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Old 20-07-22, 06:24 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - July 23rd, 22

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July 23rd, 2022




Netflix’s Next Challenge: Piracy is Back
Nick Bonyhady

Media executives could be forgiven for thinking that in era of Shiv Roy, Saul Goodman and Ted Lasso, piracy was a thing of the past.

Between 2015 and 2018, the number of Australians pirating movies dropped from a staggering 49 per cent to just 21 per cent, according to federal government data. The sharp decline reflects the launch and rise of subscription-based video streaming services such Netflix, which debuted offering easy access to a smorgasbord of content for less than $10 a month. But since the pandemic, federal data shows piracy is flat or rising. And the forces underpinning this resurgence — a proliferation of services, the scattering of the best shows and movies across those services, and rising prices — all point to a key question facing the $4 billion-a-year streaming market: are multiplying services pushing some users away?

When streaming services arrived in Australia their proposition was clear: simple access to a vast array of content at a low price. Netflix and Stan (owned by Nine Entertainment) both once had much of the Disney library, such as its Marvel superhero franchises like Thor along with Pixar titles like Toy Story. Now Disney has its own streaming service. So do Paramount, Apple and Amazon, which announced it was buying James Bond maker Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer last year as the war for content accelerated.

Though the move to streaming cost media giants like Disney lucrative licensing agreements with distributors, those who led the move continue to defend it. “We were being disrupted by others, so why not disrupt ourselves?” former Disney chief executive Bob Iger told a Macquarie Technology Summit last month.

Beyond a fear of missing out, traditional media companies and tech players were lured to streaming for myriad reasons including encouraging people to stay within their tech ecosystems, to try and capture the high multiple investors ascribed to Netflix shares on the stockmarket. But that was before pandemic lockdowns ended and a broader tech rout sent share prices plummeting. (That rout was kicked off by Netflix’s last quarterly earnings report. The company will deliver its latest results later this week).

Now the streaming market is just as congested but not as commercially attractive, prompting services like Netflix to plan cheaper subscriptions supported by advertising in an effort to restart growth.

The much-discussed American TV show The Bear offers a useful example of why piracy is stubbornly flat, if not resurgent. Though it doesn’t yet have the fame of a Stranger Things, reviews aggregator site Metacritic rates The Bear as “universally acclaimed”. The show, which is about a chef’s return to run his family’s sandwich shop in Chicago, launched in America in June to rave reviews.
The delayed Australian release of hit show The Bear, about a fine-dining chef running a Chicago sandwich store, has prompted some people to pirate it.

“I had to pirate The Bear because it’s a [US streaming service] Hulu show that isn’t available here!” said one viewer, speaking on condition of anonymity. “That said, at this point I’ve got Disney+, Binge, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Stan. It’s out of control and I’ll be damned if I also pay for Paramount+.”

The Bear will launch on Disney+ next month, but the confusion makes plain a frustration for consumers: every major streaming service only has a handful of really big hits. To access them all, a viewer would have to pay almost $70 a month for basic access, without sport streaming like Kayo or specialist apps dedicated to particular genres, which could double that.

People like Melbourne man Will, who did not want his last name used, told this masthead he was forced to pirate one of his most favourite shows because he wasn’t willing to take out another subscription just to watch it. “I was watching [British police show] Line of Duty on Netflix, but the last season wasn’t on there,” said Will. “And I had COVID so of course I was going to download it [unlawfully].”

Due to licensing agreements, Line of Duty’s sixth season is only available on BritBox, yet another streaming service.

While there are some pirates who never stopped illegally downloading because they could or it saved money, Will is in a different category. Like many of his generation, Will and his friends used torrenting services, which let people share frequently pirated files online, regularly until about 2015. That was the year Netflix launched in Australia. But now he is back to torrenting and thinking of cancelling his Netflix account.

“I was like: ‘does [torrent search site] Pirate Bay still exist?’, how do you download stuff?” Will said of his return to piracy. “And it’s definitely still there and it’s easier than working out what streaming service a show is on.”

Others who spoke to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age for this story pirate content via other means: websites that host illegal streams, software that puts a Netflix-like interface atop torrented downloads such as Popcorn Time or libraries of unlawful content on instances of media library software Plex. Most are more convenient than torrenting alone, when users could just as easily find themselves with a virus as with a new episode of The Sopranos.

