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Old 28-08-19, 11:26 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - August 31st, ’19

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August 31st, 2019




Music Companies Sue Internet Provider RCN for “Enabling” Piracy
Naga Pramod

Several major music companies including Sony, Warner Bros, Universal, and many more have sued the internet service provider RCN for harboring pirated content and enabling “massive” piracy. The music companies claim that the ISP was turning a blind eye towards pirated content and profiting from piracy activities as well.

Legal battles and proceedings such as these are not new; for nearly two decades now, music companies routinely issued takedown notices to ISPs warning them that their subscribers are committing piracy by sharing copyrighted material.

“This is a case about a leading internet service provider knowingly enabling its customers’ massive online copyright infringement of sound recordings,” said the companies.

According to US laws, ISPs are bound to block such users from their networks for curbing piracy. With passing time, the lawmakers and companies have become more stringent about this law and are holding ISPs accountable. The aforementioned case was filed at a federal court in New Jersey.

The music companies have stated that several bit torrent pirates have promoted the high-speed connections offered by RCN and have also leveraged the ISP to extensively carry out pirating activities. Moreover, it was stated that the infringers were aware of the fact that RCN turned a blind eye towards piracy and took full advantage of the situation.

RCN was accused of plainly profiting from the entire string of piracy activities and standing as a mere beholder instead of enforcing the necessary legal directives against copyright infringers.

What's wild about this case is that the music companies go as far as to argue that because RCN helps to provide faster speeds, it means they're actually assisting in aiding the piracy of the materials.

“RCN provides its subscribers with a fully functioning system that allows them to engage in copyright infringement on a massive scale using BitTorrent networks, And for those subscribers who want to pirate more and larger files at faster speeds, RCN obliges them in return for higher fees. The greater the bandwidth its subscribers require for pirating content, the more money RCN receives,” read the complaint.

The anti-piracy tracking company Rightscorp had been supplying the music companies with the necessary data to back their claims in the ongoing legal battle. The companies are currently demanding a mammoth figure in compensation which can amount to more than $150 million.
https://reclaimthenet.org/music-comp...sp-rcn-piracy/





Eight Charged with Running Illegal TV Show and Movie Streaming Services
BreAnna Bell

Eight people have been charged with conspiring to violate federal criminal copyright law which resulted in the loss of millions of dollars by television program and film copyright owners.

Kristopher Lee Dallmann, Darryl Julius Polo, Douglas M. Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Edward Jaurequi, Peter H. Huber, Yoany Vaillant, and Luis Angel Villarino were indicted by a federal grand jury for running Jetflicks, an online subscription based streaming service based in Las Vegas. By using computer code to search and download programs from global pirate sites such as the Pirate Bay and Torrentz, Jetflicks permitted users to illegally stream and often download copyrighted TV shows.

One of the defendants, Darryl Polo was supposedly a member of the Jetflicks computer programming team before he eventually left and created an equally illegal competing service, iStreamItAll. Both sites were available online and on numerous systems including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, video game consoles, and digital media players allegedly reproducing tens of thousands of copyrighted television programs without authorization — more than Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video. Jetflicks offered over 183,200 different TV shows while its competition had over 120,000 different titles.

Dallman and Polo were both additionally charged with two counts of criminal copyright by public performance, four counts of money laundering along with two counts of criminal copyright infringement by reproduction or distribution.
https://www.newstimes.com/entertainm...d-14383082.php





Netflix-Like Pirate Sites Offered More Video than the Real Netflix, Feds Say

Indictment: Pirate services used torrents and Usenet to build huge video catalog.
Jon Brodkin

A federal grand jury yesterday indicted eight people who allegedly ran two pirate streaming services that "offered more television programs and movies than legitimate streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and Amazon Prime Video," the Department of Justice said.

Jetflicks, which operated from 2007 to 2017, obtained its video from torrent sites and Usenet sites "using automated programs and databases such as SickRage, Sick Beard, SABnzbd, and TheTVDB," the indictment said. Jetflicks made "those episodes available on servers in the United States and Canada to Jetflicks subscribers for streaming and/or downloading," the indictment said. Torrent sites that Jetflicks operators relied on allegedly included the Pirate Bay, RARBG, and Torrentz.

With this method, defendants often "provid[ed] episodes to subscribers the day after the shows originally aired on television," a DOJ announcement yesterday said. Jetflicks charged subscription fees as low as $9.99 per month, letting subscribers "watch an unlimited number of commercial-free television programs," the indictment said. The service claimed to have more than 37,000 subscribers.

The indictment was handed down in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Domain names to be seized

One of the eight defendants, 36-year-old Darryl Julius Polo, left Jetflicks to create another site called iStreamItAll, which was still online today. iStreamItAll likely won't stay online long, though, as the indictment said the site's domain names are subject to forfeiture. The Jetflicks domain names were also subject to forfeiture orders, and the website is offline.

Jetflicks "claimed to have more than 183,200 different television episodes," while iStreamItAll "at one point claimed to have 115,849 different television episodes and 10,511 individual movies," the DOJ said. iStreamItAll "publicly asserted that it had more content than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime," the DOJ said. (Netflix offered 4,010 movies and 1,569 TV shows as of 2018, according to Netflix search engine Fixable.)

The two services were designed to work with "numerous varieties of computer operating systems, smartphones, tablets, smart televisions, video game consoles, digital media players, set-top boxes and web browsers," the DOJ said. iStreamItAll offers monthly plans for $19.99 and charges $179.99 for a full year.

In addition to Polo, the indictment included charges against Kristopher Lee Dallmann, 36; Douglas M. Courson, 59; Felipe Garcia, 37; Jared Edward Jaurequi, 38; Peter H. Huber, 61; Yoany Vaillant, 38; and Luis Angel Villarino, 40. All eight defendants were charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. Dallmann and Polo face additional charges of criminal copyright infringement, money laundering, and aiding and abetting.

"Prosecutors said none of the defendants have been taken into custody," according to The Washington Post. While conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement can be punished with up to five years in prison, the additional charges faced by Dallmann and Polo "could put them in prison for many more decades," the Post wrote.

On November 16, 2017, law enforcement officials seized equipment from two houses in Las Vegas that were used by Dallmann to operate Jetflicks, according to the indictment. The seized equipment included 28 Mac Mini computers, which are often used as servers. Law enforcement also seized more than 40 storage drives and other computers and devices from Dallmann's houses. Additional seizures of storage drives and computers were made at another Las Vegas home used by Polo.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ated-feds-say/





Netflix Has Now Shipped 5 Billion DVDs to Its Members
Janko Roettgers

Netflix has shipped a total of 5 billion DVDs to its customers since first sending out those iconic red envelopes 21 years ago. The milestone was announced by DVD.com, the Netflix subsidiary that is now responsible for the company’s physical disc subscriptions, on Twitter Monday.

5,000,000,000 shipments. F I V E B I L L I O N .

