Daily Archives: May 8, 2025

EU prepares to give new rights to live streaming sites, to the detriment of the Internet and its users

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At the heart of Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) lies the dispiriting saga of how the EU Copyright Directive came into being. It began in early 2013 with the usual “stakeholder dialogue”, in which the European Commission sought the views of the various constituencies affected. It generated an unprecedentedly large response that was surprising given the dry and dusty nature of copyright law. As the European Commission’s Report on the consultation noted:

The public consultation generated broad interest with more than 9,500 replies to the consultation document and a total of more than 11,000 messages, including questions and comments, sent to the Commission’s dedicated email address. A number of initiatives were also launched by organized stakeholders that nurtured the debate around the public consultation and drew attention to it.

Some 5,600 citizens took the trouble to respond, despite the lack of an easy online interface to do so: responses required a document to be completed then emailed. Numerous problems with the existing copyright system were raised, particularly in the light of the shift from analogue to digital technologies. Despite that welcome engagement, and the many substantive issues that were raised, the public’s comments and concerns were almost entirely ignored in the final result of the legisltative process. Instead, the EU Copyright Directive gave yet more rights to copyright holders, and undermined the freedom of speech and privacy rights of ordinary people.

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The standard mechanism for giving the copyright world what it wants, while pretending to respect democratic processes, has been set in motion again. The European Commission has just launched a “Call for Evidence in view of the assessment of the Recommendation on combatting online piracy of sports and other live events”. The Recommendation referred to there was published two years ago. It explores the unauthorised retransmissions of live sports and other live events online, the next battleground for the copyright world, ever-keen to expand its rights and powers.

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Those further measures are likely to involve yet more one-sided legislation in favour of the copyright world, as with the EU Copyright Directive. Such laws are already being discussed in the US. But there is a significant difference between what happened back in 2013, and the latest call for evidence. In 2013, people were warning about the possible effects of various bad policy options that might be adopted. The copyright world naturally dismissed those concerns as fear mongering, which allowed its allies within the European Parliament to push through precisely those bad policy options in the final text of the Directive.

But when it comes to unauthorised retransmissions of live events, we already have a wealth of evidence of how disproportionate attempts to rein in such streams can be harmful. The main example of what not to do comes from Italy, whose Piracy Shield is shaping up to be the worst copyright enforcement scheme since France’s Hadopi (also discussed in detail in Walled Culture the book).

The central problem is overblocking. For example, back in March last year, Walled Culture reported that one of Cloudflare’s Internet addresses had been blocked by Piracy Shield. There were over 40 million domains associated with the blocked address. Compounding the problem is a lack of transparency about which sites are being blocked, and the failure to provide a rigorous and rapid complaint procedure for fixing such far-reaching blunders. […] the damage could easily go well beyond the inconvenience of millions of people being blocked from accessing their files on Google Drive, as happened last year.

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Despite these serious issues, Italy seems determined to make Piracy Shield even worse by building it out in a number of ill-advised ways, including the extension of blackout orders to VPNs and public DNS providers, and the obligation for search engines to de-index sites. Worryingly, a new “Study on the Effectiveness and the Legal and Technical Means of Implementing Website-Blocking Orders” from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) holds up Italy’s approach as an example of a “well-functioning site-blocking system”.

Nor is Italy alone in demonstrating the harms this approach to dealing with unauthorised rebroadcasts of sports events gives rise to. In Spain, attempts by La Liga, the country’s top professional football league, to tackle the problem have also led to overblocking,

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German ISPs have been implementing a secret block list of allegedly infringing sites, including those offering streams, for years, and without any court oversight. The lack of transparency of this approach was underlined when the list was accidentally exposed before being hidden away once more.

As the above makes clear, the blocking of allegedly infringing streaming sites is already happening across the EU in an uncontrolled way, and with little to no effective judicial oversight. The copyright industry can present this as a kind of fait accompli, and ask the EU to bring in laws to formalise the situation. In doing so, they will skirt over the numerous and deep-seated problems with this approach, not least overblocking, which shuts down entirely innocent sites and offers little or no redress for the harm this causes.

