P2P-Zone  

Go Back   P2P-Zone > Peer to Peer
FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Peer to Peer The 3rd millenium technology!

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Old 04-11-20, 07:10 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
JackSpratts's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: New England
Posts: 10,013
Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - November 7th, ’20

Since 2002


































November 7th, 2020




Brazil Seizes Sites Pirating US TV Shows
Sarah Coble

The United States and Brazil have teamed up to take down multiple websites and apps that were selling pirated versions of American-made movies and TV shows.

In a joint effort dubbed "Operation 404," seizure warrants were executed against three domain names of commercial websites engaged in the illegal reproduction and distribution of copyrighted works.

The federal law enforcement operation targeted online services that provided illegal copies of television shows and movies owned by American rights holders to audiences in Brazil and beyond.

According to the affidavit in support of the warrants, each of the three domains—megatorrentshd.biz, comandotorrentshd.tv, and bludv.tv—offered “free access to copyrighted content to website visitors all over the world, including released and pre-release feature-length movies and television shows.”

Megatorrentshd.biz featured roughly 335 different television series and approximately 84 navigation pages, with around 20 film titles per page.

While Comandotorrentshd.tv displayed movies and television shows, with approximately 10 titles per page, distributed throughout around 124 navigation pages, Bludv.tv offered users a choice of around 9,500 different entertainment titles.

Operation 404 was coordinated with Brazil’s Secretariat of Integrated Operations (SEOPI) at Brazil’s Ministry of Justice and Public Security (MoJPS).

“By seizing these domain names, law enforcement has disrupted the unlawful reproduction and distribution of thousands of pirated television shows and movies, while also cutting off the profits to unlawful actors willing to exploit the hard work of others for their own personal gain,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Rabbitt of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

“The Justice Department, together with our international law enforcement partners, will continue to take enforcement actions to identify, seize, and disable these sites wherever they exist around the globe.”

The federal government now has custody of the domains. Users who attempt to access the seized sites will now be confronted with a seizure banner and a notice that informs them that willful copyright infringement is a federal crime.

“Illegal streaming is not a victimless crime,” said Derek Benner, executive associate director for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). “It harms the content creators of the shows that you know and love, and feeds a criminal enterprise whose profits support organized criminal endeavors."
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.co...irating-us-tv/





Asking Microsoft to Resign from the RIAA Over youtube-dl Takedown Demand
Denver Gingerich

We learned on Friday that GitHub removed youtube-dl's primary collaboration forum and code repository from their site, which had been hosted at https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl. The action was in response to a DMCA Section 512 notice that the RIAA sent demanding removal of youtube-dl, which was released and distributed via GitHub under a liberal FOSS license. In the notice, the RIAA cites DMCA Section 1201 (the removing digital restrictions section) as justification for youtube-dl's removal.

We believe that youtube-dl has substantial non-infringing uses. There are many, but to name a few, youtube-dl has the following important features:

• enable users to watch YouTube videos without installing any non-free software
• watch YouTube at different speeds (including speeds YouTube does not offer) — an important feature for accessibility!
• change the YouTube video quality setting manually when the user is more aware of bandwidth issues than YouTube's non-human algorithms
• ability to download (and then, with other software, modify and reuse) freely licensed videos, such as those licensed under CC-BY
• various aids for journalists, including fact-checking, video analysis, and bandwidth saving

We realize Microsoft, a paying member of the RIAA, has left themselves stuck between their industry association's abuses of the law and the needs of FOSS projects for which they provide infrastructure. While under current law (which we object to), complying with the takedown notice is admittedly the fastest way to limit Microsoft's liability, we view Microsoft's membership in the RIAA as a much bigger liability to our community, now that Microsoft controls GitHub. We call on Microsoft to resign from the RIAA and remove their conflict of interest in this matter. This is an important opportunity for Microsoft to stand up for the values of software freedom.

If you work at Microsoft (including for its GitHub subsidiary), we call on you to petition your employer to resign immediately from the RIAA. We suggest that you raise these concerns directly with your manager or other management, or (even better) by starting an internal email petition with other employees.

To build a strong community of FOSS developers, we need confidence that our software hosting platforms will fight for our rights. While we'd prefer that Microsoft would simply refuse to kowtow to institutions like the RIAA and reject their DMCA requests, we believe in the alternative Microsoft can take the easy first step of resigning from RIAA in protest. We similarly call on all RIAA members who value FOSS to also resign.
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/...aa-youtube-dl/





Spotify Finds a Pay-for-Play Workaround
Rhett Jones

As far as big tech media companies go, Spotify’s algorithms have largely avoided scrutiny. But we’re entering a new era for the music streaming giant’s relationship with the algos. People are slowly gaining awareness of Spotify’s potential for emotional surveillance—a model for personality profiling that does for music what Facebook did for friends. And on Monday, the company announced a new initiative that offers artists the chance to pay their way into automated recommendations.

