Month: May 2019

Airbus hat an seinem Helikopter-Standort in Bayern erstmals das Lufttaxi City Airbus vom Boden abheben lassen. Erste echte Flugtests sind für den Sommer geplant. (Lufttaxi, Technologie)

Entwickler Laminar Research hat ein neues Update für den Flugsimulator X-Plane veröffentlicht. Es ist zwar nur ein kleines Update, dennoch wurden hunderte Flughäfen überarbeitet. Viele davon gab es zuvor in X-Plane nicht. (X-Plane, Simulationsspiel)

Die Beschwerde von Spotify bei der EU-Kommission hat einen ersten Erfolg gebracht. Die EU will ein Kartellverfahren gegen Apple einleiten. Spotify wirft Apple vor, seine Marktmacht im iOS-Ökoystem zu missbrauchen, um seinen eigenen Musikstreamingdienst zu vermarkten. (Spotify, Apple)

Wer Openbook bereits unterstützt, kann jetzt in begrenztem Umfang andere Nutzer in das neue soziale Netzwerk einladen. Die Nutzerzahlen des potenziellen Google-Plus- und Facebook-Konkurrenten könnten sich damit vervierfachen. Damit bleibt die Anfangsgruppe aber trotzdem noch sehr klein. (Openbook, Soziales Netz)

Die Optimierungen in Linux 5.1 sind ziemlich zahlreich: verbesserte asynchrone Operationen, ein ausgemustertes Dateiformat, eine Abschirmung für externe USB-Datenträger, beschleunigtes WLAN und optimiertes Live-Patching. (Linux-Kernel, WLAN)

Ein freies Chat- und Messenger-System, das Nutzer aus den Silos großer Unternehmen wie Facebook befreien soll und trotzdem direkt einsetzbar ist, ist ein fantastisches Versprechen. In der Realität kann das leider nur scheitern. Von Sebastian Grüner (E-Mail, Instant Messenger)

This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

Avengers: Endgame 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	(1)	Avengers: Endgame (HDCam)	9.1 / trailer
2	(5)	Cold Pursuit	6.4 / trailer
3	(3)	Glass	6.9 / trailer
4	(8)	Aquaman	7.7 / trailer
5	(…)	Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile	6.8 / trailer
6	(…)	Avengers: Infinity War	8.5 / trailer
7	(2)	What Men Want	4.7 / trailer
8	(6)	Captain Marvel (HDTS)	7.2 / trailer
9	(4)	Escape Room	6.4 / trailer
10	(7)	How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World	7.8 / trailer

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

Die US-Luftwaffe hat ein Lasersystem zum Abfangen von Raketen getestet, das künftig auch in Flugzeugen montiert werden könnte. Das System hat aber einen Nachteil: Bei schlechtem Wetter ist es nur bedingt einsatzfähig. (Laser, Technologie)

In den USA ist eine Sammelklage gegen Apple wegen Audioproblemen beim iPhone 7 und iPhone 7 Plus eingereicht worden. Die Probleme sind unter dem Namen Schleifenkrankheit oder Loop Disease bekannt. Apple soll laut Klägern von den Problemen gewusst haben. (iPhone 7, Apple)

A few days ago the United States Trade Representative (USTR) published its latest overview of ‘notorious markets’.

The annual publication highlights some of the most problematic ‘piracy’ websites, as pointed out by copyright holders. It includes torrent sites, streaming platforms, as well as stream-rippers.

The goal of the list is to motivate foreign governments to take action against these websites. This type of diplomatic pressure is not new. In fact, a similar tactic was used more than a decade ago, when the US urged Sweden to take out The Pirate Bay.

The USTR’s list of ‘notorious markets’ also called out hosting providers that do not properly respond to takedown notices. To some, the overall impression may be that pirate sites are mostly hosted by ‘shady’ companies operating from ‘exotic’ locations. This, however, isn’t true.

A recent analysis by Volker Rieck and Jörg Weinrich of the German anti-piracy publication WebSchauder shows that most of the top pirate sites appear to be hosted by US companies

The research looked at the domain names for which Google received most takedown requests, assuming that these are infringing websites. From the top 5,000 domain names, 3,645 were still active, and the authors of the report then looked up where they are hosted. 

A massive chunk of these domains, 41.9 percent to be precise, use Cloudflare. While this is a US-based company, it’s not technically a hosting service, and for outsiders, it’s hard to identify the true hosting locations of these sites.

That leaves a little over 2,000 domain names. The WebSchauder authors determined the hosting provider for each of these, which resulted in some rather interesting findings.

As it turns out, more than a third of all the remaining ‘pirate’ domains were hosted by US companies. This applies to the public facing front of the sites but data may also be hosted elsewhere. Amazon is the most popular US-based host, with 7.1% of the non-Cloudflare domains, followed by Confluence Networks and NameCheap, with 6% and 4% respectively. 

And then there’s Europe. Following in the footsteps of the US, the EU also launched its own notorious markets report, again, highlighting pirate websites that are presumably the responsibility of foreign authorities. However, it turns out that many pirate sites are also hosted in the EU.

The most popular host of all ‘pirate’ sites is the Dutch hosting provider LeaseWeb, with more than 13% of the sites, 289 to be precise. It’s no surprise that the Netherlands is in second spot, behind the US, looking at the headquarter location of the hosting companies. 

Together, WebSchauder found that hosting providers in the US and the Netherlands are good for 59% of all the non-Cloudflare protected ‘pirate’ site domain names. 

Of course, hosting companies are not automatically liable for everything their clients do. When they categorically ignore complaints, they may be held liable, but that’s something a court must decide. As such, it may be perfectly fine to host these sites.

Still, it’s odd that the US and the EU keep pointing fingers at other countries when the majority of the pirate sites are hosted in their jurisdictions. This is welcome ammunition for rightsholders and sites such as WebSchauder. 

“Both the EU and the US should first sweep their own farm before complaining again and again in long reports of notorious disturbers abroad,” the WebSchauder report reads.

“The problem of unregulated distribution does not take place exclusively in exotic countries but predominantly in Western Europe and the USA. If you want to solve it, you have to start here and finally assign responsibility to the datacenters.”

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