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Category Archives: Global Domination

Japanese Police Arrest Man For Selling Modded Save Files For Single-Player Nintendo Game

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Japan’s onerous Unfair Competition Prevention Law has created what looks from here like a massive overreach on the criminalization of copyright laws. Past examples include Japanese journalism executives being arrested over a book that tells people how to back up their own DVDs, along with more high-profile cases in which arrests occurred over the selling of cheats or exploits in online multiplayer video games. While these too seem like an overreach of copyright law, or at least an over-criminalization of relatively minor business problems facing electronic media companies, they are nothing compared with the idea that a person could be arrested and face jail time for the crime of selling modded save-game files for single player game like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

A 27-year old man in Japan was arrested after he was caught attempting to sell modified Zelda: Breath of The Wild save files.

As reported by the Broadcasting System of Niigata (and spotted by Dextro) Ichimin Sho was arrested on July 8 after he posted about modified save files for the Nintendo Switch version of Breath of The Wild. He posted his services onto an unspecified auction site, describing it as “the strongest software.” He would provide modded save files that would give the player improved in-game abilities and also items that were difficult to obtain were made available as requested by the customer. In his original listing, he reportedly was charging folks 3,500 yen (around $31 USD) for his service.

Upon arrest, Sho admitted that he’s made something like $90k over 18 months selling modded saves and software. Whatever his other ventures, the fact remains that Sho was arrested for selling modded saves for this one Zelda game to the public. And this game is fully a single-player game. In other words, there is not aspect of this arrest that involved staving off cheating in online multiplayer games, which is one of the concerns that has typically led to these arrests in Japan within the gaming industry.

[…]

Source: Japanese Police Arrest Man For Selling Modded Save Files For Single-Player Nintendo Game | Techdirt

Google fined €500m for not paying French publishers after copying their texts on search results

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Google was fined €500m ($590m, £425m) by the French Competition Authority on Tuesday for failing to negotiate fees with news publishers for using their content.

In April last year, the regulator ruled the American search giant had to compensate French publishers for using snippets of their articles in Google News, citing European antitrust rules and copyright law. Google was given three months to figure out how much to pay publishers. More than a year later, no licensing deals have been struck, and Google did not “enter into negotiations in good faith,” we’re told. For one thing, it just stopped including snippets from French publishers in all Google services.

[…]

Now, the FCA has sanctioned the Chocolate Factory €500m and has given it two months to negotiate with French publishers. If the web giant continues to dilly-dally after this point, it’ll be fined up to €900,000 (over $1m or around £767,000) a day until it complies with the FCA’s demands.

[…]

Source: Google fined €500m for not paying French publishers after using their words on web • The Register

Inside the Industry That Unmasks People at Scale: yup your mobile advertising ID isn’t anonymous either

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Tech companies have repeatedly reassured the public that trackers used to follow smartphone users through apps are anonymous or at least pseudonymous, not directly identifying the person using the phone. But what they don’t mention is that an entire overlooked industry exists to purposefully and explicitly shatter that anonymity.

They do this by linking mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) collected by apps to a person’s full name, physical address, and other personal identifiable information (PII). Motherboard confirmed this by posing as a potential customer to a company that offers linking MAIDs to PII.

“If shady data brokers are selling this information, it makes a mockery of advertisers’ claims that the truckloads of data about Americans that they collect and sell is anonymous,” Senator Ron Wyden told Motherboard in a statement.

“We have one of the largest repositories of current, fresh MAIDS<>PII in the USA,” Brad Mack, CEO of data broker BIGDBM told us when we asked about the capabilities of the product while posing as a customer. “All BIGDBM USA data assets are connected to each other,” Mack added, explaining that MAIDs are linked to full name, physical address, and their phone, email address, and IP address if available. The dataset also includes other information, “too numerous to list here,” Mack wrote.

A MAID is a unique identifier a phone’s operating system gives to its users’ individual device. For Apple, that is the IDFA, which Apple has recently moved to largely phase out. For Google, that is the AAID, or Android Advertising ID. Apps often grab a user’s MAID and provide that to a host of third parties. In one leaked dataset from a location tracking firm called Predicio previously obtained by Motherboard, the data included users of a Muslim prayer app’s precise locations. That data was somewhat pseudonymized, because it didn’t contain the specific users’ name, but it did contain their MAID. Because of firms like BIGDBM, another company that buys the sort of data Predicio had could take that or similar data and attempt to unmask the people in the dataset simply by paying a fee.

[…]

“This real-world research proves that the current ad tech bid stream, which reveals mobile IDs within them, is a pseudonymous data flow, and therefore not-compliant with GDPR,” Edwards told Motherboard in an online chat.

“It’s an anonymous identifier, but has been used extensively to report on user behaviour and enable marketing techniques like remarketing,” a post on the website of the Internet Advertising Bureau, a trade group for the ad tech industry, reads, referring to MAIDs.

In April Apple launched iOS 14.5, which introduced sweeping changes to how apps can track phone users by making each app explicitly ask for permission to track them. That move has resulted in a dramatic dip in the amount of data available to third parties, with just 4 percent of U.S. users opting-in. Google said it plans to implement a similar opt-in measure broadly across the Android ecosystem in early 2022.

[…]

Source: Inside the Industry That Unmasks People at Scale

Samsung Washing Machine App Requires Access to Your Contacts and Location

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A series of Samsung apps that allow customers to control their internet-connected appliances require access to all the phone’s contacts and, in some cases, the phone call app, phone’s location, and camera. Customers have been furious about this for years.

