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Old 27-11-19, 07:51 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - November 30th, ’19

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November 30th, 2019




China Used a File-Sharing App to Round Up 40,000 Uighur Muslims for Prison Camps, a Startling Insight into how it Oppresses People Via Technology
Alexandra Ma

• The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published leaked documents detailing China's coordinated crackdown on the Uighur Muslim minority.
• One document described how authorities identified 40,557 people who are alleged to have shared banned content via the file-sharing app named Zapya.
• Zapya encourages users to download the Quran and share religious teachings, the ICIJ reported. China sees Uighurs' religion as a threat.
• The document ordered officials to investigate all 40,557 people "one by one," and send them to "concentrated training" unless they could prove themselves innocent.
• It's not clear how officials accessed the app's user data. But the Chinese government has the power to demand user data and the contents of private conversations whenever it wants.

Chinese authorities used a file-sharing app to target Uighur Muslims to send to its vast network of oppressive prison camps, according to leaked classified documents published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The document provides a clear look at China's tactics for controlling Uighurs, who live in the western Xinjiang area of China, via sophisticated technology and surveillance.

Since 2017, China has waged a coordinated hi-tech counterterrorism campaign on the Uighurs. Authorities have locked up at least 1 million Uighurs in prison and detention camps.

One of the documents, dated June 2017, noted that authorities in Xinjiang had identified 40,557 people by monitoring their activity on Zapya, a popular free Chinese app used to share audio and video files.

It encourages users to download the Quran and share religious teachings, the ICIJ reported. China described the material as encouraging terrorism.

The app, also known as Kuai Ya — or "fast tooth" — in Chinese, is developed by DewMobile Inc., which is headquartered in Beijing. The app is popular beyond China, and is used in countries including Myanmar, India, and Pakistan.

Zapya allows smartphones to connect to one another without being connected to the web, making it popular in areas with poor internet connection, according to the ICIJ.

According to the Communist Party document, authorities found that more than 1.8 million Uighurs in Xinjiang had downloaded the software between July 2016 and June 2017, and that 40,557 of them are what it called "harmful" people.

"Harmful" people include fugitives, criminal detainees, and "unauthorized imams." The Communist Party tightly controls religion, only allowing people to practise and congregate if their sect is officially sanctioned by the government.

After a spate of ethnic riots between Uighurs and Han Chinese — the dominant ethnic group in the country — in 2009, China started to see Uighurs as terrorists. China has frequently conflated Islam with extremism, and likened it to a cancer or disease.

The document then instructs officials to crack down on those 40,557 people "one by one" and to detain them in prison camps unless they were able to prove themselves innocent.

"All localities should ... carry out investigation and verification one by one, and for those suspected of terrorism, it is necessary to fix evidence and crack down according to the law in a timely manner," the document says.

"If it is not possible at the moment to eliminate suspicion, it is necessary to put in concentrated training and further screen and review."

The document does not make clear what "concentrated training" entails, but it is likely to mean a prison or a detention camp, where conditions are filthy, and detainees are physically and psychologically tortured, according to people who have been inside.

Sharing "harmful" content on apps such as Zapya is one of many reasons China cites to justify sending people to prison camps.

How officials accessed the app's users, and what they sent and received, is not clear. But the Chinese government has the power to request and obtain user data and the contents of private conversations whenever it wants.

WeChat is one of many Chinese tech giants which has handed over private user information to law enforcement officials in the past.

China also makes tourists visiting the region install invasive software that downloads their texts and scans their phones for Islam-related content, a joint report by Vice, the Guardian, The New York Times, and German outlets NDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung found earlier this year.

Officials in Xinjiang also use a special app to log residents' personal information, which include political views, use of birth control, and use of electricity at home, as reported by Human Rights Watch this year and detailed in ICIJ's leaked files.

Party officials policing the region also stick QR codes in front of people's front doors to log personal information about the household and track their whereabouts.

The leaked documents published on Sunday, in addition to a separate cache of leaked Communist Party instructions published by The New York Times last Saturday, offer an unprecedented glimpse into the party's coordinated campaign against the Uighurs.

Previous reports of atrocities in the region had largely been based on the testimony of Uighurs living outside China and of former detainees in prison camps. The latest documents confirm the existence of the government's oppression.

China has called the leaked documents "pure fabrication and fake news," and denied the existence of documents ordering officials to send people to prison camps, The Guardian reported.

