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Old 05-05-21, 06:34 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 8th, ’21

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May 8th, 2021




NY: Broadband Cos Paid for 8.5M Fake Net Neutrality Comments
Tali Arbel

The Office of the New York Attorney General said in a new report that a campaign funded by the broadband industry submitted millions of fake comments supporting the 2017 repeal of net neutrality.

The Federal Communications Commission’s contentious 2017 repeal undid Obama-era rules that barred internet service providers from slowing or blocking websites and apps or charging companies more for faster speeds to consumers. The industry had sued to stop these rules during the Obama administration but lost.

The proceeding generated a record-breaking number of comments — more than 22 million — and nearly 18 million were fake, the attorney general’s office found. It has long been known that the tally included fake comments.

One 19-year-old in California submitted more than 7.7 million pro-net neutrality comments. The attorney general’s office did not identify the origins of another “distinct group” of more than 1.6 million pro-net neutrality comments, many of which used mailing addresses outside the U.S.

A broadband industry group, called Broadband for America, spent $4.2 million generating more than 8.5 million of the fake FCC comments. Half a million fake letters were also sent to Congress.

The goal of the broadband industry campaign, according to internal documents the attorney general’s office received, was to make it seem like there was “widespread grassroots support” for the repeal of net neutrality that could give the FCC chairman at the time, Ajit Pai, “volume and intellectual cover” for the repeal.

The agency is supposed to use the comments it receives, from industry and public-industry groups and the public, to shape how it makes its rules.

The FCC did not immediately answer how or if it has changed its commenting process, but the acting chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel, said in a prepared statement that “widespread problems with the record” of the 2017 proceedings “was troubling at the time” and the agency has to learn and improve the commenting process.

The fake comments had high-profile victims. In 2018, two senators, Democrat Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, said their identities were stolen to file fake comments for the net neutrality proceeding. “We were among those whose identities were misused to express viewpoints we do not hold,” they wrote to the FCC’s then-chairman, Pai, asking him to investigate the fake comments.

Many expect the FCC to try to reinstate net neutrality rules once a third Democratic commissioner is appointed. The agency is currently split half Democrat and Republican, which makes undoing the repeal unlikely.

Broadband for America’s website says its members include AT&T and Comcast as well as major trade groups for the wireless, cable and telecom industries.

The campaign hired companies known as lead generators which created the fake comments, but that the attorney general’s office had not found evidence that the broadband companies had “direct knowledge of fraud” and thus they had not violated New York law, according to the report.

Still, the report criticized the broadband industry group’s behavior as “troubling,” saying the campaign organizers ignored red flags and hid the broadband industry’s involvement.

The lead generators copied names and addresses they had already collected and said those people had agreed to join the campaign against net neutrality, the report said. One company copied information that had been stolen in a data breach and posted online.

The attorney general, Letitia James, also announced agreements with three of the companies that were responsible for millions of the fake comments, Fluent Inc., Opt-Intelligence Inc. and React2Media Inc., that require them to change practices in future advocacy campaigns and pay $4.4 million in fines. The companies did not reply to requests for comment.

The attorney general’s office and other law enforcement agencies are still investigating ″other responsible parties,” according to the report.

AT&T, Comcast and industry trade groups NCTA and USTelecom did not respond to questions.
https://apnews.com/article/governmen...fc010ceaedaca7





Ajit Pai Promised Cheaper Internet—Real Prices Rose 19 Percent Instead

Home-Internet prices rose four times faster than inflation in Trump era.
Jon Brodkin

The average US home-Internet bill increased 19 percent during the first three years of the Trump administration, disproving former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's claim that deregulation lowered prices, according to a new report by advocacy group Free Press. For tens of millions of families that aren't wealthy, "these increases are felt deeply, forcing difficult decisions about which services to forgo so they can maintain critical Internet access services," Free Press wrote.