Federal government commissioned survey research shows a low of 21 per cent of Australians reported watching at least some pirated movies in 2018. It had been 49 per cent in 2015 but by 2021 year it had risen to 23 per cent. TV programs are similar, dropping from 33 per cent to 18 per cent and then rising to 20 per cent last year, the most recent for which data is available. There was a change in methodology in 2019 but the broad trend suggests the quick reduction in piracy numbers is over. Then there is the question of the pandemic, which boosted streaming growth but may also have contributed to the piracy figures. Its long-term impact is uncertain.

RMIT University Associate Professor Ramon Lobato said piracy levels were tied to income, along with other factors such as convenience. Data released in May by the consultancy Gemba shows average monthly spending on streaming is up 7 per cent this year, “reflecting the price increases across a number of services”. At the same time, the proportion of subscribers leaving within six months of signing up has risen 18 percentage points, with price the leading reason.

“As cost of living pressures rise in Australia, it’s likely that some consumers will become more discerning about what they spend their money on, and may supplement or replace some of their streaming subscriptions with piracy,” Lobato said. “But there’s no hard boundary between piracy and legal consumption; the two often co-exist in Australian households.”

That helps to explain how many services, especially smaller ones, are enjoying growth even while piracy is not declining. “While there is an impact of piracy for Foxtel along with Kayo Sports and Binge, our streaming services are growing quickly, with Kayo subscribers up over 30 per cent and Binge up more than 90 per cent on the prior year,” a Foxtel group spokeswoman said. Netflix remains the dominant service, with about 60 per cent of respondents to the Gemba research saying someone in their family paid for it, but the overall picture is one of market saturation. “Growth has plateaued,” the consultancy concluded, with streaming penetration declining. Netflix revealed it had lost 200,000 subscribers globally earlier this year and is bracing for more to go.

A spokesman for Netflix said competition had always forced it to improve. “We aim to be the one streaming service everyone subscribes to because of the variety and quality of our titles,” the spokesman said. Stan and Apple declined to comment. Disney, Amazon and Paramount were contacted for comment.

Amy Pettinger, general manger of the industry funded anti-piracy group Creative Content Australia, sees things differently. “More services means less pirating,” she said. The group’s survey data shows a sustained decline in piracy since the introduction of streaming services. However, unlike the federal government’s survey, it asks users directly whether they have pirated content, rather than if they have accessed content in ways likely to indicate piracy, raising questions about whether users are leery of self-reporting.

But Creative Content has identified an archetype of pirates who use the plethora of streaming services to justify their behaviour.

“When we’ve profiled people who pirate, the majority are university educated, they earn over $90,000 a year, and they subscribe to three plus subscription services,” Pettinger said. “They are prolific content consumers, so it brings us back to they feel they have some sort of entitlement to piracy because they are already paying for services.”

The industry sees no justification for piracy. It argues piracy destroys jobs, investment and damages great Australian storytelling on screen. Foxtel wants internet platforms to be forced to take more responsibility for the piracy they enable and Netflix says it has anti-piracy measures in place.

Does pirating make Will feel guilty? “No, not really, they’re just big companies aren’t they,” he said.
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/ne...11-p5b0s1.html






Game of Thrones Remains the Most Pirated TV Series in 2022
Jeremy Dick

Years after its controversial finish, Game of Thrones is still getting pirated en masse.

A new study has revealed Game of Thrones to be this year's most popular show (so far, anyway). For many years, piracy has served as a huge problem for television networks hoping to get as many viewers as possible to watch their shows live. But despite every effort to combat online piracy, pirated video is still accounting for around 230 billion views a year.

The new study, conducted by Uswitch, analyzes the most in-demand pirated media. This includes collating the most common international Google search volumes of popular pirating terms to determine the most pirated TV shows, video games, movies, and software. Even with Game of Thrones ending in 2019, the series remains popular with pirates three years later, as the fantasy drama series ranked as the most-pirated TV show with 8,560 monthly searches for illegal streams in 2022. The series had previously been named as the most pirated television show overall during its run on HBO.

Another HBO title fell into the No. 2 spot as the most-pirated show. That would be Euphoria, which debuted its acclaimed second season this year and recently was recognized with Primetime Emmy Award nominations. The show has 7,960 monthly searches for illegal streams this year.

A blast from the past lands in the No. 3 position, and this one is much older than Game of Thrones. The sitcom Friends holds that spot with 5,060 monthly searches, remaining popular with pirates after ending in 2004. Legally, the show can be streamed on HBO Max, but as with Game of Thrones and Euphoria, many pirates are clearly refusing to pay for that subscription.

