rights holders.

“We have sought a judicial review because of the way the government made its decision not to protect the UK’s creative industries,” said Bain. “[This is] in stark contrast to other countries that have introduced copyright exceptions.”

The government has previously rejected calls from record companies and musicians for a tax, licence or levy to copying devices – laptops, phones and MP3 players – to cover lost sales as a result of the change to copyright law.

“Licensing is the business model for the UK music industry’s success in the digital age,” said Jo Dipple, chief executive of UK Music. “However, where the right to licence is removed, rights holders should be compensated. Copyright enables people to earn a living out of their creativity and sustains jobs. The government has made a serious error with regards to private copying. The legislative framework must guarantee musicians and composers are fairly compensated.”
http://www.theguardian.com/media/201...stry-copyright





With ‘Hunger Games’ Campaigns, Lionsgate Punches Above Its Weight
Brooks Barnes

With its cutting-edge social-media campaigns for “The Hunger Games,” the tiny 27-person marketing department at Lionsgate has become a model for Hollywood’s legacy studios: scrappy, thrifty, forward-thinking.

But is the “Lionsgate way” even possible for the old guard to replicate?

“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1,” the third movie in the postapocalyptic series, sold an estimated $123 million in tickets at North American theaters over the weekend. It was by far the biggest opening since last November, when Lionsgate released “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” taking in $158.1 million on the way to a global total of $864.9 million.

Perhaps more impressively, given the constant discussion in Hollywood about reducing promotional costs, Lionsgate spent roughly $50 million to market “Mockingjay” in the United States and Canada. Hollywood’s six major studios, each of which operates a domestic marketing department at least three times the size of Lionsgate’s, routinely spend $100 million to release a major movie in North America.

“There is a lot of fat,” said Richard Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research.

The lesson is as obvious as it is humiliating: In the social-media age, the marketing of mass-appeal movies does not necessarily require a cast of thousands (or hundreds) or a Brink’s truck full of cash. Lionsgate keeps costs down by taking full advantage of low-cost media like YouTube, by making certain advertising decisions without relying on expensive market research studies and even by shooting its own pictures to save on photography.

Big studios like Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox release more big-budget movies than Lionsgate does, which is one reason they maintain much larger domestic promotional departments. But little Lionsgate has lately been schooling some of its heftier rivals.

Walt Disney Studios, for instance, recently sent its global marketing and publicity teams to Google’s vaunted BrandLab for workshops intended to help companies “world-build,” a trendy catchphrase that means creating overlapping online experiences for various customer bases. Google held up Coca-Cola and Mercedes-Benz campaigns as best-in-class examples, along with a lone movie: “The Hunger Games.”

“It’s very easy to follow convention, and what Lionsgate has done with ‘The Hunger Games’ is an interesting case study about breaking convention,” said Ben Malbon, Google’s director of creative partnerships.

Warner Bros. is in the middle of laying off 1,000 employees, or roughly 12.5 percent of its work force, with marketing among the departments suffering losses. Sony Pictures Entertainment recently shook up its promotional unit, bringing in a young executive to replace its top marketer, who departed after 22 years, and elevating a well-regarded digital advertising executive to another top post.

But rewiring the Hollywood equivalent of an aircraft carrier is an almost impossible task. Lionsgate, founded in 1997, about the time Warner Bros. was celebrating its 75th anniversary, has been built differently from the ground up. For instance, Jon Feltheimer, chief executive of Lionsgate’s corporate parent, Lions Gate Entertainment, has long empowered Tim Palen, chief marketing officer, to make instinctive snap decisions — and Mr. Palen does, so much so that The New Yorker in 2009 nicknamed him the Cobra.

“Typically at a studio, you sit in marketing meetings and there are 17 proposed versions of a poster and sheets of data about how various proposed materials have tested,” said Francis Lawrence, who directed “Mockingjay” and whose other credits include “I Am Legend” for Warner and “Water for Elephants” for Fox. “Decisions are data-driven and made by committee.”

He added, “You just don’t get that at Lionsgate.”

Douglas Wick, a producer of Lionsgate’s new “Divergent” series who has worked with almost every studio in Hollywood over the years, was more blunt: “Tim knows that bureaucracy is death,” he said.

Mr. Palen, 52, is rare among studio marketing chiefs in that, along with running a department, he often personally photographs actors for promotional materials. That both reduces costs and gives him crucial artistic credibility with filmmakers. Mr. Palen largely taught himself photography over the years, gradually taking on a more direct creative role in every campaign because filmmakers started to demand it.

“To be that creative and original and still have the trains come and go on time is very unusual,” said Lucy Fisher, a “Divergent” producer who has held senior positions at Warner, Fox and Sony over the years.

Mr. Palen — even while managing the “Mockingjay” campaign, as well as several other smaller ones for films like “John Wick” — flew to Atlanta to photograph the cast of “The Divergent Series: Insurgent” for posters, billboards and a flurry of online efforts. He shot 15 actors in a single day, some with four different setups each.

“We didn’t shoot one thing that we didn’t end up using,” Mr. Palen said, sitting in his decidedly nonpalatial office at Lionsgate’s headquarters here. The cost of the shoot was his plane ticket and a hotel room; hiring an outside photographer, which is what most studios would have done, could have easily cost $225,000.

Mr. Palen, sitting with his publicity chief, Julie Fontaine, a former Disney executive, grew visibly uneasy when the conversation veered toward his singular contribution. He pointed to the lack of corporate layers at Lionsgate and an overall culture of risk-taking.

“We may be outlaws, but Jon Feltheimer is still the sheriff,” he said, referring to the chief executive. “He’s the reason I get to make moonshine.”

Take, for instance, the time Mr. Palen’s team advertised fake “Hunger Games” beauty products on billboards and bus shelters. Or more recently, when Mr. Palen used an amputee underwear model and the reigning Mr. L.A. Leather in a major “Mockingjay” outdoor and online promotion called “District Heroes.”

“At another studio, legal or standards or both would have stopped us 10 steps before we got any of those ideas,” Mr. Palen said. Lionsgate, one of the last remaining independent studios in Hollywood, released 21 movies last year, although many were small in scope.

A built-in fan base for “Mockingjay” certainly helped fuel its weekend ticket sales. More than 80 million copies of Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” trilogy have been sold worldwide. But industry observers also point out that keeping moviegoers interested in a “Hunger Games” movie every year is difficult; typically studios wait a year or two between installments, in part to maximize demand.

So Lionsgate relied heavily on YouTube, in particular creating a boundary-pushing initiative called “District Voices.”

Mr. Palen and his team — working with Google — essentially created their own “Hunger Games” television network, CapitolTV. Released through YouTube and the other websites, CapitolTV was presented as an official news source from the movie’s fictional government. To provide programming, Lionsgate recruited a group of YouTube stars including Justine Ezarik, better known as iJustine, and Rob Czar and Corinne Leigh, the pair behind ThreadBanger, a do-it-yourself fashion channel.

But Lionsgate went a step further, helping produce the scripted “District Voices” videos, which featured the YouTube personalities in “Hunger Games” costumes with props from the movie, blurring the line between reality and fiction.

“Lionsgate wanted to do something aggressive and pioneering, and it turned out that they actually were serious, which is not always the case,” said Mr. Malbon of Google, noting that its collaboration with the studio was “a Hollywood first.”

He added, “We are now in talks with other movie studios.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/bu...od-weight.html





Why People Keep Trying to Erase the Hollywood Sign From Google Maps
Alissa Walker

The Hollywood Sign might be one of the most recognizable things on Earth. In Los Angeles, it's also one of the most visible. You can see it from a plane as you glide into LAX. You can see it from a car as you drive up the 101 freeway. But a group of people who live near the sign are trying to hide it, even as it looms in the hills, in plain sight. By removing it from Google Maps.

Why hide the Hollywood Sign? It begins with the story of the Hollywood locals vs. the Hollywood tourists. For decades, the people who live below the sign have been battling the constant wave of sightseers who flock to see the nine giant letters as part of an Essential Los Angeles Pilgrimage. Signs (some illegal) have been erected on streets, warning that there is "No access to the Hollywood Sign."

