HBO Max Keeps Losing Popular Content, Highlighting The Raging Stupidity Of Pointless Media Megamergers

Failures

from the dealmaking-for-dealmaking's-sake-is-not-a-business-model dept

You might recall how AT&T spent nearly $200 billion on megamergers thinking it was going to dominate the online video advertising space. But after spending a fortune on DirecTV and Time Warner, laying off 50,000 people, and killing off popular properties like Mad Magazine, it quickly became clear that AT&T executives had absolutely no idea what they were doing.

That forced AT&T executives to spin off Time Warner for a loss, triggering yet another disastrous and pointless merger between Discovery and Time Warner. That in turn has created all manner of additional problems as cheapskate Discovery executives attempt to cut even more costs by firing thousands of additional employees, and cancelling a parade of popular shows.

But execs have taken things even further by pulling huge swaths of popular content off of their flagship streaming service, HBO Max, simply because they were too cheap to pay royalties to the actors and writers who created them. That’s resulted in a long line of shows (from Westworld to Euphoria) being pulled off the Internet (driving people to piracy if they want access).

It’s resulting in a pockmarked HBO Max lineup that’s notably shittier than ever, with entire seasons of classics like Sesame Street, Looney Tunes, and The Flintstones simply disappearing from the Internet. In some cases, I’ll note, because the company didn’t even want to pay itself (I shit you not):

Variety explains that these shows were licensed to HBO Max by Warner Bros. (once more for those in the back: THAT COMPANY OWNS HBO MAX), but the streaming service reportedly decided not to renew those licenses (with ITS OWN COMPANY) to save money. That’s in keeping with Warner Bros. Discovery’s crusade against animation and animators, with WBD boss David Zaslav having already gutted his company’s cartoon offerings earlier in 2022.

Where are customers going to go when they can no longer find any of this content? Piracy, of course. At which the entertainment industry will, as is tradition, blame everyone but itself.

It’s just so perfectly demonstrative of the absolute pointlessness of our obsession with megamergers, “growth for growth’s sake,” and “dealmaking for dealmaking’s sake.” Hundreds of billions of dollars exchanged in a completely pointless dance, resulting in little more than a parade of layoffs and a demonstrably shittier end product.

All so a handful of executives and investors could enjoy some short-term tax breaks and compensation boosts at the cost of the company’s long term health and longevity. Super innovative stuff.

Filed Under: competition, consolidation, consumers, hbo max, layoffs, megamergers, mergers, streaming, video
Companies: at&t, discovery

DidYouKnowGaming Gets Video Nintendo DMCA’d Restored

Copyright

from the for-once dept

Back in December we discussed how Nintendo got a video on the DidYouKnowGaming YouTube channel taken down via a DMCA notice. While Nintendo is notorious for being an intellectual property bully and enforcing what it thinks are its rights in as draconian a manner as possible, what stood out about this particular story is that the video in question was a journalistic effort to document a game pitched to Nintendo that never came out, included no gameplay footage, and therefore didn’t reproduce any actual game assets. It appears for all the world that Nintendo used the DMCA system to take down a video comprised of pure gaming journalism, which is not how any of this is supposed to work.

DYKG, for its part, both promised to fight the takedown and implored its Twitter followers to reach out to Nintendo and tell the company what they thought of this sort of censorship of facts.

And now it appears that the channel made good on its promise to fight back, or at least not give in. YouTube restored the video this week after DYKG filed a counternotice, finding that there was no copyright infringement within the video.

“We won,” YouTube channel DidYouKnowGaming tweeted on December 28. “The Heroes of Hyrule video is back up.” It added that YouTube confirmed the original copyright takedown notice was indeed from Nintendo and not an imposter, and that the video has received over 20,000 views in its first day back.

“When you counter a DMCA on YouTube, the company who DMCA’d you has 10 working days to show that they’ve taken legal action against you, or the video is restored,” tweeted Shane Gill, the owner of DidYouKnowGaming. “So I spent the past two weeks checking my email to see if Nintendo was suing [sic] me.”

