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Old 13-04-22, 06:25 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - April 16th, 22

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April 16th, 2022


















Meet the 1,300 Librarians Racing to Back up Ukraine’s Digital Archives
Pranshu Verma

In early March, two weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Carrie Pirmann stumbled upon a website dedicated to Ivan Mazepa, a 16th century Ukrainian politician and patron of the arts. A 44-year-old librarian at Bucknell University, Pirmann had joined an international effort of fellow archivists to preserve the digital history of a country under siege, and the contents of Mazepa’s website, though obscure, seemed worth saving.

The site held a number of things: Lord Byron poems written about Mazepa’s life and a catalogue of centuries-old articles detailing his various conquests. Pirmann opened her website scraping tool, backing up the site and preserving its content.

Now, the original website is lost, its server space likely gone to cyberattacks, power outages or Russian shelling. But thanks to her, it still remains intact on server space rented by an international group of librarians and archivists.

“We’re trying to save as much as possible,” Pirmann said. “Otherwise, we lose that connection to the past.”

Buildings, bridges, and monuments aren’t the only cultural landmarks vulnerable to war. With the violence well into its second month, the country’s digital history — its poems, archives, and pictures — are at risk of being erased as cyberattacks and bombs erode the nation’s servers.

Over the past month, a motley group of more than 1,300 librarians, historians, teachers and young children have banded together to save Ukraine’s Internet archives, using technology to back up everything from census data to children’s poems and Ukrainian basket weaving techniques.

The efforts, dubbed Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online, have resulted in over 2,500 of the country’s museums, libraries, and archives being preserved on servers they’ve rented, eliminating the risk they’ll be lost forever. Now, an all-volunteer effort has become a lifeline for cultural officials in Ukraine, who are working with the group to digitize their collections in the event their facilities get destroyed in the war.

The endeavor, experts said, underscores how volunteers, armed with low-cost technology, training and organization can protect a country’s history from disasters such as war, hurricanes, earthquakes and fire.

“I have not seen anything like it,” said Winston Tabb, dean of libraries, archives and museums at Johns Hopkins University. “We didn’t really have the tools before that made it even possible to undertake this kind of initiative.”

The seeds of this international effort started online. On Feb. 26, Anna Kijas, a music librarian at Tufts University, put a call out on Twitter asking if any volunteers would join her for a “virtual data rescue session” to preserve Ukrainian musical collections which could be lost in the war.

That got notice from librarians and archivists across the world, including Quinn Dombrowski, an academic technology specialist at Stanford University, and Sebastian Majstorovic, a digital historian based in Vienna. They banded together, and amid sleepless nights across multiple time-zones, they recruited, trained, and organized scores of volunteers wanting to help archive Ukraine’s historical websites.

Large parts of the Internet get periodically archived through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which partners with the organization, but SUCHO’s organizers also needed something more advanced, Dombrowski said. In many cases, the Wayback Machine can dig into the first or second layer of a website, she added, but many documents, like pictures and uploaded files, on Ukraine’s cultural websites could be seven or eight layers deep, inaccessible to traditional Web crawlers.

To do that, they turned to a suite of open source digital archiving tools called Webrecorder, which have been around since the mid-2010s, and used by institutions including the United Kingdom’s National Archive and the National Library of Australia. They also started a global Slack channel to communicate with volunteers.

To archive, volunteers mostly use the Webrecorder suite, organizers said. There is Archiveweb.page, a browser extension and stand-alone desktop app that archives a website as people browse pages. Another is Browsertrix Crawler, which requires some basic coding skills, and is helpful for “advanced crawls,” such as capturing expansive websites that might have multiple features like calendars, 3D tours, or circuitous links for navigating in-site. And more recently, there is Browsertrix Cloud, an easier-to-use, automated version of the powerful Browsertrix Crawler, which is popular with volunteers.

“It essentially tries to mimic a human browsing the Web,” Ilya Kreymer, the founder of Webrecorder, said. “And as it does that, it’s archiving all of the network traffic, and then all that is stored into a file … that can be loaded from anywhere.”
A lab in rural Virginia is racing to preserve Ukraine’s cultural heritage

Over the past month, SUCHO has developed systematic, and creative, way to go about its work. There’s a master spreadsheet where volunteers detail all the Ukrainian museums, libraries, and archives that need to have their websites backed up or ones that have been completed. To develop this list, SUCHO’s organizers receive tips from librarians and archivists across the world who may know of a rare museum in Ukraine that needs to have its work backed up.

Other volunteers have become sleuths, using Google Maps to take a digital walk down Ukrainian streets, looking for any signs that might say “museum” or “library” and trying to find out if it has a website that needs archiving.

In other cases, when a shelling happens somewhere, a group of volunteers dedicated to “situation monitoring” alerts any volunteers that might be awake to look for institution websites in that region that need backing up, for fear they could go offline any minute.

“These are the moments,” said Dombrowski, whose 8-year-old child occasionally helps archive sites, “that future historians will either celebrate or curse the people of our time for either doing or not doing something in a way that can enable them to tell those stories through a larger arc of history.”

In little over a month, volunteers have backed up an exhaustive array of data. According to their website and organizers, volunteers have preserved documents totaling 25 terabytes that include the history of Jewish towns in Ukraine, photographs of excavation sites in Crimea, and digitized exhibitions of Kharkiv’s Literary Museum.

For Majstorovic, the importance of the work he’s helping organize was made apparent a few weeks ago. In early March, he happened upon the Ukrainian State Archive of Kharkiv’s website. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was gearing up, he was worried how long the site would remain active, fearing its servers would be susceptible to cyberattacks or shelling.

He loaded the archive’s website into Webrecorder’s Browsertrix tool, and let it do its work. By early morning, it collected over 100 gigabytes of information, including the district’s census records, criminal cases, and lists of people who have been persecuted in the region.

Within hours, the website was gone. But still, its records remained. Looking back, Majstorovic says, that’s exactly why he is doing this work.

“If we can save these things, we prove that Ukraine has a history,” he said. “[If] they are gone forever … that just rips a black hole into the history of a place that will last forever.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/techn...ves/ar-AAVZOen





Free File-Sharing Websites to Send Large Files
Guru Mandadi

Gone are the days when we use thumb or Pendrive to carry or transfer data. It is the time for extreme digitalization and we have many services like OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. to upload our data and access it anywhere on any device. You can share the links of the files with others for them to access them. There are websites that offer free and premium file-sharing or transfer services. In this guide, we list 10 file-sharing websites to send Small or Large files.

