Kingdom of Serbia

Double D (Edd - Ed, Edd n Eddy)

Wilfried Zaha

Chris Martin

Ethereum core developers decided to delay the “difficulty bomb” for two months, which might mean a longer wait for The Merge. Ethereum core developers met on Friday and decided to delay the handling of the “difficulty bomb”, a crucial catalyst in Ethereum’s long-anticipated “Merge,” which will migrate the network from a proof-of-work consensus to proof-of-stake. The difficulty bomb was planted in Ethereum’s code in 2015 as a measure to force validators to accept the merge. An implementation of the merge dubbed went live on the Ropsten testnet earlier this past week. Following the testnet merge and after discussing a number of bugs revealed by the test merge, developers proposal EIP-5133 to delay the difficulty bomb to August 2022. It has been delayed five times before. “In short, we agreed to the bomb delay,” tweeted lead developer Tim Beiko after the call on Friday. “We are aiming for a ~2 month delay and for the upgrade to go live in late June.” While Ethereum developers have not firmly committed to a date for the Ethereum merge, both Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and core developer Preston Van Loon have said August—”if everything goes to plan,” Van Loon said last month at a conference. “So, we will push back the Ethereum difficulty bomb,” tweeted Ben Edgington, another core developer, after Friday’s call. “We say it won't delay the Merge. I sincerely hope not.” The new EIP-5133 proposal still says the target is for The Merge to occur “before mid August 2022.” Decrypt has reached out to Beiko for further comment about the difficulty bomb. What is the difficulty bomb? Ethereum, the largest smart contracts platform, is migrating from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus model to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus model that should make the blockchain far more efficient and less energy-consuming. Ethereum is currently supported by validators (or miners) who use remote computers to solve complicated math problems in order to record and verify transactions—just like on the Bitcoin blockchain. Following The Merge, validators will instead stake coins to confirm transactions, and there are concerns that some validators may reject proof-of-stake. To prevent that scenario, the difficulty bomb increases the block difficulty (the time it takes validators take to verify and add a transaction to the blockchain) exponentially over time. Over an extended period, it becomes impossible for the validators to mine new transactions due to near-infinite block difficulty, forcing an end to proof-of-work on Ethereum. On the other hand, the “difficulty bomb” executed at the wrong time could halt Ethereum before The Merge” is completed, leading to disastrous financial outcomes. Ethereum price action Ethereum (ETH), the No. 2 cryptocurrency by market cap, fell by double-digits over the past day, has fallen 19% in the past seven days due to a combination of macroeconomic factors (tech stocks also tanked; CPI showed a worse than expected rise in inflation) but the Ropsten testnet merge earlier this week apparently did nothing to help. ETH is now down a whopping 69% from its all-time high of $4,891.70 in November 2021, according to CoinMarketCap.

Despite the sharp correction in crypto valuations, consumer interest in the sector is still strong, Bank of America (BAC) said in a report on Monday. The bank recently conducted a survey of 1,000 existing and potential users of cryptocurrency and digital-asset exchanges. It found that 91% of respondents intended to buy crypto in the next six months, which was the same percentage as those who said they had bought in the last six months. Selling expectations are also steady, with 30% saying they do not plan to sell any of their crypto holdings in the next six months, unchanged from the percentage who said they had not sold any crypto in the previous six months, the report said. Average transaction sizes varied, with buys tending to be larger than sales, and the most common transaction size is under $25, the bank said. PayPal (PYPL) and Coinbase (COIN) were the platforms most frequently used – at 53% and 46%, respectively – it added. BofA sees growing interest in the use of crypto as a payment method, it said. With 39% and 34% of respondents using crypto as a payment method to make online or in-person purchases, respectively. Crypto made up less than 10% of overall financial investments for 65% of respondents, the survey found, but allocations varied, with 15% holding more than 25% of their total financial investments in digital assets. The majority of respondents were short-term investors, with 77% normally holding crypto for less than a year, the report added.

