Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 18th, ’24

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May 18th, 2024




VidAngel Hit with $62.4 Million Judgment for Pirating Movies
Gene Maddaus

A jury on Monday ordered VidAngel to pay $62.4 million to Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. for streaming hundreds of movies on its service without permission.

The verdict is potentially a death blow to the Utah-based company, which sought to allow family audiences to watch Hollywood fare while skipping past violence, sex, and other objectionable content.

U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte had already ruled that VidAngel’s service was illegal, leaving the jurors to decide only the amount of damages. VidAngel ripped movies from DVD copies, and then streamed them to users with offensive content filtered out. The company argued this was allowed under the federal Family Movie Act, but Birotte did not agree and ordered the service to shut down in December 2016. The company later relaunched a filtering service for Netflix and Amazon, which continues to operate.

The case has been working its way through court since then. At trial, the studios asked the eight-member jury to impose the maximum penalty of $125 million for illegally streaming 819 movies, arguing that the company had willfully violated copyright law. VidAngel’s attorney, Mark Eisenhut, asked jurors to levy the minimum of $600,000, arguing that CEO Neal Harmon and his team honestly believed that what they were doing was legal.

In their verdict, the jurors landed halfway between those two figures.

“It feels like the jury split the baby,” Harmon said in an interview. “It just so happens that halfway in between is not a good situation for us.”

VidAngel is already in bankruptcy in Utah, and has about $2.2 million in the bank. The jury’s verdict — if it is upheld — could force the company into liquidation. Harmon said he planned to appeal.

In a statement, the studio plaintiffs applauded the verdict.

“The jury today found that VidAngel acted willfully, and imposed a damages award that sends a clear message to others who would attempt to profit from unlawful infringing conduct at the expense of the creative community,” the plaintiffs said.

Kelly Klaus, who argued the case for the plaintiffs, noted in his opening statement that VidAngel customers could stream movies for as little as $1 — undercutting services like Amazon and iTunes that had paid for their content.

Harmon said that customers who use the current service will not notice any immediate changes.

“In a matter of months we should have a better picture of what kind of guidance we can give customers going forward,” he said.

Harmon said he was frustrated that the trial did not allow the jurors to decide whether filtering is legal — only the penalty for the violations.

“It wasn’t a trial of both liability and damages,” he said. “Had it been so, it would have been easier for the jury to see our side of the story.”
https://ca.style.yahoo.com/news/vida...l?guccounter=1





Hollywood at a Crossroads: “Everyone Is Using AI, But They Are Scared to Admit It”

Despite the recent labor actions to combat it, Hollywood has already started using artificial intelligence, presenting the industry with the existential threat that many predicted.
Winston Cho, Scott Roxborough

For horror fans, Late Night With the Devil marked one of the year’s most anticipated releases. Embracing an analog film filter, the found-footage flick starring David Dastmalchian reaped praise for its top-notch production design by leaning into a ’70s-era grindhouse aesthetic reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead or Death Race 2000. Following a late-night talk show host airing a Halloween special in 1977, it had all the makings of a cult hit.

But the movie may be remembered more for the controversy surrounding its use of cutaway graphics created by generative artificial intelligence tools. One image of a dancing skeleton in particular incensed some theatergoers. Leading up to its theatrical debut in March, it faced the prospect of a boycott, though that never materialized.

The movie’s directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes defended the AI usage, explaining the art was touched up by human hands. In a statement, they said, “We experimented with AI for three still images which we edited further and ultimately appear as very brief interstitials in the film.”

Less than a month later, five images suspected to be generated by AI teasing postapocalyptic scenes in A24’s Civil War sparked similar outrage by a segment of fans. There were a few telltale signs that the graphics were AI-created in landmark accuracy and consistency blunders: The two Chicago Marina Towers buildings in one poster are on opposite sides of the river; in another, a shot of wreckage shows a car with three doors.

In response, a reader on A24’s Instagram post wrote that the backlash to Late Night was “more than enough to make transparently clear to everyone: WE DO NOT WANT THIS.”

But in the entertainment industry, the Pandora’s box of AI has likely already been unleashed. Behind closed doors, most corners of production, from writers’ rooms to VFX departments, have embraced generative AI tools. For every project that has faced blowback for using AI in some part of the production pipeline, there are dozens more that have quietly adopted the technology.

