Month: October 2016

Responding to a request from the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), the MPAA has sent in its annual list of notorious markets.

In its latest submission the Hollywood group targets a wide variety of “rogue” sites and services which they claim are promoting the illegal distribution of movies and TV-shows, with declining incomes and lost jobs in the movie industry as a result.

“The criminals who profit from the most notorious markets throughout the world threaten the very heart of our industry and in so doing they threaten the livelihoods of the people who give it life,” the MPAA writes.

What’s new this year is that the MPAA calls out several hosting providers. These companies refuse to take pirate sites offline following complaints, even when the MPAA views them as blatantly violating the law.

“Hosting companies provide the essential infrastructure required to operate a website,” MPAA writes. “Given the central role of hosting providers in the online ecosystem, it is very concerning that many refuse to take action upon being notified.”

The Hollywood group specifically mentions Private Layer, Altushost and Netbrella, which are linked to various countries including the Netherlands, Panama, Sweden and Switzerland.

CDN provider CloudFlare is also named. As a US-based company it can’t be included in the list. However, MPAA explains that it is often used as an anonymization tool by sites and services that are mentioned in the report.

“An example of a CDN frequently exploited by notorious markets to avoid detection and enforcement is Cloudflare. CloudFlare is a CDN that also provides reverse proxy functionality. Reverse proxy functionality hides the real IP address of a web server.”

Stressing the importance of third-party services, the MPAA notes that domain name registrars can also be seen as possible “notorious markets.” As an example, the report mentions the Indian Public Domain Registry (PDR) which has repeatedly refused to take action against pirate sites.

At the heart of the MPAA’s report are as always the pirate sites themselves. This year they list 23 sites in separate categories, each with a suspected location, as defined by the movie industry group.

Torrent Sites

According to the MPAA, BitTorrent remains the most popular source of P2P piracy, despite the shutdowns of large sites such as KAT, Torrentz and YTS.

The Pirate Bay has traditionally been one of the main targets. Based on data from Alexa and SimilarWeb, the MPAA says that TPB has about 47 million unique visitors per month.

The MPAA writes that the site was hit by various enforcement actions in recent years. They also mistakenly suggest that the site is no longer the number one pirate site, but add that it gained traction after KAT and Torrentz were taken down.

“While it has never returned to its number one position, it has had a significant comeback after kat.cr and torrentz.eu went offline in 2016,” the MPAA writes.

ExtraTorrent is another prime target. The site offers millions of torrents and is affiliated with the Trust.Zone VPN, which they advertise on their site.

“Extratorrent.cc claims astonishing piracy statistics: offering almost three million free files with sharing optimized through over 64 million seeders and more than 39 million leechers.

“The homepage currently displays a message warning users to use a VPN when downloading torrents. Extratorrent.cc is affiliated with Trust.Zone,” MPAA adds.

The full list of reported torrent sites is as follows:

-1337x.to (Switzerland)
-Extratorrent.cc (Latvia)
-Rarbg.to (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
-Rutracker.org (Russia)
-ThePirateBay.org (Unknown)

Direct Download and Streaming Cyberlockers

The second category of pirate sites reported by the MPAA are cyberlockers. The movie industry group points out that these sites generate millions of dollars in revenue, citing a report from Netnames.

The “Movshare Group,” which allegedly operates Nowvideo.sx, Movshare.net, Novamov.com, Videoweed.es, Nowdownload.ch, Divxstage.to and several other pirate sites is a particularly large threat, they say.

As in previous submissions VKontakte, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook, is also listed as a notorious market.

-Allmyvideos.net (Netherlands)
-Nowvideo.sx and the “Movshare Group” (several locations)
-Openload.co (Netherlands)
-Rapidgator.net (Russia)
-Uploaded.net (Netherlands/Switzerland)
-VK.com (Russia)

Linking Websites

Finally, there are various linking websites, many of which focus on a foreign audience. These sites don’t host the infringing material, but only link to it. The full list of linking sites is as follows.

123movies.to (Unknown)
-Filmesonlinegratis.net (Brazil/Portugal)
-Kinogo.club (Netherlands)
-Movie4k.to (Russia)
-Newmovie-hd.com (Thailand)
-Pelis24.com (Spain/Mexico/Argentina/Venezuela/Peru/Chile)
-Primewire.ag (Switzerland)
-Projectfreetv.at (Romania)
-Putlocker.is (Switzerland/Vietnam)
-Repelis.tv (Mexico/Argentina/Spain/Peru/Venezuela)
-Watchseries.ac (France)

In its closing comments the Hollywood industry group calls on USTR and the U.S. government at large to help combat these threats, either directly or by encouraging foreign nations to take action.

