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Old 10-06-20, 05:47 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - June 13th, ’20

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June 13th, 2020




Japan Approves Stricter Piracy Laws for Manga Starting in 2021
Megan Peters

When it comes to manga, the industry is constantly battling pirates at every turn, and we are not just talking about the Straw Hats. Luffy's gang may call themselves pirates, but they are not the ones creators are worried about. After all, Japan has passed new copyright laws to better target manga pirates, and they will go into effect starting next year.

The resolution was passed late last week after the parliament met revised a copyright law in Japan. It expands the government's right to punish anyone who knowingly downloads manga illegally (via ANN). This goes for anyone pirating manga or simply uploading it illegally. The approved measure will go into effect on January 1 after politicians went back and forth on it. It was first passed through a cabinet that approved the bill before it reached the Japanese parliament.

Not only does the ban expand laws targeting manga pirates but it also includes measures about so-called leech sites. The websites are ones that collect links to pirated manga and share them with users via a hyperlink. They might not be the site hosting the pirated manga, but they act as a source for such content.

Currently, the revised bill will allow fans to download snippets of manga, but it pushes back against the entire thing. You can also share photos including manga pages, but they cannot be the main focus of the post. And for safe measure, this bill does not include fan-works of any sort, so you can continue to download those.

If you are caught downloading illegal content, the maximum punishment is two years in jail or a 2 million yen fine. Leech site operators can face worse punishment with five-year jail sentences and additional fines.
https://comicbook.com/anime/news/my-...new-top-ten/#1





Activists Rally to Save Internet Archive as Lawsuit Threatens Site

The non-profit removed lending restrictions on over a million books during the COVID-19 crisis. Now it's being sued by publishers.
Jeff Benson

In brief

• The Internet Archive removed waitlists for books in its "National Emergency Library" so that multiple readers could simultaneously download the same digital copy.
• Four major book publishers have responded by suing the Internet Archive. If successful, they could bankrupt the nonprofit.
• The publishers take issue not only with the National Emergency Library, but with the Internet Archive as a whole.

The Internet Archive is a massive endeavor—it's an online library aiming to "provide Universal Access to All Knowledge." It has digitized millions of web pages, movies, photos, recordings, software programs, and books that might otherwise be lost to history.

But it's neither un-censorable nor outside the bounds of copyright law. And now open internet supporters are wondering how to save it before it disappears.

In March, as the COVID-19 pandemic led to the shutdown of public libraries, the Internet Archive created the National Emergency Library and temporarily suspended book waitlists—the kind that make you cool your jets for 12 weeks to download "A Game of Thrones" onto your Kindle—through the end of June. In doing so, it essentially allowed for a single copy of a book to be downloaded an infinite number of times.

Book publishers weren't happy. Last Monday, Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley—four publishing behemoths—sued the organization. The lawsuit argues that "IA’s actions grossly exceed legitimate library services, do violence to the Copyright Act, and constitute willful digital piracy on an industrial scale."

Perhaps in response, today the Internet Archive announced it was closing the National Emergency Library two weeks early. Founder Brewster Kahle wrote that he hoped the plaintiffs would "call off their costly assault."

If the court finds that Internet Archive "willfully" infringed copyright, the library could be on the hook for up to $150,000 in damages—per each of the 1.4 million titles. (You do the math.)

That would likely be game over for the archive. Even an unintentional act of copyright infringement carries statutory damages of at least $200, which would put damages in the hundreds of millions.

Many are preparing for the worst, a complete shutdown, but doing so is no easy feat. Many open-Internet activists have been discussing how to back up the archive and make it more resilient for years. The temptation would be to employ a distributed system, such as a blockchain, that would be censorship-resistant and couldn’t be legally shut down. Yet the amount of data makes any attempt at backing up the archive difficult.

The INTERNETARCHIVE.BAK project aimed to scope out the viability of archiving the Internet Archive’s data, which numbers in the petabytes. It has been inactive since 2016. Other projects have similarly stalled.

Some decentralization stalwarts and open-information advocates are urging people to donate or rally to the organization’s side. Doing so would help it pay for legal costs and perhaps buy time to move some of the archive’s resources elsewhere.

According to the publishers, copyright violations are damaging to the industry, which makes money off of selling to libraries and bookstores alike. According to the Denver Public Library, "Libraries pay three-to-five times more than retail price for eBook access. If an individual is charged $15 for an eBook license, a library often pays $50 or even $84 for one license."

That price model makes sense since eBooks make the rounds to multiple library users. And if librarians face large demand for popular titles, they may have to buy multiple licenses—otherwise readers might face a very long wait.

Kahle has urged reconciliation. "Publishers suing libraries for lending books, in this case protected digitized versions, and while schools and libraries are closed, is not in anyone’s interest,” he wrote on the organization's blog. "We hope this can be resolved quickly."

