The UK Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UK) will work on developing resilience to state-sponsored and criminal attacks on critical systems. Photograph: Daniel Law/PA
The UK government will unveil its lead cyber emergency response unit on 31 March, after delays had put the digital squadron on hold, the Guardian has learned.
The UK Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UK) will work on developing the UK’s cyber resilience to state-sponsored and criminal attacks on critical systems, including those controlling the national energy supply and within government departments, according to the Cabinet Office.
Launch day, considered by the Cabinet Office as “a key milestone in the development of the UK’s cyber security capabilities”, will initiate a “first phase”, as part of an incremental rollout.
The CERT was announced in December 2012, when the Cabinet Office promised to deliver what is considered one of the most important parts of its £650m cybersecurity strategy within 12 months.
It soon conceded the project would be pushed back to early 2014, with few reasons given, other than the division needed more personnel, better technology and a headquarters. They were duly added, with Chris Gibson, formerly of the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (First), made director.
Neil Cassidy, former cyberdefence lead at government supplier Qinetiq, was made deputy director of operations. Andrew Whittaker, a former Foreign Office crisis management expert, was given the overall deputy director role.
The government has been co-ordinating with law enforcement bodies and the various industry-specific CERTs, including those based out of GCHQ and the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, over the last year on creating an effective response unit.
One of the key participants was the new National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU), launched in October 2013, as part of the National Crime Agency. Kevin Williams, head of partnership engagement at the NCCU, said there had been “really good engagement” thus far with CERT-UK, which will be based at an as-yet undisclosed London location.
Another core partner, the emergency response team responsible for attacks on universities, Janet Computer Security Incident Response Team, said it was already collaborating with CERT-UK.
“Janet CSIRT has been working closely behind the scenes with CERT-UK to share and enhance its experience in incident response,” a spokesperson said, in an emailed statement from Jisc, the parent body of the Janet network.
“The new CERT-UK team already shares incident data with CSIRT in real time over the Janet network, and both organisations work collaboratively on the latest cyber threats to the education and research sector and the UK as a whole. We expect that CERT-UK will provide a single point of co-ordination through which the existing UK incident response community can pool their efforts to secure UK cyberspace.”
Charlie McMurdie, former head of the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) who was involved in the early stages of CERT-UK’s development, said the unit should act as an overarching unit that will enhance the response to major attacks being monitored by other incident response teams.
Previously, CERTs worked in a siloed fashion, with limited collaboration between them, McMurdie said. The new body will aim to fix that weakness.
“Those sub-CERTs could be far stronger and far more effective… if you're picking up something in one sector it just doesn't make sense that it is dealt with in isolation within that sector when there are opportunities to engage and utilise skill sets and intelligence elsewhere. You can disseminate intelligence to prevent cross-sector impact,” she added.
The launch comes at a time of heightened anxieties over attacks on critical infrastructure. Experts last year warned the UK’s energy infrastructure was at risk of being shut down by hackers, while Cabinet Office minister confirmed plans to spend an additional £210m on protecting the nation’s digital assets by 2016.
In India, Nokia has been tied up in legal cases with the governments of various regions. The southern state of Tamil Nadu filed a €300m claim on Friday relating to the company's manufacturing plant in Chennai, on the basis that it had sold handsets made there inside India, which would make them liable to tax. Exported handsets are not subject to tax. The factory's ownership is being transferred to Microsoft, triggering the tax claims.
Meanwhile in China, the government's Ministry of Commerce is reported to be pressuring Microsoft and Nokia to lower its patent fees which cover a wide range of handset and mobile functionality. The remaining part of Nokia will retain ownership of its mobile patents, which it is seeking to monetise, while Microsoft has its own array which it has asserted against dozens of Android device-makers around the world.
In a blogpost, Microsoft's legal chief, Brad Smith, said that the company was awaiting "approval confirmation" in remaining markets, after receiving the go-ahead from 15 other regulators. Those include the US and Europe.
"This work has been progressing, and we expect to close next month, in April 2014," Smith said. When the deal was originally announced, the two companies said that they expected it to close in March 2014, and Nokia classed its handset business under "discontinued" in its financial results for the three months to December. The delay almost certainly means that Nokia will have to report some details from the handset business with its financial results in April.
