Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - February 10th, ’24

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002




































































February 10th, 2024




Ebook Piracy is Considered a Minor Problem by US Government
Michael Kozlowski

Digital book piracy is considered a very minor problem by the United States government. The Office of the United States Trade Representative has just published its annual overview of the world’s most significant and problematic piracy websites. The vast majority of the sites focus on file hosting websites, streaming IPTV boxes and pirating websites. Over 25 different sites, in addition to gaming and music piracy, made the lists for this. Still, only three sites were mentioned when it came to book piracy, so not many people see piracy as a significant problem when it comes to piracy.

The two major piracy sites the report mentioned were Sci-Hub and Libgen and the relative newcomer, Annas Archive. The first two focus on academic journals and scholarly papers that are usually paid for, but they make all this content available for free. This helps students and anyone involved in higher learning read reports without spending hundreds or thousands of dollars. At the same time, Annas focuses on pirated ebooks.

Sci-Hub is a shadow library website that provides free access to millions of research papers, regardless of copyright, bypassing publishers’ paywalls in various ways. The service started in 2011 because there was no centralization. Website or service that focuses on academic papers.

Library Genesis (LibGen) is a file-sharing-based shadow library website for scholarly journal articles, academic and general-interest books, images, comics, audiobooks, and magazines. The site enables free access to content that is otherwise paywalled or not digitized elsewhere. LibGen describes itself as a “links aggregator,” providing a searchable database of items “collected from publicly available public Internet resources” as well as files uploaded “from users.

Anna’s Archive is a search engine for shadow libraries. It was founded by the Pirate Library Mirror, a team of anonymous archivists, in response to law enforcement efforts to close down Z-Library in 2022. It describes itself as a project that aims to “catalogue all the books in existence” and to “track humanity’s progress toward making all these books easily available in digital form.” As of February 1, 2024, Anna’s Archive includes 25,530,302 books and 99,425,822 papers. Z-Library quickly reopened after being shut down and remains one of the most popular ebook piracy sites in the world, but due to its complex nature now, Annas seems to be more popular.

These are the three sites that the report mentioned when it came to piracy that affected publishers directly. There were other players on the list that people visited to pirate books or audiobooks, such as Pirate Bay or newcomer TorrentGalaxy.
https://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-...-us-government





Sony is Erasing Digital Libraries that were Supposed to be Accessible “Forever”

Casualties afoot as Sony merges Funimation with 2021-acquired Crunchyroll.
Scharon Harding

How long is “forever”? When it comes to digital media, forever could be as close as a couple of months away.

Funimation, a Sony-owned streaming service for anime, recently announced that subscribers' digital libraries on the platform will be unavailable after April 2. For years, Funimation had been telling subscribers that they could keep streaming these digital copies of purchased movies and shows, but qualifying it: “forever, but there are some restrictions.”

Funimation’s parent company, Sony, bought rival anime streaming service Crunchyroll in 2021. Since then, it was suspected that Sony would merge the offerings together somehow. This week, we learned how, as Funimation announced that its app and website would close on April 2, and Funimation accounts will become Crunchyroll accounts. Most of Funimation’s catalog is already on Crunchyroll, Funimation’s announcement claimed.

But in addition to offering video streaming, Funimation also dubbed and released anime as physical media, and sometimes those DVDs or Blu-rays would feature a digital code. Subscribers to the Funimation streaming service could add those digital codes to Funimation and then stream the content from the platform.

With Funimation claiming that customers could access these digital copies “forever,” I could see why someone might have thought this was a reliable way to access their purchased media. For people lacking the space, resources, or interest in maintaining a library of physical media, this was a good way to preserve treasured shows and movies without spending more money. It also provided a simple way to access purchased media online if you were, for example, away on a trip and had a hankering to watch some anime DVDs you bought.

But soon, people who may have discarded or lost their physical media or lack a way to play DVDs and Blu-rays won't have a way to access the digital copies that they were entitled to through their physical copy purchase.

Funimation's announcement says:

Please note that Crunchyroll does not currently support Funimation Digital copies, which means that access to previously available digital copies will not be supported. However, we are continuously working to enhance our content offerings and provide you with an exceptional anime streaming experience. We appreciate your understanding and encourage you to explore the extensive anime library available on Crunchyroll.