But given the tone of the lawsuit, the publishers take issue with Internet Archive's mission as a whole, suggesting that they were waiting for some pretext to take the entire organization down: "Without any license or any payment to authors or publishers, [Internet Archive] scans print books, uploads these illegally scanned books to its servers, and distributes verbatim digital copies of the books in whole via public-facing websites."

With the publishers seemingly out for blood, all of the digital archives are at risk. Those who rely on it to keep a digital history of our world may be running out of time, though the last chapter has yet to be written.
https://decrypt.co/31906/activists-r...suit-threatens





New software application makes transferring files and electronic data from one place to another simpler, safer and faster for enterprise businesses.
Press release

shayre, an innovative new provider of data-sharing solutions, today announced the launch of its direct point-to-point and point-to-multi-point software for file transferring and synchronization suited for enterprise businesses. shayre’s reliable and secure application allows unlimited files and file sizes to be transferred between as many devices as needed, without any uploading or downloading to the cloud. With remote work in the U.S. growing by 44 percent,1 even before coronavirus contingencies, more people and enterprises are relying on digital tools for virtual office needs. Leaders in entertainment, healthcare, finance, legal and other industries are already leveraging the drag-and-drop simplicity of shayre to safely and reliably send and receive files worldwide.

“Initially developed for the entertainment industry to solve the problem of getting TV commercials to air in local news programs as quickly as possible, we realized that this cloud-free secret weapon could solve data transfer problems for any industry,” said Chris Monte, CEO and Co-Founder of shayre. “With countless more employees working remotely right now, it’s nothing short of essential to have safe, efficient digital tools to support business continuity. Rain or shine, our file-sharing application handles the whenever, wherever and whatever of a company’s data operations, and it does so without cloud storage.”

shayre is a powerful yet simple direct point-to-(multi)-point solution, eliminating manual processes to improve workflows internally and externally, saving enterprises both time and money. Gone are the days of “uploading” and “downloading”. Once installed on the operating system (currently running on Windows, Mac and Linux), no manual manipulation is needed. Now, with shayre, file transferring is as intuitive as drag and drop, whether across town or across the world.

More secure than parking files in the cloud, shayre is the safest and easiest file transfer application of its kind for both sender and recipient, leveraging the same military-grade encryption used by the world's most sophisticated banking and e-commerce platforms. Weaknesses in cloud security include theft, advanced attacks against the application provider and the inability to monitor data moving to and from applications. Though the shayre application does not require the cloud, it can be utilized just as seamlessly by companies with existing cloud-based protocols.

Upon installation, the software operates automatically in the background with virtually no imprint on the operating device. Any file type or file size can be transferred with shayre, with no threshold for number of files that can be distributed. Connections for file transfers are limitless, allowing any number of people and devices as desired to share data. Additionally, shayre can be toggled for both two-way file synchronization or one-way file sending.

“In one case, a major entertainment studio was transferring 400GB from London to Los Angeles, taking 12 hours with current industry software, but that time was significantly reduced upon implementing shayre, finally allowing for continuous work cycles between the two time zones,” said Chris Woodward, President and Co-Founder. “Imagine saving your company almost an entire day of work with an effective, easy-to-use data-sharing utility. It’s 2020, after all — are we really still trying to download files?”

shayre also incorporates automatic trackability, providing transparency to users via text message and/or e-mail alerts once files have been successfully transferred. Every transfer is recorded by shayre, from the devices being used, to file names, send and receive times, information about deleted files and more. Furthermore, comprehensive activity reports are available via a daily, weekly or monthly digest email with a .csv file to satisfy auditing and compliance requirements.

In the healthcare space, which still relies on fax machines for the transferring of important information, shayre augments antiquated IT systems and creates efficiencies by connecting disparate silos of information and improving interoperability. Fully HIPAA compliant and ideal for compliance reporting, shayre is automating the transfer of protected health information (PHI) between departments as well as externally between payers, hospitals, providers and patients.

Enterprise businesses interested in shayre are encouraged to take advantage of a free 30-day trial: simply visit www.shayre.com and click on “Get Started.” For more information and regular updates, follow the company on LinkedIn and Twitter.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/ho...aring-Solution





Illegal Netflix, Amazon Streamers Cut Off After European Arrests
Gaspard Sebag and Angelina Rascouet

European police busted an illegal streaming ring that provided service to 2 million people and was so sophisticated that it had its own customer-service team.

The criminal network operated for over five years and offered more than 40,000 channels, movies, documentaries and other content, according to European police coordination agency Europol.

The scale of the operation shows how the big streaming platforms still struggle to deal with content theft as criminals find new ways to hack their anti-piracy systems.

The group offered a technical assistance service and high standards of quality control, earning an estimated 15 million euros ($17 million) through PayPal payments, bank transfers and cryptocurrencies, the agency said.