The 19 percent Trump-era increase is adjusted for inflation to match the value of 2020 dollars, with the monthly cost rising from $39.35 in 2016 to $47.01 in 2019. Without the inflation adjustment, the average household Internet price rose from $36.48 in 2016 to $46.38 in 2019, an increase of 27 percent.

The nominal increase in each of the three years was between 7.27 percent and 9.94 percent, while inflation each year ranged from 1.81 percent to 2.44 percent.

"That means the nominal increase in broadband bills was more than four times the rate of inflation during those three years," Free Press said. The report is based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Expenditures Survey data, which does not yet include 2020.

Prices go up as costs for ISPs go down

On an annual basis, the average household Internet expenditures rose from $437.71 in 2016 to $556.50 in 2019. When adjusted for inflation to match the value of 2020 dollars, the cost rose from $472.25 in 2016 to $564.07 in 2019.

"[b]roadband prices consistently increase faster than the rate of inflation while the providers' own costs do not. This makes this increasingly critical infrastructure service both more expensive in real terms to users and more profitable for the ISPs," the report said.

Capital investment by Internet providers has dropped, "with substantial declines at large companies like AT&T (where 2020 investment was 52 percent below the 2016 total for the company on an inflation-adjusted basis) and Comcast (where 2020 cable segment investment was 22 percent below 2016's level on an inflation-adjusted basis)," the report said.

In a press release, Free Press said that ISPs "grew their profits to record levels before and during the COVID-19 pandemic by increasing their prices during an unprecedented economic downturn," and that "low-priced entry-level options for high-speed Internet service are disappearing, raising the adoption barrier for low-income families."

"US broadband giants continue to raise prices and reap higher profits as their own investments decline," said Free Press Research Director Derek Turner, the report author. "This is exactly the outcome we'd expect in a highly concentrated market that's completely free of any regulatory oversight."

Long-term trend of rising prices

Prices rose by a similar amount during the last three years of the Obama administration. Pai claimed that his deregulation of the broadband industry and repeal of net neutrality rules would reverse the trend of rising prices, bringing "cheaper Internet access to all Americans." Instead, the prices kept rising.

President Biden said he wants to reverse the long-term trend by "working with Congress to find a solution to reduce Internet prices for all Americans." Biden didn't say exactly how he would lower prices, but the cable lobby is already slamming Biden for his suggestion that the government should help Americans get cheaper access to the Internet.

In the last three Obama years, the inflation-adjusted average monthly Internet expenditures rose from $32.25 in 2013 to $39.35 in 2016, a 22 percent rise. Nominal prices rose from $28.86 to $36.48 in those three years, a 26 percent increase.

The Free Press report highlighted the increase during the Trump years to point out that Trump's and Pai's policies didn't lower prices as FCC Republicans and the broadband industry claimed they would, Turner told Ars. But the Obama administration also did little to push down broadband prices.

"Neither the Obama administration nor the Trump administration had policies in place to curb broadband price hikes," Turner said. "At best, the FCC's 2015 Open Internet Order sent a signal to ISPs that abusive data caps might raise a concern."

There are different ways to measure Internet prices. Broadband lobby groups claim that prices are getting lower by pointing to a declining price-per-megabit or by tracking the advertised price of the "most popular [speed] tier" over time. But "the actual price customers pay every month," which is often inflated by hidden fees, equipment rental charges, and data-cap charges, "is the most important metric to have for economic analysis and policymaking," the Free Press report said.

Pai claimed in October 2020 that "real prices for broadband decreased by about a third" between 2015 and 2020. Free Press' report said that "Pai cited an ISP industry-paid operative using quality-adjusted URS [FCC Urban Rate Survey] data to make a comparison between average quality-adjusted prices in 2015 and 2020, without noting the data is not reflective of actual price paid, and without confronting the impact that the decline in 'Cadillac' fiber tier prices had on the average values but not the median. This same data shows median prices rose during the same period that Pai cites."

