Tech News: Netflix Wages War Against VPNs

about VPNs, or virtual private networks before. This is a service in which you use a piece of software to log into a remote server, and then that server kind of acts as a type of proxy to access content on the Internet on your behalf. And that means like all the sites you're visiting are going through the server

before coming to you. So anyone who might be, say spying on your side of the connection, all they would see is that you are in communication with this VPN server, with ideally all of that communication encrypted, so that whomever is snooping on you has no idea what it is you're looking at, right because they can only see that it's coming from this VPN server. They cannot see beyond that point, so they wouldn't have any clue what was

going on. And then anyone who was snooping on the opposite side of this, All they would see is that this server is communicating with other web servers, but not knowing you know, whom on the other end is actually responsible for that. Like let's say that you were visiting your bank, Well, they would be able to see that there was communication between this VPN server and the bank server, but they wouldn't know who was ultimately trying to access that.

And also that communication would be encrypted. So there are a lot of legit reasons to you that use this, just like I was just mentioning, Like if you wanted to use extra precautions when accessing certain services like banking services while you're on say a public WiFi hot spot, so you're at a coffee shop, you might want to use a vp N to access various things so that someone snooping on that public WiFi hotspot wouldn't know your business.

But one other popular use of VPNs is to access region locked material that is otherwise unavailable to you, and recently Netflix has been on the war path to fight against that. Netflix has licensing deals with various studios and it allows Netflix to stream content certain content to certain

regions or audiences. For example, there are programs on Netflix that are available in the UK on Netflix, but I can't watch them because I'm in the United States and Netflix does not have a license to stream that specific content two people here in the US. But through a VPN, I could potentially circumvent those rules and just log into a VPN server in the UK and try to get around it that way. This isn't exactly legit, but a

lot of folks use VPNs for this specific reason. Now, Netflix is blocking certain IP addresses that the company associates with VPN services because some of these services what they're doing is they're using IP addresses that look like residential IP addresses. So Netflix is starting to block some IP addresses that appear to be residential ones, and some of

them turn out to actually be residential IP addresses. Now, the whole goal is to prevent the VPN users from relying on this work around, right, But in the process that means some innocent folks are getting misidentified as VPN services and they find that their access to Netflix ends

up being limited. So clearly there's some collateral damage going on here as the company tries to crack down on VPN users attempting to skirt region locking but it is impossible to say how common this is, like how frequently is Netflix affecting legitimate users? Those getting hit with the ban are still able to access Netflix original content, but they might not be able to see stuff produced or

distributed outside of Netflix's own properties. Once again we see how a media company's response to people breaking the rules can cause further harm. See also digital rights management and the various massive lawsuits that media companies leveled against people who were identified as being pirates. I do not have a solution to this problem, by the way, and I'm not saying Netflix is necessarily in the wrong as far as it goes trying to uphold its end of these

licensing deals. My guess is that the licensing agreements mean that Netflix is obligated to pursue solutions to this problem or else face some pretty tough consequences, such as not being able to secure future licensing agreements with you know, various TV and movie studios. It's just unfortunate that the current solution can have a negative impact on people who are not part of the problem. That is really unfortunate. It really says that solution is a bad solution. I

just don't have a better one to offer, so bummer. Now, when it comes to picking what the top stories of we're here in the United States, there is a lot to choose from. I mean, coronavirus is an obvious candidate, as was the election and all the trappings around that, from misinformation camp ains to the fights around voter suppression and more. Uh, there's the big story of the Black

Lives Matter movement, which I support needs ongoing support. And there's a related issue the de fund the police movement. Now that last one is extremely controversial and politically a lot of leaders don't want to have anything to do with it, they don't even want to to address it. But then we have a story like this one that brings into sharp relief the concerns of those who want to see an overhaul in how the United States handles

law enforcement. So, according to documents obtained by the Legal Aid Society and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, the New York City Police Department has spent around a hundred sixty million dollars on surveillance systems since two thousand seven. And

here's the big part, without any public oversight. So these technologies include systems like X ray, SCAE, inners for police fans that could reportedly detect weapons in vehicles, you know, hundreds of feet away, to facial recognition technologies, which, as I've mentioned several times in the past, frequently proved to be unreliable and subject to algorithmic bias that can disproportionately harm non white populations, and also the use of sting ray devices. A sting ray is a cell phone catcher.

