Over the Fourth of July weekend, a number of news outlets, including Slashdot, ran stories warning that the free and open-source audio editor Audacity may now be classified as spyware due to recent updates to its privacy policy. Ars Technica's Jim Salter looked into these claims and found that that is not the case. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from his report: FOSS-focused personal technology site SlashGear declares that although Audacity is free and open source, new owner Muse Group can "do some pretty damaging changes" -- specifically meaning its new privacy policy and telemetry features, described as "overarching and vague." FOSSPost goes even further, running the headline "Audacity is now a possible spyware, remove it ASAP." The root of both sites' concern is the privacy policy instigated by new Audacity owner Muse Group, who already published open source music notation tool MuseScore. The privacy policy, which was last updated on July 2, outlines the data which the app may collect [...]. The personal data being collected as outlined in the first five bullet points is not particularly broad -- in fact, it's quite similar to the collected data described in FOSSPost's own privacy policy: IP address, browser user-agent, "some other cookies your browser may provide us with," and (by way of WordPress and Google analytics) "your geographical location, cookies for other websites you visited or any other information your browser can give about you." This leaves the last row -- data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities' requests (if any)." While that's certainly a broad category and not particularly well-defined, it's also a fact of life in 2021. Whether a privacy policy says so or not, the odds are rather good that any given company will comply with legitimate law enforcement requests. If it doesn't, it won't likely be a company for long. The final grain of salt in the wound is a line stating that Audacity is "not intended for individuals below the age of 13" and requesting people under 13 years old "please do not use the App." This is an effort to avoid the added complexity and expense of dealing with laws regulating collection of personal data from children.

The first thing to point out is that neither the privacy policy nor the in-app telemetry in question are actually in effect yet -- both are targeted to an upcoming 3.0.3 release, while the most recent available version is 3.0.2. For now, that means there's absolutely no need for anyone to panic about their currently-installed version of Audacity. [...] Although FOSS-focused media outlets including FOSSPost and Slashgear reported negatively on this issue over the holiday weekend, the contributors and commenters active on the project's Github seem to have been largely satisfied by the May 13 update, which declared that Muse Group would self-host its telemetry sessions rather than using third-party libraries and hosting. The same day the second pull request went live, Github user Megaf said, "Good stuff. As long as the data is not going to [third party tech giants] we should be happy. Collect the data you really need, self-host it, make it private, make it opt-in, and we shall help." It's a small sample, but the sentiment seems broadly supported, with 66 positive and 12 negative reactions. Reaction to Megaf's comment reflects user reaction to the updated pull request itself, which currently has 606 positive and 29 explicitly negative reactions -- a marked improvement over the original pull request's 4,039 explicitly negative reactions and only 300 positive reactions. We believe that the user community got it right -- Muse Group appears to be taking the community's privacy concerns very seriously indeed, and its actual policies as stated appear to be reasonable.

League of Legends developer Riot Games released a 37-track album of ambient tunes (now on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music) "that will let gamers stream their sessions accompanied by music that doesn't infringe copyright protections," reports Bloomberg.

And that's just one response to aggressive copyright enforcement: For example, a new Guardians of the Galaxy game to be released later this year will be loaded with a soundtrack with songs by Iron Maiden, KISS, Wham!, Blondie and more. To stay on the good side of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the studio behind the game, Eidos Montreal, has created a toggle switch that will allow gamers to turn off the soundtrack when live streaming, Venturebeat has reported. Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt SA also created an option for players to turn off certain songs that could cause trouble and replace them with an alternative.

After largely ignoring streaming platforms for years, last spring the music industry suddenly bore down on Twitch, owned by Amazon.com Inc. and started sending users thousands of DMCA takedowns for copyright violations. Twitch responded by telling users they could no longer use copyrighted material and also had to remove old posts that violated the rules. Some games are still struggling to adapt. Earlier this month, a number of music publishers, including those that represent Ed Sheeran and Ariana Grande, sued Roblox Corp. for copyright infringement, saying the company hasn't licensed the music many of its creators have used in their games. The lawsuit is seeking at least $200 million in damages, the Wall Street Journal reported...

The collection is just the beginning and Riot said it's committed to creating more projects like Sessions in the future.