The titles making up the rest of the top ten, in order, are Family Guy, Attack on Titan, Chicago Fire, Peaky Blinders, The Office, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Ted Lasso, Modern Family, Elite, Grey's Anatomy, and Vikings.

Game of Thrones leads the pack with pirates when it comes to television. For those interested in the big screen releases, this may not be much surprise, but Spider-Man: No Way Home is this year's most pirate film with 83,390 monthly searches in 2022. That's by far ahead of the next most-pirated film, Avengers: Endgame, which had 3,210 monthly searches. That's followed by Interstellar at 2,910 monthly searches, and the following top ten titles include Avengers: Infinity War, Star Wars, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, M, Joker, The Dark Knight, Good Will Hunting, Pulp Fiction, The Matrix, Spirited Away, Godfather, and Inception.

“With the increasing cost of living, some people may turn to illegal downloading as a means to access their favorite TV shows, films, games, and software online," says Uswitch Broadband expert Nick Baker. "This could be cause for concern as online piracy not only has a negative impact on creators, but it can come with risks to your own safety and security."

Encouraging consumers to utilize Uswitch instead of breaking the law, Baker added, “Using illegal piracy websites can put users at extreme risk of hacking and phishing scams which makes your personal data vulnerable. In addition to that, industries that are affected by illegal downloading closely monitor the internet and can take legal action against you if caught. While the temptation to pirate your favorite content is appealing, it’s worth asking yourself if it’s really worth putting yourself at risk of scams and legal action."

You can read more information about the study at Uswitch.com.
https://movieweb.com/game-of-thrones-most-pirated-2022/





Lofi Girl Disappeared from YouTube and Reignited Debate Over Bogus Copyright Claims
Kai McNamee, Michael Levitt

A young cartoon girl wearing large headphones hunches over a softly lit desk. She's scribbling in a notebook. To her side, a striped orange cat gazes out on a beige cityscape.

The Lofi Girl is an internet icon. The animation plays on a loop on the "lofi hip hop radio — beats to relax/study to" YouTube stream.

It's a 24/7 live stream that plays low-fidelity hip hop music — or lofi for short.

"I would say lofi music is the synthesis of golden era rap aesthetic with the Japanese jazz aesthetics that is then put through this lens of nostalgia," says Hixon Foster, a student and lofi artist.

He describes listening to lofi as a way to escape. Some songs are lonely or melancholy, others remind him of his school years in Michigan and toiling away at homework while listening to tunes.

The genre has become increasingly popular in the last few years. There are countless people making lofi music, fan art, memes, spin-off streams, and Halloween costumes.

Basically, Lofi Girl is everywhere. And with nearly 11 million people subscribed to the channel, the Lofi Girl stream has been the go-to place to find this music.

But last weekend, she went missing. YouTube had taken down the stream due to a false copyright claim.

Fans were not happy.

"There were camps that were confused and camps that were angry," Foster said. "I mainly saw kind of, at least through the lofi Discord, various users being like, 'Oh my God what is this? What's really going on with this?'"
Related Story: How Elizabeth Cotten's music fueled the folk revival

YouTube quickly apologized for the mistake, and the stream returned two days later. But this isn't the first time musicians have been wrongfully shut down on YouTube.

"There's been a lot of examples of copyright going against the ideas of art and artistic evolution," Foster said. "It feels like a lot of the legal practices are going towards stifling artists, which is interesting when the main idea of them is to be protecting them."

The rise of bogus copyright claims

Lofi Girl made it through the ordeal relatively unscathed, but smaller artists who don't have huge platforms may not be so lucky.

"They are at the mercy of people sending abusive takedowns and YouTube's ability to detect and screen for them," said James Grimmelmann, a law professor at Cornell University.

He said false copyright claims were rampant.

"People can use them for extortion or harassment or in some cases to file claims to monetize somebody else's videos," he said.

YouTube gets so many copyright claims that they can't carefully evaluate whether each one is legitimate, Grimmelmann said.

They leave it up to the artist to prove the claims are wrong — sometimes in court — which can be a long process.

Grimmelmann said it's up to Congress to fix copyright law for it to work better for artists. The current laws incentivize YouTube to err on the side of removing artists' content, rather than being precise in their enforcement of copyright claims.

