Month: November 2015

Müssen private Drohnen in Deutschland bald registriert werden, und ist ein Drohnenführerschein nötig? Regierung und Opposition fordern schärfere Bestimmungen für private Drohnenpiloten. (Drohne, Internet)

4K Ultra HD TV sales rose 494 percent for the third quarter compared to the same quarter last year, the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) reports.

The same report also found that for the first time, consumer spending on subscription streaming went above spending on packaged media sales in the quarter.

According to data obtained by the DEG, 2.8 million U.S. households already own a 4K Ultra HD TV, out of the 96 million total HDTV households. This bodes well for the launch of the Ultra HD Blu-ray format at the end of the year.

But the overall news isn't particularly bright for packaged media, with sales down 14% year-on-year in the third quarter. With $1.146 billion in spending on disc purchases in the quarter, it was eclipsed by spending on subscription streaming. Consumers spent $1.268 billion on SVOD platforms such as Netflix and Hulu, up 23.3% from the same quarter a year ago.

Overall, anything related to physical media appears to be on a downward trajectory, with brick and mortar rental (down 17.15%), disc subscriptions (down 15.6%) and rental kiosks (down 7.61%) all down. On the other hand, total digital spending was up 15.75% to nearly $2.12 billion.

Total home entertainment spending remained largely unchanged from Q3 2014 to 2015, up a slight 0.22%.

Die Phonedrone Ethos ist ein kleiner Quadcopter, der im Rumpf ein Smartphone beherbergt. Gesteuert wird das Fluggerät vom Boden aus mit einem weiteren Smartphone oder Tablet. Weil im fliegenden Smartphone genügend Sensortechnik steckt, ist die Drohne vergleichsweise günstig. (Drohne, Smartphone)

SolidRun’s latest development board looks like something you’d use to make an internet router… and I suppose that’s one of the things you could use it for. The ClearFrog Pro is a single-board computer with a Marvell Armada A380/A388 processor, 256MB of RAM and 1GB of storage. It also has a dedicated Ethernet port, a […]

SolidRun ClearFog dev board has Marvell Armada A38x chip, 6-port Ethernet switch is a post from: Liliputing

After reporting on thousands of file-sharing related stories around the globe for almost ten years, the folks here at TF have a ‘feel’ for how certain scenarios play out. With that in mind, something doesn’t feel right with the ongoing drama involving YTS / YIFY.

When sites as big as YTS get taken down by the MPAA, RIAA, or their partners around the world, these organizations usually order their PR departments to repeatedly bash the big button marked “CONGRATULATIONS TO US”. Yet for weeks following the YTS shut down there was complete silence.

Details of the multi-million dollar lawsuit supposedly filed in New Zealand are nowhere to be found either. And if one was expecting the usual “Shut down by ICE/FBI/DELTA FORCE” banner to appear on YTS.to instead of the usual YIFY movie rips, then there’s only disappointment there too.

Ok, the MPAA have this week admitted they’re behind the shutdown, but the way it’s being handled is extremely puzzling. The announcement from MPAA chief Chris Dodd was muted to say the least and the somewhat compulsory gloating at having taken down one of the world’s most important piracy sites is almost non-existent.

This is odd for a number of reasons, not least when one considers the nature and scale of the operation. YIFY / YTS released as many as five thousand copies of mainstream movies onto the Internet. Between them they were shared dozens of millions of times, at least. Over the past decade those kinds of numbers – and a lot less – have seen people jailed for up to five years in the United States and elsewhere.

Yet according to credible sources the operator of YTS – a 21-year-old who for unknown reasons isn’t even being named – has already settled his beef with the MPAA. This, despite running a site that has been repeatedly listed as a worldwide notorious market in the USTR’s Special 301 Report.

Of course, the operator of YTS isn’t in the United States, he’s in New Zealand, but geographical boundaries are rarely an issue for Hollywood. Take the drama surrounding Kim Dotcom and his former site Megaupload, for example.

Like the operator of YTS, Dotcom also lives in New Zealand. Importantly, it’s never been claimed that Dotcom uploaded anything illegal to the Internet (let alone thousands of movies) yet he was subjected to a commando-like raid on his home by dozens of armed police. He’s also facing extradition to the United States where he faces decades in jail.