China euphemistically calls the detention camps "free vocational training."
https://www.businessinsider.com/chin...ya-app-2019-11





New Zealand Police Seize $4.3 Million in Crypto From Alleged Online Pirate
Michael LaVere

New Zealand authorities have seized around NZ$6.7 million (roughly USD 4.3 million) in cryptocurrency from a suspect who was allegedly involved in pirating movies illegally in the United States.

According to a report published on November 23 by local news outlet the New Zealand Herald, the New Zealand national police managed to recover $4.3 million in crypto and an additional $700,000 in bank funds from the alleged suspect Jaron David McIvor.

McIvor, a 31-year-old Hamilton-based software programmer, was suspected of money laundering after receiving millions of dollar from an alleged online movie-streaming service that had built with his help.

McIvor’s funds were seized under the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act (CPRA), which is a civil-based process where a High Court must first determine if there are "reasonable grounds" to believe that an individual had received the money through "significant criminal activity".

Detective Senior Sergeant Keith Kay, the Head of the Asset Recovery Unit in Waikato, said that his team was originally tipped off by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS):

He commented:

“Introducing illicitly-obtained funds into New Zealand constitutes money laundering and police will thoroughly investigate and restrain the assets of those who undertake such activity regardless of where in the world the crime is committed.”

McIvor’s lawyer says his client is denying these money laundering allegations.
https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2...online-pirate/





Oregon Poker Player Admits Making Millions Pirating Movies

Talon White faces 5 years in prison
Dan Tilkin

A professional poker player who rolled the dice on a scheme to sell pirated movies and TV shows pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal charges.

The US Attorney’s Office for Oregon said Talon White netted more than $8 million in his scheme. Investigators say he set up numerous websites where he offered the pirated material.

Under a plea agreement the 29-year-old Newport man pleaded guilty to criminal infringement of copyright and tax evasion.

“White also underreported his income by more than $4.4 million, willfully evading the payment of more than $1.9 million in taxes owed from 2013 through 2017,” wrote Kevin Sonoff, the Public Affairs Officer for the US Attorney’s Office in Portland.

Earlier this year, White’s lawyer, Rain Minns told KOIN 6 News her client is a professional poker player. Several gambling websites and his Facebook page show him participating in Las Vegas Poker tournaments, including the World Series of Poker.

In May, a federal judge ordered the Internal Revenue Service to take possession of $3,926,478.11 and a sum of cryptocurrency after the U.S. Attorney for Oregon said it was earned illegally through the sale of pirated movies and television shows.

Under the deal with prosecutors, White agreed to forfeit all of the currency, as well as his house in Newport worth $415,000. Investigators with Homeland Security and the IRS believe it was purchased as part of the scheme to launder the money.

White faces a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison, a $250,000 fine on each of the two charges when he is sentenced in February.

Homeland Security Investigation agents received a tip from PayPal about suspicious websites: www.noobroom.com and www.noobroom7.com. Federal prosecutors believe White worked with “other known and unknown co-conspirators” to operate several websites, including Superchillin.com, Movietv.to and Sit2play.com.

“Members of the public purchased subscriptions to websites created by White and were able to stream or download the video content,” wrote Sonoff. “The content included movies that had yet to be released to the public.”

In previous court filings, White’s lawyers accused the federal government of unlawfully taking his property. They told the judges he had not done anything wrong.

“We don’t generally comment on a current case, but as a matter of principle, the government should not grab a person’s assets and strip them of their resources unless and until proven guilty,” Minns told KOIN 6 News in May. Minns is a Texas lawyer who specializes in accusations of white-collar crimes.

In the first court filings in November 2018, IRS Special Agent Keith Druffel laid out a lucrative venture, with more than $6.3 million deposited into the man’s Stripes account. Stripes is a payment service, similar to PayPal.

“I determined that (he) received substantial revenue from the above listed websites. In 2018, he was averaging over $500,000 per month. In 2017, (he) received over $2.2 million. In 2016, (he) received over $1 million in revenue, and in 2014 and 2015, (he) received on average about $400,000 a year in revenue,” wrote Druffel.

Investigators tried to find out if the man had a lucrative traditional job, which would account for the big deposits.

“(He) was found to have no verifiable legitimate income sources,” wrote Druffel.

Federal investigators worked with private investigators from the Motion Picture Association of America which tried to shut down the websites.

