Month: May 2018

PUBG and Epic Games, two gaming heavyweights, are going head to head in court.

PUBG filed a lawsuit in South Korea earlier this year, alleging that Epic copied “Fortnite” from “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” (PUBG).

“We filed the suit to protect our copyright in January,” a PUBG official informed the Korea Times. On Friday the company requested an injunction at the Seoul Central District Court, hoping to stop the alleged infringement.

The report does not provide details on the alleged infringements, but the lawsuit likely accuses Epic Games of copying specific Fortnite elements from PUBG.

PUBG’s complaints are not new. Last year the Korean game developer already hinted at a lawsuit, after it accused Fortnite of being very similar. At the time, the company said that it was contemplating further action.

The lawsuit between the pair of gaming giants runs in parallel with legal action against other users and developers accused of infringing the companies’ rights. Over the past several months, Epic Games has filed several copyright infringement lawsuits against cheaters in the US, for example.

PUBG hasn’t been sitting still either. The game company recently filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the developer of the mobile games “Rules of Survival” and “Knives Out,” accusing these of copying specific elements from PUBG.

In addition, PUBG cheaters are being chased as well. Earlier this month Chinese authorities reported that fifteen people had been arrested in connection with PUBG cheating.

“We take cheating extremely seriously. Developing, selling, promoting, or using unauthorized hacking/cheating programs isn’t just unfair for others playing PUBG — in many places, it’s also against the law,” the company said, commenting on the news.

Suing Epic Games over Fortnite is definitely something of a different scope of course. With dozens of millions of players, it is a massive target, with a very active and engaged user base.

It doesn’t seem likely that PUBG’s lawsuit is going to be the end of Fortnite though. If the court agrees with PUBG, which is far from certain, the game could probably survive with alterations. Or the companies could agree to some kind of settlement, in or out of court.

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

Eine Umfrage unter Nutzern der Onlineplattform Stack Overflow belegt Stereotype. Entwickler sind demnach jung. Sie wohnen in Bayern oder Nordrhein-Westfalen. Auch die unbeliebteste Programmiersprache wurde gefunden. (Softwareentwicklung, Studie)

Die HyperX Predator RGB sind ein Speicherkit mit RGB-Lichteffekten und DDR4-2933-Takt. Die bunte Beleuchtung synchronisiert sich per Infrarot, was aber nur bei RAM-Bänken auf einer Seite des CPU-Sockels klappt. Ein Test von Marc Sauter (Kingston, Hynix)

Der Preis für Super-Vectoring ist bei der Telekom offenbar schon durchgesickert. Neukunden zahlen in den ersten sechs Monaten nur 20 Euro. (Telekom, DSL)

Wieder sind Callya-Flex-Kunden mit einem Ausfall der zugehörigen App konfrontiert. Eigentlich sollen Kunden ihren Prepaid-Smartphone-Tarif über die Callya-Flex-App jederzeit konfigurieren können. Aber seit mehreren Wochen fällt die Vodafone-App immer wieder aus. (Vodafone, Mobilfunk)

Die britische Firma Milk & More hat von der Deutschen Post 200 Elektrofahrzeuge gekauft, die zur leisen und umweltfreundlichen Milchauslieferung genutzt werden sollen. Bisher sind die Streetscooter vornehmlich von der Deutschen Post selbst verwendet worden. (Streetscooter, Technologie)

Synopsys hat mit zwei FPGA-Plattformen die erste Demo mit USB 3.2 gezeigt. Die neue Schnittstelle schafft mit bis zu 20 GBit/s eine doppelt so hohe Datenrate wie USB 3.1 Gen2 bisher. Per USB-Typ-C-Kabel und unter Windows 10 sind knapp 13 GBit/s Übertragungsrate erreicht worden. (USB Typ C, Benchmark)

Mit dem Elektrobus fahren und an den Haltestellen aufladen: Das hat in Mannheim mit der Primove-Technik nicht zufriedenstellend geklappt. Die Ladepausen sind fahrplanbedingt zu kurz, Klimaanlage und Heizung benötigen zudem zu viel Energie. (Elektroauto, Technologie)

Two years ago we revealed how scammers were abusing the DMCA to extract cash payments from innocent Internet subscribers.

They used the name of piracy-tracking firm IP-Echelon and several major copyright holders, including HBO, to demand settlements for allegedly pirated content.

The DMCA scam was pretty convincing. The emails lacked IP-Echelon’s PGP signature but were good enough to fool some Internet providers into forwarding them. If anything, it revealed that these type of notices should be carefully vetted.

While we haven’t seen any reports of these fraudulent notices since, Internet provider Grande Communications has taken an interest in the matter, in preparation for its piracy liability case against the RIAA.

This case relies on DMCA notices sent by IP-Echelon competitor Rightscorp. The ISP is therefore eager to hear out IP-Echelon to find out more about the issue, noting that they received the scam emails as well.

“Grande has also received IP-Echelon infringement notices, which include both authenticated, PGP-signed infringement notices from IP-Echelon, as well as fake, non-PGP-signed notices which falsely claim to be from IP-Echelon,” Grande informed the court late last week.

“In light of this phishing scam involving IP-Echelon and Grande, as well as the similarity of IP-Echelon’s role in investigating and sending infringement notices regarding alleged BitTorrent-based infringements to the role played by Rightscorp for Plaintiffs in this case, Grande decided to subpoena IP-Echelon to produce certain documents and appear for a deposition.”

Grande’s interest in IP-Echelon is understandable. Getting in touch with the company, which has offices in the US and Australia, has proven to be rather complicated though.

The ISP used a private process server to serve the subpoena at IP-Echelon’s Los Angeles office, but these efforts failed more than once. The ISP’s legal team also reached out to the piracy tracking firm via telephone and email, but again, without any success.

This prompted Grande to ask the court for help from some heavy hitters in law enforcement. The ISP would like U.S. Marshals to get involved, so they can use their arsenal to track down and serve IP-Echelon.

“In the absence of proper service of the subpoena on IP-Echelon, Grande would be prejudiced because it would be unable to obtain evidence from IP-Echelon,” the company writes.

“Accordingly, Grande requests the assistance of the U.S. Marshal to complete service on IP-Echelon.”

As far as we know IP-Echelon still works for several Hollywood studios so there must be a way to reach them, especially if the Marshals get involved in locating the piracy tracking company.

Whether evidence and a deposition of IP-Echelon are going to help Grande’s case is unclear, but that’s for another time.

—

A copy of Grande Communications’ motion to order the U.S. Marshal for the Central District of California to serve Grande’s Subpoena on IP-Echelon is available here (pdf).

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

The One Netbook One Mix Yoga mini PC will ship with Windows 10 when it hits the streets in the coming weeks, but since I’ve been testing a pre-production prototype sent to me by the folks at Geekbuying (who are taking pre-orders for $460), I figured I’d see how it handles the recently-released Ubuntu 18.04 Linux operating […]

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