The acquisition of the loss-making business, announced in September, positioned Microsoft to challenge Apple and Google, which at the time owned the Motorola handset business. Steve Ballmer, then chief executive, said that it was "a bold step into our future" and "a signature event in our transformation" into a "devices and services" business.
Subsequent reports suggest that tensions between Ballmer and Microsoft's board over the wisdom of the deal – which Ballmer drove through against some resistance from other directors – led to his decision to step down from the post, to be replaced by Satya Nadella in January.
Coldplay recently played at Apple's iTunes Festival in SXSW. Such relationships could serve the company well in a streaming service. Photograph: Jack Plunkett/Invision/AP
With sales of music downloads seemingly tipping into decline, Apple is reportedly in "exploratory talks" with labels over launching a Spotify-style streaming music service under its iTunes brand.
The report on industry site Billboard even suggests that Apple may be considering launching an iTunes app for Android devices, as it seeks to reverse a recent trend that has seen download sales shrink after a decade of growth.
Figures published this month by industry body the IFPI showed that labels' income from download sales fell 2.1% in 2013, while streaming revenues rose by 51%. Download revenues were still more than three times bigger – $3.93bn to $1.11bn – but it still felt like a tipping point.
It's a shift from music ownership to music access "on demand", but for now Apple remains on the ownership side of that transition, eyeing the potential threat from Spotify, Deezer, Beats Music, Rdio and other companies on the access side.
Apple took its first step into streaming last year with the US launch of iTunes Radio, although it's a "personal radio" service rather than a fully on-demand competitor. If Billboard's sources are correct, the company is now actively preparing to take on Spotify and its rivals more directly.
Historically, Apple has been successful at watching other companies do something not that well, before entering the market with something better. The original iPod, consumer tablets, mobile app stores and the iTunes Store – which was streets ahead of the music industry's early attempts at download stores when it launched in 2003 - are obvious examples.
It's not quite as simple for streaming music, where the established services have been rapidly improving over their short lifetimes – particularly the last year – and where regular new players (Beats Music this year, for example) have brought new ideas and kept competitors on their toes.
How can Apple improve on what those companies have been doing, then? Here are a few ideas:
1. Big catalogue and big exclusives
It's hard to put your finger on how many digital music tracks there are in the world. Most download stores claim a catalogue of somewhere between 25m and 30m songs, while streaming services tend to claim between 20m and 25m.
In truth, Apple can't really make a feature out of having more tracks than rivals if it launches a streaming iTunes, although it could use its corporate muscle to ensure it has some big exclusives that aren't available anywhere else.
Such as? Well, The Beatles most obviously. The Fab Four's catalogue still isn't available on Spotify and other streaming services, having beensold by Apple as downloads since November 2010.
They'd make a useful slab of exclusivity for a streaming iTunes, while Apple's relationships with artists including Coldplay, Beyoncé, Daft Punk, Adele, Justin Timberlake and others might serve it well in trying to secure big albums at the expense of rivals.
Apple sold 151.5m iPhones in 2013. Photograph: ITAR-TASS/Barcroft Media
2. Big distribution through iOS and canny pricing
Like iTunes Radio – accessed through iOS' Music app – an on-demand iTunes streaming service would be preloaded on every iOS device. To put that into context, Apple sold 151.5m iPhones and 74.2m iPads in 2013 – 225.7m new iOS devices – and that's without factoring in iPod touch, Apple TV or Mac sales.
That's a pretty decent base from which to launch a streaming service, with room to try some disruptive marketing tactics on top of it. Apple could make its streaming iTunes free for three months, six months or even a year, bundling the cost into the price of the device.
Talking of price, Apple could try to undercut Spotify and other services once people start paying. As Billboard's label source described the company's early ideas: "When you buy a song for $1.29, and you put it in your library, iTunes might send an e-mail pointing out that for a total of, say, $8 a month you can access that song plus all the music in the iTunes store".
$8 a month would be $2 cheaper than rivals, although note, even this may not be disruptive enough. Venture capitalist David Pakman – who used to run digital music service eMusic – recently called on labels to "allow the price of subscription music services to fall to $3–$4 per month"in response to data showing that's the sweet spot if mainstream music fans are going to pay for a streaming subscription.