“As part of the plea agreement, White has agreed to pay $669,557 in restitution to the Motion Picture Association of America and $3,392,708 in restitution, including penalties and interest, to the IRS,” wrote Sonoff.
https://www.koin.com/news/crime/oreg...rating-movies/





Hacker Stole Unreleased Music and then Tried to Frame Someone Else

Texas man stole more than 50 GBs of music and then published unreleased songs on public internet forums.
Catalin Cimpanu

US authorities charged a Texas man this week for hacking into the cloud accounts of two music companies and the social media account of a high-profile music producer, from where he stole unreleased songs that he later published online for free on public internet forums.

When the man realized he could be caught, he contacted one of the hacked companies and tried to pin the blame on another individual.

Hacks targeted cloud accounts for music labels

According to court documents published on Monday by the Department of Justice, the suspect is a 27-year-old named Christian Erazo, from Austin, Texas.

US authorities say that Erazo worked with three other co-conspirators on a series of hacks that took place between late 2016 and April 2017.

The group's primary targets were two music management companies, one located in New York, and the second in Los Angeles.

According to investigators, the four hackers obtained and used employee credentials to access the companies' cloud storage accounts, from where they downloaded more than 100 unreleased songs.

Most of the data came from the New York-based music label, from where the Erazo and co-conspirators stole more than 50 GBs of music. Erazo's indictment claims the group accessed the company's cloud storage account more than 2,300 times across several months.

Hackers also went after producers and artists

Erazo also allegedly hacked the "microblogging and social networking" account (very likely Twitter) of an LA-based musician and producer.

The suspect used the access to this hacked account to send private messages to other producers and music artists, asking them to send unreleased songs to an email address under Erazo's control, investigators said.

Songs gathered through this scheme were later also leaked online on internet forums, damaging the producer's reputation.

The attempted cover-up

US officials said that Erazo began discussing with his co-conspirators in December 2016 about the idea of pinning the hacks on someone else -- referred in the indictment only as "Individual-1."

The group went ahead with their plan on January 8, when one of the co-conspirators emailed the NY-based music label stating that Individual-1 had gained access to their cloud data and was currently selling their songs online for $300 per track.

The music label contacted authorities, and when Erazo and a co-conspirator called the music label ten days later on January 18, they talked on the phone with an undercover federal agent posing as the label's security staff.

Investigators say that during this conversation and later emails, Erazo and friends posed as do-gooders trying to help to company and its music artists.

According to statements quoted in the indictment, Erazo said he was "doing this for the love of the artists" and claiming they want no harm done to the producer -- who, they were still actively hacking at the time.

US authorities said that Erazo offered to help the music company in its investigation into Individual-1.

"I'm happy to help out if you need any of the info or anything I could dig up for you guys just let me know and I'm more than happy to help you guys out with this," Erazo was quoted in the indictment as saying.

"Yeah and another thing to why we are going to you guys is we just hate this fucking [person]. Bottom line. We aren't even going to beat around the bush," Erazo also allegedly said, also offering to play a double agent if the music company asked.

In addition, Erazo urged the music label to take legal action against this person, and also advised the company about improving the security of its cloud storage account.

A week after contacting the NY music company, investigators said that Erazo sent on online message to one of his co-conspirators saying that "this is the perf[ect] cover up."

Charges and sentence

However, Erazo's plans didn't work. He was charged in a New York court on Monday under three counts.

Charges include one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years; one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, which carries a maximum sentence of five years; and one count of aggravated identity theft, which carries a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment of two years.

News of Erazo's arrest comes after in mid-September UK police arrested two teens -- one in London and one in Ipswich -- for similar charges of stealing data from music artists. It is unclear if the two cases are related, however, the two UK teens were accused of selling the tracks online, rather than releasing them on forums.

Erazo's case is not related to the Radiohead incident from March 2019 when a hacker gained access to unreleased Radiohead music and tried to extort the band for $150,000. In response to the ransom attempt, the band published the music on a Bandcamp account ahead of its planned release.

This is by no means the first incident of its kind, and hacks like these have been happening for years. For example, in 2012, hackers stole and published more than 50,000 songs from Sony Music, including unreleased Michael Jackson songs.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/hacker...-someone-else/





PSA: 100,000 Readers Are Probably Not Pirating Your Indie Comic Book
Jude Terror

Comics piracy is the hot topic of the week, and understandably so, since a lot of comic book creators have been discovering that tens of thousands of people appear to be pirating their comics based on the view counters on various comics piracy sites. It’s a shocking thought. Could an exponentially higher number of people really be pirating your comic than buying it? What if even a small percentage of those readers could be converted to customers by stopping piracy? This is totally outrageous and probably the biggest problem facing the comics industry today!