I suppose that lawsuit could still be forthcoming, but man would it be a stupid move on Nintendo’s part if that happened. Again, the important bit is that there is no actual Nintendo content being copied here or anything in the video that would fall outside of obvious fair use provisions.

The takeaway here is that it would be really nice if stories like this becamse more common, particularly when it concerns the more notorious IP bullies out there.

Filed Under: copyright, counternotice, didyouknowgaming, dmca
Companies: nintendo

Congressman Moonlighting As A Master’s Degree Student In AI

Policy

from the life-long-learning dept

We’ve spent years criticizing many politicians, especially in Congress, for trying to regulate technology that they don’t seem to understand and often falling prey to wild moral panics about the technology. That’s why it’s quite refreshing to see this story that the Washington Post had in the waning days of 2022 about Rep. Don Beyer, who has represented a district in Northern Virginia since 2015, and whose hobby is… to be getting a masters degree in artificial intelligence from George Mason University.

That’s been the story of the year for Beyer… who has been moonlighting as a student at George Mason University in pursuit of a master’s degree in machine learning while balancing his duties as a congressman. Beyer — a science wonk, economist and former car salesman — has been taking one class per semester in a slow but steady march toward the degree, with hopes of one day applying his artificial-intelligence knowledge to his legislative work as the technology evolves further.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” the72-year-old Beyer said — although, “I was trying to think last night about the consequences. Number one is I read only two-thirds as many books this year. If I hit 53 I’ll be lucky, just because the time that I used to read books, I’m doing problems.”

He does his homework usually sometime between 9 and 11 at night, after he gets home from the Hill and before he hits the lights. He attended a Zoom class each Thursday night with many 18-year-olds who kept their cameras off and who in breakout small-group work sessions did not seem to know (or care?) that their classmate is a U.S. congressman. The proctor administering an exam in his pre-calc class this spring leaned in and whispered, “What are you doing here?” as Beyer handed in his test.

As the article notes, Beyer has long been interested in technology, and its ability to analyze data, and he became interested in taking the class after visiting the university and learning about its “innovation initiative,” and decided to sign up for the program.

The article notes that another Congressman, Jay Obernolte, who sits across the political aisle from Beyer* but who also has an AI masters degree (and who also got a doctorate while serving in the California legislature) will serve with Beyer on the “AI caucus” in Congress. And having both working together on these issues as people actually knowledgeable about the technology seems like a step up from the way that tech policy is often made.

But as the power of artificial intelligence and its uses grow, Obernolte said it will be worth it to have another member at the table with all that fresh knowledge — particularly as the AI caucus seeks to steer Congress down responsible avenues for regulating the technology and use of personal data.

“Some people who aren’t familiar with AI think that the biggest drawback of AI is evil robots with red laser eyes. You know what I mean?” Obernolte said. “You get closer to it and you realize that, no, there are actually drawbacks that are even more substantial than that, but they’re also more subtle. So we want to make sure that we approach the regulation of AI in a way that’s thoughtful, that does the protection of consumers and privacy that needs to be done, but also doesn’t stifle the innovation and entrepreneurialism that has characterized the last 50 years of the technology industry in America.”

Overall, I think this is great. I don’t think everyone in Congress should be going back and getting graduate degrees, but two things I do think are super important are lifelong learning as well as having lawmakers who actually understand complex and nuanced issues and trade-offs as it relates to technology. So it’s nice to see a story that actually shows an elected official who believes in that as well.

* As a reminder, Techdirt does not name politicians’ political parties unless its core to the story, because otherwise many people focus entirely on that and make their judgments based on team colors rather than what’s actually happening.

Filed Under: ai, congress, don beyer, education, life long learning, masters degree

You No Longer Own What You Buy: Arlo Cameras Lose Updates, Cloud Storage

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the you-don't-own-what-you-buy dept

One of the common themes here at Techdirt over the last decade is how the very meaning of “ownership” and “property” has changed — often for the worse. In the broadband connected era, firmware updates can often eliminate functionality promised to you at launch, as we saw with the Sony PlayStation 3. And with everything now relying on internet connectivity, companies can often give up on supporting devices entirely, often leaving users with very expensive paperweights as we saw after Google acquired Revolv.

