Month: June 2018

The latest version of the copy protection scheme used by 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs has been cracked, according to the Russian company that makes the software DeUHD.

AACS (Advanced Access Content System) is the name of a digital rights management (DRM) scheme that has been in use on Blu-ray discs since the optical format's inception. An updated version of the scheme was put to use for the Ultra HD Blu-ray disc format, and has so far proved to be harder to crack than the original version.

The latest version of this copy protection scheme, version 2.1, was only put into "service" last month for the release of the tank battle movie 'Fury' on UHD Blu-ray. The previous iteration, version 2.0, had remained resilient until a crop of ripped UHD Blu-ray discs started to surface on the piracy scene, suggesting that a workaround, if not a full crack, has been found. A commercial ripping tool called DeUHD was then released by a Russian software company called Arusoft that took advantage of AACS 2.0's weakness to allow at-home ripping of UHD discs.

AACS 2.1 was an attempt to address version 2.0's weaknesses, but it too appears to have been cracked only a month after it surfaced. The makers of DeUHD officially announced that the latest version of the software will now support the ripping of 'Fury' and AACS 2.1, claiming that the software now rips more than 1100 UHD Blu-ray discs (as of June 11).

TorrentFreak reached out to Arusoft to ask them to explain how AACS 2.1 worked, and how a crack was devised. Arusoft was surprisingly forthcoming and explained that AACS 2.1 now used an encrypted m2ts file that now contains "forensic information". 

"It is not too difficult to bypass this protection, just takes some time to do it," Arusoft told TorrentFreak.

The addition of "forensic information" suggests that studios are now trying ascertain the source of leaks via digital watermarking, which could make ripping and uploading 2.1 protected discs a risky proposition. However, Arusoft assures users that "redundant data has been cleared from the disc", suggesting, but not confirming, that forensic tracking data appears to have removed.

[via TorrentFreak]

Riesenrad und Konzerte, schnelle Autos und Abenteuer in digitalen Welten: Juhu, diese Woche haben wir Spaß! (Golem-Wochenrückblick, Elektroauto)

With the online piracy wars about to enter their third decade, there’s an increasing emphasis on pressurizing influential third-parties to tackle the problem.

As a result, much blame is laid at the feet of companies like Google, who are regularly blamed for not doing more to tackle infringements carried out by individuals and entities outside of their control.

Search results are a particularly sticky subject. Google, Bing, and Yahoo, for example, wish to provide the most comprehensive indexes possible. On the flip side, entertainment industry companies insist that those indexes shouldn’t help people find pirated content. If they do, it’s argued that these companies act as piracy facilitators.

This familiar battle is now underway in Russia, where Yandex is in receipt of a strongly-worded letter which accuses the search giant of being a big part of the piracy problem.

According to local publication Vedomosti, the letter is signed by Leonid Agronov, general director of the National Federation of the Music Industry, Alexei Byrdin, general director of the Internet Video Association, Sergei Selyanov, director of the Association of Film and Television Producers, and Pavel Stepanov, president of the Media Communication Union.

The entertainment giants explain that due to ‘pirate’ search results appearing in its indexes, Yandex is contributing to the growth of online piracy. They want the company to show responsibility by adopting measures to both find and remove infringing links from search and related products.

“We urge Yandex to use all available methods to detect illegal content and eliminate it both from search results and from the applications and services of Yandex,” the letter reads.

It’s suggested that Yandex should take a similar path to that taken by search companies in the UK, via the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding which declares common interests in fighting piracy.

Yandex won’t be alone, however.

A spokesman for the Media and Communications Union, which is one of the groups behind the letter, told Vedomosti that a similar letter would be sent to Google in the near future. Needless to say, Google is no stranger to these kinds of allegations, whether in Europe or the United States.

In the letter, search engines like Yandex are accused of promoting illegal resources over legal content, resulting in revenue being siphoned away from legitimate players and into the hands of criminals. The search engine is also accused of taking down material in response to demands under the DMCA, but not doing enough in Russia.

“Yandex actively cooperates with copyright holders and is working to improve the culture of legal content consumption,” the company said in a statement, adding that it actually stands to benefit from ads promoting sales of non-infringing content.