The following are the 10 of the popular and best file-sharing or transfer websites that help you transfer files over the internet.

1) WeTransfer
2) TransferNow
3) Wormhole
4) TransferKit
5) TransferXL
6) Send Anywhere
7) Smash
8) File Transfer
9) SurgeSend
10) Filemail

Let’s get into the details of each service.

1] WeTransfer

WeTransfer is one of the most popular file-sharing websites. It has both free and paid services. With free service, you can send up to 2GB of files that can be downloaded for 7 days. If you want to send files that are larger than 2GB you need to subscribe to paid plans according to your need. You need to have an email of the person you are sending files to as well as your personal email to send files.

2] TransferNow

TransferNow is another file-sharing website using which you can send files up to 5GB to 10 people at a time. The files you send can be downloaded for 7 days after which the file will be inaccessible on the free plan. If you want to upload larger files and send them to more people and extend their availability, you need to upgrade to a paid plan.

3] Wormhole

Wormhole is one of the rare file-sharing services which do not require an email to use it. It is a secured online file-sharing website, which lets you choose when to delete the file. It is a free service using which you can send files up to 10GB. You just have to share the link with others. The only flipside of Wormhole is, the file will only be available to download for up to 24 hours or a maximum of 100 downloads. There is no premium plans available to change the expiry time.

4] TransferKit

TransferKit is a cloud-sharing platform that stores files on a decentralized network. It is a free service using which you can share any type of file up to 32GB without any issue. The files you share are stored on the decentralized network forever and not deleted once a week. Your files are end-to-end encrypted and no one can access them unless they have the link.

5] TransferXL

TransferXL is another free and premium file-sharing service that lets you share files without an issue up to 5GB. The files you share are available for 7 days on the free plan. You can use this service to share files up to 10GB on a single day. If you want to send larger files for a larger time for up to 3 months, you can subscribe to the paid plans.

6] Send Anywhere

Send Anywhere is one of the secured file-sharing platforms that can be used to send files in real-time. You can create a 6-digit key and share files to download with that key. You don’t need to have a link to download the file. The six-digit key you create can be used to access the file just by entering it.

7] Smash

Smash is a free and premium file-sharing service that does not put any cap on the size of files you transfer. If the size of the file exceeds 2GB on a free plan, you need to wait in the queue to send them. The files you upload to send are available for 7 days in a free plan and they can be changed with paid plans.

8] File Transfer

FileTransfer does not require an email or anything to share files. You just upload your files up to 6 GB and share the link. The file stays there for 21 days or up to 51 days whichever is earlier. The only difference from other file-sharing services is, you can monetize your file-sharing link on FileTransfer.

9] SurgeSend

SugeSend offers file-sharing as well as file storage features to its users. You get a space of 5GB to store your files on SurgeSenf and can upload a file up to 3GB. With premium plans, you get more storage facilities, more file size as well as password protection for your file.

10] Filemail

Filemail is another file-sharing service that offers great speeds. You can send files up to 5GB using email or a secure link. It is also a free and paid file-sharing platform that gives more features and sizes on paid plans.
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/free-...nd-large-files





Impervious Browser: Functionality Overview

The Impervious Browser will be publicly released April 7th, during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference, in Miami.
Chase Perkins

• Zoom, without Zoom.
• Google Docs, without Google.
• Medium, without Medium.
• WhatsApp, without WhatsApp.
• Payments, without banks.
• Identity, without the state.
• All without centralized intermediaries and built into the Impervious Browser.

In August 2021, Impervious released a bundle of APIs built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which created a programmatic layer for Bitcoin - (i.e. “Layer 3”). The Impervious APIs enable any application or service to stream cryptographically secure, censorship and surveillance resistant data transmission channels.

Following an enthusiastic reception of the Impervious APIs, we fused all of our Peer-to-Peer ("P2P") capabilities together into one easily consumable super application - the Impervious Browser.

Creating a New P2P Internet Standard: Circumventing Intermediaries and Digital Gatekeepers

Impervious is building the tools and infrastructure for the P2P internet. By interlacing Lightning, Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), a DIDComm system, WebRTC, IPFS and more into a familiar application, the Impervious Browser is able to provide an entire suite of easy to use P2P capabilities.

An Overview:

Secure P2P Messaging: WhatsApp, without WhatsApp

• Cryptographically secure, persistent and ephemeral messaging
• Decentralized, real-time P2P communication between browsers and DIDs
• Secure communication between peers and peer groups
• No third-party intermediaries to survey, capture, or censor messages
• All inbound and outbound messages are cryptographically signed and verified by respective parties for authenticated message integrity
• Secure P2P file transfer directly via WebRTC or encrypted third party relay

Secure P2P Audio and Video Calls: Zoom, without Zoom

• Peer-to-Peer WebRTC data channels without third party intermediaries - supporting audio, video, messaging, and real-time data transmission
• Group video and audio Calls (i.e. Google Hangouts or Zoom)
• Ephemeral Chat (conversation only lives until the end of the call)
• Available usage of data channels for additional real-time communication (ex. file transfers and games)

Decentralized and Local Storage

• Files can be encrypted and stored locally in both the browser and designated encrypted system database
• Files can be published to an anonymous, publicly accessible, decentralized data store (IPFS)
• IPFS is managed automatically and fully integrated into the underlying Impervious Daemon
• Files published to IPFS can be universally accessed via IPNS and a persistent link (similar to DNS)
• Built in IPFS pinning services allows for persistent file availability, even when a user's IPFS node is offline, without requiring IPFS node management
• File management via the Impervious Browser - bookmark, control access and endpoints
• IPFS nodes can be federated to a trusted domain

Real-Time P2P Collaborative Workspaces: Google Docs, without Google

• Real-time, Peer-to-Peer collaborative workspaces for document creation, editing and publishing
• Create, collaborate and share documents directly from within the Impervious Browser - a Google Docs-esque experience
• Control and manage access (i.e. read/write privileges) for all collaborative documents
• Share the document privately amongst authorized peers, without unauthorized users or third parties being aware of the files existence
• Publish encrypted documents to IPFS, readable only via authorized peers
• Publish unencrypted documents to IPFS, to generate publicly accessible content
• Be notified and pull offline document changes via optional DIDComm relay

Newsletters, Subscriptions and Direct Content Monetization: Medium, without Medium

