On Monday, famed singer-songwriter Neil Young had his music removed from Spotify as a protest against the platform's distribution of Joe Rogan, who's been widely criticized for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines on his Spotify-exclusive podcast. Now, Neil's fans are taking their frustrations out on Spotify. Ars Technica reports: Though the loss of Young's music likely represents a small percentage of overall streams on Spotify, Young pointed out that "Spotify represents 60% of the streaming of my music to listeners around the world." For Young and his fans, the hit was palpable, and his fans are apparently taking their frustrations out on Spotify. The hashtag #SpotifyDeleted trended on Twitter yesterday, and fans seem to have inundated customer support with so many messages that Spotify has had to take it offline at times. "We're currently getting a lot of contacts so may be slow to respond," a large red banner has read on the support page. Options to message the company, which have previously included live chat with a customer support agent or a chat bot, are now limited to an email address link.

"When I left Spotify, I felt better," Young wrote on his website today. "I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship. Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information. I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the front line health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others." The artist, who has long criticized audio quality on streaming services, and on Spotify in particular, closed with one last dig. "As an unexpected bonus, I sound better everywhere else," he wrote.

Qubit Finance took to Twitter last night to beg hackers to return more than $80 million in stolen cryptocurrency this week. ZDNet reports: On Thursday, the DeFi platform said their protocol was exploited by a hacker who eventually stole 206,809 binance coins from Qubit's QBridge protocol, worth more than $80 million according to PeckShield. An hour after the first message, the company explained that they were tracking the exploiter and monitoring the stolen cryptocurrency. They noted that they contacted the hacker and offered them the maximum bug bounty in exchange for a return of the funds, something a number of other hacked DeFi platforms have tried to middling success. They shared multiple messages on Twitter that they purportedly sent to the hacker offering a bug bounty of $250,000 and begging for a return of the stolen funds.

"We propose you negotiate directly with us before taking any further action. The exploit and loss of funds have a profound effect on thousands of real people. If the maximum bounty offer is not what you are looking for, we are open to have a conversation. Let's figure out a situation," the Qubit Finance Team wrote. The company later explained in a blog post that their Qubit protocol "was subject to an exploit to our QBridge deposit function." [...] Blockchain security company CertiK released a detailed explanation of how the attack occurred and has been tracking the stolen funds as the hackers move them to different accounts. "For the non-technical readers, essentially what the attacker did is take advantage of a logical error in Qubit Finance's code that allowed them to input malicious data and withdraw tokens on Binance Smart Chain when none were deposited on Ethereum," CertiK explained.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Los Angeles Times: Waymo, the driverless car company operating an autonomous taxi fleet in San Francisco, is suing the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The immediate issue: whether the company, owned by Google parent Alphabet, can hide from the public safety-related information by designating it as a trade secret. The topics Waymo wants to keep hidden include how it plans to handle driverless car emergencies, what it would do if a robot taxi started driving itself where it wasn't supposed to go, and what constraints there are on the car's ability to traverse San Francisco's tunnels, tight curves and steep hills. Waymo also wants to keep secret descriptions of crashes involving its driverless cars.

That's among the information the DMV requires to determine whether to issue permits to deploy robot vehicles on public roads. The permit was issued last year. Waymo is focusing on San Francisco, where, for the time being, its robotaxis operate under the supervision of trained human drivers. The wider issue: how to handle the explosion in trade secret claims in an age of artificial intelligence, robot technology, the internet of things and pervasive data collection. The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court on Jan. 21, contends that Waymo would lose out against other driverless car companies if full permit information were shared with the public. "Every autonomous vehicle company has an obligation to demonstrate the safety of its technology, which is why we've transparently and consistently shared data on our safety readiness with the public," Waymo spokesperson Nicholas Smith said via email when asked about the suit. "We will continue to work with the CA DMV to determine what is appropriate for us to share publicly and hope to find a resolution soon."