Apple is one of relatively few technology companies capable – in theory – of charging that much then absorbing the remaining costs of a streaming service in the price it charges for hardware. A $4-a-month streaming iTunes would well and truly set the cat among the pigeons in the world of streaming music.
3. Better music discovery features
Music discovery is currently a big buzzphrase within the music industry –here's a longer feature on what and why – with streaming services and app developers alike thinking hard about how to make it easier for people to find new music that they might like, as well as to rediscover old music they liked but have forgotten about.
Spotify has improved greatly over the last two years, Beats Music has made discovery a key selling point, and Deezer's CEO Axel Dauchez recently claimed it was part of his company's corporate mission: "We have a common responsibility to generate discovery: to force people to try new artists, new songs," he said at the Midem conference in January. "Investing in new artists is not a marketing tool: it’s an industry need."
What can Apple bring to this area? The company's past efforts – the Genius system within iTunes for providing recommendations based on your previous purchases – have been... average. The company does have a lot of experience in curation: it has editorial teams working on the storefronts for iTunes, the App Store and the iBooks Store, as well as staff building streaming stations for iTunes Radio.
If Apple was serious about on-demand streaming, it would need to go even further. Buy another startup or two with great recommendations technology, perhaps.
Develop a streaming app that provides regular recommendations in response to what you're listening to right now (note, this is crucially different to what you've bought in the past), maybe. Try some new ideas around shared playlists, and feeds of what friends are listening to.
Apple's record on recommendations is mixed – I'm still surprised that the App Store isn't personalised Amazon-style for each iOS user, based on their app habits – but the area of music recommendations is young and constantly evolving. That means Apple – like any company – could come in and offer something new and better than what's gone before, if it puts its mind to it.
Spotify is popular on Android as well as iOS.
4. Bite the bullet and launch iTunes for Android
Apple launching an on-demand iTunes streaming service has been expected for some time, given the wider music industry shifts. What was more surprising in Billboard's article was the claim that it's also considering launching an iTunes app for Android smartphones (and presumably tablets too).
The claim flies against pretty much everything Apple has done with its own apps and services in recent memory, although if you look further back in its history, extending the original iPod and iTunes from Mac to PC might provide a relevant case study.
By July 2013, 1.5m Android devices were being activated every day according to Google, while research firm Gartner claims that sometime in 2014, Android will surpass 1bn active users across all devices. That's a lot of people who aren't currently being supported by iTunes – on their devices at least – and who might thus be a lost audience for any new streaming iTunes service.
In the US, executives at personal radio service Pandora have pointed to its availability on Android, Windows Phone and other platforms when asked how it can compete with iTunes Radio. The bosses at Spotify, Deezer, Beats Music, Rdio and the rest would surely do the same if an on-demand iTunes was iOS-only in mobile terms (even if it was available for PCs running Windows too).
Still, iTunes for Android? There may be potential for some price wiggling – $4 a month on iOS versus $8 on Android? – but given the well-documented enmity between Apple and Google over Android in recent years, this would still count as a shock.
5. Provide a good API for app developers to hook into
One of the trends that's emerging from Spotify, Deezer and Rdio over the last couple of years is that one single streaming music app can't do it all. All three companies have focused on attracting developers to build external apps that hook in to their services – either sitting within their own applications, or separately on the app stores.
If Apple has big streaming music ambitions, it could follow suit: capitalising on the fact that it already has a huge community of iOS developers, and a well-established system of making its APIs available for them to use. Follow suit with streaming iTunes, and it could rely on that community to come up with the whizzy discovery features, or new ways to dig deep into its catalogue of songs. It could also pitch artists and labels on launching better mobile apps of their own that include the ability to stream full albums – and get paid for it.
There's already a thriving community of music developers – epitomised by the Music Hack Day initiative – and the existing streaming services all play prominent roles in its events around the world. It might not sound much in Apple's character to dive enthusiastically into this circuit alongside rivals – perhaps it would rather run its own hack days – but realising that external developers can come up with ideas as good or better than Apple's own software engineers (and then helping and incentivising them to do it) would be an important step.