The latest example of this phenomenon comes courtesy of Arlo, which has announced that the company is eliminating numerous features from their Arlo cameras courtesy of a new penny pinching measure.

The update is part of Arlo’s new “end-of-life policy,” which reserves the right to eliminate all cloud functionality — including push notifications, email alerts, or other “bundled services or features” — for any camera more than four years old. Many of these users bought these products specifically because they promised free cloud functionality.

Reddit users shared the email from Arlo which puts it this way:

These cameras may continue to be operated after April 1, 2023 by all existing Arlo owners to live stream video, receive motion notifications, and store video clips locally with a compatible Arlo base station. These cameras also can utilize Arlo’s new cloud storage, which is available with the Arlo Secure subscription service, though the EOL’d cameras themselves may lose some functionality over time, as they will not be provided with further firmware upgrades.

Basically, Arlo is informing users they need to pay a subscription fee if they want the camera they purchased to continue working normally. If not, it’s up to them to use local storage (a feature that may not even work with many of these models). All basically because Arlo wants to both drive users to subscription services, and cut costs when it comes to supporting its own products.

It’s generally not a great trend, as this kind of penny pinching also often extends to security updates for such products. It’s likely to result in a class action lawsuit for Arlo, which is usually what awaits companies that begin charging users for functionality that used to be free.

Filed Under: cameras, cloud storage, consumer rights, end of life, firmware updates, functionality, iot, ownership, security, video hardware
Companies: arlo

Apple’s Encryption Plan Is Good, But Still Leaves Some Questions Unanswered

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the default-would-be-better-than-opt-in dept

Recently, Apple announced some quality of life updates for services and devices used by millions. The company opted to give its users more privacy and security by offering them the option to fully encrypt data stored in its cloud service. For years, iCloud accounts have been the endaround for encrypted devices, allowing law enforcement (and malicious hackers) to access content and communications inaccessible through the device that created them.

Apple’s announcement made millions of users happy and irritated a single federal law enforcement agency: the FBI. The FBI has, through its directors, consistently advocated for an impossibility: compromised encryption that only law enforcement can utilize. The problem with encryption is either it works or it doesn’t. Punching law enforcement-specific holes in it makes it easier for everyone to undermine this protection.

So, the FBI delivered a statement decrying this decision by Apple, claiming it would negatively affect every law enforcement agency. Despite this claim, the FBI was the only law enforcement agency to issue a public statement on iCloud encryption — one issued by an agency that’s well into its fifth year of refusing to correct its on misinformation on the negative impact encryption was allegedly having on law enforcement.

Stanford research scholar Rianna Pfefferkorn has more to say about Apple’s recently announced changes. While most of it is good, there are still some concerns Apple’s statements and iOS alterations don’t address.

First, there’s the unquestionably good news about Apple’s permanent abandonment of plans to engage in client-side content scanning “for the children.”

Apple confirmed that it is conclusively abandoning the controversial plan it had announced last summer to client-side scan photos as they’re being uploaded to iCloud to look for child sex abuse material (CSAM). That plan was put on pause after massive pushback from civil society (including yours truly). Observers commented at the time that this client-side scanning feature, where the scanning would happen before an image hit the cloud, only made sense if Apple was planning to E2EE iCloud (since scanning wouldn’t be possible in an E2EE cloud) – and here we are.

Which brings us to the E2EE added to iCloud. It’s not on by default. It’s an option users need to affirmatively implement. This seems like some sort of internal compromise by Apple, which announced plans to encrypt iCloud content nearly a half-decade ago, but (temporarily) abandoned those plans in order to appease the progressively-more-livid FBI, which had just gotten its compelled encryption dreams dashed by a federal court.

The FBI has proven unworthy of appeasement. It has spent much of the past half-decade lying about the extent of the problem encryption poses to investigators and insinuating that a solution could be had if only the people smart enough to make it happen would stop playing dumb.

There are still plenty of iCloud accounts that won’t be encrypted. First and foremost, there will be all the accounts left unprotected by Apple customers who are either unaware of this option or decide they’ve got nothing to hide, etc. Then there are those specifically carved out of this security measure by Apple — something that appears to be another concession to one particular law enforcement agency.