The threat to legal streaming may grow if Netflix Inc., Walt Disney Co. and others gradually raise prices in coming years to capitalize on their fast-growing subscriber bases and viewers seek out cheaper, illegal alternatives.

“The background threat of piracy means that the subscription video-on-demand services will have the ongoing threat of piracy as a pricing factor,” Midia Research analyst Tim Mulligan said by email.

The group operated mainly out of Spain, said Eurojust, an agency that oversees cooperation on judicial matters. Police forces made 15 house searches across Europe and arrested 11 people. Eurojust said 50 servers were taken down in nine countries.

A property, luxury cars and jewellery, cash and cryptocurrencies were seized for a total value of about 4.8 million euros, Europol said. Another 1.1 million euros was frozen in various bank accounts.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ropean-arrests





Streaming Is Laying Bare How Big ISPs, Big Tech, and Big Media Work Together Against Users
Katharine Trendacosta

HBO Max is incredible. Not because it is good, but because of how many problems with the media landscape it epitomizes. If you ever had trouble seeing where monopoly, net neutrality, and technology intertwine, well then thanks, I guess, to AT&T for its achievement in HBO Max. No one knows what it’s supposed to do, but everyone can see what’s wrong with it.

For the record, HBO Max is a streaming service from AT&T, which owns Warner Bros. and, of course, HBO. HBO Go, by contrast, is the app for people who subscribe to HBO through a cable or satellite provider. And HBO Now is a digital-only subscription version of HBO. HBO Max is, somehow, not HBO. It’s a new streaming service, like Disney+, offering both the back catalogs of HBO and Warner Bros. and new exclusives. The name, which emphasizes HBO and doesn’t alert people that this is a service where they can watch Friends, has been a marketing problem.

But the marketing problem, while hilarious, is not where the biggest concerns lie. The real problem is with AT&T offering HBO Max for free to customers with certain plans, not counting it against data caps for its mobile customers, and launching without support for certain TV devices.

Let’s go through what’s happening here piece by torturous piece. First: HBO Max is free if you are a subscriber to certain AT&T plans—high-speed home Internet, unlimited wireless plans, and premier DirectTV plans, to name a few. But Americans pay more for worse Internet than their peers in Europe and South Korea. With high-speed home Internet, most Americans have two or fewer choices. The most meaningful choice an AT&T home Internet subscriber in the U.S. makes is between expensive low-speed service or very expensive "high-speed" service.

This lack of choice means that there is no reason for AT&T or any of the other large ISPs to have a better quality product or better customer service. They know we will pay because in 2020, nearly all of us need Internet access at home. Any Internet service will sell just fine, and it's more lucrative, in the short term, for ISPs to offer slow, expensive Internet than fast, good Internet.

Given these high prices, HBO Max isn’t “free.” AT&T is already making money hand over fist on you, and now it gets to report AT&T premium customers as subscribers to its new streaming service to its investors, inflating growth.

Second: AT&T isn’t counting HBO Max against the data caps on its mobile plans. Data caps are artificial: they exist so that there can be more expensive plans, not to manage capacity. Not counting the data used by an app against a data cap is a practice known as a “zero-rating.” When an ISP zero-rates its own content and applications, or that of its favored partners, that violates the principle of net neutrality.

Net neutrality is the principle that all data online is treated equally by Internet providers, so that they can’t manipulate what you see online by blocking it, slowing it down, or prioritizing the data of privileged apps and services. In the case of AT&T and HBO Max, AT&T has a “sponsored data” program that allows companies to pay it to zero-rate their data. But when HBO Max does that, AT&T is just paying itself though a meaningless accounting convention that costs it nothing (unlike competitors who give it money for equivalent zero-rating treatment). AT&T does this all the time.

So if Disney+ or Netflix—or, more importantly, a smaller company trying to compete with the big guys—wants their content to be on a level playing field, they will have to pay a fee that HBO Max does not.

This does not mean HBO Max is a better deal on an AT&T phone. You are paying too much for data already and, again, this trick helps drive AT&T’s subscriber numbers while not costing the company anything. It’s manipulative, too. It funnels AT&T customers who want entertainment but have artificially low data caps into AT&T’s own content. And according to Pew Research Center, those who rely on smartphones for Internet access are more likely to be young, Black, Hispanic, low-income, and rural.

