May 2018 – Page 50 – news.buyenne.com

ISP Telenor Will Block The Pirate Bay in Sweden Without a Shot Fired

Telenor, an ISP that has long fought against site-blocking in Sweden, will now begin blocking The Pirate Bay, apparently voluntarily. The development isn’t the result of a direct court order against the company, rather its final consolidation with Bredbandsbolaget, an ISP owned by Telenor that was previously ordered to block the infamous torrent site.

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

Back in 2014, Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Nordisk Film and the Swedish Film Industry filed a lawsuit against Bredbandsbolaget, one of Sweden’s largest ISPs.

The copyright holders asked the Stockholm District Court to order the ISP to block The Pirate Bay and streaming site Swefilmer, claiming that the provider knowingly facilitated access to the pirate platforms and assisted their pirating users.

Soon after the ISP fought back, refusing to block the sites in a determined response to the Court.

“Bredbandsbolaget’s role is to provide its subscribers with access to the Internet, thereby contributing to the free flow of information and the ability for people to reach each other and communicate,” the company said in a statement.

“Bredbandsbolaget does not block content or services based on individual organizations’ requests. There is no legal obligation for operators to block either The Pirate Bay or Swefilmer.”

In February 2015 the parties met in court, with Bredbandsbolaget arguing in favor of the “important principle” that ISPs should not be held responsible for content exchanged over the Internet, in the same way the postal service isn’t responsible for the contents of an envelope.

But with TV companies SVT, TV4 Group, MTG TV, SBS Discovery and C More teaming up with the IFPI alongside Paramount, Disney, Warner and Sony in the case, Bredbandsbolaget would need to pull out all the stops to obtain victory. The company worked hard and initially the news was good.

In November 2015, the Stockholm District Court decided that the copyright holders could not force Bredbandsbolaget to block the pirate sites, ruling that the ISP’s operations did not amount to participation in the copyright infringement offenses carried out by some of its ‘pirate’ subscribers.

However, the case subsequently went to appeal, with the brand new Patent and Market Court of Appeal hearing arguments. In February 2017 it handed down its decision, which overruled the earlier ruling of the District Court and ordered Bredbandsbolaget to implement “technical measures” to prevent its customers accessing the ‘pirate’ sites through a number of domain names and URLs.

With nowhere left to go, Bredbandsbolaget and owner Telenor were left hanging onto their original statement which vehemently opposed site-blocking.

“It is a dangerous path to go down, which forces Internet providers to monitor and evaluate content on the Internet and block websites with illegal content in order to avoid becoming accomplices,” they said.

In March 2017, Bredbandsbolaget blocked The Pirate Bay but said it would not give up the fight.

“We are now forced to contest any future blocking demands. It is the only way for us and other Internet operators to ensure that private players should not have the last word regarding the content that should be accessible on the Internet,” Bredbandsbolaget said.

While it’s not clear whether any additional blocking demands have been filed with the ISP, this week an announcement by Bredbandsbolaget parent company Telenor revealed an unexpected knock-on effect. Seemingly without a single shot being fired, The Pirate Bay will now be blocked by Telenor too.

The background lies in Telenor’s acquisition of Bredbandsbolaget back in 2005. Until this week the companies operated under separate brands but will now merge into one entity.

“Telenor Sweden and Bredbandsbolaget today take the final step on their joint trip and become the same company with the same name. As a result, Telenor becomes a comprehensive provider of broadband, TV and mobile communications,” the company said in a statement this week.

“Telenor Sweden and Bredbandsbolaget have shared both logo and organization for the last 13 years. Today, we take the last step in the relationship and consolidate the companies under the same name.”

Up until this final merger, 600,000 Bredbandsbolaget broadband customers were denied access to The Pirate Bay. Now it appears that Telenor’s 700,000 fiber and broadband customers will be affected too. The new single-brand company says it has decided to block the notorious torrent site across its entire network.

“We have not discontinued Bredbandsbolaget, but we have merged Telenor and Bredbandsbolaget and become one,” the company said.

“When we share the same network, The Pirate Bay is blocked by both Telenor and Bredbandsbolaget and there is nothing we plan to change in the future.”

TorrentFreak contacted the PR departments of both Telenor and Bredbandsbolaget requesting information on why a court order aimed at only the latter’s customers would now affect those of the former too, more than doubling the blockade’s reach. Neither company responded which leaves only speculation as to its motives.