Aw beans, it’s Ted “Nibs” Brandt @ten_bandits
• Nov 24, 2019

How do you get your stuff taken off of a pirate site? CROWDED’s up to 95,000 reads on one I just looked at, while I’m completely broke.

Aw beans, it’s Ted “Nibs” Brandt @ten_bandits

Seriously. 95000 READS over the 10 issues. What the everloving fuck. We’ve already had to shorten the book due to a lack of money.


Gary Erskine @garyerskine
• Nov 25, 2019

In 2008 Virgin Comics released a print only version of Dan Dare. It was pirated and downloaded 120,000 times on one site. While I agree that not every download was a lost sale we only sold 12,000 physical copies. Virgin Comics went out of business. Actions have consequences. 1/

Gary Erskine @garyerskine

While there were plenty of online pirates who loved the book and wanted more it didn't help. The second series by Pete Milligan was scripted and I was ready to start then Virgin Comics closed. People lost their jobs. For me? $24000. But please... tell me about your entitlement 2/


Jim Zub

@JimZub

Remember six months ago when I mentioned that comic piracy numbers were easily 20x legitimate buyers and it was a real problem?

Sometime yesterday a bunch of other comic pros looked closer, saw the numbers and the cold chill of it really hit.

Yup.



Well… slow down a little bit and warm up, folks. The fact is, those numbers that show up in the “views” counter on piracy sites are almost certainly vastly inflated, something most people wouldn’t have any reason to know unless they have some experience in running a website (which, it so happens, we have a lot of). So let us break down for you why those numbers displayed in the hit counters are probably complete bulls**t, and the number of people pirating comics is probably far lower and more in line with (or lower than) the percentages seen in other entertainment mediums. Hopefully, that can help some people who are understandably stressed out by this whole thing relax a little bit.

Most sites rely on complex analytics software from companies like Google to track the people visiting their site, and important base metrics there include things like unique pageviews and unique visitors. This software looks to keep track of who is visiting a site so that, for example, the same person clicking on a page ten times can be accurately counted as a singular consumption of that content. Purveyors of reputable websites want to know this data because it helps them make business decisions. But a shady site posting a hit counter on their page only wants to display the highest possible number in order to make themselves look more important than they actually are.

In addition, analytics software can generally tell who is a human and who is a bot and exclude the bots from the important metrics. That last bit is important because bots often account for a significantly higher percentage of hits on a website than users do. These bots are performing tasks like indexing the page for search engines that make the web work. A report in 2017 found that 52% of all web traffic comes from bots, and that number is only likely to have risen since then because bots continue to become more advanced and prolific. In addition, comics piracy sites often display comics one page at a time (after all, this maximizes their clicks and therefore ad revenue), and it’s highly likely that each page turn counts as a “view” for the site’s purposes.

So using some simple math, if a site shows 100,000 views for a comic, we can immediately assume more than half of those “views” come from bots (and that’s a conservative estimate, because bots will continue to crawl a page as long as it exists, which means the first issue of a comic will continue to rack up bot views even after readers have finished with it). Of the 48,000 remaining “views,” you should probably divide that by the number of pages, including cover and whatever “credit” pages the pirate posts at the end, so let’s say 25. That leaves less than 2,000 people who probably actually read an issue of the pirated comic, which you can then divide by the number of issues aggregated in the view counter to get an average figure per issue. So for a series like Crowded, which the initial tweet suggested had 95,000 people read 10 issues, it’s more likely something like 180 people per issue on that particular site, a figure much more in line with the number of people seen torrenting issues of popular comics like Marauders #1 from uploads by notable comics pirate Nemesis43 (and with the actual sales of the comic).

This thinking also brings comics piracy more in line with other mediums. A report in 2018 estimated that 1/3 of music consumers engage in piracy, so is it really likely that 20 times more comics readers are stealing the books than buying them, particularly in an industry with a smaller and more close-knit community where readers feel an obligation to support the books they love through purchases? While it’s impossible to prove it without access to more complex analytics data from piracy sites, it seems probable that comics piracy is less prevalent than music piracy, and it is almost certainly far less prevalent than this week’s panic has convinced people it is.

