Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - July 1st, ’23

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002































July 1st, 2023




Supreme Court Rejects Lawsuit Accusing Google of Stealing Millions of Song Lyrics
Emily Birnbaum

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to revive a lawsuit by music website Genius Media Group Inc. accusing Alphabet Inc.’s Google of stealing millions of song lyrics.

The justices left in place a ruling that tossed out the suit, which accused Google of violating a contract with Genius by using its song lyrics in search results without attribution.

It’s the latest victory at the Supreme Court for Google, which earlier this year won a battle over whether its video-streaming platform YouTube can be held liable for hosting terrorist videos.

There are deep disagreements over how copyright laws apply to online speech and aggregation. The lower court said Genius does not own any of the copyrights to its lyrics — instead, those are held by the songwriters and publishers.

Genius claimed that Google violated its contract by scraping lyrics and boosting them in Google Search results without any attribution. Genius, which claimed the saga caused millions of dollars in losses for the website, initially sued Google in 2019. In order to drum up attention and prove its case, Genius said it used a secret code spelling out the word “red-handed” to prove Google was stealing its lyrics.

“We appreciate the court’s decision, agreeing with the solicitor general and multiple lower courts that Genius’ claims have no merit,” Google spokesman José Castañeda said Monday. “We license lyrics on Google Search from third parties, and we do not crawl or scrape websites to source lyrics.”

Terms of service, which are used on most websites, are typically backed by state law. Genius and its supporters argued the decision could effectively water down the contractual protections websites enjoy when users agree to their terms.

Google argued Genius was attempting to bring a “quasi-copyright” claim under the guise of contracts law. Federal law preempts lawsuits over issues that are similar to copyright, even if they don’t explicitly center on copyright infringement claims. That distinction proved fatal to Genius’ case.

Genius said the lower court’s decision “threatens to hobble any of thousands of companies that offer value by aggregating user-generated information or other content.”

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, urged the justices to skip the case, arguing it is a “poor vehicle” to resolve the tension between copyright law and contractual rights.

The case is ML Genius Holdings v. Google, 22-121.
https://www.hastingstribune.com/supr...8a3f93ef7.html





White House Announces $40 Billion in Broadband Funding

The funding is part of the administration’s goal to connect all Americans to high-speed broadband by 2030.
Makena Kelly

President Joe Biden is getting closer to distributing more than $40 billion in funding to support broadband expansion nationwide as part of his administration’s goal to connect all Americans to high-speed internet by 2030.

The funding, authorized in Biden’s 2021 bipartisan infrastructure package, will be distributed proportionally to states based on need with each state receiving at least $100 million. Monday’s allocations were made using broadband coverage maps that were recently updated to include more than one million new locations.

“Just like Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered electricity to every home in America through his Rural Electrification Act, the announcement is part of President Biden’s broader effort to deliver investments, jobs, and opportunities directly to working and middle-class families across the country,” a White House official said in a statement Monday.

States will be expected to submit their plans for using the funding by December. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), housed in the Commerce Department, plans to approve these plans before next spring when it will begin allocating 20 percent of a state’s authorized funding and infrastructure deployment can begin. By the end of 2025, at least 80 percent of the funding will be allocated.

The White House is expected to release the amounts each state received by Monday afternoon.

Earlier this month, NTIA announced $930 million for 35 “middle-mile” broadband construction projects that connect large fiber networks to smaller, local networks that can already reach homes and businesses across the country.

The Biden administration is expected to invest more than $90 billion to expand equitable and affordable internet access nationwide. As part of the American Rescue Plan, more than $25 billion has been authorized to build out broadband infrastructure and subsidize the cost of connected devices for low-income people.

“The Middle Mile program is a force multiplier in our efforts to connect everyone in America,” NTIA administration Alan Davidson said in a statement earlier this month. “Middle Mile infrastructure brings capacity to our local networks and lowers the cost for deploying future local networks.”
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/26/2...ite-house-ntia





Apple Joins Opposition to Encrypted Message App Scanning
Chris Vallance

Apple has criticised powers in the Online Safety Bill that could be used to force encrypted messaging tools like iMessage, WhatsApp and Signal to scan messages for child abuse material.

Its intervention comes as 80 organisations and tech experts have written to Technology Minister Chloe Smith urging a rethink on the powers.

Apple told the BBC the bill should be amended to protect encryption.

The government says companies must prevent child abuse on their platforms.

End-to-end encryption (E2EE) stops anyone but the sender and recipient reading the message.

