Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - August 22nd, ’20

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002































August 22nd, 2020




Torrent Indexer ‘1337x’ Has Banned ‘YTS’ Uploads for Divulging Pirate IDs
Bill Toulas

• The recent snitching action of YTS has resulted in widespread condemnation from the pirating community.
• Torrent indexing platform ‘1337x’, which is the third most popular in the world, has banned all YTS uploads.
• EZTV was banned shortly after, as a link between the two was subsequently confirmed beyond doubt.

A few days back, disclosed court documents involved YTS in a large-scale pirate identification operation carried out by filmmakers who are seen in the pirating community as “copyright trolls.” YTS was in legal trouble again, and to escape the worst of the possible consequences, they just shared the IP addresses, emails, and whatever else they had on the users who downloaded the movies “Rambo: Last Blood” and “Hellboy.”

Some saw this as a betrayal of YTS towards its userbase and the pirating community in general. So, ‘1337x’ is the first to do something to express their opposition to what happened.

The torrent indexer, which also happens to be one of the largest and most successful torrent sites in the world, has banned all YTS uploads on its platform. The site didn’t even bother to issue a warning or an announcement about the ban, so they just blocked the YTS upload bots.

This translates to preventing hundreds of new torrents from being added on 1337x each week. The operators of the torrent indexing site told Torrent Freak that YTS has acted as a common snitcher and that the decision to ban them came from a unanimous vote from the staff.

Along with YTS, EZTV was also banned since it is considered to be linked to the YTS operators. When the YTS ban came into effect, the EZTV bot started uploading YTS torrents on 1337x, essentially acting as a backup system. The admins of 1337x added that they never trusted YTS and EZTV anyway, and they knew that they weren’t the original groups.

However, they previously allowed them to upload stuff on the website because they weren’t doing anything malicious like including malware in the torrents, and users loved the combination of good enough quality and small file size. After the recent events, though, 1337x doesn’t want to have any association with them.

YTS is indeed trying to play a double-platform game, facilitating piracy on the one side and paying their way out of trouble on the other. YTS is attempting to balance its act between making money from illegal operations and not getting shut down by copyright holders. That second part would be through the payment of settlements and also the sharing of user identification details. This is one sure way to lose people’s trust, as even those who are using a VPN tool to access YTS may now have ethical barriers in doing so.

Following 1337x’s ban, ‘TorrentGalaxy’ and ‘Glotorrents’ have also decided to block all YTS release uploads, and more platforms will likely do the same soon. Of course, there will always be the YTS website, but many already see this domain as a pirate honeypot.
https://www.technadu.com/torrent-ind...te-ids/179335/





Cities Sue Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Claim they Owe Cable “Franchise Fees”

Cities demand 5% of revenue, claim online video uses "public rights of way."
Jon Brodkin

Four cities in Indiana are suing Netflix and other video companies, claiming that online video providers and satellite-TV operators should have to pay the same franchise fees that cable companies pay for using local rights of way.

The lawsuit was filed against Netflix, Disney, Hulu, DirecTV, and Dish Network on August 4 in Indiana Commercial Court in Marion County. The cities of Indianapolis, Evansville, Valparaiso, and Fishers want the companies to pay the cable-franchise fees established in Indiana's Video Service Franchises (VSF) Act, which requires payments of 5 percent of gross revenue in each city.

The lawsuit is based on an unusual legal argument and doesn't seem likely to succeed. Essentially, the cities are claiming that Netflix and similar providers use the public rights of way simply by offering video streaming services over the Internet:

Defendants transmit video programming to Indiana subscribers using Internet protocol and other technologies. When doing so, Defendants transmit their programming through facilities located at least in part in public rights of way within the geographic boundaries of Indiana Units, including public rights of way located within Plaintiffs' geographic boundaries. Therefore, Defendants are required by the VSF Act to pay the Plaintiffs—and all other Indiana Units in which Defendants transmit video programming through facilities located at least in part in a public right-of-way—franchise fees.

“Netflix is clearly not a cable operator”

But streaming companies don't have to build physical infrastructure in each city to offer online video, so they aren't deploying their own wires on public rights of way.

"I find it extremely unlikely this lawsuit will prevail," Harold Feld, a longtime telecom attorney and senior VP of consumer-advocacy group Public Knowledge, told Ars. "The [federal] Communications Act defines terms such as 'cable system' and 'cable operator' in physical terms."

As Feld noted, US law defines a cable system as "a facility, consisting of a set of closed transmission paths and associated signal generation, reception, and control equipment that is designed to provide cable service." Local franchising rules and fees are based on cities' authority to manage their local rights of way.

"Netflix is clearly not a cable operator" and is therefore not subject to local franchising rules, Feld said. "Furthermore, because broadband is not considered a cable service, Netflix does not offer video programming 'over a cable system,' which would be required to make it a cable operator."

Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ are Internet-only services. Dish and DirecTV are primarily satellite operators but also offer online access. The cities' lawsuit never mentions the word "satellite" and doesn't fully explain how DirecTV and Dish use the public rights of way. "Defendants DirecTV and Dish have transformed their businesses and delivery methods over the last decade to meet the demands of the marketplace, and subscribers now access their services through facilities located at least in part in a public right of way," the lawsuit said, apparently referring to the newer, online components of the services.