But in the last few years, technology has amplified this battle into an all-out war. Since they can't physically block the streets to stop cars from arriving, residents have spent years working on the next best solution: Make the sign invisible online—so no one can find it.

"How do you get to the Hollywood Sign?"

The sign hangs off the side of Mt. Lee, a peak in the Santa Monica mountain range that runs east to west through Griffith Park, the largest urban park in the U.S. While you're not allowed to scramble right up to the letters and take a seat on the W, you can summit the mountain itself, rewarding yourself with a stunning view of the city, the famous reversed-out letters at your feet (it's where I shot the photo below). The best access is from nearby Beachwood Canyon, home of the original Hollywoodland neighborhood that the sign was erected to advertise in 1923, at the end of a steep but well-maintained trail.

When I first moved to LA 13 years ago, I lived at the base of Bronson Canyon, one canyon over. From our street we had a fairly clear shot of the sign and on the weekends there were often tourists taking what would later be known as selfies with H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D behind them. Whenever I hiked through the neighborhood and up into the park, I'd have at least one carful of visitors stop me to ask for driving directions to the sign.

For starters, the sign is in a park, so you can't really drive there, I'd say watching their faces deflate. Then I'd deliver the second piece of bad news: To actually get to the sign, you have to hike, and even then, you end up above it. When I'd try to explain that where they were at the moment was probably the easiest place to get the best view, they'd often wave me off, determined they could get much closer by feeling it out themselves.

But the sign is both tempting and elusive. That's why you'll find so many tourists taking photos on dead-end streets at the base of the Hollywood Hills. For many years, the urban design of the neighborhood actually served as the sign's best protection: Due to the confusingly named, corkscrewing streets, it's actually not that easy to tell someone how to get to the Hollywood Sign.

That all changed about five years ago, thanks to our suddenly sentient devices. Phones and GPS were now able to aid the tourists immensely in their quests to access the sign, sending them confidently through the neighborhoods, all the way up to the access gate, where they'd park and wander along the narrow residential streets. This, the neighbors complained, created gridlock, but even worse, it represented a fire hazard in the dry hills—fire trucks would not be able to squeeze by the parked cars in case of an emergency.

The neighbors pleaded with the city to help. Then the local councilmember, Tom LaBonge, who is known for leading regular hikes through the park and up to the sign itself, proposed something that seemed crazy, if not impossible: He would look into changing the sign's official GPS coordinates, effectively hiding it from tourists forever.

So how do you get to the Hollywood Sign?

By 2011 the anti-tourist rhetoric reached a fever pitch, with homeowners mounting a vicious campaign threatening visitors, who, unsurprisingly, just kept coming. Some neighbors painted their curbs red (illegally) to discourage parking and tacked up more signs (illegally) warning against trespassing. In a vacant lot, someone took the time to build a full-on piece of land art that seemed to echo the large white letters in the distance: TOURISTS GO AWAY.

In response to the vitriol, and because I myself had witnessed the crowds firsthand, I wrote what I thought was a very helpful bit of service journalism on my blog, "The best way to see the Hollywood sign." In my piece, I argue that driving through the twisty-turny streets of Beachwood Canyon is actually not the best way to snuggle up to the sign. I very clearly direct would-be visitors to the address of a small public park with an excellent view of the famous icon, from which you can hike up to the sign.

Three years later my story remains one of the top hits if you go searching online for the best way to see the Hollywood Sign, and every few weeks I still get emails from people sharing the photos they took from the location and thanking me profusely for posting the information on my blog.

Why? Because if you try to find out how to actually get to the Hollywood Sign by asking Google Maps, you won't get anywhere near it.

Why People Keep Trying to Erase the Hollywood Sign From Google Maps

Even though Google Maps clearly marks the actual location of the sign, something funny happens when you request driving directions from any place in the city. The directions lead you to Griffith Observatory, a beautiful 1920s building located one mountain east from the sign, then—in something I've never seen before, anywhere on Google Maps—a dashed gray line arcs from Griffith Observatory, over Mt. Lee, to the sign's site. Walking directions show the same thing.

Even though you can very clearly walk to the sign via the extensive trail network in Griffith Park, the map won't allow you to try.

When I tried to get walking directions to the sign from the small park I suggest parking at in my article, Google Maps does an even crazier thing. It tells you to walk an hour and a half out of the way, all the way to Griffith Observatory, and look at the sign from there.

No matter how you try to get directions—Google Maps, Apple Maps, Bing—they all tell you the same thing. Go to Griffith Observatory. Gaze in the direction of the dashed gray line. Do not proceed to the sign.

Don't get me wrong, the view of the sign from Griffith Observatory is quite nice. And that sure does make it easier to explain to tourists. But how could the private interests of a handful of Angelenos have persuaded mapping services to make it the primary route?

Anyone seen a Hollywood Sign around here?

To find out how this happened, I had a very nice conversation with Betsy Isroelit from the Hollywood Sign Trust, a nonprofit which protects and maintains the sign, and has become in many ways the keeper of the sign's public interests.

She admits that there was once a goal to "hide" the sign online completely, but it was deemed impossible. "At one point we were successful in getting Google to take the address down, but it appears so many other places like the city council offices and the city of LA that they put it back up."

In the end, it was Councilmember LaBonge who found a different solution. Working closely with Google and the GPS company Garmin, he was able to convince them to change the directions to the sign. Google did not respond to my requests for comment, but Carly Hysell from Garmin confirmed to me that the change was made in their spring 2012 map release.

"The point of interest right at the sign was removed and 'sign view' points of interest on the ground were added, but they aren't at the sign itself." Now there are actually two places that drivers might be directed: Griffith Observatory, and puzzlingly, the viewing platform at the Hollywood & Highland Center, which is about four miles away on busy Hollywood Boulevard.

Now imagine for a second that you've flown all the way here from Istanbul to see the Hollywood Sign. And you end up at a mall.

Although the Hollywood Sign Trust has posted these viewing places on their website, Isroelit says the nonprofit's official position is to remain vague. So the website insists there is no address, devotes an entire page to explaining why you shouldn't hike to the sign. "We're very explicit about not parking in the neighborhood," she says. "But we don't own the land and we don't control the city streets."

Technically, neither do the neighbors, who continue to harass tourists—and residents—who have every right to use the streets, trails, and public parklands to access the sign.

Now, at least two people who live in the neighborhood have now decided to come after me for publishing accurate information about where the Hollywood Sign actually is and how to get there.

Last week, I received an email from a homeowner who threatened to take legal action against me for posting two separate addresses on my blog (the address of the small public park and another place to find the access gate to the hiking trail—neither of which are residential addresses or actual addresses of the sign):

Please immediately cease and desist from using 3204 Canyon Lake Drive and 6161 Mulholland [Hwy] or any other residence as the address for the Hollywood Sign and change the address to one of the two official viewing spots sanctioned by the Hollywood Sign Trust as shown in their map. The locations are: Griffith Park Observatory and the Hollywood and Highland Center...

Please be advised that up to this point your actions may have simply been due to an oversight of the local situation. However, should the address not be changed going forward, you may named in a lawsuit and be held liable for damages in an accident or due to your knowing and/or negligent continuing direction of visitors to the viewing spot at 3204 Canyon Lake Drive and 6161 Mulholland Hwy.


As I was still trying to process how I might be held liable for making a map, the initial email was followed by eight separate emails from the same resident with photos of how my writing was encouraging people to park illegally.

Within a few hours, another resident emailed me:

[W]hy are you referring people to the Hollywood sign, using addresses that are not sanctioned by Recreation & Parks or by Hollywoodsign.org?

That is because you are referring people to a death trap. You are actually not advocating for "safe" or "fun" walking.

We do not have the infrastructure to handle all these extra cars. There is nowhere for them to park. There are no LA Park Rangers in these areas. There are no bathrooms, no drinking fountains, no sidewalks. You CANNOT hike to the sign, yet you are encouraging a volatile situation.


This email was accompanied by photos of a small fire and a burst fire hydrant, both of which my writing had caused. Also, the email mentions that a dog was run over by a car in the area, which was apparently also my fault.