Now, think of the flamboyant Dotcom what you will. Then feel relieved for the admin of YTS, who by many accounts is a thoroughly nice guy and has somehow managed to save his own skin, despite providing much of the content for global phenomenon Popcorn Time.

But then try to get a handle on how differently these two people are being treated after allegedly committing roughly the same offenses in exactly the same country. One case is still dragging on after almost four years, with tens of millions spent on lawyers and no end in sight. The other was a done deal inside four weeks.

Earlier this week TorrentFreak spoke with Kim Dotcom who told us he’d been following the YTS story in the media. Intrigued, we wanted to know – how does it feel to be raked over the coals for close to four years, have all your property seized, face extradition and decades in jail, while someone just up the road can walk away relatively unscathed from what would’ve been a slam-dunk case for the MPAA?

“It’s a double standard isn’t it?” Dotcom told TF.

“I think our case has chilled law enforcement and Hollywood against pursuing the criminal route in cases such as this. Quick civil settlements seem to be the new way to go.”

Dotcom may well be right and the fact that New Zealand already has a massive headache because of his case may well have been a factor in the decision not to make a huge example of the YTS operator. At the moment no one is talking though, and it’s entirely possible that no one ever will.

That makes a case like this all the more unsettling. Are we witnessing Hollywood’s ability to switch on a massive overseas law enforcement response in one case and then reel in the United States government in another? It’s worth saying again – YTS was a ‘notorious market’ in the eyes of the USTR yet apparently that be dealt with privately these days.

But with all that being said, it is quite possible that the U.S. government has learned lessons from its heavy-handed actions in 2012 and doesn’t want to repeat them again, least of all in New Zealand, a country whose judges must be growing tired of the Dotcom debacle.

“As the DOJ admitted the Megaupload case is a test case. The test isn’t going well for them,” Dotcom concludes.

And for that the guy behind YTS must be thanking his lucky stars.

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

From the MPAA's great victory to a great loss for consumer fair use rights, read this and other news stories for the week ending 8 November 2015

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At first glance, the most unusual thing about the BlackBerry Priv smartphone is hardware-related: it’s one of the only high-end Android smartphones with a physical keyboard. But a lot of what makes BlackBerry’s first Android phone special is also software-related. The company ships the phone with Google’s smartphone operating system, but BlackBerry also includes a […]

Some BlackBerry Priv apps can run on other Android phones (keyboard, calendar, launcher) is a post from: Liliputing

Samsung sieht sich mit einer Klage der Verbraucherzentrale Nordrhein-Westfalen konfrontiert: Die Verbraucherschützer bemängeln nicht genehmigte Datenübertragungen von Smart-TVs des Herstellers. (Smart-TV, Rechtsstreitigkeiten)

Vier Monate mussten deutsche Kunden warten, jetzt kann der Ethernet-Adapter für Googles Chromecast auch hierzulande gekauft werden. Vorerst gibt es den Adapter nur im Google-Store. (Chromecast, Google)

The Internet is littered with torrent indexes and search engines, all offering a wide range of content to their visitors.

For this content to travel from A to B the BitTorrent ecosystem needs reliable trackers. Sadly, good public torrent trackers are a rarity these days.

Earlier this year OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent disappeared for good, and the same is about to happen to Demonii. This means that all trackers with more than 30 million active peers are gone.

So who will fill this gap? Running a large standalone tracker doesn’t come cheap, but this week we spotted a worthy contender.

To our surprise, the largest telecoms company in Kazakhstan is running a fully functioning tracker powered the well-known Opentracker software.

Kazakhtelecom, which has the local Government as a majority shareholder, can certainly afford to run it. The company has a yearly revenue of half a billion U.S. dollars.

At the time of writing the ISP already tracks 461,274 torrents, coordinating the transfers of more than 2.5 million people worldwide. The tracker can be used by anyone and supports both http and udp connections.

The retracker.telecom.kz:80/announce URL appears in torrents of all shapes and sizes and had been in use for at least a few months.

It’s not clear whether the ISP’s higher level management is aware of the tracker, or if it was configured by a torrent-friendly employee, but for now it works just fine.

The connection to the Kazakh Government may become a problem though, since peer-to-peer services and torrent trackers are not allowed under current law. Whether the Government will enforce that policy against itself has yet to be seen.

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