Posts by Prophet

The MPAA has long criticized Google on the issue of piracy but revelations from recently leaked emails indicate that Hollywood has embarked on an organized political campaign against the search giant. The fight has now bubbled over, with the MPAA and Google slamming each other in public.

mpaa-logoEven after running for weeks, the fallout from the Sony hacking fiasco is showing no signs of waning. In fact in some areas it appears that matters are only getting worse.

Earlier this month a TF report revealed how the MPAA (with a SOPA defeat still ringing loudly in its ears) is still intent on bringing website blocking to the United States.

The notion that Hollywood was intent on reintroducing something so unpopular didn’t sit well with critics, but that was only the beginning. A subsequent article in The Verge revealed a campaign by the MPAA to attack “Goliath” – a codeword for Google – by “convincing state prosecutors to take up the fight” against the search giant.

The MPAA budgeted $500,000 for the project with costs potentially rising to $1.175 million. The Hollywood group subsequently called on SOPA-supporting Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood to attack Google, which he did.

The New York times has a copy of the letter he sent to the search giant – worryingly it was almost entirely drafted by the MPAA’s lawfirm Jenner and Block.

After a week of “no comment” from Google, the company has just broken its silence. In a statement from SVP and General Counsel Kent Walker, Google questions the MPAA’s judgment over its SOPA-like aims and apparent manipulation of an Attorney General.

“Almost three years ago, millions of Americans helped stop a piece of congressional legislation—supported by the MPAA—called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). If passed, SOPA would have led to censorship across the web. No wonder that 115,000 websites—including Google—participated in a protest, and over the course of a single day, Congress received more than 8 million phone calls and 4 million emails, as well as getting 10 million petition signatures,” Walker writes.

“We are deeply concerned about recent reports that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) led a secret, coordinated campaign to revive the failed SOPA legislation through other means, and helped manufacture legal arguments in connection with an investigation by Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood.”

Then, in what can only be a huge embarrassment for the MPAA and the Attorney General, Walker turns to the letter AG Hood sent to him in 2013.

“The MPAA did the legal legwork for the Mississippi State Attorney General.
The MPAA then pitched Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood, an admitted SOPA supporter, and Attorney General Hood sent Google a letter making numerous accusations about the company,” Walker explains.

“The letter was signed by General Hood but was actually drafted by an attorney at Jenner & Block — the MPAA’s law firm. As the New York Times has reported, the letter was only minimally edited by the state Attorney General before he signed it.”

The Google SVP ends with a shot at the MPAA and questions its self-professed position as an upholder of the right to free speech.

“While we of course have serious legal concerns about all of this, one disappointing part of this story is what this all means for the MPAA itself, an organization founded in part ‘to promote and defend the First Amendment and artists’ right to free expression.’ Why, then, is it trying to secretly censor the Internet?” Walker concludes.

Without delay, Google’s public comments were pounced upon by the MPAA who quickly published a statement of their own. It pulls no punches.

“Google’s effort to position itself as a defender of free speech is shameful. Freedom of speech should never be used as a shield for unlawful activities and the internet is not a license to steal,” the statement begins.

“Google’s blog post today is a transparent attempt to deflect focus from its own conduct and to shift attention from legitimate and important ongoing investigations by state attorneys general into the role of Google Search in enabling and facilitating illegal conduct – including illicit drug purchases, human trafficking and fraudulent documents as well as theft of intellectual property.”

And, in a clear indication that the MPAA feels it acted appropriately, the Hollywood group lets Google know that nothing will change.

“We will seek the assistance of any and all government agencies, whether federal, state or local, to protect the rights of all involved in creative activities,” the MPAA concludes.

The statements by both Google and the MPAA indicate that in this fight the gloves are now well and truly off. Will ‘David’ slay ‘Goliath’? Who will get hurt in the crossfire?

The Isohunt.to team have decided to give an early Christmas present to Pirate Bay fans. They've launched "The Open Bay," an initiative that allows anyone to put a 'copy' of The Pirate Bay online, minimal technical knowledge required.