Thelasko shares a report from the BBC: A US police officer played a Taylor Swift song on his phone in a bid to prevent activists who were filming him uploading the video to YouTube. The video platform regularly removes videos that break music copyright rules. However, the officer's efforts were in vain as the clip of the encounter in Oakland, California promptly went viral. Alameda County police told the BBC it was not "approved behavior."

The video was filmed by members of the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP), which says it is a coalition that seeks to "eradicate police terror in communities of color." Some of them were protesting outside the courthouse at the pre-trial hearing of a San Leandro officer charged with the manslaughter of a black man. In the video, the officer says: "You can record all you want, I just know it can't be posted to YouTube." When asked if playing music in this way is procedure, the officer responds: "It's not specifically outlined." Later in the video, he confirms: "I'm playing music so that you can't post on YouTube." The sheriff's department said: "We have seen the video and referred it to our internal affairs bureau. This is not approved behavior. It will not happen again." Earlier this year, Motherboard reported on cases of other California-based officers starting to play Beatles songs while being filmed so that the clips would be removed for copyright issues when uploaded to social media sites.

LG plans to introduce its first consumer Mini LED TVs sometime next month, according to a press release from the South Korean company. Mini LED is a new variant of LCD TV tech that offers better contrast ratios, among other improvements. From a report: The new lineup in the US includes one 4K TV (dubbed the QNED90) and one 8K variant (called the QNED99). Both are available in three sizes: 65 inches, 75 inches, and 86 inches.

Much of the recent advertising and marketing muscle behind Mini LED TVs has come from Samsung, but that's not the only company making them. TCL, Hisense, and others have introduced Mini LED sets as well. LG calls its Mini LED technology "QNED," which is just a marketing term that stands for "Quantum Nanocell Mini LED." As far as we can tell, there's nothing fundamentally different about these TVs that actually calls for a different acronym compared to Mini LEDs from other companies.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: United Airlines is adding a long-awaited feature to the in-flight entertainment seatback screens of its new Boeing 737 Max 8 jets -- support for Bluetooth headphones. The company is making the upgrade as part of "United Next," a new plan to expand and modernize its fleet with what it says are larger, fuel-efficient jets and a more comfortable in-flight experience. Adding seatback screens made a huge difference in how tolerable flying is, but it's been held up by lagging audio support that The Verge has even written a guide to getting around. And this isn't a problem unique to United. Other airlines like Delta or JetBlue have been offering seatback screens for years, but have also saddled flyers with analog audio. United just might be one of the first airlines to start the next wave of inflight entertainment improvements (hopefully).

However, there's room for things to go a bit sideways. As part of its upgrades, United's new 737 Max 8 jets offer 10 or 13-inch inflight entertainment screens on the backs of all seats, which might mean a lot of people trying to connect to Bluetooth at once. That could cause interference, and might also make the process of connecting your headphones more of a chore if you're having to hunt through multiple devices trying to pair in the same menu. United currently only offers Bluetooth on its Max 8 jets which it says should start flying this summer. The company didn't share how it plans to address issues with Bluetooth, but said it's still "studying the technology."

Today, YouTube TV announced a 4K Plus add-on package with offline downloads, 5.1 Dolby audio, and features that make it easier to watch live sports. From a report: YouTube TV is already one of the pricier streaming services out there -- at $64.99 per month, you might not save much money by choosing YouTube in lieu of your cable service. Hulu + Live TV is priced the same, but offers a Disney+ and ESPN+ add-on for a total of $72.99 per month. But if you want to kick your video quality (and your monthly bill) up a notch, you can now enable 4K streaming for an extra $19.99 per month, bringing your grand total to $84.98 monthly.

The 4K Plus add-on package will also allow subscribers to download shows from DVR to watch offline -- currently, that's not possible on the standard $64.99 per month package. Meanwhile, the 5.1 Dolby audio capabilities will be a free addition for all YouTube TV members -- in a blog post, the company says this has been one of users' "biggest requests." The sports upgrades also come at no additional cost -- one new feature will let viewers jump to key plays and specific highlight moments when watching a DVR recording or trying to catch up live.

