Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the always-more-to-say dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is TKnarr with a comment about Elon Musk’s troublesome demands of Twitter employees, and those employees being encouraged not to keep written records:

This sounds like prime examples of a rule I’ve had for decades: if your bosses don’t want a written record of something, you absolutely need a written record of it.

In second place, it’s kallethen responding to a line in that post about Elon being “suckered into massively overpaying for the company”:

Let’s be real about one thing here… Nobody suckered Elon into this purchase but himself.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with Thad and a comment about not paying the rent:

When poor people don’t pay rent because they can’t afford to, they’re lazy deadbeats.

When rich people odn’t pay rent because they don’t wanna, they attract an army of Comment Guys constantly proclaiming them to be business geniuses.

Or, as I guess they prefer to be called, a “transition team”.

Next, it’s an anonymous comment about Twitter’s onerous new pricing for academic researchers wanting access to its data, responding to the claim that they have plenty of money to do so based on endowment totals:

Those topline numbers are meaningless. Nearly all that money is earmarked by their donors, so either you need an alumni gift specifically to research social media (or maybe supporting social studies projects generally) or a no-strings-attached gift. Inevitably the larger donors want their names on something shiny so most of the money goes into buildings, schools, financial aid, chairs, and speaker series.

Second, universities pay little to none of professors’ research budgets. In science you’re expected to pull in a nice NSF or NIH grant and that pays everything from PhD student tuition and stipends to your solvent stock, or else you’re researching out your own pocket. In social studies a donor paid for your chair but you pay your own research budget, and the big grants will get you a hefty $300 (yes three hundred dollars) and maybe a round trip plane ticket if it’s foreign. How that’s supposed to pay for $42k a month is trivial to answer: it doesn’t. You could hire 3 full professors for that price, and the department has maybe 10 of them to begin with.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Thad again, this time with a simple response to the Heritage Foundation admitting the GOP will use KOSA to censor LGBTQ+ content:

oh no this article turned me trans

In second place, it’s Cat_Daddy responding to our post about Rand Paul’s call to use AI for censorship, and our description of “the government trolling the internet and taking down comments”:

Texas, Florida, and the Red States: “Write that down! WRITE that down!”

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with one more comment on that post, where Violet Aubergine enlisted some AI assistance:

Can I have a paragraph written in the tone of a paranoid conservative ranting about the dangers of AI

ChatGPT
Folks, let me tell you, we’re standing at the precipice of a technological abyss, and it’s time to wake up! This so-called “artificial intelligence” is nothing more than a diabolical creation that threatens the very fabric of our existence. It’s like a Frankenstein’s monster, lurking in the shadows, waiting to devour our freedoms and control our lives. These tech elites and their AI cronies are hell-bent on turning us into mindless drones, manipulated by algorithms and devoid of independent thought. They claim it’s all about convenience and efficiency, but mark my words, it’s a Trojan horse of tyranny! They’ll invade our privacy, monitor our every move, and even predict our actions before we’ve even thought of them. Our thoughts, our preferences, our secrets—all will be harvested by these soulless machines. We’ll become slaves to the whims of cold, heartless algorithms, losing our individuality and autonomy in the process. Don’t be fooled by their promises of progress; this is the slippery slope to a dystopian nightmare! It’s time to resist, my friends, and safeguard the future of humanity before it’s too late. We must stand against this AI juggernaut and reclaim our sovereignty, our privacy, and our human spirit!

At least we know it can mimic GOP word salad with no problems.

Finally, it’s wshuff with a comment about deleted tweets reappearing on Twitter:

I just read that Musk’s Neuralink company has been granted authorization to start human trials. The way Twitter is going doesn’t really inspire confidence, but who knows, maybe the test subjects will get their implants and suddenly start remembering things they’d forgotten.

That’s all for this week, folks!

