Tuesday, October 31, 2017

ExtraTorrent Uploader Groups Launch Their Own Torrent Site

Earlier this year the torrent community entered a state of shock when another major torrent site suddenly closed its doors.

Having served torrents to the masses for over a decade, ExtraTorrent decided to throw in the towel, without providing any detail or an apparent motive.

“It’s time we say goodbye,” was all that ExtraTorrent operator SaM was willing to say in a brief response.

Although ExtraTorrent is no more, the site’s name lives on thanks to several uploader groups that were tied to the site. The TV and movie torrent uploaders ETTV and ETHD continued their work on sites such as The Pirate Bay and 1337x.

While this worked fine, not all former “followers” knew where to go. ETTV and ETHD torrents were still downloaded millions of times a week, but this activity was scattered around sites that didn’t really feel like their old home.

To fill this hole, ETTV, ETHD and DTOne have now joined forces and launched a torrent site of their own, simply named ETTV.tv.

“We have launched a new site to cater to our fans,” the ETTV.tv teams inform TorrentFreak.

“Since the shutdown of ExtraTorrent we were homeless and our fans and followers didn’t know where to find us. We decided, along with DTOne (formerly DDR/ICTV/DUS), to come together and make a site that can bring our fans back.”

ETTV.tv

While the groups in question had ExtraTorrent as their home, this is not a reincarnation of the defunct torrent site. ETTV.tv is operated by different people and only offers a curated selection of movie and TV uploads.

The site may expand to other categories in the future, but for now, there are no concrete plans to do so. It’s also a closed ecosystem, meaning that only a select group of trusted uploaders is allowed to add new content.

“We want to have a site for best quality torrents thus we are not taking every uploader that comes knocking our doors,” the ETTV.tv team explains. There are over 50,000 torrents on the site already but the uploaders are working on bringing their entire archive back online.

Since the site is new there are several bugs and other issues too, which is something the site’s operators are keeping a close eye on as well. They informed TorrentFreak that ETTV.tv users are encouraged to report problems and come with suggestions.

The groups currently promote ETTV.tv in their upload notes on other sites and, even though the site has only been around for a few days, many close followers have found their way to it already.

During the months and years to come the groups hope to keep these people on board, add some more, and stay clear from any legal problems.

“We hope we can live up to the trust we had in the past and continue to serve our fans and followers,” ETTV.tv concludes.

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



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‘Pirate’ IPTV Provider Loses Case, Despite Not Offering Content Itself

In 2017, there can be little doubt that streaming is the big piracy engine of the moment. Dubbed Piracy 3.0 by the MPAA, the movement is causing tremendous headaches for rightsholders on a global scale.

One of the interesting things about this phenomenon is the distributed nature of the content on offer. Sourced from thousands of online locations, from traditional file-hosters to Google Drive, the big challenge is to aggregate it all into one place, to make it easy to find. This is often achieved via third-party addons for the legal Kodi software.

One company offering such a service was MovieStreamer.nl in the Netherlands. Via its website MovieStreamer the company offered its Easy Use Interface 2.0, a piece of software that made Kodi easy to use and other streams easy to find for 79 euros. It also sold ‘VIP’ access to thousands of otherwise premium channels for around 20 euros per month.

MovieStreamer Easy Interface 2.0

“Thanks to the unique Easy Use Interface, we have the unique 3-step process,” the company’s marketing read.

“Click tile of choice, activate subtitles, and play! Fully automated and instantly the most optimal settings. Our youngest user is 4 years old and the ‘oldest’ 86 years. Ideal for young and old, beginner and expert.”

Of course, being based in the Netherlands it wasn’t long before MovieStreamer caught the attention of BREIN. The anti-piracy outfit says it tried to get the company to stop offering the illegal product but after getting no joy, took the case to court.

From BREIN’s perspective, the case was cut and dried. MovieStreamer had no right to provide access to the infringing content so it was in breach of copyright law (unauthorized communication to the public) and should stop its activities immediately. MovieStreamer, however, saw things somewhat differently.

At the core of its defense was the claim that did it not provide content itself and was merely a kind of middleman. MovieStreamer said it provided only a referral service in the form of a hyperlink formatted as a shortened URL, which in turn brought together supply and demand.