• Self-host and serve newsletters, blogs and subscriptions - all without relying on intermediaries
• Store content locally, publish to IPFS (or an endpoint of your choice), generate universally accessible endpoints via IPNS (similar to DNS), make content discoverable via Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and receive payments for subscriptions over the Lightning Network
• Own your data and original content
• Upload content (audio, video, file, etc.) via the Impervious Browser and distribute to an endpoint of your choice
• Publish and monetize premium content
• Create, pay, and verify Lightning Invoices
• Send and receive Lightning Keysend Payments
• Create pay-to-play links, prompting peers to fulfill a key exchange or Lightning Invoice to view premium content
• Port existing audiences to bolster subscription content revenue resiliency
• Offer goods and services via links associated with a decentralized identity

Decentralized Identity (DIDs) Control and Management: Identity, without the State

• True cryptographic ownership of a decentralized user identity (DID)
• Create private identities to be shared privately amongst peers
• Generate decentralized identities via ION (a globally accessible, public, Decentralized Identifier network that runs on top of the Bitcoin blockchain) - directly from the Impervious Browser
• Published identities can be discovered and fetched by other peers
• Published identities cannot be deleted or modified by any actor other than its owner
• Published identities do not have to contain PII, allowing for anonymous interchangeable identities (similar to aliases)
• Create one-time, single use identities to be traded for key exchange, with limited time value messaging, payment, or specialty applications
• Manage private and public identities for seamless in-app profile switching and compartmentalization
• Use your DID for password-less authentication and one-click user registration
• Utilize DIDs to create high fidelity, authenticated, and encrypted messages between peers without third parties or middleware

Decentralized Communication (DIDComm)

• Manage and control several communication points of contact within your decentralized identity (DID) via DIDComm
• Allow communication points of contact to be publicly discoverable or remain private and exclusively accessible via trusted peers
• Communication between DIDs (via DIDComm) is transport agnostic, making several channels available for peers to receive content or data
• Create backup communication channels to ensure alternative fall-back points of contact
• List multiple locations for hosted data within a decentralized identity to be universally discoverable and resilient
• Create data redundancy - provide various forms and paths to content to bolster data accessibility and resiliency
• Search and retrieve content from peer identities to connect with friends, creators, and brands
• Hosted data can include any arbitrary file type (ex. applications, websites, community information, or public keys)

Impervious is building the tools and infrastructure for the P2P internet. By interlacing Lightning, Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), a DIDComm system, WebRTC, IPFS and more into a familiar application, the Impervious Browser is able to provide an entire suite of easy to use P2P capabilities.
https://newsletter.impervious.ai/imp...lity-overview/





Lots of Broadband Money, But US Expansion Finds Speed Bumps
Wilson Ring and Mark Gillispie

In the remote Vermont community of Victory, Town Clerk Tracey Martel says she’s regularly frustrated watching a spinning circle on her computer while she tries to complete even the most basic municipal chores online.

“Fast internet would be really good,” said Martel, whose community of about 70 was one of the last in Vermont to receive electricity almost 60 years ago. The DSL service she has now works for basic internet, but it can be spotty and it doesn’t allow users to access all the benefits of the interconnected world.

About 5 miles (8 kilometers) away as the bird flies in the neighboring community along Miles Pond in the town of Concord, a new fiber optic line is beginning to bring truly high-speed internet to residents of the remote area known as the Northeast Kingdom.

“I’m looking forward to high-speed internet, streaming TV,” said Concord resident John Gilchrist, as a crew ran fiber optic cable to his home earlier this year.

The fiber optic cable that is beginning to serve the remote part of Concord and will one day serve Victory is being provided through NEK Broadband, a utility of nearly 50 Vermont towns working to bring high speed internet service to the most remote parts of the state.

NEK Broadband Executive Director Christa Shute said the group’s business plan calls for offering services to all potential customers within five years, but given current supply constraints and the shortage of trained technicians, she’s beginning to think that goal isn’t achievable.

“I think our build will take seven to 10 years,” she said.

Congress has appropriated tens of billions of dollars for a variety of programs to help fill the digital gap exposed by the pandemic when millions of people were locked down in their homes with no way to study, work or get online medical care.

The first of those funds are reaching municipalities, businesses and other groups involved in the effort, but some say supply chain issues, labor shortages and geographic constraints will slow the rollout.

The demand for fiber optic cable goes beyond wired broadband to homes and businesses. The cable will help provide the 5G technology now being rolled out by wireless communications providers.

But there’s a bottleneck in the supply. Michael Bell, of Corning Optical Communications based in Charlotte, North Carolina, said the issue lies with supply of the protective jacket that surrounds the hair-thin strands of glass that carry information on beams of light.

Currently, some working to expand broadband say delays in getting the fiber optic cable they need can exceed a year.

“Based on the capacity we’re adding, and the capacity we see our competitors adding, wait times will start going down dramatically as the year progresses and into next year,” Bell said. “And I think as we get into next year, the lead time for most customers is going to be well under a year.”

Meanwhile, there’s a labor shortage for installing the cable. Many in the industry are setting up educational programs to train people to work with the fiber, said Jim Hayes, of the Santa Monica, California-based Fiber Optic Association.

“It needs to be done now,” Hayes said. “We’re going to need to train probably ten techs for every tech that we’ve got who’s competent to lead them.”

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill passed last fall, says areas that receive broadband speeds of less than 25 megabit downloads and 3 megabit uploads are considered unserved. To qualify for different federal grants through the infrastructure bill and other programs, most finished projects must offer speeds of at least 100 megabits per second for downloads. Upload speeds differ, but most federal grants have a minimum of 20 megabit uploads.

For comparison, it takes 80 seconds to download a 1 gigabyte video at the speed of 100 megabits per second. It takes four times as long — 320 seconds, or more than 5 minutes — at 25 megabits per second.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration — a part of the Agency of Commerce, which is funding broadband projects across the country through the infrastructure law — is neutral about about how internet service providers reach the speed requirements. Many providers say the key to bringing true high-speed internet service to the entire country is to install fiber optic cable to every nook and cranny.

Deploying high-speed internet in tribal communities and rural areas across the western United States where distances dwarf those of rural northern New England will be even more challenging.

Broadband access on the Navajo Nation — the largest reservation in the U.S. at 27,000 square miles (69,930 square kilometers) in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah — is a mix of dial-up, satellite service, wireless, fiber and mobile data.

The U.S. Department of the Interior, which has broad oversight of tribal affairs, said federal appraisals, rights-of-way permits, environment reviews and archaeological protection laws can delay progress.

