Month: August 2018

Last week we reported how impostors abuse the DMCA takedown process to punish rival pirate sites.

Just when we thought we’d seen it all, an even more bizarre collection of takedown requests appeared.

This time our very own publication is a target, along with several other sites that cover censorship related news and developments.

At the center of the matter is the reporting agency “Topple Track“. In a series of takedown requests, the company targets a broad selection of perfectly legitimate sites, sites that have nothing to do with the content for which the notice is sent.

For example, this request was sent to Google on behalf of Melbourne artist Gamble Breaux, supposedly listing sites that linked to infringing copies of her song This Time.

However, most, if not all of the links in the notice are completely unrelated. This includes our article on pirate site blocks in Denmark, and a Danish news report on the rise of illegal streaming.

Even more bizarrely, perhaps, the same notice also lists several articles about the EU “upload filter” and “link tax” proposals.

This includes the Savethelink.org campaign site, this article from Boing Boing, as well as an article from the German news site Der Spiegel, and a post from law firm Wilde Beuger Solmecke.

Worryingly, the same notice also lists an article from EU Member of Parliament Julia Reda, which Google has indeed removed from its index.

It can hardly be a coincidence that a DMCA notice for a random music track lists so many “censorship” related articles. Especially when it only includes 23 URLs. There’s some bittersweet irony in there too.

Thus far we only have discussed one takedown notice but there are many more. Digital Rights Group EFF noticed this too, as they themselves are among the targeted sites.

The Topple Track DMCA request where EFF is mentioned has another theme though. Instead of a EU censorship focus, it lists a variety of pages and articles related to the MP3Tunes case, including this piece from Stanford.

Yet another takedown notice has a “YouTube” theme, targeting various non-infringing news reports from sites such as The Verge, Chip.de, CNET, Ubergizmo, Wikihow and various others. Even the US Government’s FCC isn’t safe from Topple Track’s notices.

TorrentFreak reached out Topple Track for a comment on the findings. The reporting company admitted that there may have been some inaccurate filings and offered an apology.

“We will issue retractions for everything affecting your brand and website and will further reach out to EFF.org as well to explain and issue retractions for all links sent there as well. We apologize for how this may have affected you and others,” the company said.

The company has put its service in maintenance mode to ensure everything is solved and rectified. After that, they will decide how to move forward.

While it’s clear that mistakes were made, we have to give the company credit for taking responsibility. Hopefully, this will also help to prevent similar issues in the future.

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

Google released a pretty major update for Chrome OS today, and the company has started certifying “YouTube Signature” devices for smartphones that will provide an optimal experience. But most of the big Google-related news today comes from leaks. We’ve got the best look yet at the upcoming Google Pixel 3 XL (unless it’s all part […]

The post Lilbits 326: Google announcements, Google leaks appeared first on Liliputing.

As expected, Samsung has beat Apple to market with a wireless charger that you can use to charge a two devices simultaneously. The Samsung Wireless Charger Duo is now available in black and white color options. Both versions sell for $120, and both are capable of charging a smartphone and smartwatch at the same time, […]

The post Samsung’s Wireless Charger Duo launches for $120 appeared first on Liliputing.

As expected, Samsung has beat Apple to market with a wireless charger that you can use to charge a two devices simultaneously. The Samsung Wireless Charger Duo is now available in black and white color options. Both versions sell for $120, and both are capable of charging a smartphone and smartwatch at the same time, […]

The post Samsung’s Wireless Charger Duo launches for $120 appeared first on Liliputing.

Enlarge (credit: Jan Fabre)

The Federal Communications Commission is proposing to maintain the US broadband standard at the current level of 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream.

That's the speed standard the FCC uses each year to determine whether advanced telecommunications capabilities are "being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion."

The FCC raised the standard from 4Mbps/1Mbps to 25Mbps/3Mbps in January 2015 under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler. Ajit Pai, who was then a commissioner in the FCC's Republican minority, voted against raising the speed standard.

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id Software

Friday's QuakeCon keynote included a 15-minute Doom Eternal gameplay premiere, showing off the idTech7 engine in action for the first time. As predicted after its E3 tease, this sequel will follow Doom II's lead from 1994 and bring the new series' demons and terrors of Hell to Earth.

The gameplay sequence confirms that Doom Eternal will further emphasize movement and explosive weaponry, and the most noticeable change comes from a new super shotgun that doubles as a grappling hook. With this weapon equipped, aim until a small skull icon turns golden in your field of view, at which point you can extend a chain and either zip yourself toward a particular demon or use its body to swing yourself in a circular motion around it.

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Enlarge (credit: DLink)

Hackers have been exploiting a vulnerability in DLink modem routers to send people to a fake banking website that attempts to steal their login credentials, a security researcher said Friday.

The vulnerability works against DLink DSL-2740R, DSL-2640B, DSL-2780B, DSL-2730B, and DSL-526B models that haven’t been patched in the past two years. As described in disclosures here, here, here, here, and here, the flaw allows attackers to remotely change the DNS server that connected computers use to translate domain names into IP addresses.

