Month: December 2018

in September 2013, H33T.com, one of the Internet’s most-visited torrent sites at the time, disappeared from the web .

Although the downtime was initially shrouded in mystery, it later became clear that the site had been targeted in a copyright infringement action.

In order to stop the distribution of a copy of Robin Thicke’s album Blurred Lines, Universal Music had obtained an injunction against Key-Systems, a German-based registrar where the H33t.com domain name was registered.

Key-Systems wasn’t happy with the ruling and the precedent it set but had no other option than to comply. However, the company informed us at the time that it would appeal the verdict, hoping to have it lifted.

This was the start of a drawn-out legal battle from which the latest ruling was just released.

The Higher Regional Court of Saarbrücken concluded Key-Systems can be held secondarily liable for the infringing actions of a customer if it fails to take action if rightsholders point out “obvious” copyright infringing activity online.

This means that, if a site owner is unresponsive to takedown requests, Key-Systems and other registrars can be required to take a domain name offline, even when the infringing activity is limited to a single page.

The local music group BVMI is happy with the outcome of the case. They believe it will help copyright holders to take action against infringing activity.

“This is a further important clarification in the legal space of the internet, helping it to become clearer and fairer for creatives and their partners,” says René Houareau, BVMI’s Managing Director Legal & Political Affairs.

“The [court] affirms, with clearly outlined criteria, the responsibility of so-called registrars and thus gives affected rightsholders an important legal tool to defend themselves against the unlawful use of their content on the internet.”

For H33T the case is no longer relevant. The site did make a comeback after the initial problems, first at H33T.eu and later at H33t.to. However, two years later it disappeared for good.

That said, the German ruling can affect other sites and registrars as well. In fact, in a similar legal battle, domain registrar 1 API lost a case earlier this year, which required it to disconnect several Pirate Bay-related domains.

The domains in question include thepiratebay.gd, thepiratebay.la, thepiratebay.mn, and thepiratebay.vg. These were already disabled years ago, and are no longer in use, but it confirms that registrars can be required to take action against pirate sites.

Lawyer Mirko Brüß notes that, in this case, the court clarified that registrars not only have to take a domain offline, they should also prevent it from being transferred to another company.

Pirate Bay’s former registrar 1 API was not allowed to appeal the case any further, but Key-Systems still has the option to take the case to the German Federal Court. This means that the H33T case may not be over yet.

TorrentFreak reached out to Key-Systems for a comment and to ask if it plans to fight the issue at the highest court, but we have yet to hear back.

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

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

Johnny English Strikes Again is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1	(…)	Johnny English Strikes Again	6.4 / trailer
2	(…)	Aquaman (HDTC)	7.7 / trailer
3	(1)	First Man	7.6 / trailer
4	(2)	Venom	7.0 / trailer
5	(4)	A Simple Favor	7.0 / trailer
6	(…)	Halloween	6.9 / trailer
7	(3)	Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle	6.8 / trailer
8	(7)	Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald	6.9 / trailer
9	(5)	The Predator	5.6 / trailer
10	(6)	Night School	5.5 / trailer

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

Wundermaterial, Cyberdetektiv, Actionfiguren und noch viel mehr: Wir haben Golem.de-Artikel zusammengestellt, die wir zum Nachlesen am Jahresende empfehlen. Die Texte findet man direkt über die Links-Rechts-Pfeile im Artikelkarussell auf der Homepage oder über die Auflistung in diesem Artikel - viel Spaß! (Golem.de, Internet)

Lust auf eine Runde Civilization 6, Xcom oder Final Fantasy 15 unter dem Weihnachtsbaum - aber mit Rücksicht auf die liebe Verwandtschaft nur auf dem Smartphone? Kein Problem: Golem.de stellt mobile Versionen von Konsolen- und PC-Spielen vor. Von Rainer Sigl (Mobile Games, Spieletest)

Increasingly, people are cancelling their expensive cable subscriptions, opting to use cheaper or niche-based Internet TV instead.

While there are plenty of legal options available, there’s also a broad offer of easy-to-use set-top boxes which are specifically configured to receive pirated content.

These pirate IPTV boxes are often sold bundled with a monthly or yearly subscription. This created an industry worth more than a billion dollars worldwide, perhaps even more.

Canadian broadband management company Sandvine recently put a spotlight on this activity, revealing how popular these boxes are. The company gathered data in 16 states and provinces in the US and Canada, monitoring traffic across multiple fixed access tier-1 networks.

Following an analysis of the data, the company was able to pinpoint how many households were accessing pirate IPTV networks. It’s a revisit of a similar study last year which found that 6.5% of the households used illegitimate subscription-based services.

The new results are somewhat lower. Sandvine reports that 5.5% of households could be linked to pirate IPTV subscriptions but this doesn’t mean that interest is waning.

The most recent study looked at a broader and more diverse population than before. Last year’s sample was concentrated in urban areas with a population over a million, which skewed the findings.

The recent study shows that 7.3% of the households in high-density urban areas have pirate IPTV subscriptions, compared to 4.3% in lower populated areas. This means that the overall reach may have actually grown.

US/Canada households accessing pirated live television services

The findings clearly show that pirate TV subscriptions are more popular in big cities, which is an interesting fact in itself.

“There is a huge variability in the demographics of those using pirated video services from region to region,” Sandvine’s Veroljub Mihajlovic notes.

The scope of the activity also remains intriguing. As previously revealed, pirate IPTV traffic generated more bandwidth than many other piracy tools and services, such as BitTorrent.

Also, it doesn’t even factor in other types of set-top box piracy, such as pirate boxes that access OTT streaming sites to play movies and TV-series “on demand.” This means that the overall piracy box landscape is even larger.

All in all it is safe to conclude that IPTV piracy makes up a large part of the pirate ecosystem. This hasn’t gone unnoticed to copyright holders of course. Over the past year, we have seen enforcement actions against several providers and if this trend continues, more are likely to follow.

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

The 264ppi True Tone displays on this year’s iPad Pro are really, really good. There’s always room for improvement, though. Semiconductor Energy Laboratory thinks there’s enough room for another 27 million or so pixels. SEL has just unveiled the industry’s first tablet-sized 8K OLED displays. They’re bringing two different models to market, measuring 8.3 and […]

The post 8K OLED tablet displays are now a real thing appeared first on Liliputing.

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Auf den Athlon 200GE folgen mit dem Athlon 220GE und dem Athlon 240GE höher taktende Versionen des gleichen Raven-Ridge-Chips. Für recht wenig Geld gibt es eine ansprechende CPU- und iGPU-Leistung. (AMD Zen, Prozessor)