Month: December 2017

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you’ll be aware that online streaming of video is a massive deal right now.

In addition to the successes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, for example, unauthorized sources are also getting a piece of the digital action.

Of course, entertainment industry groups hate this and are quite understandably trying to do something about it. Few people have a really good argument as to why they shouldn’t but recent tactics by some video-affiliated groups are really starting to wear thin.

From the mouth of Hollywood itself, the trending worldwide anti-piracy message is that piracy is dangerous. Torrent sites carry viruses that will kill your computer, streaming sites carry malware that will steal your identity, and ISDs (that’s ‘Illegal Streaming Devices’, apparently) can burn down your home, kill you, and corrupt your children.

If anyone is still taking notice of these overblown doomsday messages, here’s another one. Brought to you by the Hollywood-funded Digital Citizens Alliance, the new video rams home the message – the exact same message in fact – that set-top boxes providing the latest content for free are a threat to, well, just about everything.

While the message is probably getting a little old now, it’s worth noting the big reveal at ten seconds into the video, where the evil pirate box is introduced to the viewer.

As reproduced in the left-hand image below, it is a blatantly obvious recreation of the totally content-neutral Raspberry Pi, the affordable small computer from the UK. Granted, people sometimes use it for Kodi (the image on the right shows a Kodi-themed Raspberry Pi case, created by official Kodi team partner FLIRC) but its overwhelming uses have nothing to do with the media center, or indeed piracy.

Disreputable and dangerous device? Of course not

So alongside all the scary messages, the video succeeds in demonizing a perfectly innocent and safe device of which more than 15 million have been sold, many of them directly to schools. Since the device is so globally recognizable, it’s a not inconsiderable error.

It’s a topic that the Kodi team itself vented over earlier this week, noting how the British tabloid media presented the recent wave of “Kodi Boxes Can Kill You” click-bait articles alongside pictures of the Raspberry Pi.

“Instead of showing one of the many thousands of generic black boxes sold without the legally required CE/UL marks, the media mainly chose to depict a legitimate Rasbperry Pi clothed in a very familiar Kodi case. The Pis originate from Cambridge, UK, and have been rigorously certified,” the team complain.

“We’re also super-huge fans of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and the proceeds of Pi board sales fund the awesome work they do to promote STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education in schools. The Kodi FLIRC case has also been a hit with our Raspberry Pi users and sales contribute towards the cost of events like Kodi DevCon.”

“It’s insulting, and potentially harmful, to see two successful (and safe) products being wrongly presented for the sake of a headline,” they conclude.

Indeed, it seems that both press and the entertainment industry groups that feed them have been playing fast and loose recently, with the Raspberry Pi getting a particularly raw deal.

Still, if it scares away some pirates, that’s the main thing….

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons

Die Sorgen über mögliche Abstürze von Lieferdrohnen sind ein wichtiges Argument gegen Programme wie Amazon Prime Air. Amazon hat sich etwas einfallen lassen: eine Selbstzerstörungssequenz, die verhindern soll, dass die Drohne als Ganzes vom Himmel fällt. (Prime-Air, Amazon)

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Wer iOS 11 am heutigen 2. Dezember 2017 noch verwendet, dem drohen laut Apple Abstürze und Neustart-Schleifen. Als Lösung wurde dafür iOS 11.2 freigegeben. Doch das Update alleine reicht laut Apple nicht. Vor dem Aufspielen müssen Vorbereitungen getroffen werden. (Apple, iPod)

Um eine spektakuläre Inszenierung ist Elon Musk ja nie verlegen: Bei dem gerade verschobenen Erstflug soll die neue SpaceX-Rakete ein Elektroauto von Tesla ins Weltall bringen. Ziel ist der Mars. (SpaceX, Elektroauto)

Apple plagt eine Sicherheitslücke, alte LKW stehen unter Strom und wir starren auf ein Notebook und zwei Bildschirme. Sieben Tage und viele Meldungen im Überblick. (Golem-Wochenrückblick, OLED)

A new study has found that subscription video-on-demand platforms like Netflix may not have as much impact on piracy rates as first thought.

A joint study by the Carnegie Mellon University and Universidade Católica Portuguesa monitored the downloading habits of thousands of Internet users, with half of those participating in the study given a free 45-day subscription to premium on-demand content.

The researchers then observed the BitTorrent downloading habits of these users, but found that despite access to legal content, piracy downloading only decreased by a small amount.

"We find that, on average, households that received the gift increased overall TV consumption by 4.6% and reduced Internet downloads and uploads by 4.2% and 4.5%, respectively. However, and also on average, treated households did not change their likelihood of using BitTorrent during the experiment," the study found.

The main reason for this lack of change, the researchers noted, was the fact that the content pirates wanted to watch weren't available on the legal streaming platforms they were given gift subscriptions to. In fact, most found only 12% of the content they wanted to watch on the platform used in the study. For the households that did find the content they wanted on services like Netflix, the results were much more promising, but still did not eliminate piracy completely from these households.

"Households with preferences aligned with the gifted content reduced their probability of using BitTorrent during the experiment by 18% and decreased their amount of upload traffic by 45%," noted the researchers.

The lackluster results could have been even worse, since those participating in the study were given free access to a premium VOD platform, and most would not have been willing to pay for it. When asked how much they were willing to pay for a service like Netflix, the average amount the households came up with was $3.25 USD, much less than the actual cost of such as service.

One thing the study may not have accounted for is the ability for SVOD to change a user's viewing habits. Having access to more original, binge worthy content as part of a larger library of available to view titles may reduce the household's desire to view new release content and other content not available on SVOD platforms. It may, for example, delay their desire to view certain content until it is released on SVOD platforms, and thus eventually reducing their need to rely on piracy.

But as the result stands for this current study, the conclusions is clear that by itself, SVOD isn't going to end the piracy problem, unless it's priced so low that it will "reduce industry revenue [and] may damage overall incentives to produce new content".

[via TorrentFreak]

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