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Old 30-10-19, 06:32 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - November 2nd, ’19

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November 2nd, 2019




Judge Won't Let Litigious Porn Co. Unmask Downloaders

Ruling against a porn studio that has filed thousands of copyright lawsuits over the past three years, a New Jersey federal magistrate on Thursday became the latest judge to sharply criticize the company's mass litigation tactics.

The judge said he would not allow Strike 3 Holdings to unmask several internet subscribers who allegedly downloaded the company's films — a make-or-break procedural step in the more than 3,000 cases the studio has filed since 2017.

Strike 3's boilerplate accusations did not meet the baseline requirements for a federal lawsuit, the judge wrote, and granting the company an early-stage subpoena posed a substantial risk of violating the privacy rights of innocent internet users.

"The court is not unmindful that its ruling may make it more difficult for Strike 3 to identify copyright infringers," U.S. Magistrate Judge Joel Schneider wrote. "To the extent this is the price to pay to assure compliance with the applicable law, so be it.

"A legal remedy does not exist for every wrong, and it is unfortunately the case that sometimes the law has not yet caught up with advanced technology," the judge wrote.

Judge Schneider is the latest jurist to push back on Strike 3, which last year alone filed a whopping 2,165 copyright lawsuits against anonymous internet users that it claims downloaded its movies. In one ruling, a judge called the cases a "high-tech shakedown" aimed at coercing settlements.

Thursday's decision is significant because it calls into question — in great detail — the key procedural tactics that make all those lawsuits possible.

Strike 3 monitors for IP addresses that download its films, then uses geolocation technology to figure out roughly where the network is located. It then files a lawsuit in the appropriate district against the anonymous subscriber linked to the address, allowing it to request a subpoena to force the internet service provider associated with the address to reveal the name of the subscriber.

Many courts have granted those subpoenas, including Judge Schneider in previous cases. But on Thursday, he reversed course after "a deep dive into Strike 3's practices" had revealed "new material information" that showed the company's approach to locating infringers was flawed.

"The court has come to learn that Strike 3's subpoenas are misleading," the judge wrote. "Prior to its recent inquiries, the court assumed Strike 3's subpoenas identified the name of the IP subscriber when its works were infringed. However, the court was wrong."

Given his doubts about Strike 3's ability to accurately identify infringers, the judge said the studio "unduly minimizes" the risk of misidentification posed by its subpoenas.

"The innocent subscriber may have to pay a substantial sum to retain a lawyer to defend the lawsuit, or possibly settle to avoid incurring future costs," the judge wrote. "Negative publicity and embarrassment may occur from being named in a copyright infringement lawsuit [and] the fact that the innocent subscriber was named in a lawsuit may be revealed in an unrelated employment or credit search."

An attorney for Strike 3 did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

In all four cases, Strike 3 is represented by John C. Atkin of The Atkin Firm LLC.

No defendants have yet been identified in the cases and no attorneys have appeared for the John Does.

The cases are Strike 3 Holdings LLC v. John Doe Subscriber Assigned IP Address 173.71.68.16, case number 1:18-cv-02674; Strike 3 Holdings LLC v. John Doe Subscriber Assigned IP Address 76.116.36.190, case number 1:18-12585; Strike 3 Holdings LLC v. John Doe Subscriber Assigned IP Address 76.116.76.28, case number 1:18-12586; and Strike 3 Holdings LLC v. John Doe Subscriber Assigned IP Address 73.160.162.60, case number 1:18-1411, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

--Editing by Adam LoBelia.
https://www.law360.com/media/article...sk-downloaders





Netflix and HBO Shows are Getting Pirated on this App that’s Been Bankrolled by Advertisers Such as Pandora, BET+ and TikTok
Megan Graham

• A service called TeaTV lets people watch seemingly pirated content from HBO or Netflix for free with ads.
• TeaTV appears to be tapping into the murky digital advertising ecosystem to get ad revenue from legit advertisers.
• This type of piracy globally is believed to cost the U.S. economy $29.2 billion a year.

Watching a bootleg version of “Joker” — albeit one that was obviously recorded from the back of a movie theater — is as easy as downloading an app from a website, finding the movie and clicking the play button.

There is one catch. Even though the content appears to be pirated, you’ll still have to sit through ads.