Crypto Crash: Bitcoin has gone through multiple cycles in the past, and has always bounced back, with a vengeance says Diego Vera of Buda.com. Individual markets, such as cryptocurrencies, stocks or commodities, and the economy as a whole, experience cycles of expansion and contraction. It is like the economy is breathing. There are periods when practically everything goes up and others when almost everything goes down. The economic crisis of 2008 took more than two years to stop hitting. The stock markets fell more than 50% in the main economies of the world. But then came 10 years of buoyant optimism. In 2000, the Nasdaq Composite stock index fell 75%. That big drop in the first image looks like just a hiccup in the bottom left corner of the second image. Since 2002 almost everything had been going up. This year, the same indicator has dropped by 14%. But now we wonder if the falls that stock markets are currently experiencing (25% so far this year), are something that will be reversed soon, or are we facing a more worrying event, like the one in 2008. Investments We have seen how practically all the investments in the different economic sectors have lost value since the beginning of the year. •Netflix : -67% •PayPal: -55% •Facebook: -44% •Tesla: -42% •Bitcoin : -38% •Amazon: -28% •Nasdaq (index): -24% •S&P 500 (index): -14% And this is just a sample. Falls reach 90% in some cases. Why do we insist so much on investing for the long term? We might be seeing a cataclysm in the global economy more like an earthquake rather than a simple tremor. But the most important thing is that you know that everything is going to be okay. We have a bad memory, and we forget the past, but we have lived this many times before. The world will recover, without a doubt. -In the 1970s, the oil crisis, added to the end of the Bretton Woods agreement (the end of the gold standard), and triggered a global recession. On this date, the S&P 500 (another indicator) fell 50% in one year (1973-1974), only to recover 76% in two years and 133% in four. -In the mid-1980s, oil once again helped trigger another global crisis. This time around, the S&P 500 fell nearly 30%, only to recover 226% in 5 years. -In 2008, the subprime crisis hit the world economy. The S&P 500 saw one of its steepest declines: -58% in just under a year and a half. 5 years later, the index had tripled its price since the low point of the crisis. Today, even considering the recent price drop, its value is more than 6 times what it was then. Crypto crash: And in the case of Bitcoin? Bitcoin has gone through multiple cycles in the past, and has always bounced back, with a vengeance. In fact, in history, 100% of the people who have bought and waited 4 years or more, have seen their investment grow. History does not have to repeat itself, but it is a very good precedent. The investment horizon is key. It is very difficult to know what will happen tomorrow. On Wall Street there are physicists and mathematicians who try and almost always fail. But as we extend the time horizon, the trend is easier to predict.

Almen Abdi

Zeus (The Emperor's New Groove)

