Month: October 2016

Twitch: Der Zuschauer als Spielmacher

Spielentwickler wollen Let’s Playern und ihren Zuschauern gleichermaßen mehr Macht und frische Möglichkeiten geben. Golem.de hat sich auf der Twitchcon 2016 umgehört, welche Auswirkungen das langfristig haben könnte. (Twitchcon 2016, Games)

Spielentwickler wollen Let's Playern und ihren Zuschauern gleichermaßen mehr Macht und frische Möglichkeiten geben. Golem.de hat sich auf der Twitchcon 2016 umgehört, welche Auswirkungen das langfristig haben könnte. (Twitchcon 2016, Games)

Google Piracy Takedown Requests Double in a Year, Set New Record

Google is coping with a continuous increase of takedown requests from copyright holders who are targeting pirate sites in its search results. The company currently processes a record-breaking 24 million links to “pirate” pages per week, which is more than double the amount it received around the same time last year.

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

googlepiratebayIn recent years copyright holders have bombarded Google with DMCA takedown notices, targeting links to pirated content.

These requests have increased dramatically over the years, breaking record after record.

Five years ago the search engine received ‘only’ ten million takedown notices during the entire year, but today it processes the same amount in less than three days.

Data gathered by TorrentFreak from Google’s Transparency Report reveals a new weekly record of 24,119,797 reported pirate links, which is more than twice the number received by Google last year.

The graph below nicely illustrates the continued increase, showing the number of weekly requests over the most recent years.

At the current rate, Google will process more than a billion links in 2016, which would be a hundredfold increase in just five years, with no slowdown in sight.

Reported ‘pirate’ links

googletakedown24

Considering our frequent reporting about various takedown related mistakes, it’s worth looking at how many of these reported links actually disappear from search results.

New data made public earlier this month showed that the majority of the links, 91 percent, are ultimately removed. Two percent of the reported URLs are rejected, with the remainder being duplicate or incomplete links.

While rightsholders have increased their takedown efforts over the years, the major entertainment industry groups are not happy with the current state of Google’s takedown process at all.

One of the main complaints has been that content which Google de-lists often reappears under new URLs.

“Every day we have to send new notices to take down the very same links to illegal content we took down the day before. It’s like ‘Groundhog Day’ for takedowns,” RIAA CEO Cary Sherman said previously.

To counter this, rightsholders would like Google to ensure that content “stays down” while blocking the most notorious pirate sites from search results entirely.

Google, however, believes that this will lead to all sorts of problems and maintains that the current system is working as the DMCA was intended.

The search engine did implement various other initiatives to counter piracy, including the downranking of pirate sites and promoting legal options in search results, which it recently detailed in its updated “How Google Fights Piracy” report.

For now the impasse continues and whether it will ever be broken is highly doubtful.

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

Feeling Generous? uTorrent Adds New ‘Altruistic’ Mode

If sharing is caring, and you want to show that you care, then popular torrent client uTorrent has a new feature that’s just right for you.Introducing uTorrent’s new ‘Altruistic Mode’, which forces the client to upload twice as much as it downloads, wh…



If sharing is caring, and you want to show that you care, then popular torrent client uTorrent has a new feature that's just right for you.

Introducing uTorrent's new 'Altruistic Mode', which forces the client to upload twice as much as it downloads, when sharing files with other users.

While all users who use BitTorrent to download will have to upload at least a portion of the same file, users who wish to follow "good torrent etiquette" will at least ensure they upload as much as they download (a 1:1 ratio).

But those that want to be more generous will now have access to a new experimental mode in uTorrent that forces a 2:1 upload-to-download ratio.

There are some quirks to the new mode though, as it sticks so strictly to the 2:1 ratio that some downloads may never complete. But that may be of little importance to users whose main aim is to give back to the torrent community and ensure a healthy swarm.

Altruistic Mode is available in uTorrent 3.4.9 and above, and BitTorrent 7.9.9 and above.

