David Blaine shows his hand in Do Not Attempt

NatGeo docuseries follows Blaine around the world to learn the secrets of ordinary people doing remarkable feats.

Over the course of his long career, magician and endurance performer David Blaine has taken on all kinds of death-defying feats: catching a bullet in his teeth, fasting for 44 days, or holding his breath for a record-breaking 17 minutes and 4 seconds, to name a few. Viewers will get to see a different side of Blaine as he travels the world to meet kindred spirits from a wide range of cultures in David Blaine Do Not Attempt, a new six-episode docuseries from National Geographic.

(Some spoilers below.)

The series was shot over three calendar years (2022-2024) in nine different countries, and features Blaine interacting with, and learning from, all manner of daredevils, athletes, street performers, and magicians. In Southeast Asia, for instance, he watches practitioners of an Indonesian martial art called Debus manipulate razor blades in their mouths and eat nails. (There is no trick to this, just conditioned endurance to pain, as Blaine discovers when he attempts to eat nails: his throat was sore for days.) He braves placing scorpions on his body, breaks a bottle with his head, and sets himself on fire in Brazil while jumping off a high bridge.

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Director Uses Takedowns to Remove Pirate Bay Docu “TPB-AFK” from YouTube

In an unexpected turn of events, the director of the Pirate Bay documentary TPB-AFK has sent takedown notices to YouTube requesting its removal. The director states that he sees the streaming portal as a radicalizing platform full of hate. The takedowns are not without controversy, however, as TPB-AFK was published under a Creative Commons license.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Released in 2013, The Pirate Bay documentary TPB-AFK offers insight into a pivotal moment in Internet history.

Created by Simon Klose, the film follows three Pirate Bay founders during their trial in Sweden. True to the nature of the site, it was made widely available online for free.

People could still buy copies or support the film directly, but those who didn’t want to spend a dime could grab a copy though torrent sites, including The Pirate Bay, or stream it on YouTube. The Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA) license even allowed fans to share their own copies with others.

“You don’t need permission to copy and share my film. But you can’t make money off it,” Klose explained at the time. “By using a Creative Commons license, I am making it legal for the audience to copy and share the film.”

2013: Copies Taken Down by Hollywood

Soon after the premiere, hundreds of copies of the documentary started to surface online, resulting in millions of views. While this was good news for the director, it also caused controversy.

In the months following the release, several Hollywood studios including HBO, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate, sent DMCA notices to Google, asking the search giant to remove links to the documentary. In most cases the requests were honored.

It wasn’t clear whether the takedowns were sent in error, or if it was a targeted attack on the Pirate Bay documentary. Whatever the case, the unwarranted censorship outraged the director.

After the erroneous takedowns were highlighted in the news, Google eventually reached out offering to set the record straight by reinstating the removed links. But not before teaching a valuable lesson about copyright power dynamics.

“To me, it’s a depressive lesson that Google rather acts as a private proxy for dinosaur copyright enforcement than helping indie filmmakers experiment with sustainable distribution models,” Klose said in 2013.

Takedowns Remove TPB-AFK copies from YouTube

With this backstory in mind, it came as a surprise to learn that copies of the TPB-AFK documentary were removed from YouTube recently. This includes the official release posted on the TPBAFK YouTube channel that was embedded across hundreds of websites.

“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Nonami Docs,” YouTube’s message reads.

TPB-AFK embed (YouTube link)

tpb afk

Nonami Docs isn’t some Hollywood adversary with a Pirate Bay grudge. On the contrary, it’s linked to Simon Klose, who used it to remove copies of his own documentary from YouTube. That also includes uploads by third-parties.

Peter, who runs the anarchi.st YouTube channel, is one of the people who was hit by a takedown notice. The channel shares films relating to class struggle without running advertisements on them, in line with TPB-AFK’s Creative Commons license, but was removed nonetheless.