The argument against the wireless options currently being used in some areas is they can’t offer speeds needed to qualify for the federal grants.

Mike Wendy of the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association said wireless technology is getting faster and more reliable, and wireless connections could be the only way to reach some of the most remote locations.

“The challenge of all this money is to make sure that the unserved are served,” said Wendy, whose organization represents about 1,000 fixed wireless internet providers. “Our guys are in those markets right now and they’re growing.”

Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said $233 million in state dollars will be used in his state to expand broadband to over 43,000 households. Other internet service providers have agreed to expand broadband to another 51,000 households. Ohio is expected to receive an additional $268 million in federal funding to further broadband expansion in the state.

Husted said Ohio is focused on infrastructure while groups and organizations are needed to provide computers and to help people adapt to the fast-growing digital age.

“We’re building the road,” Husted said. “Access to broadband is like the highway system. That’s where we’re focused. It doesn’t mean there are people who don’t need cars or need driver’s licenses.”

There are still scattered locations across the country that rely on dialup and some people in remote locations use satellite internet services. Some people have no internet options whatsoever.

Martel, the Victory town clerk, said that when the people from NEK Broadband visited, they told residents it would be five to seven years before fiber optic cable would reach the community.

But Shute said her organization hopes to get a grant to connect the most rural areas, which could move the timeline for Victory up to three years.

Back in East Concord, after having the service for several weeks, Gilchrist said he and his daughter Emily, who is 19 and headed to college in a few months, no longer have to go to the local diner to use the internet. He canceled his expensive satellite TV service, his daughter and her friends have been using it to play online video games and in a few months she will be using the connection while doing college studies.

“It’s been working great, as far as I’m concerned, all I do is check email,” Gilchrist said. “I don’t watch TV, but my daughter loves it.”

___

Gillispie reported from Cleveland. AP Correspondent Felicia Fonseca contributed to this report from Flagstaff, Arizona.
https://apnews.com/article/technolog...829ded7be76fc7





AT&T’s WarnerMedia Era Ends: How Culture Clashes, Massive Debt and Donald Trump Doomed the Merger
Gene Maddaus, Brent Lang

In September 2018, AT&T summoned the big players from the worlds of media and advertising to a beachside resort in Santa Barbara. The company had finally closed its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, after a protracted fight with the Department of Justice, and wanted to celebrate — and to mark its place at the center of the media ecosystem.

The three-day AT&T Relevance Conference, at the lavish Ritz-Carlton Bacara, featured appearances by Derek Jeter and Issa Rae, as well as AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. The centerpiece of the event was the unveiling of Xandr — the company’s new platform that was designed to revolutionize the ad business by bringing Facebook-style personalization to TV.

In many ways, Xandr was the fulcrum of the AT&T/Time Warner merger. The idea was that AT&T could combine its scale and customer data with Time Warner’s content to supercharge the value of its TV ads.

Xandr was seen as so vital to the company’s future that its CEO, Brian Lesser, reported directly to Stephenson, and its results would be broken out separately on AT&T’s quarterly statements. Even the name signified its centrality to the telecom’s strategy — invoking Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, the founder of AT&T, and by far the most sacred figure in company lore.

The only problem was, there wasn’t much explanation of how Xandr was supposed to work.

“They could have put out the blueprint for the marketplace. That’s why they brought everyone (to the conference),” says Lorne Brown, CEO of the ad management firm Operative. But the blueprint wasn’t ready. “So instead they put up a bunch of pictures and did meditation.”

This week, the AT&T/Time Warner era will officially come to a close. As Discovery combines with Warner Bros., it will mark an end to one of the most disastrous mergers in media history, perhaps second only to the AOL/Time Warner union in 2000.

The Xandr story is only one piece of the broader misadventure, which one observer called “a nesting doll of ridiculousness.” The story will go down in the annals of mid-’10s hubris, when a telecom looked in the mirror and saw — not the nation’s second-largest phone provider — but a genuine rival to Facebook, Apple and Google. Its foray into media would destroy tens of billions of dollars in market capitalization, force the company to slash its dividend, and cost thousands of people their jobs. And it’s still not entirely clear why it happened.

Click here to subscribe to Variety‘s free Strictly Business newsletter covering media earnings, financial and investment news and more.

The modern AT&T emerged from the breakup of the historical phone monopoly in 1984. Texas-based Southwestern Bell, one of the seven Baby Bells, bought up many of its rivals and then acquired AT&T Corp. in 2005, taking on the AT&T name. In 2011, it tried to buy T-Mobile, the fourth-largest phone provider, but found the limit of how much reconsolidation would be allowed. The DOJ filed an antitrust suit, and the merger was abandoned.

From then on, AT&T would have to grow either organically — or by getting into other lines of business. Stephenson and his top lieutenant and eventual successor, John Stankey, looked around and decided that the best way to compete would be to get into TV. With leaps in wireless speeds, more and more content was being consumed on phones. This trend — which also spawned Jeffrey Katzenberg’s ill-fated Quibi — persuaded Stephenson and Stankey that there was a natural synergy between a phone company, satellite distribution and content creation. They took the plunge, buying DirecTV in 2014 and announcing the Time Warner deal two years later.

“The rationale never made any sense,” says Craig Moffett, a partner at MoffettNathanson, and a critic of AT&T. “The acquisition of DirecTV, and later Time Warner, was never driven by a strategic analysis of what assets they needed to compete, and then a strategy to figure out the best way to go out and get them. It was driven by what assets they would be allowed to buy, and rationalizing an argument for why it would be a sensible thing to buy them.”

Stephenson testified in federal court about the decision in 2018.

“In 2016, we said we need to own content,” he said. “We just think the strategic rationale is too compelling.”

But the strategy remained murky. Stephenson pitched a vision of a vertically integrated company — from content creation through distribution — that could chase the big tech companies, which were also investing in premium video to drive customer engagement. But AT&T would never be allowed to limit access to Time Warner content only to AT&T subscribers. That left it unclear what AT&T could gain from owning content that it couldn’t get from licensing it.

Some looked for other explanations.

“Randall Stephenson hated being a telco,” says analyst Roger Entner, who follows the telecom business at Recon Analytics. “He wanted to be a media mogul in the sexy, glitzy Hollywood universe.”

Stephenson argued that AT&T’s customer data could be leveraged to multiply the value of Time Warner’s advertising inventory. If marketers could target TV ads to households based on demographics or buying intentions, they would be willing to pay more for those ads, and TV subscribers could be charged less, giving the company a competitive advantage.