Where the DMV stands on the issue remains unclear. The agency has yet to file a response to the suit and told The Times it won't discuss ongoing legal matters.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Apple is stifling competition through its mobile app store, attorneys general for 34 U.S. states and the District of Columbia said on Thursday, as they appealed against a ruling that let the iPhone maker continue some restrictive practices. While dozens of state attorneys general have filed recent antitrust lawsuits against other big tech companies, including Facebook owner Meta Platforms and Alphabet's Google, none had so far taken aim at Apple. Thursday's remarks, led by the state of Utah and joined by Colorado, Indiana, Texas and others, came in a lawsuit in an appeals court against app store fees and payment tools between "Fortnite" video game maker Epic Games and Apple. "Apple's conduct has harmed and is harming mobile app-developers and millions of citizens," the states said. "Meanwhile, Apple continues to monopolize app distribution and in-app payment solutions for iPhones, stifle competition, and amass supracompetitive profits within the almost trillion-dollar-a-year smartphone industry." [...] The states said in their filing that the lower court erred by failing to adequately balance the pros and cons of Apple's rules and also by deciding that a key antitrust law did not apply to non-negotiable contracts Apple makes developers sign. "Paradoxically, firms with enough market power to unilaterally impose contracts would be protected from antitrust scrutiny -- precisely the firms whose activities give the most cause for antitrust concern," they said.

Apple appears to be testing a feature that will let you use Face ID to unlock the phone even when wearing a mask. From a report: The first developer beta for iOS 15.4 has a screen that asks if you want to be able to use Face ID while wearing a mask, at the cost of reduced security, according to photos from Brandon Butch on Twitter and MacRumors. According to pictures of the screen, Apple says that "iPhone can recognize the unique features around the eye area to authenticate" but warns that Face ID is going to be more accurate if you have it set to not work with a mask.

One of the two administrators of the DeepDotWeb portal was sentenced this week to 97 months in prison for receiving money from illegal dark web marketplaces to promote their sites. From a report: Tal Prihar, 37, was detained in May 2019 in France and subsequently extradited to the US. He was charged with running DeepDotWeb, a website on the public internet that advertised and reviewed dark web marketplaces that sold illegal content such as drugs, firearms, and forged documents. US authorities said that Prihar, together with his partner, ran a kickback scheme where they provided links to the marketplaces in exchange for a commission.

Twitter revealed on Tuesday that governments' requests for content to be removed from the platform hit a record high in the first six months of 2021. The Hill reports: Governments made 43,387 legal demands for content to be pulled down from 196,878 accounts between January and the end of June. Twitter's latest transparency report showed that 95 percent of the requests came from Japan, Russia, Turkey, India and South Korea. The platform "withheld" access to content or required accounts to take down posts in response to 54 percent of the demands. Twitter's transparency report also showed that government requests to preserve account information fell four percent compared to the previous reporting period, the last six months of 2020. The United States accounted for 57 percent of preservation requests.

This new political breed accepts paychecks in Bitcoin. The mayors also want to use buzzy new tech like NFTs to raise money for public projects. From a report: The ballooning popularity of Bitcoin and other digital currencies has given rise to a strange new political breed: the crypto mayor. Eric Adams, New York's new mayor, accepted his first paycheck in Bitcoin and another cryptocurrency, Ether. Francis Suarez, Miami's mayor, headlines crypto conferences. Now even mayors of smaller towns are trying to incorporate crypto into municipal government, courting start-ups and experimenting with buzzy new technologies like nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, to raise money for public projects. Their growing ranks reflect the increasing mainstream acceptance of digital currencies, which are highly volatile and have fallen in value in recent days. The mayors' embrace of crypto is also a recognition that its underlying blockchain technology -- essentially a distributed ledger system -- may create new revenue streams for cities and reshape some basic functions of local government.

"Mayors rationally want to attract high-income citizens who pay their taxes and impose few costs on the municipality," said Joseph Grundfest, a business professor at Stanford. "Crypto geeks fit this bill perfectly." But as with many ambitious crypto projects, it's unclear whether these local initiatives will ultimately amount to much. So far, most are either largely symbolic or largely theoretical. And the mayors' aims are partly political: Crypto boosterism has a useful bipartisan appeal, garnering popularity among both antigovernment conservatives and socially liberal tech moguls. "You can do these things because you want to be associated with dudes with AR-15s, or you want to be associated with Meta," said Finn Brunton, a technology studies professor at the University of California, Davis, who wrote a 2019 book about the history of crypto. "A lot of it is hype and hot air."

