Month: July 2017

Am Samstag, den 1. Juli, sollte die seit mehr als zwei Jahren diskutierte Vorratsdatenspeicherung in Kraft treten. Dass sie drei Tage vorher gestoppt wurde, dürfte der Bundesregierung egal sein. Denn das war von Anfang an mit eingepreist. Ein IMHO von Friedhelm Greis (Vorratsdatenspeicherung, Datenschutz)

An indie game developers seeing his beloved game being pirated on torrent sites didn't reach for the phone to call his lawyer, but instead, offered up free game keys and even advice on a better version of his game to offer to pirates.

Jacob Janerka, developer of the game 'Paradigm,' found a cracked version of his game on The Pirate Bay. What Jacob did next, however, was completely unexpected.

Jacob immediately posted a comment for the pirated download. Instead of a take-down demand, or threats of legal action, Jacob did the next best thing: offered up free serial keys for his games.

"Hey everyone, I'm Jacob the creator of Paradigm. I know some of you legitimately can't afford the game and I'm glad you get to still play it :D," read the comment.

"If you like the game, please tell your friends and maybe even consider buying it later," Jacob added.

It was then that Jacob posted a few extra game keys for those interested in playing his game.

Jacob did have a complaint aimed at the uploader though. 

"Also dauphong, why did you not upload the DRM free version? I feel that would of been way easier haha," continued Jacob.

TorrentFreak spoke to the generous Jacob and asked him why he wasn't angry at pirates "stealing" his hard work.

"I know for sure that when I was a young kid, I was unable to buy all the games I wanted and played pirated games. And when I actually got that disposable income, I ended up buying sequels/merch/extra copies," Jacob explained.

"Maybe I lost a few sales or whatever, but people liking your game can be just as valuable. Realistically, most people who pirated it, wouldn't have played it anyway, so its neat that more people get to experience it, when they wouldn’t have otherwise," he said.

If you welcome Jacob's novel approach to dealing with piracy and would like to support this initiative, you can purchase Paradigm at the official site.

[via TorrentFreak]

Hardly a week goes by without the Russian web-blocking juggernaut rolling on to new targets. Whether they’re pirate websites, anonymity and proxy services, or sites that the government feels are inappropriate, web blocks are now a regular occurance in the region.

With thousands of domains and IP addresses blocked, the situation is serious. Just recently, however, blocks have been more problematic than usual. Telecoms watchdog Roskomnadzor, which oversees blocking, claims that innocent services are rarely hit. But critics say that overbroad IP address blockades are affecting the innocent.

Earlier this month there were reports that citizens across the country couldn’t access some of the country’s largest sites, including Google.ru, Yandex.ru, local Facebook variant vKontakte, and even the Telegram messaging app.

There have been various explanations for the problems, but the situation with Google appears to have stemmed from a redirect to an unauthorized gambling site. The problem was later resolved, and Google was removed from the register of banned sites, but critics say it should never have been included in the first place.

These and other developments have proven too much for some pro-freedom activists. This week they traveled to Roskomnadzor’s headquarters in St. Petersburg to give the blocking watchdog a small taste of its own medicine.

Activists from the “Open Russia” and “Civil Petersburg” movements positioned themselves outside the entrance to the telecom watchdog’s offices and built up their own barricade constructed from boxes. Each carried a label with the text “Blocked Citizens of Russia.”

Blockading the blockaders in Russia

“Freedom of information, like freedom of expression, are the basic values of our society. Those who try to attack them, must themselves be ‘blocked’ from society,” said Open Russia coordinator Andrei Pivovarov.

Rather like Internet blockades, the image above shows Open Russia’s blockade only partially doing its job by covering just three-quarters of Roskomnadzor’s entrance.

Whether that was deliberate or not is unknown but the video embedded below clearly shows staff walking around its perimeter. The protestors were probably just being considerate, but there are suggestions that staff might have been using VPNs or Tor.

Moving forward, new advice from Roskomnadzor to ISPs is that they should think beyond IP address and domain name blocking and consider using Deep Packet Inspection. This would help ensure blocks are carried out more accurately, the watchdog says.

There’s even a suggestion that rather than doing their own website filtering, Internet service providers could buy a “ready cleaned” Internet feed from an approved supplier instead. This would remove the need for additional filtering at their end, it’s argued, but it sounds like more problems waiting to happen.

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

Die Ransomware Petya befällt weltweit Computer, ein Bug macht Intel zu schaffen und das iPhone feiert Jubiläum. Sieben Tage und viele Meldungen im Überblick. (Golem-Wochenrückblick, Vorratsdatenspeicherung)