Police, the government and some high-profile child protection charities maintain the tech - used in apps such as WhatsApp and Apple's iMessage - prevents law enforcement and the firms themselves from identifying the sharing of child sexual abuse material.

But in a statement Apple said: "End-to-end encryption is a critical capability that protects the privacy of journalists, human rights activists, and diplomats.

"It also helps everyday citizens defend themselves from surveillance, identity theft, fraud, and data breaches. The Online Safety Bill poses a serious threat to this protection, and could put UK citizens at greater risk.

"Apple urges the government to amend the bill to protect strong end-to-end encryption for the benefit of all."

But the government told the BBC that "companies should only implement end-to-end encryption if they can simultaneously prevent abhorrent child sexual abuse on their platforms.

"We will continue to work with them to seek solutions to combat the spread of child sexual abuse material while maintaining user privacy."

The Online Safety Bill, currently going through Parliament, contains powers that could enable communications regulator Ofcom to direct platforms to use accredited technology to scan the contents of messages.

The government said these powers would only be used as "a last resort, and only when stringent privacy safeguards have been met".

Recently Home Office ministers have also been highly critical of Facebook's roll-out of the tech for messaging.

Several messaging platforms, including Signal and WhatsApp, have previously told the BBC they will refuse to weaken the privacy of their encrypted messaging systems if directed to do so.

Signal said in February that it would "walk" from the UK if forced to weaken the privacy of its encrypted messaging app.

Apple's statement now means that some of the most widely used encrypted apps oppose this part of the bill.

The government argues it is possible to provide technological solutions that mean the contents of encrypted messages can be scanned for child abuse material.

The only way of doing that, many tech experts argue, would be to install software that would scan messages on the phone or computer before they are sent, called client-side scanning.

This, critics say, would fundamentally undermine the privacy of messages.

In 2021 Apple announced plans to scan photographs on people's iPhones for abusive content before they were uploaded to iCloud but these were abandoned after a backlash. It has now clearly signalled its opposition to any measure that weakens the privacy of end-to-end encryption.

'Routine scanning'

Its announcement comes as the digital civil liberties campaigners The Open Rights Group sent an open letter to minister Chloe Smith.

The letter, signed by more than 80 national and international civil society organisations, academics and cyber-experts, says: "The UK could become the first liberal democracy to require the routine scanning of people's private chat messages, including chats that are secured by end-to-end encryption.

"As over 40 million UK citizens and 2 billion people worldwide rely on these services, this poses a significant risk to the security of digital communication services not only in the UK, but also internationally."

Element, a British tech company whose products using E2EE are used by government and military clients, has previously told the BBC measures in the bill that are seen to weaken the privacy of encrypted messages would make customers less trustful of security products produced by UK firms.

There is a growing expectation, the BBC has learned, that changes may be made to part of the bill which critics say could be used to mandate scanning. These could be included in a package of amendments to be revealed in the coming days.

But it is not clear what the detail of those changes might be, or if they will satisfy the concerns of campaigners.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66028773





How to Open Torrent Files on Mobile and Desktop
Daniel Allen

One of the greatest accomplishments of the internet is the ability to connect with other people around the world (we recommend connecting with a quality Chromebook). Along with that connection comes the ability to communicate and exchange digital information and files. In the 80s, this exchange occurred by logging in to a host computer and initiating a file transfer over a dial-up connection.

This cumbersome and slow system was eclipsed in the early 2000s by services like Napster, which could facilitate a direct transfer of files between two computers without the need for arcane computer knowledge. One problem with Napster (and its imitators) was that you had to rely on the user whose content you were downloading to remain online throughout the entire file transfer. If they went offline, the download stopped, and the hours you waited were wasted. In 2001 (the same year Napster shut down), the BitTorrent file-transfer protocol changed, transforming peer-to-peer file sharing forever.

The basics of BitTorrent

The big innovation wrought by the BitTorrent protocol was downloading a file from more than one person simultaneously. To achieve this, the protocol breaks up files into numerous equal-sized pieces, so instead of downloading one file from one person, you're downloading dozens of pieces of a file from a pool of potentially hundreds of people.

However, if you want to take advantage of all that the BitTorrent protocol offers, you'll need a specialized bit of software called a client. The client coordinates between all the users making the pieces of the file available and those who want to download them.