Among the more popular places to find this sort of unauthorized content is a site called TeaTV. The online service offers a wide swath of pirated movies from major networks such as HBO and streaming services including Netflix as well as current releases from top movie studios. Video ads have shown up from brands including TikTok, streaming service BET+, the Madden Mobile video game, music streaming service Pandora, Pluto TV, Hulu, Yahoo Mail and many more.

Ads also were appearing for major advertisers including Walgreens, Amazon’s Fire TV and Kia on the website through Google, The Trade Desk, Adroll and more but had stopped as of early October after CNBC began reaching out to advertisers and ad-tech companies. Most brand advertisers contacted by CNBC did not respond to requests for comment or did not comment on the record. A Walgreens spokesperson said the company wasn’t aware of the issue and prohibits ads on sites with pirated content. The company added it was working to understand and resolve the matter.

Consumers are given the option of downloading the app to Android, Windows or MacOS, where they can watch “free 1080p movies.”

And even though many companies in the advertising space know it’s an issue, the ads keep coming, on the app at least. At a recent meeting of major industry players in New York on the subject of ad-supported pirated content, TeaTV was one topic of conversation, according to a person in attendance.

Good luck trying to find who’s behind the service. On TeaTV’s website, there’s no detail about where the company is located, or if it’s even a company at all. There’s no location or phone number provided, no individual’s name included and the only contact information is a Gmail address. (CNBC reached out and didn’t get a response.) The company does maintain an active Twitter profile, where it shares new releases and helps troubleshoot problems.

TeaTV isn’t alone. Apps and websites providing pirated content proliferate at a pace that experts say make the problem difficult to manage. Those trying to take down the sites find themselves in a game of “whack-a-mole.” Meanwhile, the digital content supply chain is so complex that it can be a challenge to keep track of where and why the ads are surfacing.

In the rapidly expanding and hypercompetitive world of content streaming, the industry is getting hammered by fraud. CreativeFuture, an advocacy organization that aims to combat content theft and protect intellectual property, citing a U.S. Chamber of Commerce figure says $29.2 billion is lost in the U.S. economy each year to global online piracy. That’s a huge chunk of change considering the total digital ad spending market worldwide is expected to reach $333.3 billion this year, according to eMarketer.

Cesar Fishman, a senior vice president at CreativeFuture, said the scammy sites pull in ads from legitimate brands both to generate revenue and to make their service appear legitimate.

“All you need is a server in some undisclosed location where you store all this stuff, and you mask your IP address so you don’t get taken down,” said Fishman. “Your overhead is peanuts.”

There’s plenty of finger-pointing going on. Some in the industry argue that ad-tech players aren’t scrupulous enough about where ads can be placed, and others suggest that brands need to more clearly lay out which sites are acceptable and unacceptable for showing their ads. And some say the entire digital advertising ecosystem in its sprawling state makes it nearly impossible to expect safety.

Augustine Fou, an independent ad fraud researcher and consultant, said despite the industry’s supposed concern about having ads show up next to pirated and other content, the problem has just intensified.

“It is clear that despite industry trade bodies’ talk at conferences and brand safety tech that advertisers have paid for for years, the problem of ads supporting piracy, porn, child abuse and hate has only gotten worse,” he said. “And more dollars are at stake than ever before because digital ad dollars are at their highest point ever.”

Asked why the advertising could still be so pervasive even after the TeaTV issue was brought up at that meeting in New York, Mike Zaneis, CEO of the Trustworthy Accountability Group, or TAG, said the industry is making substantial progress but that piracy is a problem that will never be completely fixed. TAG says it works to eliminate fraud, malware and piracy in advertising but has also been the recent subject of criticism for its strategies to combat issues like this.

“We’re not perfect,” Zaneis told CNBC. “We’re never going to be perfect. We just want to solve as much of the problem as we can.”

The supply chain

One tool that’s supposed to help make the supply chain more transparent is a file called “ads.txt,” which was created by the IAB Tech Lab, a nonprofit research and development consortium. It gives publishers and distributors working in the programmatic ad universe a way to declare who is authorized to sell their inventory.

This tool wasn’t built to prevent piracy specifically but to help combat issues such as the sale of counterfeit inventory, where someone pretends to be selling inventory on a site and is actually putting it somewhere else, like a porn site or other scammy location. But it does give some clues about who could be monetizing TeaTV.