Finally: HBO Max was launched without support on certain TV devices. Managing all these streaming services and subscriptions is a pain, and a lot of people do it with devices like Roku or Amazon Fire TV. Sometimes these are separate devices, and sometimes your so-called “smart” TV just came with one built-in. And guess what? If you have one, you weren’t watching HBO Max when it was launched. AT&T hadn’t made deals with those companies, so HBO Max won’t play on those devices. Remember how cable and satellite companies fight with TV networks over fees, sometimes leading to programming blackouts? Well, the same thing is now happening between streaming services like HBO Max and the makers of hardware and software for viewing them. So even if you have a “free” HBO Max subscription, you might not get to watch it on your Roku TV.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Cable and satellite TV services have almost always required subscribers to rent special hardware—that ugly, power-guzzling set-top box that you pay monthly rent for. In 2016, TV hardware and software makers asked the Federal Communications Commission to “Unlock the Box” by passing rules that would require cable and satellite services to make their channels available through whatever hardware and software the customer chose, using a set of industry standards for connecting those devices. TV studios and networks fought vehemently against that proposal. They argued that new rules were not necessary, because services delivered “over the top” through the Internet, like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and now HBO Max, would automatically run on all the consumer’s devices.

The outcome was easy to predict: Unlock the Box rules never came to be, and “over the top” apps like HBO Max don’t run on all devices—only the ones whose makers made deals with AT&T.

In the cord-cutting era, Roku and Amazon Fire TV have 70% of the market share for these kinds of devices. Users are stuck in the middle of a fight between giants just to watch content they supposedly get for “free” or have already paid for.

We need more choices for our ISPs, so they can’t keep charging us more for bad service. We need more choices so they can’t leverage their captive audiences for their new video services. We need net neutrality so these giant companies can’t create fiefdoms where they manipulate how we spend our time online. And we need our technology to be freed from corporate deals so we get what we paid for.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/0...gether-against





Cox Slows Internet Speeds in Entire Neighborhoods to Punish Any Heavy Users

Cox warns customers to lower usage, imposes 10Mbps upload limit on "gigabit" plan.
Jon Brodkin

Cox Communications is lowering Internet upload speeds in entire neighborhoods to stop what it considers "excessive usage," in a decision that punishes both heavy Internet users and their neighbors.

Cox, a cable company with about 5.2 million broadband customers in the United States, has been sending notices to some heavy Internet users warning them to use less data and notifying them of neighborhood-wide speed decreases. In the case we will describe in this article, a gigabit customer who was paying $50 extra per month for unlimited data was flagged by Cox because he was using 8TB to 12TB a month.

Cox responded by lowering the upload speeds on the gigabit-download plan from 35Mbps to 10Mbps for the customer's whole neighborhood. Cox confirmed to Ars that it has imposed neighborhood-wide slowdowns in multiple neighborhoods in cases like this one but didn't say how many excessive users are enough to trigger a speed decrease.

Mike, a Cox customer from Gainesville, Florida, pays $150 a month, including $100 for 1Gbps download speeds and 35Mbps upload speeds, and another $50 for "unlimited data" so that he can go over Cox's 1TB data cap. Mike told Ars via email that most of his 8TB+ monthly use consists of scheduled device backups and "data sharing via various (encrypted) information-sharing protocols," such as peer-to-peer networks, between 1am and 8am. (We agreed to publish Mike's first name only but reviewed his bills and confirmed the basic details of his account with Cox.)

Generally speaking, data usage for most households declines significantly during those 1am-8am overnight hours, so a robustly built broadband network should be able to handle the traffic. In any case, Mike couldn't use more than 35Mbps for uploads at any given time because that's the limit Cox always imposed on its gigabit-download cable plan. Mike said his household's daytime and evening use is more like a typical Internet user's, with work-from-home activities during the day and streaming video in high-definition during the evening.

Mike also said his level of Internet usage has been roughly the same for the past four years that he's been using Cox—but it was only in mid-May that the company flagged him for excessive use. This may suggest that Cox is struggling to handle pandemic-level broadband traffic, but Cox says that the vast majority of its network is "performing very well."

Cox provided a little more detail after this story published, saying that the neighborhood-wide slowdowns and disconnection threats sent to individual customers "are two separate initiatives that could cross over in some cases."

“Scheduled for termination”

First, Mike got three calls from Cox including one that left a voicemail saying, "we need to speak with you regarding your Internet usage. Your home is using an extraordinarily high amount of Internet data and adjustments need to be made immediately." The voicemail warned that your "Internet will be scheduled for termination" unless usage reductions are "made within five days," according to Mike.

Mike explained how he responded:

Since I work from home, I naturally was very concerned they would pull the plug on me and I'd be unable to work. Immediately calling the number [provided in the voicemail], I was funneled directly to a department for "questions about your recent Internet speed changes," and spoke with a representative there. He went on to explain that their network is overburdened and since I was an above-average user, I was being targeted to lower my usage or else have my account terminated... I tried to explain that my usage is not out of the ordinary for me. My day-time bandwidth usage is paltry (most of my bandwidth consumption is scheduled from 1am-8am), and that Cox should have been upgrading their infrastructure instead of oversubscribing nodes and pocketing the record revenue. I was told if I did not make a substantial decrease in my upload data usage, my service would be terminated.

