Episode: 1145
Title: HPR1145: TGTM Newscast for 12/20/2012
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1145/hpr1145.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 19:45:14

---

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You're listening to 12 Geeks Me News, number 85 recorded for Thursday, December 20, 2012.
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This is Pokey, reading for TechGeek to me news.
And now for the tech news roundup from techdirt.com by Mike Maznik, dated December 14, 2012.
ITU boss in denial claims success, misrepresents final treaty as US, UK, Canada, and many more
refused to sign.
From the, this is not consensus department.
The ITU's world conference on international telecommunications, WCIT, is now over, and
it played out almost exactly as many had predicted.
After going back on explicit promises that the treaty would A, not be about the internet
and B, would only be completed by consensus rather than by majority vote, the US lived
up to its promise not to support such a treaty by officially stating that it would not sign.
A number of other countries quickly followed suit including the UK, Canada, Denmark, Australia,
Norway, Costa Rica, Serbia, Greece, Finland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Sweden, New Zealand,
Czech Republic, Slovenia, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Qatar.
Though some apparently said that they could not sign because they first had to consult
with their own governments.
So it's possible that some of these may change their mind, but many viewed such statements
as a more diplomatic way of refusing to sign.
The US on the other hand was explicit in refusing to sign, quote, it's with a heavy heart
and a sense of missed opportunities that the US must communicate that it's not able
to sign the agreement in the current form.
End quote said US ambassador to WCIT Terry Kramer, quote, the internet has given the world
unimaginable economic and social benefit during these past 24 years, all without UN regulation.
We candidly cannot support an ITU treaty that is inconsistent with the multi-stakeholder
model of internet governance.
End quote Kramer had it.
The US delegation also laid out the specific reasons why it refused to sign, and they're
the same issues we've been talking about all along.
One, the attempts to expand the definition of the types of entities covered by the treaty
from the big telcos to just about everyone running network.
Two, the explicit inclusion of internet and internet governance in the treaty.
Three, the claim of a mandate over cybersecurity and four, the official regulation of Spain.
The last one hasn't received as much attention, but the US found the rules put forth for dealing
with Spain going way too far and putting in place rules that would violate the First Amendment.
Of course, with so many countries bailing out, the ITU's promise that this would all be
about consensus look positively laughable in retrospect.
But perhaps even more laughable is the response from the ITU boss, Hamadun Torre, whose claims
read like those of a bureaucrat in complete denial.
First, he claimed complete surprise that the US and other countries walked away.
Quote, I couldn't imagine they wouldn't sign it.
I especially was surprised by the reasons that were put in place.
I had made it clear from the opening that internet and content were not a part of the discussion.
I invited ICANN to show that we want to build bridges.
The telcom society and internet society need to work together.
I made an appeal to please help us build bridges.
The fighting will not help the consumer that we are trying to reach here.
End quote.
He kept going on and on insisting that the internet and internet governance were not part of the agreement,
even though they are.
Of course, he then effectively admits that part of the goal is to be the key player in the internet.
Quote, I have been saying in the run up to this conference that this conference is not about governing the internet.
I repeat that the conference did not include provisions on the internet in the treaty text.
Annex to the treaty is a non-binding resolution which aims at fostering the development and growth of the internet.
A task that ITU has contributed significantly to since the beginning of the internet era,
and a task that is central to the ITU's mandate to connect the world,
a world that today still has two-thirds of its population without internet access.
End quote.
So it's not about the internet,
but the internet is central to the ITU's mandate.
Of course, that claim is also a lie.
The ITU's mandate does not cover the internet, but telecom infrastructure.
One of the more nefarious moves by Torrey and the ITU and this whole process
was to continually blur the lines between telecom, infrastructure, and the internet, as if they were the same.
To read the rest of this story for yourself, please visit techdirt.com or see the link in the show notes.
Our next story, also from Techdirt by Tim Cushing, dated December 13, 2012.
Sony's new German e-book store features thousands of DRM-free books.
From the, in other news, Sony sells e-readers department.
