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From pirates’ latest Google trick to a new challenger for Netflix, read about this and more in our roundup for the week ending July 21, 2019
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From pirates' latest Google trick to a new challenger for Netflix, read about this and more in our roundup for the week ending July 21, 2019
Copyright news website TorrentFreak has discovered a new trend where rival piracy sites are pretending to be rights-holders and using Google’s DMCA take-down mechanism to target piracy rivals.In a further blow to the credibility of Google’s t…
Copyright news website TorrentFreak has discovered a new trend where rival piracy sites are pretending to be rights-holders and using Google's DMCA take-down mechanism to target piracy rivals.
In a further blow to the credibility of Google's take-down system, the latest incident sees a potential pirate pretend to be the MPAA, Hollywood's anti-piracy lobby. The impostor requested Google to remove almost thousands of links, mostly targetting a small collection of piracy sites, or sometimes just a single site.
Taking down selected piracy sites from Google's search results could benefit sites further down the rankings, including other piracy sites or even sites trying to scam unsuspecting downloaders. It is theorized that this could be the main motivation behind these fake take-down notices.
Worryingly though is the fact that despite some of these notices being clumsily formed (where the "Original URLs" and "Infringing URLs" are filled in each other's spots on the submissions), Google has complied with several notices and removed the "infringing" URLs without verifying the real identity of the submitter.
However, some submissions have been labelled as fake by Google, suggesting that the search engine may be aware of this problem and is working on a solution.
[via TorrentFreak]
Data and Seven of Nine return to help Picard shepherd a new cast into space.
"Engage!" Yes, that's what Sir Patrick Stewart says in this moment, and yes, it's as delightful in action as that sounds. [credit: CBS ]
All eyes were on San Diego Comic Con's Star Trek panel this year, as anticipation continues to build for Star Trek: Picard, the first Trek entry to feature Sir Patrick Stewart since the 2002 film Star Trek: Nemesis. And on Saturday, the series' handlers at CBS didn't disappoint.
One additional fun reveal came at the event: a new CBS All-Access animated series titled Star Trek: Lower Decks. This series' announcement did not come with a trailer, but we shouldn't have to wait long to see more, as Lower Decks is expected to drop in 2020.
Star Trek Picard SDCC trailer
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Three years ago today, the popular torrent site KickassTorrents was shut down following a criminal investigation by the U.S. Government. While the site is now a distant memory to most people, alleged founder Artem Vaulin remains in limbo, fighting an extradition request from the U.S. in Poland.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.
On July 20th, 2016, exactly three years ago today, the torrent community was in dire straits.
Polish law enforcement officers had just apprehended Artem Vaulin, the alleged founder of KickassTorrents (KAT), at a local airport.
The arrest was part of a U.S. criminal case which also listed two other men as key players. At the time, KAT was the most-used torrent site around, so the authorities couldn’t have hit a more prominent target.
The criminal case marked the end of the torrent site and the start of a lengthy legal battle for the suspected operator.
To this day, Vaulin remains in limbo. March 2017, the Warsaw District Court ruled in first instance that the alleged KickassTorrents owner can be extradited. However, more than two years have now passed and the final ruling has yet to come in.
Vaulin is currently out on bail awaiting the final decision on the extradition request from the United States, while the other two defendants are still at large.
Over the past year, there have been no official updates. Vaulin’s defense team informed us that things haven’t really moved. In addition, a new status report filed by US Attorney John R. Lausch Jr. this week shows that there’s little progress.
“Defendant is still undergoing extradition proceedings in Poland, and the parties are not currently aware of a timetable for a resolution of those proceedings,” Lausch Jr. informed the court.
The case’s status hearing, which was initially scheduled for last Wednesday, has now been postponed until October. It’s unclear, however, whether there will be any progress by then.
Back in 2016, the defense team submitted a motion to dismiss the entire case. Among other things, it argued that torrent files themselves are not copyrighted content. The court decided, however, that the US Government’s case is strong enough to continue.
Since that decision, more than two years ago, there hasn’t been any progress as both parties await the extradition decision.
Meanwhile, it’s pretty clear that the original KickassTorrents is not coming back. The site’s spirit remains online, though. Several former staffers of the site relaunched a KAT spinoff late 2016, and that site is still going strong.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.
Review: CIA flunkies become accidental conspirators in deadpan mockumentary-turned-thriller.
[credit: Zapruder Films ]
With this weekend's 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, it's worth remembering most conspiracy theories are more-or-less the same: a shadowy cabal of all-powerful, all-knowing elites comes together to manipulate us commoners, for whom they have nothing but contempt. The cabal changes—globalists, Lizard People, the media, the Vatican, whatevs—but the song remains the same.
So a few years back when I heard someone had made yet another a low-budget mockumentary about faking the Apollo 11 Moon landing, that's what I was expecting. Maybe even Kubrick would be evoked again. Instead, imagine my surprise when 2016's Operation Avalanche turned out to be light on conspiracy against the sheeple and heavy on a bumbling, baby-faced doofus who comes up with a plan to fake the Moon landing as basically a way to impress his boss.
Psychologists speculate that people are drawn to conspiracy theories because a world controlled by dark forces is still preferable to a world in which no one is at the controls. But truthers will find cold comfort in Operation Avalanche's view that the masters of the universe are more likely to be a grinning nincompoop whose best friend's wife greets him with "Don't touch me."