What’s more, not everyone gets to choose it: managed Apple IDs and child accounts aren’t eligible for ADP [Advanced Data Protection], according to Apple’s documentation.

That decision by Apple is a little strange. And it’s potentially going to be a legal issue for the company. As Pfefferkorn points out, the UK and California have enacted laws that increase default protections for children’s data. By making this option unavailable to its minor users, Apple may find itself in breach of the law. The UK’s Age Appropriate Design Code, California’s similarly titled law, and the (horrendous) Kids Online Safety Act all contain mandates that could make this decision by Apple a criminal offense.

All three require online services to set minors’ accounts to the most privacy-protective settings by default. Because it’s E2EE, ADP is inarguably a higher privacy setting than Apple’s standard data protection for iCloud. That seems to tee up a potential conflict with these requirements, insofar as (1) ADP is opt-in, not on by default, and (2) child accounts are not eligible for ADP at all. 

Unresolved problems with UK and California law have been created. Somewhat hilariously, the conflict created between the Kids Online Safety Act could actually result in encryption mandates that cover accounts created and run by minors.

In bill text that I believe just came out yesterday, available here, section 4(a)(3) says,

“DEFAULT SAFEGUARD SETTINGS FOR MINORS.—A covered platform shall provide that, in the case of a user that the platform knows or should know is a minor, the default setting for any safeguard … shall be the option available on the platform that provides the most protective level of control that is offered by the platform over privacy and safety for that user.”

(The bill defines “covered platform” to mean “a commercial software application or electronic service that connects to the internet and that is used, or is reasonably likely to be used, by a minor.”)

There’s no “compelling reason/best interest” carve-out here. It therefore seems to me that Senator Blumenthal’s bill would require Apple to not just make ADP available for child accounts, but opt them all into it, so that all children’s iClouds are E2EE by default.

This is going to generate some friction between the FBI (which wants encryption to be compromised) and federal legislators (who would have to add an encryption mandate targeting Apple). The friction will be wonderful to enjoy secondhand, given that both parties claim they’re doing everything they can “for the children.”

Pfefferkorn says this is not the end of the questions raised by Apple’s ADP plans. Since E2EE of iCloud content isn’t on by default, it could mean Apple is still eyeing plans to scan content for CSAM, although most likely not on the client side. A large percentage of Apple users are unlikely to opt into encryption, so Apple can continue to scan content “for the children” while truthfully claiming users (other than children at the moment) can opt out of this scanning any time by opting into its new E2EE offering.

Perhaps most questionable of all (although not really a question, per se) is this Apple claim, highlighted in Pfefferkorn’s excellent post:

In announcing ADP, Apple claimed that E2EE iCloud will eventually be offered in China, too, as part of ADP’s gradual global rollout. 

Sure, pal. Call me when that happens. Let’s move on.

This seems, at best, highly unlikely. Giving Chinese users access to E2EE will likely just see Apple blocked from selling phones in the country that makes so many of them. It also would mean fully abandoning China as a manufacturing base since the government isn’t going to give its blessing to Apple manufacturing plants when it knows the end result is Chinese citizens locking the government out of access to locally stored (yes, you read that right) data and communications.

The timetable alone for reducing Apple’s dependence on Chinese manufacturing would likely push E2EE implementation in China back for several years. Apple’s dependence on Chinese citizens as customers pushes this back even further, putting it right on the border of “decades away” and “never.”

Apple’s recent security changes are still a net good, at least for users who can/will take advantage of them. But just because the change is positive doesn’t mean Apple shouldn’t remain under scrutiny. Every action has reactions and it appears, at least at this point, that acting on behalf of most of its customers may again put it at odds with governments all over the world.

Filed Under: encryption, fbi, security
Companies: apple

Irish Data Protection Authority, Under Pressure From Other EU Officials, Says Meta’s Clickwrap Agreement Is No Legal Basis For Targeted Ads

Privacy

from the much-ado-about-something dept

Some big news out of the EU this week as the Irish data protection authority has fined Meta over $400 million, claiming it violated the GDPR. The full details of the ruling are not yet out (apparently, the officials are working with Meta over what needs to be redacted — which is not out of the ordinary in the EU, but still feels sketchy), but the basic idea is that Meta sought to get around some of the GDPR’s consent rules regarding using data for customization / targeting by including “consent” directly in the terms of service. The Irish regulator overseeing the case had initially indicated that this was legitimate, but apparently changed their minds.