It gets worse than simply firing off a few emails. Earlier this year, these Beachwood Canyon residents successfully petitioned the city to close a public trail to the sign to keep tourists at bay, erecting a giant fence and hiring security guards. The trail has been closed since late March. Now no one, even residents, can use one of the most popular trails to access one of the country's largest urban parks, in the middle of our public space-deprived city.
I saw the sign

When I spoke to Councilmember LaBonge he emphasized that his job was to protect potential environmental and safety concerns. "There are impacts to the canyon that we are trying to resolve," he said. But on the other hand, he said, nothing has actually been restricted in the area as far as parking or roadblocks. "It's very important to have access at all time to that mountain." The trail that's been closed—ostensibly for repairs—is being reopened soon, he told me.

The solution going forward likely won't involve more mapping tweaks. LaBonge's next project will be a shuttle that would take people from a location in Hollywood to a place where they could easily access the park and the trail to the sign—without bringing their cars.

But he also agreed that the online battle had been tough for the city to win. "The internet is like a wild river," he said. "It allows anything and everything and you hate to see anybody drown."

When that wild river is tamed, it's usually in our best interest. Mapping companies might blur satellite imagery in the name of public safety, like certain international borders and government buildings. But the fact that cartographers are publishing false information about public lands in the middle of Los Angeles is quite worrying.

Over at Garmin, Hysell noted that their cartographers do, in fact, take input outside of their own experiences driving the routes. "They do receive data on a regular basis from city officials, county officials, DOT websites, and so on, and of course, make updates and adjustments to the mapping accordingly," she says. "They also take reports from users, too, and apply changes as deemed worthy and verifiable."

So what's happening in Hollywood is a disturbing peek into the future of digital cartography. A few dozen homeowners in one of the city's wealthiest zip codes—who bought their homes knowing (I assume) about the letters hanging just outside their bedroom windows—have found a way to keep people out of their neighborhood by manipulating technology.

This is the next iteration of a gated community.

It doesn't seem like it could happen just anywhere; Hysell agrees that the Hollywood Sign was a special exception. But where do the exceptions end? A group of homeowners petitions Zillow to hide specific property information and prevent certain populations from buying homes? A group of well-to-do Yelpers deliberately scramble the addresses of their favorite restaurants, so undesirables can't "discover" them?

Thanks to the duplicitous nature of NIMBYs, now we have three levels of censorship happening here in Hollywood: Organizations erecting digital walls around our most famous landmarks, technology companies lying to tourists about our geography, and a faction of vigilante residents cracking down on bloggers who are trying to disseminate accurate information about our city.

Because our mapping services are now subject to the whims of angry, powerful residents, we have to rely on other sources to give us accurate directions. In a way, the post on my blog is almost like passing out hand-drawn paper cartography from person to person, a map to buried treasure that hangs in plain sight. Until the online maps are updated properly, I'm here to help anyone—tourist or resident—who wants to experience all LA has to offer. Just let me know if you need directions.
http://gizmodo.com/why-people-keep-t...rom-1658084644





To Lure Young, Movie Theaters Shake, Smell and Spritz
Brooks Barnes

Having tried 3-D films, earsplitting sound systems and even alcohol sales in pursuit of younger moviegoers, some theater chains are now installing undulating seats, scent machines and 270-degree screens.

For an $8 premium, a Regal theater here even sprays patrons with water and pumps scents (burning rubber, gun powder) into the auditorium. Can’t cope with two hours away from your smartphone? One theater company has found success with instant on-screen messaging — the texted comments pop up next to the action.

“When I step back and think about what will get people off a couch, in a car, down the road and into a theater, the answer is not postage stamp-sized screens and old seats,” said Gerardo I. Lopez, the chief executive of AMC Entertainment, the No. 2 chain in the United States. “Why would they bother? What the hell, stay in the house.”

If Mr. Lopez sounds frustrated, he is. Ticket revenue in North America has fallen 4 percent this year compared to the same period in 2013, according to box office analysts, and attendance is equally down. The busy Thanksgiving and Christmas moviegoing periods are not expected to make up the ground.

The decline has hammered the biggest theater companies, with profit at both AMC and Regal Entertainment, the No. 1 chain, plunging more than 50 percent through the first nine months of this year, compared to the same period a year earlier.

But what really has the exhibition industry unnerved are two statistics released in the spring by the Motion Picture Association of America. Last year, despite a glut of extravagant action movies, the number of frequent moviegoers ages 18 to 24 dropped 17 percent, compared to a year earlier; the 12-to-17 age bracket dropped 13 percent.

The undiscerning young ticket buyers Hollywood has long counted on to turn out weekend after weekend are suddenly discerning. Or they are at least busying themselves with video games, living room wide-screen televisions and devices that can pull up thousands of movies with a couple of clicks. For many teenagers, the idea of focusing on a single screen for an extended stretch is anathema.

“The traditional moviegoing experience is at odds with the rest of their lives,” said Ben Carlson, president of Fizziology, a consultancy that focuses on entertainment and social media.

To combat the problem, theater chains seem increasingly open to trying just about anything. Regal, for instance, in June began offering something called 4DX in downtown Los Angeles. More than 100 seats buck and dip in close synchronization with the action on the screen. Compressed air blasts from headrests to simulate flying bullets. Fans provide a gentle wind effect.

There are two types of water effects: rain, which drops from the ceiling, and mist, which is squirted from the seat in front of you. (Patrons can turn off the water by pressing a button.)

“We’re adding to the story, not taking away from it,” said Catherine Yi, a senior editor for CJ 4Dplex, the company behind the technology. More 4DX theaters are on the way, both in the United States and abroad. Competing companies like D-Box and MediaMation are racing to roll out similar motion-seat offerings.

For many cinephiles, this is sacrilege. Even some Hollywood executives joke about bringing motion-sickness bags and raincoats.

But the target audience — men 18 to 24 — seems to enjoy it, with screenings often selling out, according to studio distribution managers. “It’s way cooler than it sounds,” said David Ramirez, 25, as he left a crowded 4DX screening of “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1” last weekend.

Newfangled multiplex ideas come and go all the time. Peter Jackson in 2012 promised to revolutionize moviegoing by exhibiting his “Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” in a faster, hyper-realistic 48 frames per second. Ticket buyers thought otherwise. The 3-D boom of recent years has also waned.

Going back further, Smell-o-Vision and AromaRama — 1960s-era attempts by exhibitors to compete with the surging popularity of television — both quickly fizzled.

But the current move toward interactivity and immersion is unlikely to go away entirely, analysts say, in part because of a generational shift.

“You’re trying to figure out if there’s something you can offer in the theater that I would not find appealing, but my 18-year-old son might,” Amy E. Miles, Regal’s chief executive, told attendees at a gathering of movie theater owners in 2012, when some of the concepts now rolling out were first discussed.

Disney over the last two years has conducted theatrical testing of an initiative it calls Second Screen. Moviegoers were encouraged to bring iPads and use apps to play games that relate to the action in the movie. During one test, conducted during a rerelease of Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” 50 percent of the audience had iPads.

Allowing patrons to use their smartphones in certain auditoriums has been discussed intermittently by exhibitors, although worries about piracy, among other factors, have prevented that notion from moving forward in the United States. But theater chains paid keen attention to a recent texting trial in China.

At August screenings in 11 cities of “The Legend of Qin,” an animated movie, ticket buyers were allowed to log on to a Wi-Fi network and use their mobile phones to text with other attendees as the film played. The messages appeared next to the action, much like VH1’s “Pop Up Video” program.

AMC, now owned by the Dalian Wanda Group, a Chinese conglomerate, says it has no immediate plans to allow texting. But the chain is moving ahead with an enhanced experience called AMC Prime. Now operating in nine American cities with more on the way, AMC Prime theaters have ButtKicker-brand subwoofers inside reclining seats (the marketing slogan: “Get ready to feel every wow”) and 60 speakers over all, double the number in a standard AMC auditorium.

America’s third-largest chain, Cinemark, has lately experimented with theaters in four states (California, Florida, Illinois and Texas) that offer a 270-degree viewing experience. The first film to be shown in the format was the young-adult thriller “The Maze Runner.”

“Our customers really seemed to like it,” said Timothy Warner, Cinemark’s chief executive.

