Month: August 2018

Last year, American satellite and broadcast provider Dish Network targeted TVAddons, the largest repository of third-party Kodi add-ons.

In a complaint filed in a federal court in Texas, TVAddons and its Canadian founder Adam Lackman were accused of copyright infringement, facing millions of dollars in potential damages.

The site was briefly taken down but returned after a few weeks, albeit without some of the more troubling add-ons. TVAddons and Lackman were planning to put up a fight and maintained that the site had always adhered to the DMCA.

Over the past several months both Dish and TVAddons were getting ready to take the matter to trial, but this weekend it became apparent that this is no longer needed.

The parties have signed a confidential settlement agreement and, as a result, Dish decided to drop the case. While the exact terms of the agreement remain private, a TVAddons representative informs TorrentFreak that they’re happy with the outcome.

“Sometimes a settlement can be considered a win for both sides. From an economic perspective, it was the ideal conclusion since the Canadian lawsuit has already destroyed our financial resources.

“It also respected our morals and promise to protect our users and developers at all cost, since no data nor user/developer information was exchanged as part of the settlement,” the TVAddons spokesperson adds.

The upside for TVAddons is quite obvious, as the site and its founder had a lot to lose financially. Dish’s motivations are less obvious. It’s not clear whether TVAddons agreed to pay damages, but that could be a factor.

TVAddons also agreed to process Dish’s future copyright claims more swiftly, if any issues arise.

“As far as our site goes, we maintain that we have always complied with copyright law. We have however agreed to an expedited DMCA process for any complaints DISH Network may have in the future,” TVAddons tells us.

The settlement agreement was signed by TVAddons founder Adam Lackman and Dish. This is interesting, as Lackman announced just a few weeks ago that he had “resigned” from all administrative roles at the site to ensure its future.

This suggests that someone else is in charge. However, a representative of the site informs TorrentFreak that there are agreements in place to ensure that the expedited DMCA agreement between Dish and Lackman will be honored.

The settlement does not include Shani, the developer of ZemTV, who was sued in the same case. The UK resident previously chose not to defend himself in court, as he lacked the funds to put up a proper defense.

TVAddons and Lackman are not out of trouble either. The Canadian lawsuit filed by an army of Canadian telecoms giants, including Bell Canada and Rogers Communications, is still on.

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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From Disney's ironic statement to the same old same old from the MPAA, read the news roundup for the week ending August 26, 2018

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Earth from space

The view from a spacecraft – dark blue oceans, the multi-colored landmasses, the blue ribbon of the atmosphere and brilliant white cloudbands during the day, long shadows and hues of orange and pink in the dawn zones and finally the gleaming lights of the planet’s cities and the faint strands of aurora in the sky.

Few of us will ever have the chance to go to ISS and view the ‘pale blue marble’ from low Earth orbit – for real that is.

Visualization

Matters are quite different in a simulation of course. Over the last years, Flightgear’s rendering engine for views from orbit called ‘Earthview’ has undergone a lot of improvements and additions, making it one of the best visualization tools available.

Lots of work has gone into the visuals at night. For example, a fairly sophisticated model of Aurora Borealis and Australis colors the sky around the poles. See a diffuse green glow of high Oxygen excitation for low solar activity, or a full auroral arc with slow red Oxygen lines high above, sharp green glow of Oxygen following the field line structure further down, culminating in the purple fringe of Nitrogen excitation.

The night lights of the cities are taken from the NASA visible Earth project – but they are post-processed by a shader to give them the appearance of being composed of millions of small lights.

As a special treat, there are even some thunderstorms with lightning momentarily illuminating the storm cell in a number of places – beware, they are not easy to find!

Earthview also comes with its own runtime-adjustible model for scattering in the atmosphere – dry scatterers give the scene a blue hue, wet scatterers make it appear foggy. The amount of scattering follows the path through the atmosphere – there’s less atmosphere effect on mountains and high plateaus than at sea level. Even a semblance of weather changes can be simulated by either moving the cloudsphere or dialing the density of clouds.

The relief mapping on the terrain give it a 3d appearance, and post-processing adds the appearance of details up to a few dozen meters in size scale. Like the terrain, the cloud map is also post-processed to show shadows and 3d appearance using parallax mapping, and clouds cast shadows onto the terrain – all of which combines to make the scene come alive.

Simulation

Ready to take the trip?

Flightgear has a handful of vehicles which can reach into space, but only two which allow to insert into a stable orbit – the Space Shuttle, and the Vostok-1 carrier. While learning to operate the Shuttle takes some time, Vostok is now equipped with automatic launch guidance, making it a good choice for your first trip into space – like Gagarin, you can just sit back and ride it out.

If your memory and graphics card permits it (8+ GB are a good idea), now would be the time to install a few GB of hires textures linked on the Earthview Wiki page. These textures are not part of a normal FG installation since they are substantially larger than the whole FG data package.

At every step, you can follow the Vostok stage separation in outside view and see the discarded rocket stages disappearing behind you as the next stage ignites.

Once in orbit, you can even try to maneuver around the TDU and get back to the discarded 3rd stage.

There’s not much in terms of maneuvering the Vostok capsule can really do, so you might as well enjoy the view for a few orbits, and eventually turn it around for a de-orbit burn that brings you back onto the ground.

The simulation can’t give you the real feeling of weightlessness, but it tries to bring you close – in the Space Shuttle, you can put a flight data file folder in free-float mode into the cabin – you can watch Earth through the windows while the manual slowly floats through your visual field.

So, get out on the pad, launch into space and enjoy the grand view!