In a carefully worded blog post, Spotify is framing its latest move as a test that will give artists more “input” into the recommendation algorithms that populate personalized playlists with fresh tracks. The company writes that its algorithms take “into account thousands of types of signals: what you’re listening to and when, which songs you’re adding to your playlists, the listening habits of people who have similar tastes, and much more.” Today, Spotify is adding a new signal to the mix: $$$.

Artists uploading new tracks to Spotify will be able to choose “music that’s a priority for them” and in exchange for accepting a “promotional recording royalty rate,” Spotify’s algorithms might just bless them with exposure. The company isn’t making promises, it’s only offering an opportunity. There’s no guarantee of placement in playlists and the reduced royalty rate is only applied to songs that end up being served through the new recommendation system.

What is a “promotional recording royalty rate,” exactly? Spotify did not immediately respond to our request for comment, but a spokesperson for the service told the Verge that they aren’t making the rate public while it’s in testing and Spotify will “calibrate to make sure that the widest group of artists and labels can find success.”

It’s not surprising that Spotify is being extra careful around this subject. Pay-for-play in the radio industry is illegal without disclosing the sponsored nature of a song’s appearance in a normal broadcast. That rules of the web are less clearly defined, but the kind of strategy that Spotify is outlining ensures there’s no direct payment and no guarantee of extra exposure—just some algorithmic hocus pocus until the results start to come in.

The biggest short-term risk is that this approach causes more damage to the relationship between Spotify and musicians. A new campaign finds the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers calling on the company to pay artists at least $0.01 per stream of a song. Spotify doesn’t list its artist payment rates, but analysts have found that it comes out to about $0.00318 per stream.

And, sure, let’s not leave out the possibility that artists use this service, like it, and everyone wins. But it’s still an ominous sign that Spotify is experimenting with methods that, by their nature, make recommendations less organic.
https://gizmodo.com/spotify-finds-a-...und-1845554656





Movie Piracy is on the Rise as Studios Bypass Theatrical Releases
Richard Chess and Bloomberg

Along with stalling film production, shutting theaters and throwing release schedules into chaos, the coronavirus pandemic has brought still another woe to Hollywood: a rise in movie piracy.

Studios have tried to salvage some of their big-budget films this year by selling them through streaming services for $20 to $30. But that business model has made it easier for pirates to illegally copy and share new releases, with an estimated loss of millions of potential customers for the production companies.

Unlicensed downloads of Walt Disney Co.’s most-recent picture, “Mulan,” have outpaced those of other movies since its Sept. 4 U.S. debut on the Disney+ streaming service, according to TorrentFreak, a website that tracks pirating activity on public servers. Compared with “The Lion King,” which came out last year in theaters, “Mulan” saw about twice as many downloads in the days and weeks after its release.

When a traditional movie is released in theaters, thieves struggle to obtain high-quality recordings of it, often resorting to bootlegging with a hidden camcorder. With digital releases, pirates use technologies not available to most consumers to make perfect copies quickly.

The high cost of legitimate first-run streaming movies may also be dissuading some people. A licensed version of “Mulan” costs $30, on top of a $7-a-month subscription to Disney+. “Trolls World Tour,” from Comcast Corp.’s Universal Pictures, started streaming in April for $20.

Disney and Universal didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Limelight Networks Inc., which provides digital distribution of entertainment content and applies antipiracy measures, has seen piracy “going up dramatically” in recent months, Chief Executive Officer Robert Lento said.

“We spend more time talking to our customers about it now than ever before,” Lento said.

Adding Watermarks

The most common technique to limit piracy is by adding watermarks that help trace which customer originally received the movie. When content is found on a pirating website, the watermarks can be used to ban the original purchaser. But that method doesn’t always work, and it hasn’t stopped the yearslong surge in piracy.

Government efforts have also been unsuccessful at preventing viewers from accessing pirated content. Pascal Metral, vice president of legal affairs at Nagra Kudelski, another digital-distribution company, said studios are most concerned with shutting down the big players who move films for profit. Attempts to go after casual users could alienate more customers than it’s worth, Metral said.

What Bloomberg Intelligence Says

“The seemingly muted performance of Disney’s ‘Mulan’ in the premium digital-film-distribution window raises questions about the viability of skipping a theatrical release in favor of streaming, further vexing the decision-making for studios delaying blockbusters like ‘Black Widow’ and ‘No Time to Die.’ ‘Mulan’ appears to have fallen short of the 10 million digital buys needed to break even on a $300 million production and marketing budget, based on our scenario analysis.”

