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Letters to the Editor: In Defense of Tidal, Election Porn, and 'Fucking Morons'

It's been another fun week in Motherboard land, and we've enjoyed chatting with a whole lot of you in the past couple weeks.

Dearest Motherboarders,

Editor-in-chief Derek Mead here. It's been another fun week in Motherboard land, and we've enjoyed chatting with a whole lot of you in the past couple weeks. Hit us up on Twitter, send us an email (letters@motherboard.tv), or mail us a potato with a note written on it. (This actually happened.) We're calling readers too, so let us know if you want to chat!

Anyway, on to this week's letters.

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Cheers,

Derek

Removing Comments "Reeks of Elitist Censorship"

Hello,

I can't tell you how much I disagree with your new comment policy. While I don't partake in leaving comments, I gain a whole lot by reading them. Generally facts or stories from readers that add to the article, try to better explain things, and or elaborate on what i had just read. I would often research things that people mention, and/or watch videos, links, etc I often thought that motherboard had a very civil discussion board…especially compared to other sites. While I can see what your aiming for I think that it completely misses the mark, reading top comments an entire week AFTER I read the article is pointless. Why bother? People have enough commen sense to disregard BS comments and or stupid "I work from home" ads. Devoting resources to moderating comments seems foolish, perhaps the solution is to back off and let it be. To say that "We're replacing comments with something better" and "in the end, we just want to hear from you" reeks of elitist censorship. You might as well say "your too stupid to differentiate between a legitimate comment and crap, so we'll decide for you!" Motherboard generally writes excellent articles, but more often than not there is some gem of a comment (the 1%) that ties it together or gives a whole different perspective. Loosing the opertunity to learn what that is, is a massive, massive loss. While I'm only one person…I don't see me sticking around without it.

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Thanks

Andy

This is a sentiment I've heard more than a few times since we eliminated comments, and aside from the fact that what I wrote in our announcement may or may not make me sound like an asshole, Andy's (and others') point is that readers can differentiate between spam and real comments. That's entirely fair, although I don't really care for spam and BS either, but spam isn't the reason we shut down comments, and we're well aware that our readers are smart as hell.

We turned off comments because much of the time comment sections were empty or populated by throwaway comments, which doesn't inspire the discussion people (including us) strive for. Then, occasionally, the comments section would get brigaded by people making personal attacks on our subjects or reporters, and we're not going to have that on our site. Aside from diverting resources to moderation, hiring someone just to look out for and process offensive comments all day is not something I want to do. It's a terrible job that many people don't think about from a personal level.

At the same time, we've definitely lost insightful comments along the way, and that sucks. Our letters to the editor has already proven successful in inspiring better discourse (including this email from Andy), but the delayed response time obviously defeats the purpose of the internet's immediate response time and connectivity. We're aware of all of this, which is why making the decision to kill comments difficult for us. But in Motherboard's case, the calculus made sense, and now we're working towards figuring out how to get insightful reader responses like this more directly connected to stories. Stay tuned. - DM

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A Very Interesting Solution to the Drone-Airplane Controversy

Hi,

I read you very informative article about the possibility of drone registration, and found it very interesting to learn who's on who's side in the debate.

I think the solution could be worked in the opposite direction: What if airlines emitted a signal that would force ANY nearby drones to descend, turn left, turn right, whatever was needed and -- most importantly -- report their identification ID to the airplane.

Then all the feds would have to do to know who to talk to after an infraction is look at their records (which of course they could have) of who's bank account paid for that unit.

Like the ID codes in all our CPUs, just require the manufacturer of the drone software and/or drone controller chip to give each one a unique ID. And broadcast it when requested. Add in a "universal descend/evade" signal that it listens for, and the crises problems outlined in your article go away (in theory, anyway). Along with our freedom, which it sounds like we're going to lose anyway.

On a side note, I wonder if the manufacturers would be so eager to give up our right (if we have this right, which I doubt the founding fathers thought about) to own and operate any aircraft wherever we want (even peering into our neighbor's fenced-off back yard) if those same manufacturers ended up with ALL the burden of making such modifications to their equipment?