"We ended up with this system because in the 1990s, when the contours of the internet and copyright are still coming into view, this is the compromise that representatives of the copyright industries and the internet industries worked out," Grimmelmann said.

"It's a compromise that hasn't destroyed anybody's business and has made it possible for artists to put their stuff online," Grimmelmann said. "And there has not been the appetite to try to upend that compromise because somebody's ox will get gored if they do."

Luckily, Lofi Girl and her millions of subscribers were able to make a big enough stink to get YouTube's attention quickly and get the issue resolved.

For now, lofi fans can get back to relaxing and studying. Lofi Girl will be right there with you.
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/16/11115...ream-copyright





The New Numbers on Music Consumption Are Very Ugly

And it's not just the dominance of old songs—the whole creative culture is losing its ability to innovate. But why?
Ted Gioia

There’s a widespread view that only tech industries need to innovate. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Even arts and entertainment businesses require constant infusions of fresh talent and new ways of thinking. It’s their lifeblood and oxygen. And if they can’t (or won’t) find it, stagnation sets in. At that juncture, even major artistic endeavors start to feel anachronistic and backward-looking.

Could this really be happening now, and in our culture?

It seems impossible—after all, billions of dollars are spent every year by entertainment corporations in their quest for market dominance. Yet, despite this constant spending spree, almost every week brings a new sign of cultural stagnation.

The latest news comes today from market research outfit Luminate, who tell us that the share of new music continues to shrink in the face of competition from old songs. I wrote about this a few months ago, and the numbers were already ugly back then.

But they have gotten worse.

The latest report shows that the consumption of old music grew another 14% during the first half of 2022, while demand for new music declined an additional 1.4%. These old tunes now represent a staggering 72% of the market.

And it’s likely to get worse when the full year numbers are released—because we are still in the midst of the Kate Bush/Metallica phenomenon spurred by the showcasing of their old songs on Stranger Things.

If this were just a short term blip of nostalgia caused by a popular TV show, I might ignore these numbers. But every other bit of market research tells the same story.

A number of recent articles on Hollywood have announced that we are living in the Golden Age of the Aging Actor. Harrison Ford, who turns 80 this week, may be the most prominent example. As the public face of several major brand franchises, he is still in demand, and will soon show up in another Indiana Jones movie, a kind of Raiders of the Lost AARP Card affair. But this aging Ford assembly line is hardly an isolated example—the graying actor is everywhere. Top Gun is the biggest box office success of the year, and it features Tom Cruise reprising a role he last played in 1986. I fully expect to see a septuagenarian Superman or Batman in the future.

The Ringer recently tried to quantify this trend. They show that a sharp upward turn in the average age of leading stars began around the year 2000—and never ended. And it’s true not just for the lead star, but also others on the cast.

Even the word ‘old’ is now used to market a movie. Not long ago, that was a rarity—used for comic effect—but today it’s a mark of pride.

If you think things are bad now, just wait. The next wave of cinema tech will allow studios to make films with dead actors. That will get interesting—especially when the corpses are called to the podium to accept their Academy Awards. Well, at least nobody will get slapped onstage.

I’d like to be amused by all this, or maybe even applaud these senior citizens who have somehow extended their careers beyond normal limits. But the larger picture is disturbing.

Just follow the dollars. Every big budget movie this year is either a reboot, sequel, prequel, remake, or brand extension. Every last one of them. The largest investments in music are the acquisition of old publishing catalogs, while almost nothing is spent developing new artists. Even TV is turning into a brand extension game—Netflix just announced that it will sell board games based on Stranger Things and Ozark. Netflix doesn’t have as many brands to milk as Disney, the unassailable champion of mummified old concepts, but they are determined to squeeze the ones they’ve got as hard as possible.

Nobody wants to take a chance on something new and different. It’s just too risky. You could even get fired for that.

But when cultures stop innovating, they soon lose the essential skills they need for their survival. I’m reminded of the Arch of Constantine built by order of the Roman Senate between the years 312 and 315 AD—when the Empire, for all its military might, had forgotten how to create impressive artistic works.

As a result, the builders of this monument had to steal parts from older structures. You could call it the first reboot, and it looks a lot like the entertainment business today. They took works designed to honor earlier emperors—Marcus Aurelius, Hadrian, Trajan—and pretended they were relevant to the current situation. The result was what we call anachronism—when something from a different time period is placed incoherently in the midst of newer material.

