March 2017 – Page 21 – news.buyenne.com

Tesla worker claims company did little to halt racial, sexual harassment

African-American man says his co-workers commented on his genitalia, threatened him.

A worker at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California, has sued the company over what he claims are months of racial, sexual, and physical harassment by his co-workers. Tesla did little to stop it, the suit alleges.

The lawsuit was filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court on behalf of Dewitt Lambert, an African-American man who moved from Alabama to California in 2012 specifically to seek work at Tesla. In it, Lambert alleges that shortly after his job began in 2015 on the assembly line, he faced consistent harassment by his younger colleagues.

Specifically, Lambert claims that the named co-workers made remarks like "Don’t this n****r look just like Samuel Jackson?" and "I bet you my dick is bigger than yours," along with other similar disparaging comments.

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DMCA Doesn’t Shield Cloudflare From Anti-Piracy Injunctions, Court Rules

When the RIAA targeted CDN provider Cloudflare with an injunction to block access to a known pirate site, the company objected. Cloudflare argued that the DMCA shielded the company from the broad blocking requirements. However, a Florida federal court has now ruled that the DMCA doesn’t apply in this case, opening the door to widespread anti-piracy filtering.

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

Representing various major record labels, the RIAA filed a lawsuit against MP3Skull in 2015.

With millions of visitors per month the MP3 download site had been one of the prime sources of pirated music for a long time. This frustrated many music industry insiders who claimed millions in losses.

Last year a Florida federal court sided with the RIAA, awarding the labels more than $22 million in damages. In addition, it issued a permanent injunction which allowed the RIAA to take over the site’s domain names.

Despite the million dollar verdict, MP3Skull continued to operate for several months using a variety of new domain names, which were subsequently targeted by the RIAA’s legal team.

As the site refused to shut down, the RIAA moved up the chain targeting CDN provider Cloudflare with the permanent injunction. According to the RIAA, Cloudflare should stop offering its services to all MP3Skull websites, arguing that the CDN provider was “in active concert or participation” with the pirates.

Cloudflare disagreed and countered that the DMCA protects it from liability for the copyright infringements of its customers, limiting the scope of anti-piracy injunctions. In an effort to resolve this difference of opinion, the RIAA has asked the Florida federal court for a “clarification” of the existing injunction.

After hearing the arguments from both sides, the court has now ruled against Cloudflare’s DMCA defense, opening the door for an injunction against the CDN provider itself.

In her order, District Court Judge Marcia Cooke notes that Section 512 of the DMCA protects service providers from copyright infringement liability for the actions of others of which they are not aware.

However, this is different from the current case where Cloudflare is not being held liable by the RIAA but is well aware of the copyright infringements, the Judge clarifies.

“Here, Plaintiffs do not allege Cloudflare is directly liable for copyright infringement. Further, CloudFlare has been aware of Defendants’ infringing behavior since at least May 2015 when it first assisted Plaintiffs in identifying relevant online information involving Defendants.

“Simply put, Section 512’s limits to online service provider liability are inapplicable here,” Judge Cooke adds (pdf).

In the present case, the scope of the permanent injunction is guided by Rule 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which may apply to any third-party that’s “in active concert or participation” with the offender.

With the ruling, the court has opened the door to broad injunctions which could force Cloudflare to implement a variety of anti-piracy measures. These aren’t limited to terminating existing accounts, as the RIAA also wanted Cloudflare to monitor new clients that use the keyword “MP3Skull” in their domain name.

However, before issuing an injunction against Cloudflare, it still has to be determined whether the CDN provider is “in active concert or participation” with the pirate site.

“Though I have determined Section 512 does not effect the scope of Rule 65 and the Permanent Injunction here, I do not believe I can make a formal ruling on whether Cloudflare was in ‘in active concert or participation’ with Defendants until CloudFlare has had a reasonable opportunity to be heard,” Judge Cooke notes.

The order is a victory for the RIAA and other rightsholders who have repeatedly called out Cloudflare for the services it provides to pirate sites. As such, it is likely to be referenced in similar cases in the future.

While the legal precedent may be important, the case itself will have very little effect. MP3Skull appears to have given up a few months ago. It was last active on the MP3Skull.vg domain but disappeared last October, forwarding the leftover traffic to an unrelated site.

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

Will the Supreme Court end the East Texas patent scam?

Tech companies and interest groups seek to alter the geography of litigation.

It didn't take long during oral arguments yesterday for the Supreme Court to hear about the "single judge in the United States that has one-quarter of all patent cases" from a lawyer representing patent defendant TC Heartland. Now, the question is what the court will do about it.