It's spoofs or imitates a cell phone tower, and nearby phones will connect to it as if it were a legitimate cell tower, and then the operator of the sting ray can pull information down from it, such as device identifications, device locations, and other data. The department acquired all these things by using a special Expenses fund line item in the budget. The NYPD could make use of those funds without first seeking approval from any other New York officials.

So you can think of it kind of like a petty cash fund, except the amount of cash in it is definitely not petty, nor were the uses of that cash. I should also add that after the city passed a law called the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act last year,

the NYPD shut down the special Expenses fund. Now, whatever your opinion is about police funding, I think it is important to remember that these technologies tend to range from they they can be effective if they are used correctly, but they are difficult to use correctly, and they go all the way to This technology is unproven and in

fact is known to be inaccurate. So even in a best case scenario, this is an example of funds being poorly spent, and in a worst case scenario, it's an example of an organization of authority that is abusing that authority and using technology to enable further abuse of authority.

This ties back in with something that I said earlier this week that we have a tendency to lean on technology in order to solve social problems, even if the tech is unproven or unsuitable for solving a social problem, or we just don't fully understand the technology, and this, I should point out, is a bad thing. Now, let us return to the issue of Facebook and Australian media companies.

You might remember that there was a big standoff between the Australian government and Facebook a while back, stemming from how Facebook offers uh previews of articles and other media content without directing people to the sites that originate that content. Now this is important because those media companies, you know, like news organizations and such, they depend upon advertising revenue,

which depends upon traffic to that website. If people are getting the content without actually visiting the site, then the company is not generating any ad revenue from that transaction, and ultimately you'll see these media companies and news organizations struggle to remain solvent. They won't make enough money to

stay in business. The Australian government issued a mandate the companies like Facebook and Google to work out deals with Australian news outlets, which Facebook said it would do after some back and forth, including moments in which Facebook implied

it would just plane shut down in Australia. Well, now Facebook is under fire again after three publishers in Australia alleged that Facebook included their content on their new news service platform in Australia without first negotiating licensing deals for that content, which you could argue would be in violation of this new law. Now, the companies say that the law might protect the larger publishing houses pretty well, but for smaller content creators it's a different story. So, according

to these publishers. They approached Facebook in order to negotiate licensing deals for their content to be featured on this news platform, and Facebook essentially dismissed them, saying, no, you guys are small potatoes. You're not suitable for our news platform because you're not notable enough to be included on it, So we're not signing a deal with you. But then, according to these allegations, content from these publishers showed up

on that news platform anyway. So as I record this, there's not a word as to whether the publishers are going to pursue any sort of government intervention in response to this problem, but they appear to at least be open to the idea. Complicating matters is only one of the three publishers, this one called Urban List, is actually registered with the Australian Communications and Media Authority, which is a prerequisite in order to be covered by this media law.

The other two have not yet applied for registration with that organization. Well, we've got a lot more news to cover, but before I get into any of that, let's take

a quick break. Let's go back over to Facebook. And you know, we were just with Facebook and Australia now we're gonna go to Facebook and the u K because over there, over the pond, the Competition and Markets Authority and agency and government agency in the UK has been investigating Facebook's acquisition of Giffee or if you prefer Jiffy. I'm sure they pronounced a Jiffy. I still maintained that the correct pronunciation of you know, gift is gift. This

is the company that's famous for animated gifts. Actually most of those, in fact aren't animated gifts at all. They're rather other formats, their short looping video clips that mimic an animated gift, but you know, that's beside the point. And this this government group says that Facebook's acquisition presents

competition concerns. At least this is according to CNBC, where I read about this, and the complaints states that the this acquisition decreases competition in the digital advertising market, which is a market that has already dominated by goliaths like