“There are tons of people who are using AI, but they can’t admit it publicly because you still need artists for a lot of work and they’re going to turn against you,” says David Stripinis, a VFX industry veteran who has worked on Avatar, Man of Steel and Marvel titles. “Right now, it’s a PR problem more than a tech problem.”

“Producers, writers, everyone is using AI, but they are scared to admit it publicly,” agrees David Defendi, a French screenwriter and founder of Genario, a bespoke AI software system designed for film and television writers. “But it’s being used because it is a tool that gives an advantage. If you don’t use it, you’ll be at a disadvantage to those who are using AI.”

One of the reasons for the backlash to AI usage in Late Night and Civil War could be the precedent it appears to set. Hiring or commissioning a concept or graphic artist would’ve been a negligible cost for the productions involved. If companies are willing to use AI to replace such peripheral tasks — in the case of Late Night and Civil War, jobs that could have been accomplished by anyone on their production design teams — what positions are next? Writers? VFX artists?

“Most writers who have tried out AI have found it’s not a very good writer,” says David Kavanagh, executive officer of the Federation of Screenwriters in Europe (FSE), a group of writers guilds and union representing more than 8,000 writers across 25 countries. “So I don’t see it replacing us yet, but the impact on other areas of the industry could be very damaging.” He points to areas like kids’ animation and soap operas, where there is a lot of “repetition of similar situations by the same set of characters,” as sectors that could be hard hit.

The displacement of labor by lower-level workers in Hollywood likely plays a part in which AI uses are seen as acceptable, and which are beyond the pale. Much of the discourse around the issue is filtered through the lens of Hollywood’s historic dual strikes last year. The utilization of AI tools in Civil War and Late Night meant artists missed out on work.

Some sectors of the industry are already threatened with extinction. “Dubbing and subtitling employment in Europe is finished,” says Kavanagh, pointing to AI technology that can produce lip-synced dubs in multiple languages, even using versions of the original actor’s performance. “It’s hard to see how they will survive this.”

In Cannes on Saturday, indie producer/distributor XYZ Films will present a sizzle reel of AI-translated trailers of international films, including Nordic sci-fi feature UFO Sweden, French comedy thriller Vincent Must Die and Korean action hit Smugglers, which showcase TrueSync dubbing technology from L.A.-based company Flawless. Flawless and XYZ are pitching the tech as a chance for hit international films to cheaply produce a high-quality English-language dub that will make them more attractive for the global market. Flawless, XYZ Films, and Tea Shop Productions plan to roll out UFO Sweden worldwide in what they are calling the first large-scale theatrical release of a fully translated film using AI.

Meanwhile, Putin, a new political biopic from Polish director Besaleel, which is being shopped to international buyers in Cannes, uses AI tech to re-create the face of Vladimir Putin over the body of an actor with a similar build to the Russian leader. Besaleel says he plans to use the same technology, developed in-house by his postproduction company AIO, to create deepfake actors to play extras and supporting roles.

“I foresee that film and TV productions will eventually employ only leading and perhaps supporting actors, while the entire world of background and minor characters will be created digitally,” he says.

In Hollywood, the specter of AI casts a daunting shadow. A study surveying 300 leaders across the entertainment industry issued in January reported that three-fourths of respondents indicated that AI tools supported the elimination, reduction or consolidation of jobs at their companies. Over the next three years, it is estimated that nearly 204,000 positions will be adversely affected. Concept artists, sound engineers, and voice actors stand at the forefront of that displacement. Visual effects and other postproduction work were also cited as particularly vulnerable.

There is also an imbalance in the resistance to AI usage in Civil War and Late Night but not, for example, Robert Zemeckis’ upcoming Miramax movie Here, which will feature a de-aged Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. Their transformations were accomplished using a new generative AI-driven tool dubbed Metaphysics Live.

Deploying AI to allow actors to play younger or older versions of themselves could entrench A-list talent because they’re now suddenly eligible to play roles of all ages. Like with graphic artists who could’ve lost out on work in Late Night, a young Tom Hanks look-alike similarly could’ve missed an opportunity to be cast in a major studio movie. Why hire Sophie Nélisse to play a younger version of Melanie Lynskey’s Shauna in Yellowjackets when the production can just de-age the established star?

