September 2016 – Page 11 – news.buyenne.com

Amazon: Fire TV erhält neuartigen Startbildschirm

Amazon will noch in diesem Jahr einen neuen Startbildschirm für seine Fire-TV-Geräte veröffentlichen. Das wurde im Rahmen der Vorstellung eines neuen Fire TV Sticks bekannt, der die erste Gerätegeneration ablöst, vorerst aber nicht für Deutschland geplant ist. (Fire TV, Amazon)

UK IP Crime Report 2016 Reveals IPTV/Kodi Piracy as Growing Threat

The UK’s IP Crime Report 2015/16 has just been published, revealing infringement trends gathered from both governmental and private anti-piracy groups. This year in the online piracy sector IPTV/Kodi, torrent sites and stream ripping are seen as the main threats. Meanwhile, the report reveals that pirating Internet subscribers will be receiving warning letters before the end of the year.

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

For more than a decade the IP Crime Group and the Intellectual Property Office have collaborated to produce an assessment of the level of IP crime in the UK. Their annual IP Crime Report details the responses of businesses, anti-piracy groups, and government agencies.

As usual, this year’s report covers all areas of IP crime, both in the physical realm and online. However, it is the latter area that appears to be causing the most concern to participating anti-piracy groups.

“Perhaps the area where IP crime statistics most often reach jaw-dropping levels is in relation to the industries providing digital content,” the report reads.

“During a sample three-month period last year, 28% of those questioned admitted their music downloads in the UK came from illegal sources. Similarly, 23% of films, 22% of software, 16% of TV and 15% of games were downloaded in breach of copyright.”

While noting that illicit music downloads have actually reduced in recent years, the report highlights areas that aren’t doing so well, TV show consumption for example.

“The reasons for the spike in TV copyright infringement appear to be, in part, technological, with ‘unofficial services’ such as uTorrent, BitTorrent, TV catch up apps and established sources such as YouTube offering content without legal certainty,” it adds.

But while several methods of obtaining free TV content online are highlighted in the report, none achieve as much attention as IPTV – commonly known as Kodi with illicit third-party addons.

In her report preamble, Minister for Intellectual Property Baroness Neville-Rolfe describes anti-IPTV collaboration between the Federation Against Copyright Theft, Trading Standards, and the Police, as one of the year’s operational successes. Indeed, FACT say anti-IPTV work is now their top priority.

Federation Against Copyright Theft

“We have prioritised an emerging threat to the audiovisual industry, internet protocol TV (IPTV) boxes,” FACT write.

“In their original form, these boxes are legitimate. However, with the use of apps and add-ons, they allow users to access copyright infringing material, from live TV and sports, to premium pay-for channels and newly released films. Once configured these boxes are illegal.”

FACT say they are concentrating on two areas – raising awareness in the industry and elsewhere while carrying out enforcement and disruption operations.

“In the last year FACT has worked with a wide range of partners and law enforcement bodies to tackle individuals and disrupt businesses selling illegal IPTV boxes. Enforcement action has been widespread across the UK with numerous ongoing investigations,” FACT note.

Overall, FACT say that 70% of the public complaints they receive relate to online copyright infringement. More than a quarter of all complaints now relate to IPTV and 50% of the anti-piracy group’s current investigations involve IPTV boxes.

British Phonographic Industry (BPI)

In their submission to the report, the BPI cite three key areas of concern – online piracy, physical counterfeiting, and Internet-enabled sales of infringing physical content. The former is their top priority.

“The main online piracy threats to the UK recorded music industry at present come from BitTorrent networks, MP3 aggregator sites, cyberlockers, unauthorised streaming sites, stream ripping sites and pirate sites accessed via mobile devices,” the BPI writes.

“Search engines – predominantly Google – also continue to provide millions of links to infringing content and websites that are hosted by non-compliant operators and hosts that cannot be closed down have needed to be blocked in the UK under s.97A court orders (website blocking).”