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Technologically, of course, it's completely doable but would cost a good bit of a small fortune. But then, plane crashes and forest fires the air drops can't reach aren't cheap, either. And those also cost lives. So maybe it would be worth it -- assuming this is a problem that needs solving in the first place (personally, I'm for vacuum-tube transport, and getting rid of the entire commercial airline industry).

Best regards,

Ace Hoffman

Carlsbad, CA

The idea of having built in drone-killing systems on passenger jets is one of the most futuristic scenarios I've heard of in awhile. With the drone market booming and the FAA slow to develop a working system for integrating drones into US airspace, you have to wonder if the eventual solution is going to be something as dramatic as this. - DM

Pokémon War

I have played every pokemon game and beat them all spending countless hours of free time roaming these worlds. And I never thought there to be a war until the subject of war arose. Once I had the mindset that all these games are being played after a major conflict took place the pieces fell into place to make this theory relevant if not the underlining truth. But before this idea was put in my head I never for a second thought a war took place. But I enjoy the what if feeling and like that the pokemon company retains it be a mystery tho a prequel game based on such a idea would be amazing and I'm sure draw back original older pokemon master like myself to play the game once again. I can not wait to see where pokemons story takes us

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- James Unger

The Pokémon war theory blew my mind too. - DM

"Your Being a 'Fucking Moron' Is Forever"

There's a popular quote from Oscar Wilde that says; "Man is least himself when he talks in the first person. Give him a mask, and he'll show you his true face." When mirrored with the internet, this quote is gospel enough to be ripped from the pages of the bible. When you create a comment section, you look for honest opinion, not a filtered…moderated…controlled…diatribe where the distasteful is disseminated through a sieve. A comment section exists because we seek the truth about what's in the hearts of the reader, and sometimes civility isn't an accurate indicator. There's a huge difference between, "I disagree with you", and, "You're a fucking moron."

If you're still not getting this, then let me school you bitches a minute. When your boss asks you how your new system of dealing with reader responses is working, then you can show him/her all filtered and moderated 'letters' you've received and respond with, "some people don't like it", instead of the avalanche of dissent where people are calling you "a fucking moron". Because screw honesty right? People will get over "don't like it", but your being a "fucking moron" is forever. And well shit, at least you get to have a nice clean, scripted reader response section.

Tom V

The idea that civility isn't always an accurate indicator of sentiment is something I agree with, sure. But it should go both ways: Tom, I'd like to come visit you at work and call you a fucking moron next time you make a typo. If you're looking for the boss, you've found him. - DM

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Someone Fact-Checked Our Story About Fact-Checking the Back to the Future 2 Newspaper

I thought the food trucks hauling garbage was just BS, but its a real article from the Gettyburg Times on 6/2/89

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2202&dat=19890602&id=GuslAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ev0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=7104,444232&hl=en

Apparently, the area below the fold wasn't to be shown on screen so they just grabbed some existing articles to fill space

- Matt Hill

We added this to the story when Matt first wrote, I'm just impressed by the work. Kudos to you Matt! - DM

A Defense of Tidal

It doesnt surprise me that Motherboard has jumped on the bandwagon of dumping on Tidal. It seems like the cool thing to do these days.

Nevermind the fact that it remains the one and only streaming service where you get 100% uncompressed lossless audio quality, and is run by artists, not corporate stiffs.

"But we have Spotify! We have Pandora! We have iTunes! Why would a sane person ever actually pay $20/month to stream music!? Thats $240 per year! Are you nuts?!

I cant even hear the difference! Who cares thats its owned by artists, it doesnt make a difference to me, the totally selfish consumer."

Well, it makes a difference to ME. Tidal is what Ive always wanted in a paid music service. I never got into iTunes, Spotify or anything else because Im not paying for an inferior product.

I wont ever pay for lossy audio, period, end of story. Thats just me, and I understand that Im different, and sound quality really doesnt matter for 90%+ of music listeners.

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But the sad reality is, the current generation of kids aged 12-25 dont feel like they should ever have to pay for music AT ALL. They feel like Pandora ads are an unjust intrusion!