The most heartfelt thank you to our incredible members that have been with us for the past 21 years of DVD Netflix. Five billion discs delivered is a huge milestone and we owe it all to our amazing members and team members. pic.twitter.com/Eg1bjEMtcx

— DVD Netflix (@dvdnetflix) August 26, 2019

Netflix began running a DVD-by-mail subscription service in April of 1998, and shipped its first billion DVDs by early 2007. The company launched its video streaming service soon after, offering it initially as an added bonus to DVD subscribers.

Four years later, Netflix proceeded split its DVD and internet subscription services into 2 separate subscription plans and businesses. Since then, the user base of the company’s DVD subscription service has steadily declined, from 14 million subscribers in 2011 to just 2.4 million subscribers at the end of the most recent fiscal quarter. The company ended that same quarter with more than 151 million paying streaming subscribers worldwide.

As the number of DVD subscribers declined, Netflix has also slowly dialed back infrastructure required to sustain this part of its business. At its peak, Netflix operated around 50 distribution hubs to ship DVDs across the U.S. (the DVD subscription plan never launched internationally). Last year, that number was down to just 17 hubs.

However, DVD subscriptions are still highly profitable for the company: In Q2 of 2019, physical disc shipments contributed close to $46 million in profits to the company’s bottom line. That sizable profit explains why the company is keeping the DVD mailing service up and running for the time being.

And in case you were wondering: The 5 billionth DVD shipped by Netflix was “Rocketman” — a movie that is currently not available on the company’s streaming service.
https://www.newstimes.com/entertainm...s-14380079.php





8K Association Lays Out 'Key Performance Attributes' for 8K TVs

What to expect when you're expecting an upgrade.
Richard Lawler

More manufacturers are selling 8K TVs or have models going on sale soon, and ahead of the IFA 2019 tradeshow an industry group has released its "performance specification" for consumer TVs. The 8K Association includes members like Samsung Electronics, Samsung Display, Panasonic, Intel, Hisense and TCL.

They're pushing this spec as a set of display performance for HDR, color performance and more that establishes what customers can expect when they see a TV with its logo, and are working on a compliance test.

• Resolution: 7680 x 4320 pixels
• Input Frame Rate: 24p, 30p and 60p frames per second
• Display Luminance: More than 600 nits peak Luminance
• Codec: HEVC
• Interface: HDMI 2.1

Those are the publicly listed requirements, while details available to members include "8K Input Parameters (bit depth, frame rate, chroma sub-sampling), Display Performance (resolution, peak brightness, black level, color gamut, white point), and the Interface & Media formats (High Dynamic Range, codec)." We'll need to see more of these TVs in action, but if you need a reason to upgrade that goes further than mere pixel and resolution count, then these specs may be key in pushing the new displays, just like HDR was for 4K sets when they began to appear.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/08/31/...ormance-specs/





Disney+ has the Potential to Send Australians Back to Piracy
Velvet Winter

Piracy rates have been in rapid decline since Netflix landed in Australia. Now multiple new streaming services fracturing the market could revert people back into the loving arms of illegal piracy.

The good ol’ days of Australian entertainment were local Blockbuster stores, 3 day rentals on new releases and a very specific warning at the beginning of each movie:

We wouldn’t steal a car - nor a handbag - but turns out that yeah, we would steal a movie.

For years we were crowned piracy capital of the world. In 2015 Australia accounted for 18 per cent of illegal downloads globally.

Then in March 2015 something marvellous happened - Netflix expanded to Australia.

Couple that with local streaming service Stan coming on the scene and Australia’s appetite for piracy began to wane.

In 2014, 29 per cent of Australians aged 18 - 64 were ‘actively’ engaged in pirating videos, according to figures from Creative Content Australia. In 2018, that number dropped to 18 per cent.

We’re spending upwards of $1.4 billion annually on what is now a verifiable feast of streaming services. Add to that Disney+, launching in November.

But there are fresh concerns that the stress - and cost - of this streaming smorgasbord may drive us back to our old ways.

Almost! But in a shocking turn of events, we can't find Dory. pic.twitter.com/k7EI8kTPnc

Piracy has been on the decline globally since 2011, but according to Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena Report 2018 - that trend is reversing, and the reason could be streaming service fragmentation.

“To get access to all of these services, it gets very expensive for a consumer, so they subscribe to one or two and pirate the rest,” Sandvine’s Cam Cullen said in a blog post.

Dr Marc C-Scott, Senior Lecturer in Screen Media at Victoria University, says that we could see a similar trend in Australia. He says the problem is the battle over exclusive content.

“So, if you want to watch something that’s only on Disney+, something that’s only on Stan, something that’s only on Netflix - all of a sudden you’re signed up to three streaming services.”

“We’re starting to get to the point where we are seeing aggregation and essentially what we’re going to see is a version of Foxtel.

And as we know, Australian’s aren’t too keen on paying for Foxtel.

Dr C-Scott warns we should also be worried about what this means for local content.

Having more international players in the Australian won’t necessarily mean more Australian content. It could, Dr C-Scott warns, go the other way.

“The government needs to step up, especially now we’ve got Disney coming in and potentially have Apple coming in,” C-Scott told The Feed.

At the moment, there are no guidelines for how much Australian content streaming services have to produce.

“The policy now is miles behind,” C-Scott says.

But the more international video on demand services that come through the further behind it falls.

Fairfax-owned Stan, who has historically committed to producing Australian content, may be hit the hardest when Disney pulls all of its content onto its own platform.

“The other issue for Stan is that they just signed a deal with Paramount Pictures who is owned by Viacom and Viacom is planning on merging with CBS who owns Channel 10."

He says it’s a difficult year ahead for the platform.

Stan could be in a sticky situation but I hope for Australian content’s sake that they’re around for a while.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-feed...back-to-piracy





Bezos and Musk’s Satellite Internet could Save Americans $30B a Year

LEOs will change the game.
Tyler Cooper

Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites for broadband internet access are beginning to display signs of real potential. Recently, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin pulled back the curtain on its space intentions by announcing Project Kuiper, a 3,236-satellite constellation. Additionally, Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink recently launched a rocket containing 60 satellites from Florida’s Cape Canaveral.

The fight for space internet supremacy is on. Both players, alongside others like OneWeb, are spending billions in space in hopes of making further billions annually once the satellites go into service for consumers in the US and around the globe.

SpaceX will initially launch service to North America, but once its full array is in place, the company has plans to roll the service out across the entire planet. Ostensibly, anywhere with access to open skies could be covered. Amazon has global aspirations for its project as well.

These low Earth orbit ventures have the potential to dramatically shift the broadband internet market and save consumers $10s-of-billions of their own. My colleagues and I have analyzed US market pricing data which suggests that the technology could save Americans more than $30 billion per year.

Ignition… we have lift-off

LEO satellites promise to bring low-latency broadband internet to millions of Americans. LEO satellites orbit extremely close to Earth, between 99 to 1200 miles (160-19,300 km) — versus 22,000 miles (35,400 km) of traditional GEO satellites — which means less time to transfer information (lower latency) and a quality of service comparable to wired cable and fiber broadband providers. The arrays will be precisely mapped into massive constellations to maximize coverage.

