e dot dot dot
a mostly about the Internet blog by

September 2017
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
         


Dispute Between Roberto Escobar And Netflix Over 'Narcos' Gets Weird: Licensing Talks And A Dead Location Scout

Furnished content.


Last year we discussed a dispute between Roberto Escobar, brother of the infamous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel's accountant, and Netflix over the latter's hit show Narcos. It was a strange dispute for any number of reasons, ranging from Roberto Escobar's demand for one billion dollars and the rights to alter content in future episodes to the fact that Escobar's demands didn't lay any actual claim to any intellectual property in dispute, all the way up to the fact that Narcos doesn't actually portray Roberto Escobar at all. Much like the silly dispute between Activision and Manuel Noriega over publicity rights, it was pretty much assumed that this nonsense would be done away with more quickly than a federal informant working on the inside of the cartel.Sadly, however, this still appears to be a thing, and it's getting quite strange. For starters, Escobar's legal team claims that a capitulation of sorts by the show might be in the works. It all starts as you'd expect, with the legal team for Narcos detailing via a letter how silly Escobar's claims are, as well as how plainly false the applications Escobar subsequently made for trademarks on terms and titles from the show were.

Narcos Productions, LLC (NPL) — the company behind the series and its popular video game spinoff Narcos: Cartel Wars — contend that without NPL's "knowledge or consent, on Aug. 20, 2016, Escobar filed use-based applications to register the marks NARCOS and CARTEL WARS with the [U.S. Patent and Trademark Office] covering a range of goods and services." Those services include everything from "downloadable ring tones" and "sunglasses, decorative magnets" to "temporary tattoos, bookmarks and sheet music," according to the trademark application documents included with the letter. The letter calls the claims "fraudulent." "For example," writes NPL attorney Jill M. Pietrini, "Escobar claims that it has used NARCOS in connection with things like 'operating a website' and 'game services provided online from a computer network' since Jan. 31, 1986. However, the internet had not been developed for widespread consumer use in 1986, nor was the capability to provide audiovisual works nor game services available at that time."
So basically the lawyers for the show are demonstrating how flimsy Escobar's attempts to setup a legal way to extort the show are. Trademark law is quite clear on the rights it affords to those who are the first to use a trademark in commerce and ought to act as a shield to these attempts. Despite that, emails obtained by THR from Escobar's legal team to Escobar himself seem to indicate that Narcos is considering just paying Escobar to go away anyway.
In a subsequent email correspondence obtained by THR and dated Sept. 1, an attorney for Escobar Inc. at Century City-based Browne George Ross LLP informs his client that he and Pietrini had a productive conversation about the claim."I floated the idea of paying you for an assignment or license or release related to your pre-exisiting rights in the trademarks in certain categories," Wesley writes. "She seemed to see the logic of exploring those discussions. She is going to speak with her client and get back to me."
While there is no clear commitment to a licensing deal there, the entertainment industry is notorious for paying people like this to go away, so it's not entirely out of the question. Given the clear legal framework here, however, as well as the personalities involved on the other side, it strikes me as fairly ludicrous that the show's producers would want any part of paying a former member of the cartel for no clear legal reason. Escobar's lawyers are making a lot of noise about how if Escobar chooses not to settle for whatever Narcos might be willing to pay him, then they "own the trademarks", which certainly is not remotely true here in the United States.Adding to how strange all of this is would be the fact that a location scout for the show, Carlos Munoz Portal, was murdered in Mexico in recent weeks while scouting locations for Narcos' fourth season. While the facts surrounding Portal's death remain unknown at the time of this writing, Escobar has been rather cryptic on the topic.
Speaking Monday to The Hollywood Reporter, Escobar's 71-year-old surviving brother, Roberto De Jesus Escobar Gaviria, suggested the show's producers are not cut out for filming in such cartel-infested locales as Mexico and Colombia, adding that they would benefit from the hiring of "hitmen ... as security."As for whether or not anyone at Escobar Inc., including Gaviria, currently has any knowledge regarding what happened to slain location scout Portal, Gustafsson would only offer, "No comment on that. But Escobar Inc. cooperates with all law enforcement."
It's as likely as not that Escobar is merely playing coy on this topic to add some gravitas to his threats and demands to Narcos and Netflix, but the comments are chill-inducing considering the source. Regardless, the merits of the trademark claims at hand remain fairly clear. Talks of Narcos capitulating or not, it's difficult to imagine a $1 Billion payday for Escobar coming anytime soon.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story


Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 22-Sep-2017
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



CCleaner Hack May Have Been A State-Sponsored Attack On 18 Major Tech Companies

Furnished content.


