Epic Games, the maker of the popular game "Fortnite," has launched a battle against Google in federal court in a closely watched antitrust showdown that could reshape how smartphone users get Android apps and pay for in-app content. From a report: Epic's lawsuit in the US District Court in California's Northern District targets the Google Play Store, focusing on Google's fees for in-app subscriptions and one-off transactions, along with other terms that app developers such as Epic say helped Google maintain an illegal monopoly in app distribution.

The legal battle follows a years-long debate about whether app store operators such as Google and Apple foster an open, competitive app ecosystem. The two companies argue their app stores help unlock billions in revenue for small businesses, while ensuring that Android and iOS users benefit from security oversight that the technology giants provide. The jury may hear high-profile witnesses testify from both sides, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Epic CEO Tim Sweeney.

The court fight traces back to 2020, when Epic launched Project Liberty, a plan to circumvent Apple and Google's app store terms. That move by Epic forced a confrontation with the tech giants. Epic updated the Fortnite app to encourage players to pay for in-app content directly through Epic's own website -- rather than through Apple and Google's in-app payment systems. That gambit triggered a violation of the app stores' developer terms. The move also prompted both app stores to remove the Fortnite app from their platforms.

The state of Maine is "poised to vote on an unprecedented plan to rid themselves of the state's two largest electric utilities and start with a clean slate," reports the Associated Press: The proposed takeover of two investor-owned utilities that distribute 97% of electricity in the state would mark the first time a U.S. state's utilities were forcibly removed at the same time. The referendum calls for dismantling Central Maine Power and Versant Power and replacing them with a nonprofit utility called Pine Tree Power to operate 28,000 miles (45,000 kilometers) of transmission lines...

The referendum calls for creation of a nonprofit utility with a board made up of mostly elected members and a few appointed ones. A primary selling point is that the new utility would be beholden only to ratepayers, not corporate shareholders, allowing lower costs, greater investments in the grid and improved performance, supporters said. Interest rates for long-term borrowing for capital improvements also would be less costly for Pine Tree Power. Supporters say there's little to lose: Both investor-owned utilities rank near the bottom in customer satisfaction, with longer-than-average response to power outages and higher-than-average electricity rates.

But critics, including Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, worry about the power grid becoming politicized. They also question savings projections because of the billions of dollars needed to buy out the utilities, and worry about the prospect of lengthy litigation. Maine Public Advocate William Harwood contends legal disputes could postpone the new utility's implementation by five to 10 years.
The American Public Power Association estimates that investor-owned utilities serve 66% of America's electricity consumers, according to the article. So the Associated Press notes that "Across the country, ratepayers who are unhappy with their utilities are watching what happens," citing this quote from energy-related research firm Clear View Energy Partners.

"What we say about state policy and trends is that it could become contagious."

Thanks to Slashdot reader jenningsthecat for sharing the article.

Many Americans want to abolish Daylight Saving Time, reports NBC News: Since 2018, nearly all states have passed or entertained legislation that would drop the twice-a-year time shift. And 19 states have passed laws or resolutions in support of year-round daylight saving time, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures. But there's a caveat: Nothing can change until Congress addresses a 1960s-era law blocking such action.
"This ritual of changing time twice a year is stupid," U.S. Senator Marco Rubio said in March, reintroducing legislation to end Daylight Saving Time. In an official statement the Senator announced that "Locking the clock has overwhelming bipartisan and popular support. This Congress, I hope that we can finally get this done."

But according to the Hill, "Both the House and Senate versions of the Sunshine Protection Act of 2023 haven't appeared to go far. The Senate bill has been read twice and referred to a committee, while the House bill has only been referred to a subcommittee."

While America waits, another medical association has come out in favor of ending Daylight Saving Time, reports NBC News: The American Academy of Sleep Medicine is a medical association whose professionals advocate for policies that improve sleep health. On Tuesday, the academy released a statement calling on the U.S. to eliminate daylight saving time completely, stating that standard time best supports health and safety, as it aligns with people's natural circadian rhythm. Undergoing the time switch itself raises the most concerns. Research shows that after the "spring forward" time change, workplace injuries, car crash deaths and heart attack risk have all increased. One 2023 study found that a week after transitioning from the time change, people reported more dissatisfaction with sleep and higher rates of insomnia.