On Wednesday, a Reddit user complained that their washing machine app, the Samsung Smart Washer, wouldn’t work “unless I give it access to my contacts, location and camera.”

This is a common complaint.

[…]

These situations speak to two issues: Apps that demand permissions that they don’t need, and “smart” and internet of things devices that make formerly simple tasks very complicated, and open up potential privacy and security concerns.

Generally speaking, over the last few years, people have become more sensitive to what they’re giving up in privacy and potentially security when they deal with big tech companies. Smart TVs (Samsung included), for example, have been caught listening to users and automatically deliver ads. Tech companies have had to adapt and do better. For example, both Apple and Google allow users to see what data an app has access to, and in some cases users can toggle the permissions individually. The upcoming new version of Android will even have a dedicated “Privacy Dashboard” where users can see which apps used what permissions, and revoke them if they want. Apple’s iOS has similar functionality. But none of this stops app developers from asking users to accept unnecessary permissions.

It’s unclear why apps that are designed to let you set the type of washing cycle you want, or see how long it’s gonna take for the dryer to be done, would need access to your phone’s contacts. In an FAQ for another Samsung app, the company says it needs access to contacts “to check if you already have a Samsung account set up in your device. Knowing this information helps mySamsung to make the sign-in process seamless.”

[…]

Source: Samsung Washing Machine App Requires Access to Your Contacts and Location

DRM Strikes Again: Ubisoft Makes Its Own Game Unplayable By Shutting Down DRM Server

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DRM has shown time after time to be of almost no hindrance whatsoever for those seeking to pirate video games, but has done an excellent job of hindering those who actually bought the game in playing what they’ve bought. Ubisoft, in particular, has had issues with this over the years, with DRM servers failing and preventing customers from playing games that can no longer ping the DRM server.

And while those instances involved unforeseen downtime or migrations impacting customers’ ability to play their games, this time it turns out that Ubisoft simply stopped supporting the DRM server for Might and Magic X-Legacy. And now basically everyone is screwed.

Last month, Ubisoft decided to end online support for a bunch of older games, but in doing so also brought down the DRM servers for Might and Magic X – Legacy, meaning players couldn’t access the game’s single-player content or DLC.

As Eurogamer reports, fans were not happy, having to cobble together an unofficial workaround to be able to continue playing past a certain point in the single-player. But instead of Ubisoft taking the intervening weeks to release something official to fix this, or reversing their original move to shut down the game’s DRM servers, they’ve decided to do something else.

They have simply removed the game for sale on Steam.

This, of course, does nothing for the people who already bought the game and now suddenly cannot progress through it completely, as all the DLC is non-functional. They can play the game up until a point, but then it just doesn’t work.

There are multiple bad actions on Ubisoft’s part here. First, using DRM like this is a terrible idea with almost no good consequences. But once it’s in use, you would think it would be the obligation of the company to ensure any changes it makes on its end don’t suddenly render purchases made by its customers unplayable. In other words, rather than ending support for a DRM server that nixes parts of a paid-for game, the company could have rolled out patches to remove the DRM completely so that none of this happened. After all, with the game no longer even available as a new purchase, what would be the harm in removing the DRM? And, of course, there’s the total lack of communication to Ubisoft customers about basically all of this.

Which is what has people so understandably pissed.

Source: DRM Strikes Again: Ubisoft Makes Its Own Game Unplayable By Shutting Down DRM Server | Techdirt

Audacity users stick the knife – and fork – in to strip audio editor of unwanted features and govt / police spyware

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Contributors disgruntled with the recent direction of cross-platform FOSS audio software Audacity are forking the sound editor to a version that does not have the features or requirements that have upset some in the community.

One such project can be found on GitHub, with user “cookiengineer” proclaiming themselves “evil benevolent temporary dictator” in order to get the ball rolling.

“Being friendly seemed to have invited too many trolls,” observed the engineer, “and we must stop this behaviour.”

Presumably that refers to the trolling rather than being friendly. And goodness, the project has had somewhat of a baptism by fire in recent hours as a number of 4chan users elected to launch a raid on it.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

The project is blunt with regard to the causes of the fork – Audacity’s privacy policy updates, the contributors licence agreement, and the a furore over introducing telemetry have all played a part.

[…]

Source: Audacity users stick the knife – and fork – in to strip audio editor of unwanted features • The Register

Sam Altman’s New Startup Wants to Give You Crypto for Eyeball Scans – yes this is a terrible dr evil plan idea

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hould probably sit down for this one. Sam Altman, the former CEO of famed startup incubator Y Combinator, is reportedly working on a new cryptocurrency that’ll be distributed to everyone on Earth. Once you agree to scan your eyeballs.

Yes, you read correctly.

You can thank Bloomberg for inflicting this cursed news on the rest of us. In its report, Bloomberg says Altman’s forthcoming cryptocurrency and the company behind it, both dubbed Worldcoin, recently raised $25 million from investors. The company is purportedly backed by Andreessen Horowitz, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, and Day One Ventures.

“I’ve been very interested in things like universal basic income and what’s going to happen to global wealth redistribution and how we can do that better,” Altman told Bloomberg, explaining what fever dream inspired this.
[…]

What supposedly makes Worldcoin different is it adds a hardware component to cryptocurrency in a bid to “ensur[e] both humanness and uniqueness of everybody signing up, while maintaining their privacy and the overall transparency of a permissionless blockchain.” Specifically, Bloomberg says the gadget is a portable “silver-colored spherical gizmo the size of a basketball” that’s used to scan people’s irises. It’s undergoing testing in some cities, and since Worldcoin is not yet ready for distribution, the company is giving volunteers other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin in exchange for participating. There are supposedly fewer than 20 prototypes of this eyeball scanning orb, and currently, each reportedly costs $5,000 to make.