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It would take a lot. Like a real lot.
Enlarge / Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier sheds some icebergs. Could we... sort of... put them back? (credit: NASA Earth Observatory)
Imagine, if you will, the engineers of the king’s court after Humpty Dumpty’s disastrous fall. As panicked men apparently competed with horses for access to the site of the accident, perhaps the engineers were scoping out scenarios, looking for a better method of reassembling the poor fellow. But presumably none of those plans worked out, given the dark ending to that fairy tale.
A recent study published in Science Advances might be relatable for those fairy tale engineers. Published by Johannes Feldmann, Anders Levermann, and Matthias Mengel at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the study tackles a remarkable question: could we save vulnerable Antarctic glaciers with artificial snow?
Antarctica’s ice is divided into two separate ice sheets by a mountain range, with the smaller but much more vulnerable West Antarctic Ice Sheet representing one of the biggest wildcards for future sea level rise. In 2014, a study showed that two of the largest glaciers within that ice sheet—known as the Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier—had likely crossed a tipping point, guaranteeing a large amount of future ice loss that would continue even if global warming were halted today.
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Terminator Genisys: Rise of the Resistance isn’t wildly innovative, but it is fun.
Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com.
Even Terminator has a board game now. In the “golden age” of tabletop gaming, companies and licensing have brought us a wealth of titles, including those that no one was asking for (I’m looking at you, Ghostbusters and Wacky Races). Is Terminator Genisys: Rise of the Resistance something to get excited about?
Thankfully, yes.
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The judge noted that the “health coach” was free to offer pro bono advice.
Enlarge / Unlicensed "health coach" Heather Del Castillo (credit: Institute for Justice)
A federal court on Wednesday rejected claims by an unlicensed “health coach” that the unqualified health advice she provided to paying clients was protected speech under the First Amendment.
In rejecting her claim, the court affirmed that states do indeed have the right to require that anyone charging for health and medical services—in this case, dietetics and nutrition advice—be qualified and licensed. (State laws governing who can offer personalized nutrition services vary considerably, however.)
Heather Del Castillo, a “holistic health coach” based in Florida, brought the case in October of 2017 shortly after she was busted in an undercover investigation by the state health department. At the time, Del Castillo was running a health-coaching business called Constitution Nutrition, which offered a personalized, six-month health and dietary program. The program involved 13 in-home consulting sessions, 12 of which cost $95 each.
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For the second time in less than a year, Google has been fined by Russian authorities for not removing banned sites, which include pirate portals, from its search indexes. After failing to connect to the country’s national ‘blacklist’, the search giant has reportedly been selectively removing content, but not to the levels required.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.
In order to control what kind of information its citizens have access to online, Russia operates an Internet ‘blacklist’.
Known locally as FGIS (Unified Register of Prohibited Information), the database contains the domains of thousands of sites containing anything from extremist material to pirated copies of movies and TV shows.
Major online technology platforms are expected to interface with FGIS to ensure they receive up-to-date information on which sites are forbidden in Russia. In the case of search engines, the database provides details on which sites should be removed from search results.
After failing to connect its systems to the FGIS and deindexing sites as required, last December Google was fined by Russian authorities. That was followed by threats from local telecoms watch Roscomnadzor early 2019 that the US-based company could be fined again for non-compliance, as well as facing a potential block itself.
In February 2019 it was reported that Google was finally playing ball and everything was running more smoothly. However, that appears not have been the case. According to an announcement published this week by Roscomnadzor, Google has been fined again.
“The company has not complied with the requirements of the law..[..]..by excluding from search results links to Internet resources with illegal information, access to which is restricted in Russia,” Roscomndazor said.
“The control event recorded that Google carries out selective filtering of search results – more than a third of the links from a single registry of prohibited information are still preserved in its search results.”
Explaining that Google has been told repeatedly of the legal requirements in Russia, the watchdog revealed that the fine handed down was 700,000 rubles – just US$11,098 – a drop in the ocean as far as Google is concerned.
Digital rights group Roscomsvoboda reports that in April 2019, Google had removed 80% of the specified banned content from its search results. However, data covering the period ending May, for which the fine was levied, showed that removal levels had fallen to 67.5%.
Last month, when Google learned that it was in line for another fine after a warning from Roscomnadzor, the company expressed surprise.
“We have not changed anything. A couple of months ago we agreed that we will not connect to the registry of banned sites and will not blindly delete anything, but consider requests to delete content, and where it meets the requirements, we remove content from the Russian service,” a spokesperson said.
“We do not understand why Roscomnadzor is talking about a new case or where they get these figures from.”
Whether Google will eventually connect to the FGIS isn’t clear. It currently receives a daily list of sites to be blocked and acts on those as it sees fit. Only time will tell whether that will be enough for Roscomndazor moving forward.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.
Der System File Checker in Windows 10 markiert neuerdings Dateien des Windows Defender als fehlerhaft. Der Bug ist auch Microsoft bekannt. Das Problem: Die neue Version des Defenders verändert im Installationsimage verankerte Dateien. Der Hersteller wi…
Der System File Checker in Windows 10 markiert neuerdings Dateien des Windows Defender als fehlerhaft. Der Bug ist auch Microsoft bekannt. Das Problem: Die neue Version des Defenders verändert im Installationsimage verankerte Dateien. Der Hersteller will das mit einem Update von Windows 10 beheben. (Windows 10, Microsoft) 
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