But Mr. Warner vowed that Cinemark would go only so far. “Unlike some of the others,” he said, “we still think the reason people go to the movies is to see movies.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/bu...nd-spritz.html





Want a 100TB Disk Drive? You'll Have to Wait 'Til 2025

Heated Dot Magnetic Recording combines future technologies for a 10X capacity improvement
Lucas Mearian

An industry consortium today released a roadmap that new recording technologies could yield 100TB hard drives in about 10 years.

That density, 10 times the capacity of today's biggest hard drives, will be achieved through the use of up-and-coming techniques such as laser-assisted recording technology.

The roadmap, released by the Advanced Storage Technology Consortium (ASTC), indicates technologies such as Bit Patterned Media Recording (BPMR) and Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) will result in up to 10-terabit-per-square-inch (Tbpsi) areal densities by 2025, compared with today's .86 Tbpsi areal densities.

"This implies that a 3.5-inch HDD built with that technology could have about 10X the capacity of the 10TB HDDs in 2025, or 100TB," industry analyst Tom Coughlin wrote in a recent blog post.

Today, the leading-edge hard drive technologies are add-ons to conventional perpendicular magnetic recording methods, where bits are arranged upright and side-by-side on a spinning platter.

Western Digital's HGST division has been sealing helium gas in its enterprise drives to reduce friction created by spinning platters, thereby allowing it to pack them more tightly together. Its Ultrastar HelioSeal product line now has 8TB and 10TB hard drives.
airhdd vs heliumhdd cutaway whitebg 300dpi 100390683 orig HGST

Seagate's largest capacity drive using conventional recording is 6TB. The company has been using a technology called Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR), which overlaps data tracks on a disk platter like shingles on a rooftop to increase that to 8TB.

SMR technology, however, isn't likely to continue adding areal density, and adding helium also has limitations, according to Coughlin.

As disk drive densities increase, the potential for data errors also increases due to a phenomenon known as superparamagnetism, where the magnetic pull between bits on a platter's surface can randomly flip them, thus changing their value from one to zero or zero to one.

"Thus higher storage capacities requires the introduction of new digital storage technology," Coughlin wrote.

Seagate believes it can produce a 30TB drive by 2020 using (HAMR). HAMR integrates a semiconductor laser onto a hard drive recording transducer. The lasers are able to set down smaller bits, but ones that are also harder to overwrite, which makes the media more stable by reducing overwrite errors.
seagatehamr 1 100529954 medium.idge Seagate

The marketing campaign Seagate has used is "20TB by 2020," but Seagate CTO Mark Re told Computerworld that's just a target. Seagate is planning to release its first HAMR-enabled drives in 2016.

Last month, Invest Northern Ireland, a regional business development agency, announced that Seagate had dropped about $55 million into further financing its existing wafer facility in Northern Ireland; that facility is developing HAMR technology. The Dublin plant is one of two working on HAMR; the other is in Minnesota.

While SMR technology has increased bit density on disk drive platters by 25% or more, to about 1Tbit per square inch, HAMR technology will increase it to 5Tbits per square inch, Re said.

By comparison, in March 2005, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) demonstrated an areal density of 230 gigabits per square inch (Gb/in2) on what was then its new perpendicular recording technology.

By 2021, HGST is expected be shipping higher-density disks using BPMR, which uses nanolithography to break magnetic media down into small regions or bit "islands" on a platter's surface. Bits, which are typically made up of 20 magnetic grains, can then be reduced in size without risk of the superparamagnetic effect.

According to the Advanced Storage Technology Consortium's roadmap, BPMR will later be joined with HAMR technology, leading to Heated Dot Magnetic Recording.
http://www.computerworld.com/article...25.html#social





A Zippier Way to Share Big Files?

Startup Keyssa wants to replace cords and connectors with speedy wireless transfer technology.
Rachel Metz

There aren’t many ways to quickly and wirelessly move big files from one device to another.

A startup called Keyssa has developed technology to wirelessly transfer large amounts of data, like movies and music collections, from one gadget to another in seconds, rather than the minutes (or longer) it can take with a USB drive or over Wi-Fi.

The company created a chip that uses high-frequency radio waves to transfer data extremely quickly between two devices that are touching each other. The plan is to put the chips in gadgets like laptops, computer docks, tablets, and smartphones; users could then transfer entire photo collections or movies in seconds by letting two devices “kiss,” in Keyssa’s parlance. That could be especially useful as higher-resolution video formats like 4K become more widespread.

Eventually, Keyssa envisions its chip-based connector replacing all kinds of metal ones, including those in smartphones—something that could become more realistic and sought-after as wireless charging improves

Keyssa, whose board is led by Nest CEO Tony Fadell, expects the first products containing its connectors to be released in the second half of next year; it isn’t divulging how much it will cost for manufacturers to add the chips to devices.

In its first iteration the technology will be able to move data as quickly as six gigabits per second; at that speed, a two-gigabyte movie could be transferred in a little less than three seconds. That’s faster than a USB stick, which has a top speed of five gigabits per second over USB 3.0, or over a regular Wi-Fi connection with a top speed of about 1.3 gigabits per second.

When I visited Keyssa’s office, Roger Isaac, vice president of system engineering and Mariel Van Tatenhove, vice president of marketing, demonstrated the company’s so-called “kiss connectivity” by transferring the movie Avatar: a USB 3.0 dongle was connected to a computer dock that contained Keyssa’s chip, and a tablet that also had a chip added to it sat in the dock. The film transferred wirelessly from dongle to tablet via the dock in about 47 seconds—slower than if the dongle was able to operate at full USB 3.0 speed, I was told, but much faster than an unmodified tablet that was simultaneously transferring the same movie from a USB 2.0 dongle that was plugged into it.

Isaac said Keyssa uses frequencies in the 60-gigahertz range to transfer information. Once devices are within millimeters of each other, they can send data to and fro.

And beyond adding its chips to the tablet and dock, the company didn’t make other modifications to the software on the tablet to get Keyssa to work: “This is just the next generation of connection,” he said.

However, Payam Heydari, an electrical engineering professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studies wireless data transfers, isn’t sure that the technology would really be in demand beyond, say, transferring data between laptops and TVs.

Heydari also notes that versions of Wi-Fi in the works will be more competitive. Samsung, for instance, said in October that it came up with its own 60 gigahertz Wi-Fi technology that would enable data transfers of up to 4.6 gigabits per second—still slower than Keyssa’s maximum promised speed, but plenty faster than today’s Wi-Fi standard.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news...are-big-files/





Google Fiber Posts Austin Pricing

1-Gig/Pay-TV Bundle To Start At $10 More Than In K.C. & Provo
Jeff Baumgartner

Google Fiber has posted details on the three residential service plans it will offer in Austin as it prepares to open up the sign-up process next month.

While Google Fiber’s 1-Gig stand-alone service and free basic Internet tier are almost carbon copies of its offerings in the Kansas City area and in Provo, Utah, its bundled 1-Gig/pay-TV offering starts at $10 more per month.

In Austin, Google Fiber’s Gigabit+TV package, which features a video lineup with more than 150 channels and a DVR that can record up to eight shows at once, will start at $130 per month and waive the $300 construction fee if customers make a one-year commitment. Google Fiber’s 1-gig/pay-TV bundles in Kansas City and Provo start at $120 per month, a price based on a two-year contract.

Also in Austin, Google Fiber’s standalone 1-Gig service comes with 1 terabyte of cloud storage and also waives the $300 construction fee if customers commit to a year of service. Its “basic” Internet service (5 Mbps down by 1 Mbps upstream) is free, though customers must pony up the $300 construction fee, which they can pay all at once or in increments of $25 per month for 12 months.

Google Fiber construction is underway in Austin, with plans to open up the sign-up process in December. Using its demand-based model, Google Fiber will offer services in “fiberhoods” where it gets the requisite number of homes to sign up. Last week, Google Fiber committed to provide its basic Internet service for free to area public housing for ten years after construction begins, though the initiative will be limited to fiberhoods that meet their individual signup goals.

Google Fiber has begun to roll out a version of its service for small businesses in many of its K.C.-area fiberhoods, but hasn’t announced when it will extend that offer to other markets.

Grande Communications, which launched 1-Gig in Austin in February and recently moved ahead on an expansion, sells its “Power 1000” tier for $64.99 per month. AT&T sells its 1-Gig GigaPower service in pockets of Austin for $70 per month under a “Premier” plan under which customers must agree to participate in AT&T Internet Preferences, a targeted Web advertising program; and for $99 per month under its “Standard” offering.