The latest Call for Evidence on this important area is open until 28 May 2025. It would be good if companies, organisations and individuals could use this opportunity to alert the European Commission to the evident dangers of Piracy Shield and similar approaches, in the hope that existing implementations might be dismantled, or at least reined in, and new ones restricted.

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French courts too are ordering Cloudflare to block streaming sites, […]

Source: EU prepares to give new rights to live streaming sites, to the detriment of the Internet and its users – Walled Culture

ispace’s RESILIENCE Enters Lunar Orbit. It’ll Try to Land in Early June

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Headquartered in Japan, the commercial space company ispace is dedicated to creating robotic spacecraft and other technology to support the discovery, mapping, and harvesting of natural resources on the Moon. One of the main tools in their arsenal is the RESILIENCE lander, a small, lightweight uncrewed spacecraft designed for low-cost, high-frequency transportation of instruments and other supplies to the lunar surface. Earlier today, the company announced that their second mission with the RESILIENCE lander (SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon) entered lunar orbit.

According to a company statement, the orbital injection maneuver was completed by 5:41 a.m. JST (1:41 p.m. PST; 4:41 p.m. EST) on May 7th, 2025. This marks the successful completion of the mission’s seventh Mission Milestone, which included completing the first lunar orbit insertion maneuver and reaffirming “the ability of space to deliver spacecraft and payloads into stable lunar orbits.” The orbital maneuver consisted of the longest thruster burn during Mission 2, lasting approximately 9 minutes. The team at the Mission Control Center in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, confirmed that RESILIENCE is now maintaining a stable attitude above the lunar surface.

On April 24th, 2025, RESILIENCE completed the maneuvers to transition the lander from deep space and closer to the Moon to complete the orbital injection. Before that, RESILIENCE completed a lunar flyby that verified the spacecraft’s propulsion, guidance, control, and navigation systems. Following the flyby, the lander spent about two months in a low-energy transfer orbit. Mission specialists are now preparing for the final orbit maneuvers in preparation for a lunar landing, which is scheduled to take place no earlier than June 5th, 2025.

Credit: ispaceRESILIENCE was launched on January 15th, 2025, at 12:44 p.m. PST (03:44 p.m. EST)

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For this mission, the RESILIENCE is transporting several payloads for commercial customers.

These include the TENACIOUS micro rover by ispace-EUROPE, which will be deployed on the surface to explore the landing site, collect lunar regolith, and relay data back to the lander. Other payloads include a water electrolyzer, a food production experiment, a deep space radiation probe, a commemorative alloy plate, and a “Moonhouse,” a model house created by Swedish artists to be placed on the surface. The mission also carries a UNESCO memory disk, a cultural artifact containing data on humanity’s linguistic and cultural diversity.

As UNESCO describes it, the disk “serves as a repository of cultural heritage,” which will be preserved for millions of years in case human civilization collapses someday:

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Source: ispace’s RESILIENCE Enters Lunar Orbit. It’ll Try to Land in Early June – Universe Today

cientists Identify New Mutation That Enables Three-Hour Sleepers

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Researchers have discovered a mutation in the SIK3 gene that enables some people to function normally on just three to six hours of sleep. The finding, published this week in PNAS, adds to a growing list of genetic variants linked to naturally short sleepers.

When University of California, San Francisco scientists introduced the mutation to mice, the animals required 31 minutes less sleep daily. The modified enzyme showed highest activity in brain synapses, suggesting it might support brain homeostasis — the resetting process thought to occur during sleep.

“These people, all these functions our bodies are doing while we are sleeping, they can just perform at a higher level than we can,” said Ying-Hui Fu, the study’s co-author. This marks the fifth mutation across four genes identified in naturally short sleepers. Fu’s team hopes these discoveries could eventually lead to treatments for sleep disorders by revealing how sleep regulation functions in humans.