Global streaming giant Netflix lost a South Korean court case on Friday, in the world's first ruling over a dispute about whether over-the-top service providers should pay internet service companies for network usage. From a report: In April 2020, Netflix filed a complaint against SK Broadband, rejecting the Korean internet provider's demand that the streaming platform pay for network use in South Korea. The legal action has drawn attention because it marks the world's first legal conflict between an OTT platform and a broadband company. South Korea is one of the world's fast-growing OTT markets, where Netflix posted triple-digit earnings growth in 2020 from the year previous. On June 25, the Seoul Central District Court rejected the case brought forth by Netflix, while dismissing Netflix's claim that the OTT platform has no obligation to negotiate with SK Broadband over the network use charges. "It needs to be determined by negotiations between the parties involved whether or not some fees will be paid, or whether they enter an agreement in accordance with the principle of freedom of contract," the court ruling reads.

Space.com reports: The U.S. government needs some more time to get to the bottom of the UFO mystery. That's the main take-home message from the highly anticipated UFO report released Friday.

"The limited amount of high-quality reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) hampers our ability to draw firm conclusions about the nature or intent of UAP," the report's executive summary states, using the military's now-preferred term for "UFO" (presumably because that older acronym has a lot of baggage attached to it).
Or, as CNET puts it, "all those sightings of bizarre things in the sky over the years fall into several categories, require more study and remain largely unexplained and unidentified." (Though they point out the Department of Defense's "UAP" Task Force reported eleven "documented instances in which pilots reported near misses...")

The report drew a response from Chris Carter, who created The X-Files, a TV drama about a government conspiracy hiding evidence of UFO's. Filming the show brought Carter in contact with real-world people who claimed they'd seen aliens, and he still thinks that when it comes to UFO, most of us are not quite there yet — but want to believe: The universe is just too vast for us to be alone in it. Carl Jung wanted to believe, as did Carl Sagan. Both wrote books on the subject... Can the new report, or any government report, give us clear answers?

I'm as skeptical now as I've ever been... [F]or me, the report on U.F.O.s was dead on arrival. Ordered up by a bipartisan group of legislators during the Trump administration, the interim report revealed nothing conclusive about U.F.O.s or their extraterrestrial origins. And the portions that remain classified will only fuel more conspiracy theories.

This is "X-Files" territory if there ever was any...

According to The New York Times, citing a highly anticipated UFO report released on Friday, "The government still has no explanation for nearly all of the scores of unidentified aerial phenomena reported over almost two decades and investigated by a Pentagon task force, [...] a result that is likely to fuel theories of otherworldly visitations." From the report: A total of 143 reports gathered since 2004 remain unexplained, the document released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. Of those, 21 reports of unknown phenomena, involving 18 episodes, possibly demonstrate technological capabilities that are unknown to the United States: objects moving without observable propulsion or with rapid acceleration that is believed to be beyond the capabilities of Russia, China or other terrestrial nations. But, the report said, more rigorous analysis of those episodes is needed. There is no evidence that any of the episodes involve secret American weapons programs, unknown technology from Russia or China or extraterrestrial visitations. But the government report did not rule out those explanations.

The nine-page document essentially declines to draw conclusions, announcing that the available reporting is "largely inconclusive" and noting that limited and inconsistent data created a challenge in evaluating the phenomena. The report said the number of sightings was too limited for a detailed pattern analysis. While they clustered around military training or testing grounds, the report found that that could be the result of collection bias or the presence of cutting-edge sensors in those areas. Government officials outlined a plan to develop, if additional funding is available, a better program to observe and collect data on future unexplained phenomena. [...] The government intends to update Congress within 90 days on efforts to develop an improved collection strategy and what officials are calling a technical road map to develop technology to better observe the phenomena, senior government officials told reporters on Friday. Officials said they would provide lawmakers with periodical updates beyond that.

AmiMoJo shares a report from TorrentFreak: Police in Japan have arrested three individuals who uploaded so-called "fast movies" to YouTube. These edits of mainstream movie titles, that use copyrighted content to reveal entire plotlines in around 10 minutes, are said to discourage people from watching the originals, costing the industry hundreds of millions in lost revenue. According to Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), there are channels with hundreds of uploads being viewed tens of millions of times, often with a for-profit motive. This means that they may fall outside traditional "fair use" style exceptions.

Miyagi Prefectural Police Life Safety Division and the Shiogama Police Station arrested three suspects under suspicion of uploading "fast movies" to YouTube without the rightsholders' consent. The arrests were reportedly carried out under the Copyright Act, which was boosted with new amendments on January 1, 2021. "From June to July 2020, the suspects edited 'I Am a Hero' and two other motion pictures owned by Toho Co., Ltd. as well as 'Cold Fish' and one other motion picture owned by Nikkatsu Corporation down to about 10 minutes without the permission of the right holders. Further, the suspects added narration and uploaded the videos to YouTube to earn advertising revenue," CODA explains. All of the channels shared by CODA appear to be operated from Japan but there is no shortage of YouTube channels operated from the US too.