Some backstory

Historically, satellite services haven't had to pay the franchise fees assessed to cable companies. "For years, cable companies have called franchise fees unfair because competitors who don't need the right of way—such as satellite-TV services or online-video services—don't have to pay cities a dime," The Colorado Sun wrote in a 2019 article.

When contacted by Ars today, a spokesperson for DirecTV owner AT&T said that "DirecTV doesn't use public rights of way and isn't covered by the Indiana Video Services Franchise Act." Dish has fought efforts to impose franchise fees on satellite providers, saying on its "Fair TV Tax" website that "Requiring satellite providers to pay a Franchise Fee, or an equivalent tax, is like asking cable and telecom companies to pay for launching satellites into orbit."

Dish declined comment today. We also contacted Netflix, Disney, and Hulu, and will update this story with any responses.

City franchise revenue in decline

Even if Indiana's state court system agrees with the cities, the companies could appeal in federal court and argue that US law preempts local franchise fees on streaming companies. The Federal Communications Commission could also get involved in the legal battle, as it has done in cases involving federal preemption of local rules. We contacted the FCC today and will update this article if we get a response.

The lawsuit may have been spurred in part by cities getting less franchise revenue as TV customers switch to online video. "Records maintained by the Valparaiso clerk-treasurer show the Porter County city received $446,000 in video franchise fees last year, $457,000 in 2018, and $476,000 in 2017," The Times of Northwest Indiana wrote last week.

Valparaiso city attorney Patrick Lyp told the Times, "Our case helps ensure a competitive marketplace where everyone subject to the fee pays it. The current situation is unfair to cable providers who have been following Indiana law."

The cities' lawsuit points to the broad definition of "video service" contained in Indiana's Video Service Franchises Act, which defines video service as "(1) the transmission to subscribers of video programming and other programming service: (A) through facilities located at least in part in a public right of way; and (B) without regard to the technology used to deliver the video programming or other programming service." Netflix and the other defendants should be forced to "acquire the necessary franchises, pay the required fees in the future, and compensate Plaintiffs and all other units of government for unpaid fees for past service," the lawsuit said.

A similar lawsuit was filed by the city of Creve Coeur, Missouri, in 2018. Netflix sought dismissal of Creve Coeur's case in federal court, saying that it distributes video programming "exclusively over the public Internet." The case was remanded to the Twenty-First Judicial Circuit of the State of Missouri, where it is still pending.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ranchise-fees/





Clear Channel’s Billboards Will Start Tracking Consumers in Europe

The company’s Radar program has been in place for four years in the US
Kim Lyons

Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings’ Radar tracking technology, which gives advertisers access to anonymized mobile phone data about people who pass by billboards, is launching in Europe next month, the Financial Times reported. The outdoor ad-tracking program has been in the US for four years, but Clear Channel waited to launch in Europe so it could meet the EU’s stricter privacy regulations.

William Eccleshare, CEO of Clear Channel’s international division, told the FT that Radar, which he stressed relied on data that was “very well anonymized,” can see and follow people’s movements into a store, follow what they purchase, and look at viewing habits if someone, say, passed by an outdoor ad for a Netflix show.

When Clear Channel launched Radar in the US in 2016, vice president for research and insights Andy Stevens admitted to The New York Times that the process did “sound a bit creepy,” but he noted that the billboards were merely using already-available data that mobile advertisers have been using for some time. And Stevens noted to the Times that ad targeting— showing certain ads to certain people based on demographic data or shopping habits— isn’t a new concept.

The process doesn’t really sound any less creepy in corporate-speak; Clear Channel describes the process, which “measures consumer’s real-world travel patterns and behaviors as they move through their day, analyzing data on direction of travel, billboard viewability, and visits to specific destinations” and then maps that movement against Clear Channel’s outdoor ads. Advertisers can then decide if they want to buy ads to “reach specific behavioral audience segments.”

Remember that scene from Minority Report where Tom Cruise is on the lam, but the billboards know what he likes?

We’re not quite there yet; the Radar-enabled billboards aren’t making spoken sales pitches directly to customers. And it seems like an odd time to try a new market for billboards: outdoor advertising has been hard hit during the pandemic, with advertisers scaling back budgets and becoming less willing to post physical ads in urban areas whose workers weren’t in offices for months. Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings posted a net loss of $137.2 million for the second quarter, with a 55 percent drop in revenue.

But Clear Channel plans to launch Radar in the UK and Spain beginning next month and expand to Sweden in the coming months, according to the FT.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/10/2...racking-europe





Mood Media, the Successor to Muzak, Emerges From Bankruptcy With Plan to Fine-Tune ‘Elevator Music’

The Austin-based background music company has just emerged out of bankruptcy, with a continuing appetite for the softer hits or ambient styles it provides.
A.D. Amorosi

Whether you know it or not, you’ve been in the mood for some time. That’s Mood Media Corp, one of the world’s largest providers of atmospheric music and visuals (along with digital signage, scent, service menu boards, hold music. on-hold messaging and integrated A/V) to shopping-oriented businesses, hotels and restaurants.

Whole Foods uses Mood. Target uses Mood.

Two weeks ago, that Mood soured as the Austin-based corporation, founded in 2004, filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District of Texas, seeking to restructure $627.5 million of debt. Its financial woes, Mood CEO David Hoodis said, came down to the media giant’s purchase of 13 separate like-minded companies since its start. “With said acquisition came leverage and a lot of debt as these companies merged,” stated Hoodis. Combine that with high costs (1,700-plus employees internationally) and Covid-19 (“70% of our clients stopped paying us”), and Mood Media’s bankruptcy seemed inevitable.