At the beginning of this week, reports emerged that Avast, owner of the popular CCleaner software, had been hacked. Initial investigations by security researchers at Cisco Talos discovered that the intruder not only compromised Avast's servers, but managed to embed both a backdoor and "a multi-stage malware payload" that rode on top of the installation of CCleaner. That infected software -- traditionally designed to help scrub PCs of cookies and other tracking software and malware -- was subsequently distributed by Avast to 700,000 customers (initially, that number was thought to be 2.27 million).And while that's all notably terrible, it appears initial reports dramatically under-stated both the scope and the damage done by the hack. Initially, news reports and statements by Avast insisted that the hackers weren't able to "do any harm" because the second, multi-stage malware payload was never effectively delivered. But subsequent reports by both Avast and Cisco Talos researchers indicate this payload was effectively delivered -- with the express goal of gaining access to the servers and networks of at least 18 technology giants, including Intel, Google, Microsoft, Akamai, Samsung, Sony, VMware, HTC, Linksys, D-Link and Cisco itself.Cisco's researchers say they obtained a copy of the hackers' command-and-control server from an unnamed source. That server contained detailed logs of the 700,000 or so computers that had "phoned home" to the hackers earlier this month. Subsequent investigation has concluded that the hackers didn't really care about most of the infected customers, and that this may have been a sophisticated state-sponsored attack specifically designed access and copy internal information and trade secrets from major tech firms:

"That target list presents a new wrinkle in the unfolding analysis of the CCleaner attack, one that shifts it from what might have otherwise been a run-of-the-mill mass cybercrime scheme to a potentially state-sponsored spying operation that cast a wide net, and then filtered it for specific tech-industry victims. Cisco and security firm Kaspersky have both pointed out that the malware element in the tainted version of CCleaner shares some code with a sophisticated hacking group known as Group 72, or Axiom, which security firm Novetta named a Chinese government operation in 2015."
One configuration file on the attackers' server was also set for China's time zone, though of course neither of these are enough solid evidence to definitively conclude state-sponsored involvement... yet. In an updated post to its website, Avast has been forced to concede that their initial claim that the second, multi-staged payload was never delivered was false, and that the total number of compromised machines at these targeted companies is "at least in the order of hundreds":
"First of all, analysis of the data from the CnC server has proven that this was an APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) programmed to deliver the 2nd stage payload to select users. Specifically, the server logs indicated 20 machines in a total of 8 organizations to which the 2nd stage payload was sent, but given that the logs were only collected for little over three days, the actual number of computers that received the 2nd stage payload was likely at least in the order of hundreds. This is a change from our previous statement, in which we said that to the best of our knowledge, the 2nd stage payload never delivered."
Cisco also warned impacted tech companies that deleting the software itself off of infected PCs is no guarantee that the threat has been mitigated, since the payload may have installed a second payload on their networks with its own, still-active command and control server. Like previous attacks of this type, the reported scope of the sophisticated attack is likely to only grow as researchers dig deeper.As several outlets were quick to correctly note the attack on CCleaner highlights a supply-side security problem at a growing number of software companies like Ukrainian accounting software MeDoc and South Korea-based firm Netsarang, which both passed on malware to trusting clients in the last few months. Traditionally we've comforted ourselves by insisting we're safe if we just avoid untrusted app stores, dubious attachments, or questionable links -- but this attack further up the software supply chain erodes public trust, which could deter users from using or updating essential protection.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story


Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 22-Sep-2017
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



September 2017
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
         







RSS (site)  RSS (path)

ATOM (site)  ATOM (path)

Categories
 - blog home

 - Announcements  (0)
 - Annoyances  (0)
 - Career_Advice  (0)
 - Domains  (0)
 - Downloads  (3)
 - Ecommerce  (0)
 - Fitness  (0)
 - Home_and_Garden  (0)
     - Cooking  (0)
     - Tools  (0)
 - Humor  (0)
 - Notices  (0)
 - Observations  (1)
 - Oddities  (2)
 - Online_Marketing  (0)
     - Affiliates  (1)
     - Merchants  (1)
 - Policy  (3743)
 - Programming  (0)
     - Bookmarklets  (1)
     - Browsers  (1)
     - DHTML  (0)
     - Javascript  (3)
     - PHP  (0)
     - PayPal  (1)
     - Perl  (37)
          - blosxom  (0)
     - Unidata_Universe  (22)
 - Random_Advice  (1)
 - Reading  (0)
     - Books  (0)
     - Ebooks  (0)
     - Magazines  (0)
     - Online_Articles  (5)
 - Resume_or_CV  (1)
 - Reviews  (2)
 - Rhode_Island_USA  (0)
     - Providence  (1)
 - Shop  (0)
 - Sports  (0)
     - Football  (0)
          - Cowboys  (0)
          - Patriots  (0)
     - Futbol  (0)
          - The_Rest  (0)
          - USA  (0)
 - Technology  (1055)
 - Windows  (1)
 - Woodworking  (0)


Archives
 -2024  March  (170)
 -2024  February  (168)
 -2024  January  (146)
 -2023  December  (140)
 -2023  November  (174)
 -2023  October  (156)
 -2023  September  (161)
 -2023  August  (49)
 -2023  July  (40)
 -2023  June  (44)
 -2023  May  (45)
 -2023  April  (45)
 -2023  March  (53)
 -2023  February  (40)


My Sites

 - Millennium3Publishing.com

 - SponsorWorks.net

 - ListBug.com

 - TextEx.net

 - FindAdsHere.com

 - VisitLater.com