Regarding refunds, Funimation's announcement directed customers to its support team "to see the available options based on your payment method," but there's no mention of getting money back for a DVD or Blu-ray that you might not have purchased had you known you couldn't stream it "forever."

The meaning of “forever” in the world of streaming

Funimation’s support page for digital copies (which, as of this writing, says it hasn't been updated in four years) notes that Funimation's idea of forever includes restrictions and links to Funimation's Terms of Use. Those terms state that Funimation can “without advance notice… immediately suspend or terminate the availability of the Service and/or content (and any elements and features of them), in whole or in part, for any reason.” It also says that the Funimation website, apps, service, and all of its content are owned by Funimation and its partners.

So even if you, understandably, thought you were buying a "forever" digital copy, the wordy truth is that you never really owned it. Yet, it wouldn't be surprising to hear that someone relying on digital copies to preserve their purchased media didn’t properly understand (or read) those terms before discarding their physical copies.

The news is a tough pill to swallow for Funimation users but another reminder of the dangers of relying on streaming services as a permanent way to access shows and movies that you’ve paid for. Streaming services continuously remove things that people have already purchased. And with the streaming world still evolving, we may have only seen the beginning of mergers like that of Crunchyroll and Funimation, which are upending long-time subscriber experiences.

In December, Sony's PlayStation announced that people who bought Discovery content from the PlayStation Store would lose access to it “due to our content licensing arrangements.” Sony’s curt notice to customers noted that the changes would take effect at the end of that month. A few weeks later, and 10 days ahead of the expected disruption, PlayStation said that it would no longer remove the content “due to updated licensing arrangements." It’s unclear how exactly things changed, but the tug-of-war customers are experiencing is just one more example of how provisional digital copies of media can be, even when you pay for them.

With further consolidation, app launches, and licensing debates likely to continue rocking streaming services, it’s a good time to reconsider total reliance on streaming media.
https://arstechnica.com/culture/2024...-ends-april-2/





Plex, where People Typically Avoid Hollywood Fees, Now Offers Movie Rentals

Users have one more place to turn when their usual options don't pan out.
Kevin Purdy

Plex, the media center largely known as a hub for TV and movies that you and your friends obtained one way or another, now lets you pay for movie rentals. It's both a convenient way to watch movies without having to hunt across multiple services, and yet another shift by Plex to be closer to the mainstream.

Plex's first set of available films is more than 1,000 titles, with some notable recent-run offerings: Barbie, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Wonka, PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie, and so forth. As is typical of digital rentals, you have 30 days to start watching a movie and then 48 hours to finish it.

Prices at the moment range from $3.99 to $5.99. Conveniently, movies you rent on one platform can be played on any other. Even on Apple devices, or, as Plex puts it, "devices that don't allow direct rentals on their platform." Rentals are only available in the US, however.

Interestingly, Plex doesn't offer movie purchases, and there is a reason why. Plex CEO Keith Valory told TechCrunch that a purchase option "creates some additional wrinkles—now you've got to keep this locker for people long-term and does that really make sense [for us]?" It's true that platforms brokering purchases between users and media conglomerates can find themselves in awkward spots, like Sony almost having deleted all Discovery content bought by PlayStation users. That kind of scenario is also, of course, the kind of thing that initially made Plex appealing to people with their own content to store.

Plex had originally planned to offer media rentals as far back as 2020 but shifted priorities when the pandemic, and its seismic shift toward streaming, gave it new targets. As a company, Plex pivoted to becoming a kind of collector of streaming services so that when you wanted to watch something, you could head to Plex and head out from there. It has previously added free ad-supported streaming of TV and movies to its platform, along with support for over-the-air antenna TV.

In that view of Plex, movie rentals make total sense; you might see that Apple TV+ or Disney+ subscribers can see a certain movie for free, but rather than set up a new cancellation reminder on your calendar, you can just pay one time and watch it.