As luck (and smarts) would have it, though, one day after Mood Media filed for Chapter 11 on July 30, the company’s restructuring plan was approved by a federal judge, its debt reduced by $404 million — and the mood lightened.

“Getting out of bankruptcy was made quick through hard work and getting concessions from every stakeholder, be it lien holders, equity holders or bond holders, that this was a fresh chapter for Mood,” said Hoodis. “They bought into our vision of a new, lean structure, a reduction in the debt load and the creation of an organization moving forward in a post-Covid world with the intent of growth and stability, that their investment would return in the future.”

By August 13, Mood hadn’t just elevated its Harmony all-in-one Brand Experience (a proprietary tech platform where clients manage all of their content through one singular content management system). It had introduced Mood Reimagined, the company’s new client support and service initiative driven by ease of use and contact, and its Center of Excellence. The latter analyzes and interprets consumer trends and behavior data faster so Mood can offer real-time strategic counsel to its operators.

“As we move forward with a Reimagined Mood, it’s with the realization that the consumer experience has become connected,” said the man behind Mood’s music, Danny Turner, global SVP of creative programming. Talking about the interconnectivity of audio, video and additional signage, Turner pushed the agenda of “fully integrated media solutions and campaigns,” where every opportunity to influence or localize is afforded.

“We’re pivoting… making the brand experience retail-ready and retail-easy in a cost-effective, fully-integrated way,” said Hoodis.

What was nearly lost in the bankruptcy proceedings was the name of Muzak, the avatar of self-created, atmospheric background music happily known as “elevator music.” That’s the brand upon which Mood Media built its reputation, with piped-in sound meant to sooth and engage, often tied to the science of how music affects the behavior of customers. (Muzak’s one-time motto was “specialists in the physiological and psychological applications of music.”)

“It is our legacy brand,” said Hoodis of the (soft) rock upon which Mood’s empire was built. Mood Media acquired Muzak Holdings in 2011, with Muzak acquiring the assets of Independence Communications Inc. in 2012.

Invented in the 1920s by Major General George Owen Squier as a technology to deliver music to audiences without the use of radio, the North American Company acquired its rights, created the firm Wired Radio, Inc., made it available in 1934 for commercial clients, eventually sold to Warner Bros., then sound entrepreneur William Benton, then Westinghouse. At its height, Muzak had its own in-house orchestra producing smooth, original content and easy, breezy covers of popular hits of the day.

Other giants of serene, swirling instrumental music such as Mantovani, Ferrante & Teicher, Ray Conniff and Percy Faith also became wildly popular — the monsters of shlock. “Those classic Muzak sounds, the drippy, kitschy, gloriously saccharine instrumental interpretations of pop melodies, are embedded in our American culture,” noted Turner. “The Muzak brand name became synonymous with the actual product. We became the Band-Aid or the Kleenex of commercial music services.”

Joseph Lanza, the author of 1994’s “Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong,” bristles at Turner’s description of Muzak and east listening as saccharine.

“Why would having something be fake-sweet be any better or worse than it being genuinely sweet?” asked Lanza. “People would consider something as schmaltzy because you don’t have some drugged-up jazz trumpeter in the foreground. This critical prejudice against schmaltz is cultural Marxism,” he said, sticking up for “a simple melody without the jive of jazz and rock ‘n’ roll.”

The best of this lush instrumental music designed for backgrounds, then, is sweet, sentimental and often unobtrusive, with a Muzak or easy-listening version of any given song “bringing out the melody that was already existing, but, only now in a more prominent fashion, and without the distraction of the voice,” said Lanza. “It would make the more harsh instruments mellow, and reconstitute the song itself. You would still be connected to, and appreciate, the original. Elevator music just added another dimension.”

Beyond background instrumentals of the Muzak company’s start, Muzak studied the science of musical sound, tones and rhythms to enhance shopping experiences and heighten productivity through its Stimulus Progression programs of the 1950s. Eventually, Muzak continued to use those same prying-and-placement principles, but with popular music and its actual hitmakers, rather than swooning instrumental covers. Mood Media’s Center of Excellence (COE), which analyzes and interprets consumer trends for real-time strategic counsel and bespoke solutions, sounds much the same as Muzak’s Stimulus Progression program.

“Muzak was fascinating in that it had that whole corporate part of it they would try to sell with real musicologists and scientific advisors studying the impact of certain songs and music on the public,” noted Lanza.

“From large, multi-national brands seeking a consistent experience globally — while allowing their managers to infuse local, market-relevant content where appropriate — to the hyper-local craft brewery that wants to be able to influence the experience based on its unique character, the solutions must be architected to be customizable,” said Turner, speaking of Mood Media’s new initiatives, which seem similar to Muzak’s Stimulus program.

The cushiony serenity and/or sweetness of Muzak’s original vision of atmospheric tones were so pervasive that, come 1986 when Westinghouse announced it was selling the sonic background provider, metal-head Ted Nugent made a $10 million bid to purchase the company with the intent of shutting it down. “Muzak is an evil force in today’s society, causing people to lapse into uncontrollable fits of blandness,” said Nugent at the time.

By the ’80s, however, the music at Muzak was on the move from the background to the foreground.

