Month: July 2018

Scuba divers in Thailand have already rescued four of the 12 boys who have been stranded, along with their coach, in a flooded cave. And they are hoping to rescue the rest in the next couple of days. But in the meantime, Elon Musk has continued working on alternative strategies divers could use if conventional diving proves too difficult the remaining boys.

On Saturday, Musk settled on the idea of building "a tiny, kid-size submarine using the liquid oxygen transfer tube of Falcon rocket as hull." He ordered SpaceX engineers to begin building the device, saying that it could be ready by the end of the day on Saturday.

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The makers of the films ‘Mechanic: Resurrection’ and ‘A Family Man’ are not new to filing copyright infringement lawsuits.

They previously went after alleged BitTorrent pirates, ordering them to pay significant settlement fees or face legal repercussions. This so-called “copyright troll” approach worked well, but in Hawaii, they have expanded their reach.

In a complaint filed in May at the US District Court of Hawaii, ME2 Productions and Headhunter accused local resident Taylor Wolf, who works at the Verizon-branded phone store Victra, of promoting Showbox and its infringing uses to a customer.

Showbox is a movie and TV-show streaming application that’s particularly popular among mobile Android users. The app is capable of streaming torrents and works on a wide variety of devices. The app can be used to pirate too, and that’s what the employee allegedly promoted.

This approach was already unique by itself, but in an amended complaint filed this week, the filmmakers go a step further.

Allegedly, other Victra employees encouraged Wolf to promote the Showbox app to drive up sales. This prompted the movie companies to add AKA Wireless and ABC Phones, which do business as Victra in Hawaii, according to the complaint.

“Upon information and belief, other employees of VICTRA informed First Defendant Wolf of Show Box and encouraged her to distribute and promote Show Box to customers in order to drive sales of telecommunication equipment, thus giving financial benefit to Second and Third Defendants,” the complaint reads.

This means that, in addition to suing the employee for contributory copyright infringement, the Victra store itself is also bing held vicariously liable for alleged copyright infringement.

“The Second and Third Defendants are vicariously liable for the contributory copyright infringement of First Defendant Wolf, as First Defendant Wolf was acting within the scope of her employment when she committed the wrongful conduct..,” the complaint reads.

The Victra defendants had the right and the power to directly control the activities of the employee and received a direct financial benefit from the infringing activities, the filmmakers allege.

It’s quite an unusual approach, to say the least.

While the complaint didn’t mention how Wolf was identified, it’s likely the filmmakers first went after the customer in a traditional BitTorrent lawsuit, who then informed them about the Showbox recommendation.

After the movie studios found out that other employees were involved, the phone store was added to the lawsuit as well. That, conveniently, increases the chance for the movie studios to recoup their damages…

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A copy of the amended complaint 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 makers of the films ‘Mechanic: Resurrection’ and ‘A Family Man’ are not new to filing copyright infringement lawsuits.

They previously went after alleged BitTorrent pirates, ordering them to pay significant settlement fees or face legal repercussions. This so-called “copyright troll” approach worked well, but in Hawaii, they have expanded their reach.

In a complaint filed in May at the US District Court of Hawaii, ME2 Productions and Headhunter accused local resident Taylor Wolf, who works at the Verizon-branded phone store Victra, of promoting Showbox and its infringing uses to a customer.

Showbox is a movie and TV-show streaming application that’s particularly popular among mobile Android users. The app is capable of streaming torrents and works on a wide variety of devices. The app can be used to pirate too, and that’s what the employee allegedly promoted.

This approach was already unique by itself, but in an amended complaint filed this week, the filmmakers go a step further.

Allegedly, other Victra employees encouraged Wolf to promote the Showbox app to drive up sales. This prompted the movie companies to add AKA Wireless and ABC Phones, which do business as Victra in Hawaii, according to the complaint.

“Upon information and belief, other employees of VICTRA informed First Defendant Wolf of Show Box and encouraged her to distribute and promote Show Box to customers in order to drive sales of telecommunication equipment, thus giving financial benefit to Second and Third Defendants,” the complaint reads.

This means that, in addition to suing the employee for contributory copyright infringement, the Victra store itself is also bing held vicariously liable for alleged copyright infringement.

“The Second and Third Defendants are vicariously liable for the contributory copyright infringement of First Defendant Wolf, as First Defendant Wolf was acting within the scope of her employment when she committed the wrongful conduct..,” the complaint reads.

The Victra defendants had the right and the power to directly control the activities of the employee and received a direct financial benefit from the infringing activities, the filmmakers allege.

It’s quite an unusual approach, to say the least.

While the complaint didn’t mention how Wolf was identified, it’s likely the filmmakers first went after the customer in a traditional BitTorrent lawsuit, who then informed them about the Showbox recommendation.

After the movie studios found out that other employees were involved, the phone store was added to the lawsuit as well. That, conveniently, increases the chance for the movie studios to recoup their damages…

—
A copy of the amended complaint 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.

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Enlarge / So long, red chili pepper of hotness.

This week, Buzzfeed reported that RateMyProfessors.com was dropping its "hotness" rating for professors after an outcry from female professors who said that the rating was sexist.