But where many see a threat, some see an opportunity. Like at the advent of CGI in the 1990s, when the technology entered the mainstream after the popularity of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park, some VFX artists are leaning into AI. Legal constraints put guardrails on how the technology can be used, and there is no copyright on AI-generated material, but artists can get around these issues by training open source AI systems on their own works. This bypasses some of the concerns posed by AI systems that have been trained on copyright-protected material.

“What we’ve been doing is taking the generative models to a point,” says Jim Geduldick, a VFX supervisor with credits on Masters of the Air, Robert Zemeckis’ live-action/CG Pinocchio and Avatar: The Last Airbender who has adopted AI into his workflow. “Some allow us to train on our own data too. That’s why a lot of open source models and datasets we can train ourselves are a bit more alluring. We know we own [whatever is created from] that.”

Stripinis notes, “We have a policy of not using AI in anything client-facing, because we don’t want to put ourselves on any kind of spurious legal ground.”

“We see AI as a tool and one we think will unlock creativity and opportunity, that will create jobs, not eliminate them,” says Motion Picture Association CEO Charles Rivkin, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in Cannes, so long as guardrails are in place and copyright is protected.

Rivkin, the former CEO of The Jim Henson Co., notes that the late, great Muppets creator was always on the cutting edge of technology. “If Jim were alive today,” says Rivkin, “he’d be using AI to do amazing things, using it to enhance his storytelling.”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/mo...es-1235900202/





Paramount: the Takeover Battle that could Reshape Hollywood

The tussle for the venerable studio has been billed as the money men against the creatives, but the outcome may help decide who survives in the streaming era
Christopher Grimes in Los Angeles and Anna Nicolaou and James Fontanella-Khan in New York

Over its 98-year history, the Paramount Pictures studio lot has survived the arrival of talking pictures, bankruptcy, the Depression, the rise of TV and a range of different owners.

The question now is whether the 65-acre property on Melrose Avenue — the last major studio left in Los Angeles’ Hollywood district — can survive the streaming era.

The Redstone family, which has controlled Paramount since 1994, is considering a sale of the company behind Sunset Boulevard, The Godfather, Chinatown and Titanic. The fate of the studio could rest on which of the two bidders — one backed by the movie-loving son of a tech billionaire, the other by a leading private equity firm — comes out on top.

Wall Street analysts have begun calculating how much the lot could fetch if sold. “Maybe the studio lot is worth $1.5bn-plus, given the scarce resource of studio assets or just because the land has value in the heart of LA,” analysts at LightShed Partners wrote in December.

There are fears in Hollywood that Apollo, the private equity group bidding $26bn for Paramount’s assets alongside Sony, could sell the Melrose property if its offer is accepted. Apollo says it is seeking to buy “the whole company”.

David Ellison’s entertainment company, Skydance, with backing from private equity groups RedBird Capital and KKR, is the rival bidder for Paramount. Ellison, the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, is said to hold great affection for the lot and wants to keep it.

The future of the studio property is a relatively minor detail in the larger negotiations over Paramount. But its sale would have an outsized symbolic impact in Hollywood, which has been shaken in recent years by the rise of streaming services, a pandemic that shuttered cinemas worldwide, two lengthy labour strikes and thousands of job losses.

The share prices of Paramount and another century-old studio, Warner Bros, have both more than halved over the past five years. Another indicator of the troubled state of Paramount — and the broader concerns about the other legacy Hollywood studios — is the size of the Apollo-Sony bid. It values Paramount’s equity at around $12bn, roughly what the late media magnate Sumner Redstone paid for it in 1994. That sum would be more than $21bn today after adjusting for inflation.

Many bankers and industry executives say the “big five” Hollywood studios — Paramount, Warner, Disney, Universal and Sony — could shrink to three in the next few years. “Are we in the middle of a scaling back in Hollywood?” asks one LA-based dealmaker. “Absolutely.”

Tom Nunan, executive producer of the Oscar-winning film Crash and a lecturer at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, says there is a “pall” over Hollywood. “There’s a re-examination of what business we’re in. What everyone can agree on is that the business seems to be broken.”