--Geetha Ranganathan, media analyst

While movies on peer-to-peer networks are free, those files often contain malware. Consequently, an entire industry has been propped up that offers reliable high-quality streaming of copyrighted works for a low monthly fee or advertisements. Streaming videos resolves most of the security risks.

Under scrutiny in Congress is one loophole of copyright law that lets streaming pirates off with only a misdemeanor offense, said Frank Cullen Jr., vice president of intellectual-property policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center. Other types of pirating where the content is republished as a file is punishable as a felony.

Closing the loophole has been discussed since at least 2011, although congressional talks are still ongoing, Cullen said.

‘Up-to-Date Penalties’

Karyn A. Temple, then-director of the U.S. Copyright Office, last year wrote to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee to urge the adoption of “up-to-date criminal penalties that are appropriate to the offenses and the digital world in which we operate.” Temple is now general counsel of the Motion Picture Association.

Last month, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched an ad campaign in conjunction with several industry trade groups. The focus is on risks to digital security and fraud when accessing pirated content. At a press conference, ICE officials highlighted the economic risks, noting that piracy costs the economy more than $29 billion each year.

“Clearly the rise of digital streaming presents new challenges when it comes to copyright protection for both the content creative industry and of course law enforcement,” said Derek Benner, executive associate director for Homeland Security Investigations.

Not all pirates go unchecked. In August, the Justice Department charged three men for their involvement in a disc-based piracy ring that distributed nearly every movie released by major production studios. The losses are estimated at tens of millions of dollars.
https://fortune.com/2020/10/06/movie...irus-pandemic/





Thinking in Print: Pulling Charlie Brown from Basic TV is a Mistake
Charlene Pepiot

The year 2020 claims yet another tradition, as for the first time in 54 years, the iconic Peanut’s special “It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” will be pulled from regular television and will air exclusively on the Apple TV+ streaming service—along with the other Peanuts holiday specials. Though Apple is allowing those without a subscription to view the “Great Pumpkin” free for a brief time, this is no substitute for airing on basic cable.

While Apple TV+ is one of many streaming services, basic cable is meant for everyone. The 1992 Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act required operators to offer a basic programming service for all Americans containing local channels and major stations such as ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS. This cheap package allows for viewers to still be able to get educational programming and news stations without the hefty cable fee.

The old plank of wood with bent coat hangers my family used to get this basic programming for years wasn’t pretty, and granted, on rainy days, we had to stand in different corners of the room to get a reception, but we still had access to those channels. The Peanuts holiday specials were something my family crowded around to watch every year—and my parents did the same as children too.

Having these iconic shorts pulled after airing on basic cable for the past five decades will be a disappointment to the many other families that consider these cartoons part of their holiday traditions. Streaming them whenever on Apple TV+ isn’t the same as clearing your schedule and gathering on the couch to count down the seconds until the program airs on television—and the 44 million Americans without internet won’t be able to watch at all. Kids 10 years from now will not have the same emotional attachment to these cartoons as those who watched them on basic cable every year, and that’s going to hurt the Peanuts legacy in the long run.

As more and more streaming services gain exclusive rights to shows, people become alienated. Paying for HBO allows you to watch trending shows like “Lovecraft Country,” but you’re still excluded from conversations about the Netflix exclusive “Stranger Things” or Amazon Prime’s “The Boys”.

Unable to pay for all these monthly subscriptions, many people have begun pirating media. Piracy has grown substantially over the years, with approximately 23.8% of the internet's bandwidth being used for piracy and the annual global revenue losses being between $40 and $97.1 billion for movies alone. Upon googling “Watch a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Online”, my first results were for Vimeo and YouTube—both pirated versions. It was only after scrolling down that Amazon appeared so I could buy it legally.

Computer viruses and busty-anime-girl ads aside, pirating hurts franchises by not showing networks an accurate level of audience interest and cheats the hardworking creators out of revenue. With the average writer making roughly 0.65% - 0.7% of receipts per digital download and corporations more willing to cancel a show not bringing in the numbers than ever, it’s no wonder the executive producer of “Hannibal” blames pirating for the iconic horror series cancelation.

Locking the Peanuts specials behind Apple TV+ might seem like a great way to reel in consumers, but in reality, it will tarnish the classic cartoon’s legacy for future generations and encourage the harmful practice of pirating media.