“The dynamic of what people expect — or rather, what retail expected — changed,” said Hoodis of Muzak’s move to popular artists rather than elevator-driven covers. “With popular music, we found customers stayed in the store longer and shopped. The came back more frequently. They bought more. That pushed away the easy listening atmospheric music that once worked well for our clients.”

Lanza also theorized that stringed instrumental music eventually died off because “baby boomers came up and had their own version of being mellow, different from the generation before: the ’70s singer-songwriter albums of Carole King and James Taylor who made melancholy songs about growing older or buying a house.”

Mood Media retired its Muzak brand name by 2015. But Muzak lives on for Mood — and YouTube fans — maybe now more than ever in its long history.

“Not long ago, those much-maligned instrumental interpretations of pop melodies that went under the Muzak banner were de rigueur,” said Mood’s Turner. “Now, electronic chill or lounge replaced that soundtrack. It’s contemporary, not obtrusive and fits with environmental factors. In other situations, pop can still reign. In the grocery vertical, for example, multi-generational, mid-to-upper-tempo, familiar and current pop and adult-contemporary selections tend to resonate the most.”

Turner goes on to say that Mood Media recently released an album of previously-unreleased Muzak studio sessions with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra (“Muzak Sessions,” on the Muzak Archives label). “We have shelves full of archived transcription masters that would eclipse your typical garage sale or record swap,” said Turner, addressing how often rare, breezy instrumental albums from the Hollywood Strings or Mantovani, as well as YouTube channels from Muzak and its rivals in background music, 3-M, come up as a topic.

Then there is Joseph Lanza, who continues his obsession with all things Muzak and easy listening in his upcoming book, “Easy Listening Acid Trip: An Elevator Ride Through Sixties Psychedelic Pop,” from Feral House.

Along with touting YouTube channels where versions of “noisy” Beatles songs such as “I Me Mine” from Franck Pourcel reign as quasi-baroque chamber music, Lanza doubles down on mid-to-late-’60s and early-’70s psychedelia and how it found a pillow-y existence in the last vestiges of true easy listening, as well as its own schmaltzy past.

“You had English bands like the Beatles and the Kinks examining their heritage in the British music hall style, while American bands were looking backwards to Tin Pan Alley and vaudeville,” said the author, not counting the folk and neo-classical revivalism on both sides of the ocean. “The irony here being that in an age where a lot of older folks thought it was the end of the world, it was the so-called hippie groups who were coming up with songs with more melodies than their parents’ favorites such as Benny Goodman were doing.”

As for easy-listening and Muzak versions of ’60s and ’70s flower-power hits, these were executed in the same spirit as Percy Faith and Mantovani before them. Only now, these instrumental ensembles, from Lawrence Welk to the Mystic Moods Orchestra, were tackling twisted rock backgrounds whose “edges were softened to be made more palatable… while its melodies were heightened,” said Lanza, pointing to the Hollyridge Strings’ version of the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever,” Paul Mauriat’s plush treatment of Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” and the Muzak instrumental version of the Strawberry Alarm Clock’s “Incense and Peppermints,” by Charles Grean and His Orchestra.

“Listen to Donovan, then listen to, say, David Rose and His Orchestra doing lush instrumental versions of Donovan (“Wear Your Love like Heaven”),” said Lanza. “These songs were offered to teen and adult audiences simultaneously. You don’t really have that strange interplay of generations and contexts anymore. Now, it is just one two-dimensional goulash of nothing.”
https://www.newstimes.com/entertainm...e-15493701.php





ViacomCBS Looking to Sell CNET for $500 Million to Digital-Marketing Firm (Report)
Todd Spangler

ViacomCBS wants to offload CNET, the tech news and reviews division of CBS Interactive, and the media conglomerate is in talks to sell it for $500 million, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Per the report, ViacomCBS has held talks with Red Ventures, a marketing company that says it owns a “portfolio of technologies, digital assets, and strategic partnerships that enable us to meet consumers where they are in the buying cycle.”

ViacomCBS reps declined to comment. Red Ventures did not respond to a request for comment.

CBS acquired CNET Networks in 2008 for $1.8 billion. In addition to the flagship CNET site, the CNET Media Group also houses brands including ZDNet, GameSpot and TV Guide.

Founded in 2000, Red Ventures says it has 3,000 employees in the U.S., the U.K. and Brazil. The Fort Mill, S.C.-based company owns and operates digital brands including Bankrate, the Points Guy, Healthline, MyMove and Allconnect.com. In 2017, Red Ventures acquired the Bankrate personal-finance website for $1.24 billion.

ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish has told investors that the company is evaluating the sale of non-core assets — i.e., those that are not video-based. Earlier this year, Bakish said the company was seeking to sell book publisher Simon & Schuster, which analysts say could fetch upwards of $1.5 billion. The CEO previously said ViacomCBS also exploring a sale of Black Rock, the office building in midtown Manhattan which has served as CBS’s headquarters since the mid-1960s.

CNET first launched in 1994, at the dawn of the internet. The site covers technology, science and culture with news, reviews, buying guides, features and commentary, and operates a Spanish-language offshoot, CNET en Español.