Supposedly the whole iris scanning thing is “essential” as it would generate a “unique numerical code” for each person, thereby discouraging scammers from signing up multiple times. As for the whole privacy problem, Worldcoin says the scanned image is deleted afterward and the company purportedly plans to be “as transparent as possible.”

Source: Sam Altman’s New Startup Wants to Give You Crypto for Eyeball Scans

Advertisers Are Selling Americans’ Data to Hundreds of Shady Foreign Businesses

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Senator Ron Wyden has released a list of hundreds of secretive, foreign-owned companies that are buying up Americans’ data. Some of the customers include companies based in states that are ostensibly “unfriendly” to the U.S., like Russia and China.

First reported by Motherboard, the news comes after recent information requests made by a bipartisan coalition of Senators, who asked prominent advertising exchanges to provide a transparent list of any “foreign-headquartered or foreign-majority owned” firms to whom they sell consumer “bidstream data.” Such data is typically collected, bought, and sold amidst the intricate advertising ecosystem, which uses “real-time bidding” to monetize consumer preferences and interests.

Wyden, who helped lead the effort, has expressed concerns that Americans’ data could fall into the hands of foreign intelligence agencies to “supercharge hacking, blackmail, and influence campaigns,” as a previous letter from him and other Senators puts it.

“Few Americans realize that some auction participants are siphoning off and storing ‘bidstream’ data to compile exhaustive dossiers about them. In turn, these dossiers are being openly sold to anyone with a credit card, including to hedge funds, political campaigns, and even to governments,” the letter states.

In response to the information requests, most companies seem to have responded with vague, evasive answers. However, advertising firm Magnite has provided a list of over 150 different companies it sells to while declining to note which countries they are based in. Wyden’s staff spent time researching the companies and Motherboard reports that the list includes the likes of Adfalcon—a large ad firm based in Dubai that calls itself the “first mobile advertising network in the Middle East”—as well as Chinese companies like Adtiming and Mobvista International.

Magnite’s response further shows that the kinds of data it provides to these companies may include all sorts of user information—including age, name, and the site names and domains they visit, device identifiers, IP address, and other information that would help any discerning observer piece together a fairly comprehensive picture of who you are, where you’re located, and what you’re interested in.

You can peruse the full list of companies that Magnite works with and, foreign ownership aside, they just naturally sound creepy. With confidence-inspiring names like “12Mnkys,” “Freakout,” “CyberAgent Dynalst,” and “Zucks,” these firms—many of which you’d be hard-pressed to even find an accessible website for—are doing God knows what with the data they procure.

The question naturally arises: How is it that these companies that we know literally nothing about seem to have access to so much of our personal information? Also: Where are the federal regulations when you need them?

Source: Advertisers Are Selling Americans’ Data to Hundreds of Shady Foreign Businesses

And that’s why Europe has GDPR

Microsoft exec: Targeting of Americans’ records ‘routine’

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Federal law enforcement agencies secretly seek the data of Microsoft customers thousands of times a year, according to congressional testimony Wednesday by a senior executive at the technology company.

Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust, told members of the House Judiciary Committee that federal law enforcement in recent years has been presenting the company with between 2,400 to 3,500 secrecy orders a year, or about seven to 10 a day.

“Most shocking is just how routine secrecy orders have become when law enforcement targets an American’s email, text messages or other sensitive data stored in the cloud,” said Burt, describing the widespread clandestine surveillance as a major shift from historical norms.

[…]

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, called for an end to the overuse of secret gag orders, arguing in a Washington Post opinion piece that “prosecutors too often are exploiting technology to abuse our fundamental freedoms.” Attorney General Merrick Garland, meanwhile, has said the Justice Department will abandon its practice of seizing reporter records and will formalize that stance soon.

[…]

Burt said that while the revelation that federal prosecutors had sought data about journalists and political figures was shocking to many Americans, the scope of surveillance is much broader. He criticized prosecutors for reflexively seeking secrecy through boilerplate requests that “enable law enforcement to just simply assert a conclusion that a secrecy order is necessary.”

[…]

As possible solutions, Burt said, the government should end indefinite secrecy orders and should also be required to notify the target of the data demand once the secrecy order has expired.

Just this week, he said, prosecutors sought a blanket gag order affecting the government of a major U.S. city for a Microsoft data request targeting a single employee there.

“Without reform, abuses will continue to occur and they will occur in the dark,” Burt said.

Source: Microsoft exec: Targeting of Americans’ records ‘routine’

High Court disallows Dutch Filmworks forcing ISPs to give out personal details of potential movie downloaders

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As expected, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal in cassation by Dutch FilmWorks. The highest judicial body follows the motivation of the Prosecutor General, who previously issued advice on this. DFW announced in 2015 that it would take enforcement action against people who illegally download films. The matter was widely publicized. DFW wanted to address individual users and possibly even fine them. It engaged an outside company to collect the IP addresses. The distributor also received permission for this data collection. However, in order to address these users, DFW had to have their name and address details, which are only known to internet providers. Ziggo refused to provide that information. Dutch Filmworks was rejected by the court and the Supreme Court also sees no reason to annul the earlier judgment.