DC's attorney general has sued 14 of the city's largest landlord firms, claiming they entered into agreements with a property management software firm to keep rent prices high in a city with a housing affordability crisis. From a report: The complaint, filed earlier today by Attorney General Brian Schwalb, focuses on the multifamily landlords' use of software from Texas-based firm RealPage, which suggests rental prices based on a pricing algorithm. Key to those models, according to the suit, is the data fed in from the landlords and the pressure RealPage puts on them to stick to the code-derived rental rates. "RealPage and the defendant landlords illegally colluded to artificially raise rents by participating in a centralized, anticompetitive scheme, causing District residents to pay millions of dollars above fair market prices," Schwalb said in a release tied to the complaint.

The collaboration "amounts to a District-wide housing cartel," Schwalb said, noting that "well over" 30 percent of buildings with five or more units use RealPage's software, along with 60 percent of 50-unit-plus buildings. Across a wider Washington-Arlington-Alexandria area, more than 90 percent of units in large buildings are subject to RealPage pricing, according to Schwalb's office. RealPage's rent management service, YieldStar, has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. RealPage and the property management firms utilizing their software were the subject of a class-action suit filed in the Southern District of California in October 2022, alleging the "cartel" artificially inflated prices. The Department of Justice's Antitrust Division opened an investigation in November 2022 into RealPage's role in potential landlord collusion.

Slashdot readers schwit1 and Another Random Kiwi share the breaking news that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been found guilty of fraud. From the Associated Press: FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's spectacular rise and fall in the cryptocurrency industry -- a journey that included his testimony before Congress, a Super Bowl advertisement and dreams of a future run for president -- hit a new bottom Thursday when a New York jury convicted him of fraud in a scheme that cheated customers and investors of at least $10 billion. After the monthlong trial, jurors rejected Bankman-Fried's claim during four days on the witness stand in Manhattan federal court that he never committed fraud or meant to cheat customers before FTX, once the world's second-largest crypto exchange, collapsed into bankruptcy a year ago.

"His crimes caught up to him. His crimes have been exposed," Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon told the jury of the onetime billionaire just before they were read the law by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan and began deliberations. Sassoon said Bankman-Fried turned his customers' accounts into his "personal piggy bank" as up to $14 billion disappeared. [...] U.S. Attorney Damian Williams told reporters after the verdict that Bankman-Fried "perpetrated one of the biggest financial frauds in American history, a multibillion dollar scheme designed to make him the king of crypto." "But here's the thing: The cryptocurrency industry might be new. The players like Sam Bankman-Fried might be new. This kind of fraud, this kind of corruption is as old as time and we have no patience for it," he said.

David Shepardson reports via Reuters: The top members of a U.S. House committee on China are introducing a bill that seeks to ban the U.S. government from buying Chinese drones. Mike Gallagher, the Republican chair of the committee, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking Democrat, are introducing the "American Security Drone Act" on Wednesday, the lawmakers said in a statement to Reuters. "This bill would prohibit the federal government from using American taxpayer dollars to purchase this equipment from countries like China," Gallagher said. "It is imperative that Congress pass this bipartisan bill to protect U.S. interests and our national security supply chain."

The bill would also bar local and state governments from purchasing Chinese drones using federal grants and require a federal report detailing the amount of foreign commercial off-the-shelf drones and covered unmanned aircraft systems procured by federal departments and agencies from China. Krishnamoorthi said the bill "helps protect against any vulnerabilities posed by our government agencies' reliance on foreign-manufactured drone technology and will encourage growth in the U.S. drone industry."

Separately, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday unanimously approved an amendment proposed by Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn and Democrat Mark Warner that would prohibit the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) from operating or providing federal funds for drones produced in China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela or Cuba. "Taxpayer dollars should never fund drones manufactured in regions that are hostile toward our nation," Blackburn said. China recently announced export controls on some drones and drone-related equipment, saying it wanted to safeguard "national security and interests." The U.S. Commerce Department in 2020 added dozens of Chinese companies to a trade blacklist, including the country's top chipmaker SMIC and Chinese drone giant DJI.