“We strongly support efforts by the U.S. government to work with trading partners to protect and enforce intellectual property rights and, in so doing, protect U.S. jobs,” the MPAA concludes.

MPAA’s full submission is available here.

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

FCA

It appears the roads of California are about to get even more crowded with self-driving cars. The Wall Street Journal reports that Valeo (a tier-one supplier to the auto industry) and Wheego (an electric vehicle powertrain engineering company) have each been granted permits by the state's DMV to begin testing a single autonomous vehicle on public roads. And over at electrek, there are some grainy spy shots of Google's new fleet of self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans, the first fruits of Google's partnership with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.

By being one of the first states in the nation to allow for the testing of autonomous vehicles on its roads, California has become quite the hotbed for self-driving car research. The addition of Wheego and Valeo now brings the total number of testing permits issued up to 17. At the end of the summer, Chinese tech firm Baidu gained permission to begin testing autonomous vehicles in the state as well.

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When Cyanogen Inc launched a few years ago, the company’s goal was to leverage the success of the popular CyanogenMod line of custom ROMs for Android smartphones and tablets to create a commercial operating system that could be licensed to phone makers.

Part of the selling point for users was that Cyanogen OS would basically be like stock Android, but with additional features and customization options. The value for device makers was the ability to have more control over the software that shipped on phones… allowing apps from Microsoft, for example, to have equal footing with those from Google.

Continue reading Cyanogen OS goes modular: Offers phone makers option to license specific features at Liliputing.

(credit: Kevin Baird)

Update: This event will be starting shortly. You can watch it on the Ars Facebook page or, if you're unable or unwilling to use Facebook, on Youtube.

Drones are changing the way people think about aviation, and around the nation people are looking at new opportunities to use them for fun and profit. With those opportunities come challenges for policy-makers, who strive to keep drone enthusiasts away from hurricanes, playoff games, and angry, shotgun-wielding landowners.

Join Ars today on our Facebook page as we live-stream a discussion from the White House about the possibilities and perils of drones and personal aircraft. White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough will host the talk. Guests include Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx; Helen Greiner, Roomba inventor and founder of drone company CyPhy Works; and Eric Allison, CEO of personal aircraft company Zee Aero, which is working on a new generation of personal aircraft.

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Samsung is launching a new range of desktop computers that drop the traditional tower PC design for a more compact cylinder shape. The Samsung ArtPC is 12.2 inches high and has a diameter of about 5.5 inches across.

There’s also a built-in Harmon Kardon 360-degree omni-directional speaker on the top and a circular ambient light.

You can pre-order an ArtPC from Amazon for $1200 and up.

That price gets you a computer with a Core i5 Skylake processor, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of NVMe solid state storage, and AMD Radeon rx 460 graphics.

Continue reading Samsung launches ArtPC: A compact, premium desktop PC for $1200 and up at Liliputing.

Enlarge / This is the second boss of Builders, and he's a colossal dick.

In a year when much slower and much more traditional Dragon Quest games are hitting the market, Dragon Quest Builders comes along to inject some zip into the series. While it won't break any records for speedy pacing, Builders is still a major departure for the definitive JRPG series, replacing the series-standard, turn-based grinding with real-time, open-world exploration and Minecraft-style block-based base building.

Somehow, this isn't that surprising. The survival/crafting genre has exploded into public consciousness since Minecraft quickly became the most popular game on Earth. Knock-offs, clones, and would-be successors to that throne have been mostly quarantined to low-priced Steam releases thus far. It was only a matter of time before major, established brands began swerving into that territory, too.

Even so, it seems like a particularly odd fit for Dragon Quest, a series that has rarely strayed from tradition. Even last year's Dragon Quest Heroes–itself a major diversion from the classic turn-based grind, simplistic story, and self-contained world–simply followed the custom of another Musou game based on a popular Japanese franchise.

Dragon Quest Builders is different in that it's actually a very traditional Dragon Quest game in most of the ways that count: an evil overlord has taken out most of the world, and the world needs a hero to take him out.

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