The source of this malaise is Netflix and the streaming revolution it unleashed, which lured customers away from the cable TV channels that were studios’ cash cows for decades. They responded by spending billions of dollars building their own streaming services, but these have yet to compensate for the decline in cable — a situation bankers have likened to a “melting ice cube”.

The two bidders have different strategies for fixing Paramount but Hollywood appears to be rooting for Ellison, a movie fanatic who has produced blockbusters in partnership with Paramount including Top Gun: Maverick. He has also been endorsed by figures such as Titanic director and producer James Cameron, who tells the Financial Times: “I love the Ellison idea.”

The making of a Hollywood hit machine

Some investors say they prefer the Apollo offer, which they argue is less complex and better for common shareholders. “I think the combination of Sony and Apollo is perfect,” says John Rogers, chair and co-chief executive of Ariel Investments. “Apollo has so much money and expertise in putting together deals and closing transactions.”

This tension boils down to what a veteran of Paramount describes as “Wall Street money guys versus Hollywood, where they’re fiercely protective of the creative process”.

The choice between the two bidders will ultimately be made by a four-person board committee and Shari Redstone, the daughter of Sumner, who died in 2020 at the age of 97.

She controls a majority of the voting shares in Paramount and is believed to oppose any transaction that would break up the company her father built. Redstone may be considering a third option: not to sell to either group.

Paramount’s predicament has been a decade in the making.

After the entertainment industry consolidated through a series of megamergers — Comcast and Universal in 2011, Disney and Fox in 2019, Warner and Discovery in 2022 — Paramount emerged a smaller player in this new landscape.

Viewed as too small to compete on its own, the company has been the subject of feverish takeover speculation among bankers and Hollywood dealmakers for years.

Redstone has long resisted such talk. She had spent years fighting off rival executives and her elderly father’s girlfriends to finally take hold of her family’s media empire in 2019. Selling was not part of the plan. “It was her family’s legacy, so she wanted to make a run at it,” says a former Paramount executive.

Even during 2022’s “Great Correction” in Netflix shares, which dragged down the valuations of Paramount and its peers, the company pushed forward with an ambitious leap into the streaming wars.

This all began to change a year ago, when Redstone started to feel the pinch on a personal level. Last May, Bob Bakish, then chief executive of Paramount, slashed its quarterly dividend from 25 cents a share to 5 cents a share. The move rattled investors and sent the stock tumbling.

It also had an impact on Redstone’s own finances. National Amusements (NAI), the Redstone holding company and cinema chain founded by her grandfather in 1936, emerged from the pandemic heavily in debt. NAI relied on the cash from Paramount’s dividends to help pay the loans. “The dividend cut had an impact on the family business,” says one person familiar with the matter.

Redstone was also profoundly affected by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and has been spending more of her time on efforts to combat antisemitism, says a person close to her. Another person, involved in one of the bids, says she has “been in this for a long time . . . I think she’s ready to move on.”

She sought out the help of Byron Trott, a former Goldman Sachs banker known as a discreet adviser to some of America’s wealthiest individuals, including Warren Buffett and Michael Dell.

His BDT & MSD merchant bank was brought in to manage NAI’s debt — as well as a potential sale process at Paramount Global. He arranged a loan to NAI of about $125mn last year to help repay part of $500mn in borrowings from Wells Fargo.

Trott advised Redstone that she had two choices: find a way to restructure internally, or sell part or all of Paramount. “For Shari, there was a certain emotional component to this,” says a seasoned media executive. “She was estranged from her dad for a long time, but they reconciled towards the end of his life. She became the steward of his legacy.”

“When she finally achieved that, selling was not something she was comfortable doing because it was her family’s legacy,” the person adds.

Then last summer Redstone was approached by Ellison, who is almost three decades her junior. It was the beginning of a conversation that has carried on for nearly a year, kick-starting a chaotic bidding war over some of Hollywood’s most storied assets.

Like Redstone, Ellison had spent much of his life in the shadow of a hard-charging billionaire father. With funding from Larry, Ellison founded his own Hollywood studio in 2010 when he was 27, naming it Skydance after his love of stunt flying. His sister, Megan, also pushed into Hollywood with her own studio, Annapurna Pictures, which has made films such as American Hustle.