DRM is becoming less and less prevalent these days,
as more companies are realizing that the flashback from crippling the purchases of paying customers
far outweighs any perceived prevention of infringement.
It is not a wholesale conversion,
but the new DRM-free converts are appearing more frequently,
including some surprising holdouts.
The digital reader brings us the news that Sony of all companies is opening its own e-book store in Germany,
bringing with it a large selection of DRM-free books.
Quote, the press release mentions that not all of the e-pub books sold by Sony
come with the owner's Adobe D.E. DRM.
Some of the books, numbering in the thousands, use digital watermarks instead.
Apparently, several German publishers have decided to go with this low-hassel security,
including Bastille, Lubé, Verlag, which publishes novels by Ken Follett, Andreas, Eschbach, and Dan Brown.
It is not clear that any of these authors' novels are DRM-free.
End quote.
Rather than inject malignant coding that often fails to distinguish between paying customers and file sharers,
these German publishers are opting for digital watermarking,
which generally works as well as nastier forms of DRM,
but without the negative side effects.
Book's team is handling the watermarking for Sony,
having proved its worth to publishers by providing this service to one of the biggest e-book store fronts of all time.
Pottermore.
So what convinced Sony to go DRM-free on thousands of titles?
Perhaps it was observing Book's stream success in detecting piracy without having to resort to draconian measures.
Quote, according to Hube Vanderpoll,
the founder of Book's team's parent company Eye Contact,
the official release of the Harry Potter e-books saw a decrease in piracy of the series.
Once the titles were available legally and were easy to use,
pirates saw little reason to post copies of the e-books online.
End quote.
As Hofolder points out,
you can't make the same claim about DRM-loaded e-books.
In nearly every case, the DRM is discarded easily by enterprising shareholders,
or just as often by consumers who strip their purchases of this handicap
in order to move them to other devices,
or simply to make sure the publisher,
bookstore, or DRM itself,
doesn't suddenly decide to register their purchases unavailable or useless.
Some customers may download the pirated version,
even if they've purchased it,
just to have an easily portable version, unhampered by DRM.
Why punish your paying customers in order to temporarily annoy,
slash, entertain, and fringes?
The other key to book stream and Pottermore's success
is the simplest one to solve.
Make the books available for sale at reasonable prices
and with as few limitations as possible.
Do this, and your piracy problem will very possibly solve itself.
Our next story from torrentfreak.com.
By Ernesto, dated December 12th, 2012.
Six strikes scheme may lead to lawsuits against pirates.
Early next year, the controversial Six Strikes anti-piracy system
will kick off in the US.
While the initiative itself has a focus on education
instead of punishing bit torrent pirates,
ISPs are obliged to hand over IP addresses of repeat infringers
to the MPAA and the RIAA.
Commenting on this largely overlooked aspect,
CCI director Jill Lesser confirmed
to torrentfreak that lawsuits may indeed
be initiated based on information collected under the program.
Last year, the MPAA and RIAA teamed up
with five major internet providers in the United States
to launch the Center for Copyright Information, CCI.
The parties agreed to operate a system,
which will see subscribers warned
when their connections are observed,
engaging in copyright infringement.
After several warnings, the ISPs will take a variety
of mitigation measures against account holders.
This continues up to six strikes.
And after that, quote, nothing will happen
and quote, according to the parties involved.
While this is true in terms of mitigation measures
applied by internet providers,
the tracking of these subscribers doesn't stop.
Even worse, in the memorandum of understanding
signed by the participating parties we read the following, quote,
the participating ISP will, however,
continue to track and report the number of ISP notices
the participating ISP receives for that subscriber's account.
So that information is available to a content owner representative
if it elects to initiate a copyright infringement action
against that subscriber, end quote.
While copyright infringement action could mean a lot of things,
we previously pointed out that this also means lawsuits.
As a part of the system, ISPs have
to share the monthly reports with copyright holders,
which would allow these groups to uncover identities
of those alleged Victorian pirates.
This means that IP addresses will be shared
without being redacted.