Comments in a Reddit thread last month confirm that Mike isn't the only Cox customer being warned to cut upload speeds in order to avoid being kicked off the network. Cox didn't tell Mike exactly how much data he'd have to shave off his monthly usage. There was "no magic number or threshold, just an arbitrary amount of decrease, a Cox-deemed 'good effort,'" or his service would be cut off, he said.

Shortly after that phone call, Mike received an email from Cox with the subject line, "Alert: Action required to continue your Internet service." Mike provided Ars with a copy of the email.

"We've recently tried getting in touch with you about your service—your account has been identified as using an extremely high level of bandwidth, which is causing a negative impact on our network and our other customers across your neighborhood," the email said. Mike's "extraordinarily high" upload usage "is negatively impacting Internet service of other customers, which is a violation of our Acceptable Use Policy, the email said. The policy contains a broad prohibition on transmitting amounts of data large enough to disrupt the network, but it doesn't specify an amount.

The real kicker is that Cox's email to Mike said that everyone in his neighborhood will get lower upload speeds until July 15:

During these unprecedented times, many people are working and schooling from home, and maintaining connectivity is important. We are working to provide a positive Internet experience for everyone, so we've adjusted our Gigablast upload speeds in your neighborhood from 35Mbps to 10Mbps, now through July 15, 2020. Your download speeds have not changed.

Cox's email doesn't specifically state that Mike's usage spurred the decision to impose a neighborhood-wide slowdown, but this is apparently only happening in a small percentage of neighborhoods where Cox has seen heavier use than elsewhere in its network.
Questions for Cox

This raises several questions that we asked Cox. We asked the cable company why its network is "unable to handle Mike's uploads in the middle of the night" and whether it has "considered adding capacity to its network instead of forcing unlimited-data customers to use less data." We asked Cox how much data, specifically, customers who pay for unlimited data are actually allowed to use, and "Why isn't Mike allowed to use unlimited data when he is paying for the highest speeds and paying extra for unlimited data?"

We also asked why Cox is imposing slowdowns throughout entire neighborhoods instead of only on the people allegedly violating the Acceptable Use Policy and whether the slowdowns are imposed even when only a single customer in a neighborhood is flagged for excessive usage. We also asked how many people in Mike's neighborhood are affected by the upload-speed decrease and whether they will get discounts to reflect their reduced service.

Cox didn't provide as much detail as we were looking for, but it confirmed the neighborhood-wide speed decreases, saying it has "identified a small number of neighborhoods where performance can be improved for all customers in the neighborhood by temporarily increasing or maintaining download speeds and changing upload speeds for some of our service tiers."

Cox defended the temporary 10Mbps upload speed for its gigabit-download plan, saying that "10Mbps is plenty of speed for the vast majority of customers to continue their regular activity and have a positive experience." Of course, customers paying extra for Cox's fastest plan and unlimited data are more likely to be outliers who do need high upstream bandwidth. Unlike fiber-to-the-home service, in which ISPs offer symmetrical upstream and downstream speeds, cable service generally has much lower uploads than downloads. Cox offers symmetrical gigabit speeds in some areas where it has deployed fiber directly to homes but provides slower upload speeds on its cable network. Cable users may eventually get symmetrical upload and download speeds from an upgrade to DOCSIS, the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification.

A Cox webpage that was updated on April 30 says that the gigabit plan's upload speeds are now "10Mbps in limited areas to support consistent service across customers during periods of sustained increased Internet usage."

The now-repealed net neutrality rules likely wouldn't have prevented this kind of data slowdown, as the slowdown would presumably fall under an exception for "reasonable network management." But the Obama-era system in which ISPs were regulated as common carriers gave more rights to consumers to complain about unreasonable rates and practices, perhaps giving extra impetus to ISPs to upgrade their networks instead of limiting their users. Cox is a private company and thus doesn't report network-upgrade spending publicly, but major ISPs such as Comcast, AT&T, and Charter have reduced network spending since the FCC repealed its net neutrality rules and common-carrier regulation.

Cox told Ars that it "will continue to work with anyone who is violating our Acceptable Use Policy with excessive use to help ensure everyone can have a positive Internet experience."

Cox says network “performing very well”

Cox told Ars its "network is performing very well overall" during the pandemic, and that out of 28,000 neighborhood nodes across the US, 98 to 99 percent "are performing with adequate capacity even with the tremendous level of increased peak usage." If Cox's 5.2 million paying broadband customers are spread equally across nodes, each node would serve about 185 households.

Cox said that it always "keep[s] a close eye at the individual node level to make sure we don't approach any congestion thresholds and need to make any adjustments. Similar to our normal process, if we see the network reach or exceed utilization thresholds we will accelerate network upgrade plans in the impacted areas. This could include splitting nodes, pulling additional fiber, equipment swaps and/or core network changes, all of which add capacity to the area."