For lots of Plex users, however, movie rentals are likely to be something nice to have, if not essential. The service today serves as a refuge from app-switching, unreliable media availability, and rapidly escalating subscription prices. It can play your own legally rendered backups of media you rightfully own, or it can connect you to friends or superusers who have… a huge number of legally rendered backups of media they rightfully own.

Given a choice, however, Plex users might be glad to throw their fancy-coffee-plus-tip rental fees to Plex rather than any one streaming silo just to keep the service funded and updated.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024...movie-rentals/





GTA 5 Top Malicious Torrent File
Justinas Vainilavičius

Fake versions of Grand Theft Auto V and World of Warcraft are among the two most popular torrent files threat actors use to distribute malware, according to new research.

Grand Theft Auto V, also known as GTA 5, and another gaming classic, World of Warcraft, are two of the top video games used to lure and infect torrent users with malicious software, cybersecurity firm ReasonLabs said in a report.

GTA 5 is one of the most successful video games in history. Released in 2013 by Rockstar Games, it has sold 190 million copies as of September 2023. Its widely anticipated successor, GTA 6, is slated for release next year, fueling further interest in the franchise.

War of Warcraft, first released in 2004, is part of another popular gaming franchise – and is also exploited as a lure targeting users of torrent websites.

“Torrent-based file-sharing offers several advantages over traditional file-sharing methods and is not illegal or intrinsically dangerous,” ReasonLabs said in its The State of Consumer Cybersecurity 2024 report.

“However, torrent files play a key role in online piracy as it’s almost effortless for cyber attackers to use them to distribute malware,” the report warned.

In addition to popular games, the top torrent files detected as malicious were different types of software-as-a-service products, it said. These included Microsoft Office, the Abode suite, and Nitro PDF Pro among others.

All files were used by bad actors to distribute malware such as Trojans, Remote Access Tools (RATs), malicious web extensions, coin miners, keyloggers, and more.

Instead of delivering their respective games, malicious GTA 5 and World of Warcraft files contained DarkComet RAT. “DarkComet enables the attacker to gain complete control of the infected device and capture screenshots, keystrokes, and webcam activity,” ReasonLabs said.

Malicious web extensions were also highly circulated in 2023, with a widely shared torrent file named Raftv 1.09 by Pioneer as one example.

“It was used to widely distribute malicious web extensions posing as VPNs, but in reality, they attacked and disabled users’ existing cashback and security extensions,” the report said.

Coin miners were among the top malware found in torrent files. Often referred to as “cryptojacking,” it can significantly drain the affected devices’ resources, leading to slower performance and increased energy consumption.

Another “widespread” threat was a variant of the banking Trojan Zusy, which ReasonLabs found in the Microsoft Office torrent file.

“Zusy will inject itself into the web pages of banks, waiting for the user to enter their credentials. Once entered, Zusy will deploy man-in-the-browser (MitB) attacks to collect the sensitive information,” the report said.

Trojans were found to be “by far the top threat” to home users, accounting for over 41% of all detections made. HackUtilities, comprising of cheats, trainers, license software hacks, and hacking tools accounted for more than 21%, followed by adware, viruses and worms, and ransomware.

Top web threats affecting users worldwide included malware, phishing attacks, adware, and cryptomining, with malicious web extensions, deepfake scams, and generative AI attacks among emerging threats, according to the report.

Children can be particularly exposed to risks online, researchers warned, with hackers becoming “more adept at leveraging torrents, illegal streams, social media, and other common sites used by children of all ages.”

“Parents must double down on protecting their children in 2024. Due to their lack of security knowledge and cyber hygiene, children are often the weakest link in any family’s security posture,” it said.
https://cybernews.com/security/gta-f...-torrent-file/





Warner Music to Lay Off 10% of Staff in Effort to ‘Double Down on Core Business’
Jem Aswad

The tough news continues for the music industry as Warner Music announced that it will lay off 10% of its staff, or 600 people, in the coming weeks. The news comes in advance of the company’s earnings report tomorrow morning, and the company insists that the move is coming from a position of strength and that the savings will be reinvested in the company, following on CEO Robert Kyncl’s plans for the next 10 years.

The biggest percentage of the layoffs will affect the company’s owned and operated media properties, including Uproxx, HipHopDX, IMGN and Interval Presents.