David Ellison has built a strong reputation among Hollywood’s creative class and has co-produced a series of films with Paramount, including recent iterations of Mission: Impossible and Terminator.

Ellison’s interest was “innovative and different” from other approaches she had received, says a person close to Redstone, adding that she saw in him another owner-operator who could provide safe hands for Paramount.

But Redstone’s discussions with Ellison drove a wedge between herself and Bakish, previously a loyal ally. He began searching for alternative deals in a bid to save his job, enlisting the informal help of LionTree banker Aryeh Bourkoff, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bakish’s efforts were successful in flushing out another bidder: Apollo, first on its own, then with Sony Pictures. But his manoeuvring also agitated the rest of the board, and in late April he was pushed out.

He has been replaced by a trio of longtime company executives — a scenario that has left the group in a state of limbo as its thousands of staff wait to find out if a deal will be made, and if so with whom.

Some saw Bakish’s exit as a sign of dysfunction at Paramount. “It’s just extraordinarily odd and unprecedented to let go of the CEO in the middle of a transaction,” says Rogers, of Ariel. “It was just totally illogical.”

Both of the bids for Paramount face significant hurdles.

Skydance, which has made its final pitch to a Paramount board committee evaluating the proposals, has financially savvy backers that include Larry Ellison and RedBird founder and former Goldman Sachs banker Gerry Cardinale.

Ellison plans to revive Paramount by restructuring the film and television businesses while making its own streaming service, Paramount+, more competitive by improving its technology.

But his challenge is persuading Paramount’s outside investors to accept the structure of its proposal. Skydance’s two-step offer envisages first acquiring NAI, which holds 77 per cent of Paramount’s voting A-shares. That would give Redstone an immediate $2bn cash payday and Skydance voting control of Paramount, albeit with only about a tenth of the economic rights.

People briefed on the proposed transaction say Skydance and Paramount would then merge in an all-stock deal that, based on Skydance’s $5bn private valuation, implies a premium of about 30 per cent for Paramount’s other shareholders. In total, they say Ellison’s group would be investing about $10bn into Paramount, including a $3bn capital injection into the business.

But independent Paramount shareholders, most of whom own the non-voting B-shares, have rebelled. They say the deal disproportionately favours Redstone over other investors. In an effort to win them over, the Ellison consortium sweetened its bid recently, throwing in an extra $1bn of cash to Paramount’s minority shareholders.

By contrast, the Apollo-Sony approach gives all Paramount’s shareholders, including Redstone, the same cash premium for their shares. The two companies plan to restructure Paramount by cutting costs, creating new synergies with Sony and potentially spinning off assets. Sony, which chose to sell its shows to streamers instead of compete with them, is unlikely to want to keep the Paramount+ service.

Their proposal comes with more regulatory risk, however. Given its Japanese ownership, Sony Pictures could be barred from owning Paramount’s CBS news network while Apollo, which already owns TV broadcasters, could run into ownership caps.

Apollo and Sony say they can structure the deal in a way that avoids upsetting the authorities. “From a regulatory perspective, we feel very comfortable with a deal getting through,” says a person involved in the joint bid.

But Washington has been tough on media deals in recent years, having in 2022 blocked Paramount’s proposed $2.2bn sale of book publisher Simon & Schuster to rival Penguin Random House. To his frustration, Bakish ended up selling S&S to private equity group KKR a year later for $600mn less.

The Biden administration’s regulatory stance has worried some bankers and Hollywood executives who believe that consolidation is the only way to bring the industry back to life.

One possible combination that is frequently discussed is a merger between NBCUniversal, owned by cable giant Comcast, and Warner Bros Discovery. “The best thing for the business is an NBC-Warner tie-up,” says one banker, expressing a common sentiment in Hollywood.

The alternative, some say, is that tech companies will ultimately end up controlling the movie and TV business. “There’s no question there needs to be consolidation in Hollywood,” says a person involved in the Paramount talks.

The question now, both on Wall Street and in Hollywood, is whether Redstone is ready to make a deal. Some warn that she needs to act sooner rather than later.

“If there isn’t a deal, what happens? I don’t think that the prognosis is good,” says the seasoned media veteran.