Meta is pushing back on the ruling, claiming that the GDPR allows you to collect and process this data for personalization so long as it’s considered a “contractual necessity.”

GDPR allows for a range of legal bases under which data can be processed. The rules of GDPR are clear: there is no hierarchy between these legal bases – none should be considered better or more legitimate than any other. Which basis is most appropriate to use depends on the specific situation. Like many companies, Meta uses a combination of legal bases to provide various services. 

Facebook and Instagram are inherently personalised, and we believe that providing each user with their own unique experience – including the ads they see – is a necessary and essential part of that service. To date, we have relied on a legal basis called ‘Contractual Necessity’ to show people behavioural advertisements based on their activities on our platforms, subject to their safety and privacy settings. It would be highly unusual for a social media service not to be tailored to the individual user.

That said, there’s a bit more background here that is worth understanding. As you may recall, last year, we noted that officials on the EU Commission were getting annoyed that the Irish data protection authority was seen as going easy on US internet companies. There has been a variety of efforts to update the GDPR to effectively give more power to either the Commission itself in Brussels, or possibly other country data protection authorities, to avoid the situation where US companies set up an EU “headquarters” in Ireland in order to be regulated by that DPA.

Given that, the Irish DPA has been somewhat under pressure to come up with a scalp to show the rest of the EU to prove that it’s “serious.” This is why we’ve mentioned that Elon Musk’s Twitter might be an easy target. But, as always, going after the “big guys,” is always preferable.

This might also explain why it looked like the Irish regulators were originally okay with Meta’s clickthrough / browserwrap arrangement, and then reversed course.

While it’s fun to see Meta struggle (especially given all the troubles its had recently after Apple effectively kneecapped a whole bunch of Meta’s data collection efforts) and face some consequences after playing fast and loose with data for years… it does feel like this kind of decision could have serious problematic consequences going forward. I’m loathe to give Meta any credit for anything that it does, but it’s kinda true that when people are signing in to most social media these days they do expect personalization.

Are there ways that Meta could give users a lot more control? Yes. Could Meta be more transparent about how it’s using data? Also yes. But I fear that the end result of this ruling is that we’re going to just end up with even more useless and annoying “cookie pop up” type warnings in which every company is going to feel the need to make you “opt-in” to personalization over and over again in a manner that is extremely annoying and does nothing to really protect anyone’s privacy.

But, alas, this is the state we live in today with the European approach to privacy laws, where most of the focus is just on getting companies to do something that is annoying for users, but which allows politicians to claim that they’re “protecting your privacy.”

Filed Under: browserwrap, clickwrap, eu, fines, gdpr, ireland, irish dpc, privacy
Companies: facebook, instagram, meta

Daily Deal: Degoo Premium

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

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Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Government Continues To Rely On Private Contractors To Bypass Privacy Protections

Privacy

from the ongoing-inconvenience-of-guaranteed-rights dept

There’s only so much domestic surveillance the government can engage in before it starts running into problems. The Supreme Court’s Carpenter decision strongly suggested gathering data in bulk to track people might run afoul of the Fourth Amendment. Lower courts have delivered a variety of opinions on the subject. Meanwhile, a few privacy-oriented legislators are trying to codify privacy protections that would limit the government’s ability to abuse the Third Party Doctrine to obtain massive amounts of data.

Location data was directly implicated in the Carpenter decision. Since then, federal agencies have decided to bypass warrant requirements by purchasing location data directly from data brokers, rather than engage with the constitutional parameters established by the Supreme Court. Everyone has a hunger for data. And plenty of companies are willing to sell whatever they can acquire to agencies like ICE, CBP, FBI, DEA, Secret Service, and the Defense Department.