In effect, MovieStreamer claimed that it was several steps away from any infringement and that only the users themselves could activate the shortener hyperlink and subsequent process (including a corresponding M3U playlist file, which linked to other hyperlinks) to access any pirated content. Due to this disconnect, MovieStreamer said that there was no infringement, for-profit or otherwise.

A judge at the District Court in Utrecht disagreed, ruling that by providing a unique hyperlink to customers which in turn lead to protected works was indeed a “communication to the public” based on the earlier Filmspeler case.

The Court also noted that MovieStreamer knew or indeed ought to have known the illegal nature of the content being linked to, not least since BREIN had already informed them of that fact. Since the company was aware, the for-profit element of the GS Media decision handed down by the European Court of Justice came into play.

In an order handed down October 27, the Court ordered MovieStreamer to stop its IPTV hyperlinking activities immediately, whether via its Kodi Easy Use Interface or other means. Failure to do so will result in a 5,000 euro per day fine, payable to BREIN, up to a maximum of 500,000 euros. MovieStreamer was also ordered to pay legal costs of 17,527 euros.

“Moviestreamer sold a link to illegal content. Then you are required to check if that content is legally on the internet,” BREIN Director Tim Kuik said in a statement.

“You can not claim that you have nothing to do with the content if you sell a link to that content.”

Speaking with Tweakers, MovieStreamer owner Bernhard Ohler said that the packages in question were removed from his website on Saturday night. He also warned that other similar companies could experience the same issues with BREIN.

“With this judgment in hand, BREIN has, of course, a powerful weapon to force them offline,” he said.

Ohler said that the margins on hardware were so small that the IPTV subscriptions were the heart of his company. Contacted by TorrentFreak on what this means for his business, he had just two words.

“The end,” he said.

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



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Monday, October 30, 2017

CBS Sues Man for Posting Image of a 59-Year TV-Show on Social Media

Just a few days ago we posted an article about the dozens of cases independent photographers file against mainstream media outlets.

These lawsuits accuse companies such as CBS, NBC, and Warner Bros of using copyrighted photos without the owners’ permission and have resulted in hundreds of settlements this year alone.

While the evidence in these cases is often strong, going up against such powerful companies is not without risk. They have the money and resources to fight back, by any means necessary. This is what New York photographer Jon Tannen has witnessed as well.

In February, Tannen sued CBS Interactive because it used one of his copyrighted photos on the website 247sports.com without being paid. While he hoped this would result in a decent settlement, CBS found a smoking gun and decided to fire back.

A few days ago the photographer was hit with a rather unusual lawsuit. In a four-page complaint, CBS Broadcasting accuses him of posting a copyright-infringing image of the classic TV-show Gunsmoke on social media.

Gunsmoke is one of the longest-running drama TV-shows in US history and aired on CBS from 1955 through 1975. In the complaint, the media giant brands Tannen a hypocrite for posting the infringing CBS screenshots online.

“This copyright infringement action arises out of Defendant’s unauthorized use of Plaintiff’s valuable intellectual property. Tannen hypocritically engaged in this act of infringement while simultaneously bringing suit against Plaintiff’s sister company, CBS Interactive Inc., claiming it had violated his own copyright.”

The complaint

The screenshot(s), which we were unable to locate at the time of writing, is taken from the “Dooley Surrenders” episode first aired in 1958. While many would classify a screenshot from a full episode as fair use, CBS is having none of it.

“Without any license or authorization from Plaintiff, Defendant has copied and published via social media platforms images copied from the ‘Dooley Surrenders’ episode of GUNSMOKE,” CBS writes, adding that the “infringement of Plaintiff’s copyright is willful within the meaning of the Copyright Act.”

CBS says that it’s been harmed by the infringing action but it can’t determine any actual damages. Instead, it requests statutory damages for willful copyright infringement which can reach $150,000 per work.

Of course, it’s unlikely that Tannen will have to pay that. CBS’s lawsuit is a clear retaliatory move through which the company hopes to lessen the potential damages for their own alleged infringement.

Posting a screenshot of a TV-episode is on a completely different level than using a full photo in a publication, of course. Still, CBS has shown that it’s willing to put up a fight, and with a powerful team of lawyers they are a tricky adversary.

—-

The full CBS complaint is available here (pdf). A copy of Tannen’s original suit against CBS Interactive can be found here (pdf).

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Devcon 2017 Part II - Day Three

The final day of Devcon - still lots to get through, although, for the sake of some team members, we might need to speak slowly and quietly...