This Week In Techdirt History: May 21st – 27th

Techdirt

from the and-then-and-then-and-then dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2018, a report confirmed the deep flaws of automated facial recognition software in the UK while its use was spreading in the US, not least because (as the ACLU found out via documents it obtained) Amazon was handing out cheap tech to law enforcement. We looked at how the recording industry hid its latest attempt to expand copyright, while copyright was being used to prevent an actress from showing her own demo reel, HBO successfully fended off a stupid copyright and trademark lawsuit brought by a graffiti artist, and the EU was gearing up to break the internet with copyright. We also wrote in detail about how you shouldn’t put your hopes in the FTC to police net neutrality.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2013, the major Hollywood studios all sent bogus DMCA takedowns about the Pirate Bay documentary, garnering a response from the filmmaker in the form of a video open letter, while Swedish prosecutors were trying to say that the Pirate Bay’s domain registrar is an “accomplice” in infringement. This was also the week of a notable shift in the online economy for small creators: the launch of Patreon.

Meanwhile, Prenda was having a bad week. A very, very, very, very bad week (with one teeny, tiny bit of good news).

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2008, ABC was still excited about the idea of DVRs that don’t let people fast forward, while we noted how far behind mainstream media was on the subjects of DRM and the DMCA, especially while music DRM was collapsing. We saw an important court ruling on the right to resell software, the MPAA got two more sites to settle for merely linking to infringing content, Japan successfully misused copyright law to convict a virus author, and we wrote about how copyright battles are about controlling new technologies.

Filed Under: history, look back

Monster Energy Opposes A Fitness Trainer’s Trademark Because Of Course It Did

Trademark

from the monster-flex dept

Ah, Monster Energy. For regular readers of Techdirt, the name of the company alone is enough to get your eyes rolling harder than a teenager at a rave. Posts on the company’s trademark bullying ways are so legion that I dare not even begin listing them; if you’re unfamiliar with them, click the link and be sure you have a pillow on your desk or you’re going to suffer a concussion.

Well, Monster is back at it again, this time opposing the trademark application for Monster Squad Del Mar, a fitness training company out of California.

A Del Mar personal trainer has been forced to go up against an energy drink giant. When filing for a registered trademark, Monster Squad Del Mar was stopped by Monster Energy.

“I’m not advertising their drinks. No logos, my logo looks nothing like theirs,” said Herman Jones, owner of Monster Squad Del Mar mobile training.

Frankly, it’s pretty hard to argue with him on the question of the logos.

That simply does not call to mind the Monster Energy logo. No claw marks. Boxing has nothing to do with Monster Energy. The only thing that might even give me a moment’s pause is the use of the green coloration, but that just isn’t enough to constitute trademark infringement.

Which leaves us with the name of the training company itself: Monster Squad Del Mar. Except, of course, that trademark infringement requires there to be public confusion as well as for the two entities to operate within the same marketplace. Unless Monster Energy recently got into the personal fitness business, this ain’t it. But, as is our mantra, trademark bullying occurs because it works, particularly when we’re talking about a big entity bullying a much smaller one.

“This is a big, big company look how much money they got. They got money to get you caught up in court and you won’t be able to pay your fees and you’ll lose any and everything that you have,” Jones said.

Fortunately for Jones, he has found a lawyer that is willing to take the case on pro bono. Not everyone is so lucky. I expect Monster to lose in its opposition, but that won’t change the larger problem: Monster Energy waltzing into disparate marketplaces and lobbing out trademark bombs indiscriminately.

Filed Under: energy drinks, fitness, likelihood of confusion, monster, trademark
Companies: monster energy, monster squad del mar

Studies Suggest That Rather Than Killing Jobs, AI Could Revive The Middle Class

Studies

from the unexpected-optimism dept

We’ve certainly been talking a lot about the “AI Doomers” who insist that AI is all too likely to destroy humanity. However, even people who aren’t fully on board with the existential threat of AI do often say that, at the very least, it’s going to destroy jobs for most people, potentially creating huge problems. For years now, people have been arguing for universal basic income, in large part, because they think that automation and AI will take away everyone’s jobs. I mean, it was a core plank of Andrew Yang’s silly run for President.

And with all these new AI tools coming on the market, there are discussions about it again. In recent weeks Annie Lowery in the Atlantic and Andrew Kennedy in Newsweek, both argued that AI was going to wipe out millions of jobs and we needed UBI to protect against that future. Both articles were responding to a Goldman Sachs report predicting massive growth in GDP from AI, but also that 300 million jobs might be automated away.