On the one hand, the decision to voluntarily implement an expanded blockade could perhaps be viewed as a little unusual given how much time, effort and money has been invested in fighting web-blockades in Sweden.

On the other, the merger of the companies may present legal difficulties as far as the court order goes and it could certainly cause friction among the customer base of Telenor if some customers could access TPB, and others could not.

In any event, the legal basis for web-blocking on copyright infringement grounds was firmly established last year at the EU level, which means that Telenor would lose any future legal battle, should it decide to dig in its heels. On that basis alone, the decision to block all customers probably makes perfect commercial sense.

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

The Curious Takedown Notices of ‘Tongues of Glass’ Poet Shaun Shane

The poet going by the name Shaun Shane has come to the forefront again, half a decade after his one-line poem triggered a takedown controversy. In a series of DMCA notices sent to Google, the poet posits that people are using black hat SEO to get to him. Targeted sites include BoingBoing and Techdirt, but also entirely unrelated ones, including the homepage of the company ‘Shaun Shane Bricklaying.’

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

Over the years we have published numerous articles on dubious or inaccurate takedown notices, both from large media conglomerates and independent copyright holders.

One of the most curious cases is without doubt that of Shaun Shane and his poem ‘Tongues Made of Glass.’

Five years ago the case first made headlines when On Press Inc. started hounding people on social media because they dared to recite the single line poem, which consists of just eighteen words.

At the time, Techdirt reported on the issue, which was quickly picked up by others including BoingBoing, professor Michael Geist, and lawyer Ken White at Popehat. Needless to say, the number of poem recitals only increased.

On Press Inc. wasn’t happy with the coverage. Responding to the media attention, the company asked Google to remove links to the poem from its search engine.

This effort backfired in an even bigger way. Not only did it lead to more articles, Google also rejected most of the requests. Even worse, the poem was also posted in full in the Lumen database, where copies of Google’s DMCA notices are published.

Fast forward five years and the Tongues Made of Glass poem is back on the radar. This time it appears to be author ‘Shaun Shane’ himself who’s sending takedown notices to Google.

As before, the DMCA notices are mostly targeting articles that reference the previous debacles, including our own, but the accusations now go far beyond that.

According to Shaun Shane, people are using black hat SEO bots to fool Google’s search algorithm and make these articles rank high for his name.

“Someone is using Bots for the reported Url to artificially raise its ranking in Google search results for the search terms ‘Shaun Shane’ beyond what Googles search algorithm would natural assign it and are engaging in Black Hat Seo [sic],” he writes in the takedown notices.

We’re not sure what these alleged black hat tactics have to do with a copyright claim. What we do know, however, is that the repeated coverage of the poem’s dubious takedowns may have something to do with the high ranking.

It doesn’t end at these accusations though.

Looking more closely at the reported URLs we see some usual suspects, including BoingBoing, TorrentFreak, Techdirt and Popehat links. However, there are also several innocent bystanders being dragged into the drama.

The poet also targets the website of the company “Shaun Shane Bricklaying,” the Linkedin profile of sales manager Shaun Shane, a piece on Legend Solar founders Shaun Alldredge and Shane Perkins, and the TripAdvisor profile of Shaun & Shane Tour Operators.

Needless to say, none of these links are even remotely infringing, and we seriously doubt that they are using Black Hat SEO. They just happen to use the keywords “Shaun” and “Shane”.

Google, luckily, denied all of the takedown requests that we referenced here. We did see one URL that was removed, which used an image with the poem, without any context.

This means that the end result for Shaun Shane is not very uplifting. Most of the content he reported remains online and with new news reports being published (including this one), they will only end up higher in the search results next time.

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

Blunder burns unicorn attack that exploited Windows and Reader

Clicking on a PDF was all it took to infect older versions of Windows.

It’s not every day someone develops a malware attack that, with one click, exploits separate zero-day vulnerabilities in two widely different pieces of software. It’s even rarer that a careless mistake burns such a unicorn before it can be used. Researchers say that’s precisely happened to malicious PDF document designed to target unpatched vulnerabilities in both Adobe Reader and older versions of Microsoft Windows.

Modern applications typically contain “sandboxes” and other defenses that make it much harder for exploits to successfully execute malicious code on computers. When these protections work as intended, attacks that exploit buffer overflows and other common software vulnerabilities result in a simple application crash rather than a potentially catastrophic security event. The defenses require attackers to chain together two or more exploits: one executes malicious code, and a separate exploit allows the code to break out of the sandbox.

