Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - April 13th, ’24

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"Rivkin is lying." – Mike Masnick


































April 13th, 2024




MPA Claims Piracy Costs Theaters $1 Billion Per Year – And They Have A Plan To Stop It [CinemaCon 2024]
Ryan Scott

CinemaCon is currently going on in Las Vegas, with theater owners and members of the industry on hand to examine the state of the movie business. One issue that's already come up in a big way is piracy. Motion Picture Association (MPA) Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin took the stage during the State of the Industry presentation on Tuesday and spoke passionately about the matter of people pirating films. Rivkin boldly claimed that piracy costs theaters an estimated $1 billion at the box office annually right now. But the MPA isn't content to just let that continue, as it's also announced a plan to help fight the problem.

Rivkin revealed that the MPA now plans to work with Congress to enact site-blocking legislation in the U.S. This is not the first time that such legislation has been proposed, but as Rivkin pointed out, more than 60 countries around the world have adopted such measures. "Site blocking works," he declared while adding that "it substantially decreases piracy." In theory, if that $1 billion figure is correct, the total global box office could have hit $10 billion in 2023 as opposed to $9 billion. It may not be as simple as that, but we are talking about a huge slice of the pie here.

Rivkin also had strong words about those who operate piracy websites. "The perpetrators are real-life mobsters," he said before adding, "Many of whom engage in child pornography, prostitution, drug trafficking, and so many other societal ills." Rivkin then explained what, in practice, such legislation would accomplish:

The idea is that, legally, it could be requested that internet service providers block access to websites that feature stolen content. Rivkin was sure to highlight that this wouldn't impact legitimate businesses. He specifically highlighted the website Fmovies, which is one of the world's biggest movie piracy sites. According to Rivkin, 1/3 of the site's traffic comes from the U.S., partially because other countries have employed site-blocking measures.

"There are no gray areas here," Rivkin said definitively. A similar fight around site-blocking measures happened in 2012 in the U.S. Arguments at the time came up suggesting that it would "break the internet" or stifle free speech. Rivkin countered by saying, "Examples of free speech violations are practically non-existent."

Much has changed in the last 12 years. Between streaming and movies hitting PVOD much earlier, clean copies of pirated films can be found online with ease. This was a problem with "Tenet" in 2020, it was a problem with "Black Widow" in 2021, and it's been a problem with virtually every other big movie since. Rivkin tried to drive home his point by pointing to a world where piracy is no longer as big of an issue:

Granted, site-blocking would by no means guarantee that those same people would then buy a ticket at a theater or pay for a movie on VOD instead. There are also nuanced parts of the conversation to consider here. Mike Flanagan has come out in support of bootleg physical releases of his shows like "Midnight Mass," which currently only exist on Netflix. In such cases, it can be argued as a form of preservation.

That's not as much of an issue with big blockbuster movies. It's a complicated situation with much to consider. The MPA isn't content to just accept these losses though — it's going to try and do something about them.
https://www.slashfilm.com/1558579/mp...inemacon-2024/





The MPA has Big Plans To Crack Down on Movie Piracy Again

The CEO of the Motion Picture Association says it’s going to work with lawmakers to restrict access to websites with pirated content.
Emma Roth

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is going off on piracy again. During CinemaCon in Las Vegas, MPA CEO Charles Rivkin announced that the organization plans on working with Congress to pass rules blocking websites with pirated content.

The MPA is a trade association representing Hollywood studios, including Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Disney (it’s also behind the ratings board that gives you an R if you say curse words too often). It has long lobbied for anti-piracy laws, but it seems the battle is heating up again. In his speech on Tuesday, Rivkin highlights what a major problem piracy in the US has become, saying it costs “hundreds of thousands of jobs” and “more than one billion in theatrical ticket sales.”

It’s true: piracy has gone up in recent years. A report from piracy data analytics company Muso revealed that video piracy websites around the globe received 141 billion visits in 2023, making for a 12 percent increase when compared to 2019. The US and India made up most of these visits. But at the same time, the price to subscribe to a streaming service is higher than ever, and so is the cost of a movie ticket.

The solution to stopping piracy, at least in Rivkin’s eyes, is to prevent users from accessing piracy websites altogether. “Site-blocking is a targeted, legal tactic to disrupt the connection between digital pirates and their intended audience,” Rivkin says. He adds that the ideal process would allow creatives across the film, TV, music, and book industries to go to court, where they can request that internet service providers block access to websites with pirated content.

If the MPA’s plan sounds familiar, it’s because it has tried this before. It helped hatch the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in 2012, which would’ve restricted access to websites containing pirated content. However, the bill was dropped after facing heavy criticism over concerns it would violate free speech. “Back then, we heard concerns about the potential use of site-blocking to stifle free speech,” Rivkin said, referring to SOPA. “But again, real-world experience proved those dire predictions wrong. Examples of free speech violations are practically non-existent.”