Source: Zaak Dutch Filmworks strandt bij Hoge Raad – Emerce

Windows Users Surprised by Windows 11’s Short List of Supported CPUs – and front facing camera requirements

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While a lot of focus has been on the TPM requirements for Windows 11, Microsoft has since updated its documentation to provide a complete list of supported processors. At present the list includes only Intel 8th Generation Core processors or newer, and AMD Ryzen Zen+ processors or newer, effectively limiting Windows 11 to PC less than 4-5 years old.

Notably absent from the list is the Intel Core i7-7820HQ, the processor used in Microsoft’s current flagship $3500+ Surface Studio 2. This has prompted many threads on Reddit from users angry that their (in some cases very new) Surface PC is failing the Windows 11 upgrade check.
The Verge confirms: Windows 11 will only support 8th Gen and newer Intel Core processors, alongside [Intel’s 2016-era] Apollo Lake and newer Pentium and Celeron processors. That immediately rules out millions of existing Windows 10 devices from upgrading to Windows 11… Windows 11 will also only support AMD Ryzen 2000 and newer processors, and 2nd Gen or newer [AMD] EPYC chips. You can find the full list of supported processors on Microsoft’s site…

Originally, Microsoft noted that CPU generation requirements are a “soft floor” limit for the Windows 11 installer, which should have allowed some older CPUs to be able to install Windows 11 with a warning, but hours after we published this story, the company updated that page to explicitly require the list of chips above.

Many Windows 10 users have been downloading Microsoft’s PC Health App (available here) to see whether Windows 11 works on their systems, only to find it fails the check… This is the first significant shift in Windows hardware requirements since the release of Windows 8 back in 2012, and the CPU changes are understandably catching people by surprise.

Microsoft is also requiring a front-facing camera for all Windows 11 devices except desktop PCs from January 2023 onwards.
“In order to run Windows 11, devices must meet the hardware specifications,” explains Microsoft’s official compatibility page for Windows 11.

“Devices that do not meet the hardware requirements cannot be upgraded to Windows 11.”

Source: Windows Users Surprised by Windows 11’s Short List of Supported CPUs – Slashdot

Why on earth should Microsoft require that it can look at you?!

Ubisoft Takes Down Fan’s Incredible Far Cry 5 ‘GoldenEye’ Maps

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For the past few years, a YouTuber known as Krollywood has painstakingly recreated every level from GoldenEye 007 inside the level editor of Far Cry 5. This week, Ubisoft removed all of those levels from Far Cry 5 due to a copyright infringement claim.

Kotaku first reported on Krollywood’s efforts earlier this month. Over the course of three years, in an endeavor that tallied more than 1,400 hours, Krollywood recreated every stage from GoldenEye 007, the classic N64 shooter (well, save for the two bonus levels). It was an impressive effort: a modernized recreation of a beloved yet tough-to-find old game. And it looked great, too.

Read More: Here’s GoldenEye 007 Remade From The Ground Up In Far Cry 5

You could find and play these levels yourself by hopping into Far Cry 5’s arcade mode and punching in Krollywood’s username. As of this writing, you no longer can. Ubisoft removed them all from Far Cry 5, a move that Krollywood described as “really sad,” noting that he probably won’t be able to restore them since he’s “on their radar now.”

“I’m really sad—not because of myself or the work I put in the last three years, [but] because of the players who wanna play it or bought Far Cry just to play my levels,” Krollywood told Kotaku in an email today.

When reached for comment, a representative for Ubisoft kicked over this statement:

In following the guidelines within the ‘Terms of Use’, there were maps created within Far Cry 5 arcade that have been removed due to copyright infringement claims from a right [sic] holder received by Ubisoft and are currently unavailable. We respect the intellectual property rights of others and expect our users to do the same. This matter is currently with the map’s creator and the rights holder and we have nothing further to share at this time.

Ubisoft did not immediately respond to follow-up requests asking whether the rights holder mentioned is MGM, which controls the license to the original GoldenEye 007.

The rights around the GoldenEye 007 game have been stuck in a quagmire for decades. Famously, Rare, the developer of the original game, planned a remake for the Xbox 360. That was cancelled in 2008. (Years later, Xbox boss Phil Spencer chalked up the cancellation to the legal rights issues being “challenging.”) That canned remake resurfaced as a full 4K60 longplay via a leak this January, with a playable version making the rounds online shortly after. A Kotaku report concluded: It was fun.

It is further unclear how, exactly, Krollywood’s map remakes in Far Cry 5 harm MGM at all—or how it violates Ubisoft’s terms of service in the first place. Krollywood didn’t use any assets or code from the original game. He didn’t attempt to sell it or otherwise turn a profit. And MGM doesn’t own any of the code from Ubisoft’s open-world shooter.

A sampling of Krollywood’s efforts…Image: Krollywood / Ubisoft
Those corpses represent every attempt to play GoldenEye 007 in any other format than the original game.Image: Krollywood / Ubisoft
Some of the remade levels stoke major wanderlust.Image: Krollywood / Ubisoft

Players just want a taste of nostalgia, and MGM has a track record of shattering the plates before they’re even delivered to the table. (Recall GoldenEye 25, the fan remake of GoldenEye 007 remade entirely in Unreal 4 that was lawyered into oblivion last year.) MGM has further neglected to do anything with the license it’s sitting on—for a game that’s older than the Game Boy Color, by the way. At the end of the day, shooting this latest fan-made project out of the sky comes across as a punitive move, at best.

“In the beginning, I started this project just for me and my best friend, because we loved the original game so much,” Krollywood said. “But there are many GoldenEye fans out there … [The project] found many new fans and I’m so happy about it.”

Source: Ubisoft Takes Down Fan’s Incredible Far Cry 5 ‘GoldenEye’ Maps

Bah. Humbug.

New ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ Game Has Game Streamers Worried Over Integral Music In The Game, shows you how stupid copyright and DMCA is nowadays

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With streaming games and “let’s plays” becoming a dominant force of influence in the gaming world, one of the sillier trends we’ve seen is video games coming out with “stream safe” settings that strip out audio content for which there is no broadcast license. We’ve talked already about how this sort of thing is not a solution to the actual problem — the complicated licenses surrounding copyrighted works and the permission culture that birthed them — but is rather a ploy to simply ignore that problem entirely. That hasn’t stopped this from becoming a more regular thing in the gaming world, even as we’ve seen examples of “stream safe” settings fail to keep streams from getting DMCA notices.

Well, if there were a perfect example of a video game that highlights the absurdity of all of this, it may well be the forthcoming Guardians of the Galaxy title. If you’re not familiar with the GotG movies, you should know that retro music plays a major role in the films. The game promises that retro music will be just as important as in the films. And that’s what immediately set off concern for game streamers.

One group that is wary of this heavy emphasis on pop music is the livestreaming crowd, who are concerned that it could make the game near-impossible to broadcast. This is because Twitch and YouTube creators are regularly hit with what are known as Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices.

[…]

The game publisher of course secured the rights to the songs to be included in the game, but did not license the songs for rebroadcast. Because the world is an extremely stupid place, streaming a game equates to a rebroadcast of any music within it. And, also because the world is an extremely stupid place, Eidos-Montreal’s solution to this is once again to mute licensed music.

Newsweek contacted Eidos-Montréal to ask if they had made any considerations for Twitch streamers in respect to Guardians of the Galaxy’s music. Over email, a spokesperson confirmed that there will actually be an option to mute licensed tracks, if players want to be absolutely safe from potential DMCA takedowns.

And so a major thematic element for the franchise will be nixed in any live-streams of the game.

[…]

Source: New ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ Game Has Game Streamers Worried Over Integral Music In The Game | Techdirt

Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

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Most of Amazon’s properties including Amazon.com, WholeFoods.com and Zappos.com are preventing Google’s tracking system FLoC — or Federated Learning of Cohorts — from gathering valuable data reflecting the products people research in Amazon’s vast e-commerce universe, according to website code analyzed by Digiday and three technology experts who helped Digiday review the code.

Amazon declined to comment on this story.

As Google’s system gathers data about people’s web travels to inform how it categorizes them, Amazon’s under-the-radar move could not only be a significant blow to Google’s mission to guide the future of digital ad tracking after cookies die — it could give Amazon a leg up in its own efforts to sell advertising across what’s left of the open web.

[…]

Digiday watched last week as Amazon added code to its digital properties to block FLoC from tracking visitors using Google’s Chrome browser. For example, while earlier in the week WholeFoods.com and Woot.com did not include code to block FLoC, by Thursday Digiday saw that those sites did feature code telling Google’s system not to include activities of their visitors to inform cohorts or assign IDs. But Amazon’s blocking appears scattered.

[..]

Source: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC — and that could seriously weaken the system

Open-source projects glibc and gnulib look to sever copyright ties with Free Software Foundation

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The GNU C Library (glibc) and GNU Portability Library (gnulib) are laying the groundwork to divorce themselves from the troubled Free Software Foundation by removing the requirement for copyright assignment.

This move follows in the footsteps of the same shift by the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) on 2 June.

Like many projects under the GNU umbrella, glibc and gnulib – the GNU Project’s C standard library and a collection of subroutines designed to ease cross-platform porting respectively – allow anyone to contribute code. Those doing so are asked to assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation – for now, at least.

[…]

“The changes to accept patches with or without FSF copyright assignment would be effective on August 2nd, and would apply to all open branches.”

[…]

Andrew Katz, managing partner and head of tech and IP at Moorcrofts Corporate Law, said of the move: “My view is that the GPL is sufficient in itself. For GPL, licence in = licence out seems to be the fairest approach from both the developers’ and the project’s perspective, and it means that, ultimately, the developers remain in control of their code.

“Recent questions about governance of the FSF (specifically, concerning RMS’s departure and reinstatement) may cause people to be concerned about the quality of that governance as regards licensing decisions. Assigning copyright to an organisation requires a significant amount of trust, and developers may understandably be concerned that trusting a third party (whether a business or a not-for-profit) presents a greater risk than retaining their own rights in the code.”

Source: Open-source projects glibc and gnulib look to sever copyright ties with Free Software Foundation • The Register

House introduces five antitrust bills targeting Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon

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Lawmakers in the House have introduced five new bills that would place significant limits on major tech companies, including Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon.The proposed legislation is part of a broader effort to step up antitrust enforcement against tech giants.The bills would place new limits on the companies’ ability to acquire new business and change how they treat their own services compared with competitors.

“From Amazon and Facebook to Google and Apple, it is clear that these unregulated tech giants have become too big to care and too powerful to ever put people over profit,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal said in a statement. “By reasserting the power of Congress, our landmark bipartisan bills rein in anti-competitive behavior, prevent monopolistic practices, and restore fairness and competition while finally leveling the playing field and allowing innovation to thrive.”

The bills include:

Notably, the bills have bipartisan support, as limiting the power of big tech platforms has been a rare source of bipartisan agreement in Congress. Though the bills don’t name individual companies, the legislation could have a significant impact on Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple, which have faced increasing scrutiny from Congress over their business practices and market dominance.