How to choose a BitTorrent client

There are lots of torrent clients to choose from. The most popular are μTorrent and BitTorrent, both maintained by Rainberry, the company responsible for maintaining the BitTorrent protocol. These two clients are free to use and available for PC and on the Play Store. The drawback is that they are supported by ads (although both clients have various tiers of premium subscriptions available).

On the other end of the software spectrum are the free and open source options. The king of open source desktop clients is qBittorrent which has a nearly identical feature set as its freemium counterparts, tends to have a lighter footprint on your system, and downloads files faster.

qBittorrent isn't available on Android. However, there's LibreTorrent which is simple to use and has a negligible learning curve. If you can, install the APK directly or from F-Droid, since it comes enabled with a few more permissions, making it easier to find and save files.

Download

How to download and open a torrent file

Downloading a torrent isn't quite like downloading a normal media file. Instead, you download a file with a .torrent extension that has all the information your torrent client needs to grab the pieces of your file from users around the world. Where you find these torrent files is up to you, but a good source of torrents for media in the public domain is publicdomaintorrents.info.

This example uses a torrent for Night of the Living Dead.

Opening a torrent on Android with LibreTorrent

If, after downloading, you see the option to Open the torrent, tap it (this automatically takes you to step 5).
If you don't see the option to open it, launch LibreTorrent and tap the + icon in the lower-right corner.

Select Open file from the options that appear.
Scroll through your Download directory (or wherever you save your downloaded files) and tap the .torrent file.
The torrent file automatically opens in your client. From here, you can change the name you wish to save the file as and select the directory in which you wish to save it. When you're ready, tap the ✔ icon in the upper-right corner.

Congratulations, you're downloading a torrent!

Opening a torrent on PC, Mac, or Linux with qBittorrent

After installing qBittorrent, clicking a .torrent link launches the client with the torrent loaded and takes you to step 3. If not, download the .torrent file from the link and follow these steps.

Open qBittorrent and select Add Torrent File from the File menu or click the icon.
From the file selection window, navigate to the directory to which you downloaded your file, select your torrent, and click Open.
A new window opens where you can fine-tune the details of your download. Select OK when you're ready to start downloading.

Be safe out there

With the knowledge you gained, you've unlocked a new world of potential content for your phone or computer. Just keep in mind that nearly all media is copyrighted, meaning if you download content you don't have the rights to, you may be putting yourself in legal jeopardy. If you're still willing to accept the risk, you might want to check out our list of the best VPNs.
https://www.androidpolice.com/how-to-open-torrent/




If You love film, you should be Worried about what's Going on at Turner Classic Movies
David Bianculli

Heard on Fresh Air

When the dismissal was announced recently of most of the people who have guided Turner Classic Movies brilliantly for years — the programmers, the producers of special material, even the executives who plan the TCM film festivals and party cruises — many people in Hollywood reacted like there'd been a death in the family. Because, to people who really love movies, that's what the news felt like.

The more you love film, the more you're likely to love TCM. It presents a wider variety of movies, across film's century-plus history, than any other network or streaming service. Thanks to its knowledgeable and enthusiastic co-hosts, it puts those films into context. It creates a sense of community and enthusiasm among its viewers, which is invaluable. TCM doesn't just present movies, it curates them. It explains why some films and performances are so good, and why you should watch and value them. And it presents those films, every one of them, unedited, uninterrupted and without commercials.
Related Story: Your Guide To The 2021 TCM Film Festival, At-Home Edition

TV executive and maverick pioneer Ted Turner had many great ideas during his reign back in cable's early days, including launching TBS, the first satellite-transmitted superstation, and creating a cable channel for 24-hour news with CNN. But arguably, Turner Classic Movies is as pure, and as perfect, an idea as Turner ever had.

TCM has been a joy since its launch in 1994, and has never faltered. In my home, it's earned its place as my default channel of choice: When I'm not watching something else, I'm watching TCM. And I've watched it enough to say, with as much authority as I can muster, that of all the channels and streaming services on TV, it's the one that, more than any other, wasn't broke, and didn't need fixing.
Related Story: Boston University grads booed the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO amid the writers strike

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, in explaining his TCM changes, has said that, among other things, he wants to have filmmakers appear on TCM to curate and present movies of their choosing. Nothing wrong with that. Except you don't have to replace your current management team to make that happen — and besides, it's already happening. Earlier this year, when Steven Spielberg was promoting his new autobiographical movie The Fabelmans, TCM host Ben Mankiewicz had Spielberg on to select, present and talk about three movies of his choice.