Many factors affect price, but it always goes up

Most of the 2013-2016 increase came in one year, between 2014 and 2015. The 2015 rise was largely due to "an acceleration into higher-priced/faster tiers at a time when the spread in price between them and lower tiers was big," Turner said.

More specifically, 2015 "was a big year for growth in subscriptions above 100Mbps, as [the] DOCSIS 3 [cable Internet standard] was pushed more heavily, particularly by Comcast in the wake of the failed TWC deal," Turner noted. Online video was also taking off, aided by streaming-quality improvements after Obama-era FCC regulation forced residential ISPs and other network operators to settle their differences and upgrade network links.

Streaming video helped spur people to buy "the more expensive 100Mbps+ tiers," especially after the network-interconnection battles involving Netflix and network operators were resolved, Turner noted. Different factors pushed prices up during the Trump era. For example, former Time Warner Cable customers who had older, slower plans with promotional prices were "pushed into faster but more expensive Charter Spectrum tiers" after Charter bought the company in 2016, he said.

As we wrote in 2017, "many [Charter] customers saw their bills rise when their previous discounts expired and they were switched to non-promotional pricing." People upgrading from DSL to fiber in the areas where providers bothered upgrading their networks also pushed up the average amount paid, Turner said.

"In short, what people are sold makes a difference to what the price paid is," he said.

Biden targets hidden fees

Biden, in addition to promising some as-yet-unannounced method of reducing prices, proposed funding for municipal broadband networks and "lifting barriers that prevent" publicly owned networks "from competing on an even playing field with private providers." This could eventually lead to the creation of more public networks, providing cheaper options and forcing incumbent ISPs to compete on price and quality.

Biden also proposed "requiring Internet providers to clearly disclose the prices they charge." That would make it harder for ISPs to advertise low prices and then hit customers with a slew of hidden fees.

"In most markets, the prices are transparent to buyers. But not in the wired broadband market," the Free Press report said. "Providers market promotional prices to new customers, but sometimes refuse to publish what the monthly charge will be after the introductory rate expires, or bury it in fine print. In addition, many wired ISPs impose additional charges such as data overage fees and equipment rental fees, as well as hidden fees like non-autopay penalties."
https://arstechnica.com/information-...rcent-instead/





'Full-Blown Assault' on Free Expression: Inside the Comprehensive Liberal Bill to Regulate the Internet

Bill C-10 proposes to subject whole realms of the Canadian online world to content oversight from broadcast regulators, including podcasts, online videos and websites
Tristin Hopper

After more than 25 years of Canadian governments pursuing a hands-off approach to the online world, the government of Justin Trudeau is now pushing Bill C-10, a law that would see Canadians subjected to the most regulated internet in the free world.

Although pitched as a way to expand Canadian content provisions to the online sphere, the powers of Bill C-10 have expanded considerably in committee, including a provision introduced last week that could conceivably allow the federal government to order the deletion of any Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or Twitter upload made by a Canadian. In comments this week, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh indicated his party was open to providing the votes needed to pass C-10, seeing the bill as a means to combat online hate.

The current state of the Canadian internet is far from a wild west: even an anonymous post can get you sued or imprisoned if it’s defamatory, infringes on copyright, violates Canadian hate speech laws or transmits illegal content such as child pornography. But Bill C-10 proposes to subject whole realms of the Canadian online world to content oversight from broadcast regulators, including podcasts, online videos and even the website on which you are currently reading this story.

Former CRTC commissioner Peter Menzies said in an interview that Bill C-10 “doesn’t just infringe on free expression, it constitutes a full-blown assault upon it and, through it, the foundations of democracy.”

Below, a look at what is fast becoming one of the most comprehensive peacetime attempts to redefine free expression in Canada.

Ottawa would be empowered to police social media

The draft text of Bill C-10 specifically included a clause exempting social media. While the government was looking to regulate the internet, it didn’t want to bother with anything “uploaded to an online undertaking that provides a social media service by a user of the service.”