In a statement provided to The Verge, Katharine Trendacosta, a director of policy and advocacy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says it’s “fundamentally wrong for the MPA to claim to take the 1st amendment seriously in one breath and threaten the expression of so many others in the next.”

Still, whatever the MPA may have in store likely won’t go over too well with users on the internet. Several popular websites went dark in opposition to SOPA in 2012, and protests could very well erupt again if the organization’s plans get that far.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/9/24...ites-cinemacon





Studios Are Going After Piracy Again, Potentially Reigniting Fight Over Free Speech

The Motion Picture Association said it will work with Congress to enact an anti-piracy law similar to legislation that failed to pass more than a decade ago for potentially promoting censorship.
Winston Cho

In 2011, at the tail end of the golden age of digital piracy, Hollywood mobilized to crack down on copyright infringement through a pair of bills that would’ve restricted access to sites that host pirated content. The legislation was met with fierce opposition from Silicon Valley and online free speech advocates, who argued that it would’ve effectively promoted censorship, leading to a series of coordinated protests that included Wikipedia going dark and Google blacking out its logo. The proposed laws died soon after.

Motion Picture Association chief executive Charles Rivkin on Tuesday announced at CinemaCon that the trade group representing the major studios will work with members of Congress to enact legislation allowing companies across the media and entertainment industries to move for the blocking of access to websites that facilitate the sharing of pirated movies and TV shows.

“Piracy is clearly not a victimless crime,” Rivkin said. “Across the globe, it undermines everyone who works in production — actors, directors, writers, carpenters, craftspeople and more.”

The announcement is part of a renewed bid to block websites accused of hosting copyright-infringing content that enable piracy. Depending on how the legislation is constructed, it also could allow bad actors to weaponize copyright law in a way that stifles free speech across the internet.

“Measures like this are inevitably used to censor lawful speech,” says Electronic Frontier Foundation intellectual property litigation director Mitch Stoltz. “Because they afford an easy way to make something disappear from the internet, they’re a magnet for abuse.”

If the effort sounds familiar, Hollywood in 2011 backed legislation called the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act. Media and entertainment companies maintained that their only goal was to go after foreign websites that distribute unauthorized copies of content. Servers for The Pirate Bay, for example, were located in Sweden, making it harder for U.S. companies to take action against the company. SOPA’s intent was to cut off user access to piracy sites by requiring providers to withhold services (think Google in search and PayPal in payment processing).

Legislation has yet to be proposed but under MPA’s vision, a process overseen by a federal judge will be created in which a copyright holder can move for an order to block a certain site, says MPA senior vp and associate general counsel Ben Sheffner. If they disagree, internet service providers and members of the public will have a chance to respond. The burden will be on the copyright owner to prove that the site is dedicated to infringement and enabling piracy, with the entire process taking place in a matter of months opposed to years if a studio were to initiate a lawsuit. If an order is granted, it’ll be left to the ISP or other intermediaries on how to deny consumers access to the site.

In typical copyright litigation, a court first determines whether the defendant has violated any of the plaintiff’s rights. If there’s liability, a judge then orders that the infringement cease. A case under this so-called “no-fault regime” would proceed differently, with the copyright holder not suing or seeking damages in the traditional sense but rather solely seeking an order for intermediaries that connect the pirate site and users to halt the infringement. “Let’s be clear: This approach focuses only on sites featuring stolen materials,” Rivkin said. “There are no gray areas here.”

Asked how the proposed law will be different from SOPA, Sheffner says that it will be a “much narrower piece of legislation.”

In 2012, SOPA was criticized for forcing intermediaries into a role in which they’re making editorial decisions on content. Google, Reddit, AT&T, Cox and Verizon didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The MPA points to identical site-blocking legislation in other countries. Over the past decade, more than 40 countries including the U.K., Canada and South Korea have enacted regimes that authorize courts or administrative agencies to disable access to websites dedicated to piracy. Since then, more than 90,000 domains used by over 27,000 websites engaged in copyright infringement have been taken down, said MPA general counsel Karyn Temple in testimony before legislators last year, noting that piracy cost the economy up to 560,000 jobs.

She added, “These laws work. They result in fewer visits to piracy sites. Even more important, they result in more visits to legal sites. And none of the predictions about the purported ill effects of site blocking have come true. Examples of over-blocking — blocking of non-infringing content — have been rare to the point of nonexistence. Site blocking has not stifled free expression.”

Enforcement mechanisms to take down copyrighted content on third-party platforms are provided for in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Copyright holders can, for example, send YouTube a notice that a video is infringing on their intellectual property. YouTube, which is protected from liability as long as it takes certain steps to remove the content, then notifies the user, who can dispute the claim. The MPA is pushing further legislation because the DMCA is largely ineffective against foreign entities.