But that all hinged on Xandr.

A month before the Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara, AT&T paid $1.6 billion to acquire AppNexus. Founded a decade earlier in New York, AppNexus had grown to become one of the leading marketplaces for digital advertising, and had recently branched out to video. AT&T put Lesser — who had come from the major ad buying firm Group M — in charge of AppNexus, and rebranded it Xandr.

Brian O’Kelley, the founder and CEO of AppNexus, stayed on as an adviser, but quickly soured on the arrangement. He came to believe that AT&T had vastly overestimated the value of its own data, and had underestimated the difficulty of creating a “addressable” advertising product at Time Warner.

On paper, he says, he could see the logic: “data plus media plus connectivity equals more money.” In reality, it just didn’t work.

“I don’t think the pieces really fit,” O’Kelley says. “Putting AppNexus between Time Warner and AT&T’s data was not a silver bullet. It was not a magic potion. It just didn’t make any sense to us.”

Lesser was given ample resources to make it work, and promised he would deliver, O’Kelley says.

“He told Randall he could do it,” he says. “He pitched himself as the wizard who could pull it off. It seemed like he was the golden child.”

AT&T has a lot of customer data, but it’s nothing compared to the data controlled by Facebook or Google. Google’s dataset covers just about every American. AT&T’s data covers a third of the country — but only when they’re on their phones.

“Madison Avenue wants to advertise to Americans, not to subscribers to AT&T,” Entner says. “One-third reach is two-thirds not enough. If you can’t compete against Google or Facebook on equal terms, don’t compete. It’s not going to be pretty.”

Before the AT&T merger, Time Warner had started to work on addressable advertising through OpenAP, a consortium with other media companies. Under Lesser, the company — renamed WarnerMedia — dropped out of that group to focus on its own solution. At the same time, Xandr appeared to compete with WarnerMedia’s own in-house ad sales unit, before the two were finally merged in 2020.

“I never understood what they wanted us to do,” O’Kelley says. “They had a big sweeping strategy, and no actual idea of what they were supposed to do to make it deliver what they told shareholders.”

Looking back, he says, “It seems silly now to think of AT&T like Facebook.”

Bewkes’ Exit Strategy

Lesser left the company abruptly in March 2020. Through a representative, he declined to be interviewed for this story, citing a confidentiality agreement. But in an interview with the Next in Marketing podcast last November, he alluded to his time at the company.

“AT&T was a really stressful experience,” he said.

AT&T was also stressful for Time Warner employees — who ended up on the receiving end of disruption.

The company had been through the wringer once already, when AOL bought it in 2000, in what is still widely recognized as the worst deal in American corporate history.

When longtime HBO chief Jeff Bewkes took the reins in 2007, he set about slimming the company down, shedding Time Warner Cable, AOL and Time Inc. It became apparent that the remaining assets — including Warner Bros., HBO, and the Turner cable channels, including TNT, CNN and TBS — would be put up for sale, either to another media company or to a tech giant.

“It was an open secret,” one former Warner Bros. executive recalls. “Every year that you didn’t get sold, you’d sort of hope you’d been wrong. But you always knew that something was going to happen.”

In 2014, Time Warner’s board rejected an offer from 21st Century Fox, which was welcome news for Time Warner employees who feared the threat of layoffs — and Rupert Murdoch’s politics.

But the reprieve was temporary.

AT&T announced it would buy the company in October 2016, paying a substantial premium to investors at $107.50 a share.

“I thought it was something Jeff thought he had to do financially,” says Gerald Levin, the former Time Warner CEO who led the AOL merger. “When you’re in the process of making a transaction, everything sounds like it’s right. You don’t get the full meaning of what the acquirer is trying to do and what the history is.”

The timing was bad, coming on the eve of the presidential election. Donald Trump vowed to block the merger, noting in a statement that CNN was “wildly anti-Trump.” After he was elected, the DOJ sued to block the merger — though the department claimed that Trump’s opposition did not influence them. AT&T won its case at trial, but the lawsuit pushed back the consummation of the merger by a year.

Stankey, whom Stephenson entrusted to oversee its integration, would later tell confidants that the case was the main reason the merger failed.

“Stankey believed firmly that was what put the company behind the eight ball,” says one former WarnerMedia executive. “There was nearly a year and a half where we were unable to start launching our streaming service and that delay cost us first-mover advantage.”

HBO Max would ultimately be unveiled to the world on May 27, 2020, more than six months after Disney launched Disney Plus. By then, the COVID-19 pandemic had forced a shutdown of film and TV production, disrupting the studio’s content pipeline. When production resumed, the pandemic brought added costs and delays.

But the problems went much deeper. When Bewkes sold the company, he seemed to assume that his executive team would be left alone to run it. Stephenson and Stankey had different ideas. According to the book “Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers,” Stankey told employees that AT&T had paid a premium for Time Warner, and so by definition “something has to change” to justify it.

As he took charge, the telco culture he brought from Dallas seemed an awkward fit in Hollywood. Stankey stands at 6-foot-5, and has a booming voice and the ramrod-straight posture of a military leader. He was not attuned to the mores of Hollywood — a world of power lunches, insincere compliments and roiling insecurities all masked by suntans and thousand-watt smiles.

Stankey would sometimes get frustrated with executives who had come up on the creative side, because they were not fluent in the language of Wall Street. And he showed his displeasure.

“The vernacular of the phone company was very, very different,” remembers one former Warner Bros. executive. “Stankey would speak a lot in financial acronyms — ROIs, EPS and all that shit — and that’s not really the way that filmmakers or Steven Spielberg talk. Your head would be spinning when you listened to him speak.”

In the entertainment business, success is measured in terms of box office grosses and Nielsen ratings. Stankey and the AT&T team urged the executives to think instead about “minutes of engagement” and “cost per minute.” The company knew it was doing well if it was keeping people glued to their phones.

Where Bewkes preferred to make decisions as a group, Stankey instead sought to project a commanding presence.

“AT&T seemed to believe that we were not paid to think — we were paid to do,” remembers one WarnerMedia executive who worked with both of them. “Bewkes would hold court to solve a problem. John would stay up all night thinking about an issue, and then he’d wake up and tell everyone what to do.”

Stankey could be intimidating in meetings, asking subordinates penetrating questions about their work. One executive says he would yell at people if he believed they were failing to catch on to what he was saying or falling short. Another executive disputes this, saying that Stankey’s baritone voice could be mistaken for anger. He also had a self-deprecating sense of humor, supported employees’ professional growth, and showed genuine concern for people’s families, two executives say.