So while yes, piracy is a problem that it would be great to solve, the comics community has probably gotten itself worked up into mass hysteria over a problem that is not nearly as widespread as the data appears to indicate at first glance to (understandably) less knowledgable consumers of that data. So by all means, be rightfully upset that someone is taking money out of your pocket, but keep in mind that the amount of money is more likely to buy you lunch than it is to buy you a new yacht or let you retire early, which might affect how much the thought of piracy stresses you out on a daily basis.
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/11...ie-comic-book/





Bloodsucking Prison Telecom Is Scamming Inmates With 'Free' Tablets

Filed to:this shit should be illegal
Whitney Kimball

When you get free technology, you can reasonably assume that you’re getting screwed. That’s infinitely truer if you’re in prison.

As Reason first reported, the West Virginia Division of Corrections struck a deal in February with GTL (formerly Global Tel*Link), the rent-seeking prison telecommunications company that’s been gobbling up smaller providers and gouging inmates for, in one Oregon county, nearly $18 for a 15-minute phone call. Under the terms of the deal, GTL provides inmates with tablets for “free.”

GTL’s West Virginia contract stipulates that the inmates would be able to use the tablets to text, stream music, play games, make video calls, and read books, among other things. The hardware is free, but doing anything on it costs a fortune. As outlined in the 2019 GTL contract, content access costs 5 cents/minute, video visitation costs 25 cents/minute, plus 25 cents per written message, 50 cents per photo attachment, and a dollar per video attachment. That could mean that texting one photo equates to up to 12.5 man-hours of labor, based on the Prison Policy Initiative’s 2017 estimate that West Virginia inmates make between 4 cents and 58 cents an hour. Alex Wright, of Level and the Inside Books Project, told Gizmodo that at least eight other states, including Colorado, Missouri, New York, South Dakota, Indiana, Delaware, Maine, and South Carolina, now offer “free” tablets.

Aside from the scandalous fees, a video visitation option seems great on its face, since it enables inmates to see friends and family inhibited by distance or disabilities (as the West Virginia Division of Corrections emphasized to Gizmodo). But not even that, as a concept, looks promising, as the Prison Policy Initiative found in 2015, many jails have used it to eliminate in-person visits altogether. (This is not the case with most prisons yet, nor in West Virginia.)

The West Virginia Division of Corrections collects a 5 percent commission on the charges, but a spokesperson clarified to Gizmodo that all proceeds go to a “benefit fund” for “open house visitation, recreational equipment, holiday dinners, and other opportunities that would not otherwise be available.” They further stated that they are still collecting book donations and that using the tablets are optional.

This still leaves the question of why the prison system couldn’t mastermind a plan to hook up Skype and scrounge up some funding for basic services without kowtowing to a villainous corporation that bleeds inmates dry. On its site, GTL advertises that it processed $800 million in credit card transactions in 2018 alone and controls communications of 1.8 million prisoners across all 50 states, amounting to over three-quarters of the U.S. prison population. Back in 2007, GTL and its subsidiary, TCG (formerly owned by AT&T), were pursued by the state of Florida for allegations of improperly dropping calls, which isn’t just shitty service; GTL charges an exorbitantly high premium (we found it charged more than $5 in one Oregon county) for the first minute of a phone call, and it was estimated that refunds would have cost up to $6 million. (The company eventually settled for $1.25 million, on the condition that there was no finding of guilt).

The Federal Communications Commission for years attempted to reign in fees on inmates’ calls, voting in 2015 to cap them at 11 cents a minute. But in 2017, after some legal setbacks and under Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, the agency reportedly dropped its efforts.

“It’s not surprising that Global Tel Link is the company behind this practice,” president of the Prison Book Program, Marlene Cook, told Gizmodo. “It is reprehensible to price-gouge a literally captive audience.”

“States like West Virginia are in on the con, too,” Wright told us. “They get kickbacks from the for-profit companies that provide these free tablets with horrendously limited and expensive content. The State of Colorado Department of Corrections, for example, receives a flat payment of $800,000 a year from Global Tel Link for this short-sighted scam.”