Also in Austin, Time Warner Cable, the market’s incumbent cable operator, recently completed an upgrade there that bumps its former 50 Mbps (downstream) DOCSIS 3.0 tier to 100 Mbps.
http://www.multichannel.com/news/tec...pricing/385834





Europe Takes Another Look at Net Neutrality
Mark Scott

Just as the United States takes steps to secure people’s unfettered access to the Internet, Europe may soon backtrack on its own proposals.

The idea of so-called net neutrality — or the concept that everyone should have equal access to all online content — will again take center stage on Thursday as politicians from the 28-member bloc meet to discuss how the rules should be put into effect across the region.

In the United States, President Obama recently called on the Federal Communications Commission to adopt rules that would stop broadband companies from slowing down certain types of online content. The European Parliament outlined similar rules earlier this year.

Now, though, some European lawmakers are pushing to loosen the rules somewhat, allowing companies to potentially charge for faster access to their networks.

A draft proposal circulated among the members of the European Union, released by European Digital Rights, a Brussels-based advocacy group, would remove the strict definition of net neutrality from new European telecom legislation that is expected to be finalized sometime next year.

The proposal, circulated by Italy, which currently holds the six-month presidency of the European Union, suggests allowing broadband and telecom companies to manage traffic across their networks (and potentially offer faster speeds to companies that are willing to pay a premium) as long as they provide a minimal level of access for all online content.

The suggestions, which still must be worked out among individual countries, the European Parliament and the European Commission, come as the region’s Internet service providers are lobbying hard to weaken Europe’s original net neutrality proposals.

Telecom companies like Vodafone of Britain and Orange of France are concerned that the current proposals would not allow them to charge for improved access to their networks to generate revenue that they say is needed to upgrade Europe’s Internet infrastructure.


The rules proposed by the Parliament include amendments intended to provide a strict definition of net neutrality, so that telecom companies and other Internet service providers could not discriminate between different services that run on their data networks.

And even while some European lawmakers are moving to alter the region’s net neutrality proposals, others continue to push strong rules.

“All the traffic has to be treated equally,” Andrus Ansip, the new digital chief at the European Commission, told Reuters this week when asked about the potential watering down of Europe’s net neutrality rules. “The Internet has to stay open for everybody.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/1...et-neutrality/





Digital Tsar Urges Europe Not to Weaken Net Neutrality Rules
Julia Fioretti and Alastair Macdonald

The European Union's new digital tsar voiced alarm on Monday at the efforts of some EU governments to water down equal Internet access, just as EU plans for "net neutrality" were being echoed in the United States by Barack Obama.

Andrus Ansip, the former Estonian prime minister who this month became Vice President for the Digital Single Market in the European Commission, told Reuters he was "really worried" by new proposals from states to let Internet service providers offer, to some degree, different data speeds to different customers.

"All the traffic has to be treated equally," Ansip said in an interview. "The Internet has to stay open for everybody.

"The president of the United States is using our wording - the wording of the European Parliament in the United States of America," he said. Draft legislation in the United States seeks to prevent content providers - big video streaming services, for example - from buying faster delivery than smaller competitors can afford.

Obama made a rare intervention on the issue two weeks ago when he said that no company should be stuck in the "slow lane" because it could not pay for faster access. That sentiment is central to proposals from the EU Commission that were strengthened by EU lawmakers in April.

Ansip's warning was directed at a proposal from Italy, which holds the rotating chair of EU inter-government meetings, to give network providers some leeway to offer different speeds.

The growth of data-hungry services such as Netflix, Skype and Spotify has strained the capacity of Internet service providers. They now say they should be allowed to give priority to some traffic over others.

"It is allowed to have higher speeds - but not at the expense of others," said Ansip, who championed high-tech development during his nine years as prime minister, turning ex-Soviet Estonia into a model for a connected economy. "Access to the Internet has to be one of those basic rights."

Ansip also said big digital service providers - such as Google, which is facing a Commission anti-trust inquiry - needed to be supervised to ensure they did not abuse dominant market positions.

(Writing by Julia Fioretti; Editing by Larry King)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/1...0J81TK20141124





This FCC Commissioner Did A Reddit Chat. It Did Not Go Well.
Mignon Clyburn

On Friday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Mignon Clyburn took to Reddit to do an "Ask Me Anything" session and answer questions about her job. But she soon found herself on the defensive against Reddit users angry about how the FCC has handled net neutrality rulemaking.

The FCC is currently weighing whether to classify the Internet like a utility and restrict Internet service providers from charging content providers for faster Internet access. This month, President Barack Obama announced his support for that approach, known as "Title II." But net neutrality advocates are concerned that the FCC might go with a different proposal, which would allow for some degree of paid prioritization. Opponents of this plan say that it would threaten the openness of the Internet by making it harder for smaller sites to compete.

When asked about her position on net neutrality, Clyburn, who is one of five FCC commissioners appointed by the president, said that she supports "a free and open Internet." She pointed out that in 2010, she supported Title II and a ban on paid prioritization, which is what Obama is asking for now. But she did not explicitly say that she still supports this plan. Instead, she wrote that she has "many of the same concerns I did four years ago, but have vowed to keep an open mind." Clyburn did not go into detail about what those concerns are.

Later, she said that "if we think the right policy goal is to ban paid prioritization, we should determine the appropriate legal authority to do so," contending that "Title II on its own does not automatically ban paid prioritization." A commenter dismissed her statement as a "talking point."

Over the summer, the FCC accepted nearly 4 million public comments about net neutrality -- an overwhelming number of which opposed allowing Internet service providers to charge for faster Internet access. One commenter asked Clyburn if the FCC listens to the public. She responded, "Public comments absolutely influence the FCC deliberations, including rule makings."

Another user asked: "How can we (the Internet!) make ourselves heard in this process? Because it begins to seem like the e-mail campaigns and the phone calls do not have a large effect on convincing the FCC to reclassify ISPs under Title II?"

Clyburn responded: "I disagree completely. Your voices are being heard and your comments are being read."

But many Redditors didn't agree, complaining about the number of Clyburn's answers and their substance. For their responses, check out the full discussion here.

Clyburn’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Igor Bobic contributed reporting.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/1...n_6204572.html





Bidding in Government Auction of Airwaves Reaches $34 Billion
Edward Wyatt

A government auction of airwaves for use in mobile broadband has blown through presale estimates, becoming the biggest auction in the Federal Communications Commission’s history and signaling that wireless companies expect demand for Internet access by smartphones to continue to soar.

And it’s not over yet.

Companies bid more than $34 billion as of Friday afternoon for six blocks of airwaves, totaling 65 megahertz of the electromagnetic spectrum, being sold by the F.C.C. That total is more than three times the $10.5 billion reserve price that the commission put on the sale, the first offering of previously unavailable airwaves in six years.

Prices are likely to rise further, because the auction has no definite end and could continue for days or weeks. The previous record was $18.9 billion raised in a 2008 sale of airwaves that, because of their lower frequency, are considered more attractive for wireless phone use than the current batch.

“It’s stunning,” said Preston Padden, executive director of the Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition, a group representing broadcast television stations that are considering giving up their spectrum for sale in the F.C.C.’s next auction, scheduled for 2016. “Consumer demand for wireless broadband is on a growth curve that looks like a hockey stick, and carriers are desperate to keep up with that demand.”

Several factors appear to have contributed to the auction’s success, as the pent-up demand from years without an auction coincided with the explosive popularity of smartphones and mobile broadband. The response is more surprising given that the airwaves’ high frequency makes them less attractive for wireless use than those sold in the last auction or scheduled for the 2016 sale.

Coming soon after President Obama called for strong net neutrality regulations to be applied equally to wireless networks, the robust bidding also seems to indicate that mobile phone companies are not as reluctant to make new investments as they indicated they were when protesting the president’s recommendation.

The auction is a significant victory for the F.C.C. and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the agency in the Commerce Department that oversees the nation’s communications systems. It makes it much likelier that broadcast stations might be willing to give up or move their positions on the spectrum to free up airwaves to be sold in the 2016 auction, because they will receive a portion of the proceeds as an incentive.