Actions taken under the DMCA may offer a window into how the law may be utilized, if it passes. In 2018, Sony sent Facebook a notice that musician James Rhodes, who was performing a song by Bach, was infringing on its copyright to the performance (Bach songs are in the public domain as long as it’s an original performance). After Facebook muted the video, Rhodes disputed the claim, explaining that “this is my own performance of Bach” and that he “owned all the rights.” Sony rejected the reasoning. His video was only restored after he took to Twitter and emailed executives at Sony. “What about the thousands of other musicians without that reach …?” he tweeted.

The MPA in 2023 also sent a takedown notice over an individual who made a playlist of Pluto TV links allowing for other apps to play content — with the ads — outside of its app, much in the same way a DVD can be played on any player. The group claimed the playlist, which gathered publicly available information in a single repository, was being used to “engage in massive infringement of copyrighted motion pictures and television shows.”

“Any entity that wants information censored will want to use it,” Stoltz says. “There’s no way to limit this [legislation] to piracy or egregious piracy or some other formulation of narrow social harm.”

While acknowledging deficiencies with the DMCA, Stoltz stresses, “The way to reduce infringement is to provide content through lawful channels that are user friendly and appropriately priced and that people want to use.”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/bu...on-1235871278/





Hollywood Believes The Time Is Ripe To Bring Back SOPA
Mike Masnick

It’s been twelve years since the big SOPA/PIPA fight. I’ve been talking with a few folks lately about how it feels like many people have either forgotten that story or weren’t paying attention when it happened. Two years ago, we did a 10-year retrospective on the fight, and it feels like some people need a refresher. Most notably, Charles Rivkin, the head of the MPA (formerly the MPAA), certainly appears to need a refresher because he just announced it’s time to bring back SOPA.

For the young ones in the audience, SOPA (and its Senate companion, PIPA) were bills pushed strongly by the film (MPA) and recording (RIAA) industries. They were pushing for “site blocking” for websites that the industries accused of being “dedicated to piracy.” The law was a slam dunk. It had a huge number of co-sponsors, and the MPA/RIAA combo had convinced Congress to pass ever more expansive copyright laws basically every two to three years for the past 25 years. SOPA was set to become law.

Until it wasn’t. Because the public spoke up loudly. I (coincidentally) was at the Capitol on the day of the big Internet Blackout in protest of SOPA/PIPA, and I heard the phones ringing off the hook. I was running up and down the halls of the office buildings, having Reps. tell me how they were removing their names from the co-sponsor list. The public spoke up and it worked.

But it’s important to remember why it worked: because the law was a horrific attack on free speech and the open web. And for no good reason.

We spent much time explaining why this would be a clear violation of the First Amendment. Under the First Amendment, you cannot shut down an entire publishing house just because it sometimes has published works that contain, say, defamation. You cannot ban access to a photocopying machine because some users use it to infringe. SOPA was basically built-in prior restraint.

You can only target the actually violative content and not declare entire sites be blocked. That goes way beyond what the First Amendment allows.

On top of that, it’s dangerous. First, as was made clear at the time, site blocking of that nature would fuck with underlying technological protocols that are designed to return sites on request. In particular, it would break DNSSEC, which remains an important bit of security online.

There is also the very real risk of false positives. We have plenty of examples of this. During the run-up to SOPA, Universal Music actually declared hip-hop star 50 Cent’s personal website to be dedicated to infringing content. Also, the risk of collateral damage is very real. In the past, we’ve had stories of orders to block a single site, not realizing it was on a shared server, that ended up with tons of sites blocked as collateral damage.

All that is to say: site blocking is bad, doesn’t work, isn’t needed, would cause real damage, and much, much more.

And so of course the MPA and Rivkin are trying to bring it back. In a speech earlier this week, Rivkin laid out the “state of the industry.” He pulled out all the old debunked hits from a decade ago about how piracy was killing Hollywood and blah blah blah. The problem is, it’s just not true. Earlier this year we released our latest Sky is Rising report, which again showed that Hollywood is thriving, and that piracy was never a particularly serious problem.

Indeed, the only reason there’s recently been a small increase in infringing use is because the big streaming companies (who are all members of the MPA) have started implementing a bunch of bullshit policies designed to annoy users and to squeeze them for more money, while giving less in return. The cause of piracy is the MPA members themselves.

But, alas, Rivkin insists that site blocking is the only answer to his own members’ failures to treat customers right:

So today, here with you at CinemaCon, I’m announcing the next major phase of this effort: the MPA is going to work with Members of Congress to enact judicial site-blocking legislation here in the United States.

For anybody unfamiliar with the term, site-blocking is a targeted, legal tactic to disrupt the connection between digital pirates and their intended audience.

