Month: December 2019

Die freie Spracherkennung Deep Speech von Mozilla läuft in der aktuellen Version 0.6 auch auf wenig leistungsfähigen Chips in Echtzeit. Darüber hinaus hat das Team das Modell weiter deutlich verkleinert. (Mozilla, Spracherkennung)

Earlier this year, a group of companies including the makers of films such as “The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” “London Has Fallen,” and “Hunter Killer,” went after the operators of various websites.

In a lawsuit filed at a U.S. District Court in Hawaii, the movie companies accused several defendants of operating websites that promoted or linked to piracy apps including ShowBox and Popcorn Time.

The apps, which are used by millions of people, all provide access to a library of streamable movies and TV-shows. These are published without permission, the rightsholders pointed out, which results in massive piracy.

“Plaintiffs bring this action to stop the massive piracy of their motion pictures brought on by the software application Show Box,” the 58-page complaint began.

The lawsuit targeted several defendants, who were all suspected of having ties to one or more piracy-related sites. One of these stood out in particular – digital marketing agency Pebble Bridge – which is an Indian LLP with a listed ‘office’ address in New York.

The company in question was allegedly connected to sites such as showboxforipad.com, showbox.fun, and show-box.pro. The company was also listed as the owner of terrariumtv.life, moviebox.software and mobrdo.mobi.

In addition, the movie companies pointed out that an IP-address associated with Pebble Bridge was found sharing a copy of “London Has Fallen” via BitTorrent.

After the complaint was filed, several of the mentioned sites stopped linking to any of the pirate apps. While Pebble Bridge didn’t respond to the allegations in court, it did start negotiations with the movie companies behind the scenes.

A few days ago, this resulted in a consent judgment where the digital marketing agency, represented by two of its partners, admitted that it was indeed behind the mentioned sites. In addition, the company also took the blame for sharing a movie on BitTorrent.

“Defendant Pebblebridge Technologies, LLP admits to describing and providing links to the Show Box app as described in paragraphs 45-88 of the Complaint and reproducing copies of the motion picture London Has Fallen as alleged in paragraph 207 of the Complaint,” the consent judgment reads.

The judgment, which all parties agreed on, also includes a permanent injunction prohibiting Pebble Bridge and its partners from promoting or distributing any piracy apps going forward.

“Defendant Pebblebridge Technologies, LLP, its designated partners Udatala Vinay Kumar and Mangilipudi Vishnudath Reddy, and those under its control are hereby permanently enjoined from promoting and or distributing movie piracy applications,” it reads.

This specifically includes apps such as ShowBox, Popcorn Time, CotoMovies, MediaBox HD, Cinemabox, Moviebox, Terrarium, and Mobdro, as well as any software that’s affiliated with YIFY, YTS, RARBG, Torrentz2, NYAA.si, LimeTorrents, Zooqle; EZTV, and TorrentDownloads.

Interestingly, the consent judgment doesn’t include a settlement amount. It is possible that the parties agreed to deal with this outside of court, but it’s not part of the court order. The same is true for a separate and similar consent judgment that was signed by a Pebble Bridge employee.

This week’s orders are not the first in this case. Previously a Pakistani man agreed to pay a settlement of $150,000 for operating another ShowBox site, ‘latestshowboxapp.com’.

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A copy of the consent judgment against Pebble Bridge, signed by Hawaii District Court Judge Leslie Kobayashi, 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.

Jubelnde Massen, ehrliche Entwickler und ein 30 Kilogramm schweres Modell des Javelin-Zerstörers: Die Citizencon 2949 hat gezeigt, wie sehr die Community ihr Star Citizen liebt. Auf der anderen Seite reden Entwickler Klartext, statt Marketing-Floskeln zum Besten zu geben. Das steckt an. Ein IMHO von Oliver Nickel (Star Citizen, 3D-Drucker)

Xiaomi hat das neue Elektrofahrrad Mi Qicycle vorgestellt, das sich für den Transport zusammenfalten lässt. Das Modell ist mit 20-Zoll-Reifen ausgerüstet. (E-Bike, Technologie)

Apples iPhone 11 Pro greift auf das ortsgebundene Tracking auch dann zu, wenn dies in den Optionen deaktiviert ist. Das liegt an Regularien zur Ultra-Wideband-Technik, die in dem Smartphone verbaut ist. Künftig soll iOS einen funktionierenden Tracking-Abschalter erhalten. (UWB, Apple)

The Pirate Bay has been operating one of its original domains – thepiratebay.org – for well over 15 years. During that same period, it has also burned through countless others due to anti-piracy action all around the globe.

The Pirate Bay is also one of the most blocked platforms on the planet for the same reason, something that has led to the creation of hundreds of proxy sites, set up to facilitate access to the index, regardless of which official domain is in use.

Last evening the operator of a site that indexes links to some of these proxies told TorrentFreak that their owners had noticed that The Pirate Bay’s Onion site had been down for several hours, which is unusual. After further investigation, it was discovered that the site had switched from the extremely messy uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion to piratebayztemzmv.onion.

Accessible via the Tor browser, for example, Onion domains grant access to the so-called ‘dark web’, which is a fancy way of describing sites and services that aren’t visible using a normal search engine or accessible by regular means. In the case of TPB, being hidden inside the Tor network also provides extra security for the raid and lawsuit-prone index.

While there has been no official announcement from TPB’s operators about the Onion domain switch, the new address can now be seen when hovering over the ‘Tor’ link on the site. Exactly why the site’s operators made the change isn’t entirely clear, however.

The new Onion domain is certainly easier to read than the old one, but still not easy to remember. That being said, it is an improvement over its predecessor and now is probably a very good time to get everyone familiar with it.

As reported here recently, the Internet Society is in the process of selling the Public Interest Registry which currently controls The Pirate Bay’s .org domain. As a result, there are concerns that the new owners may throw the infamous domain overboard on copyright grounds.

If that does indeed happen, the Onion domain will certainly come in handy, as will the hundreds of pre-existing proxy sites currently doing a dance around dozens of blockades, all around the world.

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

Tesla hat für seine Fabrik in Deutschland eine eigene Aktiengesellschaft gegründet, die den Produktionsstandort im Namen trägt. Die Tesla Manufacturing Brandenburg SE gehört Teslas niederländischer Firma Tesla International B.V. (Tesla, Technologie)

Egal ob Brille oder Headset: Mit dem Snapdragon XR2 sollen AR-, MR- und VR-Geräte deutlich besser werden. Der Chip ist eine Version des Snapdragon 865, er unterstützt Augen-, Gesichts- und Hand-Tracking. (Snapdragon, Augmented Reality)

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