Further reading

The Earthview project page
The Earthview wiki page
The Vostok-1 wiki page
The Shuttle project page

Für die beiden Fire-TV-Browser Silk und Firefox stehen neuen Versionen bereit. Nach der Aktualisierung kann auf beiden Browsern mit der Stimme die Wiedergabe etwa von Youtube-Videos auf einem Fire TV gesteuert werden. Firefox hat hierbei mehr Funktionen als Amazons Silk-Browser. (Fire TV, Firefox)

Öffi gibt es weiterhin nicht im Google Play Store, bald soll es aber wieder eine aktuelle Version in Amazons Appstore geben. Bis dahin kann Öffi über F-Droid aktuell gehalten werden, darüber werden künftig Updates verteilt. (App, Applikationen)

To millions of loyal users, Reddit is one of the Internet’s most valuable resources. The platform covers every subject one can think of, plus hundreds that have never entered mainstream consciousness.

Along with fairly benign topics such as news, health, beauty and sport, Reddit caters to those whose hobbies and interests are a little more controversial. Dozens of so-called sub-Reddits are dedicated to most aspects of piracy, for example, something that has landed a few of them in hot water.

Take the /r/megalinks sub-Reddit, for example. Last year the discussion forum was shut down in a blaze of bad publicity after the site accumulated enough ‘strikes’ to trigger Reddit’s repeat infringer policy.

Megalinks was a very good example of sub-Reddit simply waiting to be closed down. The entire purpose of the community was to post links to infringing content stored on file-hosting site MEGA. No pirated content was off-limits so when Reddit’s admins decided enough was enough, it was no surprise to see the sub disappear down the drain.

This week, another piracy-focused sub-Reddit found itself disappearing into history. The /r/crackedsoftware forum, which (surprise, surprise) dedicated itself to links to pirated software, also found itself banished by Reddit’s admins. As the image below shows, it too fell foul of Reddit’s ‘repeat infringer’ policy.

No surprise the banhammer came out for this one

With news of these bannings filtering through to other sections of Reddit dedicated to piracy, some users have been asking whether they too could be banished to the digital wilderness. The question has been asked several times on /r/piracy, a sub with more than 244,000 subscribers. So, is it at risk?

To answer that question it’s first necessary to differentiate between sub-Reddits that act as a platform for piracy and those that discuss piracy but do not engage in it, on Reddit itself.

There can be no doubt that /r/megalinks and /r/crackedsoftware fall into the first category. Both sub-Reddits were designed to encourage and then provide access to links to known infringing content. Or, to put it another way, these sub-Reddits acted like The Pirate Bay or any other intentional ‘pirate’ linking site.

While this in itself would probably be enough to put the subs on the wrong side of the law, Reddit only appears to take action against subs when they cause documented copyright infringement problems for the platform. If a sub-Reddit receives repeat complaints from copyright holders, Reddit – as is required under the DMCA – invokes its repeat infringer policy.

At Reddit’s discretion, that repeat infringer policy can be acted upon in two ways. Firstly, Reddit could determine that a particular user is at fault and since he or she is continually posting infringing content, they could be banned. However, if the problem “pervades a whole community“, the entire sub will be banned if it doesn’t clean up its act. Clearly, both Megalinks and CrackedSoftware fall into this category, hence their demise.

Now, compare these two now-defunct subs to /r/piracy, Reddit’s flagship piracy forum with close to 245,000 users. While the sub is no doubt inhabited by many thousands of pirates, its moderators have put in place a set of clear rules to ensure that their home isn’t shut down in the same way as some others.

The sub only has four rules, three of which are dedicated to keeping the discussion both tidy and on topic. However, rule three is the sub’s most important, despite being a single line long. To be sure, however, the point is repeated and rephrased.

“No asking or linking pirated/copyrighted content,” it reads. “Do not request or link to pirated/copyrighted content,” notes the reminder.

It is this rule (and its enforcement by the sub’s moderators) that ensures that /r/piracy does not often find itself mentioned in DMCA notices sent to Reddit. If there are no links to infringing content, copyright holders can’t send a valid DMCA notice and Reddit will not be required to invoke its repeat infringer policy.

Advice from Reddit to keep a piracy-focused sub in shape

Of course, even the most fastidious of moderation teams can accidentally let something infringing slip through the net (even mods have to sleep), meaning that it’s still possible for an infringing post or comment to appear on /r/piracy. However, that is not the forum’s main aim, something which seems to go a long way with Reddit’s admins.

There are threats to the sub, however. A minority of users, many of whom simply can’t be bothered to read the rules and/or stick to them, are the number one concern.

While regular subscribers rarely attempt to post infringing content without being asked, every day people wander in and post questions demanding links for movie X or TV show Y. Other users rarely respond and the mods act quickly, but it’s not a great look for /r/piracy, especially when the mods work so hard to keep things legal.

In short and as things stand, /r/piracy seems a solid discussion forum that operates well within Reddit’s rules and is unlikely to be shut down. However, a little common sense in respect of Rule 3 wouldn’t go amiss and perhaps the threat of a temporary ban here and there would help to focus the minds of the minority of users who play fast and loose with the sub’s future.

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

Die Gebühr beim Kauf eines Onlinetickets über CTS Eventim könnte weiter bestehen bleiben, aber geringer ausfallen. Falls es das Urteil des Bundesgerichtshofs erlaube, wolle der Kartenverkäufer weiterhin eine Servicegebühr für das Selbstausdrucken von Tickets erheben. (Verbraucherschutz, Internet)