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Der Hamburger Spielentwickler Goodgame Studio äußert sich nach langem Schweigen zu den Vorwürfen, er wolle durch Entlassungen die Gründung eines Betriebsrats verhindern. Einen Fehler räumt das Unternehmen ein. (Goodgame Studios, Games)
High quality copies of some of the year’s most anticipated movies have begun leaking to torrent sites. Screeners of The Hateful Eight and The Revenant leaked before their theatrical release, with one prominent piracy group now promising to leak dozens more in the days to come.
Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
All year round unauthorized copies of movies appear online following a recording in a cinema or after being ‘ripped’ from a DVD or Blu-ray disc. However, when the ‘Oscar season’ begins in November, greater treasures are on the horizon.
Every year so-called ‘screener’ copies of the most critically acclaimed films are ‘securely’ sent out for review but with few exceptions these movies leak to the Internet. This grants pirates the ability to watch big titles in a quality rarely experienced for such early releases.
This year is no exception, with movies such as Straight Outta Compton, Brooklyn, Room, The Peanuts Movie and Carol all leaking during recent days. However, this past weekend delivered the most controversial leaks so far.
While Sylvester Stallone is likely to be angry that his movie ‘Creed’ is now doing the rounds on torrent sites (TorrentFreak estimates at least 100,000 downloads thus far), that will pale into insignificance compared with the wrath likely to be consuming the Tarantino household right now.
After being scheduled for a December 25 cinema debut, Quentin’s latest work ‘The Hateful Eight’ is now being guzzled up by excited Internet users around the globe. Before Sunday had even drawn to a close the movie had been downloaded more than 100,000 times but at the time of writing those numbers have swelled to more like 220,000.
While not in the quality Tarantino envisioned for his Ultra Panavision 70mm masterpiece, the copy is extremely clean and free from timestamps and ‘property of’ watermarks. Whether it has other secret markings will remain to be seen but there’s certainly nothing that spoils the viewing experience.
But when it comes to mass appeal the leak of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s ‘The Revenant’ is likely to take some beating.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and also slated for a Christmas day release, by Sunday this tale of vengeance had clocked up in excess of 180,000 downloads. Today those totals have reached an ‘impressive’ 300,000.
Again, the quality is extremely good for such an early release and there are no obtrusive markers to spoil the experience. Although as ever some purists are likely to prefer an even better copy, this is perfectly good enough to be shown on most TVs and likely to be the best to appear before an official DVD release.
Considering the noise made last year when The Expendables 3 leaked before its official release, the leaking of AAA titles like those detailed above are likely to stir up anti-piracy sentiment in Hollywood like never before. That being said, it appears that we’re only just getting started.
Hive-CM8, one of the groups behind the leaks, says it has obtained copies of dozens of screeners and is preparing to leak them out one by one during the days to come.
“DVDScreener 1 of 40,” the group announced. “Will do them all one after each other, started with the hottest title of this year, the rest will follow.”
Yesterday that batch continued with the leak of the Tom Hardy Krays movie ‘Legend’ and continued with ‘In the Heart of the Sea’. Only time will tell which movies will appear next but this is a huge provocation from CM8 and may yet illicit a law enforcement response.
Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Warten auf besseres Wetter – aber nicht lange: Weil die Chance, dass die Landung gelingt, heute größer ist, hat das US-Raumfahrtunternehmen SpaceX den Start der Falcon-Rakete noch einmal verschoben. (SpaceX, Technologie)
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent are in again. ‘The Intern.’ tops the chart this week, followed by ‘The Peanuts Movie’ ‘Pan’ completes the top three.
Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
This week we have six newcomers in our chart.
The Intern 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 BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.
RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.
Ranking | (last week) | Movie | IMDb Rating / Trailer |
---|---|---|---|
torrentfreak.com | |||
1 | (3) | The Intern (Webrip) | 7.4 / trailer |
2 | (…) | The Peanuts Movie (DVDscr) | 7.7 / trailer |
3 | (1) | Pan | 6.0 / trailer |
4 | (2) | The Martian (Subbed HDRip) | 8.2 / trailer |
5 | (…) | The Revenant (DVDscr) | ?.? / trailer |
6 | (4) | Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials | 6.8 / trailer |
7 | (…) | The Lobster (Web-DL) | 7.5 / trailer |
8 | (…) | Sicario | 8.0 / trailer |
9 | (…) | Creed (DVDscr) | 8.5 / trailer |
10 | (…) | The Hateful Eight (DVDscr) | 9.1 / trailer |
Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Die BBC möchte Filme mit Hilfe einer App auf die jeweiligen Vorlieben der Zuschauer zuschneiden. So interessant wie die Technik sind auch die möglichen Nebenwirkungen. (Digitalkino, BBC)
Yes, really. There’s a whole lot of confusion in the dangerous and wrong cliché that “authors must be paid” for every copy that’s made. We live in a market economy for good reasons.
Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
In the copyright monopoly debate, there’s significant confusion about how a market economy works, and what constitutes a right to remuneration of any kind.
There is exactly one action that entitles somebody to money, and that is an agreement that money should be paid in exchange for a good or service, otherwise known as a “sale”. There are exactly zero other things that entitle somebody to payment.
When somebody views a movie through a window? Nobody is entitled to money.
When somebody listens to a street performer? Nobody is entitled to money.
When somebody plays a video game at a friend’s? Nobody is entitled to money.
When somebody copies said video game from their friend? Nobody is entitled to money.
When somebody walks into a store and agrees to exchange money for a good? Then, and only then, is somebody entitled to money. Only then.
There are absolutely zero excuses for “wanting” money but not “getting” it. If you’re not able or willing to find a counterparty with whom to perform an exchange on mutually agreed terms, you’re entitled to exactly nothing. Just like everybody else. Specifically including people who create art and want to be paid for creating art, or for that matter, anybody doing anything they like. Nobody owns the fuzzy, wishy-washy and generally handwavy “fruits of their labor”. They own exactly what they can exchange in a mutually negotiated transaction with a voluntary and willing counterparty. Nothing less, nothing more.
This is called a market economy, and it works so vastly superior to all other alternatives tried because all people do their own valuations of the value of goods or services all the time in a decentralized fashion, rather than somebody centralized trying to establish a “proper” value for goods and services. That kind of hubris has been tried from time to time in various forms of centralization of the economy, and it has always resulted in either huge shortages, or huge surplus stocks resulting in huge shortages elsewhere. Nobody simply has the brainpower to assess the continuous valuation and re-valuation of millions of other people.
When planned economies have been tried – notably under communism – they look fine on the surface until too many people are starving and lack basic hygiene essentials because of said shortages. At that point, the first protesters are generally jailed as political prisoners. Sometimes, they’re murdered by the regime “for the cause”, whatever that is – the murdered generally don’t care. Eventually, the whole fairytale idea of one person being a better valuator of something than millions of people doing the same thing breaks down, and the Maskirovka falls.
The copyright monopoly is a strong limitation of the property rights that are essential to a market economy, and indeed a limitation of the market economy itself. The copyright monopoly is therefore not just completely immoral from this angle, but also damaging to the economy as a whole.
So what does this have to do with the “authors must be paid” cliché? Everything. Since you’re neither buyer nor seller, you’re not a party to the transaction. Therefore, frankly and literally, it’s none of your business. When a third party makes a copy of a game, a third party who was not party to the original transaction, that third party has absolutely no obligation whatsoever to the parties in the original transaction: no sale has been made.
When you’re repeating the blatant cliché of “authors must be paid”, you’re asserting a right to intervene in a market transaction between two parties where you were not involved in the transaction or negotiations. This is the direct opposite of a market economy. And when suggesting the cliché as a rule, or law, you’re advocating a planned interventionary economy – literally a communist economy.
Put differently, other people’s business failures are neither your moral, legal, or business problem to solve. Trying to blame your customer’s morals for the weaknesses in your own business plan – your inability to find a voluntary counterparty with whom to make an exchange, a “sale” – is the last step before your business dies, and frankly, it’s rather unworthy. This is where the copyright industry is currently finding itself.
And as we’ve seen before, making a copy of something – in violation of the copyright monopoly or not, that doesn’t matter – is merely exercising your own property rights: rearranging the magnetic fields on your own property according to what you’re observing with your own tools and senses. Suggesting such an action to constitute a fantasy voluntary agreed transaction with a fantasy counterparty is suggesting a planned economy, the kind that didn’t work at all under communism.
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.
The Falcon 9 rocket is now launching on Monday.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is reading to launch 11 ORBCOMM satellites into space. (credit: SpaceX)
In what may be a first in spaceflight history, SpaceX delayed the commercial launch of a satellite payload on Sunday to wait for better weather not to liftoff, but rather to land the booster of its Falcon 9 rocket.
The rocket company's chief executive, Elon Musk, announced the decision Sunday afternoon via Twitter. According to Musk, "Monte Carlo" simulations of landing weather on Sunday and Monday at a complex along the Florida coast showed better conditions on Monday. "Punting 24 hours," he said. The new launch time is 8:33pm ET on Monday. The forecast calls for an 80 percent chance of acceptable launch weather.
SpaceX is attempting make its return to flight after an accident in June with its Falcon 9 rocket. Not only is the company launching 11 ORBCOMM communications satellites, it is flying an upgraded variant of the Falcon 9 rocket, and trying to return an orbital rocket safely back to the ground for the first time. Previously SpaceX tried to recover the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on autonomous drone ships, without success.
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