The BPI notes that between January 2015 and March 2016, it submitted more than 100 million URL takedowns to Google and Bing. Counting all notices since 2011 when the BPI began the practice, the tally now sits at 200 million URLs.

“These astronomic numbers demonstrate the large quantity of infringing content that is available online and which is easily accessible to search engine users,” the BPI says.

On the web-blocking front, the BPI says it now has court orders in place to block 63 pirate sites and more than 700 related URLs, IP addresses and proxies.

“Site blocking is proving a successful strategy, and the longer the blocks are in place, the more effective they tend to be. The latest data available shows that traffic to sites blocked for over one year has reduced by an average of around 80%; with traffic to sites blocked for less than a year reduced by an average of around 50%,” the BPI adds.

Infringement warnings for Internet subscibers

The Get it Right campaign is an educational effort to advise the public on how to avoid pirate sites and spend money on genuine products. The campaign has been somewhat lukewarm thus far, but the sting in the tail has always been the threat of copyright holders sending warnings to Internet pirates.

To date, nothing has materialized on that front but hidden away on page 51 of the report is a hint that something might happen soon.

“A further component of the ‘Get it Right’ campaign is a subscriber alert programme that will, starting by the end of 2016, advise ISPs’ residential subscribers when their accounts are believed to have been used to infringe copyright,” the report reads.

“Account holders will receive an Alert from their ISP, advising them that unlawful uploading of a copyright content file may have taken place on their internet connection and offering advice on where to find legitimate sources of content.”

Overall, the tone of the report suggests a huge threat from IP crime but one that’s being effectively tackled by groups such as FACT, BPI, the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, and various educational initiatives. Only time will tell if next year’s report will retain the optimism.

The full report can be downloaded here (pdf)

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

Musikstreaming: Soundcloud könnte bald Spotify gehören

Der Musikstreamingdienst Spotify plant einem Medienbericht zufolge die Übernahme des Konkurrenten Soundcloud. Mit der Akquisition könnte Spotify den Abstand zu Apple Music vergrößern. (Soundcloud, Cloud Computing)

Online- oder Handyfahrschein: Ausweiszwang bei der Bahn

Die Deutsche Bahn will ab dem 1. Oktober bei Nutzern von Online- oder Handytickets zusätzlich zur Bahncard einen amtlichen Ausweis sehen. (Deutsche Bahn, E-Personalausweis)

Elektroauto: Volkswagen ID soll bis zu 600 km elektrisch fahren

Volkswagen hat mit dem VW ID ein Konzeptfahrzeug vorgestellt, das mit einer Akkuladung 400 bis 600 Kilometer weit fahren soll und mit einem 170-PS-Elektromotor angetrieben wird. 2020 soll das Elektroauto in Serie gehen. (VW, GreenIT)

Sicherheitsrisiko Baustellenampeln: Grüne Welle auf Knopfdruck

Es klingt wie ein Computerspiel oder ein Hackerfilm, ist aber leider Realität: Die Ampelanlagen eines deutschen Herstellers lassen sich fernsteuern. Obwohl das Unternehmen seit Monaten Kenntnis davon hat, ist bislang nichts geschehen. (Sicherheitslücke, Fernwartung)

Record-breaking DDoS reportedly delivered by >145k hacked cameras

Once unthinkable, 1 terabit attacks may soon be the new normal.

Last week, security news site KrebsOnSecurity went dark for more than 24 hours following what was believed to be a record 620 gigabit-per-second denial of service attack brought on by an ensemble of routers, security cameras, or other so-called Internet of Things devices. Now, there's word of a similar attack on a French Web host that peaked at a staggering 1.1 terabits per second, more than 60 percent bigger.

