Month: November 2019

Das Elektroauto BMW i4 ist ein Mittelklassefahrzeug, das eine Reichweite von rund 550 km aufweisen und mit einem Elektromotor mit 530 PS ausgerüstet werden soll. BMW will das Auto ab 2021 anbieten. (BMW, Technologie)

Der Oktocopter DS30 des Herstellers Doosan Mobility hat medizinische Proben über eine Strecke von rund 70 km transportiert. Das Besondere: Die Drohne ist mit einem Brennstoffzellenmodul geflogen. (Drohne, Technologie)

Ford hat den Sportwagen Mustang als Elektroauto vorgestellt. Der Mach E soll je nach Konfiguration bis zu 480 km weit kommen und in gut 3 Sekunden auf 100 km/h beschleunigen. Er sieht aber eher wie ein Crossover-SUV aus. (Ford, Technologie)

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Intel hat seine 7-nm-Xe-Grafikmodule erläutert: Die heißen intern Ponte Vecchio, nutzen diverse Packaging-Techniken sowie Stapelspeicher und werden in multipler Form gekoppelt. Zusammen mit Sapphire-Rapids-CPUs bilden sie die Basis des Aurora-Exaflops-Supercomputers. (Grafikhardware, Prozessor)

Eine Reihe von weniger bekannten CDU-Mitgliedern will weiter eine Beteiligung von Huawei am 5G-Ausbau verhindern. Doch der Ausbau mit Huawei-Technik in Deutschland ist bereits in vollem Gang. (Huawei, Telekom)

In April, a group of movie companies filed a lawsuit against the operators of various websites that promoted and distributed the Showbox app.

Showbox and similarly named clones are used by millions of people. These apps enable users to stream movies via torrents and direct sources, using a Netflix-style interface.

The tools are a thorn in the side of movie companies, including those behind “The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” “London Has Fallen,” and “Hunter Killer.” In a complaint filed at a U.S. District Court in Hawaii, the companies pointed out that Showbox facilitates massive piracy.

“The Defendants misleadingly promote the Show Box app as a legitimate means for viewing content to the public, who eagerly install the Show Box app to watch copyright protected content, thereby leading to profit for the Defendants,” the 58-page complaint read.

The movie outfits went after several defendants suspected of having ties to one or more piracy-related sites. This includes a Vietnamese man named Nghi Phan Nhat, who allegedly operates the APK download portal ‘apkmirrordownload.com.’

The site stood accused of offering the ShowBox and Popcorn Time apps, which have since been removed, but the defendant never responded to the allegations in court. This prompted the movie companies to file a motion for a default judgment.

In September, they requested $150,000 in statutory damages, as well as thousands of dollars in attorney fees and costs. In addition, they asked for an injunction ordering third party services such as hosting companies and domain registrars to stop doing business with the site.

While the defendant remained silent, the Court referred that matter to a magistrate judge for a recommendation. Although default judgments are often easily granted, in this case, Hawaii’s Magistrate Judge Kenneth Mansfield advises denial of the request.

In their motion, the filmmakers argued that the Court has personal jurisdiction over the operator of the site. This requires a relationship between the foreign defendant and the US. To establish this, it has to pass the three-part minimum contacts test.

The first part of this test is to show that the defendant purposefully directed activities to the United States or purposefully availed himself of the privileges of conducting activities there.

According to the movie companies, this is certainly the case, since the site is quite popular in the US and also presented entirely in English. However, that’s not enough to establish personal jurisdiction, according to the Judge.

“That the APK Site is in English does not show purposeful direction, as the United States is not the only country with English as an official language. Nor is Plaintiffs’ allegation that the United States is the country with the second most traffic to the APK site evidence of purposeful direction,” Judge Mansfield writes.

The filmmakers further argued that the defendant purposefully availed himself to the State of Hawaii by conducting business with US-based companies, domain registrar Namesilo and CDN provider Cloudflare. However, the Magistrate Judge disagrees again.

“While Defendant Nhat may have contacts with California and Arizona pursuant to his registration with United States companies, such contacts are not extensive enough to invoke nationwide jurisdiction such that it is reasonable to subject Defendant Nhat to litigation in any United States federal forum,” the Judge writes.

The fact that the APK download site references the US DMCA law on its site is not good enough either. According to the Judge that merely means that the site is in compliance with the DMCA, not that the defendant subjects himself to the jurisdiction of US courts.

Based on these and other arguments, Judge Mansfield concludes that the Court doesn’t have personal jurisdiction over the alleged site operator. Without even considering the other two elements of the minimum contacts test, he recommends denying the motion for a default judgment.

The recommendation is a setback for the movie companies. If the Court adopts it, they will not get their $150,000 damages through a default judgment. Neither will they get an injunction to take the site offline.

The filmmakers had more success a few weeks ago when they reached an agreement with the Pakistani operator of ‘latestshowboxapp.com,’ who agreed to pay a $150,000 settlement. Whether that will be paid in full is another question.

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A copy of Magistrate Judge Kenneth Mansfield’s findings and recommendations is available here (pdf).

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

In this episode Jamie meets up with John P. Carlin, author of Dawn of the Code War and former Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Security Division to discuss the ongoing network war with China — one that’s about to ratchet up, as 5G connects billions of devices via a technology heavily dependent on China’s Huawei.

What does it mean to wage war in the era of distributed networks? How do networks change the very idea of ‘Command and Control’ towards leaderless, non-hierarchical memetic structures? We dig into crowdsourced terrorism’ of Al Qaeda and look at some similarities with Anonymous and the QAnon phenomenon.

Finally, we discuss the widespread idea that there’s a kind of break with authority going on in the online era—what could be described as an ‘epistemological crisis’ created by our hyper-informational environment—one that’s being exploited and amplified by various lords of chaos to create new and unpredictable political realities.
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Steal This Show aims to release bi-weekly episodes featuring insiders discussing crypto, privacy, copyright and file-sharing developments. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary, and analysis.

Host: Jamie King

Guest: John P. Carlin

^{If you enjoy this episode, consider becoming a patron and getting involved with the show. Check out Steal This Show’s Patreon campaign: support us and get all kinds of fantastic benefits!}

Produced by Jamie King
Edited & Mixed by Lucas Marston
Original Music by David Triana
Web Production by Eric Barch

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

HP Inc sieht sich mit 33 Milliarden US-Dollar von xerox stark unterbewertet. Der Verwaltungsrat ist aber offen, andere Optionen für ein Zusammengehen mit Xerox zu erörtern. (HP, Drucker)

Huawei bietet an, Arbeitsplätze in dem schlecht versorgten ländlichen Teilen der USA zu retten und neu zu schaffen. Die Entity-Liste von Trump gefährde Tausende amerikanische Arbeitsplätze. (Huawei, Handy)