“Years of hard work paved the way” for the auction, “and ongoing bidding appears to signal considerable commercial interest in this spectrum,” the F.C.C. chairman, Tom Wheeler, and an assistant secretary of commerce, Lawrence E. Strickling, said in a joint statement on Friday.

About $7 billion of the proceeds will be used to finance the building of a nationwide public-safety communications network, known as FirstNet, with the remainder going to the Treasury.

A successful sale was anything but a foregone conclusion. The frequencies are currently occupied by government agencies, including branches of the military, which had to be cajoled to agree to move out or to share portions of them.

The relatively high position on the electromagnetic spectrum of the blocks being sold also cast doubt on their attractiveness. Higher-frequency waves generally have more trouble passing through buildings, making them less desirable for mobile phones, although they are able to carry lots of data, increasingly important to wireless broadband.

Frequencies being sold include two blocks in the 1695-1710 megahertz band, and four paired sets of frequencies at 1755-1780 and 2155-2180 megahertz. The next scheduled broadcast spectrum auction, in 2016, involves frequencies in the 600 megahertz band.

The last such sale was in 2008, when the iPhone was barely a year old and demand for mobile broadband was at a relative trickle. Today, as consumers stream video and share photographs with many more phones, tablets and other devices, demand for bandwidth has exploded.

Some analysts have also speculated that because the auction of broadcast television bands currently scheduled for 2016 has already been delayed twice, buyers might be skeptical that those frequencies will come to market on schedule — giving them extra incentive to buy now rather than wait.

Still, the current spectrum, known as the AWS-3 bands, is also not likely to be available for use for some years. Government users will first have to move out of the bands, or buyers figure out how to share some of the airwaves with military operators.

Seventy companies were approved to bid in the auction, but the high bidders will not be identified until after the auction is completed. New owners will then have to engineer their devices to work with the high-frequency spectrum, although the biggest companies, like AT&T and Verizon Wireless, already use similar, adjacent frequencies, so that is not likely to be too onerous.

Verizon Wireless and AT&T are assumed to be among the big bidders in the sale. But Philip Cusick, a financial analyst at J.P. Morgan, wrote in a note to clients on Thursday that “the continued rapid rise in bids is a sign that there is a third, or perhaps fourth, large bidder in the auction.”

One of those could be Dish Network, the satellite company, which already owns some nearby frequencies. Dish Network’s share price rose 13 percent last week as investors realized the aggressive bidding meant Dish’s holdings were probably undervalued.

Shares of Verizon and AT&T, for their part, fell slightly, as analysts noted that the companies might be spending more than they expected.

Some prices are truly eye-popping. The price for licenses in a 20-megahertz block of paired frequencies covering New York and Long Island and portions of adjacent states stood at $1.96 billion Friday afternoon. In the bidding round that starts Monday morning, the minimum bid is more than $2 billion.

The results of the yet-to-be-completed auction have some parties calling for Congress to pave the way for more sales, and soon. “Companies are clamoring to give the federal government money,” Vince Jesaitis, vice president for government affairs at the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group, wrote on the group’s blog last week.

“The clamoring for spectrum available in this auction,” he added, “should refocus our lawmakers’ attention on the value of this resource and the need to put it to use to meet the needs of the American public.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/bu...4-billion.html





Under Pressure From Uber, Taxi Medallion Prices are Plummeting
Josh Barro

In major cities throughout the United States, taxi medallion prices are tumbling as taxis face competition from car-service apps like Uber and Lyft.

The average price of an individual New York City taxi medallion fell to $872,000 in October, down 17 percent from a peak reached in the spring of 2013, according to an analysis of sales data. Previous figures published by the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission — showing flat prices — appear to have been incorrect, and the commission removed them from its website after an inquiry from The New York Times.

In other big cities, medallion prices are also falling, often in conjunction with a sharp decline in sales volume. In Chicago, prices are down 17 percent. In Boston, they’re down at least 20 percent, though it’s hard to establish an exact market price because there have been only five trades since July. In Philadelphia, the taxi authority recently scrapped a planned medallion auction.

Most major American cities have long used a system to limit the number of operating taxicabs, typically a medallion system: Drivers must own or rent a medallion to operate a taxi, and the city issues a fixed number of them. In New York, which established its medallion system in 1937, that number is 13,437. The number has risen only gradually since the late 1990s, even as the city’s economy has boomed.

The turmoil in the medallion market has been obscured in part because publicly disclosed data about taxi medallion prices can be misleading. And the turmoil suggests that the taxi business, which has undergone little change over many decades, is now in the midst of a revolution.

“I’m already at peace with the idea that I’m going to go bankrupt,” said Larry Ionescu, who owns 98 Chicago taxi medallions. That might be overly dramatic; after all, Mr. Ionescu also compared Chicago’s pro-Uber mayor, Rahm Emanuel, to Nicolae Ceausescu, the reviled ex-dictator of his native Romania. It’s likely Mr. Ionescu remains a very rich man. In November, Chicago medallion sale prices averaged $298,000, well below the $357,000 price that was typical this spring, but far up from the $50,000 price of a decade ago.

But it’s easy to see why he’s worried about the medium term: A seven-mile ride from the Loop to the University of Chicago in a medallion taxi costs about $26, including tip. The same trip cost $12.29 this April with UberX, the lowest-cost service option from Uber.

The crucial question for medallion owners like Mr. Ionescu is, if Uber is that much cheaper than a taxi, why would anyone take a taxi, and therefore why would any driver pay to lease a medallion? Mr. Ionescu says his revenues are down around 25 percent, and he’s having trouble leasing out his whole fleet.

Official data on medallion prices can be misleading for two main reasons: simple inaccuracy — as in New York, where officials excluded most sales from their calculations — or the very small number of sales. In Chicago, for example, there have been only 11 medallion sales since July 1, compared with 147 during the same period last year. Just because somebody sold a medallion for $300,000 doesn’t mean it will be consistently possible to sell at that price into a thin market.

“Those are fake prices,” said Mohammad Kamran, a medallion broker in Chicago, who blames UberX. “The price has plunged big time, and there are no buyers or sellers because the lenders are not lending money.”

Mr. Kamran said owners are increasingly unable to charge Chicago’s maximum weekly lease rate for medallion taxis, which is around $780, including taxes and insurance, for a late-model Toyota Prius. Drivers have been bargaining that rate down to $700 or $725, he says; others are defecting to services like Uber.

In Boston, the story is similar. As recently as April, Boston taxi medallions were selling for $700,000. The last sale, in October, was for $561,000.

“Right now Uber has a strong presence here in Boston, and that’s having a dramatic impact on the taxi industry and the medallion values,” said Donna Blythe-Shaw, a spokeswoman for the Boston Taxi Drivers’ Association. “We hear that there’s a couple of medallion owners that have offered to sell at 425 and nobody’s touched them."

Not long ago, with demand for taxis rising and the supply fixed, medallions soared in value: A medallion that could be bought for $250,000 in New York a decade ago (or about $315,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars) was worth over $1 million last year.

Medallion sales volume has often fluctuated in New York, but right now it is at a low point. There was only one medallion sale in September, followed by nine in October. Ominously, five of the 10 sales in those two months were foreclosure sales. New York’s taxi market had generally been thought less vulnerable because of the importance of street hails, which Uber can’t do, and because New York requires Uber drivers to be licensed by the T.L.C. and drive vehicles with livery plates and commercial insurance.

Yellow taxis in New York also face competition from new green “boro taxis,” which may pick up fares only in the boroughs outside Manhattan and in northern Manhattan. That program has been in the works for three years, including during a period when medallion prices were still rising. The vast majority of yellow cab pickups occur in Manhattan below 110th Street or at airports, where yellow cabs face competition from Uber but not from green cabs. Still, the green cab program has faced strong opposition from yellow cab medallion owners, and the start of falling medallion prices coincides with a June 2013 court ruling upholding the green cab program.

The trouble in New York’s market was also partly obscured by a flaw in the average price reports that were published monthly by the city’s taxi commission until September. Those reports erroneously said average prices for individual medallions had stayed largely the same since setting a record of $1.05 million in June 2013.