CBS News reports: A mysterious and puzzling email with the subject line of "Integration Test Email #1" landed in the boxes of some HBO Max subscribers on Thursday. Just hours later, the company said that the message was intended to be an empty test email, and "yes, it was the intern." The unnamed intern quickly became the new star of HBO Max on social media, as hundreds of encouraging messages poured in to reassure the intern that mistakes happen, in all phases of careers... And instead of subscribers responding with angry messages about an inconvenience, they used the opportunity to tell their own stories of work snafus...

One individual wrote about how they "once globally took down Spotify." It almost happened twice," they wrote. "...You managed to find something broken in the way integration tests are done. It's a good thing and will help improve things...."

"When I was 25 I made a PDF assigning each employee to the Muppet they reminded me of the most," another wrote. "I meant to send it to my work friend, but I accidentally sent it to the entire company. My supervisor (Beaker) wanted to fire me, but the owners (Bert & Ernie) intervened."
Dozens of news outlets, from the Huffington Post to media wire services, soon began covering the funny stories shared in support:

• "Don't feel bad Integration Test Email #1 intern...when I was an intern once I accidentally powered off every device during a complicated laser experiment at MIT."
• "In the first month of my new HR job with a major defense contractor, I sent out an email about shirt orders that included the division president and several corporate leaders. Title of email: Your Shit is in the HR Office..."

But my favorite reply of all?

"Dear intern, welcome to Systems Engineering."

Share your own thoughts and stories of support in the comments...

Nielsen on Thursday announced that it had moved a step closer toward cracking one of the great questions of the modern entertainment world: How big, exactly, is streaming? From a report: Nielsen, the 98-year-old research firm that for decades has had an effective monopoly on measuring TV ratings in the United States, has a new metric that it says allows it to make an apples-to-apples comparison, on a percentage basis, of how many people are streaming shows and films on their TVs versus how many are watching traditional cable and broadcast channels. For the time being, Nielsen reports, people are spending more time watching TV the old-fashioned way -- but streaming is gaining fast.

On Thursday, the firm reported that 64 percent of the time American viewers used their television sets in May 2021 was spent watching network and cable TV, while they watched streaming services about 26 percent of the time. Another 9 percent of the time, they were using their TV screens for things like video games or watching programs or films they had saved on DVR. The streaming share is increasing rapidly. It stood at about 20 percent last year, Nielsen said; in 2019, it was about 14 percent. A Nielsen spokesman said that the firm anticipates the streaming share could go up to about 33 percent by the end of the year. Netflix and YouTube are the streaming leaders, the research firm said, with each capturing 6 percent of total TV time. They are trailed by Hulu (3 percent), Amazon (2 percent) and Disney+ (1 percent). Nielsen calls its new metric The Gauge. It comes in addition to its previous method of measuring how many people are watching streaming platforms, which relies on audio-recognition software included in Nielsen devices that are now in 38,000 households across the country. Both metrics measure only what is viewed on television screens and do not count what is watched on phones or laptops.

Today is Record Store Day, an annual event celebrating the culture of independently-owned record stores. And music industry players have said they actually got more money from the sale of vinyl records than they do from YouTube.

But is that changing? The New York Times reports those figures are from a time when YouTube was only selling ads on (or beside) music videos and then sharing that cash with the record labels and performs: Fast forward to last week, when YouTube disclosed that it paid music companies, musicians and songwriters more than $4 billion in the prior year. That came from advertising money and something that the industry has wanted forever and is now getting — a cut of YouTube's surprisingly large subscription business. (YouTube subscriptions include an ad-free version of the site and a Spotify-like service to watch music videos without any ads.) The significance of YouTube's dollar figure is that it's not far from the $5 billion that the streaming king Spotify pays to music industry participants from a portion of its subscriptions. (A reminder: The industry mostly loves Spotify's money, but some musicians ïsay that they're shortchanged by the payouts.)

Subscriptions will always be a hobby for YouTube, but the numbers show that even a side gig for the company can be huge. And it has bought peace by raining some of those riches on those behind the music. Record labels and other industry powers "still don't looooove YouTube," Lucas Shaw, a Bloomberg News reporter, wrote this week. "But they don't hate it anymore."