Of course, both of those articles totally ignore that the very same Goldman Sachs report predicts that the automation of those 300 millions jobs might not lead to mass layoffs, but rather just a changing of how those jobs are done, saying that in many cases, it will complement jobs, rather than substitute for it.

And, a few early studies seem to support that possibility. Planet Money recently had an episode looking at these new studies that even suggest that these new AI tools could help revive the middle class.

But there is a glimmer of hope – in the form of an economic study. The study looked at the customer service department of a big software company, and it found that ChatGPT made workers much more productive. More interesting, most of those gains came from less skilled workers, while the more skilled workers showed only marginal improvement. Put in other words, AI narrowed the productivity gap between lower skilled workers and workers with more skills. This finding is very different from previous findings about the effect of technology on workers over the last four decades. A whole generation of economic research shows that computers have been a major force for increasing inequality. A force for a shrinking middle class.

David Autor is a professor at MIT, and he is widely regarded as one of the greatest labor economists in the world. He led a lot of that initial research about the computer era and the labor market. And he thinks this study, and another one like it, suggest that we could use AI to expand job opportunities, lower barriers to entry to a whole range of occupations, and reduce inequality.

It’s notable that Autor is saying this as well, since (as the article snippet notes) his earlier research has shown how earlier tech innovations actually increased inequality. His biggest papers are on how much tech has harmed inequality in the job market. But in the podcast, he notes that his own research suggests that AI may also be decreasing that inequality.

The key, again, is recognizing how AI works best as a tool to assist workers, rather than as a tool to replace them. The first study mentioned above is really interesting to read. Basically, they looked at how customer support agents were using AI, and specifically reviewing productivity and performance and how it changed via the staggered introduction of the tools to different support agents.

The report found productivity went up across the board — and also that both employees and customers were much happier, which seems like a good thing. But, the impact on lower skilled workers was much bigger, basically leveling them up to work nearly as well as higher skilled workers.

Instead of experienced and skilled workers benefiting mostly from AI technology, it’s the opposite. It’s the less experienced and less skilled workers who benefit the most. In this customer support center, AI improved the know-how and intelligence of those who were new at the job and those who were lower performers. It suggests that AI could benefit those who were left behind in the previous technological era.

“And that might be helpful in terms of closing some of the inequality that previous technologies actually helped amplify,” Brynjolfsson says. So one benefit of intelligence machines is — maybe — they will improve the know-how and smarts of low performers, thereby reducing inequality.

Of course, this is just one study of one company, using the technology as it is today. But lots of things could still change. That study may not prove to be generally applicable. The tech could change. There are lots of other things that could go wrong. And this isn’t to suggest that UBI might not still be a useful tool for helping make sure that everyone has a clear foundation on which to feel safe and able to live freely.

But, at the very least, it might call into question the “doom and gloom” predictions that this will somehow further hollow out the middle class and massively increase unemployment. The early evidence, at least, seems to suggest it might do the exact opposite.

Filed Under: ai, david autor, jobs, middle class, ubi

The Supreme Court May Not Have Read Our Brief About The First Amendment And Copyright, But You Can

Copyright

from the be-smarter-than-SCOTUS dept

Technically we’ve posted this analysis before, when we posted our entire amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court in the Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith case, along with a summary of what we had written in it. But that summary also included other arguments, and a very condensed version of this one, that the First Amendment requires copyright law to be interpreted in a way that doesn’t harm future free expression. It is an idea important enough to be worth more attention – especially given that it seems the Supreme Court itself overlooked it.

So we are unpacking what we had submitted to the Court here for everyone to be able to easily read. Although written in a style particularly palatable for jurists (in particular, the cites to cases are treated differently, with the case name following the statement it supports, and the specific language from the case presented in a trailing parenthetical, rather than a separate blockquote, but just skip over them if it feels too kludgy to read), this brief section is really no different from any post we write here, where we make a point, explain it, and cite to authority that supports it. And even though it was written with the aim of reversing the Second Circuit’s decision, the same analysis will remain applicable for every other case in the future, where an interpretation of copyright law threatens to say no to future free expression.