It allows all types of creative industries – film and television, music and book publishers, sports leagues and broadcasters – to request, in court, that internet service providers block access to websites dedicated to sharing illegal, stolen content.

Let’s be clear: this approach focuses only on sites featuring stolen materials. There are no gray areas here.

Site-blocking does not impact legitimate businesses or ordinary internet users. To the contrary: it protects them, too.

And it does so within the bounds of due process, requiring detailed evidence establishing a target’s illegal activities and allowing alleged perpetrators to appear in a court of law.

Almost everything Rivkin says here is bullshit. Hollywood is thriving these days. They had a blip due to COVID, but there is no indication, at all, that “piracy” has ever been a problem, let alone now. Rivkin tosses out bullshit numbers claiming massive job and revenue losses from piracy, and those numbers come from laughably bad studies that often assume every infringing copy is a lost sale. Or they lump in claims of “trademark infringement” to argue that every counterfeit product is the same as someone downloading a movie they would never have paid for in the first place.

But, more importantly, site blocking is 100% prior restraint and unconstitutional in the US. There is no serious due process in any site blocking regime, and every attempt has resulted in all sorts of bogus blocks and takedowns, many of which we’ve detailed over the years.

Rivkin’s claims that there “are no gray areas” and that it “focuses only on sites featuring stolen materials” would sound a lot better if we didn’t have a long list of bogus seizures of sites based on lies told by the RIAA and MPA. Remember Dajaz1? That site was seized by the government because the RIAA lied and claimed it featured infringing content. It did not. It was a music blog that the industry itself would often send material to in an effort to hype up artists.

Or how about OnSmash? It was another blog that the recording industry regularly sent tracks to as a promotional gambit, only to then claim it was a pirate site. It was seized and the government ignored requests to return it for FIVE YEARS, before finally handing it back to the original owner with no charges filed and no apology.

There are many more examples like this of sites being seized by the government based on outright lies by the industry. There is no due process. There is no fairness. It absolutely destroyed “legitimate businesses and ordinary internet users.”

Rivkin is lying. He’s hoping that people are too distracted with things like generative AI and fights over Section 230 to realize that they’re bringing back SOPA and looking to destroy the open internet once again.

Do not let this move forward. If Rivkin is mentioning it, it means he has the MPA’s usual crew of bought-and-paid-for Congressional Reps and Senators ready to spring into action.

Congress is going to need to be reminded why the internet stood up and said “NO!” last time SOPA/PIPA came around. They need to be reminded why they’ve stayed away from copyright law for the most part all these years, realizing it had become a third rail issue. The MPA bringing SOPA back suggests they think internet users are distracted and have moved on.

We’re going to need to show Rivkin that he’s wrong.
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/10/...ing-back-sopa/





Chechnya is Banning Music that's Too Fast or Slow. These Songs Wouldn't Make the Cut
Rachel Treisman

Authorities in the Russian republic of Chechnya are banning music they consider either too fast or too slow, effectively criminalizing many genres.

The Chechen Ministry of Culture announced the ban on its website last week, by the order of Culture Minister Musa Dadayev and with the agreement of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

"Musical, vocal and choreographic" works will be limited to a tempo of 80 to 116 beats per minute (BPM) to "conform to the Chechen mentality and sense of rhythm," said Dadayev, according to the Russian state-run news agency TASS.

"Borrowing musical culture from other peoples is inadmissible," Dadayev said, per a translation by The Guardian. "We must bring to the people and to the future of our children the cultural heritage of the Chechen people. This includes the entire spectrum of moral and ethical standards of life for Chechens."

Russian media report that artists have until June 1 to rewrite any music that doesn't conform to the new rule, though it's not clear how it will be enforced.

Chechnya is a roughly 6,700-square-mile autonomous republic situated in the North Caucasus of southern Russia and home to some 1.5 million people, the vast majority of whom are Muslim. Its leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has consistently quashed dissent in the territory since he came to power in 2007 — nominated by Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he remains close.

Over the years, dissidents, human rights activists and journalists — as well as their family members — in Chechnya have faced threats and reported instances of abduction, arbitrary detention and death. Chechen authorities also orchestrated what Human Rights Watch describes as "lethal purges of men perceived to be gay or bisexual" in 2017 and 2019. (Kadyrov said in 2017, "We don't have any gays ... If there are any, take them to Canada.")

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has said Kadyrov's regime "maintains hegemony through the imposition of a purported 'traditional' version of Islam, which falsely claims to defend local belief and culture, and combat violent extremism."

"In reality, Kadyrov has [co-opted] Chechen religion and culture to support his brutal regime, which violates the secular constitution of the Russian Federation and international standards of freedom of religion or belief," it added.