The team that's been running TCM for years has been serving up treats like this with regularity, and with exceptional taste. There are pockets on the schedule for silent movies, for underground films, for film noir, for musicals, and so much more.

And if you stay tuned between movies — which you should — you get even more treats. Salutes of actors by fellow actors. Short features on costume design and the uncomfortable but illuminating history of blackface in the movies. Some films are presented in newly restored form. Others are newly discovered and presented as the gems they are – and TCM occasionally revives and showcases rare live television dramas, too. You can imagine how much I love that.
Related Story: 5 questions about the new streaming service Max — after a glitchy launch

Zaslav says the TCM channel is on all the time in his office, too, and he's saying all the right things about valuing the curation of film as well as film itself. But Zaslav already has just shut down his overseas equivalent of Turner Classic Movies in the U.K. And he's the guy who, since taking over the reins at Warner Bros. Discovery, already has turned HBO Max into just Max, which makes no sense — devaluing his own HBO brand.

Zaslav's altered that Max streaming service so that, while a link to a TCM sub-menu does appear, it's buried way down in the menu. What's worse, its highlighted TCM movie offerings are almost all of the more recent, filmed in color, variety. It's presenting only a tepid taste of what TCM offers on its own 24-hour cable service. Zaslav also, since becoming CEO, has overseen the rapid, clumsy devaluation of CNN, by making poorly received moves like that Donald Trump town hall. In Zaslav's short time on the job, he's already considerably damaged CNN, one of Turner's more brilliant network ideas. I fear, with Turner Classic Movies, Zaslav is about to weaken another — but I'd love to be proven wrong.
Transcript

TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery, the new corporate owners of Turner Classic Movies, announced the dismissal of most of the cable channel's veteran top management and other staffers. This led to a sudden Zoom meeting between Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and filmmakers Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson, who contacted Zaslav to express their support for TCM and their concerns about its future. In a joint statement afterwards, Spielberg and the company said they, quote, "were heartened and encouraged," unquote, by their conversation. But our TV critic David Bianculli isn't so heartened.

DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: When the dismissal was announced recently of most of the people who have guided Turner Classic Movies brilliantly for years - the programmers, the producers of special material, even the executives who plan the TCM film festivals and party cruises - many people in Hollywood reacted like there had been a death in the family because, to people who really love movies, that's what the news felt like. The more you love film, the more you're likely to love TCM. It presents a wider variety of movies across film's century-plus history than any other network or streaming service.

Thanks to its knowledgeable and enthusiastic co-hosts, it puts those films into context. It creates a sense of community and enthusiasm among its viewers, which is invaluable. Remember I want my MTV? And TCM doesn't just present movies. It curates them. It explains why some films and performances are so good and why you should watch and value them. And it presents those films, every one of them, unedited, uninterrupted and without commercials.

TV executive and maverick pioneer Ted Turner had many great ideas during his reign back in cable's early days, including launching TBS, the first satellite-transmitted superstation and creating a cable channel for 24-hour news with CNN. But arguably, Turner Classic Movies is as pure and as perfect an idea as Ted Turner ever had. TCM has been a joy since its launch in 1994 and has never faltered. In my home, it's earned its place as my default channel of choice. When I'm not watching something else, I'm watching TCM. And I've watched it enough to say with as much authority as I can muster that of all the channels and streaming services on TV, it's the one that, more than any other, wasn't broke and didn't need fixing.

Zaslav, in explaining his TCM changes, has said that, among other things, he wants to have filmmakers appear on TCM to curate and present movies of their choosing. Nothing wrong with that, except you don't have to replace your current management team to make that happen. And besides, it's already happening. Earlier this year, when Steven Spielberg was promoting his new autobiographical movie "The Fabelmans," TCM host Ben Mankiewicz had Spielberg on to select, present and talk about three movies of his choice. And it was a very casual, very enthusiastic conversation.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BEN MANKIEWICZ: The three movies that you have picked tonight, really interesting set of films. We're going to open with "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" from 1962, directed by John Ford. And then we'll have A Walk In The Sun, Lewis Milestone's great war picture. And we'll wrap it up with Francois Truffaut's "Day For Night." We're starting with "Liberty Valance," John Ford. Anybody who's seen "The Fabelmans" now knows the role that John Ford played in your life.

STEVEN SPIELBERG: Yes. First of all, I was a complete Fordophile (ph), I think, probably ever since I saw, when I was about 10 years old, in a movie theater "The Searchers." I had to actually take a little money out of the cookie jar because my parents thought it was too violent, wouldn't let me go. And Haddon Heights was close to our house. I walked a mile to the theater and spent my 35 cents, got in and saw my first John Ford picture. I've been a fan of his ever since.