[via TorrentFreak]

Arduino vs. Arduino: Namensstreit unter Bastlern friedlich beigelegt

Den Streit der beiden Unternehmen Arduino LLC und Arduino SRL um die Arduino-Namensrechte haben beide Parteien beendet. Zukünftig soll es ein Unternehmen für den Vertrieb der Arduino-Boards geben, die Weiterentwicklung übernimmt eine gemeinnützige Stiftung. (Arduino, Politik/Recht)

Den Streit der beiden Unternehmen Arduino LLC und Arduino SRL um die Arduino-Namensrechte haben beide Parteien beendet. Zukünftig soll es ein Unternehmen für den Vertrieb der Arduino-Boards geben, die Weiterentwicklung übernimmt eine gemeinnützige Stiftung. (Arduino, Politik/Recht)

A Closer Look at the RIAA Lawsuit Against YouTube-MP3

This week a huge coalition of recording labels headed by the RIAA, IFPI, and BPI, sued YouTube ripping service YouTube-MP3. Today we take a closer look at the lawsuit which was filed against a German company, owned and operated by a German citizen, which could seek damages running into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

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

A couple of weeks ago, the IFPI announced that the problem of stream-ripping has become so serious that in volume terms it has overtaken downloading from ‘pirate’ sites. For what is essentially a YouTube-powered phenomenon, that was quite a claim.

When the labels publish this kind of information, they usually have an end game in mind. So, thinking ahead, we contacted Philip Matesanz, the usually responsive operator of YouTube-MP3, the world’s largest ripping site. We asked if the labels had been in contact with him. We received no response and the alarm bells began ringing.

This week, all became clear. UMG Recordings, Capitol Records, Warner Bros, Sony Music, Arista Records, Atlantic Records and several others, sued Matesanz and his company PMD Technologie, claiming that his ripping of tracks from YouTube infringed their rights. Today we take a closer look at their lawsuit.

Jurisdiction

Those familiar with YouTube-MP3 will recall that the site is based in Germany and therefore operates under local law. However, the labels have chosen to sue Matesanz and his company in the United States under US law.

They state that their claims arise under federal copyright law and that is appropriate since YouTube-MP3 is “dedicated exclusively to capturing, converting, and copying audio content that is maintained on a U.S.-based website, YouTube.com.”

The labels say that after ripping the content from YouTube, YouTube-MP3 then distributes that content to users in the United States, noting that the site has more users from the US than any other country.

It is worth noting that unlike the Kim Dotcom/Megaupload case, there appears to be no criminal action against YouTube-MP3, only civil litigation.

The allegations against YouTube-MP3

The labels claim that YouTube-MP3 was designed and exists for one reason – to profit from the unauthorized reproduction of their copyrighted music. In carrying this out, the labels say that YouTube-MP3 breaches copyright law in a number of ways.

Direct Copyright Infringement: The labels allege that after ripping content from YouTube, YouTube-MP3 stores the resulting MP3s on its servers in order to service subsequent users more efficiently. This, they say, amounts to the site carrying an illegal library of their content and distributing it in the United States.

Contributory Copyright Infringement: With the allegations of direct infringement in mind, the labels say that YouTube-MP3 has “actual and constructive knowledge” that its users are also committing infringement when they rip content and have it delivered to their machines. Therefore, YouTube-MP3 is liable for user infringements too and at $150,000 per shot, that could get insanely expensive.

Vicarious Copyright Infringement: “Defendants have the right and ability to supervise and control the infringing activities that occur through the use of YTMP3, and at all relevant times have derived a direct financial benefit from the infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrights. Defendants are therefore vicariously liable for the infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings,” the lawsuit reads.

Inducement of Copyright Infringement: Simply put, the labels claim that by providing the ripping and downloading service, YouTube-MP3 encouraged, promoted and assisted the direct infringements of its users. As a result, the site is liable for their actions.

Circumvention of Technological Measures: The labels say that YouTube has technical measures in place to prevent users from downloading music from the site. These are bypassed by YouTube-MP3 in breach of copyright law.

“YTMP3 service circumvents technological measures that YouTube has implemented to effectively control access to and prevent copying of works protected under the Copyright Act, in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a). More specifically, Defendants’ service descrambles a scrambled work, decrypts an encrypted work, or otherwise avoids, bypasses, removes, deactivates, or impairs a technological measure without the authority of Plaintiffs or YouTube.”

While not as much as the $150,000 in statutory damages available for each instance of willful infringement, circumvention can get expensive too. In this respect, the labels are looking for $2,500 for each act of circumvention and with a reported 60 million visitors each month, there are countless millions of those.

Conclusion

There can be little doubt that given the importance the labels are now placing on stream-ripping, this case against YouTube-MP3 will be vigorously pursued to its conclusion. Whether it will progress to a full trial will remain to be seen but one has to think that barring an extraordinarily spirited Kim Dotcom-style defense, this one is unlikely to end well for YouTube-MP3.

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

Man, located after he left phone at robbery, now pleads guilty to kidnapping

Matthew Muller, former US Marine and disbarred lawyer, could face 40 years in prison.