While Chechnya waged two wars against Russia for its independence in the 1990s and early 2000s, it remains part of Russia and is now seen as its close ally in the war against Ukraine. Even so, it's held on to its language and culture, in which folklore plays a major role. Traditional Chechen music includes instrumental songs and epic ballads, according to the Guardian.

The government's crackdown on certain musical tempos would silence most modern music genres. Electronic styles of music like house, techno and dubstep all tend to have BPMs of over 116, says the audio tech company Izotope, while the average tempo of 2020's best-selling pop songs was 122 BPM, according to the BBC.

The independent Russian news outlet Meduza said the tempo of the Russian national anthem would be considered too slow under the new limit, reports RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. But it would seem to permit hip-hop music, which generally has a BPM of 85 to 95.

Some songs that would fit the bill include Beyonce's "Texas Hold 'Em" (110 BPM), the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" (104 BPM), Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" (82 BPM), ABBA's "Dancing Queen" (101 BPM) and Taylor Swift's 10-minute version of "All Too Well" (94 BPM), among others.

Here are examples of songs that wouldn't:

Too slow:

• "Little Wing" by Jimi Hendrix (71 BPM)

• "Don't Worry Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin (69 BPM)

• "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse (72 BPM)

• "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston (68 BPM)

• "Imagine" by John Lennon (76 BPM)

• "Hello" by Adele (79 BPM)

Too fast:

• "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles (129 BPM)

• "Cruel Summer" by Taylor Swift (170 BPM)

• "16 Carriages" by Beyonce (127 BPM)

• "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana (117 BPM)

• "Toxic" by Britney Spears (143 BPM)

• "Hotel California" by the Eagles (147 BPM)

https://www.npr.org/1243632570





Consumers will Finally See FCC-Mandated ‘Nutrition Labels’ for most Broadband Plans

Major ISPs had until April 10th to publish labels during point-of-sale with basic information about their broadband offerings.
Amrita Khalid

It appears that a nearly eight-year-long battle by the FCC to require internet companies to display information on the costs, fees, and speeds of their broadband services is finally over. Starting on Wednesday, all but the smallest ISPs will be required to publish broadband “nutrition labels” on all of their plans, the regulator announced. The FCC’s intention behind the labels is that they’ll allow consumers to more easily comparison shop between plans and avoid any hidden fees.

The next time you shop for either a standalone home or fixed internet plan, or a new mobile broadband plan, you should notice such a label. Each label will include monthly broadband prices, introductory rate details, data allowances, broadband speeds, and links to find out about any available discounts or service bundles. Links to network management practices and privacy policies should be listed as well. The labels should appear both online and at physical stores.

Most of the information in the labels is publicly available but would require some time and research for the average consumer to sleuth out. In the past, the broadband industry has published advertised speeds for broadband plans that misrepresent the actual connection speeds available for most customers. The new labels should cut down on this practice; ISPs must now publish “typical” download and upload speeds with each plan.

Major broadband providers have fought vigorously over the years to kill the rule, arguing that such labels would be too costly and complicated to implement. Some consumer advocates also criticize the FCC for not addressing the more serious problem of regional broadband monopolies. Many Americans, especially in rural or less economically prosperous areas, only have one or two options for their broadband provider. Adding to the sense of urgency is that a program that gives low-income Americans additional money to purchase broadband internet plans is set to expire at the end of the month.

Regional ISPs with only one or zero competitors have little incentive to lower their prices or improve their speeds. Dozens of cities have tried to address the problem on their own by building out their own municipal broadband networks, though, of course, the telecom industry is trying its best to fight this.

So far, Verizon, Google Fiber, and T-Mobile have released labels ahead of the deadline. Although the FCC’s official deadline for compliance (if you’re a major ISP) is April 10th, small ISPs (with fewer than 100,000 lines) have until October 10th to implement the nutritional labels.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/10/2...deadline-today





Google One VPN Is Bound for the Google Graveyard Later This Year

The service is shutting down due to too few people using it, despite a massive price drop in 2023.
Joe Hindy

Google is preparing to send yet another product off to the great Google graveyard. This time, it's the VPN service that comes bundled with Google One subscription plans. The announcement was made to Google One subscribers via email, as seen on Reddit.

Google is phasing out the VPN later this year, according to the email, although a specific date was not mentioned.

A representative for Google said that the company was "discontinuing the VPN feature as [it] found people simply weren't using it." Deprecating the VPN feature allows the Google One team to "support more in-demand features with Google One."

The email mentions those "more in-demand features" as well, including Google opening up Magic Editor and other formerly Pixel-based features to Google One subscribers. Starting May 15, Google One subscribers can use these editing features on photos in their Google Photos library. Some of the features, such as Magic Editor, will have a limited number of free uses per month. To unlock unlimited editing, you'll need a $10 per month or more Google One subscription.