In fact, individual medallions have traded below $1 million for most of the last year. But the commission excludes from its statistics any transaction at a price more than $10,000 below the previous month’s reported average.

The commission does so in the name of excluding sales that do not occur at an arm’s length — say, between two relatives. When prices are flat or rising, as they generally have been for decades, the methodology can produce a reasonably accurate result. But when prices are falling, the commission’s method is guaranteed to mischaracterize the market.

A spokesman for the T.L.C. pointed to disclaimer language saying its average price reports “may be misleading and may not accurately convey trends in medallion prices, among other things.”

The Upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our weekly newsletter here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/up...lummeting.html





Uber's Android App Caught Reporting Data Back Without Permission

Uber's Android app is acting like malware, reporting personal data back to the company that it doesn't have permissions for
Loz Blain

Security researcher GironSec has pulled Uber's Android app apart and discovered that it's sending a huge amount of personal data back to base – including your call logs, what apps you've got installed, whether your phone is vulnerable to certain malware, whether your phone is rooted, and your SMS and MMS logs, which it explicitly doesn't have permission to do. It's the latest in a series of big-time missteps for a company whose core business model is, frankly, illegal in most of its markets as well.

Taxi-busting ride share app Uber might have an operating model that suits customers better than traditional, regulated taxi services – but the company's aggressively disruptive (and frequently illegal) business practices don't seem to stop at harming the taxi industry.

Its vicious attacks on competitors have included ordering and cancelling more than five and a half thousand rides through its chief competitor Lyft. Its senior Vice President of Business, Emil Michael, casually mentioned at a dinner that maybe Uber could start digging up personal dirt on journalists critical of the company.

These kinds of stories, of course, should be taken with a grain of salt – they're certainly very beneficial to competing services like Lyft.

But there doesn't seem to be a lot of grey area in these latest revelations that Uber is collecting a stack of personal data from users who have its Android app installed, including SMS data that its permissions list doesn't allow.

Security researcher GironSec decompiled the code of the Uber Android app and found it to be collecting and sending the following information back to Uber:

• Accounts log (Email)
• App Activity (Name, PackageName, Process Number of activity, Processed id)
• App Data Usage (Cache size, code size, data size, name, package name)
• App Install (installed at, name, package name, unknown sources enabled, version code, version name)
• Battery (health, level, plugged, present, scale, status, technology, temperature, voltage)
• Device Info (board, brand, build version, cell number, device, device type, display, fingerprint, ip, mac address, manufacturer, model, os platform, product, sdk code, total disk space, unknown sources enabled)
• GPS (accuracy, altitude, latitude, longitude, provider, speed)
• MMS (from number, mms at, mmss type, service number, to number)
• NetData (bytes received, bytes sent, connection type, interface type)
• PhoneCall (call duration, called at, from number, phone call type, to number)
• SMS (from number, service number, sms at, sms type, to number)
• TelephonyInfo (cell tower id, cell tower latitude, cell tower longitude, imei, iso country code, local area code, meid, mobile country code, mobile network code, network name, network type, phone type, sim serial number, sim state, subscriber id)
• WifiConnection (bssid, ip, linkspeed, macaddr, networkid, rssi, ssid)
• WifiNeighbors (bssid, capabilities, frequency, level, ssid)
• Root Check (root staus code, root status reason code, root version, sig file version)
• Malware Info (algorithm confidence, app list, found malware, malware sdk version, package list, reason code, service list, sigfile version)

While some people are suggesting it might be an anti-fraud measure to help Uber detect and combat fake accounts set up by its competitors, the fact remains – collecting data without appropriate permission constitutes malware and compromises users' personal data.

It's not yet clear whether the iPhone app does the same level of reporting on its users. As for whether Google will move to pull the Uber app from the Play store, that seems unlikely given that Google's US$258 million dollar stake in Uber represents the biggest deal Google Ventures has ever done.

This is the new world we're living in, folks, and if you think Uber's the only one building fat files out of your personal information, you're mad.
http://www.gizmag.com/uber-app-malware-android/34962/





The FBI’s Dangerous Misrepresentation of Encryption Law
Kyle Chayka

The FBI no more deserves a direct line to your data than it deserves to intercept your mail at the post office. But it doesn’t want you to know that.



FBI Director James Comey certainly wants you to think that he’s not going to be able to get inside of your iPhone 6. Lately, Comey has been the source of a slew of off-the-cuff comments about how the FBI is “going dark”: “Those charged with protecting our people aren’t always able to access the evidence we need,” he said in a recent speech at the Brookings Institution. “We have the legal authority to intercept and access communications and information pursuant to court order, but we often lack the technical ability to do so.”

Comey’s consternation stems from Apple and Google’s decisions to manufacture their smartphones and operating systems with encryption baked in by default. “In the past, conducting electronic surveillance was more straightforward,” Comey said during the speech. Such encryption would damage the organization’s access to the real-time data of its suspects, or such is the line that Comey is pushing. “Some believe that the FBI has these phenomenal capabilities to access any information at any time…. It is simply not the case in real life,” he said.

Privacy experts agree that Comey’s comments are not only misleading, but outright false. Installing encryption on individual devices is a fundamental political right that the FBI seems to be ignoring, despite the fact that laws banning this encryption have already failed to pass. Comey’s comments are a repetition of an old narrative. His recommendation of mandating the installation of a backdoor into encryption for government access would be damaging to users, businesses, and national security alike, critics argue.

Installing encryption on individual devices is a fundamental political right that the FBI seems to be ignoring, despite the fact that laws banning this encryption have already failed to pass.

“The fundamental misunderstanding is that the Fourth Amendment gives the government an affirmative right to information, which is it doesn’t,” says Liza Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program. The amendment “provides an affirmative right to people, not the government.” In other words, Comey seems to think that the FBI has a legal right to blank-check access to unencrypted information from our personal devices. But there is “absolutely nothing wrong or illegal about a person encrypting their information or Apple offering encryption as a default,” Goitein adds.

Comey is also misrepresenting the extent to which encryption from Google and Apple changes how information is protected. Privacy, after all, has always been a third-party option for devices. “Strong encryption services and products are already out there,” says Harley Geiger of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “You can buy a black phone, a Silent Circle phone, or use PGP to encrypt your data.” What the FBI is speaking out against is the spread of encryption technology to a wider audience that may have not been aware of it before. “What Apple and Google have done is make strong encryption available to the average user, not just those who are security conscious—that’s hugely valuable,” Geiger adds.

Not only would mandating an encryption backdoor damage personal privacy, it could have much wider consequences. “There’s no way to create a vulnerability that only the U.S. government can exploit,” Goitein says. This means hackers, cyber-criminals, and foreign governments could easily use such a hole. “In the end it creates much less security than if you had strong encryption in place without the backdoor,” Geiger says.

The burden of such a backdoor will also fall squarely on U.S. businesses, which may find themselves unable to compete in foreign markets with the added risk of vulnerability. “Small businesses, large businesses use encryption,” says Mark Jaycox of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “The notion that FBI likes to push is only terrorists use encryption, but everyone uses encryption.”

Comey is pushing for an update of the Communications Assistance of Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which was passed in 1994, mandating telecommunications companies to install backdoors so the FBI could continue wiretapping even without the presence of a physical wire. But a renewed CALEA could push for applying the same rules to individual users, when legal tools like subpoenas and warrants already exist for the organization to get the data it needs for evidence. Efforts to pass a new version of the law have failed. “Congress could have extended [CALEA] to Internet communications, but Congress didn’t,” Goitein says.

As we move farther beyond the initial Edward Snowden leaks and into a Republican-controlled Congress, overreaches like CALEA might pass unnoticed. But Comey’s speeches should raise alarms. Not only is the director of the FBI advocating for something that could make America’s Internet infrastructure weaker, he is actively misrepresenting the legal context of encryption for individuals, a much larger infringement on technology users—i.e., everyone. As Goitein states, encryption is perfectly legal, and the FBI no more deserves a direct line to your data than it deserves to intercept your mail at the post office.

The illogic of the situation is gradually coming to light. In fact, not all branches of the government support the FBI’s push.