We started the day with a Foundation financial overview from natethomas. Even as a non-profit, volunteer-run organisation, keeping Kodi going is an expensive undertaking by the time you take into account events and conferences, hosting, legal, development hardware, and similar. This in turn led to a conversation about future logistics: we have a large team now, and it's getting increasingly challenging to get the team together to meet, discuss, work, and socialise while we continue to make your favourite media centre software. We also want to continue to attend and increase our engagement with FOSDEM, ELC, CES, VDD and other open source and multimedia events.

Our next topic was infrastructure with kib. The Kodi systems respond to literally millions of requests per day for such things as downloads and addon updates, so we're looking after a significant infrastructure. We have multiple servers for the forum, wiki, main web site, build server and mirroring, all of which need to be managed, backed up, maintained, upgraded. Given our recent extended forum downtime, that was clearly part of the discussion as it's unacceptable in every respect. We need to look again at how we host our content, our architecture, and any weak points.

We then moved onto a brief conversation about addon security. This is a big topic that will need to be progressed separately: addon sandboxing to protect the core code and operating system, for example, or signing and hashing to ensure code integrity.

Tooling was our next topic, led by razee and martijn. Do we have all the tools that the developers need? Are there better ways and methods? How do we take work out of the system, perhaps through automation of some basic sanity checks? How do we make it easier for people to contribute code and get it accepted and merged?

We then moved on to forum moderation, with a discussion led by darrenhill. All forum users should be aware that we do not allow forum conversations or support threads that touch on piracy, guided by a non-comprehensive list of banned addons on the wiki. However, new piracy addons appear all the time, so we need to consider how we better maintain and publicise this list, including making it clearer to new forum sign-ups: we still get too many people who sign up specifically to ask for help with an unsupported addon, for example. The conversation then moved on to log files, and users who edit these to deliberately try to hide addons/repositories. Finally, we moved on to the sanctions we take against users who repeatedly breach the forum rules, and the basis on which we take action while trying to remain fair and transparent.

Moving on, we came back to a topic we covered earlier in the conference: whether an addon should ever be allowed to modify another addon, or whether an addon should be allowed to disable anything when it finds something that it's decided is somehow "undesirable". This is clearly a contentious issue. As a rule, nothing should ever break a working installation, either by changing core Kodi files or by altering some other part of a user's installation that was already there. The current issue with addons checking for the presence of others, however, is clearly more complex as there may be legitimate reasons for such behaviour, such as a compatibility check. Expect a more formal announcement on this subject in the forums in the near future.

Our final conversation of the day, then - and the final one of the conference - was alwinus and the addon subsystem. He talked us through the current addon system, and some of the problems and limitations it presents: it's not easily extensible, there are limitations on interoperability between addons, SQL dependencies impacting performance, and there are some inherent instabilities in the addon handling code that can trigger a crash. Simply put, there is a series of improvements proposed that will address these issues: limit SQL dependencies, remove async thread handling, cache more information, move away from dependency on cpluff.

And that's it for Devcon 2017: time for people to head out, to airports, train stations, wherever.

Thank you to everyone for their attendance and contributions!

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Assassins Creed Origin DRM Hammers Gamers’ CPUs

There’s a war taking place on the Internet. On one side: gaming companies, publishers, and anti-piracy outfits. On the other: people who varying reasons want to play and/or test games for free.

While these groups are free to battle it out in a manner of their choosing, innocent victims are getting caught up in the crossfire. People who pay for their games without question should be considered part of the solution, not the problem, but whether they like it or not, they’re becoming collateral damage in an increasingly desperate conflict.

For the past several days, some players of the recently-released Assassin’s Creed Origins have emerged as what appear to be examples of this phenomenon.

“What is the normal CPU usage for this game?” a user asked on Steam forums. “I randomly get between 60% to 90% and I’m wondering if this is too high or not.”

The individual reported running an i7 processor, which is no slouch. However, for those running a CPU with less oomph, matters are even worse. Another gamer, running an i5, reported a 100% load on all four cores of his processor, even when lower graphics settings were selected in an effort to free up resources.

“It really doesn’t seem to matter what kind of GPU you are using,” another complained. “The performance issues most people here are complaining about are tied to CPU getting maxed out 100 percent at all times. This results in FPS [frames per second] drops and stutter. As far as I know there is no workaround.”