The transition may have been jarring, but some insiders believe that what made executives the most upset was that the old, free-spending days were coming to an end and a culture of greater accountability was being introduced. More questions were being asked about how money was being spent and why and that bothered executives from a different era.

Richard Plepler, the powerful head of HBO, had no appetite for the new regime, and announced his departure within months. David Levy, the president of Turner, left the same day.

“Losing the management at Time Warner was catastrophic,” Moffett says. “It wasn’t just a loss of institutional knowledge. It was a demoralizing blow to the people who remained. It said that their experience wasn’t going to be valued. There was an enormous brain drain.”

But one holdover executive seemed well positioned to thrive under new management. Kevin Tsujihara had risen through the ranks to become CEO of Warner Bros. A Stanford MBA, he could speak Stankey’s language, but he was also a polished movie executive who had built up trust in the creative community. He sat next to Stankey at the 2019 Oscars, and a few days later was given an expanded role, overseeing the company’s animation division. Internally, the belief was Tsujihara was being groomed to take over WarnerMedia if and when Stephenson retired and Stankey replaced him as CEO of AT&T.

Two days after the promotion, the Hollywood Reporter published text messages suggesting that Tsujihara had tried to help get roles for Charlotte Kirk, an actress with whom he was having an extramarital affair. (Tsujihara would deny he ever used his position to secure parts for Kirk.) Stankey had been warned of the issue six months earlier, in an anonymous letter, but an internal investigation turned up no wrongdoing. Now he recognized that Tsujihara would have to go. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, top executives and talent didn’t want to work with a person in a sex scandal. For instance, Katie McGrath, the wife and business partner of J.J. Abrams, the superstar creator that WarnerMedia was courting for a massive overall deal, let it be known that they would not join forces with the company if Tsujihara was still in charge.

But Stankey also felt that Tsujihara deserved a graceful goodbye. Even as he pushed the executive to tender his resignation, he gave him the kind of sendoff that was unusual for someone forced out in the wake of public controversy. Not only did he host a cocktail party for Tsujihara on the Warners lot, he also flew him to New York for a celebratory dinner and to London for another farewell gathering.

Tsujihara’s lawyer declined to comment.

“The whole thing was a fucking train wreck,” Moffett says.
Straight to Streaming

Entner, the telecom analyst, believes the merger could have worked out, if it had been flawlessly executed. But it was not.

“There are few if any management teams that can do this really well,” he says. “You need to have a team of superstars that have no ego and work together.”

To replace Tsujihara, Stankey turned to Ann Sarnoff, a former Viacom and BBC Studios executive with a low profile in Hollywood. Sarnoff proved to be affable and intelligent with a habit of furiously writing notes during meetings. But not everyone appreciated her low-key style. Once the pandemic hit, she was forced to work remotely and thus failed to forge the kind of relationships necessary to succeed in the role.

Stephenson retired in April 2020, and as expected Stankey became CEO. To replace himself at WarnerMedia, Stankey found an offbeat choice. Jason Kilar was a former CEO of Hulu, and Stankey believed that he combined creative chops with the disruptive personality of a Silicon Valley visionary — just what he thought WarnerMedia needed. Kilar’s upbeat spirit was welcome in some corners, as was his palpable love of movies, shows and gaming (he saw “Aquaman” in theaters seven times). But traditionalists bristled at his social media habit, preferring their leaders to keep a lower public profile — at one point, Kilar snapped behind-the-scenes photos of HBO Max’s “Friends” reunion intending to share them on Twitter, which caused some consternation. His massive $52.2 million pay package in 2020 also drew ire, coming amid company directives to keep a lid on costs and as WarnerMedia had instituted layoffs.

Kilar will be remembered for orchestrating one of WarnerMedia’s boldest and most controversial bets. In late 2020 — with the theater business still in intensive care — he decreed that Warner Bros.’ entire film slate for 2021 — including “Dune” and “King Richard” — would debut concurrently on HBO Max. Kilar, Sarnoff and film chief Toby Emmerich signed off on the decision, but there were disagreements about whether the films should launch day-and-date. Some film executives believed that there should be some sort of exclusive theatrical window for the movies, albeit a shorter one, which Kilar vetoed.

The move stunned Hollywood, with filmmakers like “Dune” director Denis Villeneuve and Christopher Nolan (whose most recent Warner release “Tenet” was not part of the experiment) decrying the decision. Warner Bros. did make an effort to make everyone whole, paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to talent, with the likes of Denzel Washington (“The Little Things”) and Will Smith (“King Richard”) earning $40 million each as a make-good for the move. The new releases bolstered HBO Max subscriptions at a critical moment, as it took time for buzzy shows such as “The Flight Attendant” and “Hacks” to ignite.

“It was a massive driver of subscriptions,” says one WarnerMedia executive. “There weren’t enough splashy shows when HBO Max launched. Those movies probably added 10 million subscribers.”

WarnerMedia continued to churn through executives. Bob Greenblatt, brought in to succeed Plepler at HBO, was ousted after 17 months. Kevin Reilly, who oversaw HBO Max content, also was forced out shortly after its launch.

After a slow start, HBO Max started to get traction. But executives could detect a shift in the corporate mood. Ambitious plans were being scaled back. Shows were getting cancelled more frequently, and the video game division, which came under Kilar’s control, was told it needed to do a better job of meeting deadlines. Kilar changed compensation structures, setting bonuses and other incentives to HBO Max hitting certain targets.

AT&T was facing pressure to reduce its debt in order to invest heavily in building its 5G network to keep pace with other mobile carriers. In February 2021, AT&T announced the sale of DirecTV. In six years of AT&T stewardship, the company had lost 40% of its subscribers and 75% of its enterprise value.

Three months later, Stankey announced that WarnerMedia would be spun off and combined with Discovery, a company largely known for its reality programming, in a $43 billion merger. As the deal neared its official close this week, many executives — including Sarnoff and Kilar — were shown the door, and another round of major layoffs are expected. Staffers have been left demoralized.

“It’s a pretty shell-shocked group over here,” says one executive. “It’s a head-spinning amount of change.”

Some insiders believe that AT&T deserves credit for pushing WarnerMedia forcibly into the streaming era. HBO Max has scored watercoolor hits such as “The White Lotus,” “The Gilded Age” and its “Friends” and Harry Potter cast reunions, and finished 2021 with almost 74 million subscribers, exceeding projections. That translated into awards success. This year, WarnerMedia’s shows and movie received more Oscar, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild wins than any other content company. And AT&T is also praised for making meaningful changes in terms of the diversity of WarnerMedia’s workforce, hiring more people of color and providing more senior jobs for them and for female executives.