It’s like walking down the street in a suit of armor, or riding a horse to the supermarket. It might seem amusing at first, but when you start seeing things like this everyday, you begin to get worried.

We have now apparently arrived at the Era of Anachronism in our own creative culture. An 80-year-old man is the star of an action movie. A tune from a different century is the song of the summer. Superheroes from the distant days before World War II are constantly juxtaposed with current urban blight, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And maybe all this is even entertaining for a while—until you start asking how this story ends.

But we already know the answer to that. There have been other periods of artistic stagnation in the past, and they usually signaled a collapse in other spheres of society too. You can’t lose creativity in the arts—its natural home—without seeing a rise of close-mindedness in other fields as well.

But I don’t expect this trend to reverse anytime soon. Even scarier, at a certain juncture, we lose the key skills we need to support and nurture fresh perspectives and new creative endeavors.

The financial support for them has already dried up. And what happens when the creative economy only invests in the past, not the future. I’m afraid we are going to find out.
https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-...ic-consumption





Democrats Prepare Bill that would Codify Net Neutrality

The FCC rolled back the rules in 2017
Makena Kelly

Congressional Democrats are preparing to relaunch their fight to restore net neutrality, according to a new report from The Washington Post on Monday. Lawmakers in both the House and Senate are expected to introduce a new bill codifying the Obama-era internet rules in the coming weeks.

The Net Neutrality and Broadband Justice Act — spearheaded by longtime Senate internet advocates Ed Markey (D-MA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) — would reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service under Title II. This would give the Federal Communications Commission new enforcement powers over the internet, including the power to set rules against throttling, blocking, or paid prioritization.
"“It is more clear than ever that broadband internet is an essential utility”"

“It is more clear than ever that broadband internet is an essential utility,” a Markey spokesperson told The Verge on Monday. “Senator Markey firmly believes that the Federal Communications Commission’s authority should reflect that, so it can fulfill its obligations to the public by reinstating net neutrality rules, protecting consumers, and taking other critical steps to create a just digital future.”

Markey’s office declined to comment on the senator’s specific plans for the bill.

The lawmakers could introduce the bill as early as August, a source familiar told The Verge on Monday. The measure would restore the FCC’s authority over broadband and allow the agency to investigate consumer complaints and roll out new rules to promote broadband competition and close the digital divide, the source said.

In 2017, the Trump FCC, led by former chair Ajit Pai, rolled back the net neutrality provisions put in place under the former administration. The rules banned broadband providers from throttling and blocking certain lanes of traffic and offering paid fast lanes for specific services. Since the Trump reversal, congressional Democrats have vowed to codify net neutrality permanently.

Last summer, President Joe Biden signed a sweeping executive order promoting competition across a variety of industries, including telecommunications. Specifically, the order called on the FCC to reinstate net neutrality, but the agency has yet to act on that request. Since Biden took office last year, the FCC has been deadlocked at 2-2. Gigi Sohn, Biden’s nominee to secure the Democratic majority to approve net neutrality, has been stalled in the Senate.

Without an FCC Democratic majority, Markey’s net neutrality bill may be the Biden administration’s only means of reinstating the open internet regulations. In June, Politico reported that Senate Democrats secured enough votes to push through Sohn with their razor-thin majority, but the vote never happened. Shortly before the vote was set to take place, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) fell and broke his hip, requiring surgery, making him unable to cast his necessary vote.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/18/2...-fcc-gigi-sohn





Two Senators Propose Ban on Data Caps, Blasting ISPs for “Predatory” Limits

Uncap America Act would ban data limits that exist solely for monetary reasons.
Jon Brodkin

US Senators Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) want to ban Internet data caps. The senators today introduced the "Uncap America Act," which would "prohibit predatory data caps that force families to pay high costs and unnecessary fees to access high-speed broadband," they said in a press release.

"A broadband Internet access service provider shall not impose a data cap except when tailored primarily for the purposes of reasonable network management or managing network congestion," the bill says. The proposed law would order the Federal Communications Commission to issue "regulations to define the conditions under which a data cap is to be considered tailored to the purpose of reasonable network management or managing network congestion."

Data caps that don't comply with the exceptions would violate the Communications Act. "While certain broadband Internet access service networks may require practices to effectively manage congestion, those practices should be tailored to improve equitable access among consumers," the bill says. "Unnecessary data caps limit participation in the digital economy and are contrary to the public interest."