So what could be causing these problems? Badly configured machines? Terrible coding on the part of the game maker?

According to Voksi, whose ‘Revolt’ team cracked Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus before its commercial release last week, it’s none of these. The entire problem is directly connected to desperate anti-piracy measures.

As widely reported (1,2), the infamous Denuvo anti-piracy technology has been taking a beating lately. Cracking groups are dismantling it in a matter of days, sometimes just hours, making the protection almost pointless. For Assassin’s Creed Origins, however, Ubisoft decided to double up, Voksi says.

“Basically, Ubisoft have implemented VMProtect on top of Denuvo, tanking the game’s performance by 30-40%, demanding that people have a more expensive CPU to play the game properly, only because of the DRM. It’s anti-consumer and a disgusting move,” he told TorrentFreak.

Voksi says he knows all of this because he got an opportunity to review the code after obtaining the binaries for the game. Here’s how it works.

While Denuvo sits underneath doing its thing, it’s clearly vulnerable to piracy, given recent advances in anti-anti-piracy technology. So, in a belt-and-braces approach, Ubisoft opted to deploy another technology – VMProtect – on top.

VMProtect is software that protects other software against reverse engineering and cracking. Although the technicalities are different, its aims appear to be somewhat similar to Denuvo, in that both seek to protect underlying systems from being subverted.

“VMProtect protects code by executing it on a virtual machine with non-standard architecture that makes it extremely difficult to analyze and crack the software. Besides that, VMProtect generates and verifies serial numbers, limits free upgrades and much more,” the company’s marketing reads.

VMProtect and Denuvo didn’t appear to be getting on all that well earlier this year but they later settled their differences. Now their systems are working together, to try and solve the anti-piracy puzzle.

“It seems that Ubisoft decided that Denuvo is not enough to stop pirates in the crucial first days [after release] anymore, so they have implemented an iteration of VMProtect over it,” Voksi explains.

“This is great if you are looking to save your game from those pirates, because this layer of VMProtect will make Denuvo a lot more harder to trace and keygen than without it. But if you are a legit customer, well, it’s not that great for you since this combo could tank your performance by a lot, especially if you are using a low-mid range CPU. That’s why we are seeing 100% CPU usage on 4 core CPUs right now for example.”

The situation is reportedly so bad that some users are getting the dreaded BSOD (blue screen of death) due to their machines overheating after just an hour or two’s play. It remains unclear whether these crashes are indeed due to the VMProtect/Denuvo combination but the perception is that these anti-piracy measures are at the root of users’ CPU utilization problems.

While gaming companies can’t be blamed for wanting to protect their products, there’s no sense in punishing legitimate consumers with an inferior experience. The great irony, of course, is that when Assassin’s Creed gets cracked (if that indeed happens anytime soon), pirates will be the only ones playing it without the hindrance of two lots of anti-piracy tech battling over resources.

The big question now, however, is whether the anti-piracy wall will stand firm. If it does, it raises the bizarre proposition that future gamers might need to buy better hardware in order to accommodate anti-piracy technology.

And people worry about bitcoin mining……?

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



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Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 10/30/17

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

Cars 3 is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:
Movie Rank Rank last week Movie name IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1 (7) Cars 3 7.0 / trailer
2 (1) War for the Planet of the Apes 7.8 / trailer
3 (2) Annabelle Creation (Subbed HDRip) 6.7 / trailer
4 (3) Spider-Man: Homecoming 7.8 / trailer
5 (5) Atomic Blonde (Subbed HDRip) 7.0 / trailer
6 (6) American Made (Subbed HDrip) 7.3 / trailer
7 (4) The Dark Tower 5.9 / trailer
8 (…) Jungle 6.7 / trailer
9 (8) Baby Driver 8.0 / trailer
10 (…) Overdrive 5.3 / trailer

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



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Sunday, October 29, 2017

Despite Massive Site-Blocking, Russian Pirate Video Market Doubles

On many occasions, outgoing MPAA chief Chris Dodd has praised countries that have implemented legislation that allows for widespread site-blocking.

In 2014, when the UK had blocked just a few dozen sites, Dodd described the practice as both “balanced and proportionate” while noting that it had made “tremendous progress in tackling infringing websites.” This, the former senator said, made it “one of the most effective anti-piracy measures in the world.”

With many thousands of ‘pirate’ sites blocked across the country, perhaps Dodd should ask the Russians how they’re getting on. Spoiler: Not that great.