The memorandum of understanding puts it as follows, quote,
the content owner representatives, explicitly MPAA
and RIAA, or any other member of the participating content
owners group may use such reports or data
as the basis for seeking a subscriber's identity
through a subpoena or order or other lawful process.
For the avoidance of doubt, the parties
agree that the content owner representatives
may share such reports with other members
of the participating content owners group, end quote.
This quote unquote side effect of the Six Strikes Plan
has been largely ignored.
So to get clarification on the purpose
of the above paragraphs,
Torrent Freak contacted CCI Executive Director Jill Lesser
this week.
Lesser confirmed over the phone that the data
shared by ISPs would allow copyright holders
to request the personal details of alleged infringers
through subpoenas, but that this type of legal action
is not part of the copyright alerts program.
Lesser added, the copyright holders
can and are already tracking bit Torrent users right now,
suggesting that it's nothing new.
While it's true that the MPAA and RIAA
can use monitoring companies to track alleged infringers,
from a legal perspective, they have a much stronger case
when it's done as part of the copyright alert system.
For example, getting the data from ISPs
allows copyright holders to say with certainty
that certain accounts were used for multiple infringements
as ISPs will connect dynamic IP addresses
to the correct account holders.
Also, those who receive warnings
under the copyright alert system
will have to acknowledge that they understand the risks.
This means that the rights holders could show the court
that subscribers were warned multiple times,
but chose not to take action.
Lesser told Torrent Freak that she doesn't believe
that the MPAA and RIAA are interested
in going after persistent pirates.
However, she admitted that she doesn't know why
the language was included in the agreement
as she wasn't yet around when the agreement was drafted.
While we can't say with certainty that the information
shared by the ISPs will lead to lawsuits
from the RIAA or MPAA,
it wouldn't be a surprise if this happens.
Why else would they have negotiated this option to begin?
We can think of no other reason why these groups
would want to know the identities of repeat infringers.
From the website perspective.mvderona.com
by James Hamilton, dated December 11th, 2012.
I'll add here that this story includes a disclaimer
by Mr. Hamilton that the opinions expressed here
are his own and do not necessarily represent those
of his current or past employers.
Micro-server market heats up
Intel Adam S-1200, codenamed Centerton announcement.
Since 2008, I've been excited by working on
and writing about micro-servers.
In these early days,
some of the workloads I worked with were IO-bound
and didn't really need or use high single thread performance,
replacing the server class processors
that supported these applications
with high volume low cost client system CPUs,
yielded both better price performance
and better power performance.
Fortunately, at that time,
there were good client processors available with ECC enabled
and most embedded system processors also supported ECC.
I wrote up some of the advantages
of these early micro-server deployments
and showed performance results
from a production deployment
in an internet scale mail processing application
in the story,
cooperative, expandable,
micro-slice servers,
low cost, low power servers
for internet scale services.
Intel recognizes the value of low power low cost processors
for less CPU demanding applications
and announced this morning
the newest members of the Adam family,
the S-1200 series.
These new processors support two cores and four threads
and are available in variance of up to two gigahertz
while staying under 8.5 watts.
The lowest power members of the family
come in at just over six watts.
Intel has demonstrated the S-1200 reference board
running spec web at 7.9 watts,
including memory, SATA, networking,
BMC and other onboard components.
Unlike past Adam processors,
the S-1200 series supports full ECC memory
and all members of the family
support hardware virtualization,
64 bit addressing and up to eight gig of memory.
These are real server parts.
For a more complete list
of the Centerton S-1200 microservice features
and more of James Hamilton's opinions on it,
please visit the story on perspectives.mvderona.com,
a link will be in the show notes.
Our last story from torrentfreak.com by Ernesto,
dated December 12th, 2012.
Verizon determines to expose bit torrent copyright trolls.
It's now apparent that Verizon is fed up
with the avalanche of masked bit torrent lawsuits
and is determined to put an end to copyright trolls
extortion-like practices.
The internet provider is asking a Texas court
to grant discovery so it can expose
how these companies operate.