Over the decades and centuries copyright law in America has often changed form, sometimes dramatically and in raw statutory substance, such as in the shift from the 1909 copyright law to the 1976 version, and sometimes via seminal interpretations by the Supreme Court or other courts. But in any of its many forms copyright law has always had to comply with two Constitutional requirements.

First, Congress’s power to legislate is inherently limited to areas articulated by the Constitution as places where it is appropriate for it to act. See United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 607 (2000) (citing Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 176 (1803) (“Every law enacted by Congress must be based on one or more of its powers enumerated in the Constitution. ‘The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written.’ ”)). If Congress acts in a way that is not consistent with that grant of legislative authority, then its legislation is unconstitutional. Id. at 602.

The federal authority to implement a system of copyrights is found in the Progress Clause, which empowers Congress to further the progress of sciences and useful arts through systems of limited monopolies, such as copyright. U.S. CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 8 (“To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”). But if Congress produces a law that does not further this Constitutional objective to promote the progress of science and useful arts, then that resulting law cannot be rooted in this authority, even if it may bear on those systems of limited monopolies. The condition for this particular grant of legislative power is that exercising it will promote progress, and it is an important predicate for the exercise of it. Were it not, then that language conditioning that power would not have needed to be included in this Constitutional clause otherwise empowering Congress. See Montclair v. Ramsdell, 107 U.S. 147, 152 (1883) (“It is, however, a cardinal principle of statutory construction that we must ‘give effect, if possible, to every clause and word of a statute.’ ”); Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 174 (1803) (“It cannot be presumed that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect; and, therefore, such a construction is inadmissible, unless the words require it.”).

But because it is an important predicate constraining Congress’s ability to implement a copyright law, it means that Congress cannot simply label anything it wants to do legislatively as copyright-related to automatically make it a product of this grant of legislative authority. If it could then Congress could easily pass a “copyright” law with all sorts of random provisions not even tangentially related to promoting the progress of sciences and useful arts, including those affecting areas of regulation left to the states by the Tenth Amendment. U.S. CONST. amend. X (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution [ . . . ] are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”). See Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1, 52 (2005) (O’Connor, J., dissenting) (“[Congress’s] authority must be used in a manner consistent with the notion of enumerated powers—a structural principle that is as much part of the Constitution as the Tenth Amendment’s explicit textual command.”). While this Court has found Congress to have wide latitude to decide how best to promote the progress of science and useful arts in its legislation, Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186, 211-13 (2003), it did not and could not grant Congress the power to do the exact opposite of promoting progress with its legislation. Thus, statutory terms that do not advance the progress of sciences and the useful arts are inherently unsound Constitutionally, because it is beyond Congress’s authority to do something ostensibly involving copyright law that does not meet that objective, or, worse, directly undermines it.

Congress’s hands are also further tied by the First Amendment, which prohibits making a law that impinges on free expression. U.S. CONST. amend. I (“Congress shall make no law [ . . . ] abridging the freedom of speech”). So, again, if the effect of legislation that Congress passes is that free expression has been impinged, then that legislation would be unconstitutional on that basis as well.

Crucially, however, in this case no issue is taken with Congress’s legislative drafting, which incorporated in the 1976 Copyright Act that is still in effect language expressly protecting fair use. 17 U.S.C. § 107. As this Court has found, fair use helps vindicate the First Amendment values promoting discourse within copyright law. Golan v. Holder, 132 S.Ct. 873, 890 (2012); Eldred, 537 U.S. at 219-20. It also helps vindicate the goals and purposes of the Progress Clause itself, given how it helps promote the creation of future new works. Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569, 577 (1994) (“The fair use doctrine thus permits [and requires] courts to avoid rigid application of the copyright statute when, on occasion, it would stifle the very creativity which that law is designed to foster.”).