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. These same brokers sell data to local law enforcement agencies and state prisons. They also sell to a bunch of other private companies, allowing this data to be abused by debt collectors, stalkers, and people pretending to be cops. They’re also allowing law enforcement in states that have outlawed abortion to track people seeking these newly banned services.

Selling other people’s data is big business. As isolated pockets of legislators push for more oversight and better privacy protections for Americans, data brokers are pushing back. Lobbyists for data brokers have made D.C. their second home, bending the ears (and loading up the wallets) of any legislators willing to set aside their privacy concerns in favor of ensuring the business of brokering data remains a going concern.

Who’s paying for all of this lobbyist action? Well, as Alfred Ng reports for Politico, it’s the same people who would probably like their privacy to be a bit more protected from the harvesting machinery of data brokers. And the on-ramp for this vicious cycle that makes the public’s money work against the public’s best interests is the federal government’s private partners in identity verification.

The idea was simple and appealing: Give citizens a single, easy-to-use webpage to access all kinds of federal services, from passport renewal to small-business loans.

The site, Login.gov, launched in 2017 and got backing from the Biden administration in an executive order last December. As of this week, it’s connected to more than 20 government agencies, including the Small Business Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Social Security Administration and NASA.

But when citizens enter their personal information to register for the site, it’s not the federal government that validates it — it’s a group of private-sector data brokers, companies that are increasingly under scrutiny for collecting, storing and selling massive amounts of information on Americans without their knowledge.

LexisNexis is the primary beneficiary of this partnership, in more ways than one. First, there’s the $34 million contract with Login.gov. Then there’s the untold millions it can make by selling off this data to other private companies, local government agencies, and anyone else it feels is deserving of access to the verification data it collects on behalf of the US government. And it continues to exploit this collection it obtains by government mandate and government contract even while paying out settlements over its misuse of the data it collects.

According to LexisNexis, it does not “store, retain, or reuse” the personal information it collects via Login.gov. But that’s only a small part of the company’s dealings with the federal government. Other contracts are far more lucrative. And they don’t come with the same assurances LexisNexis has offered here.

The Login.gov account is a relatively modest example by federal standards. In 2021, the Department of Labor awarded LexisNexis a $1.2 billion deal to prevent fraud in state unemployment insurance programs. (The contract was later reduced to $528 million.) The Labor Department also has a $2 billion effort for fraud detection, which involves LexisNexis and the credit monitoring agency TransUnion. (TransUnion, which is also registered as a data broker, has its own contract with Login.gov for fraud prevention.) Other companies that are registered data brokers, such as Accenture and Acxiom, also have contracts with the federal government. Accenture has a $73 million contract with the IRS for fraud prevention, while Acxiom did identity verification for the Department of Veteran Affairs.

Here’s the weird part: the government doesn’t have direct access to the verification info required by Login.gov, despite being the origin of this information. That allows data brokers to make money by selling the federal government the information it can’t acquire legally on its own.

There’s a deeper irony in the government’s reliance on private firms: Much of the information they use is issued by the government itself. Login.gov’s verification process primarily relies on two pieces of information: your social security number and your state-issued ID. But Login.gov itself doesn’t have access to that data because of a nearly 50-year-old law designed to protect Americans’ privacy, which applies to government agencies, but not to data brokers.

The stated goal for this convoluted, law-skirting mess is fraud prevention. But mission creep set in long ago. Verification info is collected from other sources since the government isn’t allowed to retain this data. LexisNexis and its competitors may not store input data from Login.gov users, but this shows they don’t need to. They already have it. And what they already have, they can do what they want with. The limits placed on the government don’t apply to private contractors. In essence, government work is a side hustle. Plenty of private parties desire this information and there’s little in the law preventing data brokers from selling this to other parties like debt collectors, insurance companies, rental agencies, marketing firms, and private security firms.

The Privacy Act passed in 1974 may have prevented the federal government from compiling massive databases of personal information, but it did nothing to prevent private companies from doing the same thing. The reliance on private contractors allows the government to do what it’s not allowed to. And it forces taxpayers to cover the tab rung up by the government as private companies sell taxpayers’ data back to the government.

Ron Wyden’s bill aims to provide better protections from the worst impulses of data brokers. If nothing else, it will prevent Americans from being double-billed when seeking access to government services.