Identity verification company ID.me uses a type of powerful facial recognition that searches for individuals within mass databases of photos, CEO Blake Hall explained in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday. From a report: The post follows a news release from the company last week stating directly that: "Our 1:1 face match is comparable to taking a selfie to unlock a smartphone. ID.me does not use 1:many facial recognition, which is more complex and problematic." Hall's post on Wednesday confirms that ID.me does indeed use 1:many technology. Privacy advocates say that both versions of facial recognition pose a threat to consumers. In addition to numerous studies demonstrating the technology is less effective on non-White skin tones, amassing biometric data can prove a huge security risk.

"Governments and companies are amassing these databases of your personal biometric information, which unlike databases, of credit cards, cannot be replaced," explained Caitlin Seeley-George, campaign director at nonprofit Fight for the Future. "And these are databases that are highly targeted by hackers and information that can absolutely be used in ways that are harmful to people." In the Wednesday LinkedIn post Hall said that 1:many verification is used "once during enrollment" and "is not tied to identity verification. It does not block legitimate users from verifying their identity, nor is it used for any other purpose other than to prevent identity theft," he writes.

Intel won a historic victory in its court fight over a record 1.06 billion-euro ($1.2 billion) competition fine, in a landmark ruling that upends one of the European Union's most important antitrust cases. From a report: The EU General Court ruled on Wednesday that regulators made key errors in a landmark 2009 decision over allegedly illegal rebates that the U.S. chip giant gave to PC makers to squeeze out rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). While the surprise ruling can be appealed one more time, it's a stinging defeat for the European Commission, which hasn't lost a big antitrust case in court for more than 20 years. The Luxembourg-based EU court said the commission provided an "incomplete" analysis when it fined Intel, criticizing it for failing to provide sufficient evidence to back up its findings of anti-competitive risks.

FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts), Google's controversial project for replacing cookies for interest-based advertising by instead grouping users into groups of users with comparable interests, is dead. In its place, Google today announced a new proposal: Topics. From a report: The idea here is that your browser will learn about your interests as you move around the web. It'll keep data for the last three weeks of your browsing history and as of now, Google is restricting the number of topics to 300, with plans to extend this over time. Google notes that these topics will not include any sensitive categories like gender or race. To figure out your interests, Google categorizes the sites you visit based on one of these 300 topics. For sites that it hasn't categorized before, a lightweight machine learning algorithm in the browser will take over and provide an estimated topic based on the name of the domain.

When you hit upon a site that supports the Topics API for ad purposes, the browser will share three topics you are interested in -- one for each of the three last weeks -- selected randomly from your top five topics of each week. The site can then share this with its advertising partners to decide which ads to show you. Ideally, this would make for a more private method of deciding which ad to show you -- and Google notes that it also provides users with far greater control and transparency than what's currently the standard. Users will be able to review and remove topics from their lists -- and turn off the entire Topics API, too.

Washington DC, Texas, Washington state and Indiana announced the latest lawsuit against Big Tech Monday, alleging that Google deceived users by collecting their location data even when they believed that kind of tracking was disabled. TechCrunch reports: "Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access," DC Attorney General Karl Racine said. "The truth is that contrary to Google's representations it continues to systematically surveil customers and profit from customer data." Racine described Google's privacy practices as "bold misrepresentations" that undermine consumer privacy. His office began investigating how Google handles user location data after reporting from the Associated Press in 2018 found that many Google apps across iOS and Android recorded location data even when users have chosen privacy options that explicitly say they won't. The AP coordinated with computer science researchers at Princeton to verify its findings.

The lawsuit argues that Google created a location tracking system that's impossible for users to opt out of and that it misled users about how privacy settings could protect their data within apps and at the device level on Android. It also accuses Google of relying on deceptive dark pattern design to force users into making choices counter to their own interests. Racine's office is pursuing an injunction against Google as well as seeking to force the company to pay out profits that it made from user data collected by misleading consumers about their privacy.