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The Pirate Bay raid last week was a landmark incident which disrupted the BitTorrent ecosystem.

Many people have been looking for Pirate Bay alternatives in recent days. While there is nothing that can match the old Pirate Bay, there are plenty of copies available.

Earlier this week the TPB crew said that it would be a good thing to have clones of the site all over the Internet, and it appears that the Isohunt.to team heard this message loud and clear.

The same team that previously resurrected isoHunt launched a copy of TPB on Oldpiratebay.org last week, and now they’re opening up its code to the public.

We have to emphasize that the term Pirate Bay “copy” should be used loosely here. The standard release includes oldpiratebay.org’s theme and a database dump of roughly 8 million torrent links, while Pirate Bay only had around 3 million.

The difference is explained by the fact that The Open Bay database also includes files that originated from KickassTorrents and Isohunt.to. The original Pirate Bay code or descriptions are not there, and it’s not possible to upload or comment either.

Finally, it may go without saying but people should keep in mind that hosting a Pirate Bay copy comes with a legal risk.

Whether the surge in Pirate Bay copies is really a good development is open to debate, but we’ll examine this topic in an upcoming article.

For those who want a local copy of The Pirate Bay’s archive for historical purposes there’s a safer option. A recent dump of the files database, complete with all original pirate bay IDs, torrent descriptions and hashes is available here.

Torrent savvy people who know how magnet links work can even use the latter as a local Pirate Bay search engine, with the help of notepad.

The initiative, properly named The Open Bay, opens up the source to their Pirate Bay clone. This means that in a few simple steps anyone can have a copy of the Pirate Bay installed on his or her own domain.

“We, the team that brought you Isohunt.to and oldpiratebay.org are bringing you the next step in torrent evolution. Open Pirate Bay source code,” Isohunt.to says.

According to the people behind “The Open Bay” there’s a lesson to be learned from the isoHunt and Pirate Bay shutdowns. Instead of a few big players, the torrent community itself should be a swarm of copies.

“We want to change the torrent landscape which has been frozen for 10 years. We need to push it ahead,” Isohunt.to tells TF.

“The Open Pirate Bay source code will give absolutely anyone with minimal knowledge of how the Internet and websites work and some basic hosting, the opportunity to create a pirate bay copy on his own domain.”

To do so, the Isohunt.to team offers code and scripts and a large database dump with instructions to get it up and running on a simple shared hosting account. In addition, they put all files in a GitHub repository so people can create improved copies of their copy.

The Pirate Bay raid is still sending shock-waves through the BitTorrent 'community' but despite the prolonged downtime people haven't stopped sharing. Statistics provided by one of the largest trackers used by TPB show that the number of continuous file-sharers remains pretty much unaffected.

download-keyboardThere is no denying that The Pirate Bay played a central role in the torrent ecosystem.

As one of the few well-moderated sites it was the source for dozens, if not hundreds of other torrent sites. And with millions of visitors per day the site also had the largest user-base.

With an event like this, one could expect that BitTorrent usage would have been severely impacted, but it appears that people have found their way to one of the many alternatives.

TF reached out to the operator of Demonii, the tracker that was used for all Pirate Bay torrents, and it appears that the Pirate Bay raid isn’t affecting its traffic much.

“Not much is happening differently on our side due to the TPB downtime. I cannot see any anomalies or differences,” the Demonii operator told us.

“Since all the torrents are pretty much mirrored by KickassTorrents and Torrentz, it seems that the downtime hasn’t stopped people from downloading or uploading at all,” he adds.

The connections per minute to the Demonii tracker remain relatively stable, hovering around the 25 million mark, with a peak during the weekends. The graph below shows the pattern for the past week with the Pirate Bay raid (last Tuesday) included.

If The Pirate Bay remains down for a longer period of time problems may arise on a different level though. TPB has traditionally been one of the best moderated sites, which helped to prevent malware and other scams from spreading.

In theory others could take over this role, but if more sites topple the quality element may become an issue. For now, however, most people seem to be sharing as much as usual.