Why would you pay for something that can be had for free? If paying for milk at the store was optional, how many people do you think would pay for it?

This is how we got to where we are with the music industry. Go look at a film shoot for any advertisement, TV or film production. There are dozens of people around at all times - all getting paid and many of those jobs are union jobs that have health benefits and a pension when you retire. Now go by your local music studio and ask them how business is. Ask a local musician if they're planning a vacation soon, or have plans to buy buy a new car or gift for their significant other with the proceeds of their music career.

We've gotten to a point with the music industry where it isnt a sustainable occupation for almost anybody. What was once a vibrant, diverse business where people as lowly as "roadies" who carry the gear could live a decent middle class life, now all but the biggest stars now have to find alternative income streams to continue making music.

Growing up, whenever we got any money whatsoever, we spent it on music. Tower Records on Broadway might as well have been our drug dealer. We skipped lunch to cop tapes and CDs.

Music is an afterthought to the modern life. Its something you do while doing something else - driving, working out, maybe when you try to get your girl in the mood.

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Listening to music as an activity is almost a forgotten art. We used to sit around and listen to complete albums. Today, music consumption is largely a la carte - singles and singles only.

Singles used to have the effect of subsidizing the rest of an album. You knew you liked that one track, why not take a shot on the whole album? That subsidy is gone forever now.

Ive come to accept that recorded music wont ever be as important as it was in its 50 year "golden age" - roughly 1950-2000. But dont think this doesnt have an impact on the music itself.

Thats the second reason I support Tidal. $20 a month is way less than I used to spend as a kid on music. For the music industry to be sustainable, thats probably what we all should pay.

Do we want a diverse, thriving industry where all musicians and producers are valued and given the ample time and resources necessary to develop true greatness?

Or do we want our musicians, and the music they make, to be exploited and eroded along with the rest of America's middle class?

- Chris Perry

This is a really useful perspective and I'm glad to have it. It's a response to Kari's piece about the Tidal concert this week not living up to its billing, and I think it's fair to say it's a disappointment. I also think it's fair to argue Tidal hasn't lived up to expectations as a business, although opinions are obviously divided on the service itself. But Chris makes a good point: There will always be people who want to listen to music at the best possible quality (because that's how music should be heard), and all too often services just gloss over audio fidelity with marketing platitudes. - DM

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Spotify Is Vulnerable Because of Its Centralization

Dear Editors,

It is critical to note that attacks such as the one described in the article are only possible because of the centralization of the music business. With all of the music - and all of the gross revenues - going to a centralized entity like Spotify, the attack becomes profitable. The attack, in short, is "increase my revenue by cutting myself a larger slice of the pie".

Many of us in the Information Tech world are working to provide decentralized solutions to these problems of hypercentralization such as we see in the music business.

Imagine this: instead of Spotify, a totally decentralized system, by which each artist hosts her own music. A user interface provides the same "look and feel" as Spotify, but the music itself is hosted by the artist, with micropayments for listening going directly from the listener to the artist with no middlemen.

The authors attack scenario is rendered ineffective. Sure, you can build a botnet to listen to songs that you host, paying yourself each time the bot listens to your track, but only at a net financial loss to yourself.

Thanks for your time,

Rip Rowan

Hello Motherboard editors,

Thank you for the wonderful piece from Mr. Bedell on the ease of building a Botnet that could cause havoc with Spotify. The article was well researched, well written, and I would like to thank Mr. Bedell for taking such a careful approach to the topic. It was also very kind of him to link to two different pieces I wrote. I will certainly be returning the favor, as his article will be prominently featured in numerous talks I will be giving on this topic this year, including the Future of Music Policy Summit coming up in a week and a half.

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One small quibble: in his piece he says

"Major music labels are insulated from streaming fraud because they negotiate a much more complex compensation package with Spotify than the simple formula outlined earlier. Sony negotiated terms including multi-million dollar advances from Spotify, and "usage-based minimums" which guarantee fixed per-stream royalty rates even if bots drag the shared-model rates to new lows."