“Yandex stands for an honest Internet, in which quality legal content is available to the user and rightsholders earn from that legitimate consumption,” the company said.

Unlike in the United States under the DMCA, content isn’t as readily taken down in Russia. Yandex also opposes filtering search results, warning that the system is easily abused by rightsholders and others looking to stifle competition.

That being said, Yandex says that rightsholders are welcome to take advantage of the local site-blocking mechanism which tackles both source sites and their mirrors. With these inaccessible, ‘pirate’ search results become useless.

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

After losing its contract to supply graphics technology for use in Apple’s iPhones, Imagination Technologies put itself up for sale last year, and eventually split the company up, with Tallwood buying Imagination’s MIPS CPU design division and Canyon Bridge buying the rest of the company. Then Tallwood put MIPS up for sale again, and this […]

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Founded around the turn of the last century, Soulseek is a small dinosaur in the file-sharing world.

Created by former Napster programmer Nir Arbel, the application swiftly turned into a tight community of music fans, which is still active today.

Over the years Soulseek operators Nir and Roz Arbel have seen other file-sharing tools come and go, but all this time they remained dedicated to their principles. Despite its name, Soulseek had long found its purpose.

While it kept a relatively low profile, Soulseek is not immune to the “stigma” that comes with being a file-sharing tool. In 2015, PayPal cut off its ability to collect donations, claiming that sharing tools required pre-approval, even though that policy didn’t exist when it signed up.

Soulseek is not a profit-oriented platform but donations are welcomed. Without PayPal, this became a challenge, but luckily for the developers, the Electonic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was able to intervene.

February 2016 everything returned to normal when the PayPal account was restored, for a while at least. Earlier his year, PayPal apparently changed its mind and booted the application once again.

Soulseek operator Roz Arbel was told that the application violated the payment service’s acceptable use policy and that ‘pre-approval’ was required for ‘file-sharing’ tools. It was pretty much the same recycled argument from years before.

Faced with this deja-vu, Soulseek turned to EFF for help once again, but this time PayPal wouldn’t budge.

“PayPal made it clear that they’re not willing to offer Soulseek financial services any longer. The company did give the Arbels access to their funds and tax documentation, after a request from EFF,” the digital rights group writes.

EFF asked whether PayPal’s latest ban was linked to a concrete copyright complaint, but the payment processor didn’t provide any further information. It just confirmed that Soulseek was banned, apparently for good.

This stance doesn’t come as a complete surprise. PayPal is widely known for its aggressive stance towards BitTorrent sites, Usenet providers and file-hosting services after all.

While some cases may be clearer than others, EFF sees the Soulseek example as a clear illustration of financial censorship.

“What the Arbels are experiencing is a form of financial censorship that has, unfortunately, become increasingly widespread. Following the law isn’t enough—PayPal apparently expects a small message board service with a file-sharing function to do far more than the law requires.”

“PayPal explained to us that they will cut off sites that ‘allow for the transfer or download of copyrighted material.’ Taken literally, that’s a staggeringly broad claim,” EFF writes.

EFF points out that pretty much all content on the Internet is automatically copyrighted. Still, there are thousands of online services that allow people to share it. Downloading copyrighted material is also possible on Dropbox and Google Drive, for example.

In PayPal’s policy, the company suggests that merchants must have a procedure to both “monitor” the files on their service and “remove or otherwise prevent access” to copyright-infringing work. Perhaps that’s where Soulseek goes wrong, but that wouldn’t be fair according to EFF.

“If payment processors were to cut off Internet services simply because they could be used for copyright infringement, a huge swath of the web would lose the ability to accept payments,” EFF writes.

“As a matter of policy, Soulseek respects its users’ privacy by not surveilling their conversations or file exchanges. Violating users’ privacy shouldn’t be the price of entry for using a payment processor.”

It’s clear that Soulseek and PayPal have parted ways. While EFF may not be able to change that, it encourages PayPal and other Internet companies to be more transparent about when and how often they terminate accounts due to complaints from governments or copyright holders.

PayPal’s file-sharing service policy

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

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Valve is putting another nail in the coffin of the should-already-be-dead Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems. The company says that starting January 1st, 2019 you won’t be able to use its Steam game platform on either operating system. Steam users will still be able to run the game client on Windows XP or […]

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