Month: March 2018

Lidl stockt die Leistung in seinen Smartphone-Tarifen auf. In allen Prepaid-Tarifen gibt es mehr ungedrosseltes Datenvolumen als bisher. Die Preise für Lidl Connect bleiben bestehen. (Lidl, Vodafone)

Tesla-Chef Elon Musk muss seine Pläne für eine Autofabrik in China ohne chinesische Beteiligung möglicherweise aufgeben. Musk hat nun US-Präsident Donald Trump per Twitter um Hilfe gebeten. (Elon Musk, Technologie)

Immer an, immer online: Microsofts Always Connected PCs mit Qualcomms ARM-System-on-a-Chip stehen kurz vor dem Marktstart. Anders als beim Start von Windows RT fehlen bei Windows on ARM aber noch die Partner, vor allem im deutschsprachigen Raum. Von Andreas Sebayang (WOA, Microsoft)

Die Konzernzentrale hat Telefónica Deutschland einen harten Sparkurs aufgezwungen. Weil dennoch die Verluste wachsen, soll jetzt ein Verkauf erwogen werden. (Telefónica, Mobilfunk)

In 2018, music piracy is a very different beast than it was back in the early P2P days of Kazaa and LimeWire.

Where once it ran rampant, vastly improved official offerings have ensured that millions of former pirates are now enjoying music legally via convenient streaming services such as Spotify. However, there is no shortage of people who prefer to have personal archives of illicit MP3s stored safely on their own machines.

This content can be easily obtained from web-based pirate sites, torrent platforms, and the aging Usenet system. The latter is often (and incorrectly) considered to be a safer option for distribution but for one uploader, things haven’t played out that way.

According to news from Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, a “large-scale” Usenet uploader has recently agreed to pay the not inconsiderable sum of 10,000 euros ($12,374) to make a potential lawsuit disappear.

BREIN says the person was responsible for uploading unlicensed music releases to Usenet in breach of copyright, including recent albums by Ed Sheeran and Justin Timberlake. However, BREIN also criticizes the Usenet providers who facilitate this kind of sharing.

“Although such uploaders usually do this free of charge for the status they receive from illegal downloaders, it is the Usenet providers that make money by selling subscriptions for access to their servers,” says BREIN director Tim Kuik.

“Such providers like to close their eyes and claim that they do not know what is happening on their servers and only take action when they receive a notification.”

Alongside BREIN’s suggestion of willful blindness to infringement, there’s also the issue of compliance when Usenet operators are presented with an official complaint. Dutch case law requires that when a “reasonable” case of infringement is presented, they must give up the identity of the alleged infringer. In this case, that’s exactly what happened.

“BREIN has, in order to obtain the details the uploader, requested the Usenet provider of this uploader to provide the data. This request was answered,” the anti-piracy outfit reveals.

Unlike other jurisdictions where a specific court order is needed for disclosure, in the Netherlands no such process is required. BREIN has taken advantage of this position in many previous cases, insisting that providers who don’t disclose when there are reasonable grounds are acting unlawfully.

Following BREIN’s approach and the 10,000 euro settlement, the anti-piracy outfit says that the uploader took to Spotnet, a piece of software that allows downloading from newsgroups, to announce his demise.

“As you may have noticed, I have not been actively uploading for a while, because BREIN finally found my details and I have been asked to stop acting as an uploader of copyrighted music content to Usenet,” the uploader wrote.

“I have made a settlement with BREIN. A part of this settlement consists of the payment of a considerable sum of 10,000 euros, so I stop with uploading and advise other uploaders to think carefully about whether they want to continue. BREIN doesn’t stand idly by either. They are willing to take the necessary steps to get your details.”

BREIN says that the circumstances of the uploader were taken into consideration when reaching the 10,000 euro figure but whether the full amount will ever get paid will never be publicly known. That being said, the publicity attached to the settlement agreement will be worth more to BREIN than the cash alone.

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

Der Streit zwischen Amazon und Google spitzt sich weiter zu. Amazon hat versprochen, Googles Streaminggerät Chromecast wieder zu verkaufen. Aber bevor der Verkaufsbann fällt, ist der Produkteintrag für den Chromecast wieder gelöscht worden. (Chromecast, Google)

In Genf zeigen 180 Aussteller Auto-Neuheiten und Konzeptfahrzeuge. Was nach mehreren Rundgängen durch die Hallen auffällt: Die Branche ist hochgradig verunsichert. Eine Analyse von Dirk Kunde (Genfer Autosalon, Technologie)

The release of Final Fantasy XV on the PC has suffered a major DRM bungle, but a side effect of this is that the game can now be benchmarked with and without the controversial Denuvo anti-tampering system.

Denuvo is controversial because, due to the way it works, some have theorized that it places additional burden on the CPU, and could lead to performance problems especially in CPU intensive games, or systems with less powerful processors.

But proving or disproving this claim has been hard, since many Denuvo "cracks" are simply workarounds that do not actually remove or stop Denuvo from running in the background. And other comparisons are often with older versions of the games running different versions of drivers, and the comparisons become inconclusive.

Then there's Final Fantasy XV, published by Square Enix. Square Enix has made the game available on pre-load via Origin, but the veteran game publisher had forgotten to encrypt the game files, meaning hackers were able to access unencrypted versions of the game files. This, along with the release of a demo version of the game that featured no DRM or additional protections, gave Chinese game cracking group 3DM a head start. The crack eventually ended up simply using the demo's executable file with the "leaked" Origin pre-loaded files, and the full game would run with some minor limitations (such as no support for DLCs).

And as a result, a cracked version of the game, sans Denuvo, was released days before the official game release. 

Adding to the intrigue is a Windows Store version of the game, which some claim does not use Denuvo but other forms of copy protection. There is no solid proof that the Windows Store version does indeed skip on using Denuvo, but if this proves to be true, then it opens up another path for Denuvo benchmarking.

So far, the only benchmarks that exists are with the demo version of the game versus the full version, with inconclusive results, possibly due to the vast differences between the demo and the full version in terms of performance optimization. 

[via Steam, SegmentNext]

Das von der RWTH Aachen koordinierte Projekt Unicaragil von sieben deutschen Universitäten hat ein autonom fahrendes Elektroauto zum Ziel. Das klingt akademisch, doch in Aachen ist auch schon der Streetscooter entstanden. (Autonomes Fahren, Technologie)

Action mit futuristischem Einschlag wollen zwei Neuankündigungen bieten: Ubisoft kündigt The Division 2 an, und Activision schickt Spieler in Black Ops 4 in den Kampf. Der Veröffentlichungstermin vermeidet ein Duell mit Red Dead Redemption 2. (The Division, Call of Duty)