In its response to a lawsuit filed by rightsholders last month a Swedish ISP has refused to block The Pirate Bay and streaming portal Swefilmer. Several major music and movie companies initiated legal action against Bredbandsbolaget in November, but the ISP says there is no legal basis for a web blockade.

In many countries around the world The Pirate Bay has become a focal point for rightsholders seeking website blocking injunctions. Portrayed as the worst-of-the-worst, the site has been named in many ISP liability lawsuits.

But while the site disappeared last week, pending legal action concerning it has not. The most recent lawsuit was filed in November by Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Nordisk Film and the Swedish Film Industry against Swedish service provider Bredbandsbolaget.

In papers filed at the Stockholm District Court, the plaintiffs attempt to hold Bredbandsbolaget liable for the copyright-infringing actions of its pirating subscribers. The entertainment companies say that in order to put itself in the clear the ISP should block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay and popular streaming portal Swefilmer.

Just over a month later and Bredbandsbolaget (Broadband Company) has now submitted its response to the Court. The ISP completely opposes the entertainment companies’ demand to block content and services.

“Bredbandsbolaget’s role is to provide its subscribers with access to the Internet, thereby contributing to the free flow of information and the ability for people to reach each other and communicate,” the company said in a statement.

Bredbandsbolaget says that its job is to deliver a broadband service to its customers, not control or block specified content or services. Noting that the company will not monitor the communications of its subscribers, the ISP says that it’s a fundamental principle of the “Open Internet” that carriers can not be held responsible for the traffic carried on their networks.

“Bredbandsbolaget does not block content or services based on individual organizations’ requests. There is no legal obligation for operators to block either The Pirate Bay or Swefilmer,” the company explains.

“There are other legal means to stop infringement of rights, but there is no provision in Swedish law that forces an Internet provider to block its subscribers’ access to services and content.”

While the motivation behind the lawsuit is to obtain a ruling that will ease blocking of additional sites in future, stopping Swedish users from accessing sharing services could prove more difficult than in other territories. The country has a long history of sharing files and services such as The Pirate Bay have become embedded in its Internet culture.

It’s also worth noting that at least for now The Pirate Bay doesn’t even exist so blocking it would be futile. Whether the entertainment companies will proceed with their case as planned if TPB stays down remains to be seen, but it’s certainly possible they might seek to include the many copycat sites that have appeared following the site’s demise.

The Icefilms streaming movie and TV show portal has a strong following but for the past 24 hours the site has been offline. With a Pirate Bay raid ringing in everyone's ears, has Icefilms fallen to the same fate? According to a source familiar with the situation the site should get back on its feet soon.

Without doubt the past seven days have shaken the file-sharing world to its core. Last Tuesday the Internet’s most famous file-sharing site, invincible according to many accounts, fell following a raid by Swedish police.

That kind of surprise can lead people to panic when other similar sites have downtime at the same time. For the past 24 hours concern has been growing over Icefilms, a movie and streaming portal with a strong online following.

Sometime yesterday morning, Icefilms disappeared offline. Visitors to the site reported various issues, from no page loading to redirections to another domain. Most, however, were confronted with the image shown below.

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While much preferable to a law enforcement notice, the image itself has been causing concern among Icefilms users due to it being hosted on Amazon rather than the site’s own server.

But despite the worries a source familiar with the situation informs TF that there is nothing to be concerned about. Icefilms currently has hosting issues to overcome, hence placing the image on another server. The site itself should be back to its full glory within days.

Even when the Pirate Bay raid is disregarded, it’s easy to see why Icefilms users have been panicking. Firstly, the first few pages of Google are almost useless when it comes to getting information about the site. In fact, Icefilms itself is completely absent from Google search results.

However, if one turns to Bing then results are restored to their former glory. In fact, Bing even provides a convenient Icefilms search engine as the first result.

Only adding to the confusion is Icefilms’ inclusion in a recent blocking order. Last month the UK High Court ordered ISPs to block 32 domains following an application by the Motion Picture Association. In recent weeks the leading service providers responded by blocking access to Icefilms.info.