LEO technology will offer robust internet access to underserved and rural communities lacking wired, low-latency broadband options. The arrival of this technology is likely to drive down monthly internet prices for hundreds-of-millions of Americans.

The Empire vs. Rebellion

Americans with access to multiple broadband-level options for internet service tend to pay lower prices on average than those who have just one option in their area.

According to further analysis of our market-wide pricing database covering plans and pricing from more than 2,000 ISPs, the average “lowest available monthly price” for the estimated 104 million Americans with only one wired broadband provider is $68. For the 75 million Americans with two choices, that average lowest price drops to $59. For the lucky 15 million Americans with five or more choices, it’s $47.

Because LEO technology will ostensibly be available everywhere in the US, as well as globally, this indicates the powerful influence the entrance of the technology will have on internet prices as new markets gain access to an additional true “broadband” option and competition heats-up.

Peace and harmony in the universe

Our projections show that that low-latency, LEO satellite internet is likely to have a similar impact on average regional prices as wired, low-latency wired providers. Extrapolating this additional competitor across all US households, the introduction of LEO satellite internet could save Americans over $30 billion.

If we assume that just Elon Musk’s Starlink launches, then the 263 million Americans with three or fewer wired broadband providers in their area could collectively save over $14 billion through reduced monthly prices. The remainder of Americans with four or more providers could save an additional $4 billion, pushing the savings to $18 billion.

If both Starlink and Project Kuiper launch, the savings is likely to be even more dramatic, which we estimate to be more than $30 billion as Americans have two additional choices.

A top-down approach to closing the digital divide

Provided these ambitious projects come to fruition over the next several years, those who currently have no wired providers, or no providers at all, will have access to high performing internet, bridging the digital divide and bringing around 10 million Americans up-to-speed with the rest of the nation, thanks to Mr. Bezos and Mr. Musk. Shortly after, these same transformative benefits could spread to countries across the globe, permanently altering the landscape of the internet as we know it.

With further tests scheduled, and tentative plans to begin serving customers as early as next year in place, the broadband industry’s very own space race is heating up; only time will tell if these tech giants can go the distance.
https://thenextweb.com/podium/2019/0...ns-30b-a-year/





DOJ’s Plan to Make Dish the Fourth Major Carrier has a Fatal Flaw

Dish replacing Sprint as fourth carrier could leave 100 million people uncovered.
Jon Brodkin

When the Department of Justice approved T-Mobile's purchase of Sprint, the DOJ's antitrust officials insisted that an unusual remedy could replace the competition lost in the merger.

Sprint will no longer exist as a separate entity if the DOJ's plan is finalized, reducing the number of major nationwide mobile carriers from four to three. But the government agency is simultaneously requiring T-Mobile and Sprint to sell some of their assets to Dish Network in what amounts to a government attempt to micromanage the mobile industry.

Dish, the government-selected replacement for Sprint, will create its own mobile service from its existing assets and spare parts the DOJ is requiring T-Mobile and Sprint to sell off. The DOJ acknowledged that T-Mobile buying Sprint "would eliminate head-to-head competition" and threaten the "lower prices and better service" created by that competition. But the department also claimed that the required divestitures will let Dish replace Sprint as a viable fourth carrier.

But will propping up Dish actually replace the lost competition? The answer in the short term is clearly no, because the merger remedies won't result in Dish building a nationwide network overnight. It will take at least a few years, and consumers will be stuck with three major carriers during that time.

Even in the long run, Dish isn't likely to become a full-fledged nationwide competitor because Dish's plan only calls for covering 70 percent of the US population by June 2023. That could leave 100 million Americans without the option of a fourth carrier.
Spectrum and prepaid selloff

The selloff to Dish is contingent on T-Mobile and Sprint completing their merger. Although the federal government has given its blessing, 15 states and the District of Columbia are suing the companies to block the deal.

Pending the lawsuit, Dish is being allowed to buy spectrum licenses, wholesale access to the combined T-Mobile/Sprint network, and Sprint's prepaid business including subsidiaries Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile. Dish agreed to pay $3.6 billion for spectrum and $1.4 billion for Sprint's prepaid business, which serves 9.3 million customers nationwide.

The wholesale agreement and prepaid divestitures would let Dish become a reseller in the near term, offering service to consumers over the T-Mobile/Sprint network. Under the terms of a settlement with the companies, the US government reserves the right to reject the wholesale agreement if it isn't "commercially reasonable." But as a reseller that doesn't operate its own network, Dish wouldn't be able to offer better service than the combined T-Mobile/Sprint.

Per the DOJ's requirements, Dish would have access to the T-Mobile/Sprint network for seven years. Sprint prepaid customers would be switched to the new T-Mobile/Sprint network and become customers of Dish. Dish will also receive an "option to acquire certain tower, network equipment and retail assets that are being decommissioned as part of the Sprint and T-Mobile integration process," Dish's announcement of the deal said.

The agreement is intended as a stopgap to help Dish gain a customer base while it builds its actual network.

"We plan to aggressively grow the Boost [prepaid] business as well as begin building out the 5G network as soon as possible," Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen said in a July 29 earnings call, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript.

The spectrum licenses included in the deal will help Dish start the multiyear process of building its own network. Specifically, Dish said it is acquiring 14MHz worth of Sprint's nationwide spectrum in the 800MHz band. This will be used along with other low- and mid-band spectrum that Dish already owns.

The future Dish-built network is the key for ensuring that the US has four major competitors. Dish said it has promised the Federal Communications Commission that it "will deploy a facilities-based 5G broadband network capable of serving 70% of the US population by June 2023 and has requested that its spectrum licenses be modified to reflect those commitments." Dish would have to pay fines of up to $2.2 billion if it fails to meet its 5G deployment deadlines.

Dish’s plan won’t match current networks

But 70% of the US is far short of what T-Mobile and Sprint promised the FCC. The merging companies "committed to deploying a 5G network that would cover 97 percent of our nation's population within three years of the closing of the merger and 99 percent of Americans within six years," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in May.

Dish is skipping 4G and moving ahead to 5G, which makes sense given that 5G can use all the same frequencies as 4G in addition to new ones in the millimeter-wave range. But Dish's plan of covering 70 percent of the 327 million people in the US isn't impressive compared to the major carriers' current 4G LTE coverage, which is important because carriers admit that 5G won't be much faster than 4G in rural areas where millimeter-wave deployments aren't viable. Outside densely populated areas, Verizon says that 5G speeds will merely be like "good 4G."

While 5G's highest speeds will be provided in dense urban areas via millimeter-wave signals, Dish's spectrum is concentrated in the low- and mid-range bands. This suggests that Dish's 5G won't be much faster than today's 4G networks. The FCC's recent auctions for 24GHz and 28GHz spectrum were dominated by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

T-Mobile says its 4G LTE service covers 99 percent of Americans, while AT&T and Verizon report similar numbers. If Dish is only at 70 percent in four years, about 100 million Americans would still only have access to three major carriers.