To quote Charlie Brown while he’s still relevant—good grief!
https://www.thepostathens.com/articl...s-apple-tv-abc





I Was Wrong: AT&T Is Struggling Just to Give HBO Max Away

Interest in the young streaming service is suspiciously weak, even among consumers who can get it for free.
James Brumley

Roughly a month before the May launch of HBO Max, I cautioned AT&T (NYSE:T) investors to keep their expectations for the new streaming service in check. My chief concern was its price. At $14.99 per month, HBO Max would have the highest monthly starting price of any streaming video on demand (SVOD) platform. Moreover, a huge swath of existing AT&T customers would be getting it free, therefore not adding any incremental revenue.

I was wrong. I wasn't wrong about the price being a challenge, to be clear. My error was in misjudging the depth of the difficulty in selling HBO Max, or even giving it away. As of the end of September, only 8.6 million consumers had activated HBO Max even though more than 38 million people may be eligible to enjoy it at no cost. Only 3.6 million of those activations were "retail" purchases from consumers outside of AT&T's customer ecosystem or AT&T customers not eligible for free HBO Max.

That's more than a little concerning for a service that's been around for over four months now, and has already seen a generous discount to only $11.99 per month.

Lagging rivals in a big way

For perspective, streaming service Peacock from Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) reported about 15 million users as of mid-September, just since its public launch in July and its private launch to Comcast's cable customers in April. Walt Disney's (NYSEIS) Disney+ was serving a little over 60 million subscribers as of early August following its launch in November of last year. Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), the oldest and biggest streaming name, ended its third quarter with 195 million memberships.

In its defense, HBO Max is new: roughly the same age as Peacock. Although Peacock clearly has more users, streaming app aggregator and streaming media research outfit Reelgood suggests most of its viewers are plugging into the free, ad-supported version.

Disney is also arguably undercharging Disney+ watchers, asking only $6.99 per month for access to the bulk of the entertainment giant's classics as well as new stuff, including Disney+ exclusives like The Mandalorian and the film Artemis Fowl.

It should also be noted HBO Max isn't supported on Roku devices or Fire TV hardware from Amazon, limiting its prospective reach.

A whole bunch of people could still get HBO Max for free, though. They just aren't.

Most free users are saying "no thanks"

The list of consumers eligible for free access includes those paying for HBO through their cable provider like Comcast or Charter's cable brand Spectrum. Customers of streaming cable platforms like Disney's Hulu+Live and AT&T's TV Now that also offer HBO are also able to view HBO Max for free. That puts the company's potential cable or virtual-cable market size at just over 38 million consumers, according to AT&T's most recent quarterly report.

Free access doesn't end with TV players, though. Most of AT&T's wireless plans under its Unlimited umbrella also give those wireless customers free access to HBO Max. They just have to activate the option online.

AT&T doesn't disclose how many of its wireless customers are these Unlimited customers. But it does report nearly 75 million postpaid wireless subscribers as of the end of last month. Even if only a relatively small number of those consumers are on so-called Unlimited plans, that's still millions of people who aren't turning on their free access to the nascent streaming service.

The takeaway

It's easy to draw your one, favorite conclusion about the tepid early interest in HBO Max, whether that's pricing, limited availability, logistics hurdles (like logging in to sign up), or competitors like Netflix and Peacock just doing a better job at getting consumers' attention. I'm not on board with any singular explanation, though. Rather, I suspect a combination of those factors are presenting themselves as a headwind for HBO Max. This mix of headaches makes the solution even more elusive for AT&T.

Regardless, I'll reiterate what I said months ago about HBO Max: Even at its target of 50 million customers by 2025, HBO Max isn't a game-changer for AT&T. Assuming each of those consumers is paying $14.99 per month (and most of them will actually likely be free users), that's still only $9 billion in revenue per year for a company that generated $181 billion worth of business in fiscal 2019.

HBO Max's real strength was instead always going to be as a sales and retention tool, but I guess I was wrong in that regard as well. Given the numbers thus far, even that prospect is now in question.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/...-give-hbo-max/





AT&T Considers Selling Significant Minority Stake in DirecTV, AT&T Now and U-Verse Pay-TV Operations, Sources Say
Alex Sherman

• AT&T is considering selling significant minority stake in DirecTV, AT&T Now and U-Verse pay-TV operations. Final bids are due in early December, sources say.
• Apollo Management among other private equity firms to submit final bids in December.
• Deal could value DirecTV at less than $15 billion after AT&T acquired DirecTV for $67 billion with debt about five years ago.

AT&T is in discussions with private-equity firms, including Apollo Management, to sell a significant minority stake in its DirecTV, AT&T Now and U-Verse pay-TV businesses in a complicated transaction that would shift legacy assets off the wireless carrier’s balance sheet, according to people familiar with the matter.

Under the terms of the proposed deal, AT&T would retain majority economic ownership of the businesses, and would maintain ownership of U-verse infrastructure, including plants and fiber. The buyer would control the pay-TV distribution operations and consolidate the business on its books. The deal could include 30% to 49% of the combined pay-TV distribution businesses, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.