Amazon used a secret algorithm to boost prices to U.S. households by more than $1 billion, says the FTC in ia new court filing. "The FTC lawsuit was filed in September but many details were withheld until Thursday when a version of the lawsuit with fewer redactions was made public in U.S. District Court in Seattle," notes Reuters. From the report: Amazon, which has 1 billion items in its online superstore, created a "secret algorithm internally code named 'Project Nessie' to identify specific products for which it predicts other online stores will follow Amazon's price increases. ... Amazon used Project Nessie to extract more than a billion dollars directly from Americans' pocketbooks," the FTC said.

Amazon began testing the pricing algorithm in 2010 to see if other online retailers tracked its prices and to raise prices for products that were likely to be tracked by competitors, the complaint said. After outside retailers began matching or increasing their own prices, Amazon would continue to sell the product at an inflated price, the FTC alleged, which resulted in $1 billion in excess profit. Amazon paused the algorithm during its Prime Day sales events and the holiday shopping season when there was more media and customer attention on the online retailer, the FTC said.

"After the public's focus turned elsewhere, Amazon turned Project Nessie back on and ran it more widely to make up for the pause," the lawsuit said. Amazon in April 2018 used it to set prices for more than 8 million items purchased by customers that collectively cost almost $194 million, the complaint said, before pausing it in 2019. Amazon retail executive Doug Herrington in January 2022 asked about using "old friend Nessie, perhaps with some new targeting logic" to boost profits for Amazon's retail arm, the complaint said. The FTC complaint also accuses Amazon of seeking to hide information about operations from antitrust enforcers by using the Signal messaging app's disappearing message feature and said the company destroyed communications from June 2019 to early 2022. Amazon also required sellers using its Prime feature to utilize its logistics and delivery services, leading to increased fees for sellers who used its fulfillment services from 27% in 2014 to 39.5% in 2018, as per the FTC. Furthermore, the complaint mentioned that Amazon treated Walmart.com differently, not allowing it to sell on its platform and allegedly deterring Walmart from offering discounts to shoppers who picked up their purchases from Walmart stores.

Further reading: Amazon Boosted Junk Ads and Deleted Messages To Thwart Antitrust Probe, FTC Says

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Coming out of the ongoing Google antitrust trial, an internal Apple presentation has surfaced (via The Verge) in which the company called Android a "massive tracking device." The presentation in question was regarding a push within Apple to start "Competing on Privacy." The slides, made in January 2013, dove into how Apple's competitors (Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft primarily) handled privacy matters and user data. A "privacy timeline" includes some 2000s and 2010s events that made headlines regarding privacy, such as Google's Street View cars recording private Wi-Fi networks and Instagram's aim to use user photos in its ads, as well as Google's privacy policy move to combining user data across services. Apple went on to compare how its products handle privacy differently from Google and others.

The presentation culminates in the full-page statement [...] where Apple says that "Android is a massive tracking device." The slideshow is partially redacted and abridged, which leaves out the context of this statement, but it's certainly a bold way to talk about a competitor. Of course, all mobile devices do a whole lot of tracking, whether it's Android or iOS.

The Brave browser is rolling out a privacy-focused AI assistant named Leo, which the company claims provides "unparalleled privacy" compared to AI chatbot services likes Bing Chat, ChatGPT, Google Bard and others. The Verge reports: Following several months of testing, Leo is now available to use for free by all Brave desktop users running version 1.60 of the web browser. Leo is rolling out "in phases over the next few days" and will be available on Android and iOS "in the coming months."

The core features of Leo aren't too dissimilar from other AI chatbots like Bing Chat and Google Bard: it can translate, answer questions, summarize webpages, and generate new content. Brave says the benefits of Leo over those offerings are that it aligns with the company's focus on privacy -- conversations with the chatbot are not recorded or used to train AI models, and no login information is required to use it. As with other AI chatbots, however, Brave claims Leo's outputs should be "treated with care for potential inaccuracies or errors."