How exactly could Russia be deterred from invading Ukraine? The U.S. government is now "threatening to use a novel export control to damage strategic Russian industries, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to civilian aerospace," according to Stars and Stripes (an editorially-independent newspaper for the American military). The newspaper cites administration officials as its source: The administration may also decide to apply the control more broadly in a way that would potentially deprive Russian citizens of some smartphones, tablets and video game consoles, said the officials. Such moves would expand the reach of U.S. sanctions beyond financial targets to the deployment of a weapon used only once before — to nearly cripple the Chinese tech giant Huawei. The weapon, known as the foreign direct product rule, contributed to Huawei suffering its first-ever annual revenue drop, a stunning 30% last year, according to analysts.

The attraction of using the foreign direct product rule derives from the fact that virtually anything electronic these days includes semiconductors, the tiny components on which all modern technology depends, from smartphones to jets to quantum computers — and that there is hardly a semiconductor on the planet that is not made with U.S. tools or designed with U.S. software. And the administration could try to force companies in other countries to stop exporting these types of goods to Russia through this rule. "This is a slow strangulation by the U.S. government," technology analyst Dan Wang of Gavekal Dragonomics, a research firm in Shanghai, said of Huawei. The rule cut the firm's supply of needed microchips, which were made outside the United States but with U.S. software or tools.

Now officials in Washington say they are working with European and Asian allies to craft a version of the rule that would aim to stop flows of crucial components to industries for which Russian President Vladimir Putin has high ambitions, such as civil aviation, maritime and high technology.... But the effort could face head winds from American and European business interests that fear using export controls could lead to Russian retaliation in other spheres — and eventually cause foreign companies to seek to design U.S. technology out of their products. That's because the extension of the rule beyond a single company like Huawei to an entire country or entire sectors of a country is unprecedented.

"It's like a magic power — you can only use it so many times before it starts to degrade," said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank. "Other countries will say, 'Oh, man, the U.S. has total control over us. We'd better find alternatives.'"
The newspaper also spoke to Paul Triolo, chief of technology policy at a global political risk research and consulting firm called Eurasia Group. His opinion "this would be weaponizing the U.S. semiconductor supply chain against an entire country."

And in more ways than one: Targeted use of the foreign direct product rule could be a blow to Russia's military, which relies on a type of chip called Elbrus that is designed in Russia but manufactured in Taiwan at a chip foundry called TSMC, according to Kostas Tigkos, an electronics expert at Janes Group, a U.K.-based provider of defense intelligence. If the United States barred TSMC from supplying those chips to Russia, as it successfully barred TSMC from supplying Huawei, that would have a "devastating effect," Tigkos said.

In a statement, TSMC said it "complies with all applicable laws and regulations" and that it has a "rigorous export control system in place ... to ensure export control restrictions are followed."Analysts say that Western multinational firms probably would comply with the export controls. All U.S. chipmakers include clauses in their contracts requiring customers to abide by U.S. export rules.
The article also explores a scenario where businesses in China step in to supply Russia (citing estimates from the Peterson Institute for International Economics that China already builds 70% of the computers and smartphones that Russia imports).

"If Chinese firms wound up supplying Russia in violation of the rule, that would leave Washington with a major diplomatic dilemma: whether to sanction them, even if they make ordinary — not military — goods."

Remember that MIT professor accused of hiding the work he did for the Chinese government? (He was arrested for not disclosing it on federal grant applications, with a U.S. attorney announcing "It is not illegal to collaborate with foreign researchers. It is illegal to lie about it.")