“Some of these [potential acquirers] may just sit around and wait for it to run into more difficulty . . . and revisit it in six months or a year.”
https://www.ft.com/content/ead41458-...b-be0f4236e303





Netflix Ad-Supported Tier has 40 Million Monthly Users, Nearly Double Previous Count
Sarah Whitten, Alex Sherman, Lillian Rizzo

Key Points

• Netflix’s cheaper, ad-supported tier now has 40 million global monthly active users, nearly double the 23 million the company reported in January.
• The company also said it would launch its own advertising platform and no longer partner with Microsoft for that technology.
• The company said Wednesday that 40% of all signups in countries that have the ad tier available are for that cheaper plan. Netflix now has 270 million total subscribers.

Netflix’s cheaper, ad-supported tier has amassed 40 million global monthly active users, the company said Wednesday.

That’s nearly double the 23 million figure the streaming giant shared in January.

The company also said it would launch its own advertising platform and no longer partner with Microsoft for that technology. The tech giant will remain a programmatic advertising partner, but will also be joined by other ad tech companies including The Trade Desk, Google Display & Video 360 and Magnite.

Netflix will begin testing its ad tech platform in Canada later this year and plans to launch it in the U.S. by the end of the second quarter next year. The company aims to set the platform live everywhere by the end of 2025.

The announcements came on Wednesday alongside Netflix’s Upfront presentation, designed to woo advertisers. The streaming giant joined its media peers for the second time in making an annual pitch to lock in advertising for its platform.

Earlier on Wednesday the company said it reached a deal to stream two National Football League games on Christmas Day this year, and at least one matchup on the same day in both 2025 and 2026.

Netflix has the option to host one or two games in future years, with 2024 serving as a test, co-CEO Ted Sarandos told CNBC on Wednesday.

It marks Netflix’s first real foray into live sports after years of resistance. Sports, particularly the NFL, has proven to be the glue that keeps traditional TV intact — and has also proven to be a boost to streaming services.

Terms of the NFL deal were not disclosed, but people familiar with the matter said Netflix will pay in the ballpark of $75 million per game. Spokespeople for the NFL and Netflix declined to comment.

The streamer will hire its own announcers for the games and partner with existing production companies. Sarandos told CNBC he felt the NFL was the right fit because it matched the streamer’s event strategy, allowing Netflix to effectively own the day.
Streaming ad market

Netflix first introduced its ad-supported subscription plan in November 2022 as part of a wider effort to drive revenue amid slowing subscriber growth. That strategy included last year’s password-sharing crackdown.

Since then Netflix has been moving at breakneck speed to grow its ad-supported customer base, after admittedly being slow to join the pack. As part of that effort, Netflix got rid of its cheapest commercial-free plan in the U.S. and U.K.

The company said Wednesday that 40% of all signups in countries that have the ad tier available are for that cheaper plan. Netflix now has 270 million total subscribers.

For comparison, Disney’s flagship service Disney+ has 117.6 million global subscribers, while Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming unit, led by Max, has 99.6 million. Those two companies recently announced they would offer a streaming bundle in order to prevent subscribers from dropping subscriptions and help them to make their streaming businesses profitable.

Meanwhile, fledgling competitors are adding quarterly subscribers, but still trail. Comcast’s Peacock had 34 million customers as of the most recent quarter, while Paramount Global’s Paramount+ had 71 million.

Netflix’s monthly active ad-tier user figures come just a month after Netflix told investors it would no longer be providing quarterly subscriber number updates. The company said at the time that it was generating substantial profit and free cash flow and that its membership numbers were not the only factor in the company’s growth. It said the metric lost significance after it started to offer multiple price points for memberships.

Meanwhile, linear TV audiences continue to shrink and traditional media companies seek to gain a foothold in the streaming realm.

Legacy media companies have suffered in recent quarters as the advertising market collapsed due to fears of a recession and surging interest rates. Companies typically pullback on advertising spending during times of economic uncertainty.

But with a long runway ahead of it in the streaming business, Netflix has established itself as the leader in the segment as many other companies struggle to make their streaming platforms profitable.