The bill can be expected to attract fierce opposition from the broadband industry and would face long odds of passing through the Senate and House. If it does become law, it would likely prohibit the home Internet data caps imposed by Comcast and others, which clearly exist for financial purposes and not for any network management need.

Data caps defined

While the Luján/Booker bill leaves key details up to the FCC, it provides a comprehensive definition of what counts as a data cap under the proposed law. The bill says a data cap is "a limit on the amount of bits or other units of information a customer of a broadband Internet access service provider may download or upload during a period of time specified by the broadband Internet service access provider before the customer is charged a fee for additional usage; is subject to an increasing cost per bit or other unit of information; is charged for an incremental block of usage; or experiences a reduction of access speed; or that the customer is otherwise discouraged or prevented from exceeding."

The proposed law would apply to home Internet services and mobile data plans, as it uses a definition of broadband service in US law that includes "mass-market retail service by wire or radio." But the FCC would be able to define different rules for different types of connections, Luján's office told Ars.

"As Internet usage continues to be a necessity for work, education, and health care, no family should have to worry about extra fees and costs because of unnecessary limits on their data," Luján said in the press release. Luján is chair of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Media, and Broadband.

Booker said that "Internet access is a basic necessity and has been increasingly important throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, many Internet providers have imposed predatory data caps, making it difficult for many vulnerable families to access high-speed Internet." The Uncap America Act aims to ensure that "providers are not taking advantage of their consumers by imposing predatory data caps," he said.

Caps called “roundabout way to increase prices”

The bill has support from Consumer Reports; Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group; and Incompas, an industry lobby group that represents "competitive networks."

Data caps are particularly harmful to low-income people, Public Knowledge Senior Policy Counsel Jenna Leventoff said in the press release. "The pandemic has proven that data caps are rarely necessary as an economic matter, often operating as a roundabout way for providers to increase prices," she said.

"Americans need fast, reliable, and affordable Internet connections that are free from the burden of data caps that chill Internet use and make it more expensive," said Consumer Reports Senior Policy Counsel Jonathan Schwantes. "Where caps are legitimate and justified, so be it. But we can't allow ISPs to maximize profits at the expense of consumers."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...datory-limits/





The Unsolved Mystery Attack on Internet Cables in Paris

As new details about the scope of the sabotage emerge, the perpetrators—and the reason for their vandalism—remain unknown.
Matt Burgess

Buried deep beneath your feet lie the cables that keep the internet online. Crossing cities, countrysides, and seas, the internet backbone carries all the data needed to keep economies running and your Instagram feed scrolling. Unless, of course, someone chops the wires in half.

On April 27, an unknown individual or group deliberately cut crucial long-distance internet cables across multiple sites near Paris, plunging thousands of people into a connectivity blackout. The vandalism was one of the most significant internet infrastructure attacks in France’s history and highlights the vulnerability of key communications technologies.

Now, months after the attacks took place, French internet companies and telecom experts familiar with the incidents say the damage was more wide-ranging than initially reported and extra security measures are needed to prevent future attacks. In total, around 10 internet and infrastructure companies—from ISPs to cable owners—were impacted by the attacks, telecom insiders say.

The assault against the internet started during the early hours of April 27. “The people knew what they were doing,” says Michel Combot, the managing director of the French Telecoms Federation, which is made up of more than a dozen internet companies. In the space of around two hours, cables were surgically cut and damaged in three locations around the French capital city—to the north, south, and east—including near Disneyland Paris.

“Those were what we call backbone cables that were mostly connecting network service from Paris to other locations in France, in three directions,” Combot says. “That impacted the connectivity in several parts of France.” As a result, internet connections dropped out for some people. Others experienced slower connections, including on mobile networks, as internet traffic was rerouted around the severed cables.

All three incidents are believed to have happened at roughly the same time and were conducted in similar ways—distinguishing them from other attacks against telecom towers and internet infrastructure. “The cables are cut in such a way as to cause a lot of damage and therefore take a huge time to repair, also generating a significant media impact,” says Nicolas Guillaume, the CEO of telecom firm Nasca Group, which owns business ISP Netalis, one of the providers directly impacted by the attacks. “It is the work of professionals,” Guillaume says, adding that his company launched a criminal complaint with Paris law enforcement officials following the incident.