But those measures apparently aren't enough to handle users like Mike, Cox said:

In some instances a number of excessive users, like the customer you referenced, are causing congestion problems in a small number of neighborhoods by utilizing over 100-200 times more upstream bandwidth than the average household. This type of excessive usage is negatively impacting the service of other customers, which is a violation of our Acceptable Use Policy. It is not our desire to terminate anyone's service, but we may need to address excessive usage out of fairness to the rest of our customers, especially during this time when households are even more dependent on a good Internet experience...

In the case of the customer you mentioned, we have communicated with him about our concerns and it appears he has made adjustments to his usage to operate within our Acceptable Use Policy.


Mike confirmed to Ars that he has lowered his use by limiting overnight upload speeds to 400kbps, "so that it is always throttled." His usage in the 2.5 weeks since May 22 is 2.1TB, putting him well below his usual monthly pace.
Pandemic spurs extra broadband use

Broadband networks have mostly held up well during the pandemic. Cable-lobby group NCTA, which represents Cox and other cable companies, says that "networks are engineered to provide superior performance throughout the day" and that "provider-backbone networks have significant capacity and show no signs of congestion." Since March 1, NCTA says that peak upstream traffic has risen 26.2 percent and peak download traffic has risen 9.1 percent.

Cox told us that "a small percentage of nodes... were approaching congestion levels prior to" the pandemic, and that "the dramatically increased use in those neighborhoods has pushed [them] beyond the threshold where performance will be impacted. These speed adjustments are temporary while we try to keep as many people as possible connected during the crisis."

Mike said he suspects Cox is limiting upload speeds "because their network can't handle the increase of residential live video conference streaming" that's happened during the pandemic. Recently, Mike said he's been seeing upload speeds of only 4Mbps to 5Mbps.
Coming soon: A price increase

Mike's bill is currently lower than usual because Cox, like other ISPs, is providing unlimited data to all customers during the pandemic. The waiver of the $50 monthly unlimited-data charge temporarily knocked his bill down to $100, and Cox provided a further $20 discount on his latest bill. Mike's bill doesn't explain the reason for the $20 credit, but it could be because of the new upload-data limit.

But Cox is already signaling that Mike is in for a price increase in the near future. Today, Mike told Ars that "I just got an alert after logging in that my one-year introduction rate is now over, so I'll be paying $175 a month for 'unlimited' data once the current data-overage exceptions expire. Yay."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...y-heavy-users/





ANALYSIS: US Falls Out of Top 10 Average Internet Speeds Globally in 2020, but Global Speeds Faster Than Ever

In brief:

• The United States has fallen back out of the top 10 to 11th on average internet speeds rankings after years of ranking between 8th-10th.
• Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Switzerland have remained the most consistent top performers in global internet speed tests over the past decade.
• Other countries that have lost notable ranking over the past several years include Canada, Japan, Australia, Norway, and Finland.
• Global internet speed averages continue to climb, and mobile broadband reaching record highs of global adoption.

From 2010 to 2020, global average internet speeds have sped up considerably. Not only have average speeds increased, but global penetration has spread so far that now over half of the entire world's population are considered active users. While reliable fixed broadband has remained spotty in large portions of the developing world with less than 20% global adoption, The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) found that cellular broadband has spread over 85% of the developing world.

The United States had been consistently ranking between 8th and 10th for top average internet speeds globally over the last 24 months, but has recently fallen out of the rolling average top 10 to the 11th position on the list. While broadband expansion and improvement has been a focus of US government agencies over the past decade, the roll out has lagged behind anticipated growth. Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica has written extensively about lagging high speed internet expansion, with reports that up to 50 million US households only have access up to 25 Mbps, less than 25% of the national average.

Similiarly, there are reports that broadband speeds have decreased for millions of US household during the COVID-19 pandemic, which could also explain the recent drop in average speeds.

Below are the current averages pulled from an aggregation of available global internet service provider (ISP) speeds and compared against speedtest.net global index averages for a country-by-country internet speed breakdown:

Country Average Broadband Speeds 2020 (Mbps)

Singapore 195.2
Hong Kong 163.9
Romania 141.3
South Korea 138.2
Switzerland 133.7
Taiwan 133.2
Monaco 132.9
Andorra 127.8
Hungary 125.8
Sweden 125.7
United States 124.1
Liechtenstein 119.9
Thailand 119.2
France 117.8
Spain 116.6
Denmark 116.5
Canada 116.0
Norway 115.4
Luxembourg 108.7
Netherlands 105.4
China 105.2
New Zealand 102.2
Japan 98.4
Lithuania 95.4
United Arab Emirates 94.9

It's important to keep in mind that while these rankings are a good benchmark of relative development and deployment of high-speed internet, it is still a net positive to see such improvements to both domestic internet speed improvements in the United States over the past decade, but also global internet speeds increasing. Data from the first two years of the decade show that average speeds have increased nearly tenfold in many countries in only ten years.

