Month: May 2017

Als "unprofessionell" kritisiert Tobias Schmid von der Landesmedienanstalt Nordrhein-Westfalen einen Teil der deutschen Youtuber. Vor allem Peter Smits dürfte gemeint sein - er hatte jüngst lieber einen Kanal eingestellt, als sich eine Rundfunklizenz zu besorgen. (Youtube, Video-Community)

Netgears neue RN400-NAS-Systeme sind komplett auf Datensicherheit ausgelegt. Dafür sorgen das BTRFS-Dateisystem und vom Hersteller integrierte Funktionen. Eine davon: das Readynas OS in Version 6.7 inklusive Virenschutz. (Netgear, Speichermedien)

Der Roboter Bless U gibt dem Begriff Deus Ex Machina eine ganz neue Bedeutung. Er erteilt Gläubigen den Segen - und nimmt dafür sogar Wünsche entgegen. (Roboter, KI)

Ein Stadtnetzbetreiber erreicht mit G.fast 1,8 GBit pro Sekunde. Das wird möglich durch eine neue G.fast-Lösung mit 212 MHz von ZTE. Der Netcologne-Chef sagt: Kunden wollen immer höhere Datenraten. (Glasfaser, Telekommunikation)

Die Gruppe Shadow Brokers hat Details ihres geplanten Abomodells veröffentlicht. Gegen die Kryptowährung Zcash sollen Abonnenten monatlich Informationen zu Sicherheitslücken aus dem Fundus der Hackergruppe erhalten. (Security, Applikationen)

Für den Einsatz von Grafikkarten plant Zotac für die nächsten Monate zwei externe Thunderbolt-3-Boxen. Sie lassen sich aber auch als externe 10GbE-Boxen und vermutlich an Macs verwenden. (Zotac, Grafikhardware)

Seit Jahren arbeitet Noctua an einem 120-mm-Lüfter, dessen Abstand zwischen Impeller und Rahmen nur 0,5 mm beträgt. Einer davon soll besser kühlen als zwei bisherige Modelle. Der Trick ist ein spezieller Kunststoff, der Kevlar ähnelt. (Noctua, Prozessor)

Etwas mehr Infos für die Zuschauer bei Onlineturnieren, allgemeine Stabilitätsverbesserungen und eine Handvoll grafisch überarbeiteter Symbole: Sony hat Firmware 4.7 für die Playstation 4 veröffentlicht. (Playstation 4, Sony)

The Kodi media player software, previously known as XBMC, has seen a massive surge in popularity in recent years.

More and more people have started to use Kodi as their primary source of entertainment, often with help from unofficial add-ons that allow them to access pirated movies and TV-shows.

While the Kodi software itself is perfectly legal, a lot of third-party software are not. In Israel, this prompted the local anti-piracy group ZIRA to take action against several popular Kodi add-ons and repositories.

Last week the group filed for an injunction to stop the site owners from offering their ‘pirate’ Kodi tools, but before the cases went to court, the industry group already announced a settlement with three of them.

A few days ago abeksis.com, kodiwizardil.net, and kodi-senyor.co.il ceased operating, without prior warning. The Abeksis repository was one main targets, as it offered an easy way to turn the Kodi media player into a piracy hub.

Abeksis

The targeted Kodi repos and add-ons were not monetizing their services and some also offered access to legal content. However, facing the threat of a lawsuit by the anti-piracy group, they chose to cease their services indefinitely.

ZIRA is happy with the outcome and notes that the shutdowns are “another victory in the struggle against the pirated content on the Internet and the preservation of Israeli creators and content.”

The operators of the sites reportedly paid a settlement of a few thousand shekels. In addition, they will have to pay 100,000 more ($28,000) if the repositories or add-ons reappear in the future.

As a warning to the public, the three sites in question replaced their regular content with a message from ZIRA. The message informs visitors about the shutdown, and the threat piracy poses to the local content industry.

“The site you’ve entered was taken down since it was violating intellectual property rights. The site’s operators were fined by the court and therefore the site ceased to operate!” the message reads.

“The cost of copyright infringement is paid by the Israeli population, Israeli culture and the income of the producers,” it adds.

ZIRA’s message

The enforcement actions have caused quite a bit of uncertainty among developers of Kodi add-ons and repositories. Several members of the community feel that the services in question did nothing wrong. Some other developers, however, also prefer to play it safe from now on.

The IsraeLive add-on, for example, which offered access to streams that are available through public websites, decided to remove all Israeli content and rename itself GlobeTV. This was presumably done to prevent legal issues with the respective rightsholders.

“Israeli broadcast streams are available on official websites and not using our add-on, and that’s due to legal reasoning and the Laws of the State of Israel,” the developer posted recently.

Whether ZIRA’s enforcement actions will have a lasting effect on the use of streaming piracy in Israel has yet to be seen. However, as the first broad enforcement action against developers of ‘pirate’ Kodi repos and add-ons, it’s a landmark case that could very well be copied elsewhere in the future.

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

Unitymedia hat heute die Analogabschaltung begonnen. In Hanau war das zuvor ohne Murren verlaufen. (HDTV, Unitymedia)