Mediagazer: Aborted Wikipedia ban in Russia and GitHub ban in China show how HTTPS encryption can limit censorship as governments are reluctant to block the entire sites (Parker Higgins/Electronic Frontier …)

9:30 AM ET, August 31, 2015

Top News:

Alex Stedman / Variety:

Epix signs multi-year distribution deal with Hulu, will not renew its deal with Netflix after current agreement expires in September — Epix Movies Are Leaving Netflix, Coming to Hulu — Epix movies also available on Amazon Prime Instant Video — UPDATED: Netflix customers soon …

Discussion: Netflix US & Canada Blog, Hulu Blog, VentureBeat, Forbes, Tech Times, VentureBeat, @pkafka, CNNMoney, The Verge, Home Media Magazine, @awallenstein, TechCrunch, Re/code, @awallenstein, Comicbook.com, @lucas_shaw, Engadget, @pkafka and The Wrap

Jean-Louis Gassée / Monday Note:

Apple's addition of content blocking in OS X and iOS could make ad-supported business models unviable — Life After Content Blocking — By Jean-Louis Gassée Ad blocking started as an initiative by independent developers who wanted to improve our browsing experience.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, @raju, @jayrosen_nyu and @niemanlab

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Sources: Apple TV 4 coming in October for under $200, Apple TV 3 will support streaming service next year, but won't have App Store or direct Siri controls — Apple TV 4 coming in October for under $200, Apple TV 3 stays & gets new streaming service — Rough mockup of fourth Apple TV vs. third Apple TV by Michael Steeber

Discussion: Digital Trends, Business Insider, MacRumors, Variety, The Verge, App Advice, VentureBeat, Engadget, ParisLemon and Pocket-lint

Thomas Erdbrink / New York Times:

Jason Rezaian's Status Unclear After Iran Sentences 2 — TEHRAN — Iran's judiciary sentenced two people to 10 years in prison on Sunday for spying for the United States and Israel, but their names were not released, local media reported. — It was not clear if the Iranian-American reporter Jason Rezaian …

Discussion: Voice of America, Washington Post, Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel and Guardian

Alyson Shontell / Business Insider:

Mic, with 20m monthly readers and a valuation of about $100 million, expects to generate $5M to $10M in revenues in 2015, up from $0 in 2014 — How two millennials built a $100 million startup in 4 years and landed an interview with the president — See Also

Rosie Gray / BuzzFeed:

The Real Media Machine Behind Trump: Conservative Talk Radio — If you're one of the millions listening to talk radio, you can almost listen to pro-Trump news all day. Is it pure fandom, a conduit for talking about immigration, or a means to give people what they want to stay relevant?

Robert Mann / Salon:

Once high-stakes affairs, political press conferences are now carefully choreographed events — The modern news conference is a scripted farce: Why Jorge Ramos' badgering of Donald Trump was a necessary corrective — Once famously combative, press conferences have morphed into carefully choreographed, entirely predictable affairs

Discussion: Media Myth Alert

Parker Higgins / Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Aborted Wikipedia ban in Russia and GitHub ban in China show how HTTPS encryption can limit censorship as governments are reluctant to block the entire sites — Russia's Wikipedia Ban Buckles Under HTTPS Encryption — Dueling forces of encryption and government censorship came to a head …

Discussion: @xor and Boing Boing

Ricardo Bilton / Digiday:

Interview with Gabe Rivera on changes in online publishing as Techmeme nears its 10th birthday — Techmeme's Gabe Rivera: ‘The home page can be really valuable’ — While publishers today constantly on the hunt for more pageviews and larger audiences, what they secretly really want is to be more influential.

Discussion: @whatthebit, @engagingnews, @tcarmody and @digiday

ABC:

Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed taken into custody, Peter Greste tried in absentia, will avoid imprisonment after deportation to Australia earlier this year — Greste, Al Jazeera colleagues given jail terms in retrial — Peter Greste and his Al Jazeera colleagues Mohammed Fahmy …

Discussion: Sydney Morning Herald, 9news.com.au, Fusion, Sydney Morning Herald, Yahoo! News, Sydney Morning Herald, Financial Times, Sky News, Quartz, Wall Street Journal and Daily Mail

Washington Post:
Al Jazeera journalists Mohamed Fahmy, Baher Mohamed, and Peter Greste sentenced to three years in prison by Egyptian court

Discussion: Reuters, CNN, Guardian, @petergreste, TVNewser, @petergreste, @bbclysedoucet, Associated Press, Al Jazeera America, Australian Minister …, Agence France-Presse, Voice of America, NBC News, BBC and Telegraph

Max Willens / International Business Times:

ABS Entertainment sues three largest terrestrial radio broadcasters for unpaid royalties it claims broadcasters owe on pre-1972 recordings — Lawsuits Against CBS, iHeartMedia And Cumulus Could Wipe Out Oldies Radio As We Know It — The next time your favorite '60s song comes on the radio …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter and Radio Ink Magazine

Elias Groll / Foreign Policy:

How journalist Brian Krebs used publicly available information to possibly identify the Ashley Madison hacker — The Curious Case of @deuszu, the Ashley Madison Hack, and an American Journalist — As word has trickled out on the Internet of the massive breach of adultery website Ashley Madison …

Discussion: Guardian

James Panichi / Politico:

EU to launch rapid-response team to counter destabilizing Russian news reports and provide an alternative Russian language news source — EU declares information war on Russia — Task force will start trying to win hearts and minds in eastern partnership countries next month.