Google first launched Google One VPN in 2020 as part of its $100 annual bundle with 2TB of Google Drive storage. The company eventually added the VPN to the $2 per month tier to entice more people to use it. The company marketed its VPN pretty heavily when it first came out, first with a white paper describing how the service works. Google would go on to open-source its VPN libraries and have a third-party research report done to prove that it was secure.

However, the service isn't without its flaws. It doesn't let you switch countries or select servers, which is one of the biggest reasons to use a VPN. In addition, while it boasts a no-logging policy, Google admits that it may collect logs in certain circumstances. Thus, people who want more freedom and more privacy would be better served by another VPN service.

Google One's VPN was best utilized when connected to public Wi-Fi. Its no-nonsense interface made it easy to switch it on at a moment's notice, so you didn't have to go through any configuration hassle to simply keep yourself safe when on airport Wi-Fi. The app also featured a kill switch, so your data would cease to function if the VPN was interrupted, thus keeping users safe from prying eyes.

The closing of Google One VPN doesn't have any impact on Google's other VPN services, at least not right now. Google Fi's VPN service, which it offers on all phones connected to Google Fi, will remain in place and available to subscribers. The Pixel VPN service available on the Pixel 7 and Pixel 8 series will also remain available.

Which VPN should you switch to?

The biggest benefit of Google One VPN was that it was inexpensive. You could get the service for as little as $2 per month along with 100GB of Google Drive storage. That is a difficult price to match, since most VPNs tend to cost over $10 per month. There are some less expensive VPNs that you can check out, but getting another one for $2 per month is unlikely.

You can come close. If you buy a yearly subscription to Proton VPN, it averages out to about $6 per month. Going for the two-year subscription lowers that to $5 per month on average. You do have to pay for both plans up front, which will cost you just under $72 and $120, respectively. It's a solid overall service with a high level of transparency. Mozilla VPN is competitive in terms of price, going for $5 per month if you opt for the annual subscription.

Surfshark comes even closer. If you opt for the 12-month subscription, which bills out at as little as $41.86, you'll average $3 per month. Going for the two-year subscription lowers that to $2.29 per month. That is about as close as you're going to get for a budget-friendly VPN that competes in terms of price with Google One VPN. Surfshark offers a no-logging policy as well as some unique features. However, the prices do increase after your first subscription period ends, so make sure to read the fine print if you want to try it.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-a...ter-this-year/





DuckDuckGo Is Taking Its Privacy Fight to Data Brokers

Privacy-focused company DuckDuckGo is launching a tool to remove data from people-search websites, a VPN, and an identity theft restoration service.
Matt Burgess

For more than a decade, DuckDuckGo has rallied against Google’s extensive online tracking. Now the privacy-focused web search and browser company has another target in its sights: the sprawling, messy web of data brokers that collect and sell your data every single day.

Today, DuckDuckGo is launching a new browser-based tool that automatically scans data broker websites for your name and address and requests that they be removed. Gabriel Weinberg, the company’s founder and CEO, says the personal-information-removal product is the first of its kind where users don’t have to submit any of their details to the tool’s owners. The service will make the requests for information to be removed and then continually check if new records have been added, Weinberg says. “We’ve been doing it to automate it completely end-to-end, so you don't have to do anything.

The personal-information removal is part of DuckDuckGo’s first subscription service, called Privacy Pro, and is bundled with the firm’s first VPN and an identity-theft-restoration service. Weinberg says the subscription offering, which is initially available only in the US for $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year, is part of an effort to add to the privacy-focused tools it provides within its web browser and search engine. “There’s only so much we can do in that browsing loop, there's things happening outside of that, and a big one is data brokers, selling information scraped from different places,” Weinberg says.

The data broker industry is a far-reaching, $200-plus billion market, which collects, buys, and sells as much information as it can. A lack of comprehensive privacy laws in the US allows companies to easily trade everything from people’s names and addresses to financial data and specific GPS coordinates gathered from your phone. (The recently proposed American Privacy Rights Act, if passed, would create a new registry of data brokers and give people some European-style privacy rights).

DuckDuckGo’s personal-information-removal tool—for now, at least—is taking the privacy fight to people-search websites, which allow you to look up names, addresses, and some details of family members. However, Weinberg says DuckDuckGo has created it so the company isn’t gathering details about you, and it is built on technology from Removaly, which the company acquired in 2022.

Ahead of its launch, the company demonstrated how the system works and some of the engineering efforts that went into its creation. On the surface, the removal tool is straightforward: You access it through the company’s browser and enter some information about yourself, such as your name, year of birth, and any addresses. It then scans 53 data broker websites for results linked to you and requests those results to be wiped. (All 53 data brokers included have opt-out schemes that allow people to make requests.) A dashboard shows updates about what has been removed and when it will next scan those websites again, in case new records have been added.