That being said, there are still 81 countries who average less than 25 Mbps, and 24 countries below 10 Mbps averages. A five-year study that was published in 2013 found that having reliable and fast internet access in developing countries was one of the most important factors of many key metrics in national advancement.

“Our study finds that many people in low- and middle-income countries, including the underemployed, women, rural residents and other who are often marginalized, derive great benefits in such areas as education, employment and health when they use computers and the Internet at public access venues,” said Araba Sey, Information School research assistant professor and lead investigator of the study.”

In closing our analysis for 2020 global internet speeds, it's of course a positive signal to rank well on these charts, but it is also important to recognize that overall, internet speeds are improving around the globe.
https://decisiondata.org/news/analys...ternet-speeds/





IBM Gets Out of Facial Recognition Business, Calls on Congress to Advance Policies Tackling Racial Injustice
Lauren Hirsch

Key Points

• IBM CEO Arvind Krishna called on Congress Monday to enact reforms to advance racial justice and combat systemic racism, while announcing the company was getting out of the facial recognition business.
• The decision for IBM to get out of the facial recognition business comes amid criticism of the technology, employed by multiple companies, for exhibiting racial and gender bias.
• The company decided to announce its decision as the death of George Floyd brought the topic of police reform and racial inequity into the forefront of the national conversation.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna called on Congress Monday to enact reforms to advance racial justice and combat systemic racism while announcing the company was getting out of the facial recognition business.

The decision for IBM to get out of the facial recognition business comes amid criticism of the technology, employed by multiple companies, for exhibiting racial and gender bias. Amazon's own use of facial recognition was put to a shareholder vote last year, with 2.4% of shareholders voting in favor of banning the sale of the technology to government agencies amid privacy and civil rights concerns

"IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms, or any purpose which is not consistent with our values and Principles of Trust and Transparency," Krishna wrote in the letter delivered to members of Congress late Monday.

"We believe now is the time to begin a national dialogue on whether and how facial recognition technology should be employed by domestic law enforcement agencies."

Krishna, who took over the chief executive role in April, has said he is focused on growing IBM's cloud services, as it looks to catch up to Microsoft and Amazon, while still remaining active in the mainframe business. Shares of the company are up a little over one percent over the year, giving it a market capitalization of $135 billion.

IBM decided to shut down its facial recognition products and announce its decision as the death of George Floyd brought the topic of police reform and racial inequity into the forefront of the national conversation, a person familiar with the situation told CNBC. It follows testimony from Joy Buolamwini, founder of Algorithmic Justice League, before Congress last year, about her research for MIT into the bias she found in facial recognition software.

IBM's facial recognition business did not generate significant revenue for the company, the person familiar with the situation said, but the decision remains notable for a technology giant that counts the U.S. government as a major customer. The decision was both a business and an ethical one, the person familiar with the situation said. The company heard in the past few weeks concerns from many constituencies, including employees, about its use of the technology, the person added.

"Artificial Intelligence is a powerful tool that can help law enforcement keep citizens safe. But vendors and users of Al systems have a shared responsibility to ensure that Al is tested for bias, particularly when used in law enforcement, and that such bias testing is audited and reported," Krishna wrote.

The letter was addressed to sponsors and co-sponsors of a sweeping police reform bill unveiled by Democrats Monday − Black Caucus Chair Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

It supported many of the reforms included in Monday's bill, including modifications to "qualified immunity" currently offered to officers and the creation of a federal registry of police misconduct.

Krishna also called on the Congressmen to consider legislation such as the Walter Scott Notification Act, sponsored by Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, which would require states receiving federal funding to disclose more details around the use of deadly force by law enforcement officers to the Department of Justice.

The letter called for expanded training and education that Krishna said "is key to expanding economic opportunity for communities of color." That includes scaling "P-Tech," the school program backed by IBM that combines training for high school, college and the professional world. There are currently 150,000 students in 220 schools in primarily "educationally underserved areas."

Krishna also advocated for the expansion of Pell Grants — federal subsidies for students of need — beyond traditional four-year programs.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/ibm-...injustice.html





Senator Fears Clearview AI Facial Recognition could be Used on Protesters

Sen. Edward Markey asks if the company considers a history of discriminatory policing before selling the tech to certain law enforcement agencies.
Corinne Reichert

Sen. Edward Markey has raised concerns that police and law enforcement agencies have access to controversial facial recognition app Clearview AI in cities where people are protesting the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died two weeks ago while in the custody of Minneapolis police.

Markey, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, said Tuesday the technology could be used to identify and arrest protestors.