The standard version of Leo utilizes Meta's Llama 2 large language model and is free to use by default. For users who prefer to access a different AI language model, Brave is also introducing Leo Premium, a $15 monthly subscription that features Anthropic's AI assistant, Claude Instant -- a faster and cheaper version of Anthropic's Claude 2 large language model. Brave says that additional models will be available to Leo Premium users alongside access to higher-quality conversations, priority queuing during peak usage, higher rate limits, and early access to new features.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Pennsylvania cannot enforce a regulation to make power plant owners pay for their planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, a state court ruled Wednesday, dealing another setback to the centerpiece of former Gov. Tom Wolf's plan to fight global warming. The Commonwealth Court last year temporarily blocked Pennsylvania from becoming the first major fossil fuel-producing state to adopt a carbon-pricing program, and the new ruling makes that decision permanent. The ruling is a victory for Republican lawmakers and coal-related interests that argued that the carbon-pricing plan amounted to a tax, and therefore would have required legislative approval. Wolf, a Democrat, had sought to get around legislative opposition by unconstitutionally imposing the requirement through a regulation, they said. The court agreed in a 4-1 decision.

The regulation written by Wolf's administration had authorized Pennsylvania to join the multistate Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which imposes a price and declining cap on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. It would be up to Wolf's successor, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, to decide whether to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court. Shapiro's administration had no comment Wednesday on whether it would appeal, and Shapiro himself hasn't said publicly whether he would follow through on the plan to join the consortium, should the courts allow it. Still, Shapiro is "focused on addressing climate change, reducing emissions, and protecting public health while creating jobs and protecting consumers," Shapiro's administration said in a statement.

Thomas Claburn reports via The Register: For a period of two years between September 2019 and September 2021, two Americans and two Russians allegedly compromised the taxi dispatch system at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to sell cabbies a place at the front of the dispatch line. The two Russian nationals, Aleksandr Derebenetc and Kirill Shipulin, were indicted by a grand jury for conspiring to commit computer intrusions, the US Justice Department said on Tuesday. They remain at large. In early October, the two American nationals, Daniel Abayev and Peter Leyman, who were indicted last year, pleaded guilty, each to one count of conspiring to commit computer intrusions.

The scheme represented an attempt to monetize the demand among taxi drivers for lucrative airport fares -- the current flat rate for JFK to Manhattan is $70 plus additional charges. As described in the indictment (PDF), taxi drivers are required to wait in a holding lot at JFK, often for several hours, before being dispatched in the order of their arrival to airport terminals. And because time spent waiting in line is not paid, drivers have a financial incentive to avoid waiting in line. The conspirators allegedly developed a plan to hack the dispatch system around September 2019. The indictment describes several approaches that were tried, "including bribing someone to insert a flash drive containing malware into computers connected to the dispatch system, obtaining unauthorized access to the dispatch system via a Wi-Fi connect, and stealing computer tablets connected to the dispatch system."

The government's filing suggests that the group gained and lost access to the dispatch system several times. When they did have access, the alleged conspirators offered to move drivers to the front of the dispatch queue for a $10 fee, and waived the fee for those who found other drivers willing to pay to play. Many drivers took advantage of the service. According to the Justice Department, the group booked 2,463 queue cuts in a single week around December 2019. The scheme allegedly enabled as many as 1,000 trips per day that skipped the queue at JFK. The American conspirators are said to have collected the money from participating drivers and to have sent payments to the alleged Russian conspirators, describing the money transfers as "payment for software development" or "payment for services rendered." The indictment indicates that the Russians received more than $100,000 for their work. If apprehended -- which appears unlikely given current US relations with Russia -- the Russians face charges that carry a maximum sentence of ten years in prison. Abayev and Leyman each face up to five years in prison. They're scheduled to be sentenced early next year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The head of the Russian department responsible for identifying threats to the "stability, security and integrity" of the internet, has revealed the extent of the Kremlin's VPN crackdown. Former FSO officer Sergei Khutortsev, a central figure in Russia's 'sovereign internet' project, confirmed that 167 VPN services are now blocked along with over 200 email services. Russia is also reported as stepping up measures against protocols such as OpenVPN, IKEv2 and WireGuard. [...]