Under the hood, things are more complex. Greg Fiorentino, a product director at DuckDuckGo, says when you enter your personal data into the system, it’s all saved in an encrypted database on your computer (the tool doesn’t work on mobile), and the company isn’t sent this information. “It doesn't go to DuckDuckGo servers at all," he says.

For each of the data brokers’ websites, Fiorentino says, DuckDuckGo looked at its URL structure: For instance, search results may include the name, location, and other personal information that are queried. When the personal information tool looks for you on these websites, it constructs a URL with the details you have entered.

“Each of the 53 sites we cover has a slightly different structure,” Fiorentino says. “We have a template URL string that we substitute the data in from the user to search. There are lots of different nuances and things that we need to be able to handle to actually match the data correctly.”

During testing, the company says, it found most people have between 15 and 30 records on the data broker sites it checks, although the highest was around 150. Weinberg says he added six addresses to be removed from websites. “I found hits on old stuff, and even in the current address, which I really tried to hide a bit from getting spam at, it’s still out there somehow,” Weinberg says. “It’s really hard to avoid your information getting out there.”

Once the scan for records has been completed, the DuckDuckGo system, using a similar deconstruction of each of the data broker websites, will then automatically make requests for the records to be removed, the team working on the product say. Fiorentino says some opt-outs will happen within hours, whereas others can take weeks to remove the data. The product director says that in the future, the tool may be able to remove data from more websites, and the company is looking at potentially including more sensitive data in the opt-outs, such as financial information.

Various personal-information-removal services exist on the web, and they can vary in what they remove from websites or the services they provide. Not all are trustworthy. Recently, Mozilla, the creator of the Firefox browser, stopped working with identity protection service Onerep after investigative journalist Brian Krebs revealed that the founder of Onerep also founded dozens of people-search websites in recent years.

DuckDuckGo’s subscription service marks the first time the company has started charging for a product—its browser and search engine are free to use, and the firm makes its money from contextual ads. Weinberg says that, because subscriptions are purchased through Apple’s App Store, Google Play, or with payment provider Stripe, details about who subscribes are not transferred to DuckDuckGo’s servers. A random ID is created for each user when they sign up, so people don’t have to create an account or hand DuckDuckGo their payment information. The company says it doesn’t have access to people’s Apple IDs or Google account details.

For its identity-theft-restoration service, DuckDuckGo says it is working with identity protection service Iris, which uses trained staff to help with fraudulent banking activity, document replacement, emergency travel, and more. DuckDuckGo says no information is shared between it and Iris.

Weinberg says that while the company’s main focus is providing free and easy-to-use privacy tools to people, running a VPN and the removal tool requires a different business model. “It just takes a lot of bandwidth,” he says of the VPN.

Broadly, the VPN industry, which allows people to hide their web traffic from internet providers and avoid geographic restrictions on streaming, has historically been full of companies with questionable records when it comes to privacy and people’s data. Free VPNs have long been a privacy nightmare.

DuckDuckGo says its VPN, which it built in-house and which uses the WireGuard protocol, does not store any logs of people’s activities and can be used on up to five devices at once. “We don’t have any record of website visits, DNS requests, IP addresses connected, or session lengths,” the company says in its documentation. The VPN runs through its browser, with 13 location options at launch, but shields all internet traffic passing through your phone or computer.

The company says it is conducting a third-party audit of the VPN to allow its claims to be scrutinized, and it will publish the full audit once it’s complete. “We really wanted to do something in the VPN space for a long time, we just didn't have the resources and people to do it,” Weinberg says. “We looked at partnering in different places. If we have to completely trust a partner versus building something where we can make it anonymous, we decided we would want to do it ourselves.”
https://www.wired.com/story/duckduck...l-privacy-pro/





The Motion Picture Association Doesn’t Get to Decide Who the First Amendment Protects
Mitch Stoltz and Katharine Trendacosta

Twelve years ago, internet users spoke up with one voice to reject a law that would build censorship into the internet at a fundamental level. This week, the Motion Picture Association (MPA), a group that represents six giant movie and TV studios, announced that it hoped we’d all forgotten how dangerous this idea was. The MPA is wrong. We remember, and the internet remembers.

What the MPA wants is the power to block entire websites, everywhere in the U.S., using the same tools as repressive regimes like China and Russia. To it, instances of possible copyright infringement should be played like a trump card to shut off our access to entire websites, regardless of the other legal speech hosted there. It is not simply calling for the ability to take down instances of infringement—a power they already have, without even having to ask a judge—but for the keys to the internet. Building new architectures of censorship would hurt everyone, and doesn’t help artists.

