Friday, September 30, 2016

Guide: Install Kodi 123Movies Addon on your media center

kodi-123movies-addon-featuredA great, hassle-free experience is what I had when I tested the Kodi 123Movies addon from the Mucky Ducks repository. This awesome Kodi movies addon is easy to install, but also easy to use. You can be watching movies in no time with the Kodi 123Movies plugin. If you want to know an easy way […]

Guide: Install Kodi 123Movies Addon on your media center is a post from htpcBeginner.



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Popular YouTuber Experiments With WebTorrent to Beat Censorship

sadyoutubeWhen discussing the most influential websites on the planet, there can be little doubt that YouTube is a true giant. The video-hosting platform is the second most popular site on the Internet behind its owner’s Google.com

YouTube attracts well over a billion visitors every money, with many flocking to the platform to view the original content uploaded by its army of contributors. However, with great power comes great responsibility and for YouTube that means pleasing advertisers.

As a result, YouTube has rules in place over what kind of content can be monetized, something which caused a huge backlash recently.

In a nutshell, if you don’t produce content that is almost entirely “appropriate for all audiences,” (without references to drugs, violence, and sex, for example), your content is at risk of making no money. But YouTube goes further still, by flagging “controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies.” Awkward.

Many YouTubers view this refusal to monetize content as a form of censorship but recognize that as long as they’re in bed with the company, they’re going to have to play by its rules. For some, this means assessing alternatives.

Popular YouTuber Connor Hill (Bluedrake42 – 186,600 subscribers) is no stranger to YouTube flagging his videos. As a result, he’s decided to take matters into his own hands by experimenting with WebTorrent.

bd42-ss

As previously reported, WebTorrent brings torrents to the web. Instead of using standalone applications it allows people to share files directly from their browser, without having to configure or install anything.

Early on, WebTorrent creator Feross Aboukhadijeh identified “people-powered websites” as a revolutionary application for WebTorrent.

“Imagine a video site like YouTube, where visitors help to host the site’s content. The more people that use a WebTorrent-powered website, the faster and more resilient it becomes,” he told TF.

It is exactly this application for the technology that has excited Bluedrake. By taking his content, embedding it in his website, and using his own fans for distribution, Bluedrake says he can take back control.

“This solution does not require torrent clients, this solution does not require torrent files, this is a seamless video-player hosted solution, with a completely decentralized database, supported by the people watching the content itself,” Bluedrake says in a new video. “And it works…REALLY well.

Of course, all torrents need seeds to ensure that older content is always available, so Bluedrake says that the servers already funded by his community will have backup copies of all videos ready to seed, whenever that’s necessary.

“That’s literally the best of both worlds. A CDN and a TVDN – a Torrent Video Distribution Network – at the same time. It will be community-funded and community supported…and then we’ll have truly censorship-free, entirely impervious video content, in a network. That gives me chills,” Bluedrake adds.

But while this solution offers the opportunity to avoid censorship, there is no intention to break the law. Bluedrake insists that the freedom of peer-to-peer will only be used for speech, not to infringe copyright.

“All I want is a site where people can say what they want. I want a site where people can operate their business without having somebody else step in and take away their content when they say something they don’t like. We’re going to host our own content distribution network within a peer-to-peer, web-socketed torrent service,” he says.

The development has excited WebTorrent creator Feross Aboukhadijeh.

“This is just one of the extremely creative uses for WebTorrent that I’ve heard about. I’m continually amazed at what WebTorrent users are building with the open source torrent engine,” Feross informs TF.

“When a video site uses WebTorrent, visitors help to host the site’s content. The more people that use a WebTorrent-powered website, the faster and more resilient it becomes. I think that’s pretty cool. It’s something that traditional CDNs cannot offer.

“The magic of WebTorrent is that people can use it however they like. It’s not just a desktop torrent app but it’s a JavaScript library that anyone can use anywhere on the web.”

Of course, one YouTuber using the technology is a modest start but the potential is there for this to get much bigger if Bluedrake can make a success of it.

“The way that we get P2P technology to go mainstream is simple: make it easy, make it better,” Feross says.

“This is part of a larger trend of decentralized protocols replacing centralized services, as we’ve seen with Bitcoin and blockchain apps.”

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.