“It makes no sense for the government to pay a data broker millions of dollars a year for information that came from government records to begin with,” Wyden said in a statement.

The road to better privacy protections is unpaved and uphill. The private sector can do what the government can’t. Unfortunately, the government has decided it’s ok (if not actually essential) to use the private sector as a legal workaround. All the while, data brokers continue to cash our checks and sell our data to other parties, over and over and over again.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, data, data brokers, login.gov, privacy, third party doctrine
Companies: lexisnexis

Big Telecom’s Quest To Tax Big Tech For No Reason Will Cause Massive Internet Instability, Group Warns

Broadband

from the please-pay-me-billions-of-dollars-for-no-coherent-reason dept

For much of the last year, European telecom giants have been pushing for a tax on Big Tech company profits. They’ve tried desperately to dress it up as a reasonable adult policy proposal, but it’s effectively just the same thing we saw during the U.S. net neutrality wars: telecom monopolies demanding other people pay them an additional troll toll — for no coherent reason.

To sell captured lawmakers on the idea, telecom giants have falsely claimed that Big Tech companies get a “free ride” on the Internet (just as they did during the U.S. net neutrality wars). To fix this problem they completely made up, Big Telecom argues Big Tech should be forced to help pay for the kind of broadband infrastructure upgrades the telecoms have routinely neglected for years.

It’s a big, dumb, con. But yet again, telecom lobbyists have somehow convinced regulators that this blind cash grab is somehow sensible, adult policy, dubbing it their “sender pays” initiative. Dutifully, European Commission’s industry chief Thierry Breton said last September he would launch a consultation on this “fair share” payment scheme in early 2023, ahead of any proposed legislation.

Tech giants like Netflix have tried to explain that this whole thing is just part of a longstanding attempt to force them to pay telecom additional money for no reason. Both Konstantinos Komaitis and K.S. Park also penned a good piece here at Techdirt explaining how these policies could have a profoundly negative impact on user and enterprise costs, broadband quality, and how the Internet functions.

The European Internet Exchange Association (Euro-IX), a coalition of core transit and interconnection telecom providers, have also now come out in criticism of the plan, saying it risks creating “systemic weaknesses” across the Internet in Europe.

More specifically, a letter from Euro-IX to European regulators argues that if you start forcing tech companies to pay “last mile” telecoms a troll toll, it will not only drive up the cost of streaming services for everyone, it could result in tech companies routing their traffic in such a way that it creates overall network instability as they sensibly seek to avoid being charged billions of dollars for no reason:

“The internet is a complex ecosystem, and it is policy-makers who are ultimately responsible for systemic effects resulting from policy choices,” wrote Bijal Sanghani, managing director of Euro-IX. Sanghani added that legislators should not prioritise “administrative rules [over] technical necessity or a high-quality internet” for those in Europe.

You don’t have to look far to see examples of how this kind of policymaking creates problems. Telecom giants in South Korea convinced regulators to impose regulations that open the door to this kind of troll tolls on tech giants. As a result, you’ve now got South Korean ISPs suing Netflix simply because television shows like Squid Game are popular, and there are higher costs all along the chain.

That’s of course not how the Internet fucking works. Users already pay their broadband provider for broadband access. And tech giants not only pay for broadband, they directly invest countless billions in cloud storage, transit routes, undersea cables, and in some instances (Google Fiber) their own residential ISPs. There’s absolutely no such thing as getting a broadband “free ride” in the U.S. or Europe.

I don’t like treating this stuff as an adult policy proposal because it simply isn’t. It’s bullshit slathered with a veneer of pseudo-engineering rhetoric just to trick captured and dumb policymakers and a lazy press. Consumers and tech giants alike in the U.S. and EU pay telecom operators countless billions of dollars more than they already should due to monopolization and constrained competition.

Those heavily subsidized ISPs then routinely use their power and influence to crush competition, stall deployment, and drive up service costs for everybody along the chain. Yet when you read through analysis of what’s being proposed in Europe, few, if any, participants can be bothered to even mention either the harm of monopolization, or the decades of outright subsidy fraud by telecom giants.