The issue with this case is that the decision by the Second Circuit […] has interpreted this statutory language in a way that now deprives it of its inherent constitutionality. See Eldred, 537 U.S. at 212 (“We have also stressed, however, that it is generally for Congress, not the courts, to decide how best to pursue the Copyright Clause’s objectives.”). Rather than fostering more expression, this interpretation outright chills it by imposing liability upon subsequent expression that follows-on an earlier work, as nearly all works do, one way or another. Campbell, 510 U.S. at 575 (1994) (“Every book in literature, science and art, borrows, and must necessarily borrow, and use much which was well known and used before.”) (citing Emerson v. Davies, 8 F. Cas. 615, 619 (No. 4,436) (C.C.D. Mass. 1845)). Such an interpretation puts the statute in conflict with both the First Amendment and the goals and purposes of copyright law articulated in the Constitution. Campbell, 510 U.S. at 575 (“From the infancy of copyright protection, some opportunity for fair use of copyrighted materials has been thought necessary to fulfill copyright’s very purpose, ‘[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.’). Only here it is the Second Circuit that has rendered the current copyright statute now unconstitutional, and not Congress.

Courts, however, cannot unilaterally change the effective meaning of statutory text. Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 140 S.Ct. 1731, 1738 (2020) (“If judges could add to, remodel, update, or detract from old statutory terms inspired only by extratextual sources and our own imaginations, we would risk amending statutes outside the legislative process reserved for the people’s representatives.”). And they especially cannot be permitted to change it in a way that alters its constitutionality. See id. (“[W]e would deny the people the right to continue relying on the original meaning of the law they have counted on to settle their rights and obligations.”). See also id. at 1753 (“[T]he same judicial humility that requires us to refrain from adding to statutes requires us to refrain from diminishing them.”).

For this reason, the decision must be overturned, and in a way that makes clear that the measure of constitutionality for copyright law in any form, regardless of whether the parameters of that law have been crafted by Congress or by the courts, is that it does not chill expression, as this decision, thanks to its reasoning, does in measurable effect.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, andy warhol, copyright, free expression, lynn goldsmith, supreme court
Companies: andy warhol foundation

Leaked Document Shows Spain Is Fully On Board With The EU Commission’s Plan To Criminalize Encryption

Privacy

from the if-it-ain't-broke,-let's-break-it dept

For a few years now, the EU Commission has been pushing legislation that would undermine, if not actually criminalize, end-to-end encryption. It’s “for the children,” as they say. To prevent the distribution of CSAM (child sexual abuse material), the EU wants to mandate client-side scanning by tech companies — a move that would necessitate the removal of one end of the end-to-end encryption these companies offer to their users.

The proposal has received push back, mainly from security experts who have repeatedly pointed out how this would make everyone’s communications less secure, not just the criminals the EU wants to target. It has also received push back from the companies offering encrypted communications, all of which have informed the EU they will take their business elsewhere, rather than break their encryption.

The most significant push back (at least as far as the EU’s governing body is concerned) has come from one EU member: Germany. Germany’s government flat out told the EU government that it would not be enforcing this law mandating broken encryption, if and when it goes into force.

But that’s just Germany. Most EU nations seem fine with breaking encryption for everyone, just to target a very small percentage of the population. A document [PDF] leaked to Wired shows widespread support for the proposed mandate, with one country in particular suggesting the encryption-criminalizing proposal doesn’t go far enough.

Of the 20 EU countries represented in the document leaked to WIRED, the majority said they are in favor of some form of scanning of encrypted messages, with Spain’s position emerging as the most extreme. “Ideally, in our view, it would be desirable to legislatively prevent EU-based service providers from implementing end-to-end encryption,” Spanish representatives said in the document.

[…]

“It is shocking to me to see Spain state outright that there should be legislation prohibiting EU-based service providers from implementing end-to-end encryption,” says Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at Stanford University’s Internet Observatory in California who reviewed the document at WIRED’s request. “This document has many of the hallmarks of the eternal debate over encryption.”

The document dates back to April of this year. The 20 countries offering at least partial support for undermining encryption were unwilling to explain to Wired why they felt this way. Only one country supplied a comment, and that comment — along with its comments in the leaked document — suggest it, too, at some point may be providing significant push back of its own.

WIRED asked all 20 member states whose views are included in the document for comment. None denied its veracity, and Estonia confirmed that its position was compiled by experts working within related fields and at various ministries.