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J.J. Abrams Can’t Stop Copyright Lawsuit Against Star Trek Fan-Film

axanarEarlier this year Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios filed a lawsuit against the makers of a Star Trek inspired fan film, accusing them of copyright infringement.

The dispute centers around the well-received short film Star Trek: Prelude to Axanar and the planned follow-up feature film Axanar.

Among other things, the Star Trek rightsholders claim ownership over various Star Trek related settings, characters, species, clothing, colors, shapes, words, short phrases and even the Klingon language.

A few months after the complaint was filed it appeared that the movie studios and the Axanar team had found a way to resolve their issues. During a Star Trek fan event director J.J. Abrams announced that the case would be over soon, citing discussions with Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin.

“We started talking about this realizing that this is not an appropriate way to deal with the fans. The fans should be celebrating this thing,” Abrams said. “So Justin went to the studio and pushed them to stop this lawsuit and now, within the next few weeks, it will be announced this is going away.”

However, as time passed it appears that the director had spoken too soon, or perhaps made up the entire claim ad-lib. The case didn’t “go away” at all and this week it became clear that Paramount and CBS Studios see J.J. Abrams’ comments as irrelevant.

Both parties are currently in the discovery phase where they hope to gather evidence from the other side to back up their claims. Axanar was particularly interested in obtaining any communications the studios had with Justin Lin and J.J. Abrams, which seem to favor their claims.

However, through their lawyers CBS and Paramount refused to hand anything over, noting that this is information is irrelevant, if it exists at all. “We objected to your requests for communications with Justin Lin and J.J. Abrams as irrelevant, and did not agree to produce those documents,” they wrote in an email earlier this month.

The email

axanemail

To resolve this and other outstanding discovery disputes, the parties now ask the court what information should be handed over, and what can remain confidential.

In the joint motion (pdf) CBS and Paramount reiterate that the comments J.J. Abrams made are “not relevant” to any party’s claim. The directors are not authorized to speak on behalf of the movie studios and their comments have no impact on the damages amount, they argue.

“J.J. Abrams is a producer/director of certain Star Trek Copyrighted Works and Justin Lin was the director of Star Trek Beyond. Neither Mr. Abrams nor Mr. Lin is an authorized representative of either of the Plaintiffs,” the studios claim.

“A third party’s statement about the merits of this lawsuit has absolutely no bearing on the amount of money Defendants’ obtained by their infringing conduct, nor does it bear on any other aspect of damages,” they add.

Axanar disagrees with this assessment. They claim that Abrams statements about dropping the “ridiculous” lawsuit in the interest of fans, is central to a possible fair use claim and damages.

“Statements that Star Trek belongs to all of us and that the lawsuit is ridiculous and was going to be ‘dropped’ is relevant to the impact on the market prong of the fair use analysis, and Plaintiffs utter lack of
damages,” Axanar claims.

The court will now have to decide what information CBS and Paramount must share. It’s clear, however, that J.J. Abrams spoke way too soon and that the movie studios are not ready to drop their lawsuit without putting up a fight.

While Abrams may not have realized it at the time, his comments are a blessing for the fan-film. It offers Axanar great leverage in potential settlement discussions and will reflect badly on CBS and Paramount if the case heads to trial.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.



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Man Who Leaked The Revenant Online Fined $1.1m

revenantIn December 2015, many so-called ‘screener’ copies of the latest movies leaked online. Among them a near perfect copy of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s ‘The Revenant’.

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and slated for a Christmas day release, in a matter of hours the tale vengeance clocked up tens of thousands of illegal downloads.

With such a high-profile leak, it was inevitable that the authorities would attempt to track down the individual responsible. It didn’t take them long.

Following an FBI investigation, former studio worker William Kyle Morarity was discovered as the culprit. Known online by the username “clutchit,” the 31-year-old had uploaded The Revenant and The Peanuts Movie to private torrent tracker Pass The Popcorn.

The Revenant

therevenant

Uploading a copyrighted work being prepared for commercial distribution is a felony that carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison, so his sentencing always had the potential to be punishing for the Lancaster man, despite his early guilty plea.

This week Morarity was sentenced in federal court for criminal copyright infringement after admitting screener copies of both movies to the Internet.

After being posted online six days in advance of its theatrical release, it was estimated that The Revenant was downloaded at least a million times during a six week period, costing Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation to suffer losses of “well over $1 million.”

