Daily Archives: 2021-02-20

Twitch Censors Live Metallica Performance with Dorkiest Music Imaginable

Source: Slashdot

Article note: Our copyright system really is completely absurd.

In the year 2000, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich answered questions from Slashdot's readers. Late Friday night, the AV Club described Metallica's appearance at the opening ceremonies for the (now online) version of Blizzard Entertainment's annual event BlizzCon: The opening ceremonies were being broadcast online, both through the official BlizzCon page, YouTube, and Twitch. And you know what happens when licensed music gets played on the internet, don't you, folks? That's right: Copyright issues! Per Uproxx, the audio of James, Lars, and the boys' performance apparently went out as per usual on YouTube and the BlizzCon page — although the whole thing appears to have been excised from the YouTube upload of the event. But on Twitch... On Twitch, things did not go so well. Which is to say that, even though it was being hosted on the company's official twitchgaming channel, the performance was ominously preceded by a chyron noting that "The upcoming musical performance is subject to copyright protection by the applicable copyright holder." And then this happened.... Can we prove that someone at Twitch intentionally picked the dorkiest, most Zelda forest-ass music imaginable to have Metallica rock their little hearts out to, instead of broadcasting their extremely copyrighted music (and thus having to deal with the possibility of issuing one of their ubiquitous DMCA takedown notices to themselves)? Obviously not.... On the other hand, we can prove that it is extremely funny to watch this happen, especially — as many people have pointed out — since Metallica is at least partially responsible for the restrictive character of many online musical streaming laws that dominate the internet today, after their high-profile campaign against Napster way back at the dawn of the MP3. In other news, Diablo II is being remastered and re-released later this year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Congress Escalates Pressure on Tech Giants to Censor,Threatening First Amendment

Source: Hacker News

Article note: "For the same reasons that the Constitution prohibits the government from dictating what information we can see and read (outside narrow limits), it also prohibits the government from using its immense authority to coerce private actors into censoring on its behalf." That is a really interesting take. I think I agree with it, but it's the first time I recall seeing it spelled out like that.
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New malware found on 30,000 Macs has security pros stumped

Source: Ars Technica

Article note: That is some weird high-polish shit to be running no payloads for that long. Escaped experiment? Nation-state actor testing? Someone clever and nefarious waiting for a large reach before they start dropping payloads?
Close-up photograph of Mac keyboard and toolbar.

Enlarge (credit: Jayson Photography / Getty Images)

A previously undetected piece of malware found on almost 30,000 Macs worldwide is generating intrigue in security circles, which are still trying to understand precisely what it does and what purpose its self-destruct capability serves.

Once an hour, infected Macs check a control server to see if there are any new commands the malware should run or binaries to execute. So far, however, researchers have yet to observe delivery of any payload on any of the infected 30,000 machines, leaving the malware’s ultimate goal unknown. The lack of a final payload suggests that the malware may spring into action once an unknown condition is met.

Also curious, the malware comes with a mechanism to completely remove itself, a capability that’s typically reserved for high-stealth operations. So far, though, there are no signs the self-destruct feature has been used, raising the question why the mechanism exists.

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Most Teen Bullying Occurs Among Peers Climbing the Social Ladder

Source: Hacker News

Article note: ...What kind of garbage-ass self-serving model have the "anti-bullying" folks (who conspicuously always seem to be at very least "socially-aggressive" themselves) been using that this is news?
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