Sprint's network lags behind the other major carriers and Sprint claims it cannot be a major competitor unless it's allowed to merge with T-Mobile. Yet Sprint's 4G LTE network already reached 300 million people in 2016, or more than 90 percent of the US population. Dish's planned 70% coverage in 2023 thus isn't even close to Sprint's coverage from three years ago.

Dish, the spectrum hoarder

Dish also has a long history of buying spectrum and doing nothing with it. As FierceWireless wrote last year, "Dish has spent roughly $20 billion over the past decade to amass a significant spectrum portfolio, and has roughly 95MHz of low-band and mid-band spectrum per market."

Yet Dish never used that spectrum to build a 4G network. Less than a year before relying on Dish to save its merger with Sprint, T-Mobile in October 2018 urged the FCC to force Dish to use the spectrum quickly or give it up. T-Mobile CEO John Legere criticized Dish for "hoarding" spectrum, saying it has "missed every build deadline."

As Legere said, Dish has failed to meet interim buildout deadlines tied to its current spectrum licenses. Under the current license terms, Dish was supposed to finish building out a network to 70 percent of the US by March 7, 2020. As previously noted, the new deal that depends on the T-Mobile/Sprint merger would give Dish until June 2023 to meet that same benchmark.

Dish seems to have enough spectrum to build a viable nationwide network. In addition to the new 800MHz holdings, Dish already had spectrum in the 600MHz and 700MHz range. These sub-1GHz bands are sometimes called "beachfront spectrum" because they can be used to cover large geographical areas and the insides of buildings. The current nationwide 4G networks rely heavily on sub-1GHz spectrum.

Dish also owns mid-range spectrum in the H Block and AWS-4 bands, which fall between 1.9GHz and 2.2GHz. These bands could help Dish provide high speeds throughout much of the country, but with less geographic reach than sub-1GHz spectrum. Including all spectrum bands, Dish will have "well over 100 megahertz of spectrum" on which to build its network, Ergen said in the July earnings call.

It’s the money

Despite Dish's extensive spectrum holdings, telecom industry analysts at MoffettNathanson Research cast doubt on whether Dish can raise enough money to build a strong nationwide network.

"Verizon spends $15 billion annually to maintain a network that they've already built," wireless industry analysts Craig Moffett and Jessica Moffett wrote in a note for investors on July 25. "The idea that Dish might spend $10 billion (their own estimate on previous conference calls) and then somehow be finished is, well, just silly."

MoffettNathanson recommended that investors sell their Dish shares, writing that the biggest loser in the T-Mobile/Sprint/Dish deal "is Dish Network, or rather, Dish Network's investors." Dish's investors value its "spectrum holdings as an asset-held-for-sale," which is "only appropriate if the spectrum will be sold," the firm wrote.

With Dish planning to use the spectrum itself instead of selling it to Verizon or another company, the analyst firm warned that Dish could embark on a potential "value-destroying wireless build-out or acquisition strategy, causing substantial direct financial losses as well as a radical de-rating of the stock as the company's spectrum holdings are negatively revalued by investors."

Dish's stock price dropped more than 25 percent after its plans were leaked on July 23, and it hasn't recovered.

Dish in decline

Dish's primary business is satellite TV and the Web-based Sling TV. Dish reported revenue of $3.21 billion and net income of $317 million in the most recent quarter, down from $3.46 billion and $439 million year-over-year. Dish lost 31,000 pay-TV subscribers in the quarter, leaving it with 12.03 million subscribers between satellite and Sling TV.

As the pay-TV business declines, Dish is banking on 5G to ensure its long-term survival. Ergen defended the company's plans in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in early August.

"We know that we do need to strengthen our balance sheet," Ergen said. While Dish estimates that it needs $10 billion to build its network, "we don't need $10 billion tomorrow," Ergen said.

Dish "ended June with roughly $13 billion of debt and about $3 billion in cash or investments," the Journal wrote.

As for skepticism that $10 billion would be enough to build a nationwide network, Dish says that "5G technology will make its cellular service more efficient and will save billions of dollars of costs that burden established network operators with legacy technology," the Journal wrote.

Dish has been making a big deal out of becoming the first "standalone" 5G network operator in the US, meaning that Dish will only have to support 5G instead of a mix of 5G and 4G. But the operation of a 4G network shouldn't be seen as a burden—4G is what gives mobile broadband and voice service to nearly every American today.

Even now, there are rural parts of America that lack reliable access to 4G. Carriers that already operate near-nationwide 4G networks are a lot more likely to fill those broadband gaps than a company like Dish that's building a 5G network from scratch.

Overall, the DOJ's promise of maintaining four-way competition depends a lot on the unknown factor of how good Dish's future network will be. If Dish builds a real nationwide network, and not just one that covers 70 percent of Americans, this deal might eventually replace the competition killed by the T-Mobile/Sprint merger. But US consumers will be deprived of competition for years while we wait to see if Dish can make it happen.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-a-fatal-flaw/





Over 20,000 AT&T Workers in the South Struck Over Weekend

More than 20,000 AT&T workers in nine Southern states went on strike over the weekend, saying that the telecommunications company isn't bargaining in good faith over a new contract.

The union, the Communications Workers of America, says AT&T isn't sending negotiators who have the authority to make decisions.

When asked if there will be service interruptions for customers, AT&T said that it's prepared for a strike. The workers who have walked off are technicians and customer service representatives for AT&T's "wireline" home and business internet and phone division, not its cellphone division.

AT&T says it disagrees with the union's claims of bad bargaining practices.

The AT&T workers are on strike in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Telecom workers periodically go on strike, including about 17,000 AT&T workers in a one-day walkout in California and Nevada in 2017 and 39,000 Verizon workers who struck for six weeks in 2016.
https://www.newstimes.com/news/us/ar...r-14379693.php





T-Mobile is Giving Away Free Hot Spots so People Can Test-Drive its Network for 30 Days

Try before you buy
Chaim Gartenberg

T-Mobile has a new “Test Drive” deal that’s meant to entice customers on other carriers to switch over. It’s a free hot spot that will let people try out T-Mobile’s network for 30 days (or up to 30GB of data, whichever comes first), so they can see how T-Mobile’s data speeds and coverage work on their existing devices.

The company started rolling out the free 30-day hot spot test program last year, but it was far more limited and offered in only Atlanta, Austin, and Boston. Presumably, it was meant to be a quiet trial run for this nationwide offer.

This is not T-Mobile’s first “Test Drive” program: in 2014, the company loaned out iPhone 5S devices with T-Mobile service so potential customers could try out the network. That program was only for seven days, though. This new Test Drive system is far longer and won’t require customers to switch phones, making it potentially more useful. If nothing else, it’s a way to get a free 30GB T-Mobile hot spot for a month.