Disney executives recently referred to Netflix as the “gold standard” of streaming, and also noted that there’s been additional supply in the ad market due to a competitor that recently entered the game, likely referencing Netflix.

Media companies recently reported quarterly earnings, which showed the advertising market for traditional TV is still soft, albeit improving. Digital and streaming advertising, however, has been on the rebound.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/15/netf...ion-users.html





Google One VPN Shuts Down on June 20, Pixel Updates Coming
Ben Schoon

Earlier this year Google announced that the Google One VPN would be shutting down and, now, we have a specific date.

In an update to a support page and the Google One app, it’s confirmed that the Google One VPN will no longer work as of June 20, 2024.

Previously in April, Google only said that the VPN would shut down in “the coming months.” The message first appeared a few days ago, and is now widely appearing in the Google One app on Android.

On a support page, Google details how to uninstall the VPN from macOS and Windows, as well as how to delete your VPN profile on Android and iOS. It’s noted that users will need to turn off the VPN from the One app under the “Benefits” tab.

Google Fi will continue to offer its VPN service, and Pixel phones are also getting updated VPN functionality. Pixel 7, 7 Pro, 7a, and Fold will get an update on June 3 – likely the monthly security patch – that brings “VPN by Google” which will be built into the OS. Pixel 8 and newer already have this implementation, though they will also presumably be updated to remove the connection to the Google One app.
https://9to5google.com/2024/05/14/go...shutdown-date/





AT&T Strikes Space Broadband Deal In Challenge To Musk’s SpaceX

• Deal with satellite company AST SpaceMobile runs through 2030
• Telecoms are racing to build out space-based wireless networks

Todd Shields

AT&T Inc. and satellite provider AST SpaceMobile Inc. are teaming up to provide wireless service from space — a challenge to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which struck a similar deal two years ago with T-Mobile US Inc.

AT&T and AST SpaceMobile formalized the partnership following an earlier testing period. They said on Wednesday that their agreement to build a space-based broadband network will run through 2030. AT&T head of network Chris Sambar will join the AST SpaceMobile board, deepening a relationship that dates back to at least 2018.

Sambar said in an interview that his team is confident in AST SpaceMobile’s technology, as demonstrated by the performance of the BlueWalker 3 test satellite. The relationship is moving from “loose partner to a strategic partner,” he said.

Wireless providers are in a race to offer connections for the world’s estimated 5 billion mobile phones when those devices are in remote areas beyond the reach of cell towers. For consumers, these services hold the promise of connectivity along rural roads and in places likes national parks. The service is typically marketed as a supplement to standard wireless coverage.

The new network will work with ordinary mobile phones, offering a level of convenience that’s lacking in current call-via-satellite services, which require the assistance of bulky specialized equipment.

“Space-based direct-to-mobile technology is designed to provide customers connectivity by complementing and integrating with our existing mobile network,” said Jeff McElfresh, AT&T’s chief operating officer, in a statement. “This agreement is the next step in our industry leadership to use emerging satellite technologies to provide services to consumers and in locations where connectivity was not previously feasible.”

Abel Avellan, AST SpaceMobile’s founder, chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement his company’s partnership with AT&T “has paved the way to unlock the potential of space-based cellular broadband directly to everyday smartphones.”

AST SpaceMobile this summer will send five satellites to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for launch into low Earth orbit. AT&T’s Sambar didn’t say when service to customers might begin.
“This will be a full data service, unlike anything you can get today from a low-Earth orbit constellation,” Sambar said.

T-Mobile is working with the low-Earth orbiting Starlink service from Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. The mobile carrier earlier said that its calling-via-satellite service could begin this year.

SpaceX has roughly 6,000 satellites aloft in low-Earth orbit — far more than any other company. The trajectory, with satellites circling near the Earth’s surface, allows communications signals to travel quickly between spacecraft and a terrestrial user.

SpaceX in January launched its first set of satellites capable of offering mobile phone service. The service “will allow for mobile phone connectivity anywhere on Earth,” Musk said in a post on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, though he added that technical limitations mean “it is not meaningfully competitive with existing terrestrial cellular networks.”
Apple Inc. in 2022 introduced an emergency satellite-messaging feature for its iPhones. The service lets users send SOS messages without a cellular connection.