According to new research published by Group-IB and reported by Izvestia, Internet pirates have been adapting to their new reality, finding new and stable ways of doing business while growing their turnover.

In fact, according to the ‘Economics of Pirate Sites Report 2016’, they’ve been so successful that the market for Internet pirate video more than doubled in value during 2016, reaching a peak of 3.3 billion rubles ($57.2m) versus just 1.5 billion rubles ($26m) in 2015. Overall Internet piracy in 2016 was valued at a billion rubles more ($74.5m), Group-IB notes.

According to the report, Russian pirates operated with impunity until 2012, at which point the government – under pressure from rightsholders – began introducing tough anti-piracy legislation, which included the blocking of pirate domains. Since then there have been a number of amendments which further tightened the law but pirates have adapted each time, protecting their revenue with new business plans.

Group-IB says that the most successful pirate site in 2016 was Seasonvar.ru, which pulled in a million visitors every day generating just over $3.3m in revenue. Second place was taken by My-hit.org, with almost 400,000 daily visitors generating an annual income of $1.2m. HDrezka.me served more than 315,000 people daily and made roughly the same to take third. Fourth and fifth spots were taken by Kinokrad.co and Baskino.Club.

Overall, it’s estimated that the average pirate video site makes around $156,000 per year via advertising, subscriptions, or via voluntary donations. They’re creative with their money channels too.

According to Maxim Ryabyko, Director General of Association for the Protection of Copyright on the Internet (AZAPO), sites use middle-men for dealing with both advertisers and payment processors, which enables operators to remain anonymous.

Like in the United States, UK and elsewhere in Europe, lists of pirate sites have been drawn up to give advertisers and networks guidance on where not to place their ads. However, plenty of companies aren’t involved in the initiative. When challenged over their ads appearing on pirate sites, some protest that it hasn’t been proven that the sites are acting illegally, so the business will continue.

“There is no negative attitude towards piracy by intermediaries. Their money is not objectionable. Sometimes they say: ‘Go and sue. There will be a court hearing, there will be a decision, and we will draw conclusions then’,” Ryabyko told Izvestia.

Dealing with pirates in the criminal arena isn’t easy either, with key players admitting that the police have other things to concentrate on.

“Law enforcers do not know how to search for pirates, they have other priorities,” says Sergei Semenov of the Film and TV Producers Association.

“Criminal prosecutions in this area are a great strain – single cases require a lot of time for investigation and going to court does not achieve the desired effect. We therefore need to diversify the grounds for bringing people to justice. We need to see how this can be applied.”

One idea is to prosecute pirates for non-payment of taxes. Well, it worked for Al Capone….

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



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Devcon 2017 Part II - Day Two

Day Two dawns... most people are bright-eyed and ready for another day, although, if I'm honest, some people may be here more in body than in spirit...
 

LibreELEC Logo

First on today, chewitt from LibreELEC gave us an update: the installed base continues to grow, with the Raspberry Pi in different forms easily remains the dominant platform, although this is slowly declining in favour of SoC (Android stock) devices. Given the appliance nature of LE - operating system and applications - a large part of the presentation was given over to security, including automated updates and the overall integrity of the process.

GSoC Logo

Next up, a series of sessions led by our newest team members - our Google Summer of Code students (or maybe "graduates" now, given their contributions!).

Vel0city presented his work on multi-pass shaders - programs that run on the GPU to manipulate an image frame at a pixel level between decoding and display - so, blur, enhance, scale, and so on. These are particularly useful for improving image quality when perhaps the display technology has advanced significantly beyond what the source material was created for (resolution, colour depth, frame rate, etc.).

Next, yol took us through his work on touch and Wayland (vs X11) integration. While we'd had some Wayland implementation previously, this work brought it right up-to-date with native support within Kodi on Linux.

And finally, arpitn30 talked about his project to port over to Python 3 (Python 2.x goes end of life in 2020). As would be expected, this involved changed library calls, removal of deprecated syntax, and updated dependencies and versions. There are significant differences between Python 2 and 3 - they're almost different languages - which give rise to real challenges in a cross-platform, multi-version environment. Of course, the shift to Python 3 will require rework in all Python addons, so this is a long-term migration across many different packages. If you're an addon author, keep an eye out for further information on this topic in the coming weeks and months, as it's not negotiable.