The new Test Drive deal does come with some fine print: it’s only open to non-T-Mobile customers, it doesn’t include international use, and it’s limited to just a single trial per user. T-Mobile also notes that the offer is available for a limited time while supplies last.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/28/2...k-30-days-30gb





US Officials are Reportedly Trying to Block an 8,000-Mile Google and Facebook-Backed Undersea Cable to China on National-Security Grounds
Alexandra Ma

• An 8,000-mile undersea cable connecting Los Angeles to Hong Kong is at risk of being abandoned over national-security threats, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• A multiagency panel led by the Justice Department, known as Team Telecom, has raised objections to the cable, which is nearing completion, The Journal said.
• The cable would provide faster internet to both the US and China, The Journal said.
• Team Telecom's reported opposition highlights the ongoing heightened fear among Americans over possible threats posed by China to US national security.

US officials are seeking to block an undersea internet cable linking the US to China over national-security concerns, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people involved in the discussions.

The multiagency panel led by the Department of Justice, known as Team Telecom, is objecting to the massive cable project, which hopes to provide faster internet to both the US and China, The Journal said.

A spokesman for the DOJ declined to comment on The Journal's story but told Business Insider in a statement: "DOJ does not comment on its ongoing assessment of applications that the FCC has referred for national security and law enforcement concerns arising out of foreign investment or control."

"DOJ's reviews and subsequent recommendations to the FCC on behalf of Team Telecom are tailored to address the national security and law enforcement risks that are unique to each applicant or license holder," he said.

The project is being backed by Google, Facebook, and a private Chinese telecommunications company called Dr. Peng Telecom & Media Group Co., The Journal reported. Dr. Peng is the fourth-largest telecom company in China.

Among Team Telecom's concerns are Dr. Peng's ties to the Chinese government and the ongoing protests in Hong Kong against Beijing's increasing efforts to integrate the semiautonomous hub with the mainland.

Many private Chinese companies keep close ties to the ruling Communist Party to maintain a favorable business environment.
A protest in Hong Kong on August 24.Tyrone Siu/Reuters

Construction work on the 8,000-mile Pacific Light Cable Network linking Los Angeles to Hong Kong is already mostly complete, with a temporary permit for its construction expiring in September, The Journal reported.

Now the cable may be prevented from operating because of Team Telecom's reported objections, which highlight the heightened fears among Americans over national-security threats from China.

In January, the DOJ labeled the Chinese telecom giant Huawei a national-security threat and accused it of violating sanctions on business with Iran and of stealing trade secrets from T-Mobile.

People who support the construction of the cable say Team Telecom's approval would actually give the US more control over the cable because the Federal Communications Commission could make the companies agree to more stringent security measures, The Journal reported.

Linking the US mainland to Hong Kong could also give US companies greater access to other growing markets in Asia, such as the Philippines and Malaysia.

Team Telecom has approved cable projects in the past — including those involving state-owned Chinese telecom companies — if the companies in charge can show they have taken enough steps to stop foreign governments from blocking or tapping traffic through the cables, The Journal reported.
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-o...ked-wsj-2019-8






Warren Blames ISPs, FCC, for Digital Divide

Said answer is 'public broadband' option
John Eggerton

As presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren sees the digital divide, ISPs and the FCC are the problem, and a "public broadband" option is the solution.

Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, continued her assault on the commercial ISPs who have used private risk capital to build out broadband to 90%-plus of the population. That came in an op ed Wednesday (Aug. 28) in The Washington Post.

As she did in unveiling her plan earlier in the month, Warren blames ISPs--she calls out Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon by name--for the digital divide and brands "former Verizon lawyer" and current FCC chair Ajit Pai as an "effective agent" for those ISPs.

Related: NCTA Praises Broadband Fund Coordination Effort

Warren is proposing to create an Office of Broadband Access that would hand out $85 billion in deployment subsidies, but only to "electricity and telephone cooperatives, nonprofit organizations, tribes, cities, counties and other state subdivisions." Those would have to offer at least 100 Mbps service.

She also has a litmus test for commissioner appointments: "I would appoint FCC commissioners who would restore net neutrality and make sure our government programs live up to the promise of universal service."

She said in the Post op ed that she would "prohibit the range of sneaky maneuvers that giant private providers use to unfairly squeeze out competition, hold governments hostage and drive up prices."

She did not say exactly what those were, but left no doubt there was no love lost for commercial broadband operators.

"Horror stories starring giant Internet companies are practically universal," she said. "In the wealthiest country on the planet, we lag behind many other developed nations in connectivity and speed, while also paying more for that service. That’s why companies such as Comcast consistently rank as the United States’ most hated companies by consumers."

But she did not confine her criticism to Comcast. She said ISPs have been "fostering pseudo-monopolies" by spending a lot to keep the regulatory environment "murky," abetted by Pai, who she said had gutted net neutrality, tried to prevent cities from building out their own broadband, and attempted to "gut" the lifeline subsidy.

Warren said ISPs "have deliberately restricted competition, kept prices high and used their armies of lobbyists to persuade state legislatures to ban towns and cities from building their own public networks. Meanwhile, the federal government has shoveled more than a billion in taxpayer dollars per year to private ISPs to expand broadband to remote areas, but these providers have done the bare minimum with these resources."

An FCC spokesperson also weighed in following the publication of Warren's op ed.

“Under Chairman Pai’s leadership of the FCC, the digital divide has been closing, average Internet speeds have substantially increased, and we’ve seen fiber deployed to more homes in a single year than any previous year in American history," the spokesperson said. "Chairman Pai has also instituted innovative reforms to the Commission’s universal service programs that are expanding broadband deployment across rural America in a cost-efficient manner. Indeed, the Commission just approved $4.9 billion last week for rural broadband deployment. So notwithstanding the hot air that campaign season brings, the truth is that his approach is producing real results and delivering digital opportunity to people across our country.”

Small-government group FreedomWorks pushed back on the attack on Pai as well as Warren's public broadband proposal.

"The attacks leveled by Elizabeth Warren against Ajit Pai are both shameful and without merit," said FreedomWorks president Adam Brandon. "Chairman Pai's tenure at the FCC has been characterized by scaling back government involvement to allow free and open competition in the market. On the other hand, Senator Warren's proposal for national public broadband would decrease Internet quality for millions of Americans and require taxpayers to foot the massive bill. The municipal broadband model has failed almost everywhere it's been attempted."
https://www.broadcastingcable.com/ne...digital-divide





Comcast, Beware: New City-Run Broadband Offers 1Gbps for $60 a Month

Comcast's lobby failed to stop launch of Fort Collins municipal broadband.
Jon Brodkin

A municipal broadband service in Fort Collins, Colorado went live for new customers today, less than two years after the city's voters approved the network despite a cable industry-led campaign against it.

"Finally, a broadband provider you can trust," the city-run broadband service's website says in a pointed message about the Comcast cable and CenturyLink DSL services that are the city's primary broadband networks.