But others are angered at what they see as the desecration of gold-standard entertainment brands.

“Working at Warner Bros. or HBO used to mean something,” says another. “This is where Clint Eastwood and Chris Nolan wanted to make movies. This is where ‘The Sopranos’ was made. You used to feel so proud to work here. It’s not like that anymore.”

Stankey at least came to recognize that the merger was not working, and pulled the plug. But the foray has cost AT&T dearly.

“The damage has been done,” Moffett says. “Their balance sheet is badly over-levered. The debt they took on, especially for the DirecTV deal, is still with them, and has left them badly hamstrung.”

In December, AT&T discarded the final piece of its former media empire, selling off Xandr to Microsoft for an undisclosed sum.

Levin, one of the architects of HBO, says he could not fault Bewkes for selling to AT&T.

“He tried to make a financial transaction. That’s the one that was available,” Levin says. “He thought it would work. It didn’t. I can’t criticize him for that.”

But he says it’s clear now that AT&T was never cut out to be a media company.

“Programming — whether streaming or not — is an art form,” Levin says. “It’s not a mechanical exercise. And they don’t operate that way.”
https://variety.com/2022/digital/new...er-1235226663/





Cop Admits To Playing Copyrighted Music Through Squad Car PA To Keep Videos Off YouTube

"You chose to use our taxpayer dollars to disrespect a man with your music. That’s childish, sir”
Erin Marquis

A police officer in Santa Ana, California, admitted to blaring Disney favorites from a squad car PA system in an attempt to keep citizens’ videos of their actions off of YouTube. It just so happens they woke up a sleeping city council member, who took police to task for their annoying and suspicious tactic.

Using copyright infringement against those who record police actions hasn’t really work so far, which may be why this officer decided to really blare Disney tunes during an investigation of a car theft. At the moment, the video posted by Santa Ana Audits is still up after being posted six days ago, so it’s safe to say this officer woke up an entire community for nothing:

As Vice points out, this tactic is well known:

“Hey, he’s playing music,” the YouTuber said in Spanish. “Because he knows that on my [YouTube] channel, I can’t upload videos with music in them.”

For a few moments, the video shows red and blue lights flashing across the street, as we hear lyrics that recall the animated friendship of Buzz Lightyear and Woody:

When the road looks rough ahead / and you’re miles and miles from your nice warm bed / you just remember what your old pal said / Boy, you’ve got a friend in me

This is yet another entry in a pattern of police playing copyrighted music while being filmed. Starting last year, cops have played Sublime and The Beatles in Beverly Hills, country music in Illinois, and Taylor Swift in Alameda County, California, in response to being recorded by civilians, in what is looking more and more like a collective attempt of police officers attempting to trick online platforms into auto-censoring videos of their actions.

The best part of the video by far was when Santa Ana city council member Johnathan Ryan Hernandez showed up and confronted police about the tactic. The cop playing the music admitted to what protesters and others who film police actions have known all along. Hernandez gave the officer an epic dressing down and demanded an apology for the person filming the scene. Here’s the whole thing incase you don’t feel like watching a 12 minute video for the satisfying bit:

At that point, a small crowd of residents had gathered, so Hernandez walked up to the officer who was running the impromptu Disney DJ set and asked why he was playing loud music.

“Why? Because it will be copyright infringement for him,” the officer says, pointing at the camera.

“So you’re using our resources that way?” Councilmember Hernandez says.

“No, I’m not using our resources. It’s my phone,” the officer replies.

“Do you know who I am?” Hernandez asks. The officer pauses, then says that he does recognize the city official — and his demeanor shifts.

“You’re not gonna conduct yourself like that in front of my neighbors,” Councilmember Hernandez continues. The officer apologizes to Hernandez, but Hernandez isn’t satisfied: “Apologize to him,” he says, motioning to the camera-holding YouTuber.

“You’re not gonna conduct yourself like that in front of my neighbors,” Councilmember Hernandez continues. The officer apologizes to Hernandez, but Hernandez isn’t satisfied: “Apologize to him,” he says, motioning to the camera-holding YouTuber.

“My people live here, brother. Please treat them with respect,” Hernandez says to the officer. “There’s kids that need to go to school, there’s people that are working, and you chose to use our taxpayer dollars to disrespect a man with your music. That’s childish, sir.”

Santa Ana PD release a statement on Twitter acknowledging the video. Santa Ana PD told Vice that using squad car audio system is not department policy. YouTube won’t always remove a video for copyright infringement. Sometimes the site will place an ad on the video, with proceeds going to the copyright holder.

Hernandez, who witnessed Santa Ana police gun down his cousin shortly after taking office, managed to find some dark humor in the moment.

“I noticed that they were playing songs from Coco and Encanto. Those were movies that Disney had used to bridge to the Latino community. Then the police used that to try to silence us,” he said, laughing quietly. “Pretty ironic.”
https://jalopnik.com/cop-admits-to-p...d-c-1848776860





Legal Analysis of the Delhi High Court Judgment in the Matter of Sony Pictures Network India PVT. V. Sportsala.TV and Ors.
Sakshar Law Associates

One of the most emerging problems due to modern-day technology is piracy. Although it has been around since ancient Greece, its meaning has changed tremendously over time. In present times, piracy mostly relates to “Digital piracy; the illegal act of duplicating, copying, or sharing a digital work without the permission of the copyright holder, a violation of copyright laws.”

Although its meaning is not limited only to that, the increased reach of internet services and globalization has led to the scale at which digital piracy takes place. One of the most common forms of digital piracy is the pirating of movies and shows which are often secure behind a paywall. Popular websites with similar nomenclature tend to offer people these services at a great quality for free.

This is what happened in the case of Sony Pictures Network India vs Www.Sportsala.Tv And Others. The suit was brought forward by Sony Pictures against Sportsala Tv and 146 others in order to prevent them from illegally streaming the India Tour of Australia 2020, the India Tour of England 2021and the India Tour of Sri Lanka 2021.

The plaintiff had acquired the exclusive license to stream these tours in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, and the Maldives for the India Tour of England 2021 and worldwide, excluding Sri Lanka in respect of the India Tour of Sri Lanka 2021 on their paid platforms. The defendant's act of illegal transmission led to a revenue loss both for the plaintiff and for the Government.