United States District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson ordered Morarity to pay $1.12 million in restitution to Twentieth Century Fox. He also sentenced the 31-year-old to eight months’ home detention and 24 months’ probation.

According to court documents, Morarity obtained the screeners and copied them to a portable hard drive. He then uploaded the movies to Pass The Popcorn on December 17 and December 19.

“The film industry creates thousands of jobs in Southern California,” said United States Attorney Eileen M. Decker commenting on the sentencing.

“The defendant’s illegal conduct caused significant harm to the victim movie studio. The fact that the defendant stole these films while working on the lot of a movie studio makes his crime more egregious.”

Deirdre Fike, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, said that Morarity had abused his position of trust to obtain copies of the movies and then used them in a way that caused Fox to incur huge losses.

“The theft of intellectual property – in this case, major motion pictures – discourages creative incentive and affects the average American making ends meet in the entertainment industry,” Fike said.

As part of his punishment, Morarity also agreed to assist the FBI to produce a public service announcement aimed at educating the public about the harms of copyright infringement and the illegal uploading of movies to the Internet.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.



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Thursday, September 29, 2016

New Amazon Fire TV Stick 2 available for pre-order now

Fire TV Stick 2 imageAmazon has just made pre-orders available for an all-new version of the Amazon Fire TV Stick. The Amazon Fire TV Stick 2 is a new iteration of this successful media streamer, and it brings some cool features, such as Alexa voice recognition via the microphone on its remote. Amazon Fire TV Alexa capabilities allow you to launch apps […]

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Research: Movie Piracy Hurts Sales, But Not Always

europe-flagResearch into online piracy comes in all shapes and sizes, often with equally mixed results. The main question is often whether piracy is hurting sales.

New research conducted by economists from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, tries to find answers for the movie industry.

For a new paper titled “Movie Piracy and Displaced Sales in Europe,” the researchers conducted a large-scale survey among 30,000 respondents from six countries, documenting their movie consumption patterns.

Using statistical models and longitudinal data, they were able to estimate how piracy affects legal sales and if this differs from country to country.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the findings show that not every pirated movie is a lost sale. Instead, for every hundred films that are first viewed from a pirated source, 37 viewings from paid movies are ‘lost’.

This results in a displacement rate of 0.37, which is still a high number of course, also compared to previous research.

It’s worth noting that in some cases piracy actually has a beneficial effect. This is true for movies that people have seen more than twice.

“Interestingly, we found evidence of a sampling effect: for movies that are seen more than twice, first unpaid consumption slightly increases paid second consumption,” the researchers write.

However, the sampling effect doesn’t outweigh the loss in sales. Overall the researchers estimate that online piracy leads to a significant loss in revenue for the movie industry.

“Using a back-of-the-envelope calculation, we show that this implies that unpaid movie viewings reduced movie sales in Europe by about 4.4% during the sample period,” they write.

This negative effect is driven by a relatively small group of consumers. Roughly 20% of the respondents with the highest movie consumption are responsible for 94% of lost movie sales. Or put differently, the most avid film fans pirate the most.

Interestingly, there are large between-country differences too. In Germany online movie piracy results in ‘only’ a 1.65% loss, this figure is 10.41% for Spain. The UK (2.89%), France (5.73%), Poland (7.21%) and Sweden (7.65%) rank somewhere in between.

According to the researchers, their findings can help policymakers to decide what the best anti-piracy enforcement strategies are. In addition, changes between countries could help to evaluate existing and future measures and inspire future research.

“The estimates that we provide can help policy makers to asses the efficient use of public resources to be spent on copyright enforcement of movies.”

“In particular, since we find that virtually all the lost sales of movies are due to a very small group of individuals, most damages of movie piracy could therefore potentially be prevented with well targeted policies,” the researchers conclude.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.



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UK IP Crime Report 2016 Reveals IPTV/Kodi Piracy as Growing Threat

For more than a decade the IP Crime Group and the Intellectual Property Office have collaborated to produce an assessment of the level of IP crime in the UK. Their annual IP Crime Report details the responses of businesses, anti-piracy groups, and government agencies.

As usual, this year’s report covers all areas of IP crime, both in the physical realm and online. However, it is the latter area that appears to be causing the most concern to participating anti-piracy groups.