Fort Collins Connexion, the new fiber-to-the-home municipal option, costs $59.95 a month for 1Gbps download and 1Gbps upload speeds, with no data caps, contracts, or installation fees. There's a $15 monthly add-on fee to cover Wi-Fi, but customers can avoid that fee by purchasing their own router. Fort Collins Connexion also offers home phone service, and it plans to add TV service later on.

Connexion is only available in a small portion of the city right now.

"The initial number of homes we're targeting this week is 20-30. We will notify new homes weekly, slowly ramping up in volume," Connexion spokesperson Erin Shanley told Ars. While Connexion's fiber lines currently pass just a small percentage of the city's homes and businesses, Shanley said the city's plan is to build out to the city limits within two or three years.

"Ideally we will capture more than 50% of the market share, similar to Longmont," another Colorado city that built its own network, Shanley said. Beta testers at seven homes are already using the Fort Collins service, and the plan is to start notifying potential customers about service availability today.

The city reportedly issued $143 million in bonds to finance the city-wide network. Fort Collins has a population of 165,000.

Ballot question

In November 2017, voters in Fort Collins approved a ballot question that authorized the city to build the broadband network.

The Colorado Cable Telecommunications Association (CCTA), of which Comcast is a member, donated $815,000 toward a campaign against the ballot initiative. The Chamber of Commerce also opposed the plan. Comcast didn't participate in the campaign publicly, but the company would have been the main beneficiary of a vote against the municipal option.

In all, the industry-led opposition spent more than $900,000 fighting the ballot question, while the pro-broadband group led by residents spent about $15,000.

Before the election, a study by a pro-municipal broadband group estimated that "Competition in Fort Collins would cost Comcast between $5.4 million and $22.8 million per year."

Net neutrality, competitive prices

Fort Collins Connexion promises to follow net neutrality principles, saying it will not "intentionally block, slow down, or charge money for specific websites and online content."

The municipal ISP's privacy pledge says that it does not "share, distribute, or sell a User's specific Internet usage history, call history, voicemail, or other electronic data generated from a User's Internet and phone Service to any external third party."

Connexion's website is advertising only two residential Internet packages, the $59.95 gigabit plan and a 10Gbps plan for $299.95 a month. Shanley told Ars that "there are no taxes and fees on Internet service," aside from the optional $15 charge to use city-provided Wi-Fi hardware instead of a customer-purchase router.

Connexion offers a gigabit Internet and phone service bundle for $74.90 a month. Phone service on its own starts at $19.95 a month. When TV service is available, there will be an Internet and TV bundle for $119.90 a month, and a bundle of all three services starts at $144.85.

Connexion's prices are competitive. Looking at Comcast's website for offers in Fort Collins today, we found a $60 monthly price for download speeds of up to 400Mbps, and $70 a month for 1Gbps. But those Comcast prices are only good for two years and would automatically rise after the promotional period. Comcast charges early termination fees, and the company says that equipment fees, taxes, other fees, and "applicable charges" may be added to the advertised price. Comcast's modem/router gateway costs $13 a month.

Besides that, Comcast's cable upload speeds are a fraction of download speeds, and Comcast enforces a 1TB monthly data cap in Colorado and many other states. Comcast charges $10 for each additional block of 50GB used after a customer hits 1TB, or $50 extra per month for unlimited data.

Comcast potentially offers lower prices than Connexion for lower-speed plans, but even then it's hard to do better than the city-run option. We found an offer in Fort Collins of 60Mbps download speeds for $29.99 a month from Comcast, but the price rises to at least $59.95 after a year. Another offer for 15Mbps download speeds has the same $29.99 monthly price for the first year and rises to 51.95 afterward.

But again, these advertised prices don't include extra taxes and fees, data cap charges, and the mental cost of dealing with Comcast's customer service. Comcast may also charge installation fees of up to $90 depending on which package you buy.

Although Connexion is only available to a small portion of Fort Collins so far, residents who advocated for the network are excited that it's now a reality.

"All in all, it's remarkably neat to see this all come to fruition after our four-year journey with all of its ups and downs," Colin Garfield of the Fort Collins Citizens Broadband Committee told Ars. "It's my hope that other communities across the country will be inspired by the muni fiber hotbed that is now northern Colorado (Fort Collins, Loveland, Estes Park, Longmont). I'm excited to use my newfound gig speed to cancel Comcast."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...or-60-a-month/





A Super-Secure Quantum Internet Just Took Another Step Closer to Reality
Martin Giles

Scientists have managed to send a record-breaking amount of data in quantum form, using a strange unit of quantum information called a qutrit.

The news: Quantum tech promises to allow data to be sent securely over long distances. Scientists have already shown it’s possible to transmit information both on land and via satellites using quantum bits, or qubits. Now physicists at the University of Science and Technology of China and the University of Vienna in Austria have found a way to ship even more data using something called quantum trits, or qutrits.

Qutrits? Oh, come on, you’ve just made that up: Nope, they’re real. Conventional bits used to encode everything from financial records to YouTube videos are streams of electrical or photonic pulses than can represent either a 1 or a 0. Qubits, which are typically electrons or photons, can carry more information because they can be polarized in two directions at once, so they can represent both a 1 and a 0 at the same time. Qutrits, which can be polarized in three different dimensions simultaneously, can carry even more information. In theory, this can then be transmitted using quantum teleportation.

Quantum … what? Quantum teleportation is a method for shipping data that relies on an almost-mystical phenomenon called entanglement. Entangled quantum particles can influence one another’s state, even if they are continents apart. In teleportation, a sender and receiver each receive one of a pair of entangled qubits. The sender measures the interaction of their qubit with another one that holds data they want to send. By applying the results of this measurement to the other entangled qubit, the receiver can work out what information has been transmitted. (For a more detailed look at quantum teleportation, see our explainer here.)

Measuring progress: Getting this to work with qubits isn’t easy—and harnessing qutrits is even harder because of that extra dimension. But the researchers, who include Jian-Wei Pan, a Chinese pioneer of quantum communication, say they have cracked the problem by tweaking the first part of the teleportation process so that senders have more measurement information to pass on to receivers. This will make it easier for the latter to work out what data has been teleported over. The research was published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Deterring hackers: This might seem rather esoteric, but it has huge implications for cybersecurity. Hackers can snoop on conventional bits flowing across the internet without leaving a trace. But interfering with quantum units of information causes them to lose their delicate quantum state, leaving a telltale sign of hacking. If qutrits can be harnessed at scale, they could form the backbone of an ultra-secure quantum internet that could be used to send highly sensitive government and commercial data.
https://www.technologyreview.com/f/6...er-to-reality/





Feds Ordered Google Location Dragnet to Solve Wisconsin Bank Robbery

Another reverse location search warrant
Russell Brandom

On October 13th, 2018, two men walked into a Great Midwest Bank in a suburban strip mall outside Milwaukee. They were the first two customers when the bank opened, barely recognizable behind sunglasses and heavy beards — but it soon became clear what they were after. One man jumped onto the teller counter and pulled out a handgun, throwing down a garbage bag for the tellers to fill with money. They left the bank at 9:09AM, just seven minutes after they entered, carrying the bag full of cash, three drawers from the vault and teller station, and the keys to the bank vault itself.