As for the books, the Appalachian Prison Book Project, which published a report on the West Virginia contract, points out that many of the books are available through the online library Project Gutenberg, which does not include the kinds of books inmates typically request, including “how-to guides (carpentry, starting a business, repairing small engines, etc.), contemporary fiction, popular mysteries and sci-fi, African American literature, Native studies, [and] recent autobiographies.” Ashley Asmus from the Women’s Prison Book Project added to that list books on GED preparation, addiction recovery, and parenting from prison; she also noted to Gizmodo that “while we applaud the service that Project Gutenberg provides,” their library focuses on older literature, which necessarily means that authors of color are not properly represented.

To recap, in addition to charging to use the “free” tablets, GTL gets to charge inmates for books it didn’t even pay for. “The content that Global Tel Link [GTL] and other similar prison profiteering companies are charging by-the-minute for is often free, Creative Commons or public domain material,” Wright told Gizmodo. “Their profit-seeking is devoid of morality, bad for prisoners, bad for taxpayers and shortsighted. Limiting education and literacy among prisoners - literally charging some of the poorest people among us by-the-minute to access free content - is a sure way to keep marginalized people right there in prison. Expanding access to education and literacy - and providing the content for free - has been shown to measurably improve incomes, decrease unemployment and reduce re-incarceration for inmates when they’re released.”

When reached by Gizmodo, Billy Wolfe of the ACLU West Virginia also called the practice of charging people for otherwise-free books “exploitative and unconscionable,” a quote I’m adding simply to up the volume in the cacophony of voices agreeing that this is terrible.

Gizmodo has reached out to GTL about their soulless, parasitic scam and will update the post when we hear back.
https://gizmodo.com/bloodsucking-pri...-fr-1840056757





Cable Execs Now Falsely Claiming Cord Cutting Is Slowing Down
Karl Bode

At no point has the cable industry or its executives been particularly keyed in to the "cord cutting" threat. As streaming video has chipped away at their subscriber bases, most cable giants like Spectrum and Comcast have responded by raising prices. And when confronted by growing evidence that cord cutting (defined as cutting the TV cord but keeping broadband) was a growing trend, most of these same executives spent years first denying cord cutting was happening, then trying to claim the only people doing so were lame man-children living in their moms' basements.

Charter CEO Tom Rutledge was a key part of this cable executive myopia, both failing to see the trend coming, then failing utterly to respond to it in any meaningful way. The result: Charter has been losing subscribers for years, last quarter losing 75,000 cable TV customers. That's not as bad as the 1.36 million pay TV customers lost by AT&T in the same period, but it's not what you'd advertise as "good," either.

Having no meaningful reputation on this subject to stand on, Rutledge last week tried to insist that the threat of users cancelling bloated, costly pay TV bundles and moving to streaming was a phenomenon that would soon slow down:

"I think in aggregate they’re going to slow down,” said Rutledge. “Because I think most single-family homes have big TVs in them and that’s where you get sports, that’s where you get news, that’s where you get live TV like this. It’s still going to be under price pressure. I’m not saying the category isn’t under pressure. But I think the rate of decline will slow."

But there's no actual evidence to support that conclusion. Cord cutting has only been accelerating and breaking records throughout 2019. And with a number of high profile streaming alternatives like Disney+ and Apple TV+ having launched this month, there's absolutely no indication that trend is going to change. That's something being made clear at research firms like UBS, which is actually predicting that things will be getting slightly better for AT&T, and marginally worse for cable giants like Charter:

"UBS predicted that the U.S. pay TV industry will lose another 6.2 million video subscribers in 2020, down slightly from the 6.4 million the analyst firm predicts will be lost in total this year. If that loss comes to bear it will represent a 6.7% rate of decline, ahead of 6.2% in 2019 and well ahead of 1.2% in 2018 when video subscriber losses totaled 1.2 million. “We now expect industry losses to remain in the 6-7% per year range for the medium term, suggesting worsening trends in domestic core affiliate into next year,” wrote UBS analyst John Hodulik in a research report. He said that improvement at AT&T will likely be offset by worsening trends for cable providers and other MVPDs."

The irony here is that Rutledge's prediction would actually be true if cable giants were willing to compete on price and customer service. But they're not, so the losses are likely to continue, especially with new services like Disney+ jumping into the fray at a measly $6 a month.