RateMyProfessors was right to do so; professorial competence and perceived attractiveness have nothing to do with one another. The rating also disadvantages women, who are too often pressured to conform to absurd beauty standards, even in a professional setting where men wouldn't feel the same pressure.

But this week's news really baffled me, not because I fail to understand how sexism works, but because until this week I thought that "hotness" referred to how exciting a particular class was. Throughout my college years, I used RateMyProfessors.com to choose undergrad classes, all the while thinking a professor with a chili pepper gave... invigorating lectures. (I promise, that's not a euphemism.) I mean, you're rating professors with chili peppers! Chili peppers mean spiciness and excitement, not sex appeal! Right?! Right, guys? Back me up here!

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Many moons ago, people started file-sharing sites for the simple purpose of sharing files with friends and other like-minded people. By volume, it was relatively rare for commercial interests to come first.

While a considerable number of smaller platforms will still fiercely protest their non-profit status if challenged, in 2018 there can be little doubt that generating revenue is the motivation behind the majority of public sites. The prevalence of ads and affiliate schemes is a testament to that.

Of course, sites don’t always start out this way. Many private torrent trackers, for example, were created with the intention of providing free, no-strings content for all. Some still achieve that today but the rising costs of running a site (including servers for hosting, proxying, seeding etc) can’t be ignored, not least since the rich benefactors of yesterday have mostly moved on.

To this end, most sites these days generate money in a number of visible ways, from ever-present ads and product affiliate schemes to ‘donation’ models that are little more than disguised subscriptions. Others accept donations in the traditional sense, with a begging bowl handed round each time a server bill is due.

But what happens when the ends no longer meet? The users of two formerly ‘free’ sites have been finding out recently. In a pair of monster discussion threads on Reddit (1,2), users of pirate anime site ‘Kissanime’ complain that they’ve been completely banned from the video platform.

Their unforgivable crime? Ad-blocking.

Users say that all they did was visit the site with Adblock Plus or uBlock Origin enabled in their browser and the next thing they were given a ban. We jumped aboard and found ourselves greeted by the notice creating all the fuss.

It’s not as if users weren’t warned though. A notice published on the site’s main page informs members that running any kind of browser addon could mean ejection from video platform.

“Using any extensions/plugins on KissAnime could lead to errors/suspension,” it reads.

Nevertheless, plenty of people appear to have ignored the advice and have suffered the consequences as a result. For their part, the operators of the site seem completely unrepentant.

“There is no way to lift the ban at the moment, if you got banned, please disable those adblockers on kissanime, never turn it on kissanime again and wait. Or you could use other anime sites,” an admin announced on Discord.

The situation is an interesting one. Like most pirate sites, KissAnime has costs that have to be met by those visiting the site. Short of asking for a “donation”, these costs are currently met by advertising revenue. However, many users don’t want to be bombarded by advertising so they block the ads.

This means that all adblocking users become freeloaders and therefore a drain on the site. As far as the site’s health goes, there’s literally no point in them being there so they’re best removed from the community. It’s an ironic situation best appreciated by the anime producers themselves who are also trying to make a living.

That being said, not all people block ads out of malice towards the site. Some users complain about porn ads corrupting their experience, so in response they block them all. Being selective is too laborious, they say.

For the site, a solution could be to remove the surprise porn ads. However, a source who asked to stay anonymous told TF that these sometimes offensive ads can be quite lucrative, hence the desire for them to stay visible.

But while one site decides to kick all of its adblocking users out for being a drain on resources, another has taken an even more radical approach to its making available of other people’s content.

FreeTutorials.us is a site that offers premium tutorials and other learning materials without permission from copyright holders. As its name suggests, it originally offered content for free.

Earlier this year, FreeTutorials.us made the headlines after being targeted in the courts by online learning platform Udemy, which took exception to its content appearing on the site for nothing.

In a subsequent interview with TF, the pirate site’s operator explained the motivation behind FreeTutorials (FTU) and affiliated site FreeCoursesOnline (FCO).

“We have been through that phase of life when we didn’t have enough money to buy books and get tuition or even apply for a good course that we always wanted to have, so FTU & FCO are just our vision to provide Free Education For Everyone,” he explained.

While having the ability to learn for free is appreciated by millions the world over, for users of FreeTutorials the dream is now over. Last month and with little fanfare, free download buttons were replaced with something else entirely.

There’s little doubt that the prices being charged are much lower than those officially available, something which probably prompted FreeTutorials to change its tagline to the current ‘Affordable Education For Everyone’.

On this basis alone they’re likely to retain visitors. Indeed, a look at their traffic stats for the past few weeks suggests that visitor numbers have remained stable. If this translates to sales, no one should expect ‘free tutorials’ to return. Like free content, few people are turning down ‘free’ money.

FreeTutorials’ email addresses bounce so we can’t ask them why they shifted over to the pay model. However, one doesn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that in one way or another, a desire to make money is at the root of the change. Whether that’s simply to pay for hosting costs or to help cover living expenses is unknown and probably irrelevant.

The important thing is that whether it’s an enforced advertising model, donations, or a flat-out desire to charge money, pirate sites face similar commercial difficulties to those experienced by their legal counterparts. Everything costs money and needs to be paid for, and if the books don’t balance, that’s the end of the show.

Despite their differences, perhaps they’re quite similar after all.

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