Christian Eriksen

Fiji

Emmanuel Ellerbee

Yuzvendra Chahal

Strike 3 Holdings has already filed over a thousand lawsuits against alleged BitTorrent pirates in U.S. courts this year. The adult entertainment company used to be part of a larger group of prolific litigants but it is now the only one left. It is responsible for the vast majority of all piracy lawsuits filed in the US this year. troll signFor more than 15 years, alleged file-sharers around the world have been pressured to pay significant settlement fees. These so-called ‘copyright-trolling’ efforts are pretty straightforward. Copyright holders obtain a list of ‘pirating’ IP-addresses and then request a subpoena from the court, compelling ISPs to hand over the associated customer data. These schemes can be rather lucrative. With minimal effort, rightsholders can rake in hundreds or thousands of dollars per defendant. That is, if a court grants expedited discovery, allowing the companies to request the personal details of alleged infringers from ISPs. In the United States it was relatively easy to pursue these cases but over time that began to change. Most prominent was the 2018 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in the Cobbler v. Gonzales case. Here, the court ruled that identifying the registered subscriber of an IP-address was not sufficient to argue that this person is also the infringer. Rightsholders needed “something more”. Last ‘Troll’ Standing? This has made it harder to pursue legal actions against file-sharers, but not impossible. While pretty much all prolific lawsuit filers have ceased their activities, Strike 3 Holdings is still going strong. Strike 3 is in the adult video business. The company makes its content available through subscriptions via the Blacked, Tushy, and Vixen websites. When it discovers that pirates have shared these videos illegally via torrent sites, the company takes action. To present “something more” than just an IP address the company is also using other sources to gather information on the defendants. This includes information shared on social media. In addition, the company has also requested data from Google and Netflix. 1,060 Lawsuits This Year This week we looked at all cases filed by Strike 3 thus far this year, making a total of 1,060 lawsuits. This means that 2022 is on course to become one of the most active years for the company in federal court. strike Strike 3 is currently responsible for the vast majority of copyright legal action in the US. There are some other smaller independent movie studios that file piracy-related lawsuits, but these are limited to a few dozen at most. With this much workload, it’s no surprise that most cases are resolved relatively swiftly. Of all the lawsuits filed in the first three months of the year, 50% have already been closed. This happens when both parties reach an out-of-court settlement or if the complaint is dropped by Strike 3 for another reason. Mixed Results There are also instances when the defendants fail to respond at all. If that happens, Strike 3 often requests a default judgment from the court, which can have mixed outcomes. In some cases, it can lead to massive damages awards. For example. last year a federal court in New York ordered a local resident to pay $108,750 in damages for sharing 145 pirated videos via BitTorrent. However, other courts have denied similar default judgment requests. Finally, it is also possible for accused pirates to secure a win. This happened when Strike 3 filed a lawsuit against a “John Doe” who turned out to be a 70+-year-old retired police officer. Instead of settling the matter, the former policeman lawyered up and submitted a counterclaim accusing Strike 3 of “extortion through sham litigation” and abuse of process. The defendant eventually secured a win and was awarded $47,777 in attorneys’ fees and costs. Overall, it’s clear that Strike 3 is getting more out of its legal campaigns than it puts in. Since 2018, when the first case was filed, over 7,000 complaints have been submitted at federal courts. At the current rate, the company is on its way to filing over 2,200 lawsuits this year alone, which would be an all-time record.

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The US Copyright Office's inquiry on the option to add mandatory copyright protection measures in the DMCA has led to some interesting responses. They include a suggestion to add "VPN detection" tools to prevent people from engaging in "geo-piracy". This request, unsurprisingly, comes from a company that offers a VPN detection service. blockedThe United States is actively exploring options to update copyright law to bring it into line with the current online environment. Most recently, the Copyright Office is looking into the option of making certain standard technical measures (STMs) mandatory for online platforms. This could include upload filters to block pirated content from being reuploaded. The current DMCA already provides an option to formally adopt STMs but that requires “broad consensus” among online services, which hasn’t been reached over the past two decades. Instead, many online platforms have developed their own in-house tools, such as YouTube’s Content ID system. Copyright Office Inquiry Through a series of public consultations, the Copyright Office is asking for input on the effectiveness, desirability, and feasibility of mandatory protection measures. Most copyright holders are supportive of the idea. They feel that without proper incentives, some online services will fail to address the piracy problem. Opponents of the idea, meanwhile, point out that it may lead to all sorts of problems and may negatively affect free expression. Much of the discussion thus far has focused on tools and technologies that detect and filter copyright-infringing content. However, this week we spotted another submission that promotes a different type of measure, which isn’t necessarily less controversial. Mandatory VPN Detection? In a letter to the Copyright Office, GeoComply CEO Anna Sainsbury suggests that VPN detection tools can play an important role as well. “As the U.S. Copyright Office explores potential technologies and solutions to include as part of the Standard Technical Measures under section 512, we respectfully suggest the inclusion of accurate and effective VPN detection tools to ensure the full protection of copyrighted works.” VPN detection tools are already widely used by major streaming services. They include Netflix, which was one of the pioneers on this front. The goal of these tools is to prevent ‘geo-piracy’, which is carried out by people pretending to be in a location that differs from where they actually are. This type of protection is important for rightsholders to enforce geographical licenses. The fact that VPNs can also be used for legitimate purposes does not prevent platforms from banning them outright. Bypassing Restrictions is Easy According to GeoComply this type of geo-piracy is quite common and in many cases, rather effective. “[W]ith hundreds of readily available VPNs on the market, the most common way for an individual to access geo-restricted content is to simply spoof their IP address using a VPN or DNS proxy,” Sainsbury writes. “There are a number of ‘free’ subscription-based VPNs/proxies that enable users to change their IP address to appear to be located in a different country or territory,” GeoComply’s CEO adds. Of course, GeoComply has the answer to this problem. The company says that its GeoGuard service can detect and block VPN and proxy traffic with 99.6% accuracy. The service has a database of problematic IP addresses but also uses Wifi access point data to check if locations are “spoofed.” geoguard Although many online streaming platforms already use VPN blocking tools, GeoComply believes that it would be beneficial to classify them as mandatory protection technologies under the DMCA. Due to the nature of the service, this would probably only apply to online platforms that have to enforce geographical licenses. This makes it a limited tool that won’t apply across the board. Marketing Pitch Needless to say, GeoComply is far from objective and the letter reads like a marketing pitch at times. “By integrating GeoComply’s solutions into their processes and risk engines, broadcasters and OTTs are able to stop-geo-piracy and ensure rightsholders are receiving the full value for their content,” Sainsbury notes. It is clear that ‘geo-piracy’ is a concern for copyright holders but whether enforcing VPN detection should be done through the law is another question. For now, GeoComply is the only stakeholder to bring up the issue; none of the rightsholders have mentioned it.