Facebook and Google. And one of the concerns is that Facebook will limit the use of Giffee gifts to Facebook platforms like the actual Facebook social network and Instagram, but there are lots of other platforms that do use Giffee, and the concern is that Facebook could cut that that access off and thus that would be an anti competitive move. The Government Office warns Facebook that it may require that the company has to sell off Giffee, which would reverse

a four million dollar deal. The Office has yet to file its full review, and under further investigation, it is possible that all complaints could be dropped. Facebook naturally says that the Government offices concerns are completely off base and that the acquisition doesn't represent a decrease in competition. Now, let's look at the world of anti virus software, because

that world is about to get a little smaller. Norton LifeLock is on track to merge with former competitor a Vast in a deal that's valued at eight billion dollars. So Norton's experience with antivirus software dates back to nine. A Vast was founded even earlier, back in nine and the plan is to merge these companies and combine the capabilities of the two and offer more robust solutions for cybersecurity, including additional ways to detect intrusions and protect privacy and

disabled malware. And as we see a rise in innovative attacks like the supply chain attacks that we saw with the solar winds attacks, cybersecurity companies are rushing to keep pace with the bad guys, and that's pretty much the normal day to day in the world of cybersecurity, because each side is constantly struggling to try and get ahead of the other. There's still a bunch of other anti virus providers out there. There's like a v G and

McAfee and Kaspersky and lots more. And I recommend that you use anti virus, but I also recommend you research anti virus software packages before you install one on your machine, because some packages contain a lot more bloat than others and will put a larger demand on your computer's resources,

which could mean that you see performance issues elsewhere. Also, be sure you don't already have anti virus software on your machine, because having more than one is a pretty good way to make your computer run so slowly that you can't do anything with it. A few news episodes back, I reported on how employees at Activision Blizzard brought forth allegations of sexual miscon harassment, hostile work environment, and more, including a lawsuit against the company, and since then there's

been an employee walk out that happened on July. There have been various calls online for game boycotts UH, and also people who have said that unfortunately, those kinds of boycotts often cause more harm to lower level employees than the leaders who allow these toxic environments to kind of take hold. There's also been responses from the company itself claiming that the allegations in the lawsuit were UH in reference to a company of the past and not reflective

of how Blizzard operates today. Well, now we've got some more updates because three important staff members recently left the studio than They include the former director of Diablo four, which is not yet released. That would be Luis Barriga. Also a designer who worked on Diablo four named Jesse McCree, and a World of Warcraft designer named Jonathan Lacraft. The company's statement is simply that these three are no longer working for the company, so there's no clarification there about

how their terms of employment came to an end. We don't know if they were fired, or if they resigned or what. Kotak, who previously published photos of Lacraft and McCree in relation to what was called the Cosby Shrine, which was a suite connected to a fan event called blizz Con back in two thousand thirteen, And obviously it was in reference to the comedian Bill Cosby, which, if you know anything about you know the story of Bill

Cosby's legal troubles. That implication is beyond horrifying, because that line of logic means the group was at least on some level condoning the idea of harassing and abusing women. So it may well be that this is Blizzard trying to clean house after insisting that its house was already clean. I don't know. I have no contacts within Blizzard, and so I have no clue if these employees were actually terminated or if they left on their own accord and chose to resign. Nor do I know what, if any

part they played in the alleged hostile work environment. But it appears that the fallout from that issue is continuing back to tech and politics, which honestly I did not anticipate being something I would have to cover so frequently in this show. But the US Senate has introduced a piece of legislation aimed at taking some power away from

platforms like Google and Apple app stores. This comes out of the Antitrust Committee in the Senate, which is a body that is dedicated to fighting anti competitive and monopolistic practices, and among the provisions in the legislation is a bit that says platforms should not be able to force app developers to use a platform provided payment system and that app developers should be able to use their own systems instead.

So currently, companies like Apple and Google require apps that are available within their respective stores to conform to the platform payment systems, and the platforms take a cut, typically around thirty for all in app purchases, assuming the purchase isn't for some real world item or service. So for example, if I were playing a game and I wanted to make an in app purchase for game items within that game, then because I use Android, Google would take a thirty

percent cut of that transaction. But if I use an app to order a pizza or use a ride hailing app like Uber or lift Google Google would not take a cut of that. It would be it's under a different set of rules. Anyway, This provision would allow pretty much everyone to use their own payment systems in lieu of you know, the official platform one and Another element

of the bill would actually be specific to Apple. It would force Apple to allow users to sideload apps onto their owns, which means they would be able to bypass the Apple Store entirely. They could load in apps that Apple did not allow in the App store. Now, Apple maintains that it's policy of only allowing users to download apps from the official Apple App Store protects the users because each app has to pass approval before being allowed

in the store. This, according to Apple, cuts back on malware and other issues, although those things still seem to creep through on occasion just but I would argue probably not nearly to the level that they would if that if that system weren't in place. But that's kind of