An in-depth report published by TheIns.ru has details of the monitoring/blocking system reportedly deployed in Russia, how much it costs (4.3 billion rubles/$43 million in 2020, 24.7 billion rubles/$247 million for 2022-2024), and the names of the companies supplying the components. The publication also obtained original documents that apparently show some of the protocols Russia initially intended to block. They include older VPN protocols IPSec, L2TP, and PPTP, plus the BitTorrent protocol still widely used today. The full report on the system, which reveals the use of Intel chips/chipsets in 965 servers manufactured by Huawei and already purchased by Russia, plus another 2400+ servers for 2023/24, is available here.

China's popular social media platforms are requiring "self-media" accounts with over 500,000 followers to disclose real-name information, prompting concerns over increased doxxing and privacy among some users. Reuters reports: China's most popular social media platforms on Tuesday announced that "self-media" accounts with more than 500,000 followers will be asked to display real-name information, a controversial measure that has prompted concerns over doxxing and privacy among some users. "Self-media" includes news and information not necessarily approved by the government, a genre of online content regulators have cracked down on in recent years to "purify" China's cyberspace. [...]

Rumors of the new policy had prompted lively debate among users. Some, like former state media editor Hu Xijin, have defended the measure as necessary in order to force influential accounts to use more responsible speech. Others, however, have expressed concerns that the measure would make doxxing easier and platforms would further remove online users' anonymity in the future.

The new measures will remove the anonymity of thousands of influencers on social media platforms that are used daily by hundreds of millions of Chinese. Several of the platforms said that accounts with over 1 million followers would be affected first and those that do not comply would face restrictions in their online traffic and income as a consequence.

Apple could be forced to scale back its App Store fees for developers after one of the European Union's antitrust watchdogs said its commissions violate the bloc's rules. From a report: In the latest twist in a long-running clash between the Dutch Authority for Consumers & Markets and the US tech giant, officials ruled that Apple's commission on certain app subscriptions are an abuse of the company's market power. In a confidential decision seen by Bloomberg, the Dutch regulator said Apple's rules unfairly target companies that offer subscription services, such as Match Group's dating app Tinder, which has to pay high commission rates on app sales, unlike ones that don't have paid digital content.

Apple harms such companies "by charging them an additional and inexplicably higher fee," according to the Dutch decision, which was sent in July. Apple had earlier offered to reduce app sale commission in the Netherlands from 30% to 27%, but the ACM's confidential findings state this offer doesn't go far enough. The decision could pave the wave for greater antitrust scrutiny across the 27-nation EU on the fairness of Apple's fee structure for different apps. The European Commission in Brussels is already investigating how Apple restricts apps from informing users of cheaper subscriptions outside the app store.

Nokia sued Amazon in courts across three continents, alleging the e-commerce giant uses its technologies in streaming services and devices without authorization. From a report: The suits were filed in the US, Germany, India, the UK, and the European Unified Patent Court, Arvin Patel, Nokia's Chief Licensing Officer said in a statement on the company's website. Separately, a suit was also filed against HP in the US over video-related technologies, he said.

Apple has warned over a half dozen Indian lawmakers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's main opposition of their iPhones being targets of state-sponsored attacks, these people said Tuesday, in a remarkable turn of events just months before the general elections in the South Asian nation. From a report: Rahul Gandhi, Indian opposition leader, said in a media briefing Tuesday that his team had received the said alert from Apple. Shashi Tharoor, a key figure from the Congress party; Akhilesh Yadav, the head of the Samajwadi Party; Mahua Moitra, a national representative from the All India Trinamool Congress; Priyanka Chaturvedi of Shiv Sena, a party with notable influence in Maharashtra reported that they too had been notified by Apple regarding a potential security attack on their iPhones. Asaduddin Owaisi, the leader of the All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM); Raghav Chadha from AAP, originating from an anti-corruption crusade a decade prior and later securing a political foothold in the national capital region; Sitaram Yechury, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India; alongside Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera were also impacted, they said. Journalists Siddharth Varadarajan and Sriram Karri, along with Observer Research Foundation (ORF) India President Samir Saran shared that they had been served with identical warnings from Apple.

wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: In a surprising development on Monday that is spooking the cybersecurity community, the SEC filed charges against SolarWinds and its Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Timothy G. Brown, alleging that the software company misled investors about its cybersecurity practices and known risks. The charges stem from alleged fraud and internal control failures related to known cybersecurity weaknesses that took place between the company's October 2018 initial public offering (IPO) and its December 2020 revelation of the infamous supply chain cyberattack dubbed "SUNBURST." [...] The SEC's complaint also points to internal communications among SolarWinds employees, including Brown, in 2019 and 2020, which raised questions about the company's ability to protect its critical assets from cyberattacks.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: GSK will pay 23andMe $20 million for access to the genetic-testing company's vast trove of consumer DNA data, extending a five-year collaboration that's allowed the drugmaker to mine genetic data as it researches new medications. Under the new agreement, 23andMe will provide GSK with one year of access to anonymized DNA data from the approximately 80% of gene-testing customers who have agreed to share their information for research, 23andMe said in a statement Monday. The genetic-testing company will also provide data-analysis services to GSK.

23andMe is best known for its DNA-testing kits that give customers ancestry and health information. But the DNA it collects is also valuable, including for scientific research. With information from more than 14 million customers, the only data sets that rival the size of the 23andMe library belong to Ancestry.com and the Chinese government. The idea for drugmakers is to comb the data for hints about genetic pathways that might be at the root of disease, which could significantly speed up the long, slow process of drug development. GSK and 23andMe have already taken one potential medication to clinical trials: a cancer drug that works to block CD96, a protein that helps modulate the body's immune responses. It entered that testing phase in four years, compared to an industry average of about seven years. Overall, the partnership between GSK and 23andMe has produced more than 50 new drug targets, according to the statement.

The new agreement changes some components of the collaboration. Any discoveries GSK makes with the 23andMe data will now be solely owned by the British pharmaceutical giant, while the genetic-testing company will be eligible for royalties on some projects. In the past, the two companies pursued new drug targets jointly. GSK's new deal with 23andMe is also non-exclusive, leaving the genetic-testing company free to license its database to other drugmakers.

Blake Brittain reports via Reuters: A judge in California federal court on Monday trimmed a lawsuit by visual artists who accuse Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt of misusing their copyrighted work in connection with the companies' generative artificial intelligence systems. U.S. District Judge William Orrick dismissed some claims from the proposed class action brought by Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz, including all of the allegations against Midjourney and DeviantArt. The judge said (PDF) the artists could file an amended complaint against the two companies, whose systems utilize Stability's Stable Diffusion text-to-image technology.

Orrick also dismissed McKernan and Ortiz's copyright infringement claims entirely. The judge allowed Andersen to continue pursuing her key claim that Stability's alleged use of her work to train Stable Diffusion infringed her copyrights. "Even Stability recognizes that determination of the truth of these allegations -- whether copying in violation of the Copyright Act occurred in the context of training Stable Diffusion or occurs when Stable Diffusion is run -- cannot be resolved at this juncture," Orrick said.

Orrick agreed with all three companies that the images the systems actually created likely did not infringe the artists' copyrights. He allowed the claims to be amended but said he was "not convinced" that allegations based on the systems' output could survive without showing that the images were substantially similar to the artists' work. The judge also dismissed other claims from the artists, including that the companies violated their publicity rights and competed with them unfairly, with permission to refile. Orrick dismissed McKernan and Ortiz's copyright claims because they had not registered their images with the U.S. Copyright Office, a requirement for bringing a copyright lawsuit.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Brazil's telecoms regulator Anatel claims that during an operation last week, it successfully blocked around 80% of pirate 'TV boxes' in the country. Estimates from early 2023 suggest that seven million were active in Brazil. The operation, claimed to be the most significant ever carried out, arrives just weeks after Google & Cisco were criticized for "turning a blind eye" to the IPTV piracy problem. [...] Whatever the approach, if Anatel had somehow managed to prevent 80% of all TV boxes receiving pirated content in the space of a year, that would be an extraordinary achievement. Even a week would be astonishing but the claim of millions in a day seems either incredible, non-credible, or entirely dependent on more important information or nuance that isn't being reported. Another angle is that disruption on a large scale tends to register in search results and Google data on various related search terms doesn't seem to reflect millions of TV boxes suddenly going dark in Brazil last week. At least, not for any significant length of time.