The YouTube turnabout may also show that complaining works. The music industry has a fairly successful track record of picking a public enemy No. 1 — Pandora for awhile, Spotify, YouTube, and more recently apps like TikTok and Twitch — and publicly browbeating it or playing one rich company against another to get more money or something else they wanted.
While the article cites concerns that YouTube is still paying too little (and failing to stop piracy), "just maybe, YouTube has shown that it's possible for digital companies to both upend an industry and make it stronger."

Netflix is branching into toys, games and clothing based on its popular shows, looking to mine popular characters for added revenue much like Walt Disney. From a report: The streaming service is launching Netflix.shop, a retail arm that will sell curated products from its catalog of shows and movies. As part of the launch, Netflix is introducing a collection of anime-inspired products, according to a statement Thursday. Products from other programs are in the works, too. The move into merchandising is a logical extension for Netflix. Other major studios generate billions of dollars in revenue from toys, collectibles and other goods based on popular characters and shows. [...] The shop will open in the U.S. before expanding to other countries, Netflix said.

Last week, Apple TV users reported issues with HBO Max refusing to rewind, fast-forward, or pause content. According to The A.V. Club, the issue is still ongoing. From the report: Strangely enough, HBO Max's customer service Twitter account acknowledged the issue on June 4. They wrote to a Twitter user, "We're aware of this issue with our app on Apple TV and our team is working to find a solution as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience while we sort this out." HBO says "fixes coming," according to The Verge. Yesterday, the site's editor-in-chief tweeted about the issue to HBO Max's executive vice president and general manager Andy Forssell, who tweeted, "First priority is to deliver for users in addressing the issues, but in parallel we will also dive deep into that question." As of now, though, the company is still charging users for an app that won't let you rewind, say, that scene from Dumb & Dumber where Harry has diarrhea. This leads us to ask, where's the money going?

On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission charged the executives of the long-defunct MoviePass app over allegations that they fraudulently blocked customers from using the service as advertised while failing to protect their data privacy. The FTC also announced that it had reached a settlement with MoviePass and its executives as a result of the investigation. The Verge reports: Under the proposed settlement, MoviePass, its parent company Helios and Matheson Analytics, its CEO Mitch Lowe, and chairman Ted Farnsworth are forbidden from falsely representing their business and data security practices to customers. Any businesses controlled by these entities are also required to roll out comprehensive information security programs to protect consumers. "MoviePass and its executives went to great lengths to deny consumers access to the service they paid for while also failing to secure their personal information," Daniel Kaufman, FTC acting director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection said in a statement Monday. "The FTC will continue working to protect consumers from deception and to ensure that businesses deliver on their promises."

The FTC's complaint accuses the company of deceptively marketing its "one movie per day" service to subscribers and barring customers from using the service as advertised. It also alleges that the company falsely invalidated customer passwords over "suspicious activity or potential fraud" in order to ban frequent moviegoers from the service. The FTC also says that MoviePass initiated a ticket verification program as a means of discouraging people from using the service. As part of the settlement, MoviePass' operators must put comprehensive data security programs into place in any future ventures after saving MoviePass customer data in plain text, the FTC said.

"It is now written in the annals of legal history that Disney's Star Wars sequels, specifically The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, are mediocre," writes MovieWeb: This, according to Ninth Circuit Court Judge Kenneth K. Lee, who recently referred to the movies as such in a recent legal ruling... Judge Lee recently handed down a ruling in regards to a class action lawsuit against ConAgra Foods Inc. The case had to do with whether or not the company was responsible for placing a "100% Natural" label on bottles of Wesson Oil. ConAgra Foods no longer owns Wesson Oil.... And, as the judge found in his ruling, the company simply doesn't have the power to make that sort of call anymore....

This is where things get interesting. At this point in the ruling, Judge Lee decided to make a comparison, and that's where Star Wars comes in. It would seem the judge is a fan and he decided to liken the situation to Disney producing a trilogy of sequels after Lucasfilm was sold to them by George Lucas in 2012. And, in his professional, legal opinion, those movies were not up to snuff. "That is like George Lucas promising no more mediocre and schlocky Star Wars sequels shortly after selling the franchise to Disney. Such a promise would be illusory."