To close off GSoC 2017, then, razze led a conversation about GSoC 2018 - a call for more mentors, for more developers to get involved. We can bring in students, we can offer project ideas, but we need the experience of the existing developers to be successful: to help orientate people to the code and guide them through the best way to get code accepted into Kodi for release.

 

After a brief but passionate conversation about trademarks, licensing and similar, the sessions moved on to usability, and the "out-of-the-box" appeal of piracy addons versus "raw" Kodi. While we don't provide any content, we could maybe make it easier for people to catalogue their media, perhaps with more pre-defined skin nodes or similar. We also covered interaction between addons and skins, and what the implications are of some modules either demanding or objecting to the presence of other modules, and what this means for the user experience.

Following this - in a deja vu moment for many people - the discussion moved to what we can realistically do to support DRM-protected content. People have an understandable desire to watch their legitimate, paid-for content, so we continue to explore what can be done in this area. This is likely to be a conversation that will run for some time, however.

Next up, Martijn talked about our next major release. We've just launched the latest point release of Krypton 17.x, so it's time to be looking towards Leia 18.x; the code is broadly ready and stable, so it's now a process of locking down features, freezing code, building alphas, and so on. As always, this is a major piece of logistics, so it needs to be planned and timed properly.

 

Linux (Tux) Logo  Windows Logo  Apple Logo  Android Logo

As the day started to lurch towards the finishing line, the sessions moved on to platform specifics.

Fresh from the Embedded Linux Conference Europe, lrusak covered Kodi on embedded Linux - specifically, where we are with Kodi now, and where we want to be as the SoC/embedded market continues to develop. The plethora of boards has caused immense fragmentation, and this is becoming impossible to maintain because of different approaches to windowing, rendering, and so on. There are technologies to address this, however: Linux kernel support for Atomic DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) starts to simplify the problem; V4L2 augments this further. These are not implemented on all platforms, though, so it's sadly not that simple. The level of support, and dependency on specific kernel versions or proprietary blobs, varies between Broadcom, Amlogic, Allwinner, Rockchip, Qualcomm, and Freescale. There's thus more work from the vendors while software packages develop in parallel: improved V4L2 in FFmpeg, Kodi changes, kernel work.

Most Windows-specific activity revolves around Kodi under UWP, which we've covered before. There were no major updates to report on Apple or Android platforms.

Final thoughts before we tail away... further conversations about the migration to Python 3 and how that might be phased/implemented, and anything else needed in the 17.x branch for a further point release.

 

And that's it for Day Two - a few attendees are going to leave early today (or maybe we'll just leave them in a bar somewhere), but there'll still be more Devcon tomorrow.

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YouTube MP3 Converters Block UK Traffic to Avoid Trouble

The music industry sees stream ripping as one of the largest piracy threats, worse than torrent sites or direct download portals.

Last year the RIAA, IFPI and BPI filed legal action against YouTube-MP3, the largest stream ripping site at the time. This case eventually resulted in a settlement where the site agreed to shut down voluntarily.

This was a clear victory for the music groups which swiftly identified their next targets. These include Convert2mp3.net, Savefrom.net, MP3juices.cc and YtMp3.cc, which were highlighted by the RIAA in a letter to the US Government.

The legal action against YouTube-MP3 and the RIAA’s notorious markets report appears to have made an impact, as MP3Juices.cc and YtMp3.cc have shut their doors. Interestingly, this only applies to the UK.

..not available in the UK

It’s unclear why both sites are “shutting down” in the UK and not elsewhere, as the operators haven’t commented on the issue. However, in other parts of the world, the site is readily available.

MP3juices

Last year, music industry group BPI signed an agreement with YouTube-MP3 to block UK visitors, which sounds very familiar. While the BPI is not directly responsible for the recent geo-blocks, the group sees it as a positive trend.

“We are seeing that the closure of the largest stream ripping site, YouTube-mp3, following coordinated global legal action from record companies, is having an impact on the operations of other ripping sites,” BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor informs TorrentFreak.

“However, stream ripping remains a major issue for the industry. These sites are making large sums of money from music without paying a penny to those that invest in and create it. We will continue to take legal action against other illegal ripping sites where necessary.”

Stream rippers or converters are not by definition illegal, as pointed out by the CCIA last week. However, music industry groups will continue to crack down on the ones they view as copyright infringing.