Indeed, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault has repeatedly framed C-10 as a way to regulate streaming services such as Netflix and Crave while leaving social media alone. He told the House of Commons just last month that “we’re not particularly interested in … when my great-uncle posts pictures of his cats.” But in a House of Commons Heritage committee meeting Friday the social media clause was deleted. When confronted on the change, Guilbeault said that it was always their plan to regulate “online platforms that act as broadcasters.”

What the deletion means is that every single Canadian who posts to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter or YouTube could be treated like a broadcaster subject to CRTC oversight and sanction. The users themselves may not necessarily be subject to direct CRTC regulation, but social media providers would have to answer to every post on their platforms as if it were a TV show or radio program.

This might be a good time to mention that members of the current Liberal cabinet have openly flirted with empowering the federal government to control social media. In a September Tweet, Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna said that if social media companies “can’t regulate yourselves, governments will.” Guilbeault, the prime champion of Bill C-10, has spoken openly of a federal regulator that could order takedowns of any social media post that it deems to be hateful or propagandistic.

I think there’s a lot that we can do, but the social media companies themselves need to step up. We don’t have to regulate everything but if you can’t regulate yourselves, governments will. @s_guilbeault https://t.co/O7PvYsWPH1
— Catherine McKenna ���� (@cathmckenna) September 22, 2020

Indeed, C-10 has been cheered by proponents specifically for its powers to silence online voices. “Now’s the time to finally finish (Ontario Proud founder) Jeff Ballingall, Ontario Proud, Canada Proud the rest of their ilk,” reads a recent pro-C-10 tweet from the anti-conservative Twitter account The Diefenbaker Project.

News, video games and even apps could be subject to new levels of government control

When he introduced Bill C-10 in November, Guilbeault assured the House of Commons that “user-generated content, news content and video games would not be subject to the new regulations. Guilbeault’s 180-degree turn on social media is covered above, but even a cursory read of the legislation reveals that news and video games are absolutely within C-10’s scope.

Bill C-10 essentially pledges to regulate online content as a “program.” And according to the original Broadcasting Act, a “program” is “sounds or visual images, or a combination of sounds and visual images, that are intended to inform, enlighten or entertain.” You’re off the hook if your content consists “predominantly of alphanumeric text,” but if your website has sounds and visual images you will henceforth be a “program” according to Bill C-10.

Basically, if your Canadian website isn’t a text-only GeoCities blog from 1996, Bill C-10 thinks it’s a program deserving of CRTC regulation. This covers news sites, podcasts, blogs, the websites of political parties or activist groups and even foreign websites that might be seen in Canada. In a Monday meeting of the Canadian Heritage committee, smartphone apps were also thrown under the Bill C-10 rubric, although the complete text has not been released to the public.

It’s not censorship, per se, but it’s close

Passage of Bill C-10 would not subject Canadian content creators to a top-down China-style censorship regime. After all, few would argue that a censorship regime applies to Canadian cable news or radio, both of which are subject to CRTC regulation. Guilbeault has asserted that Bill C-10 is only intended to regulate the actions of “web giants,” and that may indeed be his intention.

But the ultimate effect of C-10 would be to plunge whole realms of independent media — from YouTubers to podcasters to bloggers — into an environment where they could face both a requirement for government registration as well as any number of CRTC content strictures drawn up without the need for additional legislation or oversight. As the bill’s official FAQ states, only after it becomes law will the CRTC decide “how it should implement the new powers afforded by the Bill.”

One of the most notable strictures faced by CRTC-regulated broadcasters is the requirement for a minimum of Canadian content on TV or radio. That’s why Patio Lanterns gets a disproportionate number of spins on FM radio and even Quebec porn channels are legally required to air at least 8.5 hours of Canadian erotica per day. Canadian broadcasters are also forbidden from airing “obscene, indecent or profane language.”

With the passage of Bill C-10, it would fall to regulators to decide which realms of the online world are subject to these Canadian content strictures, and even what those strictures might be.