That wasn't the end of it either. In a footnote at the end of that page in the document, Judge Lee added some clarification saying, "As evident by Disney's production of The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker."

AMC announced today that it was creating AMC Investor Connect, "an innovative, proactive communication initiative that will put AMC in direct communication with its extraordinary base of enthusiastic and passionate individual shareholders to keep them up to date about important company information and to provide them with special offers." In other words, the company is embracing the meme stonk investors that have sent AMC shares to new highs. The Verge reports: This represents "a groundbreaking new approach" to communicating with retail investors, the company says. It's a shame they didn't put a bunch of rocket emojis in the announcement -- after all, there's no need to be coy. We all know exactly who AMC is speaking to, and if they sign up today, they're getting free popcorn. This is also, essentially, the opposite of what GameStop did, which was say absolutely nothing. You got the sense that maybe the exec team was nervous that anything they said might potentially be securities fraud. AMC, though, they've elected to really embrace the whole meme thing. I'm hoping there are more announcements where they get meme-ier. Like, retail investors get a free Lego rocket in the fourth quarter or something.

The senior technology editor at Ars Technica checked the plausibility of Andy Weir's new science fiction novel Project Hail Mary with an actual professor of linguistics and cognitive science at Northern Illinois University. It's another tale of solving problems with science, as a lone human named Ryland Grace and a lone alien named Rocky must save our stellar neighborhood from a star-eating parasite called "Astrophage." PHM is a buddy movie in space in a way that The Martian didn't get to be, and the interaction between Grace and Rocky is the biggest reason to read the book. The pair makes a hell of a problem-solving team, jazz hands and fist bumps and all. But the relative ease with which Grace and Rocky understand each other got me thinking about the real-world issues that might arise when two beings from vastly different evolutionary backgrounds try to communicate...

The question I put to her was this: going by our current understanding of how and why human languages operate, do we think it would be practical—or even possible — for two divergently evolved sentient beings from different worlds to learn each other's languages well enough in a short amount of time (perhaps as little as a week) to usefully converse about abstract concepts and to be reasonably assured that both beings actually understand those abstracts...?
And the professor's response? We ended up blowing an entire hour on linguistics, and it was easily the coolest and nerdiest conversation I've had in a long time. Nearing the end, though, I asked Dr. Birner for her final take on whether or not the language acquisition exercise portrayed in Project Hail Mary would work.

Her consensus was "probably," but only given a number of extremely lucky — and extremely unlikely — coincidences in psychology and evolution (there's that anthropic principle of science fiction rearing its head!). If we can take it as a given that the alien is "friendly," and if we can also take it as a given that "friendship" in the alien's society carries along with it the same or a similar set of relationship expectations as it does for humans, and if we can take it as a given that the alien has similar emotional drivers, and if the alien values (or can at least intellectually conceive of) concepts like altruism and cooperation, and if the alien has a compatible sense of morality that places value on the lives of individuals and prioritizes the avoidance of death—if we can take all those things and more as givens, then things might work out.

"I think that given a theoretically infinite amount of time, probably yes," communication would be possible, she said. "As long as there's enough goodwill that you are going to be there together working together."
But in a long comment, long-time Slashdot reader shanen argues all sentient beings are basically Universal Turing Machines running mental programs in our heads, but still warns of "hardware-level incompatibilities not just at the level of sound systems, but in the kinds of programs that 'run sufficiently easily' in the more dissimilar Universal Turing Machines."

James Bond has a new home: Amazon and MGM announced a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire MGM for $8.45 billion. From a report: MGM, founded in 1924, complements Amazon Studios, which has primarily focused on producing TV programming, the companies said. Amazon will help "preserve MGM's heritage and catalog of films," and provide customers with greater access to these existing works, the companies said. For Amazon, snapping up MGM -- which has more than 4,000 movies and 17,000 TV shows in its catalog -- is a way to supercharge its Prime Video service with a slew of well-known entertainment properties. In addition, Amazon is anticipating being able to tap into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer properties like the Pink Panther, Rocky, and, yes, the 007 franchises for new originals.

"The real financial value behind this deal is the treasure trove of [intellectual property] in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM's talented team," Mike Hopkins, senior VP of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, said in announcing the deal. "It's very exciting and provides so many opportunities for high-quality storytelling." Hopkins noted that MGM productions collectively have won more than 180 Oscars and 100 Emmys. The studio has roughly 800 employees globally.