The attacks were first reported on September 19 by Octave Klaba, the founder and CTO of OVH. The first one reached 1.1 Tbps while a follow-on was 901 Gbps. Then, last Friday, he reported more attacks that were in the same almost incomprehensible range. He said the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were delivered through a collection of hacked Internet-connected cameras and digital video recorders. With each one having the ability to bombard targets with 1 Mbps to 30 Mbps, he estimated the botnet had a capacity of 1.5 Tbps.

On Monday, Klaba reported that more than 6,800 new cameras had joined the botnet and said further that over the previous 48 hours the hosting service was subjected to dozens of attacks, some ranging from 100 Gbps to 800 Gbps. On Wednesday, he said more than 15,000 new devices had participated in attacks over the past 48 hours.

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Convertible Acer Chromebook R 13 goes up for pre-order

The Acer Chromebook R 13 is a convertible notebook with a 13.3 inch touchscreen display, 4GB of RAM, and up to 64GB of storage. It has a 360 degree hinge that lets you fold the screen back when you want to hold the Chromebook like a tablet. And the system is the first Chromebook powered by a MediaTek processor.

Announced in August, the Acer Chromebook R 13 should begin shipping next month. But it’s already available for pre-order from B&H (and maybe a few other retailers).

Continue reading Convertible Acer Chromebook R 13 goes up for pre-order at Liliputing.

Announced in August, the Acer Chromebook R 13 should begin shipping next month. But it’s already available for pre-order from B&H (and maybe a few other retailers).

Continue reading Convertible Acer Chromebook R 13 goes up for pre-order at Liliputing.

New Hampshire law barring ballot selfies is unconstitutional, court rules

Not even the motive to limit voter coercion can bar right to ballot booth selfies.

Just in time for the Nov. 8 presidential elections, a federal appeals court on Wednesday declared a New Hampshire law banning so-called ballot booth selfies "facially unconstitutional."

The 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled (PDF) there was no compelling government need to restrict First Amendment rights and ban voters from disseminating pictures of their ballots or of themselves posed with their ballots. State lawmakers, when approving the law that carries a $1,000 fine, had maintained in 2014 that the statute was needed to combat voter fraud—like having people coerced into voting a certain way and then having to prove it via social media or by some other means, for example. The appeals court explained:

Digital photography, the internet, and social media are not unknown quantities — they have been ubiquitous for several election cycles, without being shown to have the effect of furthering vote buying or voter intimidation. As the plaintiffs note, “small cameras” and digital photography “have been in use for at least 15 years,” and New Hampshire cannot identify a single complaint of vote buying or intimidation related to a voter’s publishing a photograph of a marked ballot during that period.

No federal law addresses the issue. That means across the US, the law in the 50 states on voting booth selfies remains mixed. There's a few court challenges across the country. The court that ruled Wednesday covers the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine. The Huffington Post has a lengthy guide on which state's it's OK to post a picture of yourself showing your votes this November.

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Memristor that forgets makes a good model neuron

New device mimics how neurons alter behavior once they’re activated.

While the human brain isn't particularly quick at handling complex calculations, it performs a variety of tasks, such as image analysis, far more accurately than any computer. And, when it comes to energy efficiency, a brain beats a traditional computer with ease. Which is why it's somewhat ironic that all the original attempts to model a brain were forced to use software running on traditional computers, since that was all we had.

Recently, however, there have been a variety of attempts to build hardware that acts more like a collection of neurons than anything that Apple or Intel have designed. While some of that uses traditional silicon-based transistors, other efforts have explored a relatively newer development, the memristor. Now, an international collaboration that includes everyone from HP to the Air Force has designed a memristor that behaves a bit more like a neuron: its recent activity influences how it responds. This is accomplished by allowing metal to diffuse within the solid memristor.

The idea behind the new design was apparently inspired by our understanding of neurons. In many cases, the activity of a neuron isn't only set by the signals it's receiving right at that instant. Instead, it has the biochemical equivalent of short-term memory. If it's received signals in the recent past, it's easier to activate that neuron by an additional signal. Over time, that memory fades, and the neuron goes back to its normal level of responsiveness.

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