TeaTV’s “ads.txt” until recently claimed inventory on its site was being sold by a variety of “sellers” and “resellers,” listing AT&T’s Appnexus, Google and OpenX as well as lesser-known players such as Vidoomy or Beachfront. The file also claimed TeaTV was working with Opt Ad 360, a Polish company that helps publishers manage ads and generate revenue.

An “ads.txt” is not always accurate. Publishers can hypothetically copy the contents or parts of an “ads.txt” file from another site and hope no one notices. Sam Tingleff, the IAB Tech Lab’s chief technology officer, said this can help a site appear more legitimate to attract advertising. When contacted by CNBC, many of these companies said that was the case.

But at least some of these companies listed on TeaTV’s “ads.txt” played a role in having ads appear on the site, where TeaTV’s various apps can be downloaded.

For instance, Adform said the site had “slipped through a very small loophole” and saw a “total of less than 10 euros transacted before we shut it down” after being contacted by CNBC.

Opt Ad 360 said in an email that it stopped its cooperation with TeaTV after a review prompted by a CNBC inquiry and asked to be removed from its “ads.txt” file. Opt Ad 360 appears on a list of sellers for AppNexus as an intermediary. Another seller that TeaTV claimed to be working with recently, Bebi, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

As of last month, Google was receiving supply from Opt Ad 360, which was in turn receiving supply from TeaTV, according to an inventory quality manager at an ad-tech platform who asked not to be named because of the company’s professional relationships. He said that supply was available to buy, and that if it had been blocked it wouldn’t have been showing bid requests.

Google was not running auctions on the site a short time later, according to Ratko Vidakovic, of ad tech consultancy AdProfs, who reviewed the auction activity in September for CNBC.

Google wouldn’t comment on the specific situation, but a spokeswoman said when the sub-account of a partner is violating its policies, it will take action on that sub-account. The company said its policies prohibit running ads against pirated content.

“We regularly review sites for policy compliance, and have thousands of people dedicated to protecting our ads systems and safeguarding our advertisers’ brands,” a Google spokeswoman said. “If we find a page or website that violates our policies, we take immediate action.”

OpenX said it officially banned TeaTV in September, but prior to that claimed it hadn’t made money from the site. AppNexus declined to comment. Vidakovic and the other inventory manager both said they were able to see from a demand-side platform, which lets ad buyers manage their ad exchange accounts, that AppNexus was running auctions for the site as of September, though it wasn’t clear how many of those actually ended up with ads being served. As of earlier this month, Vidakovic said AppNexus was no longer running the auctions.

There’s a version of “ads.txt” that’s specific to apps, but TeaTV didn’t appear to have one set up. However, CNBC viewed ads on TeaTV’s app that claimed to be coming from mobile ad companies such as Vungle, StartApp, Unity Ads, AdColony, IronSource, Tapjoy and more. Vungle’s spokesperson said TeaTV wasn’t a customer and was investigating the presence of ads on the app. AdColony acknowledged a “limited number” of its ads were served “via a non-direct supply source” and said it took immediate action to halt exposure after being contacted by CNBC.

Unity Ads, which showed ads for advertisers including Pandora, was contacted by CNBC in September and was still showing ads this week. The company declined to comment on the record.

The other companies didn’t respond to requests for comment.

On mobile apps, advertisers can sometimes become plugged into the ecosystem when fraudsters use a legitimate app as a Trojan horse to get inside an app that later becomes criminal, said Rachel Nyswander Thomas, COO of TAG. She said a developer can build an innocuous app and use standard approaches to start to work with advertising companies. Once those relationships are in place, the developer can rebuild the app to contain pirated content, yet the ads remain, she said.

“It’s not that these legitimate companies are working with a criminal entity,” said Thomas.

What this all means about the ecosystem

With industry initiatives such as “ads.txt,” the IAB Tech Lab’s hopes are for more transparency and more safety in the programmatic ecosystem. Tingleff said the cooperation of the industry will mean a “safer, more secure environment for advertisers and a better experience for all of us.”