For instance, a group called the Alliance for Equity in the Music Industry is currently petitioning the federal government to include provisions in Bill C-10 that would mandate Canadian creators to submit race-based data and be subject to review by a chief equity officer. While the group is seeking to have the provisions added directly to the text of the bill, it could just as easily be accomplished by a directive from the Minister of Canadian Heritage. The original 1970 introduction of Canadian Content regulations, for one, did not need new legislation, but was imposed by then-CRTC director Pierre Juneau.

The unintended consequences could be massive

Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa professor and the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law, has been among one of the most persistent critics of Bill C-10, calling it “dangerous,” and “inexcusable.”

In a February blog post, Geist noted that aside from C-10’s infringements on free expression, it could spark blowback well beyond what is expected by its drafters. As an example, Geist cites the experience of Facebook in Australia. Earlier this year, Australia passed legislation requiring the social media giant to compensate news companies whenever a link was shared on its platform. In response, Facebook simply banned the sharing of news content by Australian users, restoring it only after Australian legislation was amended.

The penalties prescribed by Bill C-10 are substantial. For corporations, a first offence can yield penalties of up to $10 million, while subsequent offences could be up to $15 million apiece. If TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are suddenly put in a situation where their millions of users must follow the same rules as a Canadian cable channel or radio station, it’s not unreasonable to assume they may just follow Facebook’s example and take the nuclear option. As Google, the owner of YouTube, told Postmedia in a statement, “we remain concerned about the unintended consequences, particularly with regards to the potential effects on Canadians’ expressive rights.”
https://vancouversun.com/news/full-b...9-eab7ba8b6887





Triller Sues 12 Websites for Allegedly Illegally Streaming Jake Paul-Ben Askren PPV
Kevin Iole

In this article:

Triller filed lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California against 12 sites and 100 unnamed persons alleging they stole the signal of Triller’s pay-per-view bout between Jake Paul and Ben Askren on April 17 and resold it at a lower rate than the $49.99 price it was asking.

Triller alleges many of the streams emanated from YouTube channels. The complaint alleges the defendants included links to PayPal to pay for the stolen stream. The complaint said damages are in excess of $100 million after there were upward of 2 million unique viewers of the streams.

In a statement provided to Yahoo Sports by a Triller spokesperson, Triller said:

“It’s shocking to think a theft so grand can be done so blatantly and brazenly. There is zero difference between what they did and walking into a market, stealing tons of a product and selling it at a discount in the parking lot. It’s neither civilly nor criminally any different and we are prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law, including working with authorities to bring swift action.

“There were far over 2 million illegal streams, akin to hundreds of millions of dollars. Sites … causing significant damage not just to Fight Club but content creators overall. People put a lot of hard work, time and money into creating a product for the consumer and having it stolen and resold is terribly damaging. As this is a true crime, they are not protected by VPN masking or other firewalls as their activities are criminal and grand theft so we will ultimately find them and prevail not just for us but for content creators in general.”

Among the sites named in the complaint that allegedly stole the stream and then resold it are:

FilmDaily.com

AccessTVPro.co

online2livestream.us

crackstreamslive.com

Sports-Today.club

My-Sports.club

bilasport.com

Trendy Clips

Mike

Your Extra

Eclipt Gaming

ItsLilBrandon

Does 1-100

Triller alleges copyright infringement; violations of the Federal Communications Act; conversion; breach of contract; conspiracy; and violations of the computer fraud and abuse act.
https://sports.yahoo.com/triller-sue...190312552.html





Google, YouTube Hit With Pirating Suit Over Mexican Movies
Peter Hayes

Google LLC and subsidiary YouTube Inc. are facing a suit in a federal court in Florida by Spanish-language movie producer Carlos Vasallo, who claims to have the “world’s largest collection” of Mexican and Latin American movies, for allegedly exploiting the piracy of his films on their video platform.