Think too about a service like SoundCloud, which despite not paying any royalties to musicians for streams of their music, is hugely popular with artists. That's partly because they see its value as a promotional tool to reach new fans, but also because it's really open, with widgets that can be embedded anywhere on the web. 'Openness' and 'web' are two concepts that Apple's critics would suggest the company still isn't geared up for, but they could be key to making an even bigger splash in the world of streaming music.
Music videos service Vevo is available on Apple TV already.
6. Make music videos part of the service
Until now, the worlds of streaming music and streaming music videoshave been largely separate: Spotify and the rest on one side, and YouTube, Vevo, MTV, Vimeo etc on the other. But there is potential for these two worlds to come together, and it's happening in 2014 outside Apple in any case.
Example one: YouTube's long-rumoured plans to launch a music subscription service to build on its status already as the world's largest streaming music service. It's expected to make its debut imminently. Example two: Scandinavian streaming service WiMP, which recently added music videos to its catalogue of streaming audio.
"We’re still acting like this was the MTV era, we’re simply displaying music videos. But once video enters music streaming – as I am sure it will this year for all the major players – artists get paid as much for a video stream as they get paid for an audio stream. So artists and labels should be thinking how they can benefit from that. How about an album that only exists as a video? If everything is paid the same you can play with the formats, you don’t release an album in the traditional way anymore."
Back to Apple, which already sells music videos alongside audio tracks on its iTunes Store. The potential is there to build on this, and encourage labels and artists to "play with the formats" under the iTunes banner. Music videos would also fit well with Apple's growing "hobby" (in CEO Tim Cook's words) in television with its Apple TV set-top box, where Vevo is already a partner of the company.
Apple has also experimented a lot with live concert streams through its iTunes Festivals in London, and more recently Austin for SXSW. Perhaps it could bundle regular livestreams into the cost of an iTunes streaming subscription, with competitions to win tickets to see the gigs in the flesh to build buzz beforehand.
7. Be the most 'artist-friendly' streaming service
Finally, if there's one claim that's open to competition in 2014 in the streaming music world, it's which service is best for musicians. Spotify spent much of 2013 fending off criticism that the money paid out from streams wasn't enough for artists to survive and prosper.
That debate has ramped up the pressure on streaming services to show themselves as being more artist-friendly, including Spotify publishing details of how its payouts are calculated, launching analytics to help musicians better understand how their music is being streamed, and allowing them to sell merchandise from their profiles.
As that debate raged, Apple kept quiet in public, but behind the scenes has been stoking the arguments by reminding big artists of the rewards that are still available from download sales. Beyoncé's success didn't hurt in that regard either.
That will present a challenge when Apple launches its own on-demand streaming service. Spotify pays out 70% of its income to music labels and publishers in royalties, and that amount rises as the company's income goes up.
Apple could quite possibly afford to promise to pay out 80% of its streaming iTunes income, especially if such a service helped it sell more iPhones and iPads, where the margins are bigger. But if it wants to disrupt rivals by charging a lower monthly subscription price, the economics will struggle to be sold as artist-friendly – unless Apple quickly signs up (for example) 50m people to pay for its service.
Being artist-friendly may be about more than payouts, though. How can Apple help musicians to sell tickets, t-shirts and vinyl, for example? How can it help them to raise money from their fans in direct donations to fund their next album or tour – imagine, for a second, the waves if Apple were to buy a crowdfunding company like Pledge Music or even Kickstarter for this purpose?
What sort of data could Apple share with musicians to help them plan their tours? These are all questions that established streaming services are trying to answer too, with a clutch of startups trying to help who'd be buyable for – in Apple's financial world – pocket change.
Conclusion: lots of potential, but also pitfalls
If Apple is planning to make any big moves in streaming music, its WWDC event in June would be the most likely time to announce them, as part of the anticipated unveiling of the next version of its iOS software, iOS 8.
Apple could certainly make a big splash in the streaming music world, but it will face much stiffer competition than in some of those historical examples (iPod, iTunes etc) where it trumped established competitors who'd been doing a clunky job.
Labels and publishers – especially in the US – are notoriously leaky, so expect a few more rumours about the dealmaking process and likely features for a streaming iTunes in the coming months.
Apple is sure to be a huge factor in the transition from music ownership to access, but past experience – Ping, anyone? – shows that it's not immune from ending up with egg on its face when trying new musical endeavours.