A security researcher from antivirus provider Eset recently found a PDF document that bypassed these protections when Reader ran on older Windows versions. It exploited a then-unpatched memory corruption vulnerability, known as a double free, in Reader that made it possible to gain a limited ability to read and write to memory. But to install programs, the PDF still needed a way to bypass the sandbox so that the code could run in more sensitive parts of the OS.

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FCC investigates site that let most US mobile phones’ location be exposed

Wyden: mobile phone companies’, contractors’ view of security is “negligent.”

The Federal Communications Commission has taken preliminary steps to examine the actions of LocationSmart, a southern California company that has suddenly found itself under intense public and government scrutiny for allowing most American cell phones’ locations to be easily accessed.

As Ars reported Thursday, LocationSmart identifies the locations of phones connected to AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, or Verizon, often to an accuracy of a few hundred yards, reporter Brian Krebs said. While the firm claims it provides the location-lookup service only for legitimate and authorized purposes, Krebs reported that a demo tool on the LocationSmart website could be used by just about anyone to surreptitiously track the real-time whereabouts of just about anyone else.

"I can confirm the matter has been referred to the Enforcement Bureau," wrote FCC spokesman Neil Grace in a Friday afternoon email to Ars.

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A dozen years after near-death, Star Trek’s future may be stronger than ever

2005’s Enterprise finale stopped ~18 years of Trek on TV—how did today’s renaissance occur?

On May 13, 2005, Star Trek: Enterprise ended its four-season run with the controversial two-part finale, “These Are the Voyages… ” The finale infamously brought in cast members from The Next Generation to tell the final chapter in Enterprise’s story, and it was viewed by some as a disrespectful and ignominious end to 18 almost-unbroken years of Trek on the small screen.

Generously put, many fans considered this a low point in the franchise’s history. With Enterprise, some fans blamed the anemic finale on the series’ often-uneven writing. Others blamed Rick Berman, who had been Star Trek’s Nerd-in-Chief since Gene Roddenberry’s passing in 1991. And still others blamed the rise of “darker” and more heavily serialized sci-fi fare like Battlestar Galactica (although BSG showrunner Ron Moore first dabbled in this style, largely successfully, in the latter seasons of Deep Space Nine).

But no matter who or what was to blame, Trekkies everywhere were suddenly in an odd position—left to wonder if the universe they’d come to know and love for almost four decades would make it to its 50th birthday. Star Trek was off the airwaves with no successor series waiting in the wings for the first time since 1987. And for some salt in the wound, it had even been three years since the last TNG-cast film, Nemesis, which had been poorly received by most fans and critics. (Its predecessor, Insurrection, hadn’t fared much better.)

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PGP/SMIME: Thunderbird-Update notwendig, um Efail zu verhindern

Thunderbird war bis Freitag für die Efail-Sicherheitslücke verwundbar, für Apple Mail gibt es bislang überhaupt kein Update. Vorläufig ist es empfehlenswert, HTML-Mails komplett zu deaktivieren. Eine Exklusiv-Meldung von Hanno Böck (Thunderbird, E-Mail…

Peek at LEGO’s upcoming sets: Star Wars crafts, Hogwarts, Ninjago city, and more

So many new minifigs—and one even has a selfie stick.

Valentina Palladino

NEW YORK—Upon walking into a gray, bricked-facade gallery in Manhattan's Chelsea area, color immediately flooded my eyes. LEGO chose an unassuming location to show off some of the more than 100 new sets coming out in time for the 2018 holiday season. The company literally took the blank canvas of the gallery's interior and splashed it with colorful bricks, some waiting patiently in buckets begging to be dumped out and some built into magical express trains, massive starfighters, and working roller coaster replicas.

As an avid LEGO fan for years (I had my father's old LEGO bricks to play with as a kid), I'm always struck by the hundreds of new sets that come out each year. According to Amanda Madore, senior brand relations manager at LEGO, the company constantly tries to spice things up in new sets with various levels of intricacy. While some builders are perfectly content sitting down for a few hours with a 1,000-piece set, others want a burst of building that's just as fun and yields almost instant gratification. Also, some fans can't afford to drop hundreds on a huge LEGO set and that's where new forms like Brick Headz come in.

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