Kalakshar US

US Representative Deborah Ross (D-NC) has introduced an updated version of the Protect Musicians Act in an attempt to change the way independent artists bargain with major streaming platforms. Created in collaboration with The American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) and The Artists Rights Alliance (ARA), the updated bill aims to “level the playing field” for artists in the digital age and the world of AI-generated music.

“This legislation will help give small, independent music creators a level playing field, empowering them to stand together for fairer compensation and giving them a voice in important negotiations that will determine the future of the music industry,” Ross said.

As it stands, current laws leave many artists, whether signed to a major label or independently working, unprotected and at the mercy of major streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. And these companies don’t always provide fair compensation to artists when their music is uploaded and streamed on the platforms. Independent artists are often forced to accept whenever rates are being offered without being able to collectively negotiate for better terms. Additionally, there is no real protection for artists against having their voice or music manipulated by AI without consent.

If passed, the Protect Working Musicians Act would allow working artists and independent musicians to come together and negotiate with dominant streaming platforms and artificial intelligence developers. It would also grant working artists and independent musicians the ability to collectively refuse to license their music to online music distribution platforms that refuse to pay fair market value.

It could be argued that many artists have always gotten a raw deal for decades when it comes to the sales and distribution of their music. Back in the day of album downloads and CD purchases, this money was usually split in many ways, leaving only a small amount for the artist. Unfortunately, unfair compensation being offered by streaming platforms is just a modern spin on a longstanding problem. And it’s not just musicians that are being affected. For years, streaming giants like Netflix have been offering low wages to its writers, which has contributed to the strike of members of the Writers Guild of America.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/revised-protect-musicians-act-could-empower-artists-against-streaming-platforms-200058922.html?src=rss 

As part of a $520 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Epic Games will be forced to provide refunds to Fortnite players who were allegedly tricked into making unintended purchases on the platform. About $245 million has been specifically earmarked for these refunds. The regulator has started notifying more than 37 million people via email if they are for compensation.

The entire process may take one month to complete and the FTC says customers who believe they were impacted will have until January 17, 2024, to submit a claim where you can simply apply for a refund directly on the FTC’s website. The FTC notes that this is one of the largest refunds in a gaming-related case to happen to date.

The FTC previously claimed that Epic Games used deceptive tactics to get Fortnite players to make unintended in-game purchases. As part of a complaint first announced by the FTC in December of last year, the agency says the video game-making company made it easy for underage players to rack up charges “without parental consent” and also “locked the accounts of consumers” that disputed unauthorized charges. Because Epic Games violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act or COPPA, it was ordered to pay $275 million in addition to the consumer refunds.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ftc-starts-claims-process-for-fortnite-players-tricked-into-making-unwanted-purchases-201534338.html?src=rss 

DIY repair gurus iFixit just issued a hearty rebuke at Apple, dinging the company’s self-proclaimed commitment to the right-to-repair movement. Additionally, the organization has retroactively lowered the repairability score for the iPhone 14, after originally being quite impressed by the phone’s easily-accessible hardware components.

The iPhone 14’s score shot down from a respectable 7 out of 10 to a “do-not-recommend” 4 out of 10. In other words, iFixit says the phone’s no longer a viable option for DIYers, even with Apple selling replacement parts via the company’s Self Service Repair program. This is because self-repair is more than just parts. There’s software involved and iFixit says Apple’s code purposefully limits repair options for most tasks.

The company derides Apple for creating a “labyrinthine maze of obstacles” for both consumers and third-party repair technicians. It all boils down to software that requires and checks for parts bought directly from Apple. Otherwise, you’ll lose functionality and receive endless warnings during use, as the system won’t successfully pair aftermarket parts.

The repair also must be validated by a proprietary chat system that requires personal information from the customer. Third-party technicians haven’t relished the prospect of handing out their customers’ private information just to replace a battery. Additionally, consumers and technicians alike typically rely on used or third-party parts, and Apple’s system dissuades both options in favor of purchasing pricey branded components.

A blog post on the matter by iFixit stated that it’s heard from several repair pros who have excited the business entirely rather than deal with Apple’s constant hurdles. The company also noted that community pushback began almost immediately after the iPhone 14 received its original repairability score.

iFixit still lauds Apple for making an “improvement over the status quo” by selling replacement parts, but says that the hoops a consumer or technician must jump through to replace a part makes the iPhone 14 “literally not repairable.” The site hasn’t issued a repairability score for any of the just-announced iPhone 15 models, but they should start coming in the next couple of weeks.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ifixit-dings-apples-right-to-repair-commitment-and-drops-iphone-14s-repairability-score-184336316.html?src=rss 

Ahead of dropping the paid Phantom Liberty expansion next week, CD Projekt Red will release a major update for Cyberpunk 2077 on September 21. The patch will overhaul a lot of the game’s systems, switch up the skill trees and make other sweeping changes. There should be a significant visual upgrade for many PC players as well. As of Thursday, Cyberpunk 2077 will be the first game to support DLSS 3.5, the latest version of NVIDIA’s upscaling tech.

DLSS 3.5 has a feature called Ray Reconstruction, which uses AI to upgrade the ray-traced elements of a game. According to NVIDIA, it “replaces hand-tuned denoisers, which resolve sampled rays in a scene, with an NVIDIA supercomputer-trained AI network that generates higher-quality pixels in between sampled rays.”

The company trained DLSS 3.5 on five times the volume of data it fed into DLSS 3. NVIDIA claims the latest version can pinpoint different ray-traced effects to both make more intelligent decisions about factoring in temporal and spatial data, and to “retain high frequency information for superior-quality upscaling.”

You don’t necessarily need to have a 40-series GeForce RTX GPU to see the benefit. While only those graphics cards support DLSS 3, the latest version of the tech will be available on all RTX GPUs.

In the case of Cyberpunk 2077, Ray Reconstruction will help to deliver “an even better, more immersive, more realistic experience,” NVIDIA claims. That’s due to upgraded quality and clarity of reflections, more accurate global illumination and more dynamically responsive lighting, the company says.

You’ll be able to try out DLSS 3.5 in more games this fall. Along with Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, it will be soon available in the likes of Portal RTX and Alan Wake 2.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nvidias-dlss-35-brings-upgraded-ray-tracing-to-cyberpunk-2077-this-week-174447575.html?src=rss