Following in the footsteps of the main site, Pirate Bay's Facebook page with nearly half a million likes was shut down a few hours ago. It's unclear whether the Pirate Bay crew deleted the page or if Facebook took action against the troubled site.

tpbfacebookMore than a week has passed since The Pirate Bay’s servers were pulled offline, and now the same is happening to the site’s official Facebook page.

With more than 470,000 likes TPB’s Facebook page had quite a reach, although the last status update dates back to last year. Since then the page was mostly used by ‘fans’ to share TPB related news stories, and most recently links to Pirate Bay alternatives.

Those who try to access the page today are out of luck though, as Facebook informs them that “the page isn’t available” and that it “may have been removed.”

It’s unclear what the reason behind the removal is. It could have been initiated by The Pirate Bay crew itself but it’s also possible that Facebook was
asked to shut it down for alleged links to copyright infringing material.

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If The Pirate Bay crew deleted the page the motivation may have been to cover its tracks. Swedish authorities have confirmed that there’s a new criminal investigation ongoing into the site’s operators, which may have prompted some to cut their ties.

That said, TPB’s official Twitter profile, which hasn’t been updated since December last year, remains online.

The Pirate Bay crew have remained pretty much silent over the past few days. Earlier this week a message was relayed through “Mr 10100100000″ who suggested that no decision has yet been made on a potential return.

“Will we reboot? We don’t know yet. But if and when we do, it’ll be with a bang,” Mr 10100100000 said.

Meanwhile, most of the site’s users are flocking to the Pirate Bay copies that are floating around, or one of the other popular torrent sites. This mass migration caused trouble at ExtraTorrent yesterday, who were briefly offline due to a “sudden increase in user traffic.”

At the same time, groups using the “Anonymous” moniker claimed to have hacked both the Swedish Government and the New Zealand police in a retaliatory move, while a better known “Anonymous” group distanced itself from The Pirate Bay.

“We do not support the return of The Pirate Bay itself. We used to be the activist arm behind this website and what it stood for, but we feel like The Pirate Bay doesn’t represent our message anymore,” the latter group said.

And so the storm continues.

December 18, 2014

While the BitTorrent ecosystem is filled with uncertainty and doubt, researchers at Delft University of Technology have released the first version of their anonymous and decentralized BitTorrent network. "Tribler makes BitTorrent anonymous and impossible to shut down," lead researcher Prof. Pouwelse says.

The Pirate Bay shutdown has once again shows how vulnerable the BitTorrent ‘landscape’ is to disruptions.

With a single raid the largest torrent site on the Internet was pulled offline, dragging down several other popular BitTorrent services with it.

A team of researchers at Delft University of Technology has found a way to address this problem. With Tribler they’ve developed a robust BitTorrent client that doesn’t rely on central servers. Instead, it’s designed to keep BitTorrent alive, even when all torrent search engines, indexes and trackers are pulled offline.

“Tribler makes BitTorrent anonymous and impossible to shut down,” Tribler’s lead researcher Dr. Pouwelse tells TF.

“Recent events show that governments do not hesitate to block Twitter, raid websites, confiscate servers and steal domain names. The Tribler team has been working for 10 years to prepare for the age of server-less solutions and aggressive suppressors.”

To top that, the most recent version of Tribler that was released today also offers anonymity to its users through a custom-built in Tor network. This allows users to share and publish files without broadcasting their IP-addresses to the rest of the world.

“The public was beginning to lose the battle for Internet freedom, but today we are proud to be able to present an attack-resilient and censorship-resilient infrastructure for publishing,” Dr. Pouwelse says.

After thorough tests of the anonymity feature earlier this year, it’s now built into the latest release. Tribler implemented a Tor-like onion routing network which hides who is seeding or sharing files. Users can vary the number of “hops” the client uses to increase anonymity.

“Tribler creates a new dedicated network for anonymity that is in no way connected to the main Tor network. By using Tribler you become part of a Tor-like network and help others become anonymous,” Dr. Pouwelse says.

