Showtime Won't Explain Why Its Website Was Hijacking User Browsers To Covertly Mine Cryptocurrency

from the whoops-a-daisy dept

Showtime's websites recently began covertly hijacking user browsers to mine cryptocurrency, and neither Showtime nor its parent company CBS appear interested in explaining how or why it happened. The code in question -- a bit of JavaScript dubbed Coinhive, was embedded in two different Showtime domains: Showtime.com and Showtimeanytime.com. When a visitor visited these domains, their browser was hijacked and their computer was forced to help mine Monero, a new privacy-centric alternative to bitcoin currently valued at around $92 each.

The mining software was first noticed by a Twitter user who discovered the Coinhive miner buried early on in the source code:

Users weren't alerted that this was happening, and visitors reportedly found the mining software utilized up to 80% of a visiting user's CPU cycles. Such miners can also notably drain battery life for visitors on mobile devices. And as of this writing, Showtime has been completely unwilling to confirm that this occurred, much less explain how the code appeared. The company has refused to respond to numerous requests for comment from a myriad of websites, Techdirt included. The code appeared in the evening of September 23, and had disappeared by the next Monday morning.

It seems relatively unlikely that executives or developers at Showtime thought it would be a good idea to hijack the browsers of potential customers to mine cryptocurrency, leading many to believe that Showtime's servers were likely hacked by somebody looking to covertly make a little extra money:

"The JavaScript, which appeared on the sites at the start of the weekend and vanished by Monday, sits between HTML comment tags that appear to be an insert from web analytics biz New Relic. Again, it is unlikely that an analytics company would deliberately stash coin-mining scripts onto its customers' pages, so the code must have come from another source – or was injected by miscreants who had compromised Showtime's systems."

That said, it's not impossible that Showtime was running an experiment. Cryptocurrency miners have been making headlines in recent weeks after The Pirate Bay was caught also covertly using Coinhive to hijack visitor browsers to make extra bank. Coinhive only just launched September 14, advertising itself as a creative alternative to the traditional advertising model. But after users over at the Pirate Bay subreddit discovered the practice and began to complain, the website was forced to pull the software from its code and issued a relatively flimsy mea culpa:

"As you may have noticed we are testing a Monero javascript miner. This is only a test. We really want to get rid of all the ads. But we also need enough money to keep the site running."

Except covertly hijacking a browser with glorified malware obviously isn't a great way of "keeping a site running," especially if websites running to embrace Coinhive refuse to let users opt out -- much less inform them this is even happening. Not surprisingly, the recent rise in such stealth cryptocurrency miners has resulted in Adblock Plus moving to help block such hijacks. Malwarebytes analyst Jérôme Segura warns in a blog post that some websites appear unsurprisingly intent on "pushing the limits towards a really bad user experience":

"Gaming and video sites typically are more resource intensive, so it seems to make little sense to run a miner at the same time without having a noted impact. Having said that, many people who consume copyrighted content are perhaps less likely to complain about an under par user experience. The question at this point is: How far can publishers push the limits towards a really bad user experience? You may be surprised that for many, this is not really a problem at all and that double dipping is, in fact, a fairly common practice."

Again, there are creative alternatives to advertising, and then there's just being an asshole. Hijacking a visitor's browser, CPU and electricity to mine cryptocurrency without informing them -- or letting them opt out -- sits firmly in the latter category.

Filed Under: coinhive, hijacking, javascript, monero, showtime
Companies: cbs, showtime

HBO Has A Distribution Problem, But Just 'Going Without' Does Nothing To Push Them To Solve It

from the at-this-point,-the-content-providers-are-being-deliberately-obtuse dept

Many, many posts and discussions have taken place here at Techdirt about content providers and their love of windowed releases. A point frequently made is that there would likely be a lot less piracy and a lot more purchasing if these 30/60/90 day rental/PPV/premium cable windows were eliminated on new releases. Another frequent target are premium cable providers and their original offerings, which suffer from long delays between original airings and their appearance on retail shelves.