Mark Larkin, who has been with CBS and CNET for more than two decades, is EVP and general manager of the CNET Media Group. He joined CNET Networks in 1996, according to ViacomCBS. When CBS acquired CNET in 2008, Larkin was named VP and GM of CBSNews.com.
https://variety.com/2020/digital/new...es-1234738878/





‘It’s a Telegram Revolution’: Messaging App Proves Crucial to Belarus Protests

A man in Minsk, Belarus, looks at Telegram channel NEXTA Live on his smartphone.
AP

Every day, like clockwork, to-do lists for those protesting against Belarus’ authoritarian leader appear in the popular Telegram messaging app. They lay out goals, give times and locations of rallies with business-like precision, and offer spirited encouragement.

“Today will be one more important day in the fight for our freedom. Tectonic shifts are happening on all fronts, so it’s important not to slow down,” a message in one of Telegram’s so-called channels read Tuesday. “Morning. Expanding the strike … 11:00. Supporting the Kupala [theater] ... 19:00. Gathering at the Independence Square.”

The app has become an indispensable tool in coordinating the unprecedented mass protests that have rocked Belarus since Aug. 9, when election officials announced that President Alexander Lukashenko — whom some call “Europe’s last dictator” — had won a landslide victory to extend his 26-year rule in a vote widely seen as rigged.

Peaceful protesters who poured onto the streets of the capital, Minsk, and other cities were met with stun grenades, rubber bullets and beatings from police. The opposition candidate, schoolteacher Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, left for Lithuania — under duress, her campaign said — and authorities shut off the internet, leaving Belarusians with almost no access to independent online news outlets or social media and protesters seemingly without a leader.

That’s where Telegram — which often remains available despite internet outages, touts the security of messages shared in the app and has been used in other protest movements — came in. Some of its channels helped unconnected, scattered rallies mature into well-coordinated action.

The people who run the channels, which used to offer political news, now post updates, videos and photos of the turmoil sent in from users, locations of heavy police presence, contacts of human rights activists and calls for new demonstrations — something Belarusian opposition leaders have refrained from doing publicly themselves. Tens of thousands of people all across the country have responded to those calls.

In a matter of days, the channels — NEXTA, NEXTA Live and Belarus of the Brain are the most popular — have become the main method for facilitating the protests, said Franak Viacorka, a Belarusian analyst and nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council.

“The fate of the country has never depended so much on one [piece] of technology,” Viacorka said.

In the days following the vote and the subsequent internet outage, NEXTA Live’s audience shot from several hundred thousand followers to over 2 million. Its sister channel NEXTA has more than 700,000 followers. Belarus of the Brain’s following grew from almost 170,000 users in late June to over 470,000 this week.

Their influence in a nation of 9.5 million is hard to overestimate, including by the authorities who have taken notice and are pursuing those behind the channels.

Last week, officials opened a criminal probe into NEXTA and its founder, 22-year-old blogger Stepan Putilo, on charges of fomenting mass riots — an offense punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Blogger Igor Losik, who founded Belarus of the Brain, was arrested before the election, but the channel continues to operate.

“We have indeed become the bullhorn of the situation that is unfolding in Belarus right now,” Putilo, who is Belarusian but lives in Warsaw, said in a recent interview with Lithuanian news outlet Delfi. “We have become the voice of this revolution, but by no will of our own. It just happened.”

Putilo first created NEXTA — which is pronounced NEKH-ta and means “somebody” in Belarusian — as a YouTube channel in 2015, when he was just 17. His profile rose last year when his 30-minute video about the country’s iron-fisted leader, “Lukashenko. Criminal Records,” was viewed almost 3 million times. A court in Belarus declared the film extremist, but it is still available on YouTube.

Putilo turned to Telegram in 2018. His two channels focused mostly on Belarusian politics. His team received thousands of messages from users sending in photos, videos and news items each day and posted the most newsworthy, taking pride in often sharing information from sources inside the government or law enforcement.

After the demonstrations began, thousands of messages turned into hundreds of thousands, and the underground operation now appears inundated. In response to a request from the Associated Press for an interview, NEXTA editor in chief Roman Protsevich wrote: “Sure, it’s possible, but the question is when. …” He then stopped responding.

Putilo hasn’t responded to requests for comment.

When the protests began, the NEXTA channels were often the first places anywhere on the internet to carry grisly pictures of police violently clashing with demonstrators. This week, they were filled with videos of workers protesting at industrial plants.

Journalists in Belarus have praised the channels for breaking news — but note that traditional media also played an important role.

“Telegram channels did help to pierce the information blackout, but I have to say that it wasn’t just them,” said Andrei Bastunets, head of the Belarusian Assn. of Journalists. “Telegram channels [run by bloggers] played a mobilizing, an organizing role, while more balanced information could be found on Telegram channels of media outlets.”

Social media platforms have played major roles in previous uprisings, including in the Arab Spring, anti-government protests in Hong Kong and demonstrations against racial injustice in the United States.

But, since 2016, when Russia was accused of using Facebook and other platforms in an effort to influence or interfere in the U.S. election, many have seen social media in a more dystopian light, said Hans Kundnani, senior research fellow at London-based think tank Chatham House.

“What’s happening in Belarus right now is kind of a reminder that actually social media can be used in a positive way from a democratic perspective,” Kundnani said.

Protesters in the streets echoed his sentiment.