In the months since, police and federal agents have struggled to track down the bank robbers. Local media sent out pictures from the bank’s security cameras, but it produced no leads. Finally, police hit on a more aggressive strategy: ask Google to track down the bank robbers’ phones.

In November, agents served Google with a search warrant, asking for data that would identify any Google user who had been within 100 feet of the bank during a half-hour block of time around the robbery. They were looking for the two men who had gone into the bank, as well as the driver who dropped off and picked up the crew, and would potentially be caught up in the same dragnet. It was an aggressive technique, scooping up every Android phone in the area and trusting police to find the right suspects in the mess of resulting data. But the court found it entirely legal, and it was returned as executed shortly after.

That kind of warrant, known as a reverse location search, has become increasingly common in recent years. More than 20 such warrants have been served in Minnesota, and at least one similar case came to light in North Carolina. Most controversially, the technique was used to identify suspects after a Proud Boy rally-turned-riot in midtown Manhattan last year.

In each case, police weren’t tracking the location of a specific suspect — where normal standards of reasonable suspicion would apply — but instead pulling the names of every individual who had been in the vicinity when a crime took place. For civil liberties groups, it’s a dangerous and potentially unconstitutional overreach of police power. But those concerns haven’t been enough to keep police from filing reverse location search warrants when a case runs dry, or to convince judges to reject them.

In the Wisconsin case, it’s not clear how useful that technique actually was. When The Verge reached out to the FBI’s Milwaukee division to ask if any charges had been brought, officers said the case was ongoing and they could not provide any additional information as a result. With nearly a year elapsed since the warrant was served, that suggests this particular reverse location search may not have been as fruitful as investigators hoped.

Groups like EFF have a lot of problems with this kind of search, particularly that it cuts against a Supreme Court precedent that treats location data as “an intimate window into a person’s life.” But the biggest gripe is the simple success rate: in the Wisconsin case, police asked for a dragnet that could produce that sensitive location data for dozens of people — but if the bank robbers weren’t using Google Maps or just left their phones at home, they wouldn’t show up in that search. For civil libertarians, that looks like a whole lot of suspicionless searches and nothing to show for it.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/28/2...nk-robbery-fbi





Consumer Groups Seek to Defend California Data Privacy Law

A collection of consumer groups has written a letter to California lawmakers urging them to keep the strong protections in a state law due to take effect next year.

Why it matters: The California law, if left largely as is, could usher in a range of new consumer protections. However, direct marketers and tech companies, working through various entities, have been seeking to water down the law.

The latest: A coalition of 10 consumer groups has written to California State Senate leader Toni Atkins encouraging legislators to explore the background of the Nonprofit Alliance, a group that has been pushing to have the law weakened.

"We are asking that the Nonprofit Alliance release their financial information; explain their ties to corporate donors; and clarify their leadership, mission, and membership."

— The groups write in a letter

Among those signing the letter:

• ACLU of California, Center for Digital Democracy
• Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood
• Consumer Action
• Common Sense
• Privacy Rights Clearinghouse

The big picture: The threat of the California law has been the biggest impetus pushing Congress to take federal action. Any weakening of California's law could reduce the pressure on Congress to act.
https://www.axios.com/california-dat...875874dee.html





The Scientific Debate Over Teens, Screens And Mental Health
Anya Kamenetz

More teens and young adults — particularly girls and young women — are reporting being depressed and anxious, compared with comparable numbers from the mid-2000s. Suicides are up too in that time period, most noticeably among girls ages 10 to 14.

These trends are the basis of a scientific controversy.

One hypothesis that has gotten a lot of traction is that with nearly every teen using a smartphone these days, digital media must take some of the blame for worsening mental health.

But some researchers argue that this theory isn't well supported by existing evidence and that it repeats a "moral panic" argument made many times in the past about video games, rap lyrics, television and even radio, back in its early days.

To understand both sides of the debate, I talked in detail to three researchers: one who argues that teens' use of tech is a big problem, one who thinks the danger is exaggerated and an expert in research methodology who suggests the connection may not be so simple.

Very concerned about smartphones

Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, may be the researcher most associated with the idea that smartphones are dangerous to teens. She's the author of the book iGen, whose 27-word subtitle states her thesis: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood — and What That Means for the Rest of Us.

"At first, when I saw these trends in loneliness and unhappiness and depression starting to spike around 2011 or 2012, I really had no idea what could possibly be causing that. It was a real mystery," she tells NPR. Then, she says, she took note of Pew research that showed 2012 was the first year that most cell phone owners had switched to smartphones.

Not only do these two trend lines seem to coincide in time, but Twenge also notes that young people who report spending the most time on smartphones — five to seven hours a day — are twice as likely to report being depressed as those who use their phones for one to two hours a day.

Twenge isn't claiming to have proved that smartphones cause depression. The data sets she works with — essentially large surveys — don't allow for that.

"It is impossible to do a random controlled trial on generations because you can't randomly assign people to be born at different times. So we cannot prove causation given that limitation," she explains. "So we have to go on the data that we have — which is obviously not going to be a true experiment — but it adds up to a lot of evidence pointing toward technology possibly playing a role in this increase in mental health issues."

Evidence — with caveats

Given that all teens use media, I asked Twenge, why would the worsening trend in mental health be more pronounced in girls than in boys?

She responded with one possible explanation: Social media, which girls tend to spend more time on, may be the culprit.

"Social media invites comparison," Twenge says. "It's not in real time. It invites anxiety over the likes and responses that you're going to get."

Given that adults use media even more than teenagers, why does this trend crop up in teens? Twenge says it's because their brains are still vulnerable and developing. Plus, they haven't had as much time to make social connections in real life as older people have, so they are even more dependent on their phones for social validation.

Twenge even thinks that the availability of smartphones could help explain the rise in suicide rates among the youngest girls. "They have more access to information online — potentially harmful information about how to harm yourself."

My final question for Twenge: She, personally, made a very similar argument about young people before smartphones existed. She previously published a book, Generation Me, that looked at similar data sets and labeled the millennial generation as "miserable," "narcissistic" and "anxious." That book came out in 2006; the iPhone was introduced in 2007. Is she putting old wine in new bottles?

Twenge says that comparing then with now, mental health trends are even more negative for what she calls iGen and, in retrospect, "more of a mixed bag" for millennials.

Not worth the time

Parents are concerned. Detox programs have sprung up to treat teen tech addiction. But some researchers are skeptical of the hypothesis that smartphones cause problems.

One team has published three papers that analyzed the same data Twenge is looking at — over 350,000 participants in three nationwide surveys in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

Amy Orben, the lead author of each paper and a psychologist at Oxford University, says the team found that the actual negative relationship between teens' mental health and technology use is tiny.