The bills known as SOPA/PIPA would have created a new, rapid path for copyright holders like the major studios to use court orders against sites they accuse of infringing copyright. Internet service providers (ISPs) receiving one of those orders would have to block all of their customers from accessing the identified websites. The orders would also apply to domain name registries and registrars, and potentially other companies and organizations that make up the internet’s basic infrastructure. To comply, all of those would have to build new infrastructure dedicated to site-blocking, inviting over-blocking and all kinds of abuse that would censor lawful and important speech.

In other words, the right to choose what websites you visit would be taken away from you and given to giant media companies and ISPs. And the very shape of the internet would have to be changed to allow it.

In 2012, it seemed like SOPA/PIPA, backed by major corporations used to getting what they want from Congress, was on the fast track to becoming law. But a grassroots movement of diverse Internet communities came together to fight it. Digital rights groups like EFF, Public Knowledge, and many more joined with editor communities from sites like Reddit and Wikipedia to speak up. Newly formed grassroots groups like Demand Progress and Fight for the Future added their voices to those calling out the dangers of this new form of censorship. In the final days of the campaign, giant tech companies like Google and Facebook (now Meta) joined in opposition as well.

What resulted was one of the biggest protests ever seen against a piece of legislation. Congress was flooded with calls and emails from ordinary people concerned about this steamroller of censorship. Members of Congress raced one another to withdraw their support for the bills. The bills died, and so did site blocking legislation in the US. It was, all told, a success story for the public interest.

Even the MPA, one of the biggest forces behind SOPA/PIPA, claimed to have moved on. But we never believed it, and they proved us right time and time again. The MPA backed site-blocking laws in other countries. Rightsholders continued to ask US courts for site-blocking orders, often winning them without a new law. Even the lobbying of Congress for a new law never really went away. It’s just that today, with MPA president Charles Rivkin openly calling on Congress “to enact judicial site-blocking legislation here in the United States,” the MPA is taking its mask off.

Things have changed since 2012. Tech platforms that were once seen as innovators have become behemoths, part of the establishment rather than underdogs. The Silicon Valley-based video streamer Netflix illustrated this when it joined MPA in 2019. And the entertainment companies have also tried to pivot into being tech companies. Somehow, they are adopting each other’s worst aspects.

But it’s important not to let those changes hide the fact that those hurt by this proposal are not Big Tech but regular internet users. Internet platforms big and small are still where ordinary users and creators find their voice, connect with audiences, and participate in politics and culture, mostly in legal—and legally protected—ways. Filmmakers who can’t get a distribution deal from a giant movie house still reach audiences on YouTube. Culture critics still reach audiences through zines and newsletters. The typical users of these platforms don’t have the giant megaphones of major studios, record labels, or publishers. Site-blocking legislation, whether called SOPA/PIPA, “no fault injunctions,” or by any other name, still threatens the free expression of all of these citizens and creators.

No matter what the MPA wants to claim, this does not help artists. Artists want their work seen, not locked away for a tax write-off. They wanted a fair deal, not nearly five months of strikes. They want studios to make more small and midsize films and to take a chance on new voices. They have been incredibly clear about what they want, and this is not it.

Even if Rivkin’s claim of an “unflinching commitment to the First Amendment” was credible from a group that seems to think it has a monopoly on free expression—and which just tried to consign the future of its own artists to the gig economy—a site-blocking law would not be used only by Hollywood studios. Anyone with a copyright and the means to hire a lawyer could wield the hammer of site-blocking. And here’s the thing: we already know that copyright claims are used as tools of censorship.

The notice-and-takedown system created by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, for example, is abused time and again by people who claim to be enforcing their copyrights, and also by folks who simply want to make speech they don’t like disappear from the Internet. Even without a site-blocking law, major record labels and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement shut down a popular hip hop music blog and kept it off the internet for over a year without ever showing that it infringed copyright. And unscrupulous characters use accusations of infringement to extort money from website owners, or even force them into carrying spam links.

This censorious abuse, whether intentional or accidental, is far more damaging when it targets the internet’s infrastructure. Blocking entire websites or groups of websites is imprecise, inevitably bringing down lawful speech along with whatever was targeted. For example, suits by Microsoft intended to shut down malicious botnets caused thousands of legitimate users to lose access to the domain names they depended on. There is, in short, no effective safeguard on a new censorship power that would be the internet’s version of police seizing printing presses.

Even if this didn’t endanger free expression on its own, once new tools exist, they can be used for more than copyright. Just as malfunctioning copyright filters were adapted into the malfunctioning filters used for “adult content” on tumblr, so can means of site blocking. The major companies of a single industry should not get to dictate the future of free speech online.

Why the MPA is announcing this now is anyone’s guess. They might think no one cares anymore. They’re wrong. Internet users rejected site blocking in 2012 and they reject it today.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/0...dment-protects
















Until next week,

- js.



















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