Vasallo’s company, Athos Overseas Ltd., alleges the companies allow the films to be shown on the YouTube platform in order to generate traffic and revenue without paying any licensing fees, according to the complaint filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law...mexican-movies





Is BitTorrent a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?
Will Ashworth

Years ago, for a short time, I sold radar detectors to speed demons eager to evade the local constabulary while speeding to the family cottage in Ontario. While using a radar detector was forbidden in the province, the sale of them wasn’t. This reminds me of BitTorrent (CCC:BTT-USD) in the sense that torrenting isn’t illegal but pirating copyrighted material using BitTorrent is.

Honestly, except for my brief investigation of BitTorrent as a means for getting content for less — as a writer, I should have known better than even to consider this option — I have absolutely zero understanding of the BitTorrent that exists today. None.

So, I’ll have to lean on my colleagues to get up to speed. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you won’t think I’m a total boob.

Here goes.

BitTorrent Is an up-and-Coming Cryptocurrency

InvestorPlace’s Mark Hake recently called BitTorrent an “up-and-coming cryptocurrency.” Of course, in the same breath, he suggested its sketchy background in peer-to-peer file sharing made its crypto token an investment of last resort.

From his list of better options, I really like Cardano (CCC:ADA-USD) and Ethereum (CCC:ETH-USD), but I’m still early in my cryptocurrency education.

As for the article, my colleague mentions investors should read before forking over any cash to buy BitTorrent; he’s right on the money. A few short paragraphs in, and I’m hooked.

“Its genius [BitTorrent] came from being decentralized — spreading the burden of bandwidth, and liability, across a number of users instead of one company. The philosophy of decentralization shaped BitTorrent’s laissez-faire view of itself,” wrote The Verge contributor Chris Harland-Dunaway in September 2020.

“It supplied a technology and had no responsibility for the pirated content illegally distributed by it.”

Sounds a lot like my radar-detector-selling days of the past.

As if that’s not bad enough, Harland-Dunaway noted that BitTorrent’s new owner, Justin Sun, published an autobiography Brave New World in 2017 at the ripe old age of 27. He’ll be 31 in July.

Warren Buffett was worth $9.3 million adjusted for inflation when he was 30. I doubt he would have felt the need to write an autobiography at that age. Heck, he only authorized the first biography about his life in 2008.

More than anything, Sun’s overconfidence should make crypto investors very leery.

BitTorrent Should Fly Higher in 2021

InvestorPlace contributor, Muslim Farooque, believes BitTorrent should continue its bullish run over the remaining eight months of 2021.

It’s hard to take something seriously when it trades for $0.006985. Yet if you bought the altcoin at the beginning of 2021, you’re up 2,328% through Apr. 29. A $10,000 investment is worth almost $243,000. That’s some serious coin.

My colleague points out that predictions about its future price include $1 by the end of 2021 and $3 by 2022. If it hits $3, a $10,000 bet becomes $4.3 million in 20 months or less.

Staggering.

Unless I’m missing something, the entire premise for BitTorrent appreciating by almost 4,000% on an annualized basis has to do with the fact it is limited to 990 billion tokens, in much the same way Bitcoin (CCC:BTC-USD) is limited to 21 million Bitcoins.
Other than that, I’m having a tough time understanding the value of BitTorrent.

The Bottom Line

Before Justin Sun came along, BitTorrent gained a reputation by disrupting peer-to-peer file sharing. That’s why it was able to sell to the Tron Foundation in 2018 for $140 million.

Today, the company says BitTorrent and µTorrent have more than 100 million active monthly users. That’s real value.

However, as InvestorPlace’s Josh Enomoto said recently, it’s unlikely that BitTorrent will ultimately be able to separate itself from Bitcoin’s market dynamics, which means you might as well buy Bitcoin.

As decentralized finance (DeFi) continues to gain traction, it will be interesting to see how BitTorrent can pivot in that direction. In an August 2020 Q&A hosted by BitTorrent, Justin Sun had a lot to say about the BTT token.