It's true the majors have usage-based minimums, however this is only partial insulation, and the major labels would not be happy to receive these minimums. Assuming nothing dramatic has changed since the Sony contract was written, a fall from $0.00844 (2014 average for US Premium subscribers) to $0.006 would represent a 28% drop in revenue. Considering the increasing importance that streaming has for the music industry this would be very bad news.

In all other respects I found the article to be flawless.

Thank you again,

Sharky Laguana

I think William Bedell's story about building a botnet to destroy Spotify with fake listens is one of the smartest stories we ran last week, because it really gets to the nuts and bolts of streaming economics. - DM

I Loved This Weird Scam Tip Sent to Lorenzo

Hey There,

How are ya? My name's Rob and I'm a fan of your work on Motherboard. I couldn't really think of anyone else to send this to, so here goes:

I got a scam call today, normal stuff, a Haitian-sounding man told me the police were about to come and arrest me unless I paid a fine. What surprised me about the call though, was that it came from a number with my area code. Not the area code from the next county over, my area code. Here's a link to a thread I found on the subject.

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http://complaintwire.org/complaint/S54BAAAAAAA/level-3-communications-llc

notice that these hundreds of complaints date back 5 years and the most recent complaint was made today. I'm not sure when "local outbound" was enabled, but the scamming enabled by L3 Communications looks like it has been happening for some time.

This may seem like an expected progression of voice, (and I may be a little late on addressing this) especially to those entrenched in the VoIP markets. However for the layperson it presents a significant shift in the process of filtering calls from unknown numbers. These could be sales people, debt collectors, scammers, non-profits, or really anyone who has obtained their phone # info from a third party source.

What's further, is that despite the increase in "local reach," there is still total anonymity. If the posts from the link can be believed, it looks like L3 Communications has been enabling scams for years. Now, their extended reach is also giving any customer (legal or not) a new "avenue of attack" for outreach.

Might be a story, might not. Figured I'd shoot it over. I attached a picture of the service offering which makes this possible. If ya' do publish anything about this though please leave my name (and anything else you know about me) out. Telecom giants are shitty enemies.

Cheers,

-Rob

This email to Lorenzo kicked off a little conversation that ended with the following email from Rob that I thought offered some valuable outside opinion on the way we approach infosec and hacking stories. Now that hacking is a pervasive topic and big breaches are happening regularly and getting tons of attention, including on Motherboard, do we need to worry about fueling further hacks? News is news, and it's our job to report it out, and I think we do an above-average job when it comes to covering infosec with savvy. At the same time, the "SCARY HACKERS!@" narrative has become so widespread that it's starting to overshadow the simple fact that we're all gonna get hacked at some point.

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Of course. I can't think of any, other than my belief that the topic of information security either will or already is experiencing a "Streisand" effect.

While I think a gripping exploration into power imbalance is noble, I'm afraid that a looming event will see you, and others like you, as retrospective champions of thought. I would consider this reverence and susequent feeling of rational vindication to be akin to the tide, which always ebbs once it has flown. I think it usually breeds over reaction and fuels confirmation bias.

In this vein I would suggest temperance, although I'm not sure temperance will get you very many pageviews.

Its worth noting though that this is aaaall intense speculation. Lol welcome to my life. That's all I got. Have a good one!

Best,

-RT

Is Sluts Against Harper Illegal?

I find it odd that media outlets are giving positive press time to a group who is blatantly violating our Election Laws…

Canada Elections Act

Offering bribe

481. (1) Every person is guilty of an offence who, during an election period, directly or indirectly offers a bribe to influence an elector to vote or refrain from voting or to vote or refrain from voting for a particular candidate.

Marginal note:Accepting bribe

(2) Every elector is guilty of an offence who, during an election period, accepts or agrees to accept a bribe that is offered in the circumstances described in subsection (1).

Your publication should exercise caution when giving positive press to people committing illegal acts.

Scott

Vancouver, BC

Giving positive press to people committing illegal acts is something we're quite wary of, but in this case, the Sluts Against Harper get-out-the-vote campaign was noteworthy to say the least. The stories were also some of the most popular we've run in the last month, so I'm guessing perv politics works. - DM