“Telegram channels and websites that don’t belong to our government are the main source of information today as we cannot at all rely on state media,” said Roman Semenov, who follows the NEXTA channels and joined a rally in central Minsk on Wednesday evening. “It’s a Telegram revolution.”
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation...larus-protests





Why Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet’ Represents a Big Piracy Risk Around the World
Patrick Frater, Manori Ravindran

Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi epic “Tenet” is charting a new course for blockbusters during the pandemic by opening in foreign territories before it lands in the U.S.

However, many of the factors that make “Tenet” the milestone film in the cinema industry’s post-coronavirus road to recovery are simultaneously elements that expose it to piracy. That runs the risk that a thriller that thrives on keeping its twists under wraps will have its secrets exposed before domestic audiences have a chance to watch it.

“In some ways ‘Tenet’ is a perfect storm for piracy, in that it has raised expectations, both about the film itself and the cinema experience,” one anti-piracy veteran said, speaking to Variety on condition of anonymity. “Also, it has limited availability and suffers from a staggered release.”

The film’s uneven worldwide release pattern — launching in some international territories on Aug. 26 before coming to some U.S. cities on Sept. 3 and China on Sept 4 — is a result of the adventure epic having been rescheduled multiple times. When it does open in the U.S., it’s unclear if moviegoers in major markets like New York City, Los Angeles or San Francisco, where cinemas remain closed, will even be able to see it on the big screen. That could spur more demand for pirated copies.

Though other major tentpoles, like superhero adventure “Aquaman,” generated massive ticket sales despite a staggered rollout across the globe, it’s rare that a movie would open in the U.S. without playing in markets in Los Angeles or New York City. It’s also possible that people will feel unsafe going to a theater during the public health crisis, potentially making them more willing to watch an illegal version of a film they would have otherwise been willing to watch on the big screen. In some foreign markets “Tenet” will clash with local events or other movie releases that it might otherwise have avoided.

“We see piracy can occur everywhere. It happens even in the three hours between East and West coast U.S. releases,” says the anti-piracy veteran.

While professional pirates would prefer to obtain pristine recordings from a post-production facility or a projection booth, camcording in cinemas can be a significant danger in the first few days of a film’s release.

There is believed to be a short-lived black market for handheld-recorded footage, and even a partial recording is useful as pirate editors will try to knit together as complete a version as possible. And an English-language soundtrack is seen as especially valuable in the case of a Hollywood movie.

COVID-19 social distancing could potentially make it harder for a person with a camera to avoid being spotted, especially in the middle of the auditorium, where the visual and audio experiences are optimal.

However, “the employment of security personnel to enforce physical distancing will also facilitate anti-piracy surveillance during ‘Tenet’ screenings,” said one Spanish exhibitor of the film which opens on Aug. 26 in Spain.

The same exhibitor said that he had no knowledge of Warner Bros. issuing anti-piracy guidance to exhibitors in Spain. But he was conscious that, with Latin American cinemas mostly under lockdown, there would be a heightened demand for Spanish-language pirate versions.

The Spanish exhibitor said that the terms and conditions received from Warner Bros. to date largely focused on commercial concerns. They included a requirement that Nolan’s movie should play a minimum eight weeks and occupy each complex’s biggest screens to compensate for limited auditorium occupancy. Warner Bros. is also raising its required percentage of box office gross in comparison to last year’s “Joker,” the exhibitor said.

Other exhibitors in Malaysia, Korea and Thailand said that, as of Wednesday, they had also not heard of any piracy-specific terms and conditions from Warner Bros. Insiders at Warner Bros., as well as executives at rival studios, note that there are careful security measures in place for any theatrical release.

Should illegal copies appear online, there are organizations that work diligently to spot and remove them from the internet. Privately, studio execs say pirated content is sometimes inevitable, but feel there’s less of a risk since “Tenet” is debuting in China fairly soon after it launches in other parts of the world.

“Thai moviegoers are excited for ‘Tenet’ coming on screen. We are very happy with the performance of (recent Korean hit) ‘Peninsula’ and look forward to ‘The Unhinged,’” said Suvannee Chinchiewchan, GM of Thailand’s SF Cinemas chain.

“Exhibitors in Thailand have not been notified by Warner of any specific requirements for ‘Tenet.’ They could ask us to implement measures like walk-throughs or projection booth checks, as have been done in the past,” she said.

Warner Bros. has yet to reach out to U.K.-based exhibitors with specific anti-piracy guidance for “Tenet,” but has begun investing heavily in marketing and promoting the film ahead of its Aug. 26 launch. Tickets went on sale at midnight on Aug. 11, with venues such as the Odeon BFI Imax, shuttered for months, opening in time to screen the film.

“Warner Bros. hasn’t specifically mentioned [piracy], but we’re aware of that and are taking extra steps because Chris Nolan is trusting us with ‘Tenet.’ We’re going to do everything we can to help him out,” said one senior international exhibitor, adding that the steps taken thus far are “within everything we can possibly do.”

A senior studio executive, who asked to remain anonymous, noted while Warner Bros. may not yet have focused attention on piracy, they are “certain to have the full force of their security and policing teams around the world all over whatever piracy links emerge.”

“Every studio has very strong and comprehensive piracy/technical teams all on hot alert as each movie goes to release,” the exec added.

The U.K.’s Film Content Protection Agency (FCPA) was set up in 2016 under the Film Distributors’ Association, and works closely with studios and exhibitors to safeguard new releases. Piracy in cinemas is not rampant in the U.K. and is generally concentrated in small geographic clusters around the country. Recent years, however, have seen an uptick in cases in London, tarnishing a previously clean record.