It’s a profound failure that the press, policymakers, and people in positions of influence aren’t clearly explaining that this is all a dumb, baseless con.

Yes, both the EU and U.S. need to find additional ways to creatively subsidize broadband expansion, especially to the marginalized communities long neglected by these very same telecom companies.

But taking money from tech giants (again, for no actual reason) then throwing it in the lap of an industry with a forty year history of anti-competitive behavior, subsidy fraud, and routine under-investment isn’t the answer. Hopefully the EU figures this out before it’s broader rules for the Internet are finalized later this year, but I wouldn’t count on it.

And I suspect if telecom companies succeed in the EU, you’ll see a similar renewed push in the U.S.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr (when he isn’t busy hyperventilating about social media companies he doesn’t regulate) has already been priming this pump for companies like AT&T for the last two years with a series of op-eds you’ll notice make all the same, dumb arguments.

Filed Under: brendan carr, broadband, con, digital divide, fcc, high speed internet, net neutrality, sender pays, telecom, troll tolls

Capcom Kneecaps Fan Remakes Of ‘Resident Evil’ Games The Company Isn’t Planning To Remake

Failures

from the evil-indeed dept

You might think that perusing Techdirt posts on the topic of fan-made video games using the IP of others would yield you only one kind of story in which threats and lawsuits abound. Fortunately, that’s something of a misconception. While there are indeed plenty of stories of that nature, there are also examples of studios and publishers that have figured out a way to embrace their biggest fans. Paradox built an affiliate program to allow its fans to create “official” games, such that there would be no threats of litigation for doing so. Sega has likewise been lenient with fan-games, even going so far as to poke fun at its competition for doing otherwise. Even Blizzard got into this act with at least one fan-made game.

The point is that there are ways to handle this that don’t involve being an IP bully or whipping the corporate attorneys into a frenzy. Or you can go the Capcom route and simply bully two fan projects into shutting down, even though there are no plans for a competing project.

The developers behind fan remakes of Resident Evil and Resident Evil Code: Veronica have announced that development on both projects has ceased after Capcom allegedly contacted them and asked the developers to cancel the project.

In a video announcing the Code: Veronica project’s cancellation, Briins Croft said that 90 percent of the Code: Veronica fan remake used existing assets from Capcom’s recent “Remake” games, such as 3D models, animations, and textures. The fans released an initial Code: Veronica demo back in June 2021, and planned to put out a much more substantial one in the beginning of 2023.

So, a couple of things of note here. First, yes, it is probably the reuse of Capcom assets in these fan-made games that really put these projects on Capcom’s radar. That’s different than simply remaking a game from scratch, to be sure. But, as I outlined in the opening, it certainly does not have to represent an insurmountable barrier. The company, which would own the copyright on those assets, could have worked something out with these fans.

Meanwhile, the release of these games was going to be free. This is purely a labor of love, in other words, rather than some attempt to make a bunch of money off the work of others. Of the two C&D notices sent to Croft, he reports that one of them carried a curious tone, but the other was quite hostile. Due to that, the whole thing is shutting down, despite having been announced and worked on beginning years ago. Notably, Capcom reps publicly confirmed that there are no plans for remaking these games within the company. Note as well that both games were originally released over two decades ago.

The fan developers believed that Capcom canceled their unofficial remakes for being too visible and official-looking. “[The Code: Veronica remake] was going to be free, so we weren’t doing anyone any harm,” Croft said in the cancellation announcement video. The publisher seemed to disagree. Capcom allegedly cited copyright factors and licensing agreements as reasons why the project couldn’t proceed.

“I was personally a bit surprised by Capcom’s decision. But hey, we were using [their] toys to create a free game, which was already creating a lot of visibility,” said Croft in the video. “So it’s okay. We can understand the cancellation.”

Nice of him to say, but this is still quite annoying. Fans worked for several years to make a re-make of two beloved games that wouldn’t compete with any currently available games from Capcom, but the company still decided to torpedo the project entirely instead of getting creative to let the fans have their day.

It could have been otherwise, but c’est la Capcom.

Filed Under: copyright, fan games, resident evil
Companies: capcom