“That means you no longer have any exposure in any swarm, either downloading or seeding,” he adds.

The downside to the increase in privacy is higher bandwidth usage. After all, users themselves also become proxies and have to relay the transfers of others. In addition, the anonymity feature may also slow down transfer speeds depending on how much other users are willing to share.

“We are very curious to see how fast anonymous downloads will be. It all depends on how social people are, meaning, if they leave Tribler running and help others automatically to become anonymous. If a lot of Tribler users turn out to be sharing and caring, the speed will be sufficient for a nice downloading experience,” Pouwelse says.

Another key feature of Tribler is decentralization. Users can search for files from within the application, which finds torrents through other peers instead of a central server. And if a tracker goes offline, the torrent will continue to download with the help of other users too.

The same decentralization principle applies to spam control. Where most torrent sites have a team of moderators to delete viruses, malware and fake files, Tribler uses user-generated “channels” which can be “liked” by others. If more people like a channel, the associated torrents get a boost in search results.

Overall the main goal of the University project is to offer a counterweight to the increased suppression and privacy violations the Internet is facing. Supported by million of euros in taxpayer money, the Tribler team is confident that it can make the Internet a bit safer for torrent users.

“The Internet is turning into a privacy nightmare. There are very few initiatives that use strong encryption and onion routing to offer real privacy. Even fewer teams have the resources, the energy, technical skills and scientific know-how to take on the Big and Powerful for a few years,” Pouwelse says.

After the Pirate Bay raid last week Tribler enjoyed a 30% increase in users and they hope that this will continue to grow during the weeks to come.

Those who want to give it a spin are welcome to download Tribler here. It’s completely Open Source and with a version for Windows, Mac and Linux. In addition, the Tribler team also invites researchers to join the project.

Looks like this thread has run its course now, so closing it :32_002:

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The new website is said to be a clone of The Pirate Bay database

Isohunt, a website providing access to mostly pirated material, has cloned the database of its competitor, The Pirate Bay, after it was shut down last week.

The cloned site is online and fully functioning, according to users.

The Pirate Bay, one of the world's most visited websites, has been closed since a police raid in Sweden last week.

Isohunt, which was banned in the UK last month, says it made the move in order to "save the Freedom of information on the Internet".

If The Pirate Bay returns, the cloned site will be taken down, Isohunt added.

The Pirate Bay offered an expansive list of links to pirated content including films, TV shows and music.

The Swedish police carried out a raid near Stockholm last week, seizing servers from The Pirate Bay following an investigation which had lasted "years", the force said.

While its founders have already been convicted of copyright infringement offences and some have been jailed, the site has proved difficult to close down permanently.

In 2012, The Pirate Bay changed its structure to make itself more portable and easy to clone.

When he heard about the raid last week Peter Sunde, one of the site's original founders, said that he did not like what the site had become.

"The site was ugly, full of bugs, old code and old design," he wrote in a blog post.

Mr Sunde went on to criticise the explicit nature of the adverts which appeared on it.

"It never changed except for one thing - the ads. More and more ads were filling the site, and somehow when it felt unimaginable to make these ads more distasteful they somehow ended up even worse."

bare minimum 1.2m, although perhaps a 1.5m Gibertini would be a better option

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Swedish police have reportedly raided The Pirate Bay. The portal has been down for several hours. The site has long hidden behind the relatively lax laws of Sweden, but it appears it's exhausted the leniency.

The embattled torrent tracker went down this morning, and Swedish Police confirmed to TorrentFreak that some servers were seized in connection with a broad intellectual property operation of some kind.

There has been a crackdown on a server room in Greater Stockholm. This is in connection with violations of copyright law," read a statement from Paul Pintér, police national coordinator for IP enforcement.

According to Metro in Sweden (bastardized translation by Google):

The effort was initiated by Frederick Ingblad, one of Sweden's special prosecutors file sharing. He confirms that the raid took place in the Stockholm area, on Tuesday morning, without specifying the site further.