Simon Brown, director of the FCPA, has been in touch with Warner Bros. and exhibitors, and will distribute a risk assessment for “Tenet” by the end of the week. It is expected that the film will receive a “Vulnerable Release Alert,” known as a VRA, which means extra precautions and guidance are circulated among cinemas. The FCPA will then monitor the situation and decide whether to deploy covert operations.

Technology used in cinemas includes everything from infrared CCTV in auditoriums at chains such as Vue, to portable night vision devices that are used by staff. At smaller independent outfits, such as London’s Genesis Cinema, there are bag searches on entry, regular walk-through screen checks and continuous screen checks from manned projection rooms.

There is, ultimately, a heavy reliance on cinema workers, whom the FCPA incentivizes to report incidents with awards. “We rely so much on the vigilance and awareness of cinema staff,” says Brown, noting that 188 incidents in 2019 were identified and disrupted by staff.

The anxiety this year, however, is how many cinema workers will return to their jobs following the lockdown period. “We are not sure how many will be new staff, in which case we need to make sure they are aware of the basics around anti-piracy. That’s an issue for us because a lot of staff have been lost in this period,” says Brown.

An unforeseen piracy challenge this summer, however, will undoubtedly be the unprecedented surge of drive-in cinemas across the U.K. Drive-ins aren’t the cultural touchstone they are in the U.S,. but a four-month movie theater shutdown has seen more than 40 new outdoor cinemas set up shop across the country. At least one drive-in operator, The Drive In chain, has begun selling “Tenet” tickets for an Aug. 31-Sept. 13 run.

“It’s a big challenge,” says Brown. “We will really rely on members of staff because catching someone in a car is almost impossible.” The FCPA is now in the process of developing best practices for drive-ins specifically, which can be particularly vulnerable to audio piracy.

Laura Elmes, a producer at Drive In London, assures that the venues are taking necessary precautions, with CCTV “all over the site.”

“We’ve also got 20 attendants patrolling the site throughout. We’re pretty well covered, to be honest, because it is not a dark cinema as well, it is quite easy to see if anyone is trying to get away with filming stuff,” says Elmes.

And what if they catch someone filming? “We’d get them to delete anything they’ve got, and then we’d keep an eye on them — depends on what they are doing, they might be asked to leave. Obviously, piracy is our top priority because it is so important. We’d stop them from coming back. It’s definitely top of the list.”

Naman Ramachandran, John Hopewell and Rebecca Rubin also contributed to this report.
https://variety.com/2020/film/news/t...an-1234735159/





How Much Is an Album Worth in 2020: $3.49? $77? $1,000? Maybe $0

It depends who’s selling. As some artists release records that feel like footnotes to bigger businesses, others double down on their value.
Jon Caramanica

Over the last couple of years, Rory Ferreira, a.k.a. the avant-garde hip-hop artist R.A.P. Ferreira, noticed that on Discogs, an online record marketplace that specializes in resales, the physical versions of his albums were trading for several times their original price.

So when planning the vinyl release of his latest album, “Purple Moonlight Pages,” he decided to charge accordingly.

“I’m not going to knock anyone’s hustle. I just need to make sure mine is calibrated accordingly, too,” he said in a phone interview last month.

In July, he offered the “Purple Moonlight Pages” vinyl for $77, an unusually high price, even for a double LP. Although the album had been available on streaming services for months, he sold all 1,500 copies available on his website. And on Instagram, he began replying to feedback about the cost, both positive and negative. To one exasperated fan, he wrote, “look we get it. you don’t value yourself or what you make. the rest of us not on that. kick rocks now.”

Charging $77 for an album might be a reach even in the best of times, but it’s especially ambitious in the current music business climate, where the album itself has become increasingly devalued. The growth of subscription streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music has, in under a decade, almost completely detached albums and songs from a specific dollar value.

So what, if anything, is an album truly worth in 2020? Depends on the business model.

“I do think music has value, but the value is not on the monetary side,” said Steve Carless, Nipsey Hussle’s business partner and co-manager. “Technology has deteriorated that.” Thanks to the abstraction of the artist from the music on streaming services, and the rise of social media and the intimacy it creates between stars and fans, physical music is no longer the primary way artists capture their followers’ attention and dollars.

“Music has now become the vehicle,” Carless added. “Before it was what was at the end of the equation. Now it’s at the beginning of the equation.”

In short: For the most popular artists, the album itself is just one small part of a multiplatform business, and nowhere near the most profitable one. While they still do a healthy business in physical sales, and sometimes find ways to squeeze additional profits from it — Taylor Swift recently offered eight different deluxe editions of her new album, “Folklore” — generally the album is the thing that sets the table for far more ambitious revenue streams: merchandise, touring, licensing and more.

That’s at one extreme. At the other are small artists or labels with devoted fan bases, for whom the album remains at the center of the financial conversation, and still a lucrative proposition on its own.

All of which is to say that it’s harder than ever to determine, in a pure sense, the value of an album. Unlike in the CD or LP eras, when the market prices for records were essentially consistent, now the album is valued on a sliding scale — for most people, using streaming services, access to an album is (or feels) free; the most dedicated, however, will put their money where their fandom is.