But as long as the confusing web of online ad sellers continues to operate, this kind of activity is hard to prevent. Even though the system has antibodies to detect sites like this, Vidakovic said that behavior tends to be reactive instead of proactive. He noted that initiatives such as MediaMath’s new “Source” project, which aims to bring transparency to the supply chain, could be the kind of thing that would help.

For now, services such as TeaTV are making money ripping movies like “Joker,” because consumers can just download a free app and hit “play” instead of coughing up the $15 to see it in a theater or to stream it legitimately. Dozens of YouTube videos promise to teach people how to watch TeaTV using their Amazon Fire Stick so they can watch on their televisions (the app also lets users cast videos to a connected screen).

And every day, consumers share on Twitter how they’ve watched shows or movies on TeaTV because they can’t — or don’t want to — watch legitimately.

Ironically, what might turn them off is all the ads.

“Don’t know about anyone else but i’m beginning to want to switch off from TeaTV out of sheer frustration with the amount of ads which are littering this app,” one Twitter user shared in early October.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/20/netf...her-sites.html





Hollywood Studios Shut Down Popular Pirating Sites Openload, Streamango
David Ng

Hollywood’s biggest studios have succeeded in shutting down Openload, a popular pirating site that received more online traffic than Hulu, HBO Go, and NBCNews.com. A second pirating site, Streamango, was also shut down.

A group of major movie and TV studios announced Thursday that the operator behind both pirating sites “is required to stop operating the services and pay a significant damage award.”

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) is a Hollywood industry group dedicated to stopping digital piracy and is comprised of numerous entertainment companies, including the five biggest studios — the Walt Disney Company, Sony Pictures Entertainment, NBC Universal, Paramount, and Warner Bros. — as well as the streaming giants Netflix and Amazon.

The alliance is closely linked to the Motion Picture Assn., formerly known as the MPAA, which acts as Hollywood’s main lobbying group in Washington, DC.

Charles Rivkin, who heads the Motion Picture Assn., also serves as chair of ACE.

“For years, these two pirate operations failed to take meaningful action to stop the dissemination of the illegal content, harming creators and misleading consumers,” he said in a statement on Thursday.

Digital piracy has become a mounting concern among the major studios and TV networks as the rise of streaming entertainment has made piracy easier and more prevalent.

ACE said that Openload provided pirated content to 72 percent of the top 50 illegal video streaming and linking sites in the world. The site had more than 1,000 servers in Romania, France, and Germany.

The site openload.co displayed the following message on Thursday: “This website is longer available due to copyright infringement.” The site then automatically redirected visitors to ACE’s official site.

Last year, the site TorrentFreak ranked Openload as No. 7 in its top 10 list of sites by global video streaming traffic share, just behind Facebook Video and ahead of Sky Go.

ACE said it has recently secured permanent injunctions against other pirating operations including Vader Streams, Dragon Box, and TickBox.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/...ad-streamango/





Banksy's Fake Store Is An Attempt To Abuse Trademark Law To Avoid Copyright Law
Mike Masnick

You may have seen the headlines lately, saying that famed pseudonymous street artist Banksy was being "forced" into opening up a pop up store in London in order to secure a trademark and prevent "a greetings card company" from selling "fake Banksy merchandise." Banksy also claimed that the company was "attempting to take custody of my name." Banksy and Banksy's artwork are somewhat famous for protesting against commercial incentives and traditional capitalism -- so many people rushed to Banksy' defense because, from the initial description, it sounded like Hallmark or some sappy corporate giant of that nature was trying to rip off Banksy images for its own benefit.

Turns out that the story is very, very different. And it doesn't make Banksy look very good at all once you understand the details. First, the "greeting card" company in question, Full Colour Black, has responded via a Facebook post, and you realize it's a tiny home-based business and it's not trying to take anyone's name or sell fake merchandise at all. Indeed, contrary to some of the reporting, it's not "suing" over anything. It just put forth a completely legitimate challenge to Banksy's sketchy and probably illegitimate trademark on the "flower bomber" image (the official name of which is apparently "Rage, Flower Thrower.")

As you know, to get a trademark, you need to show "use in commerce." And Banksy wasn't selling the flower bomber image -- though it does appear others are selling sculptures and posters of the work that was produced (as always) in secret, in Jerusalem, in 2005. In 2014, an organization representing Banksy, with the clever name of "Pest Control Office Limited", filed and received the registered trademark on the image.

