Month: July 2016

The MPAA wants YouTube to get tough, not only on pirated movies, but also on fake pirated movies uploaded onto the site to trick users.

Most YouTube users should be aware of these fake uploads, where from the preview image and even the video's length, it appears to be the correct content. But playing the movie will only result in a blank video, usually with a message to visit a third party site to obtain the actual movie. Users who throw caution to the wind and follow the links will rarely find what they're looking for, and will be instead met with malware or unrelated downloads.

The presence of fakes on YouTube also makes it increasingly hard for pirates to find real pirated content, and contributes to giving piracy its bad reputation when it comes to malware. It may in fact be one of the best ways to deter users from going down the piracy route, at least on YouTube.

Which is why is was unexpected that Hollywood, via the MPAA, has made fake pirated uploads an issue in its on-going war against Google. The MPAA tweeted an article written by Vox Indie's Ellen Seidler, who went into detail just why fake uploads are a problem, not just for pirates, but for content owners too.

The crux of the problem, according to Seidler, is the fact that YouTube's anti-piracy system, Content ID, can fill up with these fake videos when rights-holders try to manage content removal.

"Removing them is an incredibly time-consuming task as it seems YouTube has purposely chosen to make the Content ID dashboard as inconvenient as possible for users," writes Seidler.

It appears Seidler and the MPAA both want YouTube to take proactive action against these fake uploads, even if it could make YouTube movie piracy viable again. The MPAA may also see any proactive action on YouTube's part as a thin-wedge in its campaign to get Google to proactively remove pirated content, not just from YouTube, but from its search results too.

[Via Vox Indie, MPAA]

Starbucks said Friday it would soon add porn-blocking filters to its public, in-store Wi-Fi. The move follows McDonald's, which disclosed this week that it had blocked the hamburger-eating public from accessing Wi-Fi-enabled porn at its restaurants.

"Once we determine that our customers can access our free Wi-Fi in a way that also doesn't involuntarily block unintended content, we will implement this in our stores," Starbucks said in a statement. "In the meantime, we reserve the right to stop any behavior that interferes with our customer experience, including what is accessed on our free Wi-Fi."

The group Enough is Enough and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation have been putting pressure on companies that provide free Wi-Fi to the public to block porn sites.

Two US senators are urging the mobile phone industry to fight robocalls and texts by creating a database of phone numbers that have been reassigned from one customer to another.

Reassigned numbers are one of the major contributors to unwanted calls and texts, and carriers haven't done enough to fight the problem, said US Senators John Thune (R-S.D.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.). The lawmakers wrote a letter today to CEO Meredith Attwell Baker of CTIA–The Wireless Association, a lobby group that represents AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA, Sprint, and other mobile carriers.

Thune and Markey "believe wireless carriers may have an opportunity to provide consumers and businesses more needed relief by establishing a reassigned numbers database, containing a list of cell phone numbers that have changed ownership," they wrote. "Periodically, consumers receive unwanted robocalls and robotexts because the previous holder of the phone number provided consent. Not only are robocalls and robotexts to reassigned numbers a nuisance to consumers, but they also create liabilities for calling parties."

Badware purveyors trying to capitalize on the ongoing Pokémon Go frenzy have achieved an important milestone by sneaking their fake wares into the official Google Play marketplace, security researchers said Friday.

Researchers from antivirus provider Eset report finding at least three such apps in the Google-hosted marketplace. Of the three, the one titled "Pokemon Go Ultimate" posed the biggest threat because it deliberately locks the screen of devices immediately after being installed. In many cases, restarting an infected phone isn't enough to unlock the screen. Infected phones can ultimately be unlocked either by removing the battery or by using the Android Device Manager.

Once the screen has been unlocked and the device has restarted, the app—which by now has the title PI Network—is removed from the device's app menu. Still, it continues to run in the background and surreptitiously clicks on ads in an attempt to generate revenue for its creators.

You'd be forgiven for scoffing at limited-edition vinyl album releases, whether because you mock them as the stuff of snooty hipsters or because you take issue with their supposed sound-reproduction superiority. But I will defend to the death anybody who lovingly manufactures gatefold-sleeve albums—or, at least, the ones that are dedicated to retro video game soundtracks.

This new niche genre of gaming product actually didn't kick off until late last year, when British company Data Discs began publishing remastered vinyl soundtracks of classic Sega games. Gaming-merch company iam8bit has also gotten in on the fun with its own line of albums. Ars doesn't typically write about album launches, but we're making an exception for Killer Cuts: the Killer Instinct soundtrack.

Why? Because the soundtrack for the original 1995 arcade game was a veritable soup of genres and sound samples, which makes it one of the most interesting candidates for iam8bit's remastering process. The soundtrack won't start shipping in its vinyl edition until October, but preorders kicked off Friday as a promotion linked to this weekend's hugely popular EVO fighting game tournament. The vinyl will come in one of three covers, each with the record colored to match the character on its front. This weekend only, interested fighting-music fans can score KI's green-vinyl Fulgore edition with metallic paper. Also, pre-order customers are automatically entered to win a pretty cool-looking Fulgore figurine.

As part of its pitch to developers, Microsoft said that it was aiming to have 1 billion devices—PCs, tablets, phones, Xboxes, HoloLenses, and whatever else can run the operating system—within the first two to three years of its availability. That target is now off the table, reports Mary Jo Foley.

In a statement, the company said:

Windows 10 is off to the hottest start in history with over 350M monthly active devices, with record customer satisfaction and engagement. We're pleased with our progress to date, but due to the focusing of our phone hardware business, it will take longer than FY18 for us to reach our goal of 1 billion monthly active devices. In the year ahead, we are excited about usage growth coming from commercial deployments and new devices—and increasing customer delight with Windows.

The issue is mobile. At the time of the prediction, Microsoft was counting on selling 50 million Windows phones a year. These were an important part of the 1 billion devices, because one of the key selling points of Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform is the way it enables developers to easily adapt their software for the many different form factors that Windows supports. Phones were expected to be the largest of the non-PC form factors, but a series of missteps has seen Microsoft's phone sales collapse.