Source: House introduces five antitrust bills targeting Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon | Engadget

Apple and Microsoft Say They Had No Idea Trump-Era DOJ Requested Data on Political Rivals

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Apple didn’t know the Department of Justice was requesting metadata of Democratic lawmakers when it complied with a subpoena during a Trump-era leak investigation, CNBC reports. And it wasn’t the only tech giant tapped in these probes: Microsoft confirmed Friday it received a similar subpoena for a congressional staffer’s personal email account. Both companies were under DOJ gag orders preventing them from notifying the affected users for years.

These instances are part of a growing list of questionable shit the DOJ carried out under former President Donald Trump amid his crusade to crack down on government leakers. The agency also quietly went after phone and email records of journalists at the Washington Post, CNN, and the New York Times to uncover their sources, none of whom were notified until last month.

On Thursday, a New York Times report revealed that a Trump-led DOJ seized records from two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee who were frequently targeted in the president’s tantrums: California Representatives Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff (Schiff now chairs the committee). The subpoena extended to at least a dozen people connected to them, including aides, family members, and one minor, in an attempt to identify sources related to news reports on Trump’s contacts with Russia. All told, prosecutors found zero evidence in this seized data, but their efforts have prompted the Justice Department’s inspector general to launch an inquiry into the agency’s handling of leak investigations during the Trump administration.

[…]

Source: Apple and Microsoft Say They Had No Idea Trump-Era DOJ Requested Data on Political Rivals

European Commission Betrays Internet Users By Cravenly Introducing Huge Loophole For Copyright Companies In Upload Filter Guidance

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As a recent Techdirt article noted, the European Commission was obliged to issue “guidance” on how to implement the infamous Article 17 upload filters required by the EU’s Copyright Directive. It delayed doing so, evidently hoping that the adviser to the EU’s top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), would release his opinion on Poland’s attempt to get Article 17 struck down before the European Commission revealed its one-sided advice. That little gambit failed when the Advocate General announced that he would publish his opinion after the deadline for the release of the guidance. The European Commission has finally provided its advisory document on Article 17 and, as expected, it contains a real stinker of an idea. The best analysis of what the Commission has done, and why it is so disgraceful comes from Julia Reda and Paul Keller on the Kluwer Copyright Blog. Although Article 17 effectively made upload filters mandatory, it also included some (weak) protections for users, to allow people to upload copyright material for legal uses such as memes, parody, criticism etc. without being blocked. The copyright industry naturally hates any protections for users, and has persuaded the European Commission to eviscerate them:

According to the final guidance, rightholders can easily circumvent the principle that automatic blocking should be limited to manifestly infringing uses by “earmarking” content the “unauthorised online availability of which could cause significant economic harm to them” when requesting the blocking of those works. Uploads that include protected content thus “earmarked” do not benefit from the ex-ante protections for likely legitimate uses. The guidance does not establish any qualitative or quantitative requirements for rightholders to earmark their content. The mechanism is not limited to specific types of works, categories of rightholders, release windows, or any other objective criteria that could limit the application of this loophole.

The requirements that copyright companies must meet are so weak that it is probably inevitable that they will claim most uploads “could cause significant economic harm”, and should therefore be earmarked. Here’s what happens then: before it can be posted online, every earmarked upload requires a “rapid” human review of whether it is infringing or not. Leaving aside the fact that it is very hard for legal judgements to be both “rapid” and correct, there’s also the problem that copyright companies will earmark millions of uploads (just look at DMCA notices), making it infeasible to carry out proper review. But the European Commission also says that if online platforms fail to carry out a human review of everything that is earmarked, and allow some unchecked items to be posted, they will lose their liability protection:

this means that service providers face the risk of losing the liability protections afforded to them by art. 17(4) unless they apply ex-ante human review to all uploads earmarked by rightholders as merely having the potential to “cause significant economic harm”. This imposes a heavy burden on platform operators. Under these conditions rational service providers will have to revert to automatically blocking all uploads containing earmarked content at upload. The scenario described in the guidance is therefore identical to an implementation without safeguards: Platforms have no other choice but to block every upload that contains parts of a work that rightholders have told them is highly valuable.

Thus the already unsatisfactory user rights contained in Article 17 are rendered null and void because of the impossibility of following the European Commission’s new guidance. That’s evidently the result of recent lobbying from the copyright companies, since none of this was present in previous drafts of the guidance. Not content with making obligatory the upload filters that they swore would not be required, copyright maximalists now want to take away what few protections remain for users, thus ensuring that practically all legal uses of copyright material — including memes — are likely to be automatically blocked.

The Kluwer Copyright blog post points out that this approach was not at all necessary. As Techdirt reported a couple of weeks ago, Germany has managed to come up with an implementation of Article 17 that preserves most user rights, even if it is by no means perfect. The European Commission, by contrast, has cravenly given what the copyright industry has demanded, and effectively stripped out those rights. But this cowardly move may backfire. Reda and Keller explain:

the Commission does not provide any justification or rationale why users’ fundamental rights do not apply in situations where rightholders claim that there is the potential for them to suffer significant economic harm. It’s hard to imagine that the CJEU will consider that the version of the guidance published today provides meaningful protection for users’ rights when it has to determine the compliance of the directive with fundamental rights [in the case brought by Poland]. The Commission appears to be acutely aware of this as well and so it has wisely included the following disclaimer in the introductory section of the guidance (emphasis ours):

“The judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the case C-401/192 will have implications for the implementation by the Member States of Article 17 and for the guidance. The guidance may need to be reviewed following that judgment“.

In the end this may turn out to be the most meaningful sentence in the entire guidance.