This has wreaked havoc on record label business models, and also on the Billboard charts. In order to encourage immediate sales, artists looking for an opening week No. 1 began bundling albums with other, higher-priced items. Nowadays, an artist’s album release can often look more like the opening of a clothing store.

Billboard’s latest attempt to rein in bundling goes into effect in October, with a mandate that music must be promoted as an explicit add-on purchase to tickets or merch, with the cost disclosed to the consumer.

It’s another adjustment meant to keep the album chart as purely about music as possible (even as the very idea of an “album” as a formally aggregated work of art is now in crisis, following the rise of playlisting and the increasingly prevalent drip-drip approach to releasing new music). But with the business of being a popular musician increasingly weighted toward non-album revenue streams, the chart’s entire meaning has become fuzzy.

As before, an album needs to cost at least $3.49 to count on the charts, a number arrived at in 2011, when digital album sales were more of a threat than album streaming. Compared to a T-shirt or hoodie that costs $50, or a concert ticket that might cost a few times that, that price of the album is incidental — the monetary value of the fandom is captured by something other than the music. But this is a recent development. Before the streaming era, artists were attempting to extract maximum value from the album itself.

Perhaps the highest-profile example is the Wu-Tang Clan album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.” The group made one copy of it available, and it sold at auction in 2015 for $2 million to the since-disgraced pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli, who surrendered it to federal authorities in 2018.

Part of the inspiration for the Wu-Tang auction was the release of Hussle’s 2013 mixtape, “Crenshaw.” Hussle, perhaps the first artist in the modern era to propose a premium pricing model for a dying medium, offered physical copies of “Crenshaw,” for $100, using the slogan “Proud2Pay.” (The mixtape was available for free online.) He sold out 1,000 copies. To demonstrate that the “Crenshaw” release wasn’t a fluke, he upped the ante with his next release, “Mailbox Money,” offering 100 copies at $1,000; all of them sold out too.

Hussle understood that the physical album was no longer a music delivery system, but a proxy for fan enthusiasm, a merch totem of its own. This was an especially key development in an era when physical sales were in decline and streaming services with their own economic interests were on the verge of inserting themselves as crucial middlemen between artists and fans.

Carless described Hussle’s intent as “Let’s stop looking at the majority, focus on the minority” — courting those listeners who were passionate and resourced enough to pay. The CD itself, numbered and signed, became “an important keepsake,” Carless said, and it came with certain fan privileges — a phone number they could use to reach Hussle, a private concert. (Hussle released “Crenshaw” the same year Patreon, which proposed a similar tiered model of financial relationship between artist and fan, opened for business.)

Perhaps more crucially, Hussle’s unconventional pricing model was also profitable at the album level. Generally speaking, a tiny sliver of top streaming pop stars can earn back the expenses of making an album purely on stream revenue. For the vast majority of artists, that’s an out-of-reach goal.

One group that still makes money off its music? The rap duo Run the Jewels. “I definitely know artists at both ends of the spectrum who look at it as a loss leader, but Run the Jewels just doesn’t happen to look at it that way,” said Amaechi Uzoigwe, the group’s manager, who added that each of the duo’s albums has been profitable — via streaming and physical sales — even though they give away downloads for free.

What this underscores is something Hussle knew, and something Radiohead figured out more than a decade ago: There are tiers of fans. Some — most, actually — will pay nothing for music. But the few who are willing to pay can more than offset them. In 2007, Radiohead released its seventh album, “In Rainbows,” via a pay-what-you-wish download, and in various physical formats; three million people paid for a copy.

On the online record marketplace Bandcamp, around 80,000 albums are sold per day. Half of them are digital: the average price for those albums — many of which are pay-what-you-wish — is $9, though according to Joshua Kim, chief operating officer of Bandcamp, some fans will voluntarily pay several times that; in one case, a fan paid $1,000 for an album.

Kim said that the fastest growing part of Bandcamp’s business is physical sales, particularly vinyl. “We view Bandcamp as a place where music is valued as art,” he said. “Physical formats are probably the most concrete expression of that.” He likened consumers willing to pay a premium for music they can otherwise get for free to those who shop for organic food or ethically sourced clothing, finding value in “compensating artists fairly.”

That perspective is consistent with what Ferreira has seen in his fan base. He noticed at shows that some fans bought copies of albums they already owned — “talismans,” he called them — as a show of financial and creative support: “I’m a poor guy from poor people from a poor place,” he said. “Thinking that somebody might own several copies of one project just because they wanted you to keep going was totally foreign to me.”

In the living room of his home in Nashville last month, Ferreira laid out hundreds of record mailers and all the copies of “Purple Moonlight Pages,” and planned for several days of work — he is a business of one.

Despite the pushback he received from some fans, Ferreira doesn’t view his $77 vinyl as a premium product. He said that he values these newest songs, which were more expensive for him to make and reflect greater maturity as an artist, more highly than his older songs, and felt that should be reflected in the price. “The music is the premium product,” he said. “It’s just that there are some people who are at a place in their life where it’s kind of nice to be able to style out and buy something nice that you believe in.”

For those people, he was excited about the process of individually packing up his albums and shipping them out. It was a way to keep his focus on the music, and its true value. “I don’t want to sell a lot of T-shirts,” he said. “I did not start rapping because I like folding T-shirts.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/a...ums-price.html

















Until next week,

- js.



















Current Week In Review





Recent WiRs -

August 15th, August 8th, August 1st, July 25th

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