Estonia’s responses to the EU’s questions make it clear it thinks the proposal is, at best, half-baked. This answer in particular shows Estonia’s government calling out the EU for creating a proposal that mandates companies break other existing EU data privacy laws:

[EU]: Are you in favour of including audio communications in the scope of the CSA proposal, or would you rather exclude it as in Regulation (EU) 2021/1232?

We are a bit reserved and concerned with the potential inclusion of “audio communication”. For us the question is about what communication are we discussing – FB voice messages or direct special services or applications offering only voice communication service, including encrypted ones? Secondly the initial proposal and assessment (Interinstitutional File: 2022101 55(COD) ) focused mainly on visual material and sites and web links – indeed, this is the most pressing issue here. Audio communication was not included in that with a big attention scope.

This does not mean that Estonia doesn’t think grooming etc. criminal activities are not important. They are and we support any action fighting against this issue! We also want to remind, that EUCJ has forbidden the state regulation retention obligation of metadata by service providers. Now, we create a regulation which forces service providers to carry out mass interception of content data, which, as we want to emphasise, was the counter-argument regarding the metadata retention in the court. This is something we don’t want to do in Europe. This may also create more friction with the EU Parliament.

More directly, the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications says this:

Estonia does not support the possibility of creating backdoors for end-to-end encryption solutions.

That’s what happens when you actually talk to “experts working within related fields,” rather than just legislators who believe any sacrifice “for the children” is acceptable, as long as they are not expected to sacrifice anything themselves.

But the rest of the document is a mixed bag, with more countries showing support for some sort of direct regulation of E2EE. This is disappointing, but it’s too be expected when loaded language is used to create the proposal and held over the heads of EU member countries — language that suggests that if they’re for protecting encryption, they’re also for the continued sexual exploitation of children. That’s the kind of peer pressure that’s difficult to shrug off. But even if some countries (looking at you, Spain) are just looking for excuses to start breaking encryption, others are publicly demonstrating they won’t be shamed into passing a bad law that makes millions of residents’ communications less secure.

Filed Under: csam, encryption, end-to-end encryption, estonia, eu, eu commission, for the children, germany, protect the children, spain

Daily Deal: MaxLight Mini Super Bright Utility Flashlight

Deals

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

These MaxLight mini flashlights are designed to fit in your backpack or pocket. They are super bright and strong enough to be used in emergencies when you need reliable illumination. The 4 modes let you switch from super bright, medium, low, and strobe modes. These flashlights have a carabiner, kickstand, long-lasting rechargeable battery, magnetic base, and bottle opener. Get 1 for $22, 2 for $32.97, or 4 for $63.

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

Twitter Demands Academics Who Won’t Pay $42k/Month Delete Any Twitter Data They Currently Have

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the so-very-transparent dept

Elon Musk has insisted that “transparency is the key to trust” in rebuilding Twitter in his image. He says it all the time. But, of course, under Musk, Twitter has been significantly less transparent, choosing to skip its transparency reports, and generally close itself off. But one of the key methods for transparency on Twitter has long been its willingness to allow academic researchers to access its API and do research around Twitter and its users.

This is how, for example, we were able to learn that (contrary to widespread belief), Twitter’s moderation efforts actually favored conservatives (rather than suppressed them), and that the “bias” in its moderation efforts was against misinformation, not any political ideology.

Of course, in Musk’s desperate efforts to poke the bird he saddled with massive debt until it makes money, means that he turned off nearly everyone’s access to Twitter’s API (including ours) and demanded a minimum $42,000 per month from academics. That’s half a million dollars a year. For access to one company’s data. This is… not the kind of money that academic institutions have to.

The whole thing seems deliberately designed to cut academics off from Twitter’s data and to be as opaque as possible, rather than transparent.

As if to put an exclamation point on that thinking, the latest is that Twitter is telling academic institutions that haven’t paid (i.e., basically all of them that used to use Twitter’s data for research) that they are required to delete all the data they collected in the past by the end of this month.

But in recent weeks, the company has been contacting researchers, asking them to pay $42,000 a month to access 0.3% of all the tweets posted to the platform – something researchers have previously said is totally unaffordable. Previous contracts for access to the data were set as low as a couple of hundred dollars a month.