"A teenagers' technology use can only explain less than 1% of variation in well-being," Orben says. "It's so small that it's surpassed by whether a teenager wears glasses to school," or rides a bicycle, or eats potatoes — all comparisons made by Orben and her Oxford co-author Andrew K. Przybylski.

How can this be? Well, smartphone use is almost ubiquitous among teenagers today, while only a small minority report mental health problems. So, knowing that a teenager uses a smartphone, even for many hours a day, won't reliably predict that the teenager will become depressed. It tells you far, far less than factors like genetics or the presence of childhood trauma, for example.

Orben has been researching the history of people making dire claims about young people and new forms of media. For example, she says, "In the 1940s, people were already talking about 'radio addiction.' One study found that fully 57% of children ages 6 to 16 were severely 'addicted to radio programs and needed them like an alcoholic does their drink.' "

She thinks the negative trends in mental health could be explained by a wide range of factors: economic anxiety or political upheaval, to name two. And, she adds, there's a chance that young people today may simply be more open in surveys when asked about mental health challenges. "A lot of teenagers are a lot more OK to say they're not OK." Ironically, this openness may in fact be partly due to social media.

Twenge responds that a forthcoming paper she has written, currently under review, will challenge the conclusions of Orben's team. She says that just because the impact of smartphone use appears small, that doesn't mean it's insignificant, especially since, unlike genetics, it may be controllable.

Statistically problematic

As a sort of referee on this debate, I called up Katherine Keyes, an epidemiologist at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Her focus is on explaining population-wide trends, particularly in adolescent mental health.

She too is a critic of Twenge's work, saying it has a tendency to "skew the data" by zooming in on screen use to the exclusion of other factors in the lives of adolescents.

And, she says, there are lots of numbers that don't necessarily fit Twenge's theory. The uptick in suicides started in 1999. The downturn in teen mental health started in 2005. The iPhone was introduced in 2007 and wasn't accessible to most teenagers for several years.

Not all the news is bad when it comes to teens. High school graduation rates are up, for example. Drug and alcohol use is down, as are car crashes and teen pregnancy.

Adolescent mental health isn't in "free-fall," says Keyes, but seems to have leveled off since a dip in 2012.

We're not seeing the same negative trends in every country, even in those where teens are just as glued to their screens as they are in the United States.

There isn't a linear relationship between screen use and mental health. On most surveys, teens who use their phones up to two hours a day appear healthier than those who don't use them at all. This doesn't count other reasons for technology use, such as homework or listening to music.

In the case of heavy users, Keyes says, smartphone use may be more a symptom than a cause of mental health problems. Or there may be a third variable that is driving both — like a lack of parental support or health issues.

The explanation that Keyes finds most compelling is that there is a "bidirectional" relationship among teens, screens and mental health. In other words, as argued in this paper by Candice Odgers in the journal Nature, teens who are already struggling may be more drawn to screens and more likely to form unhealthy relationships with media, for example by seeking out information on self-harm or encountering cyberbullies. The time they spend online might in turn make them feel worse.

Twenge agrees with the general idea that "social media invites comparisons and anxiety."

What's a parent to do?

Although their conclusions are different, no researcher I've spoken with thinks it's a great idea to let teens scroll through TikTok or play Fortnite all day and night.

Twenge, Orben and Keyes are supportive of similar commonsense rules, like making sure teens don't have their phones in their bedrooms late at night and trying to ensure that their lives are balanced with outdoor exercise, school and face-to-face time with friends and family.

So why should the average parent worry about this scientific controversy? Because, Keyes says, when parents simply demonize phones, "there's less of a communications channel" about what teens are encountering online. A parent's opportunity to mentor or support positive uses of media is replaced by "confrontation on a day-to-day basis." Well-meaning parents, wrongly believing the phone to be as risky as a cigarette or a beer, may actually be making their children's lives harder by fighting with them about it.
https://www.npr.org/2019/08/27/75436...-mental-health





Top MPAA Lawyer, Mastermind Behind Its Plan To Attack The Internet, Arrested On Blackmail And Sexual Assault Charges
Mike Masnick

A while back, an MPAA whistleblower sent me a big file of internal MPAA documents. I spent many months going through them and trying to track down any actual story in them, but there really wasn't much there. Most of the documents were quite old and not all that revealing beyond what was already known (or widely assumed) about how the MPAA acted. The only thing that struck me as interesting, was a very old memo, written by lawyer Steven Fabrizio, before he became the MPAA's General Counsel, when he was still at the MPAA's favorite law firm, Jenner & Block. The memo outlined a very long list of potential anti-piracy strategies, and whether or not they were legal. Some of them were... quite surprising in what they were even considering (it included things like taking over a pirate site and using it as a honeypot). Many were what I would personally classify as somewhere between sleazy, dishonest and unethical. I never wrote up any details, because there was no evidence that the MPAA ever actually did any of the proposed programs, and a few people I ran questions by pointed out that, as as corporate lawyer, reviewing crazy ideas by clients and giving a legal opinion on them is standard practice.

The Fabrizio connection struck me as interesting on a few levels, though. Beyond being the MPAA's top legal attack dog for nearly a decade, the Sony Pictures email leak showed that Fabrizio was the mastermind behind Hollywood's Project Goliath to use MPAA/Hollywood Studio funds to pay for having state Attorney's General and news media owned by those studios, to attack Google to try to pressure it into some sort of "deal" with the studios. Fabrizio was also formerly the top litigator at the RIAA, and led its charge against Napster. Fabrizio was deeply involved in key copyright lawsuits, including the fights against Grokster, Hotfile, and Aereo. Basically, much of the history of "anti-piracy" litigation and "anti-piracy" efforts regarding the internet, was somehow touched by Steve Fabrizio.

And, of course, the usual line that people would give in supporting these positions is that it was necessary is because "piracy is illegal" and so on.

Anyway, that's why it's a bit shocking to discover that Fabrizio has now been arrested in DC (and fired by the MPAA) for alleged sexual assault and blackmail. Variety's story on the charges is really quite incredible:

According to a police affidavit, Fabrizio is accused of threatening a woman he met on a “sugar daddy” dating site. The police allege that Fabrizio and the woman had consensual sex once on Aug. 19, after which he paid her $400. After that, she did not want to see him again. According to the affidavit, Fabrizio sent numerous texts insisting on a second meeting, and threatening to expose her if she did not comply.

“I know where you live,” he allegedly wrote. “I know where you work. Don’t think — Hospital would be happy to know that it’s young nurses are having sexual for money / Same for your landlord.”

Fabrizio allegedly used those threats to coerce her into having sex again, according to the affidavit. The police allege that he then sent additional texts threatening to tell her parents if she did not continue to have sex with him a couple times a month. The woman called the police. After arranging for another meeting, Fabrizio was arrested outside the woman’s apartment on Friday morning, according to the document.


That is beyond horrifying -- especially given that part of Project Goliath was to try to get various state Attorneys General to argue that Google helped enable sex trafficking and other such things. Apparently, Fabrizio decided to "investigate" things a bit more directly.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...-charges.shtml

















Until next week,

- js.



















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