Final bids are due in early December, the people said. While valuations haven’t been determined, a deal may value DirecTV at less than $15 billion including debt, two of the people said. AT&T acquired DirecTV in 2015 for $67 billion with debt. A deal will not include DirecTV’s Latin American business, the people said.

AT&T ended the third quarter with about 17 million legacy TV subscribers (DirecTV and U-verse combined), down more than 16% from a year earlier. AT&T Now customers fell 40% to 683,000.
watch now

AT&T has been under pressure from investors, including activist hedge fund Elliott Management, to divest assets after acquiring DirecTV and then spending more than $100 billion on Time Warner. The proposed deal structure would give AT&T cash to pay down debt while keeping the equity check low enough for a fund, such as Apollo, to execute the deal itself, two of the people said.

AT&T has pivoted away from legacy pay-TV since acquiring DirecTV, focusing instead on adding HBO Max streaming subscribers. The satellite TV provider has hemorrhaged millions of subscribers in recent years as customers have fled to cable companies that also offer high-speed broadband or cancelled traditional bundled TV altogether.

“AT&T is trying to do something very hard,” Craig Moffett, a telecommunications analyst at MoffettNathanson, wrote in a note to clients after AT&T’s third quarter earnings. “They have to manage a portfolio of declining businesses by slashing their costs, while still not hurting their cash generation prospects too badly, while simultaneously finding a way to sustain a dividend, pay down debt enough to placate rating agencies, and, all the while, invest in the few growth areas they’ve got that are worthy (wireless, HBO Max, and fiber-based broadband).”

Spokespeople for AT&T and Apollo declined to comment.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/03/att-...-business.html





The Tech Antitrust Problem No One is Talking About

Americans pay more for broadband, have fewer choices than consumers in other countries.
Tom Simonite

After years of building political pressure for antitrust scrutiny of major tech companies, this month Congress and the US government delivered. The House Antitrust Subcommittee released a report accusing Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook of monopolistic behavior. The Department of Justice filed a complaint against Google alleging the company prevents consumers from sampling other search engines.

The new fervor for tech antitrust has so far overlooked an equally obvious target: US broadband providers. “If you want to talk about a history of using gatekeeper power to harm competitors, there are few better examples,” says Gigi Sohn, a fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy.

Sohn and other critics of the four companies that dominate US broadband—Verizon, Comcast, Charter Communications, and AT&T—argue that antitrust intervention has been needed for years to lower prices and widen Internet access. Analysis by Microsoft last year concluded that as many as 162.8 million Americans do not use the Internet at broadband speeds (as many as 42.8 million lack meaningful broadband), and New America’s Open Technology Institute recently found that US consumers pay, on average, more than those in Europe, Asia, or elsewhere in North America.

The coronavirus pandemic has given America’s gaping digital divide more bite. Children without reliable Internet have been forced to scavenge bandwidth outside libraries and Taco Bells to complete virtual school assignments. In April, a Pew Research Center survey found that one in five parents with children whose schools had been closed by coronavirus believed it likely they would not be able to complete schoolwork at home because of an inadequate Internet connection.

Such problems are arguably more material than some of the antitrust issues that have recently won attention in Washington. The Department of Justice complaint against Google argues that the company’s payments to Apple to set its search engine as the default on the iPhone make it too onerous for consumers to choose a competing search provider. For tens of millions of Americans, changing broadband providers is even more difficult—it requires moving. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which promotes community broadband projects, recently estimated from Federal Communications Commission data that some 80 million Americans can only get high-speed broadband service from one provider.

“That is quite intentional on the part of cable operators,” says Susan Crawford, a professor at Harvard Law School. “These companies are extracting rent from Americans based on their monopoly positions.”

The United States has suffered, and broken up, telecom monopolies in the past. AT&T had a government-sanctioned monopoly for much of the 20th century, until it was broken up in 1984. The 1996 Telecom Act included rules for phone providers aimed at encouraging competition, but it excluded “information services,” leaving broadband companies freer rein.

“Much more could come to the surface”

Crawford and other industry critics say cable companies have used that freedom to erode choice through mergers and have deployed a deep bench of lobbyists to steer lawmakers to lighten oversight and ban cities from building their own networks. Cities that have done so, like Wilson, North Carolina, generally have higher speeds at lower prices and less restrictive terms, Crawford says. Comcast has spent more than $10 million on lobbying in Washington this year, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. Only two other companies, Amazon and Facebook, have spent more.

US Internet providers say the American broadband market is doing just fine and that the digital divide is closing. Business in this pandemic year is good: US providers signed on 2.4 million additional subscribers from January through June as school, work, and social life shifted online.