- There were a number of police officers and Digital forensics there.This took place during the morning and until the afternoon. And there were several servers and computers seized, but I would not say exactly how many, says Fredrik Ingblad.

So while we don't have a definite confirmation, it's probably fair to draw a line between the intellectual property operation and the outage. TorrentFreak notes that several other trackers like EZTV are down. The Pirate Bay forum at Suprbay.org is also down.

Earlier this year it was reported that The Pirate Bay set up a network of virtual servers to keep the tracker up and running in the case of a raid but that obviously didn't work.

The Pirate Bay has been in hot water for aiding piracy for long time. The first raid on the service goes all the way back to 2006. Opponents say that the service willfully aids in wholesale piracy by linking to torrents for copyrighted movies, music, TV shows, etc. And though the founders have been successfully prosecuted, the service has continued to exist. What claims it has to legitimacy are couched behind freedom of speech.

As for the future, it's hard to imagine that this is The Pirate Bay's final act. Two of the Pirate Bay's founders are in prison, and the only one who isn't, Peter Sunde was recently released after being arrested earlier this year. Even if it dies in name, torrents and piracy will live on under some other name. There are plenty of alternative trackers, and indeed, because The Pirate Bay has been shutdown and raided before, people are used to looking other places for their torrent links.

Updating with more information as we get it. Let us know if you know anything.

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Ofcom, the UK's telecoms regulator, says fixed broadband connections are now "almost universally available" throughout the UK.

Average download speeds are 23 megabits per second (Mbps), it said in a report on the UK's telecoms infrastructure.

But it admitted that 3% of premises do not have basic broadband of 2Mbps.

And 15% can't receive 10Mbps - the usual requirement for a typical household these days.

There is also a huge gap between the minimum and maximum broadband download speeds available in Britain, Ofcom finds, with some premises receiving just 0.1Mbps and others 350Mbps.

About 18% of households don't bother with any home internet access at all, Ofcom said.

"Things are improving," says Andrew Ferguson, editor of the Think Broadband website, "but there is still a huge gap between the haves and the have-nots.

"About three to four million households still don't have access to superfast broadband, while others don't realise it is available in their area."

The regulator has also launched an interactive map allowing consumers to assess the level of broadband, mobile and TV services in their areas and compare this against UK averages.
'Aggressive target'

The government's aim is to deliver superfast broadband to 95% of UK premises by 2017 - a target the regulator describes as "aggressive".

While superfast broadband of 30Mbps is now available to 75% of premises, just 21% have taken it up, Ofcom said.

Consumers and businesses in rural areas are still under-served, the report concludes, largely because of the expense of providing high-speed networks in areas of low population.

If the length of fibre cable from the household to the nearest junction cabinet is too long, download speeds of 30Mbps are not possible.

But technologies are being developed to rectify this issue for remote households.

Small businesses also lose out compared with households when it comes to access to superfast broadband, says the report.

And with average UK upload speeds of just 3Mbps, business applications such as video conferencing and large file sharing, can become difficult.
The end of the landline?

As more people rely on their mobiles for voice calls and broadband penetration increases, network providers will increasingly move towards voice-over-broadband services, Ofcom believes.

This could ultimately lead to "the switching off of the traditional landline network", known as PSTN - public switched telephone network.

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Ofcom says the government's target of delivering superfast broadband to 95% of UK premises by 2017 is "aggressive"

About 16% of households already have no voice landline, relying on mobile for calls.

But as with broadband, fast 4G mobile services are not evenly spread throughout the country, and vary a lot depending on where people are trying to ring or connect from.

For example, for people in cars, 4G is not available at all in 71% of areas.

While nearly three-quarters of premises have access to 4G, only 35% are served by Vodafone, O2 and EE, said Ofcom.

EE has the best outdoors coverage, reaching 68% of the country, it said.

As mobile use and connectivity speeds grow, so does data usage, up 53% between 2013 and 2014.

But mobile data usage - at 0.5 gigabytes (0.5GB) a month - is still tiny compared to fixed broadband usage, currently 58GB a month on average.

