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Anne Frank‘s Diary, if you haven’t heard of it, is the notes of a girl who hid in Amsterdam from the nazis toward the end of World War II. Sadly, she didn’t make it, and died at nazi hands in 1945.

Her diary has become a seminal work to understand what people in the occupied countries went through on a personal level, beyond the statistics. It was compiled after her death and after the war by her father, Otto Frank.

As Anne Frank died in 1945, this work would be elevated to the public domain in six weeks, on January 1, 2016 – 70 years after her death. However, the foundation that holds the copyright (and therefore collects a significant amount of money from this work) is now trying an obvious abuse of their monopoly, by suddenly naming her father Otto a co-author of her diary where he was previously just an editor. This move purportedly extends their own monopoly on the piece of heritage by decades – all the way through 2050 – out of the blue.

What’s really infuriating about this is how oldmedia doesn’t call it out as fraud at all, but takes a completely neutral stance. Most outlets seem to be rewrites of the New York Times story, which just neutrally reports “the book now has a co-author”, quotes a few people in the worst form of abdicative “he-said-she-said journalism”, and leaves it at that.

Let’s be clear on three points here: One, this is a fraud committed for the sole purpose of preventing the work from being elevated to the public domain; two, it is committed now as the book would otherwise be elevated to the public domain a mere six weeks from now — if Otto Frank was objectively a co-author, it would reasonably have said so from the beginning, and not when then monopoly was down to the wire; and three, oldmedia remains abysmally ignorant of how the copyright monopoly is used to punish and withhold, rather than the illusory encourage and reward.

Not one single oldmedia outlet has called out the fraud, even though it’s right in their face.

The tech outlets are less inhibited. BoingBoing is much more upright, calling it fraud in the very header.

The thing is that this ignorance is endemic to oldmedia. The Internet is the single most important piece of infrastructure we have, and policymakers are letting an old printing monopoly decide how it can and cannot be used – which should be cause for revolts and uprisings. Instead, oldmedia are collectively treating it with a yawn, while tech writers who understand the issue are calling a spade a spade.

What’s worse, it’s widely assumed that the cost of the monopoly is zero. But as BoingBoing observes, there have been two houses fighting in lockstep over petty monopolies to bring the story of Anne Frank to the world – and seeing how that number is typically limited to one, now that it’s evidently possible to have two, what sets a cap at two? Why can’t it be two hundred or two thousand?

That’s the harm of the copyright monopoly. Putting it differently, were it not for the copyright monopoly, we wouldn’t have had seven Harry Potter books but rather upwards of seven thousand, many utter crap but some outright stellar. There’s a real cultural cost, a real cost to our common heritage, right there. That’s how the copyright monopoly punishes and withholds us all.

And oldmedia is completely oblivious to it.

About The Author

Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at falkvinge.net focuses on information policy.

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

Last year BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music sued Cox Communications, arguing that the ISP fails to terminate accounts that are frequently used to pirate content.

The case is crucial as it may define the obligations of Internet providers hoping to keep their safe harbor protections. Ideally, the music companies would like to have the accounts of repeat infringers terminated.

Both sides are currently preparing for trial and Cox recently submitted a motion to the court, where it asks for a ban on statements and evidence which equate BitTorrent to piracy.

Earlier this week we reported on Cox’s argument that the direct piracy evidence gathered by the music companies can’t be trusted, and now the ISP also wants to cut off alternative arguments.

“Plaintiffs seek to introduce testimony and third-party hearsay — with inflammatory statements such as ‘File-Sharing Is Really About Piracy’ — as proof that BitTorrent use equates to the existence of infringement,” Cox writes (pdf).

“Once they have argued that BitTorrent use is automatically infringing, Plaintiffs seek to introduce other testimony and documents showing that some proportion of data traffic on Cox’s network is associated with BitTorrent in order to mislead the jury into thinking that Cox knew or should have known about the infringement that Plaintiffs allege.”

Instead of generalizing BitTorrent traffic as copyright infringement, the music companies should offer direct proof that Cox subscribers pirated their work. Any other allegations are inappropriate and misleading according to Cox.