A Comcast spokesperson said the company is not a monopoly and competes with at least one other high-speed provider “in almost every area we operate.” Charter says it spent $25 billion from 2017 through 2019 and made its service available to millions of new homes. AT&T and Verizon directed WIRED to the industry group USTelecom, which recently published an analysis of FCC data showing that prices for residential broadband have fallen over the past five years.

Comcast and Charter cited an Economist Intelligence Unit report paid for by Facebook that ranks the US first in the world for Internet affordability. The ranking is based on the cost of mobile and broadband services, as well as the cost of smartphones, and the full methodology is unclear. A Wall Street Journal analysis of 3,300 broadband bills last year found broadly similar pricing to that reported by New America and concluded that prices were higher in places with less competition.

The Department of Justice and House Antitrust Subcommittee did not respond to requests for comment. Sohn of Georgetown, a former FCC staffer, says she has spoken about the broadband market to subcommittee staff and is hopeful they will take an interest.

Federal oversight of US Internet providers has dwindled under the Trump administration. In 2017 the agency abandoned net neutrality rules, which required ISPs to treat traffic from different sources equally. The Government Accountability Office and two of the agency’s own commissioners have questioned the FCC’s methodology for measuring broadband access, saying it paints an artificially rosy picture of the US market. The agency had allowed ISPs to count an entire census block as served by broadband access if service is available to a single resident, even if that resident has not signed up, but has since voted to require ISPs to submit geospatial maps.

If Joe Biden wins the White House, he is expected to try to restore the FCC’s net neutrality rules. The Democratic platform also includes promises to have the agency scrutinize broadband pricing and to prevent states from blocking municipal broadband networks.

Joshua Stager, a senior policy counsel at New America's Open Technology Institute, would also expect a Democratic-controlled Congress to consider expanding subsidized broadband programs during the pandemic.

Making US broadband significantly more competitive would require larger and more coordinated action by the White House and Congress. Options worth considering include reversing some of the acquisitions that turned Comcast and others into nation-spanning giants and mandating that companies allow competitors to use their networks, as is common in Europe, Stager says.

Those would be more notable antitrust actions than seen from the US government in a while, but Stager believes the case is there. “The backlog of evidence is certainly there, and with increasing pressure on the networks, much more could come to the surface,” he says.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...talking-about/





Amazon’s Surveillance Drones Violate FCC Rules. It's Time To Enforce Them

Home surveillance devices like Amazon Ring are already illegal, but the Republican-led FCC has done nothing to enforce its own rules.
Albert Fox Cahn, Evan Greer

Albert Fox Cahn is the founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) at the Urban Justice Center and a fellow at the Engelberg Center for Innovation Law & Policy at N.Y.U. School of Law.

Evan Greer is an activist, musician, and writer based in Boston. She is the deputy director of the viral digital rights group Fight for the Future, and writes regularly for the Washington Post, The Guardian, Buzzfeed, and Wired.


The walls may not yet have ears, but nearly everything else in the typical American household does. With digital assistants and a growing list of increasingly invasive “internet of things” devices, we’re constantly being monitored by the likes of Siri, Alexa, Ring, and Google. These constant companions have not only become more prevalent, they’re also becoming more powerful.

Amazon’s newest home spy tool, Ring Always Home Cam, is an indoor camera-enabled drone. The flying robot independently dislodges from its base to investigate noises or periodically patrol your house when it senses no one is home. While a static camera can be controlled, this Ring-enabled drone will use Amazon's home surveillance platform to record everyone and everything it sees.

We often think of a Big Brother mass-surveillance state being imposed by governments, when in reality we are building it ourselves with the devices we willingly purchase. What many people don't realize is that these invasive products are already illegal in the US—it's just that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hasn't been enforcing its own rules.

Under an FCC rule from 1989, people are barred from using devices capable of “overhearing or recording the private conversations of others unless such use is authorized by all of the parties engaging in the conversation.” In short: you can’t install your own wiretap.

The rule was part of a broader set of reforms created to regulate the use of unlicensed wireless spectrum. This is the part of the airwaves that is reserved for low-powered consumer purposes, walled off from the TV, radio, and other licensed parts of the spectrum to prevent potential interference. In the late 1980s, the FCC realized they needed to create rules for the growing array of consumer devices that used wireless spectrum, but they couldn’t have possibly imagined how we’d be using that spectrum 31 years later. Instead of using that slice of the airwaves for walkie talkies and RC cars, we’ve built a gargantuan collection of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi-enabled devices that are constantly watching and listening to us—and sometimes providing data to the police.