According to an advisory published Friday morning by security firm Radware, hackers have been exploiting the vulnerability to send people trying to visit two Brazilian bank sites—Banco de Brasil’s www.bb.com.br and Unibanco’s www.itau.com.br—to malicious servers rather than the ones operated by the financial institutions. In the advisory, Radware researcher Pascal Geenens wrote:

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Last month Microsoft introduced a new app called Your Phone that would let you use a Windows 10 PC to access photos from your phone and send web pages from your phone to your desktop web browser. Now it’s available. The Your Phone app is now available from the Microsoft Store. But you’ll need to […]

The post Microsoft’s Your Phone app is now live (for Windows Insiders) appeared first on Liliputing.

Todayish, The Pirate Bay turns 15 years old, which is quite an achievement considering the immense legal pressure it has faced over the years.

While the exact launch date is a bit of a mystery, even to the site’s founders, August 10 was previously chosen as its anniversary.

What we do know is that the site was brought online in 2003 by now-disbanded pro-culture organization Piratbyrån, which is Swedish for Bureau of Piracy.

The group was formed by political activists and hackers in the same year, many of whom had already launched other web projects challenging political, moral, and power structures.

One of the group’s unwritten goals was to offer a counterweight to the propaganda being spread by local anti-piracy outfit Antpiratbyrån. With BitTorrent as the up-and-coming file-sharing technology, they saw fit to start their own file-sharing site to promote sharing of information.

The Pirate Bay first came online in Mexico where Gottfrid Svartholm, aka Anakata, hosted the site on a server owned by the company he was working for at the time.

After a few months, the site moved to Sweden where it was hosted on a Pentium III 1GHz laptop with 256MB RAM. This one machine, which belonged to Fredrik Neij, aka TiAMO, kept the site online and included a fully operational tracker.

The original idea of Piratbyrån was to create the first public file-sharing network in Sweden, but in the years that followed the site grew out to become a global file-sharing icon.

While The Pirate Bay team was proud of this success, it was not without consequence. Initially, various takedown messages from copyright holders were met with mocking responses, but the legal pressure became a heavy burden.

Behind the scenes, the US Government applied pressure on Sweden, urging the country do something about the taunting pirate site. At the same time, the site’s founders noticed that they were being shadowed by private investigators, who smelled blood.

The pressure eventually reached its first peak when The Pirate Bay’s infrastructure was raided.

May 31, 2006, less than three years after The Pirate Bay was founded, 65 Swedish police officers entered a datacenter in Stockholm. The policemen had instructions to shut down the Pirate Bay’s servers, which was exactly what happened.

Just as the raid was about to go down, Gottfrid noticed that something was up. He warned Fredrik who, as a precaution, decided to make a backup. This turned out to be a pivotal moment in the site’s history. Because of this backup, Fredrik and the rest of the Pirate Bay team managed to resurrect the site within three days.

The swift and deviant comeback turned the site’s founders into heroes for many. The site made headline news around the world and in Stockholm, people were waving pirate flags in the streets, a sentiment that benefited the newly founded Pirate Party as well.

There was also a major downside, however. The raid was the start of a criminal investigation, which led to a trial, and prison sentences for several of the site’s founders.

This became another turning point. Many of the early Piratbyrån members cut their ties with the site, which was handed over to a more anonymous group.

The outspokenness of the early years eventually gave way to the silent treatment. While the site’s moderators are easy to reach nowadays, the people who pull the strings at the top remain behind the scenes at all times.

This was made quite obvious when the site disappeared for weeks following another raid at a Stockholm datacenter in 2014. At the time, even the site’s staffers had no idea what was going on.

The site did eventually return though. And today, fifteen years after it first came online, the site remains one of the top pirate sources.

While the site hasn’t changed its looks in recent years, in many ways it’s an entirely different animal than it once was. The activist attitude is pretty much gone and there are few public updates.

Today’s ‘anniversary’ isn’t even mentioned…

That said, The Pirate Bay isn’t going away anytime soon. While it has regularly suffered downtime over the past several years, it keeps coming back, serving torrents to millions of users every day.

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

Enlarge / The Microsoft logo at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. (credit: Getty Images | Justin Sullivan)

The Microsoft Azure cloud computing service threatened to stop hosting Gab, a self-described "free speech social network," unless the site deleted two anti-Semitic posts made by a neo-Nazi who previously ran for a US Senate seat.

Gab founder Andrew Torba yesterday posted a screenshot of Microsoft's notice, which said that Microsoft had "received a complaint of malicious activity" and that Gab must take action within two business days or face the possible "suspension of your deployment(s)."

"Gab's hosting provider, Microsoft Azure, has given us 48 hours to take action on two posts or they will pull our service and Gab will go down for weeks/months," the website's official Twitter account said.

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