Source: cientists Identify New Mutation That Enables Three-Hour Sleepers | Slashdot

VMware perpetual license holders receive cease-and-desist letters from Broadcom

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Broadcom has been sending cease-and-desist letters to owners of VMware perpetual licenses with expired support contracts, Ars Technica has confirmed.

Following its November 2023 acquisition of VMware, Broadcom ended VMware perpetual license sales. Users with perpetual licenses can still use the software they bought, but they are unable to renew support services unless they had a pre-existing contract enabling them to do so. The controversial move aims to push VMware users to buy subscriptions to VMware products bundled such that associated costs have increased by 300 percent or, in some cases, more.

Some customers have opted to continue using VMware unsupported, often as they research alternatives, such as VMware rivals or devirtualization.

Over the past weeks, some users running VMware unsupported have reported receiving cease-and-desist letters from Broadcom informing them that their contract with VMware and, thus, their right to receive support services, has expired. The letter [PDF], reviewed by Ars Technica and signed by Broadcom managing director Michael Brown, tells users that they are to stop using any maintenance releases/updates, minor releases, major releases/upgrades extensions, enhancements, patches, bug fixes, or security patches, save for zero-day security patches, issued since their support contract ended.

The letter tells users that the implementation of any such updates “past the Expiration Date must be immediately removed/deinstalled,” adding:

Any such use of Support past the Expiration Date constitutes a material breach of the Agreement with VMware and an infringement of VMware’s intellectual property rights, potentially resulting in claims for enhanced damages and attorneys’ fees.

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The cease-and-desist letters also tell recipients that they could be subject to auditing.

Failure to comply with [post-expiration reporting] requirements may result in a breach of the Agreement by Customer[,] and VMware may exercise its right to audit Customer as well as any other available contractual or legal remedy.

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Since Broadcom ended VMware’s perpetual licenses and increased pricing, numerous users and channel partners, especially small-to-medium-sized companies, have had to reduce or end business with VMware. Most of Members IT Group’s VMware customer base is now running VMware unsupported

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Source: VMware perpetual license holders receive cease-and-desist letters from Broadcom – Ars Technica

Hackers Manage To Take Control of Nissan Leaf’s Steering Remotely

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Connected cars are great, as they let you communicate with other systems and devices via the internet, but connectivity opens the door to hacking. As it turns out, hacking a Nissan Leaf isn’t nearly as difficult as it might sound if you’ve got the right tools and the right knowledge.

Researchers from Budapest-based PCAutomotive traveled to Black Hat Asia 2025 to demonstrate how they managed to hack into a 2020 Nissan Leaf. Luckily, they had good intentions—they simply wanted to show that it could be done. Someone with less-than-good intentions could have caused a great deal of damage with the same tools. Most of the parts used to hack into the car were sourced from eBay or a junkyard.

The first part of the project involved building a working test bench around a Leaf touchscreen and the EV’s digital instrument cluster. They then bypassed the anti-theft safeguards by implementing a Python script, which is a programming language, and hacked into the system. The steps taken to break in were detailed in a presentation. They look complicated if you don’t know what you’re dealing with and have no programming experience, but someone with a great deal of programming experience shouldn’t find the process terribly daunting.

When everything was set up, it was time to launch an attack. One of the researchers connected to the Leaf remotely via a laptop while two others were riding in it. The first step was pretty straight-forward: The man with the laptop tracked the Leaf’s movements via GPS. He then recorded the conversation the passengers were having inside the car, downloaded it to his laptop, and played it in the car via the speakers.

Next, things got creepier. Using the same laptop, the researcher sounded the horn, folded the door mirrors, turned on the wipers, and even yanked the steering wheel. He was able to perform these tasks even when the car was moving. The team identified a list of 10 vulnerabilities that allowed it to access the Leaf’s infotainment system and notified Nissan. The company hasn’t responded to the video as of this writing, however.

Source: Hackers Manage To Take Control of Nissan Leaf’s Steering Remotely