The law may be old, but it’s clear: you can’t use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to operate a home wiretap. Of course, this is exactly what devices like Ring do. And as home surveillance devices become even more widespread, even more people are being tracked without their consent.

It’s not just Wi-Fi-enabled surveillance cameras, but the growing array of personal assistant devices like Alexa that violate this law as well.

The harmful impacts of these devices are numerous. Abusers and stalkers already use them to monitor the whereabouts of their spouses and children. Hackers have broken into home surveillance cameras like Ring to harass kids and threaten families. The devices leak customers’ WiFi usernames and passwords, leaving them vulnerable to cybercrimes. Marginalized people are also disproportionately surveilled by these products, enabling a culture of paranoia and racial profiling that further subjects Black, Indigenous and people of color to mass criminalization and incarceration.

It’s time the FCC do something about these illegal devices. And if the FCC is going to start anywhere, it should start with Amazon, the tech giant that has sought to corner the market on Wi-Fi enabled home surveillance through it’s Ring subsidiary. Ring’s entire purpose is to record, track, and analyze anyone the camera comes in contact with. Any unsuspecting neighbor, visitor, or delivery person who has a conversation within earshot of a Ring camera is a target.

These tools are invasive and dangerous. They collect huge volumes of information––everything from car license plates to peoples’ faces—and expose our most intimate moments to potential hacks. These recordings are easily accessed by police departments, despite there being hardly any evidence that they help prevent crime.

According to a 2019 survey, 63% of people find smart home devices creepy and 75% don’t trust them. But consumers also don’t feel like they have a way to avoid this invasive tech. After all, buying a new refrigerator or TV, it increasingly means being subjected to the corporate surveillance tech that's built right in.

Under its current chairman, Ajit Pai, the Republican-led FCC has stood by while these devices proliferate and track our every move, despite having the authority to stop it. With the upcoming election, a potential change in administration could mean a new FCC chair that actually cares about our privacy. If that happens, getting the FCC to enforce this rule should be a top priority for privacy advocates and regular consumers.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3vv...o-enforce-them





'This is Revolutionary’: New Online Bookshop Unites Indies to Rival Amazon

Bookshop.org, which launched in the US earlier this year, has accelerated UK plans and goes online this week in partnership with more than 130 shops
Alison Flood

It is being described as a “revolutionary moment in the history of bookselling”: a socially conscious alternative to Amazon that allows readers to buy books online while supporting their local independent bookseller. And after a hugely successful launch in the US, it is open in the UK from today.

Bookshop was dreamed up by the writer and co-founder of Literary Hub, Andy Hunter. It allows independent bookshops to create their own virtual shopfront on the site, with the stores receiving the full profit margin – 30% of the cover price – from each sale. All customer service and shipping are handled by Bookshop and its distributor partners, with titles offered at a small discount and delivered within two to three days.

“It’s been a wild ride,” said Hunter, who launched the site in the US in January. “Five weeks into what we thought was going to be a six-month period of refining and improving and making small changes, Covid-19 hit and then suddenly we were doing massive business.”

Initially starting with 250 bookshops, more than 900 stores have now signed up in the US. “We went from selling $50,000 (£38,000) worth of books in all of February, to selling $50,000 a day in March, then $150,000 a day in April,” said Hunter. By June, Bookshop sold $1m worth of books in a day. The platform has now raised more than $7.5m (£5.7m) for independent bookshops across the US.

“We were four employees plus me, working at home, getting up as early as we could and going to bed as late as we could, trying to make it all work. It was a real white-knuckle ride,” said Hunter. “But it was extremely gratifying because the whole time we were getting messages from stores saying, ‘Thank God you came along, you’ve paid our rent, you’ve paid our health insurance this year.’ If you’re going to have to work in insane circumstances and with huge amounts of stress, it’s good to be doing it in something you feel good about.”

Bookshop is a B Corporation, created with the mission “to benefit the public good by contributing to the welfare of the independent literary community”. Rules state that it can never be sold to a major US retailer, including Amazon.

Hunter believes the reason for Bookshop’s quick success is readers’ fondness for their local booksellers. “Bookstores have been in trouble for a while because of Amazon’s growth, but this pandemic has really accelerated it. Amazon has gotten much more powerful, while there are 100-year-old stores that are hanging on for survival,” he said. “I think we were so successful because enough people were conscious of that, and wanted to rally around around their beloved bookstores, because they care about the world that we emerge from this pandemic into.”

Hunter had been planning to launch Bookshop in the UK in 2021 or 2022. But after seeing the success of the platform in the US, shops, publishers and authors in the UK asked him to step up the timeline. Bookshop.org launches in the UK on Monday, with more than 130 British bookshops already signed up and 200 expected by the end of the year. The UK arm of the company will be run by managing director Nicole Vanderbilt, the former international vice-president of Etsy.