The suit was brought forward under section 55 of the Copyright Act which provides for civil remedies in cases of copyright infringement.

Hon’ble Justice Jayanth Nath at the High Court of Delhi passed an order estopping the plaintiffs from

“reproducing, making sound and/or visual recordings of the Plaintiff's Channels or the feed thereof and communicating the same to the public without authorization of the Plaintiff, or doing any other thing as is likely to lead to infringement of the exclusive rights of the Plaintiff in the Sporting Events.”

Apart from this, the court also passed an Ashok Kumar Order which will enable the plaintiff to, “facilitate the service of summons upon and the extension of the injunction to parties who violate the plaintiff's rights” against any unknown future infringers.

The Ashok Kumar or the John Doe Order was first propounded by the British Courts in 1976 in the case of Anton Piller KG v. Manufacturing Processes Ltd. It enables the aggrieved party to get a court order in general against unknown parties who might infringe their copyrights in the future.

Popularised all over the world, it made its way to India in the year 2002 in the Delhi High Court judgment in the case of Tej Television Limited vs. Rajan Mandal. Similar to the case mentioned above, even in this one the plaintiff sought to stop the illegal transmission of their sports broadcasting on other television channels.

After a thorough interpretation of the circumstances under which the foreign courts had granted such an order, the Hon’ble court passed the Ashok Kumar Order while quoting a Canadian judgment, “The principle rests on the basic premise that as long as the litigating finger is pointed at a particular person then the misnomer is not fatal.”

Similar orders were passed in a number of cases. Taking it away from the media industry, this order was passed in Luxottica Group Limited vs. Ashok Kumar from which it gets its name. In this, the copyright and trademark rights of the plaintiff were being infringed.

In the case of Reliance Big Entertainment v. Multivision Network and Ors, the court while citing the Rajan Mandal case passed the John Doe Order on three criterias provided by the plaintiff, which were, prima facie cases, imminent danger, and balance of convenience.

In its statements in the Indian Performing Right vs. Mr. Badal Dhar Chowdhry, the Hon’ble Delhi Court highlighted how this order could be misused as well. Hon’ble Justice Rajiv Sahai said, “vague injunction can be an abuse of the process of the court, and such vague and general injunction of anticipatory nature can never be granted.” Therefore, it is essential that before a judgment is pronounced, the court should thoroughly investigate if such an order is required at all.

The Ashok Kumar Order provides a dual advantage. One, it reduces the number of times an aggrieved party has to approach the court in order to have their rights enforced. This in turn helps in reducing the burden on the courts. And most importantly, two, it ensures that the holders of these intellectual property rights are protected even against future infringements. This enables them to act swiftly and reduce the amount of damage caused.

In the previously mentioned Sony case, the last respondent was a “John Doe” which is to say that the last respondent was used as a blanket front for any future copyright infringers. If for example a new website infringing Sony’s rights is made by a new player in the market, even they would be bound by the judgment given in this case.

This blanket cover helps Sony secure its rights without having to prove them first. It will ensure faster redressal for their issue and the amount of time that the Honourable Court has to spend on it will also be drastically reduced.

In the present conditions were going to courts, again and again, is not the most feasible option, the Ashok Kumar order with its prospective application helps individuals and companies enforce their rights more conveniently and efficiently.
https://www.lexology.com/library/det...f-1e8199bd692f





Deathloop Gets Cracked After Seven Months

Check out the game on Steam right now.
Nalin Rawat

Deathloop is a first-person shooter video game by Arkane Studios, makers of the beloved Dishonored series. The game is the spiritual successor to the Dishonored series and features similar mechanics. However, seven months after its release, Deathloop was cracked by a pirate group called Empress.

Empress is also responsible for cracking many games that no other pirate group can. They have previously cracked games like Watch Dogs: Legion, Resident Evil 8: Village, and Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla.

Deathloop cracked

Deathloop came out on September 14 for Microsoft Windows and as a timed console exclusive for the PlayStation 5. Bethesda published the game for the PS5 even after Microsoft bought the company.

The game was well-received by critics due to its gameplay and art style. Deathloop even won Best Game Direction and Best Art Direction at The Game Awards in 2021.

The subreddit known as r/CrackWatch, which tracks games that pirates have cracked, has also confirmed that Empress has cracked Deathloop. Other pirate groups have also released repacked versions of the game, with DLC and bonus content unlocked.

Recently, pirate groups also cracked games like Elden Ring, Death Stranding Director’s Cut, and Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. These games are also available on Steam if you want to check them out.

About the game

In Deathloop, players step in the shoes of Colt, a man stuck in a time loop on an island. Their objective is to kill all eight targets called Visionaries across the island before the day is over. Gameplay is a mixture of stealth, parkour, attack skills, guns, gadgets, and powers.

Deathloop also features a multiplayer where players step in the shoes of Juliana. Players can then invade others and take out Colt to protect the time loop.

We recommend checking out ‘Deathloop’ on Steam instead of pirating the cracked version of the game.

Disclaimer: Fossbytes does not support piracy and advises users not to break any copyright laws. This article is only for educational purposes.
https://fossbytes.com/deathloop-gets...-seven-months/





Brazilians Broadcast Fake Football Game To Pirating Live Streamers
Alex Anyfantis

Creative agency Mirum Brazil partnered with South American online portal DIRECTV GO to broadcast a fake football game between ‘Maochester United’ and ‘Atletico de Mandirituba’, targeting all those who live-stream football illegally.

The game featured all the ingredients of an actual match between two teams of the highest level: a commentary team, cameras from different angles, even sponsors with familiar-looking names.

The names of the players who took part in this 90-minute game were also oddly familiar (‘Rolando’), while there were some hilarious moments that interrupted the run of play, like when a man invaded the pitch on his bike or when a streaker was caught running through the field.

The game was also quite popular on social media, with people arguing over who would get the jerseys of Doente, Pancho and Cavando. We’ll let you figure out who those names are referring to…

The real intention behind this game was so that it could grab the attention of all those in the Latin American country who stream football illegally, attempting to put a stop to a stop to their highly damaging habits by promoting a series of alternatives by DIRECTV GO which wouldn’t burn a hole in their pockets.

Surprisingly, despite the poor quality of football displayed on the pitch (as these players were only amateurs), most viewers stuck around for an average of 19 minutes. Apparently any kind of sport activity can be appealing when it’s being observed illegally…
https://www.bandt.com.au/brazilians-...ive-streamers/

















Until next week,

- js.



















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