“Perhaps the area where IP crime statistics most often reach jaw-dropping levels is in relation to the industries providing digital content,” the report reads.

“During a sample three-month period last year, 28% of those questioned admitted their music downloads in the UK came from illegal sources. Similarly, 23% of films, 22% of software, 16% of TV and 15% of games were downloaded in breach of copyright.”

While noting that illicit music downloads have actually reduced in recent years, the report highlights areas that aren’t doing so well, TV show consumption for example.

“The reasons for the spike in TV copyright infringement appear to be, in part, technological, with ‘unofficial services’ such as uTorrent, BitTorrent, TV catch up apps and established sources such as YouTube offering content without legal certainty,” it adds.

But while several methods of obtaining free TV content online are highlighted in the report, none achieve as much attention as IPTV – commonly known as Kodi with illicit third-party addons.

In her report preamble, Minister for Intellectual Property Baroness Neville-Rolfe describes anti-IPTV collaboration between the Federation Against Copyright Theft, Trading Standards, and the Police, as one of the year’s operational successes. Indeed, FACT say anti-IPTV work is now their top priority.

Federation Against Copyright Theft

“We have prioritised an emerging threat to the audiovisual industry, internet protocol TV (IPTV) boxes,” FACT write.

“In their original form, these boxes are legitimate. However, with the use of apps and add-ons, they allow users to access copyright infringing material, from live TV and sports, to premium pay-for channels and newly released films. Once configured these boxes are illegal.”

FACT say they are concentrating on two areas – raising awareness in the industry and elsewhere while carrying out enforcement and disruption operations.

“In the last year FACT has worked with a wide range of partners and law enforcement bodies to tackle individuals and disrupt businesses selling illegal IPTV boxes. Enforcement action has been widespread across the UK with numerous ongoing investigations,” FACT note.

Overall, FACT say that 70% of the public complaints they receive relate to online copyright infringement. More than a quarter of all complaints now relate to IPTV and 50% of the anti-piracy group’s current investigations involve IPTV boxes.

fact-ipcrime

British Phonographic Industry (BPI)

In their submission to the report, the BPI cite three key areas of concern – online piracy, physical counterfeiting, and Internet-enabled sales of infringing physical content. The former is their top priority.

“The main online piracy threats to the UK recorded music industry at present come from BitTorrent networks, MP3 aggregator sites, cyberlockers, unauthorised streaming sites, stream ripping sites and pirate sites accessed via mobile devices,” the BPI writes.

“Search engines – predominantly Google – also continue to provide millions of links to infringing content and websites that are hosted by non-compliant operators and hosts that cannot be closed down have needed to be blocked in the UK under s.97A court orders (website blocking).”

The BPI notes that between January 2015 and March 2016, it submitted more than 100 million URL takedowns to Google and Bing. Counting all notices since 2011 when the BPI began the practice, the tally now sits at 200 million URLs.

“These astronomic numbers demonstrate the large quantity of infringing content that is available online and which is easily accessible to search engine users,” the BPI says.

On the web-blocking front, the BPI says it now has court orders in place to block 63 pirate sites and more than 700 related URLs, IP addresses and proxies.

“Site blocking is proving a successful strategy, and the longer the blocks are in place, the more effective they tend to be. The latest data available shows that traffic to sites blocked for over one year has reduced by an average of around 80%; with traffic to sites blocked for less than a year reduced by an average of around 50%,” the BPI adds.

Infringement warnings for Internet subscibers

The Get it Right campaign is an educational effort to advise the public on how to avoid pirate sites and spend money on genuine products. The campaign has been somewhat lukewarm thus far, but the sting in the tail has always been the threat of copyright holders sending warnings to Internet pirates.

To date, nothing has materialized on that front but hidden away on page 51 of the report is a hint that something might happen soon.

“A further component of the ‘Get it Right’ campaign is a subscriber alert programme that will, starting by the end of 2016, advise ISPs’ residential subscribers when their accounts are believed to have been used to infringe copyright,” the report reads.

“Account holders will receive an Alert from their ISP, advising them that unlawful uploading of a copyright content file may have taken place on their internet connection and offering advice on where to find legitimate sources of content.”