It would be a fitting punishment for betraying the 450 million citizens the European Commission is supposed to serve, but rarely does, if this final overreach causes upload filters to be thrown out completely.

Source: European Commission Betrays Internet Users By Cravenly Introducing Huge Loophole For Copyright Companies In Upload Filter Guidance | Techdirt

Google to adapt its ad technology after France hands it a $267 million fine

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Google has agreed to pay a €220 million ($267 million) fine and change its ad practices after France’s competition authority found it had abused its dominant online ad position. Following a 2019 complaint by News Corp. and French newspaper Le Figaro, France ruled that Google was favoring its own advertising services to the detriment of rivals.

[…]

In a blog post, Google explained how it planned to change its ad rules by offering publishers “increased flexibility” by improving interoperability between its ad manager and third-party ad servers. “Also, we are reaffirming that we will not limit Ad Manager publishers from negotiating specific terms or pricing directly with other sell-side platforms.”

Google’s ad division has faced scrutiny from French regulators in the past. In 2019, the watchdog fined Google €150 million ($167 million) for opaque and unpredictable advertising rules after it suspended the Google Ads account of a French company without notice. Google has also clashed with regulators and publishers in the nation over the use of snippets of content in its news section.

Source: Google to adapt its ad technology after France hands it a $267 million fine | Engadget

Apple’s tightly controlled App Store is teeming with scams

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Apple chief executive Tim Cook has long argued it needs to control app distribution on iPhones, otherwise the App Store would turn into “a flea market.”

But among the 1.8 million apps on the App Store, scams are hiding in plain sight. Customers for several VPN apps, which allegedly protect users’ data, complained in Apple App Store reviews that the apps told users their devices have been infected by a virus to dupe them into downloading and paying for software they don’t need. A QR code reader app that remains on the store tricks customers into paying $4.99 a week for a service that is now included in the camera app of the iPhone. Some apps fraudulently present themselves as being from major brands such as Amazon and Samsung.

Of the highest 1,000 grossing apps on the App Store, nearly two percent are scams, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. And those apps have bilked consumers out of an estimated $48 million during the time they’ve been on the App Store, according to market research firm Appfigures. The scale of the problem has never before been reported. What’s more, Apple profits from these apps because it takes a cut of up to a 30 percent of all revenue generated through the App Store. Even more common, according to The Post’s analysis, are “fleeceware” apps that use inauthentic customer reviews to move up in the App Store rankings and give apps a sense of legitimacy to convince customers to pay higher prices for a service usually offered elsewhere with higher legitimate customer reviews.

Two-thirds of the 18 apps The Post flagged to Apple were removed from the App Store.

[…]

Apple has long maintained that its exclusive control of the App Store is essential to protecting customers, and it only lets the best apps on its system. But Apple’s monopoly over how consumers access apps on iPhones can actually create an environment that gives customers a false sense of safety, according to experts. Because Apple doesn’t face any major competition and so many consumers are locked into using the App Store on iPhones, there’s little incentive for Apple to spend money on improving it, experts say.

[…]

Apple unwittingly may be aiding the most sophisticated scammers by eliminating so many of the less competent ones during its app review process, said Miles, who co-authored a paper called “The Economics of Scams.”

[…]

Apple has argued that it is the only company with the resources and know-how to police the App Store. In the trial that Epic Games, the maker of the popular video game “Fortnite,” brought against Apple last month for alleged abuse of its monopoly power, Apple’s central defense was that competition would loosen protections against unwanted apps that pose security risks to customers. The federal judge in the case said she may issue a verdict by August.

The prevalence of scams on Apple’s App Store played a key role at trial. Apple’s lawyers were so focused on the company’s role in making the App Store safe that Epic’s attorneys accused them of trying to scare the court into a ruling in favor of Apple. In other internal emails unearthed during trial that date as far back as 2013, Apple’s Phil Schiller, who runs the App Store, expressed dismay when fraudulent apps made it past App Store review.

After a rip-off version of the Temple Run video game became the top-rated app, according to Schiller’s email exchange, he sent an irate message to two other Apple executives responsible for the store. “Remember our talking about finding bad apps with low ratings? Remember our talk about becoming the ‘Nordstroms’ of stores in quality of service? How does an obvious rip off of the super popular Temple Run, with no screenshots, garbage marketing text, and almost all 1-star ratings become the #1 free app on the store?” Schiller asked his team. “Is no one reviewing these apps? Is no one minding the store?” Apple declined to make Schiller available to comment. At trial, Schiller defended the safety of the app store on the stand. The app review process is “the best way we could come up with … to make it safe and fair.”

Eric Friedman, head of Apple’s Fraud Engineering Algorithms and Risk unit, or FEAR, said that Apple’s screening process is “more like the pretty lady who greets you with a lei at the Hawaiian airport than the drug sniffing dog,” according to a 2016 internal email uncovered during the Epic Games trial. Apple employs a 500-person App Review team, which sifts through submissions from developers. “App Review is bringing a plastic butter knife to a gun fight,” Friedman wrote in another email.

[…]

Though the App Store ratings section is filled with customer complaints referring to apps as scams, there is no way for Apple customers to report this to Apple, other than reaching out to a regular Apple customer service representative. Apple used to have a button, just under the ratings and reviews section in the App Store, that said “report a problem,” which allowed users to report inappropriate apps. Based on discussions among Apple customers on Apple’s own website, the feature was removed some time around 2016.

[…]

 

Source: Apple’s tightly controlled App Store is teeming with scams – Anchorage Daily News

Apple settles with student after authorized repair workers leaked her naked pics to her Facebook page. Apple blocks Right to repair for danger by unauthorised parties. Hmm.