However, since it wasn't clear how the image could qualify as a trademark in the first place, a small three person greeting card company sought to invalidate the trademark. As Full Colour Black explains:

Loud Tie Weasels are being used to paint our tiny business as a 'big corporate group' and paint Banksy as the harddone-by artist. There are only three people in our small business. We don’t have high powered legal teams on three continents, we don’t have a Management teams dealing with Hollywood and we certainly don’t have highly effective PR teams. We also can’t afford to open high earning hotels with celebrity acts on the grand piano nor can we steal the thunder from Stormzy’s amazing performance at Glastonbury.

All of that is Corporate Activity. We are not corporate... we sell greetings cards from our home. It is ENTIRELY untrue that we are attempting to “take custody” of his name”. This line has been invented by his Corporate Lawyers to try and gain sympathy from you. He’s made this up!!!

As they further explain, they run a small business that does photography and sells cards involving public graffiti:

We legally photograph public graffiti and make it available to you - the public. We know that you don’t have the unlimited budgets of Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt or Christine Aguilera. You cannot afford to buy one of his official canvases. We make cards because Banksy never makes anything available to his fans. We all love his graffiti. He doesn’t want you to have it and he’s hoping to trick you into thinking that we’re hurting his business. We’re not.

We don’t infringe his rights in any way. We don’t use his trademarks or his brand name. We make cards that feature Banksy’s Public Graffiti. It’s a legitimate enterprise.


So... that last part did make me wonder a bit -- because it's not exactly clear if the statements here are true. As we've noted in the past, there are significant legal questions around the copyright status of public graffiti art, with some courts coming down on the side of the graffiti artists, sometimes in ludicrous ways. And, of course, that's resulted in more and more litigation.

But... that's all about copyright. In reading the news coverage of all of this, I was stumped as to why were were discussing trademark at all -- until I realized something kind of important. Banksy is using trademark because Banksy can't use copyright without revealing who Banksy is. Full Colour Black's lawyer, Aaron Wood, explains:

“We are contesting the validity of one of his EU trademarks on the basis that he has freely permitted it to be reproduced such that it no longer functions as a trademark (if it ever did), on the basis that he never intended to use it as a trademark and that he is trying to register for collateral purposes (ie, to avoid evidential issues with copyright and to avoid having to file a ‘statement of use’ in the US).”

Either way, Banksy, on the advice of "arts lawyer" Mark Stephens, seems to think that setting up a pop up shop with the (okay, absolutely brilliant) name "Gross Domestic Product", which will exist for a few weeks but never actually open to the public (though sales will happen online), somehow will re-establish the trademark in question:

Mark Stephens, an arts lawyer and founder of the Design and Artists Copyright Society, called the case a “frankly ludicrous litigation” and is giving Banksy legal advice.

“Banksy is in a difficult position,” he said. “Because he doesn’t produce his own range of shoddy merchandise and the law is quite clear – if the trademark holder is not using the mark, then it can be transferred to someone who will.”

Except, as with much of this story coming from the Banksy side, this is absolutely misleading. There isn't "litigation" happening at all. And this is not about "shoddy merchandise." This is about challenging the legitimacy of what certainly looks like an illegitimate trademark. And Full Colour Black's attorney highlights that, if anything, this shop harms Banksy's case, because they're not even arguing that the trademark fails for lack of use in commerce, but rather that the whole trademark is a sham to get around copyright law -- and this stunt supports that argument:

“If it were a revocation case then the strategy would be ill-conceived,” he claims. “The real error, however, is that this isn’t a revocation case on the basis of non-use, so it’s a frankly pointless step which doesn’t stand up to scrutiny from anyone with a modicum of knowledge of trademark law. In fact, this has strengthened the arguments that the marks are a false attempt to monopolise his work in bad faith [and to] circumvent copyright law and trademark law. Banksy may be a subversive character but the same law applies to him.”

Indeed, as others have noted, Banksy has been increasingly aggressive about enforcing trademark claims regarding people selling works based on Bansky art -- despite historically arguing against things like copyright:

Having once claimed that copyright is for losers, Banksy has been ramping up his legal position for several months now. At the end of 2018, the artist’s handling service Pest Control took action against an Italian company that organised an exhibition, The Art of Banksy—A Visual Protest, for Milan’s Mudec Museum.