More discussion is on the way! It started with a piece in the Guardian by Frederic Filloux arguing, as many have, that release windows lead to more piracy when it comes to cable TV programs. Megan McArdle responded to that article by arguing that such an argument is totally bogus, and the cable execs are brilliant business folks that many of us only dream of being one day. Then enter Marco Arment, agreeing with McArdle, saying that it's wrong to argue that cable companies are "forcing" people into piracy:

Realistically, nobody’s going to stop you from pirating it, but you can’t argue that you’re justified in pirating it. Admit it: you’re ripping it off, it’s morally questionable at best (and illegal), but you don’t care. You’re pirating a TV show because you don’t want to pay for it or wait for it to become available in the ways you want. You’re not making any kind of statement or participating in a movement — you’re just being cheap and/or impatient. If you don’t have the fortitude to cope with that, then don’t pirate.

If you want to hit cable companies, HBO, etc. where it hurts — if you truly want to send a message that there’s unmet demand they should be addressing — don’t watch their shows. At all. Don’t even pirate them. Don’t blog or tweet or face (?) about how good they are. Just don’t watch them.

That’s a real statement. And if enough people do it, that movement will effect change.

There's a questionable moral argument in there, but the troublesome part is in the second paragraph. Not watching a show doesn't send the message that there's unmet demand. It sends the message there's very little or no demand, which is exactly the wrong message to send if you're trying to motivate HBO, etc. to either speed up its delivery system or offer a la carte service.

Arment expands on this thought process on a followup post, which deals mainly with the "statement" sent by piracy:

Actually, piracy does make a statement — it’s just the wrong statement. If you truly want to pressure content providers to adapt new distribution channels, and you’re not just trying to justify getting everything for free, piracy is hurting your cause.

Most geeks try to justify piracy because the content isn’t available on our terms. We can’t get it in our country, we can’t get it as quickly as we want, it costs more than we want to pay, we can’t get it on the device we want, or we can’t get it in the format we want. Publishers have a distribution problem.

But when publishers see widespread piracy of their content, they don’t see the distribution problem. They think they have a piracy problem.

Ament is right. HBO, et al have a distribution problem. But simply refusing to watch or purchase the content sends two messages, neither of which will result in an overhaul of the distribution system. (The following uses HBO as an example, but it could any major motion picture studio, premium cable service or other distributor. But, HBO is the most pirated.)

1. If viewership falls or purchases drop off, HBO may decide there's no viable market for these programs and simply stop making them. This protects HBO's bottom line, but it does nothing for its future endeavors as it's drawing the wrong conclusions from the data.

2. HBO may simply view the dropoff to be the result of piracy rather than "viewer opt-out" and resort to the actions mentioned by Arment, including pushes for more anti-piracy legislation as well as limiting its exposure through increasingly onerous DRM or windowing.

Because piracy will never be nonexistent, it's impossible to create a control group that includes only potential purchasers of HBO's content. The only course of action left is for HBO is to experiment with faster turnaround and price reductions and see if these "forced pirates" are willing to put their money where their torrent is. To date, HBO has been unwilling to do this, at least in the US. Other premium cable companies have drastically reduced the turnaround of their shows and HBO itself offers a standalone streaming service in northern Europe, both in an effort to combat piracy. As its stands now, HBO's contracts with cable providers are far too lucrative to consider changing up its release strategy by going a la carte or trimming down the wait between debut and retail, at least not on a larger scale.

The problem with price/window experimentation is that altering these two factors in order to convert more pirates into viewers and purchasers will make cable companies extremely unhappy. HBO may find that it does very well with faster/cheaper releases but it won't ease its relationship with its most lucrative customers (at this point): cable companies. They already worry about cord-cutting and it's quite possible that current contracts prohibit HBO from undercutting its core market, which isn't viewers, but cable providers.

What piracy does do, regardless of "morality" or "making a statement" or anything else along those lines, is indicate demand. The content providers know people are watching their offerings, many times without paying. What they have to do is make the determination as to whether that audience is worth pursuing. At this point, many seem to believe it isn't. Very few companies have made any moves to drastically alter the artificial limits of the supply chain in order to capture some of the "un-monetized" market.

As Arment points out, the "half-empty" view of the content glass usually results in legislation and litigation rather than any serious attempts to solve the distribution problem. Pirating because you're "forced" into it simply feeds into these companies' dim view of the online market. But, unless these companies begin experimenting with the distribution process, there's no way to gauge the conversion rate. Doing things the way they've always been done will keep the status quo -- and people will continue to exercise the option to get the content on their own schedule.