All charges have been dropped. Mass Live reports: Chen, 56, was arrested a year ago for failing to disclose millions of dollars in contracts, appointments and awards from the Chinese government when he applied for a grant from the Department of Energy. Among other charges, he was accused of wire fraud and making a false statement on a tax return, according to prosecutors. He pleaded not guilty to the full slate of charges. On Thursday, U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said the federal government would drop its case against Chen. After assessing new evidence, Rollins said in a statement her office found it could not meet the burden of proof in a trial. "As prosecutors, we have an obligation in every matter we pursue to continually examine the facts while being open to receiving and uncovering new information," Rollins said. "Today's dismissal is a result of that process and is in the interests of justice...." Prosecutors had claimed Chen used the U.S. government's money to benefit the Chinese government, while failing to disclose any relationship with Chinese leaders. Colleagues protested Chen's arrest, saying grant disclosure violations had been treated as a serious crime, such as espionage or intellectual property theft, the New York Times reported. Recently, Department of Energy officials said they would awarded a grant to him even if he had disclosed his ties to China.
MIT Technology Review adds: From the start, Chen had maintained his innocence, while MIT had indicated that he was working to establish a research collaboration on behalf of the institution and that the funding in question was actually for the university rather than Chen personally. MIT also paid for his defense....

"The government finally acknowledged what we said all along: Professor Gang Chen is an innocent man," Robert Fisher, Chen's defense attorney, said in a statement. "Our defense was never based on any legal technicalities. Gang did not commit any of the offenses he was charged with. Full stop. He was never in a talent program. He was never an overseas scientist for Beijing. He disclosed everything that he was supposed to disclose and never lied to the government or anyone else."

For his part, Chen said, "While I am relieved that my ordeal is over, I am mindful that this terribly misguided China Initiative continues to bring unwarranted fear to the academic community, and other scientists still face charges."

"I will have more to share soon," the scientist added.

As the price of bitcoin drops to $35,149, "The entire country of El Salvador is riding the cryptocurrency wave," reports The Street, "even in its choppiest waters." The first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, the Central American nation just "bought the dip" once again and acquired 410 bitcoin (roughly $14.8 million USD), its president tweeted Friday....

Bitcoin, which nearly topped $70,000 in November, has now lost more than 40% of its value... El Salvador had previously "bought the dip" when, last September, its worth fell by more than 10%... "150 new coins!" Bukele wrote on Twitter. He said that, at the time, the country had a total of 700 bitcoin.
The Street also shares an interesting detail on how the bitcoin is purchased: It is not clear what type of funds, be they state or private, were used to secure the bitcoin for El Salvador, but the country's 40-year-old President Nayib Bukele is said to buy the country's bitcoin using his phone. The nation's embassy did not immediately respond to TheStreet's request for clarification.

"The European Union took a significant step Thursday toward passing legislation that could transform the way major technology companies operate," reports the Washington Post, "requiring them to police content on their platforms more aggressively and introducing new restrictions on advertising, among other provisions...."

"The legislation is the most aggressive attempt yet to regulate big tech companies as the industry comes under greater international scrutiny." The version approved Thursday would force companies to remove content that is considered illegal in the country where it is viewed, which could be Holocaust denials in Germany or racist postings in France. And it would significantly shape how companies interact with users, allowing Europeans to opt out of targeted advertising more easily and prohibiting companies from targeting advertisements at children.... The legislation would also ban companies from employing deceptive tactics known as dark patterns to lure users to sign up or pay for services and products. And it would allow users to ask companies which personal characteristics, such as age or other demographic information, led them to be targeted with certain advertisements.
The two legislation bodies of the 27-nation bloc "are expected to debate the contents of the legislation for months before voting on a final version," the Post adds. But they add this a vote on "initial approval" of the legislation passed "overwhelmingly". "With the [Digital Services Act] we are going to take a stand against the Wild West the digital world has turned into, set the rules in the interests of consumers and users, not just of Big Tech companies and finally make the things that are illegal offline illegal online too," said Christel Schaldemose, the center-left lawmaker from Denmark who has led negotiations on the bill.

The Post adds this quote from Gianclaudio Malgieri, an associate professor of technology and law at the EDHEC Business School in France. "For the first time, it will not be based on what Big Tech decides to do," he said. "It will be on paper."

In fact, the site Open Access Government reports there were 530 votes for the legislation, and just 78 against (with 80 abstentions). "The Digital Services Act could now become the new gold standard for digital regulation, not just in Europe but around the world," they quote Schaldemose as saying, also offering more details on the rest of the bill: Algorithm use should be more transparent, and researchers should also be given access to raw data to understand how online harms evolve. There is also a clause for an oversight structure, which would allow EU countries to essentially regulate regulation. Violations could in future be punished with fines of up to 6% of a company's annual revenue....