In a recent speech at Stanford in front of an audience of Silicon Valley insiders, National Security Agency director Michael Rogers noted that “when you find vulnerabilities, we are going to share them; the default mechanism is that we’re going to share the vulnerabilities.” (Presumably they will work to solve these vulnerabilities as well rather than exploiting them.) “A fundamentally strong Internet is in the best interest of the nation,” he said.

We can only hope that both the FBI and NSA have the ultimate safety of Americans in mind when they push for access to more and more consumer data. Unfortunately, as the past several years have proven, this is not the case. It behooves us all to be more aware not just of how we use technology but also of how its mainstream perception is being manipulated.
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/poli...ion-law-94876/





U.N. Committee Spotlights 'Highly Intrusive' Digital Spying
Michelle Nichols

A United Nations General Assembly committee on Tuesday expressed concern at digital spying and said unlawful or arbitrary mass surveillance, interception and collection of online data are "highly intrusive acts" that violate the right to privacy.

But a reference to metadata surveillance as an intrusive act was removed from the resolution, which was adopted by consensus, to appease the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, known as the Five Eyes surveillance alliance, diplomats said.

Metadata is communications detail such as which telephone numbers were involved in a call, when calls were made, how long they lasted, when and where someone logged on to email or the Internet, who was emailed and what Web pages were visited.

"Lawful surveillance, subject to appropriate safeguards and oversight, can be an important tool to protect individuals from criminal or terrorist threats and access to telecommunications metadata can be an important element of the investigation of such threats," an Australian delegate told the U.N. Third Committee, which deals with human rights, after the vote.

The resolution drafted by Germany and Brazil does still mention metadata for the first time, warning that "certain types of metadata, when aggregated, can reveal personal information and give an insight into an individual's behaviour, social relationships, private preferences and identity."

But Canada said any further global discussions on metadata should not be limited to U.N. diplomats.

"If our muddled discussions on metadata are any indication, these conversations cannot take place between diplomats alone. They require the collective expertise of all stakeholders: governments, industry, civil society and the technical community," a Canadian delegate told the Third Committee.

The resolution was approved by the 193-member committee as a follow-up to a similar text adopted last year after former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden exposed a spying programme by the NSA, sparking international outrage.

"Without the necessary checks, we risk turning into Orwellian states, where every step of every citizen is being monitored and recorded in order to prevent any conceivable crime," Germany's U.N. Ambassador Harald Braun said on Tuesday.

The resolution is now expected to be adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in December. Resolutions passed by the General Assembly are non-binding but can carry political weight.

It calls on states to provide an effective remedy when a person's right to privacy has been violated by unlawful or arbitrary surveillance and encourages the U.N. Human Rights Council to consider establishing a special procedure to identify and clarify standards protecting privacy rights.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by James Dalgleish)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/1...0J92I520141126





Computer Spying Malware Uncovered with 'Stealth' Features – Symantec

An advanced malicious software application has been uncovered that since 2008 was used to spy on private companies, governments, research institutes and individuals in 10 countries, antivirus software maker Symantec Corp said in a report on Sunday.

The Mountain View, California-based maker of Norton antivirus products said its research showed that a "nation state" was likely the developer of the malware called Regin, or Backdoor.Regin, but Symantec did not identify any countries or victims.

Symantec said Regin's design "makes it highly suited for persistent, long-term surveillance operations against targets," and was withdrawn in 2011 but resurfaced from 2013 onward.

The malware uses several "stealth" features "and even when its presence is detected, it is very difficult to ascertain what it is doing," according to Symantec. It said "many components of Regin remain undiscovered and additional functionality and versions may exist."

Almost half of all infections occurred at addresses of Internet service providers, the report said. It said the targets were customers of the companies rather than the companies themselves. About 28 percent of targets were in telecoms while other victims were in the energy, airline, hospitality and research sectors, Symantec said.

Symantec described the malware as having five stages, each "hidden and encrypted, with the exception of the first stage." It said "each individual stage provides little information on the complete package. Only by acquiring all five stages is it possible to analyze and understand the threat."

Regin also uses what is called a modular approach that allows it to load custom features tailored to targets, the same method applied in other malware, such as Flamer and Weevil (The Mask), the antivirus company said. Some of its features were also similar to Duqu malware, uncovered in September 2011 and related to a computer worm called Stuxnet, discovered the previous year.

Cybersecurity is a sensitive topic for businesses in the United States, where there have been several breaches of major companies and customer information. The U.S. government and private cyber intelligence firms have said they suspect state-backed hackers in China or Russia may be responsible.

Symantec said Russia and Saudi Arabia accounted for about half of the confirmed infections of the Regin malware and the other countries were Mexico, Ireland, India, Iran, Afghanistan, Belgium, Austria and Pakistan.

(Reporting by Grant McCool, editing by G Crosse)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/1...0J70S920141123





Dirt-Cheap Android Tablets from Best Buy, Walmart, Elsewhere Found to Ship with Major Security Flaws
Chris Smith

Many retailers are ready to offer buyers various interesting deals on smartphones and tablets this year on Black Friday, but not all products are safe for consumers, new research from security company Bluebox Labs reveals. Apparently, certain dirt-cheap Android tablets might come with major security vulnerabilities on board.

“Bluebox Labs purchased over a dozen of these Black Friday ‘bargain’ Android tablets from big name retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Kmart, Kohl’s and Staples, and reviewed each of them for security,” the company wrote on its blog. “What we found was shocking: most of the devices ship with vulnerabilities and security misconfigurations; a few even include security backdoors. What seemed like great bargains turned out to be big security concerns. Unfortunately, unsuspecting consumers who purchase and use these devices will be putting their mobile data and passwords at risk.”

Obviously, these tablets mostly come from unknown manufacturers, and it’s likely most savvy Android users have never even heard of some of them.

According to a list of devices provided by Bluebox Labs, the following devices are not to be trusted, as they come with vulnerabilities out of the box:

• $49.99 DigiLand from Best Buy
• $39.99 RCA Mercury from Target
• $39.99 Mach Speed Xtreme from Kmart
• $49.99 Polaroid from Walgreens
• $49.99 Zeki from Kohl’s
• $39.99 Mach Speed JLab Pro from Staples
• $49.99 Craig 7 from Fred’s Super Dollar
• $49.99 Pioneer 7 from Walmart
• $49.00 Nextbook from Walmart
• $49.99 Ematic from Walmart
• $69.99 RCA from Walmart
• $47.32 Worryfree Zeepad from Walmart

The security company advises buyers to handle these particular models with extra care, and use them for “low-risk activities like simple gaming, media entertainment, and public web browsing.”

“We recommend that you avoid conducting online banking, making purchases or storing sensitive data on these devices – if you do, you will be putting your data at risk,” the company wrote.

More details about the kind of security vulnerabilities found on these ultra-affordable Android tablets are available at the source link.
http://bgr.com/2014/11/26/cheap-blac...droid-tablets/





Sony Pictures Hacked, Entire Computer System Reportedly Unusable
Owen Williams

Reports that Sony Pictures has been hacked have been trickling in this morning, after a thread appeared on Reddit claiming all computers at the company were offline due to a hack.

According to the Reddit thread, an image appeared on all employee’s computers reading “Hacked by #GOP” and demanding their “requests be met” along with links to leaked data.

The Reddit user that posted the thread posted a year ago that they worked at Sony Pictures.

The image shown on employee computers – we’ve blurred out the links to leaked documents

The ZIP files mentioned in the images contain a list of filenames of a number of documents pertaining to financial records along with private keys for access to servers. The message shown on computers mentions “demands” that must be met by November 24th at 11:00PM GMT or the files named will be released.

A source within Sony has anonymously confirmed to TNW that the hack and image that have appeared on computers inside Sony Pictures is real. They said that “a single server was compromised and the attack was spread from there.”

According to our source, everyone was going home following the hack: “We’re all going to work from home. Can’t even get on the internet.”

Variety reports that Sony employees have been warned not to connect to the company’s corporate network or to check email. They also added that “Sony’s information-technology departments have instructed employees to turn off their computers as well as disable Wi-Fi on all mobile devices”

Sony Pictures is the American company that manages distribution of the company’s film and TV productions.

We’ve contacted Sony’s press line for comment but haven’t heard back yet, however in a statement to Deadline, the company said “We are investigating an IT matter.”
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/1...uters-offline/

















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