BIANCULLI: The team that's been running TCM for years has been serving up treats like this with regularity and with exceptional taste. There are pockets on the schedule for silent movies, for underground films, for film noir, for musicals and so much more. And if you stay tuned between movies, which you should, you get even more treats - salutes of actors by fellow actors, short features on costume design and the uncomfortable but illuminating history of blackface in the movies. Some films are presented in newly restored form, others are newly discovered and presented as the gems they are. And TCM occasionally revives and showcases rare live television dramas, too. You can imagine how much I love that.

Zaslav says the TCM channel is on all the time in his office, too. And he's saying all the right things about valuing the curation of film, as well as film itself. But Zaslav already has just shut down his overseas equivalent of Turner Classic Movies in the U.K. And he's the guy who, since taking over the reins at Warner Bros. Discovery, already has turned HBO Max into just Max, which makes no sense, devaluing his own HBO brand.

He's altered that Max streaming service so that while a link to a TCM submenu does appear on it, it's buried way down in the menu. What's worse, its highlighted TCM movie offerings are almost all of the more recent, filmed in color variety. It's presenting only a tepid taste of what TCM offers on its own 24-hour cable service. Zaslav also, since becoming CEO, has overseen the rapid, clumsy devaluation of CNN by making poorly received moves like that Donald Trump town hall. In Zaslav's short time on the job, he's already considerably damaged CNN, one of Ted Turner's more brilliant network ideas. I fear, with Turner Classic Movies, David Zaslav is about to weaken another. But I'd love to be proven wrong.

MOSLEY: David Bianculli is professor of television studies at Rowan University. He looked at the changes happening at Turner Classic Movies. Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, the glory days of the Negro Leagues. We talk with Sam Pollard, director of the new documentary "The League," about the dozens of teams with Black owners and players who played a style of baseball that was fast, aggressive and entertaining long before Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @nprfreshair.

(SOUNDBITE OF GERTRUD HUBER'S "THE HARRY LIME THEME")

MOSLEY: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Ann Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Susan Nyakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley.
https://www.npr.org/1184544944





The Pirate Bay Restores New User Registrations, with a Twist

The torrent indexing service is expecting a flood of new applications
Alfonso Maruccia

In context: Once a bastion of unrestricted file sharing through the BitTorrent network, The Pirate Bay is now just another torrent search engine battling with spam and malware. Things could soon change, though, as a new generation of moderators is preparing to restore one of the site's most neglected features of these past years.

Since May 2019, The Pirate Bay hasn't provided a way to register new user accounts. The torrent indexing service was forced to disable account registrations as the moderatos were trying to stop the flood of spam and malware-ridden torrents uploaded by newly created malicious accounts, with the promise to lift the registration ban in a short timeframe.

The moderators' original plan was to fight the spam and malware issue by enforcing a hard limit on the number of torrents a single user could upload in a given period of time, while the registration lock would have just been a temporary fix. But things didn't go exactly this way, as The Pirate Bay added its last "new" user on May 22, 2019.

In four years, the torrent landscape has drastically changed. Streaming from a centralized service has become the main drive for both illegal and licensed content delivery, and file sharing through P2P networks like BitTorrent is now just a niche market for the most passionate (and broke) fans of offline experiences out there.

The Pirate Bay has long lost its traditional role as one of the pillars of unrestricted file sharing it once had, while licensing corporations and law firms are constantly seeking new targets for their neverending campaign against online piracy. RARBG, one of the major suppliers of new torrent material coming straight from the "scene," was recently shut down for cost issues and other reasons, so there is room for a new shuffle within the torrent-sharing market.

Earlier this week, TPB moderators announced that the Bay team was working on reopening user registrations on the site. For now, uploaders need to apply for a new account through the official SuprBay forums, where moderators will manually approve or reject every single application. TPB administrator "Spud17" is asking wannabe pirates to be patient while they wait for a reply, as the forums will likely be busier than usual.

The Pirate Bay team is likely trying to revitalize the site while keeping the longstanding spamming and malware issue at bay. New accounts will be limited to 50 torrent uploads per day, just like in the original plan from 2019, but users willing to become "prolific" uploaders can ask the moderators for the limit to be lifted once an account is created.
https://www.techspot.com/news/99242-...ons-twist.html

Until next week,

- js.



















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