The draft Bill is one half of a dual-digital regulation package. The other policy is the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which would largely look at tackling online monopolies.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader UpnAtom for sharing the story.

In 2015 the San Francisco Arts Commission surveyed nearly 600 local artists. "More than 70% of them had either already left San Francisco or were about to be displaced from their work, home or both," reports SFGate.com, adding "The pandemic has only intensified these problems. A report by Americans for the Arts found that 53% of artists have no savings whatsoever as a result of the pandemic."

Would it help to give over 100 artists their own Universal Basic Income? In an effort to mitigate what appears to be an existential threat to the arts, in March 2021, the city of San Francisco partnered with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts [YBCA] to launch a guaranteed income pilot, called the SF Guaranteed Income Pilot for Artists, or SF-GIPA, that gives 130 local low-income artists who have been severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic $1,000 a month, no strings attached, for 18 months.... At the time, YBCA was planning to launch its own guaranteed income project for artists, and this allowed it to combine forces and take both projects further. The first six months of funding for the SF-GIPA project came from the Arts Impact Endowment, which is funded by San Francisco's hotel tax and designated for underserved communities. YBCA extended the project by an additional 12 months with private funding from the Start Small Foundation, a philanthropic initiative by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey....

Though the additional income from SF-GIPA is a welcome relief, as the project moves past its halfway point, the question remains: Will 18 months be enough time to truly make a difference in these artists' lives? YBCA is currently scrambling to find a way to continue supporting guaranteed income recipients after the project's scheduled end in October 2023.... "It's just so sad; people come to San Francisco because of the art and culture, but the art and culture makers can't afford to live here," says Stephanie Imah, who is leading YBCA's pilot. "This is very much a rental problem. It's really hard for artists living in San Francisco unless they work in tech. It's clear we need long-term solutions." For YBCA, that means advocating for big policy changes down the line.

"Our eyes are on the federal government," YBCA CEO Deborah Cullinan explains in an interview with Berkeley's Aurora Theatre. "We'd like to see guaranteed income programs across the country for all people." For now, the organization is focused on collecting "university standard research" in order to make an irrefutable case for universal basic income as a viable long-term solution to poverty.

The Washington Post reports that three of the world's most prominent live-streaming stars "received notifications of copyright infringement after broadcasting TV shows to their millions-strong fanbases on Twitch."

"The days that followed produced copious amounts of Twitch's most common byproduct, online drama, but also focused attention on the murky and legally complicated question of what constitutes fair use of copyright materials such as TV shows and movies...." In 2007 Viacom sued YouTube for copyright infringement. Though the court ultimately ruled in favor of YouTube, the suit paved the way for the "Content ID" system, which automatically identifies copyright content and aggressively polices the platform. While software that can scan Twitch already exists, Twitch has yet to create its own automated system, and it does not appear to be in the process of doing so, according to industry figures with knowledge of Twitch's operations who weren't authorized to speak publicly.

Such an outcome becomes more likely, however, if advertisers start withdrawing from the platform for fear of being associated with risky content, something that's already beginning to happen on Twitch according to Devin Nash, chief marketing officer of content creator-focused talent agency Novo...

The "react content" trend often hinges on broadcasting copyright material, like popular movies or TV shows, a practice which skirts the outer edges of platform rules. Earlier this month, Viacom and the History Channel/A&E (which is owned by Hearst and Disney) issued copyright claims — also known as Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown requests — to specific streamers.... The DMCA-centric discourse left streamers and viewers on Twitch with ample drama but no clear answer as to whether one of the platform's go-to trends merely faces a few bumps in the road or an asteroid-sized extinction event. "Nothing could happen, or everything could happen," Cassell added. "And it rests on the decisions of a handful of media rights holders...."

Some streamers, such as Piker and Felix "xQc" Lengyel, both of whom started reacting to clips from sites like YouTube long before the current react meta began, argue reaction content should be permitted since Twitch is essentially built on copyright infringement. Streaming a video game is technically a DMCA-able offense. The video game industry, however, has decided to allow the practice because the free publicity and resulting sales tend to outweigh any potential downsides. But television is a different beast, with its economics rooted in broadcast rights rather than individual unit sales....