Anti-piracy coalition ACE has booked another victory by shutting down We-Play, one of the largest piracy portals in Thailand. Local police carried out a raid in Bangkok and arrested the alleged operator of the site. We-Play reportedly 'caused' $1.2 million in losses per month, which translates to $0.50 for every visit to the site. weplayThere is no denying that the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has been rather successful over the past few years. The anti-piracy group, which represents prominent rightsholders such as Disney, Netflix, Warner Bros, and beIN, systematically hunts down key piracy players. These enforcement actions have resulted in the demise of high-profile targets including Openload, RapidVideo, Pelisplushd.net, Afdah.video, and many others. This week we can add another name to the growing list. ACE reports that, in collaboration with local rightsholder True Visions, it helped the Thai police to shut down We-Play.live. The site offered a wide variety of piracy content including films, TV shows and sports. It reportedly generated revenue through subscriptions and carried advertising for illegal gambling operations. The Economic Crimes Suppression Division of the Royal Thai Police raided a condo in Bangkok where the 26-year-old operator of the site was arrested. He will be prosecuted based on copyright infringement-related charges. We-Play Operator Arrested (footage: TNN ) <>weplay arrest ACE’s Chief of Global Content Protection Jan van Voorn is pleased with the outcome. He hopes that it will clearly signal to other site operators in the region that piracy isn’t tolerated. “ACE commends the Thai Police for their continued collaboration and the effective takedown of this infamous streaming website,” van Voorn says. “The operator of the We-Play network of sites deserves his day in court.” We-Play had been in operation for four years and had an estimated 2.8 million visits per month according to ACE, citing SimilarWeb data. However, according to True Visions and local news reports, the site ‘only’ had 20,000 monthly visitors. Despite this confusion, all sources agree that the site caused roughly 50 million Thai Baht ($1.4m) in damages per month. This estimate is based on information provided by local police. With 20,000 visitors, this would mean that every visitor causes $70 in damages to rightsholders. And even at 2.8 million monthly visits, every visit would take a $0.50 out of the rightsholders’ coffers, which is still pretty high. On the heels of shutting down We-Play, Thai Police also shut down the pirate IPTV service pglivetv.com. With support from ACE and True Visions, several servers were seized at the local hosting provider World Internetwork. The 37-year-old operator of the subscription-based IPTV service was arrested at a Bangkok residence, where a number of documents and devices were also seized.

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