"As demonstrators across the country exercise their First Amendment rights by protesting racial injustice, it is important that law enforcement does not use technological tools to stifle free speech or endanger the public," Markey said in a letter to Clearview AI CEO and co-founder Hoan Ton-That.

The threat of surveillance could also deter people from "speaking out against injustice for fear of being permanently included in law enforcement databases," he said.

Markey, who has previously hammered Clearview AI over its sales to foreign governments, use by domestic law enforcement and use in the COVID-19 pandemic, is now asking the company for a list of law enforcement agencies that have signed new contracts since May 25, 2020.

It's also being asked if search traffic on its database has increased during the past two weeks; whether it considers a law enforcement agency's "history of unlawful or discriminatory policing practices" before selling the technology to them; what process it takes to give away free trials; and whether it will prohibit its technology from being used to identify peaceful protestors.

Ton-That said he will respond to the letter from Markey. "Clearview AI's technology is intended only for after-the-crime investigations, and not as a surveillance tool relating to protests or under any other circumstances," he said in an emailed statement.

Clearview AI identifies people by comparing photos to a database of images scraped from social media and other sites. It came under fire after a New York Times investigation into the software company, and in late January, Markey called Clearview AI a "chilling" privacy risk. Since then, Google, YouTube, Microsoft and Twitter have sent cease-and-desist letters to Clearview AI, and the company is also facing multiple lawsuits including for allegedly taking these photos without people's consent.

Black Lives Matter protests are continuing across the US and globally as people demonstrate against the recent deaths of Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, and of systemic racism.
https://www.cnet.com/news/senator-co...tter-protests/





The ACLU is Suing Los Angeles Over its Controversial Scooter Tracking System

MDS, or Mobility Data Specification, is used by LADOT to track all of the city’s electric scooters
Andrew J. Hawkins

The American Civil Liberties Union sued Los Angeles Monday over the city’s requirement that electric scooter rental companies provide anonymized real-time location data.

The lawsuit centers on the Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s use of a digital tool called the Mobility Data Specification program (MDS), which the agency created as a way to track and regulate electric scooters operating on its streets.

MDS provides the city with data on where each bike and scooter trip starts, the route each vehicle takes, and where each trip ends. LADOT has said the data won’t be shared with police without a warrant, won’t contain personal identifiers, and won’t be subject to public records requests. But the ACLU says the data tool is unconstitutional.

“Renting an electric scooter should not give the government the right to trace your every move — where you start, where you end, and all stops, twists, and turns in between,” the ACLU said in a statement. The group’s California chapter is joined on the suit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the law firm Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP.

Naturally, MDS has proven controversial with scooter companies, which have balked over having to share location data with the city. It’s growing into a bigger problem beyond LA. Cities such as Columbus, Ohio; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Omaha, Nebraska; San Jose, California; Seattle, Washington; Austin, Texas; and Louisville, Kentucky are demanding scooter companies agree to share data through MDS as a condition for operating on their streets.

Uber, which until recently owned the dockless scooter and bike company Jump, has said MDS would lead to “an unprecedented level of surveillance.” The company, which filed its own lawsuit earlier this year, was leaning on an analysis by California’s Legislative Counsel to make its argument. The counsel said MDS could violate the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was signed into law in 2015.

The ACLU is going a step further, alleging that MDS violates the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution preventing unlawful search and seizure.

“The government’s appropriate impulse to regulate city streets and ensure affordable, accessible transportation for all should not mean that individual vehicle riders’ every move is tracked and stored without their knowledge,” said Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney at ACLU SoCal. “There are better ways to keep ride-share companies in check than to violate the constitutional rights of ordinary Angelenos who ride their vehicles.”

In an interview with The Verge last year, LADOT Director Seleta Reynolds said that the city “encoded” privacy protections into the regulations in order to give them “the force of law.” She added that it’s a “Day One job and a forever job” of city officials to make sure that the “open source tools that we build do not become tools that people can use to invade the privacy of others.”

But the ACLU says the city’s argument that MDS is free of personal identifying information rings false.

For example, when a trip begins at a home and ends at a sensitive location — such as a therapist’s office, marijuana dispensary, a Planned Parenthood clinic, or a political protest — all the government would need to know is who lives at the house in order to identify the rider and why the rider was making the trip.

After its collected, this kind of detailed information can ultimately be lost, shared, stolen, or subpoenaed. If in the wrong hands, it can also result in arrest, domestic abuse, and stalking, as a recent investigation of automatic license plate reader information in California revealed. In other cases, location information in the hands of authorities can stoke racial and gender-based violence.


“We cannot comment on pending litigation, which we also have not seen,” Colin Sweeney, spokesperson for LADOT, said in an email. “The department requires reasonable information about shared vehicles operated by for-profit transportation technology companies and remains committed to ensuring the safety and accessibility of our streets.”
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21...-tracking-uber

















Until next week,

- js.



















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