Month: November 2015

Sony has released the names of the first set of Ultra HD Blu-ray titles to be released early next year.

'The Amazing Spiderman 2', 'Chappie', 'Hancock', 'Pineapple Express', 
'Salt' and 'The Smurfs 2' have been chosen to be the first titles to received the Ultra HD Blu-ray treatment, with additional support for an open, non-proprietary HDR that's compatible with 4K TVs with HDR.

Some 4K TV owners have already expressed disappointment at the line-up, but Sony has promised that a steady stream of Ultra HD Blu-ray titles, including 'Fury', 'Captain Phillips', 'Lawrence Of Arabia' and 'The Fifth Element', will be forthcoming.

Rival studio 20th Fox previously announced that most new release titles will be simultaneously available on Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray, and it is expected Sony will follow suit. The first batch of UHD Blu-ray titles from Fox includes 'Gods and Kings', 'Fantastic Four', 'Kingsman: The Secret Service', 'Life of Pi', and 'X-Men: Days of Future Past'.

The process of releasing titles, particularly catalog titles, on Ultra HD Blu-ray is by no means a straight forward. Many titles will need to be carefully restored to 4K resolution, and some early digital titles, while shot in 4K, were archived in lower 2K resolution, making restoration more difficult.

Roboter töten Menschen. Diese Erfahrung haben schon mehrere Betriebe gemacht. Deutsche Wissenschaftler wollen Industrieroboter feinfühliger machen. Dazu müssen sie erst einmal herausbekommen, wie stark der Roboter zuschlagen darf, ohne einen Schaden zu verursachen. Freiwillige vor. (Roboter, Technologie)

Microsoft hat die Präsentationssoftware Powerpoint um zwei Werkzeuge zur Erstellung aufwendiger Folien ergänzt. Neben filmischen Übergängen mit Morph wird mit Designer ein Werkzeug angeboten, das auf Basis eines Bildes das Foliendesign erstellen soll. (Powerpoint, Office-Suite)

Ford testet seine autonomen Autos in MCity, einem abgesperrten Bereich der Universität Michigan, in dem eine Stadt simuliert wird. Das soll die Entwicklungszeit reduzieren. Die Stadt wurde naturgetreu nachgeahmt, bedruckte Kulissen stellen Häuser dar. (Autonomes Fahren, Technologie)

Bei copter.eu ist ab sofort eine neue Transporttasche für den YUNEEC ST10-Sender (sowie ähnliche Fernsteuerungen) erhältlich. Die 310 x 210 x 135mm große Tasche ist mit einem zusätzlichen Innenfach, einem Trageriemen und einem umlaufenden Reißverschluss versehen. Kostenpunkt: 22,90 Euro. Features: hochwertige Sendertasche für YUNEEC ST10 / ST10+ sehr leicht und stabil, exakt passend großer Reissverschluss [...]

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.

Book Falkvinge as speaker?

Follow @Falkvinge

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

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.

Book Falkvinge as speaker?

Follow @Falkvinge

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