Month: February 2020

Mannesmann hatte schon 1999 versucht, die TV-Kabelnetze der Telekom zu kaufen, die Vodafone erst später erworben hat. Mannesmann hatte ein Konzept für Festnetz und Mobilfunk. (Vodafone, Kabelnetz)

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Ursprünglich sollte auf das Surface Hub 2S das 2X als ein modulares System folgen. Diese Pläne ändert Microsoft und will stattdessen ein vollwertiges Windows 10 kostenlos für das Konferenzsystem verteilen. Ende des Jahres folgt das 85-Zoll-Modell. (Surface, Display)

Am 31. August 2020 endet eine Ära: TCL wird die Produktion von Blackberry-Smartphones einstellen. Nach über 20 Jahren wird es keine neuen Mobilgeräte mit Blackberry-Logo mehr geben. Zuvor gekaufte Geräte sollen noch bis 2022 unterstützt werden. (Blackberry, Smartphone)

Telefónica Deutschland leiht sich Geld, um die Ziele beim Netzausbau zu erreichen. Ab dem Jahr 2020 sollen mehrere Milliarden Euro in das Netz investiert werden. (Telefónica, Telekom)

Huawei steht derzeit im Zentrum des Medieninteresses - und so wird auch mehr über den Gründer und Chef Ren Zhengfei bekannt, der sich bisher so gut wie möglich aus der Öffentlichkeit ferngehalten hatte. Ein Porträt von Achim Sawall (Huawei, IBM)

Die Kundschaft wartet offensichtlich auf die neue Konsole: Sony hat von der Playstation 4 im letzten Quartal 2019 rund 6,1 Millionen Geräte verkauft. Klingt viel - ist aber viel weniger als früher. (Playstation 4, Sony)

Für einen kurzen Zeitraum im November hat ein Bug bei Google Fotos dafür gesorgt, dass beim Export der persönlichen Daten Videos vertauscht wurden. Einige Nutzer erhielten Zugriff auf die Privatvideos von anderen. (Google, Datenschutz)

Open-Source-Entwickler haben auf der Fosdem die Open Food Facts vorgestellt - ein Wikipedia-artiges Projekt, das Informationen zu Lebensmitteln sammelt und bewertet. Aber auch darüber hinaus ist die Landwirtschaft ein Thema für die Entwickler. (Open Source, Applikationen)

Last year, several major Hollywood studios filed a piracy lawsuit against Omniverse One World Television.

Under the flag of anti-piracy group ACE, the companies accused Omniverse and its owner Jason DeMeo of supplying pirated streaming channels to various IPTV services.

Omniverse offered live-streaming services to third-party distributors, such as Dragon Box and HDHomerun, which in turn offered live TV streaming packages to customers. According to ACE, the company was a pirate streaming TV supplier, offering these channels without permission from its members.

The IPTV supplier initially denied the allegations and countered that it did everything by the book. The company pointed to a licensing deal it had with cable company Hovsat, which relied on a long-standing agreement with DirecTV to distribute TV content.

As the case progressed, the Hovsat deal didn’t turn out to be as solid as expected. After several IPTV providers distanced themselves from Omniverse, it threw in the towel. Last November the company agreed to a liability judgment of $50 million for the copyright infringements it caused.

While Omniverse agreed to the monstrous judgment, it mostly blames Hovsat, as it made clear in a separate complaint that was filed against the company last summer. The IPTV supplier always believed that it was properly licensed and wants Hovsat to cover the multi-million piracy bill.

As time went by it became apparent that Hovsat, a revoked New Jersey corporation, wasn’t responding in court. The same is true for its alleged owner Shant Hovnanian. This lack of response has now prompted Omniverse to request a default judgment.

In a new filing submitted at a federal court in California, Omniverse is demanding $50 million, the exact damages amount it agreed with the Hollywood studios last November.

“HovSat is the party responsible for the copyright infringement alleged by the Plaintiffs by way of misrepresenting to Omniverse that HovSat actually received a license to distribute the copyrighted content through agreements with DirecTV,” Omniverse writes.

The defunct IPTV supplier accuses Hovsat of fraudulently claiming that it had a valid and lawful copyright license from DirecTV. This breach of contract made Omniverse liable for millions of dollars in damages.

“Had HovSat not made the misrepresentations regarding acquiring the distribution licenses for the copyrighted content, and thus not breached their contract with Omniverse, Omniverse would have never been subject to the above-caption lawsuit raised by Plaintiffs. It logically follows that HovSat’s misrepresentations thus proximately and directly caused the $50,000,000 in damages suffered by Omniverse,” the filing adds.

The court has yet to sign off on the default judgment. However, since Hovsat is not defending itself in court, there is a good chance that the IPTV supplier will indeed come out the winner. Whether it will ever recoup any of the potential damages from Hovsat is another question.

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A copy of the proposed default judgment, which has yet to be signed off, 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.