An email, seen by the i, says researchers who don’t sign the new contract “will need to expunge all Twitter data stored and cached in your systems”. Researchers will be required to post screenshots “that showcase evidence of removal”. They have been given 30 days after their agreement expires to complete the process.

Now, in talking to people (both former Twitter employees and academic researchers) about this, they do say that the Twitter API contract has long had a clause regarding data deletion. But also, that it has never been used in this manner (only in cases where there were claims of misuse of the data), and that the demand to prove the data has been deleted is particularly egregious and petty.

But, really, it just highlights how little Elon is willing to have outside experts look into the details of how Twitter is working. It’s the opposite of transparency.

And, thus, Elon himself is effectively telling you that you should never trust Twitter.

On top of that, it seems particularly ironic that Twitter is demanding proof of deletion the very same week that Twitter itself began accidentally putting back tweets that Twitter had told people had been deleted. So Twitter is now being less transparent, demanding proof of deletion, at the very same time that it can’t delete things it promised it had deleted.

Super trustworthy site there.

Filed Under: academics, api, data deletion, elon musk, research, transparency
Companies: twitter

Hugely Profitable And Consolidated Streaming Platforms Suddenly Too Cheap To Pay Residuals And Writers, Or Keep Niche Shows Online

Culture

from the dysfunction-junction dept

We’ve noted repeatedly that as the streaming sector grows and consolidates, it’s revealing many of the same problems we saw inherent in traditional, shitty, cable TV. As in the need to provide Wall Street improved quarterly returns at any cost has them doing the sort of things common in the traditional cable sector they used to criticize and disrupt (see Netflix’s password sharing cash grab).

Elsewhere, we’re seeing the byproduct of mindless consolidation results in other problems. Such as with the AT&T/Time Warner/Discovery mess, a series of utterly pointless mergers that have made the end product decidedly worse, while resulting in thousands of layoffs, price hikes, companies too cheap to pay artist residuals, writer strikes, and widespread annoyance and angst.

Warner Brother Discovery has been too cheap to pay artist residuals, resulting in a lot of popular shows being pulled from the company’s HBO Max streaming platform. We’re seeing the same thing over at Disney+, which apparently has proven unable to keep shows they’ve just recently produced — like Willow — online and available to a handful of customers via streaming.

The reason we’re given is that the same giant media conglomerates that spent hundreds of billions of dollars on pointless megamerger sprees, and received tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks for doing absolutely nothing, suddenly can’t afford to pay their writers a living wage, or keep shows like Willow available to consumers:

Streamers like Disney+ have to pay rights-holders and content creators continually in many cases to keep their content on their platforms, but often that content is being viewed by too few people and isn’t driving new subscriptions. As such, these businesses see cuts as obvious ways to save money during turbulent times.

The cuts are occurring at the same time that corporations are once again flexing their muscles in the wake of a brief shift of power toward labor during peak COVID. As the narrative goes, this kind of belt tightening is only wise given the “turbulent times” and a purported recession (?) waiting in the wings. You’re lucky to have a job. Sit down and shut up.

In reality, chipping away at your own streaming catalog is one of several ruthless determinations made by bean counters who are no strangers to wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on failed luxury amusement parks and massive megamergers, but somehow now can’t afford to maintain user access to a relative handful of niche programming:

So who decides which shows should get the boot? Bean counters, mostly, who consider the cost of carrying library content based on how much is paid toward residuals, participations and royalties. That is weighed against viewership and a title’s ability to lure more subscribers — like The Office on Peacock, for example — and create less churn. Ahead of Showtime dumping titles, Chris McCarthy, President/CEO, Showtime and Paramount Media, said that “we will divert investment away from areas that are underperforming and that account for less than 10% of our views.”

But again, it’s not just less popular shows like Willow getting the axe. Sesame Street and other popular kids’ programming have been shown the door. Mad Magazine was an early casualty of merger mania. There’s logic-driven belt tightening, and then there’s just being fucking cheap.