Two things stand out: how the cables were severed and how the attacks happened in parallel. Photos posted online by French internet company Free 1337 immediately after the attacks show that a ground-level duct, which houses cables under the surface, was opened and the cables cut. Each cable, which can be around an inch in diameter, appears to have straight cuts across it, suggesting the attackers used a circular saw or other type of power tool. Many of the cables have been cut in two places and appear to have a section missing. If they had been cut in one place they could potentially have been reconnected, but the multiple cuts made them harder to repair.

“You need to have extra fibers and then fuse them on both sides. So that makes things more complicated. It requires more time,” says Arthur PB Laudrain, a researcher at the University of Oxford’s department of politics and international relations who has been studying the attacks. Laudrain says that in France the cables included in the internet backbone “tend to follow physical transport infrastructure,” such as national railways, main roads, and wastewater systems. Whoever conducted the attacks would have had to know the exact locations of the cable ducts and been informed about the targets—the incidents were also carried out in the dark. “It implies a lot of coordination and a few teams,” Laudrain says.

A few of the approximately 10 companies impacted by the cuts are publicly known. For instance, internet services providers Free 1337 and SFR suffered some initial outages because of the attacks. (Neither company replied to a request for comment). Less visible are the infrastructure providers and companies that rent fiber optics within the cables.

Enterprise technology firm Lumen; networking firm Zayo; and DE-CIX, the internet exchange point in Frankfurt, Germany, all confirmed to WIRED that their equipment or services were caught up in the attacks. Thomas King, the CTO of DE-CIX, says the dark fiber it rents within cables was damaged. “Our cables were cut in two distinct locations around Paris,” says Karen Modlin, Zayo’s director of corporate communications.

Lumen, Zayo, and DE-CIX all say that their services weren’t down or impacted for long and have all been repaired. In many instances, internet traffic was manually or automatically rerouted through other cables. “We had three very difficult hours because a backup link was not active,” Netalis’s Guillaume says. Teams working at Netalis restored connections so most customers experienced a “limited impact,” he says, adding repairs that lasted “several dozen hours” started around 10 hours after the initial incident took place.

At present, there’s little information about who may have been behind the attacks. No groups or individuals have claimed responsibility for the damage, and French police have not announced any arrests linked to the cuts. Neither the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office nor Anssi, the French cybersecurity agency, responded to WIRED’s requests for comment.

In June, CyberScoop reported claims that “radical ecologists” who oppose digitalization may be behind the attacks. However, multiple experts speaking to WIRED were skeptical of the suggestion. “It’s quite unlikely,” Combot says. Instead, in many potential sabotage instances he has seen, those who attack telecom infrastructure aim to target cell phone towers where damage is obvious and claim responsibility for their actions.

In France—and more widely around the world—there’s been an increase in attacks against telecom towers in recent years, including cutting cables, setting fire to cell phone towers, and attacking engineers. When the Covid-19 pandemic started in early 2020, there was an uptick in attacks against 5G equipment as conspiracy theorists falsely believed the network standard could be dangerous to people’s health.

While some caution against assuming environmentalist groups were behind the April attacks, there is a precedent for such actions in France: A December 2021 investigation by environmental news outlet Reporterre, as noted by CyberScoop, documented more than 140 attacks against 5G equipment and telecom infrastructure. The attacks were said to show a pattern based on “refusal of a digitized society.”

In one of the other biggest attacks against French networks, more than 100,000 people found themselves struggling to get online in May 2020 after several cables were cut. During the past three months, there have been an estimated 75 attacks against telecom networks in France. The total number of attacks has declined since 2020, however.

Combot says the April attack was one of the “biggest incidents” targeting telecom infrastructure in recent years. It also highlights the fragility of local internet cables. “Breaking the internet is not a good thing for those who have the idea to do so, because the internet is locally vulnerable but globally resilient,” Guillaume says.

While cutting cables and setting fire to cell phone towers can cause temporary internet outages or slowdowns, internet traffic can usually be rerouted relatively quickly. In short: It’s very hard to take the internet offline at scale. The internet can largely withstand human sabotage, damage from natural events, and Canadian beavers chomping through cables.

This doesn’t mean threats to connectivity can’t cause widespread disruption. “I fear that these attacks, in France and elsewhere in the world, will happen again,” Combot says. “There are vulnerable points everywhere in the world,” he adds, highlighting Egypt, where subsea cables pass between Europe and Asia. In June the EU published an in-depth review of subsea internet cables that says more should be done to protect them.

DE-CIX’s King says that most incidents around cables are usually accidents, such as damage from roadworks or earthquakes. “The solution is to introduce redundancy in the design of connectivity,” King says. This means having more connections in the internet’s backbone and systems to replace others in case of potential failures or attacks. Every system should have a backup.