In February this year, the judge ruled in favour of Banksy’s request for all merchandise bearing his name to be removed from the museum’s shop, but promotional materials using his name were allowed to remain. The judge noted that the documents filed in the proceedings showed a limited use of the Banksy brand.


The whole situation is kind of crazy when you think about it. Banksy doesn't want to use the law that actually covers the artwork, copyright, because that would likely require an outing of whoever is behind Banksy. And, according to Banksy, "copyright is for losers." But Banksy as a concept has become so profitable that now it's suddenly trying to stop anyone else from making money from Banksy-related works -- and appears to be abusing trademark to make that happen.

Full Colour Black, the greeting card company, notes that it's been trying for years to send Banksy some money, but that it's gotten nowhere:

We’ve written to Banksy, his team and his lawyers many times since 2010 to say that we want to pay royalties to him. He doesn’t want it. We believe he’s making so much money already; a couple of hundred pounds a year from us probably wouldn’t even cover the cost of his handmade shoes.

I’ll say it once again… don't be fooled folks. He’s using weasels to paint our tiny little business as a 'big corporate’ and paint himself as the poor artist. Look beyond his slick PR. He’s out of your league but he wants your sympathy. If you really want to support the little guy… stand by us. We’ll continue to offer you amazing graffiti and we can post it to you across the world.


This really does look like Banksy gone corporate in the worst sense -- abusing trademark law for no good reason at all and (worse) lying about it and pretending that a small home-based business is a big corporate entity trying to "seize" Banksy's name, when that's not even close to the truth. Banksy could just confirm that copyright law (and much of trademark law) is for losers, and let this small shop sell these cards that only serve to make Banksy's own artwork more and more valuable. The fact that all of this comes at a time when Banksy just sold a painting for $12 million, and part of the reason it's worth that is the kind of fame driven by people photographing and sharing Banksy's work, suggests that maybe Banksy should ditch some of the "copyright" lawyers advising Banksy, and go back to some more Banksy roots.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...ight-law.shtml





AT&T Loses Another 1.3 Million TV Customers as DirecTV Freefall Continues

AT&T tries to make peace with investors after losing 5M subscribers since 2016.
Jon Brodkin

AT&T lost more than 1.3 million TV customers in Q3 2019 as its nosedive in both the traditional pay-TV and online-streaming markets continued.

AT&T today reported a net loss of 1,163,000 customers in the premium TV category, which includes DirecTV satellite and U-verse wireline TV services. That number is slightly worse than the customer loss that AT&T warned investors was coming last month. AT&T today also reported a net loss of 195,000 customers of AT&T TV Now, the online streaming video service formerly known as DirecTV Now.

The latest losses leave AT&T with 20.4 million satellite-and-wireline TV subscribers and 1.1 million streaming subscribers. AT&T has lost nearly 5 million satellite-and-wireline TV customers since the end of 2016, when it had a total of 25.3 million subscribers in that category. AT&T has lost more than 700,000 streaming customers over the past year since hitting a peak of 1.86 million in Q3 2018.

AT&T's quarterly Video Entertainment revenue fell from $8.3 billion to $7.9 billion year over year. AT&T has focused on increasing the average revenue per customer, which rose 5.6% to $121.35 per month in the satellite-and-wireline TV category. The overall Entertainment Group—including TV, broadband, and landline phone services—had Q3 revenue of $11.2 billion, down from $11.6 billion in Q3 2018. But the division turned an operating profit of $1.1 billion, only about $19 million less than the previous year's third quarter.

AT&T attributed its premium-TV customer losses to a focus on profitability. "Customers rolling off promotional discounts, programmer disputes and competition as well as lower gross adds due to the continued focus on adding higher-value customers" all contributed to the net loss of 1,163,000 customers in that category, AT&T said.

AT&T said its 195,000-customer loss in online streaming was caused by "higher prices and less promotional activity," as AT&T phased out discounts that it previously used to boost subscriber numbers. AT&T has raised TV prices several times despite claiming that its 2018 acquisition of Time Warner Inc. would allow it to lower TV prices.