Routinely lost in the conversation is all the endless promises of “untold synergies” that accompanied decades of mindless media consolidation. Synergies that were supposed to have made these companies lean and resilient long ago. In reality, that consolidation instead created a massive, wasteful mess fraught with consistent managerial incompetence that’s increasingly catching up to the industry:

On Tuesday morning, subscribers took to social media to complain that they were having problems logging in to Max, which is replacing the three-year-old HBO Max service. As reported by users, the issues spanned the Max.com website as well as mobile apps including iOS and connected-TV apps on Roku and Samsung TV.

It’s growth for growth’s sake. Change for change’s sake. And dealmaking for dealmaking’s sake. Usually simply to generate tax write offs and let incompetent media executives fail upwards while pretending they’re savvy dealmakers.

You’ll notice that how much money gets wasted in mindless consolidation, pointless megadeals, and sustained managerial incompetence kind of gets lost in the weeds when it comes time to explain why streaming catalogs are shrinking, prices are rising, writers can’t get paid, and layoffs abound. But harmful and often pointless consolidation remains a primary reason streaming is slowly turning into the terrible cable TV sector it used to make fun of.

Filed Under: cable tv, mergers, streaming, streaming tv, video, wall st., willow, writers
Companies: warner bros. discovery

Activision Shutters ‘CoD’ Fan Servers, Which Were Better, More Secure Than The Official Servers

Copyright

from the officially-crap dept

Here we go again. We’ve talked several times in the past about game publishers and studios going out of their way to shut down fan-run servers for online play. The excuses for doing so mostly amount to either claims that intellectual property laws require this sort of policing action (it doesn’t), that the publisher needs to shut down servers for older versions of games to get people to buy newer versions (objection: asserting facts not in evidence), and some just seem to want to play strongman for whatever reason.

But the worst of these is when a publisher shuts down fan servers while either not bothering to put out a competing product themselves for legacy games, or when those fan servers are demonstrably better than the official servers. Activision serves as the most recent example of this, having shut down two fan-run server clients for legacy Call of Duty games, all while its own servers for online play are worse and less secure.

The first of these was SM2, which was a client for online play and included a bunch of mods to make the game different and, to some, better.

The first victim of Activision’s recent efforts was SM2, a major Modern Warfare 2 modding project whose development started over two years ago. Since then, the modding group has been working on updating that seminal 2009 release with new weapons, in-game perks, a redesigned UI, new streak and progression systems, and even a recent move to a more modern game engine.

Those efforts stopped last week, though, before the mod could even release its first version. The SM2 Twitter account reported that “a team member received a Cease & Desist letter on behalf of Activision Publishing in relation to the SM2 project. We are complying with this order and shutting down all operations permanently.”

These fan servers wouldn’t even be a thing if Activision would provide the same modding and functionality in its own official servers. There is obviously a market for this. And it must be a sizable enough market that Activision went to all the trouble to have its legal beagles craft and fire off the C&D notice. So why not just figure out how to make the same functionality work within the official servers themselves?

It gest worse with the second shut down, X Labs, which made a series of custom servers to play legacy CoD games in a more secure manner than on the official servers. See, online play for these legacy games is so chock full of hackers utilizing known exploits that, well, it makes much of the ranking systems and, sometimes, even playing the game flatly impossible.

Hackers on those official servers can kick other players from the game and reset their in-game rank and unlocked content, as Modern Warzone said he found out personally during a recent “throwback day” event in the player community. Playing these older games on PC also risks exposing your IP address and letting hackers insert malicious files onto your machine, he said.

“Basically, it’s just not safe,” Modern Warzone said. “If Activision Blizzard wants to continue to send out these cease and desists, they at least need to handle their security problems because it is egregious. You can’t just take away the ability for your fan base to play old games when it’s not harming you.”

Telling your fans, “Sorry, but we’re not let you going to play our games in a safe way and instead need you to use the official, wildly unsecure online servers we’re responsible for instead!” is not exactly treating your own fans well.

And Modern Warzone’s last point is the right one: if this isn’t really causing the company any harm, then what’s the point of this?

Filed Under: call of duty, copyright, fan servers, legacy video games, mods, video games
Companies: activision blizzard