This is crazy, but maybe don't take predictions from a guy whose response to increased competition is to raise prices, repeatedly. Or from a guy whose company is so disliked, it literally has among the worst customer satisfaction rankings of any company, in any industry in America (pause and think about that accomplishment for a moment). Cable executives could respond to the cord cutting threat (read: cheaper, better competition) by fixing customer service and lowering prices. Instead, they'd rather stick their heads three feet underground, the very reason they're in this predicament in the first place.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...ing-down.shtml





US Proposes Rules to Vet all Telecoms-Related Purchases
Elaine Kurtenbach

The Department of Commerce has proposed requiring case-by-case approvals of all purchases of telecommunications equipment in a move likely to hit major Chinese suppliers like Huawei.

The plan issued Tuesday follows President Donald Trump’s order in May declaring a national emergency and restricting purchases by U.S. companies of telecoms equipment that might be considered a security threat. It calls for a period of public comment before it is implemented.

That order did not name specific countries or companies but was thought to target Chinese suppliers such as Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp. It gave the Commerce Department 150 days to come up with the regulations issued this week.

The May 15 order by Trump said foreign “adversaries” were exploiting information and communications technology and services, or ICTS, for espionage and other cybercrimes. It gave the commerce secretary the authority to prohibit or “mitigate” any purchases of telecommunications equipment and services made after that date, “if such transactions pose: an undue risk of sabotage or subversion of ICTS in the United States; an undue risk of catastrophic effects on the security and resiliency of critical infrastructure or the digital economy... or an unacceptable risk to national security or to the security or safety of U.S. persons.”

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement that the proposed rules “demonstrate our commitment to securing the digital economy, while also delivering on President Trump’s commitment to our digital infrastructure.”

Decisions on transactions would use a “case-by-case, fact specific approach” and refer to assessments by the Secretary of Homeland Security and Director of National Intelligence.

The Chinese Commerce Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The U.S. government blacklisted Huawei in May, requiring U.S. companies to obtain government approvals for sales to the company. That would disrupt Huawei's access to processor chips and other technology. Its smartphones would lose Google maps and other services, making it hard to compete.

The Trump administration on Nov. 19 extended for 90 days a limited reprieve on such technology sales, the second such extension.

Despite sanctions, numerous loopholes have been exploited. U.S. companies, for example, continue to supply Huawei with chips made outside the United States.

The May executive order was based on the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which had never before been applied to an entire commercial sector. It usually is used to freeze assets of designated terrorists and drug traffickers and impose embargoes on hostile foreign governments.

Huawei, the world's biggest supplier of network gear, has been deemed a danger in U.S. national security circles for the better part of a decade. The company denies such allegations and insists that it would abide by promises to protect its customers’ data and services.

U.S. justice and intelligence officials have presented no evidence of any Huawei equipment in the U.S. or elsewhere being compromised by backdoors installed by the manufacturer to facilitate espionage by Beijing. Huawei vehemently denies involvement in Chinese spying.

But all major U.S. wireless carriers and internet providers swore off Chinese-made equipment after a 2012 report by the House Intelligence Committee said Huawei and ZTE, China's No. 2 telecoms equipment company, should be excluded as enablers of Beijing-directed espionage.

Trump signed a bill in 2018 barring the U.S. government and its contractors from using equipment from the Chinese suppliers.

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission cut off government funding for equipment from Huawei and ZTE, citing security threats. It also proposed requiring companies that get government subsidies to rip out any equipment from Huawei and ZTE that they already have in place.

The FCC’s order mostly affects small, rural companies. The regulator has sought comment on how to help rural telecoms financially, and bills in Congress have proposed setting $700 million to $1 billion aside.

Huawei has emphasized its desire to work with the FCC to lay to rest concerns over national security and ensure "best practices" are used in U.S. telecommunications systems. The company says it supplies 45 of the world's top 50 phone companies. But only about 2 percent of telecom equipment purchased by North American carriers was Huawei-made in 2017
https://www.newstimes.com/business/t...d-14865790.php





Downloading: 'People Said it Would End Record Labels'
Will Smale

The BBC's weekly The Boss series profiles different business leaders from around the world. This week we speak to UK music industry veteran Jeremy Lascelles, the co-founder and chief executive of Blue Raincoat Music.

Jeremy Lascelles says there was "total and utter panic" across the entire record industry when illegal music file sharing took off.

"People were saying it was the end of record labels, and that we had better close everything down, and sue absolutely everyone who was illegally downloading music. Everyone was taking the view that we were finished."