“You can imagine my surprise when my channel got a copyright strike because Simon Klose wanted the film removed from YouTube. It is difficult to imagine a more ironic copyright action,” Peter tells us.

Anarchi.st Takedown (Swedish)

afk takedown

The channel owner confirmed that the notice did indeed come from the TPB-AFK director but opted not to file a counter notice as he could do without the added stress. Nonetheless, he was puzzled by the takedown. And he’s not the only one.

Klose Sees YouTube as a Radicalizing Platform

Creative Commons licenses are typically considered irrevocable, which makes the takedown all the more questionable. However, it turns out that Klose hasn’t had a change of heart when it comes to copyright, his actions are targeted at YouTube specifically.

The director informs us that he did indeed remove the film from YouTube. This is not a copyright issue. He simply doesn’t want TPB-AFK to be present on Google’s streaming platform any longer.

“I’ve taken it off YouTube, because I think YouTube has become a radicalizing platform full of hate, and I don’t want my film there anymore. It’s still available on torrent sites,” Klose says.

The director didn’t add any further background but pointed us to his latest film, “Hacking Hate“, which discusses in detail how social media platforms and YouTube are used as a tool to proliferate extreme content while profiting from it.

While it’s clear that Klose has changed his mind about YouTube rather than copyright, one can question whether copyright takedowns are the right way to enforce this. Especially when people are technically allowed to share the film.

The removals could be a good strategy to put a spotlight on the “Hacking Hate” documentary, but since Klose never sought public attention for the removals, his actions seem more intrinsically motivated.

It’s not clear how many instances of the documentary were removed from YouTube, but many copies of TPB-AFK are still available on the platform at the time of writing. Whether the uploaders of these copies filed counter-notices or were simply not targeted is unclear.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

This launcher is about to displace the V-2 as Germany’s largest rocket

Isar Aerospace’s first Spectrum rocket will launch from Andøya Spaceport in Norway.

Seven years ago, three classmates at the Technical University of Munich believed their student engineering project might hold some promise in the private sector.

At the time, one of the co-founders, Daniel Metzler, led a team of 40 students working on rocket engines and launching sounding rockets. Josef Fleischmann was on the team that won the first SpaceX Hyperloop competition. Together with another classmate, Markus Brandl, they crafted rocket parts in a campus workshop before taking the leap and establishing Isar Aerospace, named for the river running through the Bavarian capital.

Now, Isar's big moment has arrived. The company's orbital-class first rocket, named Spectrum, is set to lift off from a shoreline launch pad in Norway as soon as Monday.

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Verkehr: Bahn-Digitalisierung verspätet sich

Bis zum Jahr 2029 sollen mehr als 14 Milliarden Euro in die Bahn-Infrastruktur fließen. Das ETCS-Steuerungssystem liegt dabei nicht im Zeitplan. (Deutsche Bahn, Wirtschaft)

Bis zum Jahr 2029 sollen mehr als 14 Milliarden Euro in die Bahn-Infrastruktur fließen. Das ETCS-Steuerungssystem liegt dabei nicht im Zeitplan. (Deutsche Bahn, Wirtschaft)

Trump administration’s blockchain plan for USAID is a real head-scratcher

Whatever happens to USAID, it will apparently “leverage blockchain technology.”

According to a memo circulating among State Department staff and reviewed by WIRED, the Trump administration plans to rename the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as US International Humanitarian Assistance (IHA), and to bring it directly under the secretary of state. The document, on which Politico first reported, states that as part of its reorganization, the agency will “leverage blockchain technology” as part of its procurement process.

“All distributions would also be secured and traced via blockchain technology to radically increase security, transparency, and traceability,” the memo reads. “This approach would encourage innovation and efficiency among implementing partners and allow for more flexible and responsive programming focused on tangible impact rather than simply completing activities and inputs.”

The memo does not make clear what specifically this means—if it would encompass doing cash transfers in some kind of cryptocurrency or stablecoin, for example, or simply mean using a blockchain ledger to track aid disbursement.

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