According to Verizon, copyright trolling practices
don't belong in court,
and the ISP equates the companies involved with,
quote,
school yard bullies who push and shove
until firm opposition is met when they shrink away.
End quote.
Two weeks ago, a group of adult movie companies sued Verizon
for failing to hand over the personal details
of alleged bit torrent pirates.
The internet provider had ignored court orders
and Malibu media, Patrick Collins and third degree films
asked the court to hold Verizon in contempt
and compel the company to respond to the subpoenas.
This week, Verizon responded to the claims
with a frontal attack.
Verizon is asking a Texas federal court
to grant discovery so the ISP can expose
how the quote unquote copyright trolls
in question operate.
Verizon's motion is short,
but leaves very little to the imagination.
In its filing, Verizon states that the copyright holders,
quote, pursue a scheme which, if not illegal,
is at a minimum of a type to which the courts
should not lend their powers and support.
End quote.
The provider has therefore decided to turn the tables.
Instead of exposing the identities of their customers,
they want to be granted discovery themselves
so that they can request sensitive information
on the companies involved.
An unusual request at this stage of a case,
but needed because many of Verizon's customers
are unable to defend themselves.
Quote, the circumstances are also unusual
because the persons subject to potential abuse
by the plaintiffs' approach are unlikely to be able
for financial reasons, personal reasons,
or plaintiffs' tactical approach to those
who do actively oppose them to effectively oppose
the plaintiffs' oppressive and unfair methods,
end quote, Verizon writes.
By exposing the tactics of these copyright holders,
Verizon hopes the court can make an informed decision
as to whether the alleged bit torrent users
should have their identities revealed.
This expose includes uncovering the tangled web
of individuals behind these lawsuits
and the tactics copyright holders use
to get defendants to hand over their money.
Quote, Verizon intends, among other things,
to seek discovery from the senior level managers
of the plaintiffs and from the persons
affiliated with the plaintiffs whose declarations
have been used to support the plaintiffs' requests
for discovery, end quote, Verizon writes.
Quote, Verizon further intends to seek discovery
into the business model of plaintiffs
and whether the plaintiffs are good faith publishers
of the material they purportedly seek to protect
as opposed to whether the plaintiffs' business model
is primarily profit from their aggressive
and abusive copyright enforcement efforts,
end quote, they added.
The ISP concludes its request
by equating the tactics of the copyright holders
to school yard bullies who run away scared
if their targets fight back,
a seemingly fitting description
as none of their cases have ever made it
through a full trial.
Quote, plaintiffs tactics appeared to be much like those
of school yard bullies who push and shove
until firm opposition is met when they shrink away.
Plaintiffs and those like them have apparently avoided
having to deal with these issues
by not pursuing those who would raise these issues
and quote, Verizon concludes.
From the filings, it becomes clear
that Verizon is determined to end the trolling tactics
of the adult studios
and they're not scared to invest money into the fight.
Torrent Freak talked to attorney Graham Stifert,
who has a lot of experience
with these mass bit torrent lawsuits
and he believes that this case could have a wide impact.
Quote, if discovery is granted,
these companies will be subject to the same scrutiny
as a plaintiff in a trial
and those depositions and answers could be used
in cases nationwide and quote, Stifert told us.
This means that if Verizon gets their way
and they uncover an updirt,
some of the most active copyright trolls
may be put out of business.
In any case, we can expect fireworks.
Other interesting headlines in the news this week
to read these stories, please follow the links
in the show notes.
Swedish Pirate Party defends role as Pirate Bay ISP.
Pirate Bay founder released from solitary confinement.
Production and editorial selection by DeepGeek,
views of the story authors reflect their own opinions
and not necessarily those of TGTM news or its readers.
News from tecturt.com of anti-times.org,
perspectives.mvderona.com,
in these times.com and allgov.com
are used under arranged permission.
News from torrentfreak.com and dff.org
are used under permission of the creative comments
by attribution license.
News from democracynow.org is used under permission
of the creative comments by attribution,
non-commercial, no derivatives license.
News sources retain their respective copyrights.
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