Apple's policy. However, it also means that Apple is the sole arbiter of which apps iPhone users are allowed to load onto their phones, assuming those users haven't gone through the trouble of jail breaking their phones, which is a whole other thing. And we'll have to see how this progresses, because we're still a long way from this legislation actually

becoming law. This is still in the formation stages. I suspect we're going to see a lot of changes to the language of that legislation introduced as Google and Apple way in through various lobbying efforts. We have a couple more stories, but before I get to that, let's take another quick break. Before the break, I was talking about Apple. It's time to talk about Apple a little bit more. The company's image scanning technology has recently come under fire

from the Electronic Freedom Foundation or e ff SO. This technology scans images sent through eye message in an effort to detect and thus report on child exploitation and abuse. In other words, like this background technology is scanning stuff that otherwise is being sent privately between individuals to make sure that it's not in violation of this that it doesn't depict child abuse or exploitation. The e f F maintains that, you know, fighting those things as noble right.

We want to protect children. However, the method that Apple is using is also open for abuse, namely that you know, Apple has now created a method to intercept and analyze material sent through eye message, and that's meant to be an end to end encryption communications channel that should provide secure and private communications between two people. That means that the whole secure thing there and private thing all that gets thrown out the window if you have a system

that's actually analyzing the material being sent back and forth. Now, the e f F points out that governments, including the United States government, have frequently sought ways to get around encrypted communications channels, up to and including demanding that companies include a backdoor access so that they these various government agencies can actually see what's being sent back and forth.

Companies like Apple traditionally have really resisted that, and this approach of creating these ways to get around encryption invariably creates a surveillance state that can grant more power to authoritarian leaders that they can then abuse, and the victims then are the citizens and others related to that government. This is one of those situations that's actually really really hard for me to grapple with because on the one hand, I absolutely want there to be more systems in place

to protect children. I really want that. But on the other hand, I don't want that pursuit to then enable systems that could harm entire populations through misuse, where the cure ends up having its own kind of disease that

affects society. I won't say it's ears than the disease, because it's hard for me to think of things that are worse than child abuse, but it could be another bad consequence of that solution, and the e f F warns that various governments and regimes around the world already are standing up to take advantage of Apple's decision and find ways to turn it to their own purposes for the you know, the aim of surveillance, and the e f F is adamant that Apple's choice ultimately weakens security

and privacy, even if the intention behind the decision was a good one. This just points out that the world is an incredibly complicated place, and again, while technology can provide some tools for us to do things, sometimes the consequences of using those tools creates problems that are you know, as difficult as the one you were trying to solve in the first place. I think this might be the case here, and it really pains me to say that, because again, I want there to be systems in place

to protect kids. But yeah, I don't know what the right answer is to this one either. I wish I did. Finally, and honestly, I apologize for not making this the top story for today. Twitter, Hold onto your Butts is rolling out a change in the font it uses to display messages. Yes, you heard me correctly. Twitter is creating and rolling out a new font called chirp into its apps and on the web based feeds. Now. The rollout is in stages, so you may or may not be able to see

it right now. According to Twitter's blog, the font quote strikes the balance between messy and sharp to amplify the fund and irreverence of a tweet, but can also carry

the weight of seriousness when needed. End quote. Which, you know, that's a huge relief to me, because I'm glad that my dumb dad joke tweets can joy a boost of jocularity from this font, while at the same time, those people who are using Twitter to you know, advance real world important social movements, or, if you prefer, those who are spreading crazy misinformation can lean more heavily on how

this font also supports the serious side. I mean, who knew that fonts were so fundamental to conveying the intent of a message. Also, full disclosure, I totally didn't notice that this thing changed, that the font changed at all, although that could say a lot more about my lack of skill in the Observation Department than anything else. Um, I don't know that it's rolled out to me. Even when I was looking at a news article that was talking about this and had pictures of examples of the font,

I thought, huh, I guess that's different. I would need to have a side by side and then I would. I'm sure I would notice it, but I guess I just never really put much stock in the font. So this I missed the boat. That's it for the news for today, Thursday, August one. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in tech Stuff, please reach out to me on Twitter. The handle is text stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.

Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.