“Plaintiffs are free to try to prove that specific BitTorrent users on Cox’s network actually infringed Plaintiffs’ copyrights, but the Court should preclude Plaintiffs from relying on mere innuendo that BitTorrent inherently allows individuals to infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights.”

The Internet provider further stresses that there are plenty legitimate uses for the popular file-sharing protocol. It’s not just a technology that’s exclusidely used by pirates.

“Cox disputes Plaintiffs’ characterization of BitTorrent — it is demonstrably not true that there are no legitimate uses for BitTorrent,” the ISP writes.

“Plaintiffs have no evidence that most or all use of BitTorrent, which is simply a communication protocol, constitutes infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrights.”

In conclusion, Cox asks the court to prohibit BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music from testifying or arguing that BitTorrent is primarily used for copyright infringement, so that it can’t mislead the jury during trial.

For their part, the music companies submitted a similar request related to Cox’s use of the terms “troll” or “extortionist.” In addition, they don’t want the ISP to argue that their tracking company Rightscorp violated debt collection or private investigation licensing laws.

It’s now up to the court to decide which arguments will be permitted during trial and what will be off-limits.

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

"Bis zu 100 MBit/s im LTE-Netz": Für Mobilfunkverträge wird gerne mit dem maximalen Download-Speed geworben. Das kann jedoch unzulässig sein, entschied das Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt. (Mobilfunk, DSL)

Xposed Framework is a utility that lets you make system-level changes to an Android device. Your device needs to rooted to use Xposed, but if you’ve got a rooted phone or tablet you can pick and choose from a large list of modules that can affect the performance or design of the operating system. Just a […]

Xposed Framework brings customization to Android 6.0 (root-only) is a post from: Liliputing

Die große Koalition will die Geheimdienste besser kontrollieren. Zunächst sollen BND und Verfassungsschutz jedoch 500 neue Mitarbeiter bekommen. (NSA, Datenschutz)

Nach den Terroranschlägen von Paris fordert die Gewerkschaft der Polizei eine längere Speicherung von Verbindungsdaten. Sicherheitsexperten verweisen hingegen auf Probleme durch Verschlüsselung und die Kommunikation über die Playstation durch den IS. (Provider, Vorratsdatenspeicherung)

From the MPAA's new hate to gamer's new love, read this and other news stories for the week ending 15 November 2015. Plus NPD stats for October

Continue reading ...

The music and movie industries love to poke the finger at Google and blame the technology giant for a world of woes, not least the appearance of ‘rogue’ sites in its search results.

Well, you know what? They’re not the only ones that can play that game.

Here at TF we do our very best to bring the latest file-sharing news to our readers and always try to bring something fresh to our reports, whether we’re the initial source or not. However, there are other sites who don’t appear to care much about the topics they cover, only the number of clicks they can generate.

I’m talking about headlines like this from the file-sharing experts at Christian Today.

“[W]ith reports saying that Microsoft’s new platform has more stringent security measures against torrents, fans are wondering if TPB and other sites will make it to Windows 10-enabled devices,” the site warns.

The article quotes fellow torrent-nonsense-farmers ‘Venture Capital Post‘ as the source, claiming that people upgrading to Windows 10 “will not have access to torrent sites, as Microsoft will reportedly actively block The Pirate Bay, Kickass Torrents and other file-sharing websites.”

These twisted accounts are based on erroneous claims about Windows 10 that date back to August and have been well and truly debunked. Still, both sites reported them only this week, with more misinformation and scaremongering thrown in for good measure.

Of further concern is how VCPost then links to International Business Times as the source of the story, a site known for its ‘advanced’ SEO techniques and its 2013 banning from Reddit.

Only adding to the hall of mirrors, IBTimes cites Christian Post as its ‘source’ with its totally baseless and speculative article titled “The Pirate Bay Update: After The Takedown Of YIFY, Is The Pirate Bay Next?”

That in turns links to a site called ‘Yibada’ with its article “The Pirate Bay (TPB) Last Man Standing After YTS/YIFY Shutdown: TPB Next In Line?” and home to other gems including (deep breath) “After Taking Down The Pirate Bay, Will MPAA Go Easy On TPB Like It Did With YTS/YIFY? Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom Cries Double Standard.”