The wonky issue of patent venues is now in the hands of the US Supreme Court, which heard arguments yesterday in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods Group Brands. Kraft sued TC Heartland for infringing its patents on "liquid water enhancers" in Delaware, and TC Heartland lawyers asked to move the case to its home state of Indiana. A Delaware judge rejected the case, noting that TC Heartland shipped about 2 percent of the accused products to Delaware. That was enough to keep the case in the state.

TC Heartland appealed, but the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled against the company last year. The company appealed again, asking the Supreme Court to take its case. TC Heartland's petition was bolstered by a brief (PDF) filed by 32 Internet companies, emphasizing that venue rules were being abused by so-called "patent trolls" with no business beyond licensing and litigating patents. Tech trade associations and public interest groups Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge (PDF) also urged the high court to take the case. In December, the petition was granted.

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Would you consider a disc-free console option?

Some gamers may be ready to ditch the disc drive to save on hardware.

When dredging up the Xbox One's brief used game policy debacle of 2013 yesterday, I was reminded of an interesting bit of trivia that came out in the aftermath of that story. Apparently, as late as mid-2013, Microsoft was considering making the Xbox One completely disc-free.

Microsoft eventually rejected that plan because, as Microsoft Studios head Phil Spencer said at the time, "when you start looking at bandwidth and game size, it does create issues." But now, four years later, I'm beginning to wonder if a disc-free game console would at least make sense as an available option.

To be clear here, I'm not saying we should do away with games on physical media entirely. The industry probably isn't ready for that for a number of reasons we'll touch on below. Instead, I'm suggesting that Sony and Microsoft could offer new versions of their consoles, without a disc drive, to sell alongside the standard disc-enabled version.

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Prozessoren: AMD bringt Ryzen mit 12 und 16 Kernen und X390-Chipsatz

Während Intel in Form der Skylake-X bisher maximal 10 Kerne für Highend-Desktops plant, arbeitet AMD an 12- und 16-Kernprozessoren mit Zen-Architektur. Dazu gibt es Quadchannel-DDR4 und 44 PCIe-Gen3-Lanes. (AMD Zen, Prozessor)

Report: You’ll be able to control HTC U smartphone by squeezing, swiping its sides

Over the past few years smartphone makers have opted for bigger, higher-resolution displays, faster processors, more memory and storage, and bigger batteries as ways to set their phones apart. But now most phones have those features, so we’re starting to see new differentiators such as cameras with optical zoom, ultra-wide displays, and physical keyboards. Now […]

Report: You’ll be able to control HTC U smartphone by squeezing, swiping its sides is a post from: Liliputing

Spark Room Kit: Cisco bringt KI in Konferenzräume

Ciscos neues Spark Room Kit soll einen Kameramann simulieren. Das Konferenzsystem erkennt Gesichter sowie den aktuellen Sprecher und richtet Bild und Ton auf ihn aus – ganz wie ein Mini-Spark-Board. (Cisco, Display)

Ciscos neues Spark Room Kit soll einen Kameramann simulieren. Das Konferenzsystem erkennt Gesichter sowie den aktuellen Sprecher und richtet Bild und Ton auf ihn aus - ganz wie ein Mini-Spark-Board. (Cisco, Display)

Kamera: Facebook macht schicke Bilder und löscht sie dann wieder

Großes Update für die Kamerafunktionen von Facebook: Nutzer können nun Fotos und Videos mit neuen Filtern versehen, online stellen und dann dafür sorgen, dass sie nach 24 Stunden wieder gelöscht werden. (Facebook, Soziales Netz)

Tapdo: Das Smart Home mit Fingerabdrücken steuern

Danach suchen viele Hersteller: Nach einer sinnvollen Steuerung von Smart-Home-Komponenten. Einen neuen Ansatz verfolgt ein deutsches Startup mit dem Projekt Tapdo. Mit einem Fingerabdrucksensor soll sich das Smart Home sinnvoll bedienen lassen. (Smart…

Android cofounder gets serious about OEM startup, teases new device

The father of Android starts an Android OEM.

Android Inc. cofounder and former CEO Andy Rubin has taken to Twitter to tease a new slim-bezeled smartphone. This is the first device we've seen from Rubin's new startup, called "Essential."

The details on Essential came out in a January report from Bloomberg. The report said Rubin is currently building consumer hardware company, starting with a "40-person team, filled with recruits from Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google." The company is still in stealth mode, but when it goes public, Rubin will be announced as the CEO, according to the report.

Bloomberg described Rubin's company as "A platform company designed to tie multiple devices together," and in addition to a smart home product, "the centerpiece of the system is a high-end smartphone with a large edge-to-edge screen that lacks a surrounding bezel." The phone part certainly seems spot on after this picture. The report claimed the device would leverage "artificial intelligence" somehow, and said it would come with a magnetic modular connector.

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