AT&T's company-wide revenue, including its mobile network, was $44.6 billion in Q3, down from $45.7 billion a year ago. Operating income rose from $7.3 billion to $7.9 billion. "Declines in revenues from legacy wireline services, WarnerMedia and domestic video, were partially offset by growth in strategic and managed business services, domestic wireless services and IP broadband," AT&T said.

AT&T promises no more big mergers

AT&T has been under pressure from activist investor group Elliott Management Corp., which has criticized AT&T's TV strategy and urged the company to consider divesting DirecTV.

AT&T today reached a deal with Elliott that does not involve selling DirecTV. However, AT&T promised to conduct a "disciplined review" of its portfolio and said it will make "no major acquisitions" over the next three years.

"We have closely evaluated the company's three-year plan and support the steps toward a faster-growing, more profitable, focused and shareholder-friendly company," Elliott said in an announcement. Elliott said the deal includes "significantly enhanced operational efficiency with meaningful margin expansion" and the appointment of two new directors.

AT&T said that CEO Randall Stephenson, who is nearing retirement, will continue in the top role through all of 2020. After the expected CEO transition, the roles of CEO and chairman will be separated instead of being held by the same person, Elliott said.
As The Wall Street Journal noted, the plan also "calls for AT&T to spend 50 percent to 70 percent of its free cash flow after dividend payments on share buybacks." Despite AT&T making concessions, Elliott "has no restrictions on its ability to publicly criticize the company in the future," the Journal wrote.

AT&T has $153.6 billion in long-term debt, largely from its purchases of DirecTV and Time Warner. Over the next three years, AT&T said it will pay off all of the Time Warner debt and reduce its net debt-to-adjusted EBITDA ratio from its current level of 2.66X to somewhere between 2X and 2.25X.

AT&T is facing a class-action lawsuit alleging that it lied to investors in order to hide the failure of its DirecTV Now streaming TV service. The lawsuit was recently updated to include allegations that AT&T supervisors encouraged sales reps to create fake DirecTV Now accounts and sign AT&T customers up for DirecTV Now "without the customer knowing."

Stephenson said in an earnings call today that AT&T expects its planned HBO Max service to get 50 million US subscribers within five years, Deadline reported. That sounds optimistic, given that the existing HBO Now service reportedly had 8 million subscribers at the end of 2018. HBO Max is expected to cost about the same amount as HBO Now, which is $15 per month, so the average revenue per customer will be much lower than DirecTV and AT&T TV Now.
https://arstechnica.com/information-...all-continues/





Study Shows 51% of Young People Haven’t Pirated a Movie in the Last Year
Hannah Davies

Pirating is down, according to a new study published by the European Union Intellectual Property Office, which states that 51% of young people haven’t illegally accessed any digital content this year.

The study found that the number of young people running to illegal sources for digital content has dropped since 2016, with 33% of young people visiting illegal sources – either intentionally or unintentionally – compared to 38% in 2016.

The EU Intellectual Property Office approached a number of 15 to 24 year old volunteers across the 28 EU States in order to identify the differences between attitudes toward pirating in 2016 and now. The 2019 Intellectual Property and Youth Scoreboard – spotted by TorrentFreak – aims to understand the drivers and barriers that affect young people’s decisions when it comes to accessing their digital content online.

Of that 33%, the majority of those asked used illegal sources to access films and TV series. In fact, there has been a notable decrease in the number of young people using illegal sources to access music compared with three years ago – while almost all young people download or stream music online, only 39% of those pirating content look toward illegal sources to access music in 2019.

Price and choice are major factors for those who do pirate. In fact, over half of young people using illegal sources intentionally blamed high subscription prices, while over a quarter said that there is a larger choice of content available illegally.

It isn’t hugely surprisingly that more users are pirating TV than music. While music streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify both offer a wide array of artists and albums, TV streaming site libraries are generally more limited with exclusive content found of each service and more networks launching their own services every year.

Just today Apple launched its own Apple TV Plus with shows like See and The Morning Show that users can’t access anywhere else.

TV and film subscriptions have nevertheless become more popular with young people than they were in 2016, with the majority of those still accessing content illegally doing so alongside legal sources.

“The idea of subscription-based business models for digital content appears to have gained traction, with a 9 percentage point increase in those saying that paying a subscription to access all content is important”, states the report. “It remains rare that young people rely exclusively on illegal sources – 80% of the sample said they use legal sources to access digital content”.
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