“It’s safe to say that BTT token enriches the BitTorrent ecosystem by bringing more users and developers into the blockchain world. Now, over 1 billion users across the globe have access to the digital economy established by blockchain technology, and this is exactly why we built the BTT empire in the first place,” Sun said on Aug. 16, 2020.

“I believe that BTT will remain strong and vigorous with the help of TRON ecosystem, and BTT holders will in return receive substantial rewards.”

One thing stands out in those comments that suggest Sun is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Any guesses?

Sun uses the proverbial “we” to describe why the BTT empire was built in the first place. He overlooks the fact that BitTorrent was started in 2004 and existed for 14 years without Justin Sun’s grand vision for the company.

At first blush, I’m really not impressed with BitTorrent as a token, cryptocurrency, or whatever you want to call it. Perhaps someone will alter my opinion in the future.

For now, I can’t possibly recommend it.

On the date of publication, Will Ashworth did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/is-b...ing-2021-04-30





Don’t Try to Pirate Movies On Elon Musk’s Starlink
GulteDesk

The Starlink team announced that if people try to openly pirate movies on SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink, then one has to be prepared to receive a warning from the company demanding that you stop. Starlink is an initiative by SpaceX with the objective of providing Internet From Space. Recently they have launched the first 60 production satellites of nearly 12,000 planned spacecraft into a low orbit above Earth.

Last weekend, a curious Starlink subscriber tested if SpaceX enforces its policy against downloading copyrighted content. The subscriber, “substrate-97,” indeed received the piracy warning notice and he posted the same from SpaceX on Reddit. “We must insist that you and/or others using your Starlink service refrains from illegal downloads of copyrighted content,” the notice says. “Downloading copyrighted materials without a license may lead to suspension or termination of your service, and put you at risk of legal action by the content owner,” the statement read.

Moreover, Starlink may also try to stop piracy if the ISP detects a download for a bootleg movie. The company will immediately send an automated warning to the offending subscriber. If the ISP recognises a download for a copyrighted movie, the provider can automatically issue a warning notification to the subscriber committing the offence.

Talking about the speciality of Starlink, due to the large constellation of satellites that are being planted up in the low orbits of the Earth, Starlink aims to provide high-speed internet with low latency i.e short lag times in signal, because most of the satellites that provide internet service are located in the higher earth orbits known as geostationary orbits which is a path about 22,000 miles above the equator.
https://www.gulte.com/trends/85497/d...musks-starlink





Starlink Satellite Internet Service Gets 500,000 Preorders, Musk Says

SpaceX has received more than 500,000 preorders for its Starlink satellite internet service and anticipates no technical problems meeting the demand, founder Elon Musk said on Tuesday.

“Only limitation is high density of users in urban areas,” Musk tweeted, responding to a post from a CNBC reporter that said the $99 deposits SpaceX took for the service were fully refundable and did not guarantee service.

"More of a challenge when we get into the several million user range," Musk said.

SpaceX has not set a date for Starlink's service launch, but commercial service would not likely be offered in 2020 as it had previously planned.

The company plans to eventually deploy 12,000 satellites in total and has said the Starlink constellation will cost it roughly $10 billion.

Building and sending rockets to outer space is a capital-intensive business, but two of the world's richest men, Amazon (AMZN.O) founder Jeff Bezos and Musk, who is also the chief of automaker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O), have invested billions of dollars over the years to make inroads in this market.

Musk and Bezos have sparred publicly over the competing satellite plans.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last month approved SpaceX’s plan to deploy some Starlink satellites at a lower earth orbit than planned but included a number of conditions to ensure the plan’s safety.

SpaceX agreed to accept that their satellites may encounter interference from satellites deployed under Amazon’s Kuiper Systems satellite project.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/s...ys-2021-05-05/





New Speedtest Data Show Starlink Internet Speeds and Latency are all Over the Place
Rachel Kraus

Just like its founder Elon Musk, Starlink's satellite-based internet service is erratic.