Political and technical measures could decrease the chances of attacks on network connections. “The best way to fight against these attacks is to have a better threat intelligence,” says Oxford’s Laudrain. The French Telecoms Federation says it is working more closely with law enforcement to try to stop those who would attack cables. “Some companies publish confidential network information on their websites,” Lumen’s Modlin says. “They should seriously consider removing exact location data, given its sensitive nature.” (She did not name the companies.)

Meanwhile, Guillame says simple physical security measures can be taken, such as ensuring that areas where cables are accessible through the ground are covered by security cameras. Others suggest adding movement sensors to these locations. Preventing internet cables and equipment from damage and destruction is crucial, Guillame says. “Behind the digital economy, there are small businesses, artisans, schools, emergency services hard hit when they can no longer connect their service. It’s not acceptable.”
https://www.wired.com/story/france-p...e-cuts-attack/





Netflix Subscriber Count in the US and Canada Dropped by 1.3 Million Over the Last Three Months

Netflix’s worldwide subscriber count is down 1 million, but it predicts it will grow again this quarter
Emma Roth

After Netflix reported losing subscribers for the first time in over a decade last quarter, the company’s Q2 earnings report revealed the number of worldwide subscribers dipped by 1 million, including a drop of 1.28 million in the US and Canada alone between the end of March and the end of June. That’s better than its projection of losing 2 million worldwide, but the subscriber shortfall in the US and Canada is double the 600,000 drop it reported for Q1. Netflix now reports it has 73.28 million paid subscribers in the US and Canada and 220.67 million worldwide.

This comes nearly a week after Netflix announced a partnership with Microsoft on its cheaper ad-supported tier that it expects to launch by early next year. In the letter, Netflix emphasizes that its current plans will remain ad-free. Netflix execs remain optimistic about the prospect of an ad-supported tier, noting that “over the long run, we think advertising can enable substantial incremental membership (through lower prices) and profit growth (through ad revenues).”

The plan is to roll it out in the markets where advertisers spend the most money first. The Netflix executives write, “Our hope is to create a better-than-linear-TV advertisement model that’s more seamless and relevant for consumers, and more effective for our advertising partners.” However, not all of its content will be available on its ad-supported plans due to content licensing agreements. During an earnings call, Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-CEO and chief content officer stated that the company “will clear some content, but certainly not all of it” by the time the new tier launches.

Netflix adds that viewing time has increased as well. It points to a study done by research firm Nielsen that found Netflix’s share of US TV viewing rose to an all-time high of 7.7 percent in June 2022 when compared to 6.6 percent last June.

Revenue increased 9 percent year over year from $7.3 billion in 2021 to $7.97 billion this quarter. Although the streamer ran into a couple of hiccups in recent months, including two separate layoffs affecting hundreds of workers, there was some good news. The season 4 release of Stranger Things boosted the series to the second most-watched show on the service, trailing behind the Korean-language hit Squid Game, which Netflix announced in June will be returning for a second season. Netflix’s earnings report also revealed the company’s plans to acquire Animal Logic, the animation studio behind The Lego Movie.

An ad-supported tier is just one of the avenues Netflix is exploring to counteract a dip in subscribers; it’s also part of the company’s efforts to hang onto the ones it already has. But Netflix wants to lock in unpaying subscribers as well, and it partially blamed password sharing for its initial decline in subscribers last quarter.

Netflix execs state that they’re working toward finding an “easy-to-use paid sharing offering” that it aims to launch in 2023. In March, Netflix rolled out tests in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru that are supposed to let users add subaccounts for users located outside of the primary account holder’s household. Netflix expanded its efforts to crack down on password sharing this week and began letting users in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic buy an additional “home” located outside the primary household where they can use Netflix on all devices.

Perhaps one of the biggest threats Netflix faces is increasing competition from newer players in the streaming industry, like Disney Plus, Paramount Plus, and HBO Max. Last quarter, Paramount Plus’ subscriber count grew to almost 40 million, HBO and HBO Max added an additional 13 million subscribers, and Disney Plus also gained 8 million new users. Disney Plus already has plans in place to launch an ad-supported tier later this year and will also utilize livestreaming for certain series like Dancing With the Stars — something Netflix is currently in the middle of testing.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/19/2...tranger-things

















Until next week,

- js.



















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