Overall, the tone of the report suggests a huge threat from IP crime but one that’s being effectively tackled by groups such as FACT, BPI, the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, and various educational initiatives. Only time will tell if next year’s report will retain the optimism.

The full report can be downloaded here (pdf)

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Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Install SABnzbd on Ubuntu Server – Easy AtoMiC Method

install-sabnzbd-on-ubuntu-featuredIf you want to know how to install SABnzbd on Ubuntu server, then you have come to the right place. This tutorial will enable you to get SABnzbd working in little time on your Ubuntu server 16.04. To make it easier, we will use the awesome AtoMiC ToolKit tool. SABnzbd is a free and easy […]

Install SABnzbd on Ubuntu Server – Easy AtoMiC Method is a post from htpcBeginner.



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Kim Dotcom’s Extradition Appeal Concludes, Will He Get a “Fair Go”?

megaupload-logoLast December a New Zealand District Court ruled that Kim Dotcom and his colleagues can be sent to the United States to face criminal charges.

This decision was immediately appealed and over the past weeks there’s been a lengthy series of appeal hearings at New Zealand’s High Court.

Represented by a team of lawyers, Kim Dotcom and his fellow Megaupload defendants have argued that the New Zealand District Court failed to give them a fair hearing. The entire case was live-streamed on YouTube and earlier today the final arguments were presented.

Kim Dotcom’s defense lawyer Ron Mansfield repeated several claims that have been discussed over the past several weeks. He argues that the lower court made critical errors in its final ruling and that crucial evidence was overlooked or not considered at all.

One of the main arguments of the United States government is that Megaupload would only disable a URL when it received a takedown notice, not the underlying file. As a result of the deduplication technology it employed, this meant that the file could still be accessed under different URLs.

However, according to Dotcom’s defense, it was a standard practice in the Internet service provider industry to remove just the URL, something copyright holders were apparently well aware of.

“How can a copyright holder have been reasonably expecting Megaupload to take down files in response to takedown notices specifying URLs if the copyright holders knew that the prevailing industry practice was to prevent access by removing the URL, not the file,” Mansfield said.

“The use of deduplication technology by Internet service providers […] was not a secret. It was widespread within the industry and well-known both by the Internet service provider industry and the content industry,” he added.

While various stakeholders disagree on what services such as Megaupload are required to do under the DMCA, removing the URLs only was not something unique to Megaupload.

In addition, Mansfield previously cited the “Dancing Baby” case where it was held that copyright holders should consider fair use before requesting a takedown. This means that removing an underlying file down may be too broad, as fair use isn’t considered for all URLs.

Overall the defense believes that Megaupload and its employees enjoy safe harbor protection and can’t be held criminally liable for copyright infringement. As such, there is no extraditable offense.

Mr. Mansfield closes his argument by highlighting the unprecedented nature of this case, which has been ongoing for nearly five years.

“Today marks 1730 days since 20 January 2012, when the New Zealand police effectively dropped from the sky and conducted the search of Mr. Dotcom’s home. And at that point they then sought about arresting him. The officers were disguised, armed and left him and his family effectively bereft of assets and income,” Mansfield said.

Mr. Mansfield

mansfield

Mansfield describes the U.S. litigation strategy as an aggressive one and argues that the failure to accept and review critical evidence deprived Kim Dotcom of a fair trial.

“Sportsmanship in a court of law is called fairness and the United States conduct has in our submission both been unlawful and unreasonable and the tactics they have adopted have been unfair and prevented Mr. Dotcom and the other appellants from having the benefit of a fair hearing.”

“He simply has not had a fair go. And we do ask that your honor considers the submissions which have been presented, because, in effect, after that period of time, after 1730 days it would be the first time there is a meaningful judicial assessment of the facts and of the submissions presented,” Mansfield concluded.

While the primary hearings are over, there are still some smaller details to work out and it is expected to take several weeks before New Zealand High Court reaches a decision. However, Kim Dotcom is confident that he’s on the winning site and congratulated his lawyers.

“I like to thank my legal team for an excellent job. My 5 children will grow up around their father thanks to your brilliance. I’m grateful,” Dotcom posted on Twitter a few hours ago.

Whatever the outcome, it’s unlikely that the case will stop at the High Court. Given the gravity of the case, both the United States and the Megaupload defendants are likely to take it all the way to the Supreme Court if the decision doesn’t go their way.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.



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