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A set-top TV box that can help people with colour blindness better differentiate shades has been developed by a Cambridge firm.

Eyeteq, from University of East Anglia-based company Spectral Edge, alters colours frame-by-frame - without spoiling them for the non-colour-blind.

The technology could also be used on video games, the company said.

A colour-blindness awareness group has called for Eyeteq to be part of all televisions as standard.

The condition affects one in 12 men, and one in 200 women, with red-green colour blindness the most common.

According to Spectral Edge's website: "Eyeteq gently modifies colours in images in such a way that colour-blind observers enjoy both improved visibility as well as the overall appearance."

"With careful design using mathematical perception models," it adds, "we are able to remap colours to maximise discrimination for colour-blind people, at the same as minimising the strength of the effect for non-colour-blind people."

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Colour clash - colour-blind football fans complained about Liverpool and Ludogorets playing in red and green

The company says those who are not colour blind do not mind the colour change as it is slight. It also said there is no noticeable lag as pictures are remapped in real-time, a process that takes milliseconds.
Liverpool woe

The technology had now reached proof-of-concept stage, Spectral Edge's managing director Christopher Cytera told the BBC.

"The next step is to refine and upgrade that proof of concept," he said.

"At the moment it's working at 720p resolution, we want to get it to 1080p."

Spectral Edge then plans to license the technology to manufacturers to include in new televisions.

Looking very good to me :32_002:

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The market is full of rumours that this or that that telephony operator wants to buy, merge or somehow absorb a rival or two, especially if that rival has TV-related assets.

Widely talked about are discussions between Vodafone and Liberty Global’s European operations. BT (the former British Telecom, and which used to own cellular operator O2) is looking to buy O2 back from Telefonica. If this doesn’t happen, the rumour mill suggests that BT might instead buy EE.

Meanwhile, other rumours suggest a Vodafone move on TalkTalk.

And while these rumours might resolve themselves over the next few days, it is a recognised fact that ‘quad-play’ is still the name of the game, and where a successful business needs cellular, broadband, land-line and TV if it is to retain customer loyalty and grow.

There are plenty of real-world examples of such M&A activity, whether from Numericable’s take-over of SFR, or Telefonica Deutschland’s €3.2 billion share issue to fund its acquisition of E-Plus, or Comcast’s purchase of NBCUniversal, or the current hot-scheme where AT&T is bidding for DirecTV.

S.ky (whether in its ‘UK’ version, or enlarged ‘S.ky Europe’ entity), has been frequently mentioned as a potential target is some of these rumours. S.ky has a strong position in the UK, although it is much less influential in Germany or Italy. Nevertheless, S.ky has an excellent reputation in TV aggregation and sports ‘rights’ as well as TV production, and cannot be immune from these discussions.

S.ky could fall to a take-over from cellular giant Vodafone. The rationale is simple: Vodafone wants a quad-play offering, and is missing pay-TV in its portfolio of services. Moreover Vodafone has the cash, the muscle, the borrowing power and associated strengths in terms of managing a triple-play offering.

The received wisdom is that a sale of O2 back to BT might well take place, with Telefonica possibly retaining a 20 per cent stake in BT’s then enlarged and transferred business.

This move could start a ‘domino effect’ of M&A activity, and the investment bankers are opening their books to a flood of potential fees with all manner of permutations cited as making sense. And one such theory is that S.ky lacks a cellular division, while Vodafone lacks a pay-TV offering: ‘Hey Presto’ as the City magicians might exclaim, and it is a marriage made in heaven!

Those who question the logic behind all or any of these rumours is to ask whether there are true synergies between content production and distribution. Besides, what if Alibaba’s billions were to enter the TV distribution market, or Facebook, or Amazon? Each has billions of dollars in terms of potential buying power. We can discount Google from this scenario because Brussels seems not to like the company!

The next few weeks promise to be fun.

Solid dish is always better than a mesh dish, mesh dishes tend to be cheaper but not by much these days

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