Paul Walker with co-star Vin Diesel in Fast & Furious 5
The makers of Fast and Furious 7 are considering the use of CGI and body doubles to complete scenes starring the late Paul Walker which were left unfinished, according to the New York Daily News.
Studio Universal may also make use of voice effects in some cases where audio for Walker's character Brian O'Conner is unavailable. The film is due to recommence shooting in Abu Dhabi early next month, more than four months after the 40-year-old actor was killed in a car crash.
An unnamed production source told the News: "They have hired four actors with bodies very similar to Paul's physique and they will be used for movement and as a base. Paul's face and voice will be used on top using CGI."
Universal has refused to confirm the report, according to the Hollywood Reporter. It had previously been thought director James Wan would make use of existing footage to complete the film. Screenwriter Chris Morgan was said to be working on a script change in which Walker's character was retired during the movie, instead of being killed off as had originally been planned.
Walker died on 30 November when the Porsche he was traveling in crashed and burst into flames in Santa Clarita, southern California. The actor had been on hiatus from a shoot in Atlanta.
Fast and Furious 7, also starring series stalwarts Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson and Michelle Rodriguez, has been delayed from July this year to April 2015.
Hatchet is in closed beta for 'friends and family' ahead of a wider launch.
Social features have been increasingly important to streaming music services like Spotify and Deezer in recent years, as they help people share recommendations and listening activity with their wider social networks.
What's been lacking is a strong interconnection between the social aspects of these rival services, beyond currently-playing tracks showing up in Facebook's news ticker. A new website called Hatchet aims to improve on that.
Announced last week via a blog post, Hatchet is currently available in closed beta for "friends and loved ones", developed by the team behind existing digital music service Tomahawk, and building on its ideas of providing better connections between the various streaming music services.
"Hatchet is designed to be an interoperable music & fan community - full of your friends (regardless of what music services they use), your musical influencers (regardless of whether they are your friends), and set of rich and expansive data around your favourite music and artists," explained the blog post.
"A place that adds value to Tomahawk users, and creates value for those that don’t use Tomahawk. A place where users can share music, tastes and thoughts. A place where users can easily have their taste data and playlists resolved against one or more music services - and be portable across them. A place where a subscriber of one music service can benefit from the tastes of their musical influencers even though they may use a different set of music services."
Hatchet's developers describe the project as an MVP – minimum viable product in technology industry parlance – although they stress that it has "a little more emphasis on the 'viable' over the 'minimum'."
Hatchet is designed to complement rather than replace Tomahawk, which is a downloadable digital music player capable of playing songs from a variety of services, while linking up friends to browse one another's libraries.
It also spawned the Toma.hk website, which enables people to search for artists, albums and tracks across Spotify, Rdio and Deezer, including pasting in links from those services to play music in the others. Tomahawk has also just launched an Android version of its app as a private beta test.
The announcement of Hatchet came shortly after Spotify acquired music technology firm The Echo Nest, which had also been trying to forge easier links between streaming music services – albeit through metadata for the global catalogue of digital music tracks, rather than community features. Since that announcement, Rdio and Rhapsody have cut their ties with The Echo Nest.
A better comparison for Hatchet is to companies like Bop.fm, SongDrop,Whyd and Soundrop, which in different ways aim to help streaming music users share playlists and (in Soundrop's case) listen together, no matter which service they're signed up to.
Details of HTC's flagship smartphone have leaked one day before launch. Photograph: STR/EPA
The Taiwanese handset maker HTC will unveil the new version of its One flagship smartphone on Tuesday 25 March – but on Monday two more key details leaked, including its price and the US distribution of a "gold" model.
According to the @evleaks Twitter account, run by the American journalist Evan Blass, the new HTC One – codenamed "M8" - will have a sim-free price of $600 for a 32GB model, the same as the 2013 model. There will also be a version in gold, which in the US will be available only through the Best Buy chain of electronics stores.
Other reports have suggested it will cost about £580 sim-free in the UK. That compares with the expected pricing of about £600 for the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy S5 and £549 for the 16GB version of Apple's iPhone 5S, or £629 for the 32GB version.