— With assistance from Loren Grush
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ce=reddit_wall





Online Liability Protections have Outlived Usefulness, Top Lawmakers Say
Lauren Sforza

Two lawmakers are pushing back against online liability protections for Big Tech companies, saying the law has “outlived its usefulness.”

Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) co-authored an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday to rail against Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. The pair of lawmakers argued in favor of sunsetting Section 230, which largely protects social media companies from being sued over the content people post to their sites.

“Unfortunately, Section 230 is now poisoning the healthy online ecosystem it once fostered. Big Tech companies are exploiting the law to shield them from any responsibility or accountability as their platforms inflict immense harm on Americans, especially children. Congress’s failure to revisit this law is irresponsible and untenable,” the lawmakers wrote.

Section 230 has been under scrutiny from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) introduced legislation last year that would limit tech companies’ legal immunity under Section 230. However, that legislation has yet to advance after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) blocked it earlier this year.

Rodgers and Pallone argued that rolling back the protections on Big Tech companies would hold them accountable for the material posted on their platforms.

“These blanket protections have resulted in tech firms operating without transparency or accountability for how they manage their platforms. This means that a social-media company, for example, can’t easily be held responsible if it promotes, amplifies or makes money from posts selling drugs, illegal weapons or other illicit content,” they wrote.

The lawmakers said they were unveiling legislation to sunset Section 230. It would require Big Tech companies to work with Congress for 18 months to “evaluate and enact a new legal framework that will allow for free speech and innovation while also encouraging these companies to be good stewards of their platforms.”

“Our bill gives Big Tech a choice: Work with Congress to ensure the internet is a safe, healthy place for good, or lose Section 230 protections entirely,” the lawmakers wrote.
https://thehill.com/policy/technolog...dgers-pallone/





Winamp has announced that it is opening up its source code to enable collaborative development of its legendary player for Windows.
Press Release

Winamp has announced that on 24 September 2024, the application's source code will be open to developers worldwide.

Winamp will open up its code for the player used on Windows, enabling the entire community to participate in its development. This is an invitation to global collaboration, where developers worldwide can contribute their expertise, ideas, and passion to help this iconic software evolve.

Winamp has become much more than just a music player. It embodies a unique digital culture, aesthetic, and user experience. With this initiative to open the source code, Winamp is taking the next step in its history, allowing its users to contribute directly to improving the product.

"This is a decision that will delight millions of users around the world. Our focus will be on new mobile players and other platforms. We will be releasing a new mobile player at the beginning of July. Still, we don't want to forget the tens of millions of users who use the software on Windows and will benefit from thousands of developers' experience and creativity. Winamp will remain the owner of the software and will decide on the innovations made in the official version," explains Alexandre Saboundjian, CEO of Winamp.

Interested developers can now make themselves known at the following address: about.winamp.com/free-llama
https://about.winamp.com/press/artic...en-source-code





Russian Cinemas Resort to Pirating Hollywood as Domestic Movies Flop
Isabel van Brugen

Russian cinemas have returned to the post-Ukraine war practice of showing pirated screenings of Hollywood movies after a recent effort to push domestic films flopped.

After major U.S. movie studios said in 2022 that they would be pulling out of the country in response to the war in Ukraine, many Russian movie theaters illegally screened pirated copies of Hollywood movies, coupled with domestically produced short films.

In a bid to support domestic movies, the Russian Association of Cinema Owners (RACO) asked that cinema chains stop this practice from April 18 to May 12.

However, domestic films failed to perform despite the initiative, and a number of theaters have returned to showing Hollywood movies, Russian publication RBC reported on Wednesday.

"For the first 12 days of May, with a large number of days off and the absence of alternative content, the collections [at the box office] are very sad—1.1 billion rubles [about $12,000]," Pavel Ponikarovsky, a RACO council member and the head of Lumen Film, a cinema chain in Russia, told the publication.

In April, the company "recorded a loss for the first time in several months," Ponikarovsky said.

He said that in March, when cinemas weren't limited to showing only domestic films, his company earned 4.2 billion rubles [about $46,000] from Russian movies. In April, this figure fell to 2.3 billion [about $25,200].
https://www.newsweek.com/russian-cin...ctions-1900997
















Until next week,

- js.



















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