This awkward and unceasing dance around the topic has been fueled in part by the fact that Twitch is incentivized to maintain its ignorance of copyright infractions taking place on their platform.... But the silence has added stress to streamers whose livelihoods could be impacted by decisions around the current DMCA practices....
The Post also spoke to game/esports/entertainment lawyer David Philip Graham, who believes copyright law itself is due for an overhaul. "Much of our current copyright regime isn't really about authors' rights or promoting the progress of science and useful arts, but about big businesses looking for easier routes to profitability," Graham said.

He proposes shortening copyright term lengths — and also expanding permissions for derivative works.

America's National Labor Relations Board is an independent agency of the federal government that enforces U.S. labor law.

And its prosecutors "plan to formally accuse Amazon.com of illegally firing an activist who was trying to unionize its New York warehouses," as well as other violations of the law, reports Bloomberg — unless Amazon settles the case first.

New York Focus reports that the fired worker had commuted from a homeless shelter to Amazon's fulfillment center on New York's Staten Island — a facility where Amazon has held mandatory anti-union meetings. But it's not the only place there's been tension between Amazon and union organizers: In March, an NLRB investigation into the firing of Queens Amazon warehouse worker and labor leader Jonathan Bailey found that the company illegally interrogated and threatened him. NBC News reported that eight other workers also said "they had been fired, disciplined or retaliated against for protected activity." A month later, the NLRB found that Amazon had illegally retaliated against Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, who was fired in 2020 for their workplace activism while employed at Amazon's headquarters in Seattle
The Amazon Labor Union (founded by current and former Amazon employees) "has filed a petition to hold an election at four of the e-commerce giant's facilities in Staten Island," Bloomberg reported Friday. And an official for the group told Bloomberg it could galvanize support for a union if they could get the fired worker reinstated. "It would be monumental for him to go back to the same building that he was terminated from and speak his truth and let workers know that it's OK to speak out." Amazon has been grappling with an unprecedented wave of activism and organizing in North America, including walkouts over safety concerns in Staten Island and elsewhere, as well as unionization drives in Alabama, Canada and New York.... In December, Amazon reached a settlement with the labor board requiring the company to inform workers nationwide of their legal rights and to let employees organize on its property during their time off.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dozens of legitimate WordPress add-ons downloaded from their original sources have been found backdoored through a supply chain attack, researchers said. The backdoor has been found on "quite a few" sites running the open source content management system. The backdoor gave the attackers full administrative control of websites that used at least 93 WordPress plugins and themes downloaded from AccessPress Themes. The backdoor was discovered by security researchers from JetPack, the maker of security software owned by Automatic, provider of the WordPress.com hosting service and a major contributor to the development of WordPress. In all, Jetpack found that 40 AccessPress themes and 53 plugins were affected.

In a post published Thursday, Jetpack researcher Harald Eilertsen said timestamps and other evidence suggested the backdoors were introduced intentionally in a coordinated action after the themes and plugins were released. The affected software was available by download directly from the AccessPress Themes site. The same themes and plugins mirrored on WordPress.org, the official developer site for the WordPress project, remained clean. "Users who used software obtained directly from the AccessPress website unknowingly provided attackers with backdoor access, resulting in an unknown number of compromised websites," Ben Martin, a researcher with Web security firm Sucuri, wrote in a separate analysis of the backdoor.

The Jetpack post said evidence indicates that the supply chain attack on AccessPress Themes was performed in September. Martin, however, said evidence suggests the backdoor itself is much older than that. Some of the infected websites had spam payloads dating back nearly three years. He said his best guess is that the people behind the backdoor were selling access to infected sites to people pushing web spam and malware. He wrote, "[...] it seems that the malware that we've found associated with this backdoor is more of the same: spam, and redirects to malware and scam sites." The Jetpack post provides full names and versions of the infected AccessPress software. Anyone running a WordPress site with this company's offerings should carefully inspect their systems to ensure they're not running a backdoored instance. Site owners may also want to consider installing a website firewall, many of which would have prevented the backdoor from working.