Then, shock/horror, Yibada directs back to International Business Times as the source – are we noticing a pattern here? Yeah? Well, the end result when searching for Pirate Bay in Google search often looks something like this.

This sorry state of affairs is entirely the fault of Google. Instead of monitoring and reading every single story in its indexes and carrying out quality control of every opinion and claim linked therein, the search giant is blatantly sending unwitting visitors to uninformed sites which misleads the public and starves creators.

So, just like elements of the entertainment industry, we’re demanding a totally self-serving modification of Google’s algorithm to push this nonsense way down the results. We’re not going to accept no for an answer either. If Google can do it for child porn, malware, and wait – Hollywood and the RIAA, they can do it for us too, surely?

Oh, and apparently there are hundreds of other companies waiting in the wings with similar plights and demands. Each is keen to feature more prominently in Google’s results and each is prepared to endlessly wail over why its case deserves special attention and how Google must be to blame.

Sadly, and as the pettiness over the mind-bending Google-gaming articles listed above highlights, no one really gives a damn and it’s no wonder that Google doesn’t either. Now excuse me while I cozy up to a few politicians and go crying like a baby to the US government. Need to get in early, there’s going to be massive queue if Google becomes compliant.

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

Schwarz, elegant und bis auf den roten Punkt unscheinbar ist Leicas Kompaktkamera Q. Ob der äußere Eindruck täuscht und die Hochpreiskamera mit ihrem Vollformatsensor auch richtig gute Bilder macht, zeigt unser Test. (Test, DSLR)

When Megaupload was raided early 2012 the U.S. Government seized 1,103 servers at Carpathia’s hosting facility in the United States.

Nearly four years have since passed and it’s still uncertain what will happen to the servers, which are safely stored in a Virginia warehouse at the moment.

After a renewed request for guidance on the issue, District Court Judge O’Grady started to explore what options are on the table. He asked the various parties what would be required to release the servers and whether their possible return has any complications.

In a response, hosting company QTS/Carpathia says that most data will still be intact but that retrieving it will be a costly endeavor.

The equipment that was used to link the servers together is no longer on the market. Used parts are still available but this would cost roughly $500,000. In addition, hundreds of thousands of dollars are needed to move the servers and set them up properly.

United States Attorney Dana Boente notes that a successful data return would likely cost millions. However, the Government has no interest in the servers and doesn’t want any of Megaupload’s restrained funds to be released to pay for the costs.

According to the Government some of Megaupload’s money comes from illicit proceeds. In addition, the possible return of the servers is a concern because they contain child pornography.

“The United States further reminds the Court that the Federal Bureau of Investigation found that many of these servers contain, as indicated more particularly under seal, copies of known images of child pornography,” Boente writes (pdf).

The MPAA also responded to questions posed by the court. The Hollywood group says it’s still gravely concerned that the copyrighted movies and TV-shows may fall into the hands of others.

“The MPAA members remain gravely concerned about the potential release of the copyrighted works that are stored on the […] servers at issue here,” the movie industry group writes (pdf).

Transferring the data to Megaupload or another party would be copyright infringement in and by itself, they argue.

“The release of these digital files would not only risk the further infringing distribution of the MPAA members’ highly valuable copyrighted works, but any transfer of these files by QTS to Megaupload or a third party would itself be an infringement of the MPAA members’ copyrights in those works.”

Based on the reasoning above it’s nearly impossible to move any of the data without violating the rights of the movie studios.

However, former Megaupload user Kyle Goodwin, represented by the EFF, stresses that there’s no need to restore the entire infrastructure. He only wants access to the personal files he lost during the raid.

Finally, Megaupload’s defense argues that it can’t pay for the servers as long as their assets are restrained.

Dotcom’s defunct file-hosting service suggests placing the servers “under a litigation hold” at a reputable eDiscovery vendor such as KPMG, to ensure the confidentiality of the files. Recovering the data won’t come cheap though.

“Megaupload had previously received an e-vendor’s estimate of US$7.7 million for forensic duplication of the data needed for e-discovery and evidence purposes,” they write (pdf).

It’s now up to District Court Judge Liam O’Grady to make a recommendation regarding the possible return of Megaupload’s servers. Based on the input from the parties above this may prove to be a difficult task.

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