Speaking at his office in central London, he says the explosion of illegal downloading in 2000 terrified record labels. "It was such an obvious threat to our business model. And for probably the next 15 years the record industry did indeed go into a tailspin."

At the time Jeremy was on the council of the BPI, the UK record industry's trade body. He was also the chief executive of music publisher Chrysalis Music.

While most of his colleagues at the BPI wanted to sue illegal downloaders, he argued against it. "The general view was to sue everyone, you know, even some granny in Swansea because her grandson had used her computer.

"I thought this was just insane, that the PR would be catastrophic and the genie was out of the bottle anyway," he says. "I didn't know what the solution was myself, but I knew that threatening people was not the way to solve things."

Born in London in 1955, Jeremy says he became obsessed with music from about the age of seven. "I had two older brothers, and we'd pool our pocket money to buy the latest singles or albums. You could get three singles for a quid."

In his late teens he dropped out of school to manage a band formed by one of his brothers. "The name of the group was the Global Village Trucking Company," he says. "I was tasked with booking them gigs. So I took a big bag of two pence pieces, went to the local phone box, and just started calling up pubs that had live music."

Jeremy then spent most of the 1970s as a tour manager for bands including Curved Air, whose drummer - Steward Copeland - went on to form The Police.

In 1979 he was offered a job in the A&R department at Sir Richard Branson's Virgin, where he stayed for the next 13 years, rising to head that division. A&R stands for "artists and repertoire", and involves both finding new talent, and looking after the development of a label's existing artists.

Looking back, he says the 1980s was "a great period for British pop music, a different world to today". During the decade record sales soared, further fuelled by the introduction of the compact disc, which meant that many music lovers bought CD versions of albums they already owned on vinyl or cassette.

During his time at Virgin, he worked with acts such as Phil Collins, Culture Club, the Human League, and Simple Minds.

"I worked very closely with Phil Collins in particular, and I have nothing but good things to say about him, he is a lovely man," says Jeremy. "Even at the height of his success he was quite insecure. He thought it could all disappear overnight.

"He used to send me demos of his songs to check out, and he'd say that I was the only person who would tell him anything other than the sun shines out of his proverbial.

"And Culture Club were in the office all the time. They'd just turn up unannounced, but you always knew when they were on their way, because a group of their really dedicated fans would arrive about 15 minutes beforehand, and stand outside."

In 1992 Jeremy left Virgin shortly after Sir Richard had sold up to EMI, then the UK's largest record label. He admits that he and Sir Richard had a big falling out over the sale. "Richard had lost interest in the record label, he was obsessed with his airline by that point. We had a big, ugly row, but that's history."

After working as a consultant for a few years, in 1994 Jeremy took up the top job at Chrysalis Music.

Did he think that the record industry had got complacent by the time illegal music downloads burst onto the scene in 2000? "I don't think that we thought the good times would go on forever, but certainly we realised that they were good times."

After a number of years of real pain in the industry, he says it was effectively saved by Spotify and the other streaming services. "The record industry was incapable of thinking its way out of the trouble, and then music streaming just fell like a gift from the gods.

"Streaming has its critics, but it's just a different business model to selling physical records," says Jeremy. "It's a volume or nickel-and-dime business - tiny margins, but from huge streaming numbers.

"You do hear arguments from artists that they are not earning a lot of money from streaming, but that is probably because they are stuck on old contracts with their record labels. But if you are an artist who does direct deals with the streaming platforms then you can make good money."

But streaming has greatly reduced the importance of the record labels, he agrees, with power mainly transferring to the artist management companies. "An artist's manager is now at the centre of everything," says Jeremy.

While the global record industry has seen "a strong recovery" over the past five years, "we haven't yet, on a macro level, re-entered the glory years," says Tim Ingham, of trade website Music Business Worldwide.

"Don't forget that the annual revenue of the global record industry was essentially cut in half between 1999, circa $29bn [£22bn] and 2013, just under $15bn," he says. Yet with worldwide industry revenues topping $19bn last year "there's plenty of money to be made, and plenty of growth ahead," he says.

Since 2014, Jeremy has been chief executive of London-based Blue Raincoat Music, which combines both artist management and music publishing, alongside running the Chrysalis record label.

"It is a source of total, utter astonishment that I'm still working in the music industry after 47 or so years," he says. "I'm still getting paid to do what is essentially my hobby. I'm a very lucky guy."
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50475324?SThisFB

















Until next week,

- js.



















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