Month: October 2016

Founded in 2006 by Rick Falkvinge, the Pirate party movement has scored some significant victories over the years.

The greatest success is the continuing presence in the European Parliament, but in Iceland the local Pirate Party is writing history as well.

Iceland’s Pirates have a great track record already, with three members in the national Parliament. However, more may join in the future as the party has added many new supporters in recent months.

With elections just a week away the tension is growing. The Pirates have been leading the polls for most of the year and are currently neck-and-neck with the Social Democratic Alliance to become the largest party in the country.

This brings the Pirates in an unusual position where they have to start thinking about possible partners to form a coalition Government, for the first time in history.

TF spoke with Ásta Helgadóttir, Member of Parliament for the Icelandic Pirate Party, who says that the party is ready to bring the change many citizens are longing for.

“Firstly, by adopting a new constitution which has already been voted on in a non-binding referendum,” Helgadóttir says.

“This will change how Iceland functions as a democracy, transitioning into a much more meaningful democracy. The Pirates are focused on decentralization of power, access to information and civil and human rights. The pillars of any meaningful notion of democracy.”

Despite the Pirate name, copyright issues are not central to their plans. That said, they have spoken out against recent web-blocking efforts.

Iceland’s ISPs have been ordered to block access to ‘infringing’ sites such as The Pirate Bay, which the party sees as a step in the wrong direction. The party fears that these censorship efforts will lead to more stringent measures.

“These measures are not a solution and only exacerbate the problem. There needs to be a review of copyright law and how creators are compensated for their work,” Helgadóttir notes, adding that some ISPs are planning to fight the blockades in court.

While the Pirate Party movement has always appealed to the younger generations, in Iceland it receives support across all age groups. One of their main selling points is a broad and clear vision for Iceland that breaks with the current political establishment.

The Pirate Party was in part formed by supporters of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a unanimously adopted parliamentary resolution to create the optimal environment for freedom of information and free expression.

“This work is still under way but something the Pirates want to implement,” Helgadóttir says.

“The resolution brings limited liability for intermediaries, whistleblower protection, enhanced source protection, due process, defamation law reform and data protection, among other things.”

With just a week to go, there’s a realistic chance that the Pirates will book a historic election win, allowing them to govern the country during the years to come.

In that regard, the timing could hardly be any better. With the recent revelations from the Panama Papers scandal and the banking crisis fresh in mind, people are longing for change.

According to Helgadóttir, the party hasn’t set any specific goals in terms of a vote percentage they want to reach. Whatever the outcome, they will to their best to and steer the country in the right direction once again.

“We do not have a specific target in terms of percentages. Our objective is to get the ball rolling on some fundamental issues, whether that happens with 10% of the vote or 40% of the vote is not paramount.”

The parliamentary elections will take place next week, October 29.

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

Der Internet-Dienstleister DynDNS hat erste Details zur schweren DDoS-Attacke vom vergangenen Freitag genannt. Demnach gab es drei Angriffswellen von unterschiedlichem Ausmaß. (DoS, Amazon)

Es ist der größte Firmenkauf des Jahres: Der Telekom-Konzern AT&T will selbst zum Inhalteanbieter werden und das Medienunternehmen Time Warner übernehmen. Donald Trump ist dagegen. (AT&T, Time Warner)

From DRM that nobody wants to a new console many will Switch to, read the news roundup for the week ending October 23, 2016

Continue reading ...

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Anti-piracy technologies have been a mixed bag in terms of success, but one name has been turning heads in the industry due to its on-going success and longevity. Denuvo, which brands itself not as a DRM but as an anti-tampering solution, has made many 'triple A' titles immune to piracy, sometimes for months after release, and this, the company's CEO and marketing director says, is something that will continue.

Denuvo's success hasn't always been consistent. A recent Steam flaw allowed many Denuvo games to be played by pirates, and shortly after, cracking group CPY released the first full crack for Denuvo.

The dominoes seemed ready to fall when the game 'Inside' was cracked in record time - six weeks was still a long time to crack a game (with previous anti-piracy measures sometimes taken down hours after a game's release), but it compared well to earlier efforts to break a Denuvo protected game that may have taken more than 6 months.

Soon after the 'Inside' success, new games including 'Doom' and 'Mirror's Edge Catalyst', were cracked as well.

Despite these setbacks, Denuvo marketing director Thomas Goebl says that while the company is aware that no protection is perfect, any protection they give during the first few days and weeks of release will still prove to be invaluable for game publishers. 

"You have to have a realistic view of anti-piracy measures," says Goebl.

"There is no such thing as unbreakable protection. That’s something we always tell our clients to help manage their expectations. Our scope is to prevent early cracks for every title. We want to allow an initial window when a game is released to have an uncracked version and thus guarantee sales."

And Denuvo is an evolving solution, according to the company's CEO Reinhard Blaukovitsch. Blaukovitsch says that with every crack of Denuvo, their team of engineers get right back to work to make Denuvo even stronger. 

"The procedure [after a crack] is the same every time. We analyze how the crack was done and then we update our protection. It’s a game of cat and mouse that we play," Blaukovitsch says.

"There are many techniques we use to prevent people from debugging, reverse engineering and otherwise tampering with our software. We are improving that technology or those techniques on a day-to-day basis, and coming up with new ideas that are almost entirely new inventions on a monthly basis on how we improve our service."

[via TorrentFreak, MCVUK]

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

With the Internet and therefore online piracy having developed into a truly global phenomenon, anti-piracy groups everywhere are expanding their reach.

What was once a semi-isolated affair has become a multi-agency, cross-continent operation, with governments and rights holders alike striving to share information and pool resources.

An event this week illustrated where things are going, with representatives from around the world descending upon Brussels for a meeting hosted by the Motion Picture Association.

The International Roundtable, titled “Combating Internet Piracy: International Practice”, saw government officials from Europe and Russia join representatives from the United States and the UK to discuss cooperation against piracy.

The meeting (Photo via Роскомнадзор)

According to information released by Russian telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor and translated by the MPA, those gathered agreed that a “lack of intellectual property protection causes significant economic damage to individual rights holders and the global economy.”

Of course, that message certainly isn’t new. Neither are mounting public claims by rights holders that Internet users are being put at risk through their visits to unauthorized sites.

Those assembled agreed that consumers are negatively impacted from enjoying entertainment in a safe environment since pirate sites “are a fertile ground for identity theft, viruses, malware or spyware.”

As mentioned earlier, anti-piracy groups and initiatives of all kinds now understand that collaboration is part of the way forward, whether that’s sharing information or working towards tougher legal frameworks.

“In particular, participants acknowledged the need to strengthen international cooperation in the fight against IPR violations on the Internet and to continue sharing experiences in improving legislation, and law enforcement practice in combating copyright infringement in the digital environment in the EU, Russian Federation, and USA,” a summary of the meeting reads.

Those at the meeting included representatives from the US “six-strikes” Copyright Alert System and the UK’s GetitRight campaign. Details are fairly scarce, but these groups are likely to have shared data on how educational messages affect the behaviors of Internet pirates and how voluntary agreements with industry players such as ISPs can become part of the anti-piracy package.

Another item on the agenda was the role that search engines and user-generated content companies play when it comes to fighting online piracy. While Russia has its own issues with services like Yandex, for the US and Europe the focus is very much on Google and sites such as YouTube.

Service provider liability and related legislative initiatives will continue to be hot topics in the months and years ahead. This is particularly true of the United States, where the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA are under scrutiny alongside a controversial debate on the so-called ‘value gap‘ claimed to be present on YouTube.

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

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 72 remaining paragraphs | Comments