That's according to new data from Ookla's Speedtest Intelligence published Wednesday. (Note: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, Mashable's parent company.) An analysis of connectivity metrics collected from users show Starlink is delivering internet download and upload speeds that are sometimes faster, and sometimes slower, than the median of what's available in those same areas. Starlink's latency was higher than broadband in every region except one.

Starlink was sometimes an improvement over rural broadband options. And sometimes it really wasn't.

Looks like Starlink's low-flying satellites aren't quite up and running yet.

Starlink is SpaceX's satellite internet service that's focused on providing connectivity to rural areas. Instead of relying on fiber optic cables to provide internet access — which requires a lot of investment in expensive infrastructure projects by ISPs — Starlink users can place a satellite on their roof, which will send and receive data via radio waves from the Starlink satellite network in space. With Starlink, the only "infrastructure requirement" is the company's $499 satellite dish and router, and a clear view of the sky.

Initially founded by Musk in 2015, Starlink launched in beta in October 2020, and had 10,000 users as of February. On Tuesday, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying Starlink satellites to deploy for the network. During the launch, the company announced that it had received 500,000 sign ups for the $99/month service.

The drive to close the digital divide desperately needs more solutions like Starlink that get reliable, high speed broadband to sparsely populated areas. Starlink's October beta sign-ups garnered a flurry of enthusiasm, and initial Speedtest results as disclosed to the FCC were promising: Starlink achieved a 102 to 103Mbps download rate, 40 to 42Mbps upload rate, and a latency of 18 to 19ms. That latency was on par with on-the-ground internet service.

Now that the network is becoming more widespread — at the same time that Starlink is working to add to its 1,400+ satellites — things are less consistent. The variability isn't a surprise: The beta invite said users should “Expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mbs to 150 Mbs and latency from 20ms to 40ms over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system.”

But even by its own benchmarks, Starlink appears to be missing the mark.

Median Starlink download speeds in the U.S. range from 40.36 Mbps to 93.09 Mbps. Ookla says "these represented everything from a dramatic improvement over other fixed broadband providers (545.6% faster in Tehama County, California) to a disappointment (67.9% slower in Clay County, Missouri)."

Median download speeds didn't break 100 mbps.

There was similar variance when it came to latency, which means how responsive an internet connection is.

"Median latency values on Starlink were observed from 31 ms (Kittitas County, Washington) all the way up to 88 ms (Otsego County, Michigan)," Ookla says. This was up to 486 percent higher than traditional broadband in the same areas. Yikes.

Starlink is certainly a work in progress. And when you're dealing with freaking space, technical difficulties are expected. But even so, as it bounces signals between space, Earth, and on and on, Starlink has a long way to go.
https://mashable.com/video/hollywood...color-grading/





SpaceX Starlink Satellites, not UFOs, spotted in Night Sky Over Washington State: Report

Sightings were also reported as far south as Portland, Oregon, a report said
Dom Calicchio

It turns out the lights in the night sky over western Washington state on Tuesday weren’t UFOs. Instead, they were SpaceX Starlink satellites, according to a report.

The satellites were launched earlier in the day in Florida, KING-TV of Seattle reported.

Sightings were reported around 9 p.m. in areas such as Bellevue, Puyallup and Covington, Wash., and even as far south as Portland, Ore., according to the station.

The objects were identified by Dr. James Davenport, an assistant professor in the Astronomy Department at the University of Washington.

"What we actually saw was the 60 Starlink satellites that had just been deployed this afternoon and they were still in low orbit, and they were still clustered together so we call this, like, the Starlink train,’" Davenport told KING. "You see, like, a little chain of satellites all close together, reflecting sunlight back at us."

SpaceX confirmed the deployment of the satellites Tuesday afternoon but as of 11 p.m. PT had not responded to KING regarding the Washington state sightings, the station reported.
https://www.foxnews.com/science/spac...n-state-report

















Until next week,

- js.



















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