Month: February 2018

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Seit einigen Tagen können Beta-Tester die Version 5.50 der Firmware für die Playstation 4 ausprobieren. Wichtigste Neuerung - allerdings nur für die Pro - ist systemweites Supersampling. Eine besonders oft von Spielern gewünschte Funktion fehlt in dem Update aber noch. (Playstation 4, Sony)

Fehlende Firmware und Dokumentation von Nvidia erschwert den Linux-Hackern weiter massiv die Entwicklung des freien Nouveau-Treibers. Es gebe allerdings leichte Anzeichen der Öffnung und weitere Hilfsmittel, sagt das Entwickler-Team. (Linux-Kernel, Nvidia)

Ein aufwendiger Werbespot für Alexa hat Amazon vor ein Problem gestellt: ungewollt ausgeführte Sprachbefehle. Nun ist bekanntgeworden, wie die Fehlsteuerung vermutlich verhindert wird. Nebenbei hat der Hersteller offenbar ein Echo-Headset vorgestellt. (Echo, Amazon)

Gut drei Monate nach der Veröffentlichung von Assassin's Creed Origins haben Cracker offenbar die PC-Version geknackt - die besonders aufwendig geschützt wurde. Allerdings soll es für neue Spiele schon wieder eine neue Version von Denuvo geben. (Assassin's Creed, Virtualisierung)

In recent years various copyright holder groups have adopted a “follow-the-money” approach in the hope of cutting off funding to so-called pirate sites.

Thus far this has resulted in some notable developments. In the UK, hundreds of advertising agencies began banning pirate sites in 2014 and similar initiatives have popped up elsewhere too.

One of the more prominent plans was orchestrated by the European Commission. In October 2016, this resulted in a voluntary self-regulation agreement signed by leading EU advertising organizations, which promised to reduce ad placement on pirate sites. The question is, how effective is this agreement?

To find out, researchers from European universities in Munich, Copenhagen, and Lisbon, conducted an extensive study. They collected data on the prevalence of ads from various advertisers on hundreds of pirate sites. The data were collected on several occasions, both before and after the agreement.

The findings are published in the article “Follow The Money: Online Piracy and Self-Regulation in the Advertising Industry.” Christian Peukert, one of the authors, informs TF that the latest version of the working paper was published last month and is currently under review at an academic journal.

The results show that the effects of the anti-piracy agreement are fairly minimal. On a whole, there is no significant change in the volume of piracy sites that ad agencies serve. Only when looking at the larger ad-networks in isolation, a downward trend is visible.

“Our results suggests that the presence of advertising services on piracy websites does not change significantly, at least not on average,” the researchers write in their paper.

“Once we allow for heterogeneity in terms of size, we show that more popular advertising services, i.e. those that are overall more diffused on the Internet, reduce their presence on piracy websites significantly more.”

When larger advertising companies are given more weight in the analysis, the average effect equates to a 17% drop in pirate site connections.

That larger companies are more likely to comply with the agreement can be explained by a variety of reasons. They could simply be more aware of the agreement, or they feel more pressure to take appropriate steps in response.

Interestingly, there are also advertising companies that began advertising on pirate sites after the agreement was signed.

“We further provide some evidence that ad services that were not active in the piracy market before the self-regulation agreement increase their presence on piracy websites afterwards,” the researchers write.

This may have been partly triggered by site owners looking for alternatives, or advertising companies looking for new opportunities. However, the effect is not statistically significant, which means that people shouldn’t read into it too much.

Overall, however, the researchers conclude that the voluntary agreement only had a relatively small impact on the EU advertising as a whole, and that there’s room for improvement.

“These results raise concerns about the overall effectiveness of the self-regulation effort with respect to reducing incentives for publishers to supply unlicensed content,” they write.

The EU agreement coincided with a series of similar agreements which, according to this data, had little effect on EU advertisers either over the researched timespan. And by looking at the average pirate site today, it becomes instantly clear that there are still plenty advertisers who are willing to work with these sites.

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

In Deutschland steht das Fernbehandlungsverbot vor dem Fall, so dass Ärzte auch neue Patienten online behandeln können. Mit der zunehmenden Verbreitung der Telemedizin könnten von IT-Konzernen wie Google unterstützte Firmen auf den deutschen Gesundheitsmarkt vordringen. (Medizin, Google)

Redbox strikes back, read the news roundup for the week ending February 4, 2018

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Over the years video game developer Blizzard Entertainment has published many popular game titles, including World of Warcraft (WoW).

First released in 2004, the multiplayer online role-playing game has been a massive success. It holds the record for the most popular MMORPG in history, with over 100 million subscribers.

While the current game looks entirely different from its first release, there are many nostalgic gamers who still enjoy the earlier editions. Unfortunately, however, they can’t play them. At least not legally.

The only option WoW fans have is to go to unauthorized fan projects which recreate the early gaming experience, such as Light’s Hope.

“We are what’s known as a ‘Legacy Server’ project for World of Warcraft, which seeks to emulate the experience of playing the game in its earliest iterations, including advancing through early expansions,” the project explains.

“If you’ve ever wanted to see what World of Warcraft was like back in 2004 then this is the place to be. Our goal is to maintain the same feel and structure as the realms back then while maintaining an open platform for development and operation.”

In recent years the project has captured the hearts of tens of thousands of die-hard WoW fans. At the time of writing, the most popular realm has more than 6,000 people playing from all over the world. Blizzard, however, is less excited.

The company has asked the developer platform GitHub to remove the code repository published by Light’s Hope. Blizzard’s notice targets several SQL databases stating that the layout and structure is nearly identical to the early WoW databases.

“The LightsHope spell table has identical layout and typically identical field names as the table from early WoW. We use database tables to represent game data, like spells, in WoW,” Blizzard writes.

“In our code, we use .sql files to represent the data layout of each table […]. MaNGOS, the platform off of which Light’s Hope appears to be built, uses a similar structure. The LightsHope spell_template table matches almost exactly the layout and field names of early WoW client database tables.”

This takedown notice had some effect, as people now see a “repository unavailable due to DMCA takedown” message when they access it in their browser.

While this may slow down development temporarily, it appears that the server itself is still running just fine. There were some downtime reports earlier this week, but it’s unknown whether that was related.

In addition to the GitHub repository, the official Twitter account was also suspended recently.

TorrentFreak contacted both Blizzard and Light’s Hope earlier this week for a comment on the situation. At the time of publication, we haven’t heard back.

Blizzard’s takedown notice comes just weeks after several organizations and gaming fans asked the US Copyright Office to make a DMCA circumvention exemption for “abandoned” games, including older versions of popular MMORPGs.

While it’s possible that such an exemption is granted in the future, it’s unlikely to apply to the public at large. The more likely scenario is that it would permit libraries, researchers, and museums to operate servers for these abandoned games.

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