MP3Juices.cc and YtMp3.cc are likely hoping to take the pressure off with their voluntary geo-blocking. Time will tell whether that’s a good strategy. In any event, it didn’t prevent YouTube-MP3 from caving in completely, in the end.

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



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Saturday, October 28, 2017

‘Pirating’ Mainstream Media Outlets Haunted by Photographers in Court

When piracy hits the mainstream news, it’s often in relation to books, games, music, TV-shows and movies.

These industries grab headlines because of the major players that are involved, but they are not the only ones dealing with piracy.

In fact, photos are arguably the most commonly infringed works online. Not just by random users on Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, but also by major mainstream media outlets.

While most photographers spend little time battling piracy, more and more are willing to take the matter to federal court. This trend started two years ago by the Liebowitz Law Firm is paying off.

The lawsuits in question, filed on behalf of several independent photographers, are fairly straightforward.

A news site or other media outlet uses a photo to spice up an article but fails to pay the photographer. This is fairly common, even for major publications. The photographer then files a lawsuit demanding compensation.

However, before the case goes to trial both parties usually resolve their issues in a private settlement. Just this year alone, the Liebowitz Law Firm closed over 200 cases for its clients.

ABC, AOL, CBS Broadcasting, NBCUniversal, NPR, Time, Viacom, Warner Bros, Yahoo and Ziff Davis are just a few of the companies that have signed settlements recently.

One of the many settlements

While the court records don’t point out any winners, it’s safe to assume that many of these cases end favorably for the firm’s clients. Otherwise, they wouldn’t continue to file new ones.

TorrentFreak reached out to Richard Liebowitz, lead counsel in many of these cases. Unfortunately, he can’t share exact details as the settlements themselves are confidential.

The photographers don’t make millions through this scheme, but it appears to be an effective way to get paid a few thousand dollars. If one repeats that often enough, it should provide a decent income. And indeed, several have already filed over a dozen cases.

The practice is reminiscent of copyright trolling cases, with the exception that the accused are major companies instead of random citizens. And unlike the lawsuits movie companies file against BitTorrent users in the US, the evidence the photographers have is rock solid.

The evidence..

When a random copyright troll sues BitTorrent users, hoping to extract a settlement, they rely on indirect IP-addresses and geo-location evidence. The photographers, however, can show an actual screenshot of the infringing work in the mainstream news outlet.

That’s hard to ignore, to say the least, and based on the number of settlements it’s safe to argue that the media outlets prefer to settle instead of litigating the issue. It’s probably cheaper and avoids bad PR.

For the record, all photos used for this article are properly licensed or part of court documents, which are public domain.

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



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Devcon 2017 Part II - Day One

Well, 2017 has turned out to be unusual, and we're not just talking world politics. This year, we've managed to bring the newly-extended team together for a second time; it's something we'd like to do more often, although it's unlikely that we'll be able to do it every year.

So, it's a grey day in Czechia, with ominous clouds hanging expectantly over Prague (picture above not actual weather, sadly!). Team Kodi is assembled - developers, skinners, moderators, the Board - and has been joined by some of our newest team members, Google Summer of Code students, and a couple of key partners.

Ludi incipiant!

Keith once again played MC and opened up the session while Natethomas valiently wrestled to overcome the inevitable hotel AV equipment challenges. Our rough format for this meeting will be a partner day today (Friday) before the internal Kodi stuff takes over for the weekend.

 

FLIRC Logo 

First up for presentations, then, Jason from FLIRC took the floor. He gave us an overview of the FLIRC products, the history of the company, the rationale behind the FLIRC USB learning adapter, a demonstration of the device in action and a brief glimpse of some possible future plans. It's amazing how excited you can get at, and how long you can discuss, what are perhaps the finest Raspberry Pi cases in the world (but maybe we're a little biased).

 

VLC Icon

Next up, JB and Etix from VideoLAN - if you don't recognise that name, they're the VLC guys, who came resplendent in their traffic cone hats. Topics covered included what's gone into VLC 3.0, code cleanup and convergence, new features. They also covered some other VideoLAN technologies, some of which go beyond VLC - Mirrorbits, for example. And we finally touched on equivalencies and common interests between the projects, and where we might perhaps collaborate more than we do today.

 

That's it for Day One - I know that looks short, but it wasn't. There were many side-bar conversations and parts of the presentations that we simply can't put onto a public blog, so you'll have to trust us on those...

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