“If you don’t get there before Christmas, and give people a way to support their stores and buy their gift books, then it’s gonna be really catastrophic for shops, which is why we’ve scrambled all hands on deck to get it up,” said Hunter.

Bookshops make no financial investment, with all customer service and shipping handled by Bookshop, and, in the UK, by distributor Gardners. The browsing experience is intended to “mirror the joy of discovering a new book in a physical bookshop”, says the company, with experts, rather than algorithms, doing the curating. Each independent that joins has its own “storefront” page, where customers can browse virtual tables of recommended books. For example, a user can see what the owner of The Shetland Times Bookshop (“Britain’s most northerly general bookshop, situated over 60 degrees north and closer to Norway than to London”) personally recommends, in lists such as “wonderfully funny picture books I’ve read to the bookshop staff”, and “books to help you take life in your stride”.

British booksellers and publishers have welcomed its arrival. “Being an independent bookseller has for so many years been such a David v Goliath battle that it feels slightly disconcerting when someone at last hands you a bazooka instead of you peppering away with your slingshot,” said Andy Rossiter of Rossiter Books in Ross-on-Wye.

Philip Gwyn Jones, publisher at Picador, described Bookshop as “a positively revolutionary moment in the history of bookselling in the UK, and in the evolution of the relationship between writers and readers”.

“It’s hard for us to compete with someone that’s got its own warehouse and sells books sometimes at a loss, or at very small profit margins. We just can’t do that. So it’s nice that Bookshop.org is going to rival Amazon in a way we couldn’t on our own or even collectively,” said Georgia Eckert, of Imagined Things bookshop in Harrogate. “You’ve got to have the reach, a site that’s big enough, run by a proper team of people dedicated to it. We’re all running our own businesses and haven’t got time to be doing that.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...o-rival-amazon





Kim Dotcom Can be Extradited to US But Can Also Appeal
BBC

A long-running effort to extradite file-sharing site mogul Kim Dotcom to the US has been left in limbo after a Supreme Court decision in New Zealand.

The court ruled that he can be returned to the US to face copyright charges - but has also overturned another lower court's decision, effectively granting him the right to appeal.

Mr Dotcom himself described the ruling as a "mixed bag".

The legal wrangling is likely to continue.

The court ruled that Kim Dotcom and his three co-accused were liable for extradition on 12 of the 13 counts the FBI is seeking to charge them with.

But it also ruled that the Court of Appeal had erred in dismissing judicial review requests from Mr Dotcom, and granted him the right to continue with them.

The FBI alleges that Megaupload facilitated copyright infringement on a huge scale, but Mr Dotcom's lawyers argue that the website was never meant to encourage copyright breaches.

If he is extradited, he faces a lengthy jail term.

Controversial figure

In response to the ruling, he tweeted a statement from his lawyers which read: "For the Dotcom team, and especially for Kim and his family, it is a mixed bag."

"There is no final determination that he is to go to the United States. However, the court has not accepted our important copyright argument and in our view has made significant determinations that will have an immediate and chilling impact on the internet."

The controversial figure founded file-sharing site Megaupload in 2005, and made millions of dollars from advertising and premium subscriptions.

At one point, he boasted that it was responsible for 4% of internet traffic.

In 2012, he was arrested when armed police stormed his Auckland home in a dramatic dawn raid, which was later to become the subject of its own legal enquiry, when Mr Dotcom sued for damages.

A district court in New Zealand ruled in 2015 that he could be extradited, but a series of appeals and judicial reviews followed.

Lawyers for Mr Dotcom argued that his actions did not amount to criminal offences in New Zealand, and were therefore not extraditable.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54809226

















Until next week,

- js.



















Current Week In Review





Recent WiRs -

October 31st, October 24th, October 17th, October 10th

Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles, press releases, comments, questions etc. in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. The right to publish all remarks is reserved.


"The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public."
- Hugo Black
__________________
Thanks For Sharing
JackSpratts is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - November 24th, '12 JackSpratts Peer to Peer 0 21-11-12 09:20 AM
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - July 16th, '11 JackSpratts Peer to Peer 0 13-07-11 06:43 AM
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - January 30th, '10 JackSpratts Peer to Peer 0 27-01-10 07:49 AM
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - January 16th, '10 JackSpratts Peer to Peer 0 13-01-10 09:02 AM
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 5th, '09 JackSpratts Peer to Peer 0 02-12-09 08:32 AM






All times are GMT -6. The time now is 10:42 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
© www.p2p-zone.com - Napsterites - 2000 - 2024 (Contact grm1@iinet.net.au for all admin enquiries)