Month: October 2019

Ein Jahr Sperre, Preisgelder entzogen: Blizzard geht mit großer Härte gegen einen E-Sportler vor, der während eines Interviews die Proteste in Hongkong unterstützt hatte. Sogar die beiden Kommentatoren, die den Spieler befragt hatten, wurden entlassen. (Blizzard, Zensur)

Mussten sich Nutzer früher Enigmail und GnuPG installieren, soll Thunderbird bald alles, was man zur Verschlüsselung von E-Mails mit PGP braucht, mitbringen. Das bedeutet aber auch das Ende von Enigmail in Thunderbird. (OpenPGP, Thunderbird)

In the early 2000s, Sweden was considered to be a relatively safe haven for pirates.

The country was the home of the Pirate Bay, the birthing ground of the Pirate Party, and a place where for many citizens file-sharing was second nature.

Today, this safe haven has long disappeared. The Scandinavian country has prosecuted several torrent site operators, including The Pirate Bay’s founders, while lawsuits targeting individual BitTorrent users are a common sight.

In many ways, Sweden has become a copyright enforcement hotspot. This includes the ‘copyright-trolling’ phenomenon, in which movie companies target hundreds or thousands of alleged pirates hoping to secure monetary settlements.

The first wave of these lawsuits started three years ago but the practice has grown exponentially since. According to Swedish Internet provider Bahnhof, which has kept track of these cases since early 2017, the number of new cases has already broken a record this year.

During the first three quarters of 2019, a total of 78 new applications were submitted to the Patent and Market Court. This is up from 72 during the whole of 2018, and substantially more than the 27 applications that were filed a year earlier.

While the number of applications has grown, the cases target fewer IP-addresses in total. Last year over 50,000 IPs were targeted and the 2019 total so far is 26,274 IP addresses. Combined with the 2017 numbers, we see that more than 100,000 IP-addresses have been targeted over the past three years.

It’s worth noting that this exceeds the number of targets in other, much larger countries, including the United States.

This type of data is not something an Internet provider would generally release, but it makes sense considering that Bahnhof is an active anti-copyright trolling advocate. The company categorically refuses to share data with copyright holders, as it also makes clear in its press release.

While Bahnhof must retain IP-address logs by law, it operates separate databases. Data is only disclosed to law enforcement authorities for specific purposes and not for this type of copyright enforcement.

“This means that Bahnhof’s customers have not suffered from this type of extortion letter,” the Internet provider notes.

Looking at the targeted ISPs over the past year we see that most of the targeted IP-addresses belong to Telia subscribers, followed by Com Hem, and Telenor. The rightsholders who file these cases are represented by a variety of law firms, including the well known Njord Law.

While Bahnhof is indirectly using these figures to promote its own business, the company hopes that these ‘copyright-trolling’ practices will eventually end, perhaps following an intervention from the Government. According to the company, the entire process is based on extortion.

“The success factor of the letters is partly that they can easily be mistaken for genuine invoices or fines, and the threat of a legal process that drives people to pay out of pure fear, even when they are innocent. The business model is thus based on regular extortion,” Bahnhof notes.

The Swedish Internet provider also maintains a dedicated website called Utpressningskollen where it provides additional details and information on Swedish copyright-trolling efforts.

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

Trotz der geringen Größe passen in das chinesische One Mix 3 Pro viel Arbeitsspeicher und eine große SSD. Die 1600p-Auflösung ist nicht minder ungewöhnlich. Allerdings ist das leistungsstarke Mini-Notebook nicht unbedingt preiswert. (Mini-Notebook, Intel)

Es gibt immer einen größeren Monitor: Der Alienware AW5520qf ist fast schon karikativ riesig. Andererseits war Borderlands 3 noch nie so immersiv wie auf der 55-Zoll-Diagonalen. Wäre da nicht ein Problem: die schlechte Ausleuchtung des 4K-OLED-Monitors. (Alienware, Display)

Eine Veröffentlichung des seit Jahren in der Planung befindlichen Atari VCS wird immer unwahrscheinlicher: Der Hauptverantwortliche des Projekts hat das Unternehmen verlassen, nachdem er sechs Monate lang nicht bezahlt wurde. Jüngste Enthüllungen zeichnen ein katastrophales Bild. (Atari, Games)

Fleisch ohne Kuh: Das israelische Unternehmen Aleph Farms hat einen 3D-Drucker entwickelt, der aus lebendigen Zellen ein Stück Fleisch aufbauen kann. Getestet wurde das Verfahren auf der ISS. (Bioprinting, Raumfahrt)

Freundeslisten mit echten Namen und das Profilbild können auf der Playstation 4 nicht mehr von Facebook übernommen werden. Zumindest vorerst - bis ein neuer Vertrag ausgehandelt ist. (Playstation 4, Sony)

In seinen Richtlinien hat Google neue Bestimmungen für Android-Geräte formuliert, die mit Google-zertifiziertem Android erscheinen: Künftig müssen die Geräte nicht nur Digital-Wellbeing-Funktionen unterstützen, sondern auch vereinheitlichtes schnelles Laden. (Android, Google)

Parallel zu den Cascade Lake X hat Intel die Serverprozessoren für den Sockel LGA 2066 aktualisiert: Die Xeon W-2200 haben bis zu 18 Kerne, unterstützen 1 TByte an ECC-geschütztem DDR4-Arbeitsspeicher und sind besser gegen Spectre-Angriffe geschützt. (Xeon, Prozessor)