Enlarge / The Vallejo Police Department originally labelled the kidnapping as a hoax. (credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images News)

The man accused of masterminding an elaborate tech-fueled kidnapping scheme in Vallejo, California, has pleaded guilty.

Thomas Johnson—the attorney representing Matthew Muller, who is himself a former United States Marine and disbarred lawyer—had previously put forward a novel legal theory during a federal court hearing in Sacramento earlier this year.

Johnson argued unsuccessfully that, because his client had not, in fact, abandoned a Samsung Galaxy phone following a separate June 2015 burglary in Dublin, California, Muller did have a privacy interest in the phone. When law enforcement used the handset to call 911 to determine its number, they eventually located its owner. Muller was arrested days later. (In this case, the judge didn’t buy Johnson’s argument—the search was not considered unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.)

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Light Show Fountain Speaker Set

Even kids know that their electronic toy will be broken when come in contact with water, and it’s been the natural law that electronic devices are weak with water. However, disregarding the elements incompatibility, people nowadays can create the mix anyway. For example, I’ve found this unique Light Show Fountain Speakers that has a water […]

Even kids know that their electronic toy will be broken when come in contact with water, and it’s been the natural law that electronic devices are weak with water. However, disregarding the elements incompatibility, people nowadays can create the mix anyway. For example, I’ve found this unique Light Show Fountain Speakers that has a water […]

Ars looks back at Rosetta’s greatest hits, from launch to landing

First probe to orbit a comet. First to land. And first in our hearts this weekend.

  • The European Space Agency released this cartoon Friday, showing Rosetta having landed, with Philae nearby. This gallery highlights key images from the mission
    ESA

Unless Matt Damon becomes stranded on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko any time soon and needs an emergency means of calling back to Earth, the world will never hear from the Rosetta spacecraft again. But the European vehicle served humanity well since its launch 12 years ago. Rosetta became the first probe to both orbit a comet and deploy a lander to a comet's surface. On Friday morning, the spacecraft joined its small lander, Philae, on the surface of its comet. Once there, it shut down.

Even before the European Space Agency’s Giotto spacecraft came within 600km of the nucleus of Halley’s Comet in 1986, the agency was already thinking about a comet lander as a follow-up mission. After finally launching in 2004, Rosetta took a long time to reach Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The probe had to make four flybys of inner solar system planets (three around Earth, one around Mars) for gravitational assists, and it traveled nearly eight billion km before descending to rest on the comet Friday. The gallery above captures some of the highlights of the 12-year mission.

From a scientific standpoint, Rosetta confirms that comets are remnants from when the Solar System formed, rather than fragments from later collisions. Comets therefore offer a window to 4.6 billion years ago. The program was a public relations success, too. “As well as being a scientific and technical triumph, the amazing journey of Rosetta and its lander Philae also captured the world’s imagination, engaging new audiences far beyond the science community,” said Mark McCaughrean, ESA’s senior science adviser.

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Colossal review: Everyone has a monster, most aren’t this fun

Anne Hathaway + kaiju monster = awesome film (though in ways you may not expect).

Colossal, a modern take on kaiju films starring Anne Hathaway, officially enjoys wide release in the US starting today (4/7/17). Ars was lucky enough to catch the film early at last fall's genre-centric Fantastic Fest 2016, and we're resurfacing our review (which originally ran on 10/1/16) accordingly.

Warning: This review contains minor spoilers for Colossal.

AUSTIN, Texas—The film Colossal currently doesn't have a publicly-available trailer, let alone a release date. But it aired at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month, sparking hurried whispers of "Anne Hathaway's kaiju movie" among #FilmInternet. Those four words made up all the prior knowledge I had when the title slid into this week's genre-centric Fantastic Fest for its US premiere.

Having seen it, I can now confirm: Anne Hathaway appears in this film, so does a kaiju monster. But pitching Colossal as Hathaway taking the Bryan Cranston role in the most recent Godzilla sells writer/director Nacho Vigalondo's latest work so, so short. Instead, Colossal proves to be an incredibly fun mishmash of well-established genres with two extremely accessible characters at its core. Over the course of 110 minutes, things shift fluidly between rom-com and monster film, dark horror and art-house indie. All the while, Colossal does its best kaiju impression, leaving tropes of each mashed in its path.

Everyone's from a Mainline, USA

Burnt-out online writer Gloria (Anne Hathaway) has been losing the eternal battle with NYC. She drinks too much, works not enough, and may be involved in an emotionally abusive relationship with Tim, a successful suit-type. It all comes to a breaking point after one too many midday, inebriated return trips to their apartment. Tim has Gloria's bags packed and ready for departure.

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