So, Arment's right: pirating because of distribution limitations will continue to send the "piracy problem" message to HBO, Showtime, etc. While other companies view pirates as underserved customers, the movie and TV industries seem stuck viewing piracy as only a problem, rather than an opportunity. Trying to hit them in the wallet by refusing to watch or purchase will send the same message (because piracy will continue to be a "thing") -- piracy is hurting sales/viewership -- or worse, that the audience no longer exists.

This screwed up situation can't be solved by asking viewers to sit on their hands and wait patiently for a better distribution system, no more than it can be solved by having every ridiculous delay greeted by visits to The Pirate Bay. But only one of these actions indicates unmet demand. 

Filed Under: cable, hbo, piracy, showtime, windows

Showtime Spoils Dexter Finale During Unskippable Pre-Menu Promo

from the ***SPOILER-AL---never-mind dept

The best way to get people hooked on a TV series is to add a bit of suspense and a well-done storyline leading up to either a cliffhanger or a shocking resolution. Like movies and games, it's not much fun to plunge yourself into something whose ending has already been detailed by careless forum members, siblings or those jackasses/heroes (P.O.V.-dependent) doing a spoiler-heavy driveby.

Of all the entities you'd expect might possibly prematurely inform you of Goose's death/The Crying Game's penis/Snape kicking the oxygen habit, the last one on that list has got to be the unskippable ad playing on your newly purchased DVD:

I bought Dexter season 6 on Blu-ray because I'm the sort of dork who feels bad about piracy and still buys all my media.
Every time I put in a disk (not first watch, mind you, every... time... ) there is a 3 minute ad for Showtime that I can't skip and can't fast forward.

THEY SPOIL THE LAST 30 SECONDS OF THE FINAL EPISODE OF THE FREAKING SHOW IN THAT AD.
Guess that's what I get for giving them my stupid money instead of stealing... 0_o

***SPOILER ALERT***

Keep this up, Showtime (and assorted movie/game trailers), and you're going to find a whole lot more people shopping with these little things. Why?

BECAUSE PIRATES FIX* THAT BROKEN SHIT THAT YOU LITTER EVERY DVD WITH.

*Other services provided: removal of DRM, removal of region-specific coding, removal of price tag(s).

Do I really need to be reminded multiple times that every frickin' g-man in the US of A will be hounding my piratey footsteps the moment I burn off a copy of this disc? Do I really need to be reminded that, yes, this studio/channel produces a great number of other entertainments and would I mind terribly just taking a look at the extended, unskippable ad?

Nobody wants "unskippable" anything on media they've purchased. Gamers don't want unskippable cut scenes. Movie/TV fans don't want unskippable FBI/ICE/MPAA warnings and studio promos. Music fans don't have to deal with this. You don't fire up a CD and have to listen to Small Print Guy telling you that reproducing this track without the express consent, etc. etc. etc. Why does everyone else have to put up with it?

Try looking at it from your customers' point of view. They just want to watch the thing they actually paid for. In a day when infringement is blamed for shutting down the entire global economy, do you really think it's a good idea to a.) make paying customers sit through enough scary legal logos to fill an entire T-shirt, and b.) make paying customers regret their purchase even before the MANDATORY pre-menu promo is over?

If you answered "yes" to either of these questions, expect to find fewer and fewer people willing to give you their "stupid money" in exchange for your even stupider product.

Filed Under: dexter, showtime, spoilers, unskippable dvd ads

Did Showtime Benefit By Giving Away Free Content?

from the apparently dept

Here is yet another example of how "free" can co-exist with paid content, even when the content is basically identical.

Recently, Showtime made the season premiers of their hit shows DEXTER and CALIFORNICATION on YouTube for anyone to watch for free.  So, did this gut their numbers when the shows aired on their subscription-only, kind of expensive if you ask me, premium cable network?

Both Dexter and Californication scored some huge opening numbers last Sunday with Dexter setting a new opening record for the cable network.

More than 1.5 million sets of eyeballs tuned to the season four opener for Dexter and 821,000 stayed to watch the opener for Californication. That's 3 million single eyeballs for Dexter and more than 1.6 million for Californication.

Guess not.

Crossposted from MyMediaMusings

Filed Under: californication, content, dexter, free, showtime, tv