To support the position of strength argument, the company released its earnings early, which show a record 11% revenue growth for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2023. The report also shows that the company’s total revenue increased 17%, or 16% in constant currency, with net income at $193 million versus $124 million in the prior-year quarter. The company is coming off of a strong 2023, and currently has 5 of the top 10 songs in the Billboard Hot 100 this week.

However it is positioned, the move is coming during an increasingly grim time for the music business and the entertainment sector in general. Tech companies have laid off many thousands of people in recent months; the media business is reeling from widespread layoffs, which span from Pitchfork to Sports Illustrated; and Universal Music Group is expected to lay off several hundred people within the next month as part of a broader restructuring that is similarly reflected in Warner’s announcement today.

Warner laid off 270 staffers last spring, with Kyncl voicing a similar reasoning as “hard choices in order to survive.” He joined the company from YouTube in January of last year, bringing a background in tech rather than the music business, and has made major cultural and structural changes in that time, with more clearly to come.

The Warner and Universal moves are coming as the streaming boom is leveling off. The music industry struggled through challenging years spanning approximately 2000-2015, as CD sales plummeted due to illegal downloading; the business shrank from a $14 billion annual business to a $7 billion one in just a few years. However, the launch of Spotify in the U.S. in 2011 and the ensuing widespread adaptation of streaming as the new global format returned it not only to health but to growth, and several years of double-digit revenue increases followed.

While ordinarily that growth would have plateaued by the end of the 2010s, the pandemic gave it an unexpected, and partially artificial, second wind, as people were stuck at home during lockdown and many who had not previously adapted to streaming did so. Once the pandemic lifted, that growth cratered, and, as with the tech world, music companies that had dramatically increased staff during the pandemic are now scaling back.

Kyncl’s letter follows in full below; Variety will have more on this development shortly.

Hi everyone,

We just finished our first All Hands of 2024 from LA.

This is a pivotal moment in the evolution of this great company, so I wanted to make sure you heard about it directly from me. As I outlined in my note last month, 2024 is a year during which we will double down on our core business and move at an increased velocity to seize the incredible opportunities for music in the new world.

This week, our recording artists make up five of the top 10, and our songwriters have six of the Top 10, on the Billboard Hot 100. Today, we’re revealing our latest quarterly results: we grew 11% in normalized revenue. And with growing momentum in Recorded Music streaming and excellent results in Music Publishing, we hit our highest quarterly revenue ever. We’re in a position of strength, and that’s the smart time to change, innovate, and lead. Music is constantly morphing, so we need to morph with it.

Today, we’re announcing a plan to free up more funds to invest in music and accelerate our growth for the next decade. To do that, we have to make thoughtful choices about where we put our people, resources, and capital. So, as part of that plan, we’ll be realizing approximately $200 million in annualized cost savings by the end of September 2025. The majority of these savings will be reinvested, putting more money behind the music.

Our plan includes reducing our workforce by approximately 10%, or 600 people – the majority of which will relate to our Owned & Operated media properties, corporate and various support functions.

We’ve already begun to inform many of the impacted employees, and the vast majority will be notified by the end of September 2024. I recognize this is unsettling news. To the people who will be leaving us: you deserve a heartfelt thank you for your hard work and dedication. We’re fortunate that you’ve been part of the team. We’ll be moving as thoughtfully and respectfully as possible, so you have the critical information you need, and we’ll support you through this transition.

Earlier today, we began exiting our O&O media properties, as well as our in-house ad sales function. These are dynamic platforms, but they operate outside our core responsibilities to our roster. We’re in an exclusive process for the potential sale of the news & entertainment websites Uproxx and HipHopDX, with more to say on that soon. After a thorough exploration of alternatives, we’ve decided to wind down the podcasting brand Interval Presents and social media publisher IMGN. Maria and I continue to discuss the ongoing evolution of WMX, and how best to further improve our services to artists and labels, and she’ll update the team in the coming weeks.