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Apple has paid a multimillion-dollar settlement to an unnamed Oregon college student after one of its outsourced repair facilities posted explicit pictures and videos of her to her Facebook page.

According to legal documents obtained by The Telegraph, the incident occurred in 2016 at a Pegatron-owned repair centre in Sacramento, California. The student had mailed in her device to have an unspecified fault fixed.

While it was at the facility, two technicians published a series of photographs showing the complainant unclothed to her Facebook account, as well as a “sex video.” The complaint said the post was made in a way that impersonated the victim, and was only removed after friends informed her of its existence.

The two men responsible were fired after an investigation. It is not known if the culprits faced criminal charges.

Much of the details of the case, as well as the exact size of the settlement, were sealed. Lawyers for the plaintiff sought a $5m payout. The settlement included non-disclosure provisions that prevented the student from revealing details about the case, or the exact size of the compensation.

Counsel for the victim threatened to sue for infliction of emotional distress, as well as invasion of privacy. The filings show they warned Apple that any lawsuit would result in inevitable negative publicity for the company.

Pegatron settled with the victim separately, per the filings.

In its fight against the right to repair, Apple has argued that allowing independent third-party businesses to service its computers and smartphones would present an unacceptable risk to user privacy and security.

This incident, which occurred at the facilities of an authorised contractor, has undercut that argument somewhat.

It follows a similar incident in November 2019, where a Genius Bar employee texted himself an explicit image taken from an iPhone he was repairing. After the victim complained, the employee was fired.

[…]

Source: Apple settles with student after authorized repair workers leaked her naked pics to her Facebook page • The Register

Bing Censors Image Search for ‘Tank Man’ Even in US

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Bing, the search engine owned by Microsoft, is not displaying image results for a search for “Tank man,” even when searching from the United States. The apparent censorship comes on the anniversary of China’s violent crackdown on protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

“There are no results for tank man,” the Bing website reads after searching for the term. “Tank man” relates to the infamous image of a single protester standing in front of a line of Chinese tanks during the crackdown.

China censors and blocks distribution of discussion of tank man and Tiananmen Square more generally. This year, anniversary events in Hong Kong have dwindled in size after authorities banned a vigil.

tankman.png

Image: A screenshot of the search results.

Bing displays ordinary, non-image search results for tank man when searching from a U.S. IP address; the issue only impacts the images and videos tabs. Google, for its part, displays both when connecting from the same IP address.

[…]

Source: Bing Censors Image Search for ‘Tank Man’ Even in US

Google, Facebook, Chaos Computer Club join forces to oppose German state spyware

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Plans by the German government to allow the police to deploy malware on any target’s devices, and force the tech world to help them, has run into some opposition, funnily enough.

In an open letter this month, the Chaos Computer Club – along with Google, Facebook, and others – said they are against proposals to dramatically expand the use of so-called state trojans, aka government-made spyware, in Germany. Under planned legislation, even people not suspected of committing a crime can be infected, and service providers will be forced to help. Plus all German spy agencies will be allowed to infiltrate people’s electronics and communications.

The proposals bypass the whole issue of backdooring or weakening encryption that American politicians seem fixated on. Once you have root access on a person’s computer or handheld, the the device can be an open book, encryption or not.

“The proposals are so absurd that all of the experts invited to the committee hearing in the Bundestag sharply criticized the ideas,” the CCC said.

“Even Facebook and Google – so far not positively recognized as pioneers of privacy – speak out vehemently against the project. Protect security and trust online – against an unlimited expansion of surveillance and for the protection of encryption.”

Source: Google, Facebook, Chaos Computer Club join forces to oppose German state spyware • The Register

Google reportedly made it harder to find Android privacy settings

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Google’s approach to Android privacy is coming under fire following revelations from Arizona’s antitrust lawsuit over phone tracking. As Insider reports, freshly unredacted documents in the case suggest Google made Android privacy settings harder to find. When Google tested OS releases that surfaced privacy features, the company reportedly saw greater use of those features as a “problem” and aimed to put them deeper into the menu system.

The tech giant also “successfully pressured” phone brands like LG to bury location settings as they were popular, according to Arizona’s attorneys. Google personnel further acknowledged that it was difficult to stop the company from determining your home and work locations, and complained that there was “no way” to give third-party apps your location without also handing them to Google.

[…]

Source: Google reportedly made it harder to find Android privacy settings | Engadget

WhatsApp Won’t Limit Functionality if You Refuse Privacy Policy – for now. But it will pester you about it.

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WhatsApp initially threatened to revoke core functions for users that refused to accept its controversial new privacy policy, only to walk back the severity of those consequences earlier this month amid international backlash, and now, it’s doing away with them altogether (for the time being, at least).

In a reversal, the company clarified on Friday that it won’t restrict any functionality even if you haven’t accepted the app’s updated privacy policy yet, TNW reports.

“Given recent discussions with various authorities and privacy experts, we want to make clear that we will not limit the functionality of how WhatsApp works for those who have not yet accepted the update,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said in a statement to the Verge. They added that this is the plan moving forward indefinitely.

In an update to the company’s FAQ page, WhatsApp clarifies that no users will have their accounts deleted or lose functionality if they don’t accept the new policies. That being said, WhatsApp will still send these users reminders to update “from time to time,” WhatsApp told the Verge. On its support page, WhatsApp claims that the majority of users who have seen the update have accepted.

Source: WhatsApp Won’t Limit Functionality if You Refuse Privacy Policy