An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon has said the number of demands for user data made by U.S. federal and local law enforcement have increased more during the first half of 2020 than during the same period a year earlier. The disclosure came in the company’s latest transparency report, published Thursday. The figures show that Amazon received 23% more subpoenas and search warrants, and a 29% increase in court orders compared to the first half of 2019. That includes data collected from its Amazon.com retail storefront, Amazon Echo devices and its Kindle and Fire tablets.

Breaking those figures down, Amazon said it received: 2,416 subpoenas, turning over all or partial user data in 70% of cases; 543 search warrants, turning over all or partial user data in 79% of cases; and 146 court orders, turning over all or partial user data in 74% of cases. Amazon also said it received between 0 and 249 national security requests, flat from previous reports. Justice Department rules on disclosing classified requests only allow companies to respond in numerical ranges. The number of requests to the company’s cloud services, Amazon Web Services, also went up compared to a year earlier. But it’s not clear what caused the rise in U.S. government demands for user data. As for the number of overseas requests, Amazon saw the number drop by about one-third compared to the same period a year earlier. “Amazon rejected 92% of the 177 overseas requests it received, turning over partial user data in 10 cases and all requested data in four cases,” the report adds.

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Source: Slashdot – Amazon Says Police Demands For Customer Data Have Gone Up

In a recent interview with Music Ally, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek denied criticisms that Spotify pays insufficient royalties to artists, and insisted that the role of the musician had changed in today’s “future landscape.” The FADER reports: Ek claimed that a “narrative fallacy” had been created and caused music fans to believe that Spotify doesn’t pay musicians enough for streams of their music. “Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape,” Ek said, “where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.” What is required from successful musicians, Ek insisted, is a deeper, more consistent, and prolonged commitment than in the past. “The artists today that are making it realize that it’s about creating a continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in, about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous dialogue with your fans.”

Ek alleged that artists have said “many times” in private that they are happy with their royalties from Spotify, and said that he believes that musicians who cannot make a living may not be in step with modern standards. “I feel, really, that the ones that aren’t doing well in streaming are predominantly people who want to release music the way it used to be released,” Ek said.

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Source: Slashdot – Spotify CEO: Musicians Can No Longer Release Music Only ‘Once Every 3-4 Years’

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Wehner said on Thursday that upcoming changes to Apple’s iOS 14 operating system could hurt the social network’s ability to target ads to users. With the update to its mobile devices, Apple will ask users if they want to let app developers track their activity across other apps and websites. Apple has not said when iOS 14 will launch, but it’s expected to roll out this year. “We’re still trying to understand what these changes will look like and how they will impact us and the rest of the industry, but at the very least, it’s going to make it harder for app developers and others to grow using ads on Facebook and elsewhere,” Wehner said.

Until now, advertisers could use a device ID number called the IDFA to better target ads and estimate their effectiveness. In iOS 14, each app that wants to use these identifiers will ask users to opt-in to tracking when the app is first launched. The change is expected to start impacting Facebook’s advertising in the third quarter but it will have a more pronounced effect in the fourth quarter, Wehner said.

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Source: Slashdot – Facebook Says Apple’s iOS 14 Changes Could Hurt Its Ad Targeting