As we carry out our plan, it’s important to bear in mind why we’re making these difficult choices. We’re getting on the front foot to create a sustainable competitive advantage over the next decade. We’ll do so by increasing funding behind artists and songwriters, new skill sets, and tech, to help us deliver on our three strategic priorities:

Grow the engagement with Music

Discovering and developing artists and songwriters is at the heart of everything we do. We’ll turbocharge our efforts and investments, with additional focus on high growth geographies and vibrant genres, as well as using our data and insights to help original talents cut through the increasing noise, and taking a holistic global approach to maximizing the potential of their catalogs.

Increase the value of Music

This is one of our industry’s largest and most complex opportunities and one that we’re working on diligently, whether it’s new DSP deal structures or building superfan experiences to help artists connect directly with their most passionate followers.

Evolve how we work together

In order to grow at an accelerated pace, we need to structure our organization so that we can grow efficiently and continue to invest more into music at the same time. That requires being intentional about where centralized shared functions make sense, versus where they are best fully dedicated. This will empower subject matter experts, while scaling our resources. We already made moves in this direction by centralizing our technology, finance and business development teams last year.

Above all, we’re positioning ourselves to be first, to be different, and to be exceptional. I – and the entire leadership team – will be keeping you updated as we make progress. In May, we’ll hold our next All Hands meeting, which we’ll devote to our best new music, as well as our most promising projects.

Thank you for your understanding, passion, and determination. We’re in an amazing industry, we’re partnered with many extraordinary artists and songwriters, and now is the time for us to pioneer the future.

Robert
https://variety.com/2024/music/news/...ff-1235901563/





Stream-Ripping Is Still a Problem, Says Latest ‘Notorious Markets’ Report

The annual report by the U.S. Trade Representative notes many e-commerce and social platforms did implement "new anti-counterfeiting tools" last year.
Elias Leight

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) welcomed the latest edition of the United States Trade Representative’s (USTR) Notorious Markets Report on Tuesday (Jan. 30), which provides an annual run-down of various forms of copyright infringement, including digital music piracy.

Digital music piracy is not front-of-mind for many listeners in the age of streaming; even the industry itself has focused more of its recent frustration on streaming fraud and the popularity of rain sounds, at least in public comments made in the last year.

However, global music piracy inched up in 2022, according to a March 2023 report from MUSO, a U.K. technology company, which tracked over 15 billion visits to music piracy sites that year.

The USTR’s new report highlighted a handful of sites — including 1337X, Krakenfiles, Rapidgator and Ssyoutube — where people go to stream or download songs illegally. “Ssyoutube is reportedly the most popular YouTube ripping site globally, with over 343 million visitors just in April 2023,” the USTR noted in one example.

“We appreciate the report’s prioritization of thefts that target the music community such as stream-ripping,” said George York, the RIAA’s senior vp of international policy, in a statement.

Overall, music is less of a concern in this year’s USTR report relative to 2023’s. The document’s primary focus is the “potential health and safety risks posed by counterfeit trademark goods.”

The USTR was heartened by the fact that “this year many e-commerce and social commerce platforms took solid steps toward initiating additional anti-counterfeiting practices and adapting to new circumvention techniques used by counterfeiters.”

“Several platforms filed public submissions outlining their implementation of new anti-counterfeiting tools, including releasing educational campaigns, increasing identity verification requirements, and implementing faster and more transparent notice-and-takedown processes,” the report continued. “Additionally, several platforms have invested in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies as a way to scale up and quickly adapt traditional anti-counterfeiting measures such as text and image screening.”

The RIAA had asked the USTR to highlight another aspect of AI, according to comments submitted in October, though it was not ultimately included in the report.

At the time, the RIAA noted that “the year 2023 saw an eruption of unauthorized AI vocal clone services that infringe not only the rights of the artists whose voices are being cloned but also the rights of those that own the sound recordings in each underlying musical track. This has led to an explosion of unauthorized derivative works of our members’ sound recordings which harm sound recording artists and copyright owners.”

In a statement following the USTR’s latest release, York “urge[d] the organization to take “a close look in the future at emerging piracy challenges presented by AI, including the widespread illegal use of copyrighted sound recordings and artist names, images, and likenesses to generate invasive and unlawful voice clones and deepfakes.”
https://www.billboard.com/business/s...rt-1235593372/
















Until next week,

- js.



















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