The pricing calls into question HTC's proclaimed aim to target the "midrange" of the smartphone business, where handsets sell for less than $400 sim-free. In February it said that it would release phones priced between $150 and $200 globally this year, as it struggles to recover from a lossmaking year in 2013 after its Android smartphone business dwindled in the face of aggressive pricing and promotion by Korean rivals Samsung and LG, and more recently Japan's Sony. HTC has already forecast that it will make a loss this quarter on revenues that it said would be smaller than at any time since 2009.
Analysts have queried how easy it will be to capture "mid-market" customers as the global smartphone business diverges towards high-end expensive phones and cheaper models which are highly popular in emerging economies.
The @evleaks account has a solid track record in leaking details about forthcoming handsets, having correctly shown details of Nokia's "X" handset - codenamed Normandy - in autumn last year, well ahead of its announcement at Mobile World Congress in February.
Other details about the new HTC One that have leaked include its use of two cameras on the back, expected to up the resolution to 5 megapixels from 4MP last year. The screen is reported to be 5in, compared with4.7in for the 2013 model. At the start of March one retailer listed details of the 2014 HTC One, suggesting it will have a 2.3GHz processor (compared to 1.7GHz for the 2013 model).
HTC is rumoured to be working with Google on a range of tablets, and has suggested that it will launch a wearable device this year
Comcast in talks to acquire Time Warner Cable for more than $45bn Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Consumer groups reacted angrily Monday to news that Apple is reportedly in talks with cable giant Comcast to launch a streaming-television service that would give Apple special treatment and bypass congestion on the web.
The discussions, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, are in early stages, and many hurdles remain. If a deal is struck, it would be the second time this year that Comcast has made special arrangements for a tech company after February’s announcement of a special deal with Netflix, the largest video streaming service.
According to the Journal, Apple’s intention is to allow users to stream live and on-demand TV programming using Comcast’s own network rather than the public internet.
The newspaper reported that Apple has asked for a separate “flow” for its traffic. It has not asked for its service to be prioritized over any other service, a situation that would challenge “net neutrality” – the concept that everyone should have open and equal access on the web. But consumer groups charged that Comcast was using a loophole to circumvent the open access rules.
Derek Turner, research director at internet rights lobby group Free Press, said: “This is very concerning. This is what happens when you have one major company that is effectively the owner of the internet and a major player in pay TV. This deal and the one with Netflix suggest that Comcast is going to make its own competition pay the quality of service they want for their services.”
“The promise of the internet is competition,” he said. “If you are not already a major player, it’s going to be very hard raising money to compete in the pay TV business. And for the major players, their costs are about to rise and will be passed on to their customers.”
Michael Weinberg, vice-president of consumer rights group Public Knowledge, said the deal was clearly in its early stages but it still presented a “huge problem for an open internet.”
“The idea that a company that wants to launch a service that competes with Comcast needs Comcast’s approval is worrying,” he said.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook has long made clear he has grand ambitions for TV. So far the company’s TV efforts have been disappointing, but earlier this year he told shareholders that Apple TV, its set-top box business, had sales of $1bn in 2013 and was no longer a “hobby”.
Streaming services using the public internet can suffer over the "last mile" – the portion of a cable network that connects to customers' homes – when too many people access too much bandwidth at the same time.
Comcast was ordered to uphold net neutrality until 2018 after its takeover of NBC Universal. The largest cable provider is also in takeover talks with Time Warner, the second largest cable provider, and consumer groups are already up in arms about the likely impact on competition.
The Federal Communications Commissions’ (FCC) conditions have an opt out for “managed” services that could allow Comcast to circumvent the net neutrality issue.
The US court of appeals threw out an earlier set of net neutrality regulations the FCC had in place in January, ruling that Comcast. Verizon and others were entitled to make deals with Netflix, Amazon and others to pay for faster services.
FCC chairman Tom Wheeler has expressed concern that tiered access to the web could mean entrepreneurs are “unfairly prevented from harnessing the full power of the internet.” The regulator is currently drafting new rules aimed at blocking internet service providers from slowing services for content providers that don't pay a toll.
Turner said the Netflix deal and the emerging terms of any Apple agreement suggested that Comcast had found “very large holes” in the FCC’s net neutrality ruling. He said the FCC should reassess its rules on open internet access in the light of Comcast’s latest moves.
“The FCC should be encouraging abundance rather than increased profits through the creation of artificial scarcity, he said.
