February 2020 – Page 30 – news.buyenne.com

Movie Company Links ‘Notorious Copyright Thief’ Peter Sunde to MKVCage Lawsuit

The makers of the movie ‘Hellboy’ have filed an amended complaint against the popular torrent site MKVCage. While the site disappeared after the legal pressure became public, the lawsuit isn’t going away. Instead, the movie company now links MKVCage to Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde, who they describe as a ‘notorious copyright thief.’

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

A group of movie companies, operating under the parent company Millennium Funding, is pursuing legal action against key piracy players.

Through various copyright infringement lawsuits and DMCA subpoenas they have gone after targets ranging from Popcorn Time through YTS, to Showbox and MKVCage.

The case against MKVCage, filed last summer, had an immediate effect. Not long after the complaint was submitted to a Hawaii District Court, MKVCage became unreachable. At the same time, the uploader stopped pushing torrents to other sites as well.

Aside from a brief comeback, the site remains missing in action today. However, that doesn’t mean that the lawsuit is over too. A few days ago, the makers of the film Hellboy submitted an amended complaint against the alleged operator, a Pakistani man named Muhammad Faizan.

Hellboy Productions accuses Faizan of promoting and distributing pirated copies of its movie. The complaint also lists 35 John Doe defendants, who presumably downloaded the film.

While many of these allegations were already present in the original complaint, the new version does introduce a new name into the mix. According to Hellboy Productions, MKVCage is linked to a ‘notorious copyright thief.’

The movie company writes that Faizan began “operating the website mkvcage.nl” together with 1337 Services LLC, which is associated with Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.

“1337 was created and is controlled by Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi,” Hellboy writes, adding that “Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi is a notorious copyright thief who was sentenced to prison in Sweden for his creation of The Pirate Bay.”

This sounds rather ominous. However, the complaint fails to mention that 1337 Services LLC is the company behind Njalla, which is a service that allows people to privately register domain names. And indeed, a Whois lookup for MKVCage.nl shows 1337 Services as the registrant.

This pushes the joint operation claim into an entirely different light. Njalla has many customers, including the Catalonian government, but it doesn’t operate the sites which are tied to these domains.

Peter Sunde informs TorrentFreak that he’d never heard of MKVcage until now. He is also not aware of any abuse emails regarding the domain name.

“As far as I know we haven’t even received an abuse e-mail regarding MKVcage, but I guess that’s their strategy. If they send abuse e-mails they might get services suspended and thus not being able to sue people,” Sunde says.

The Pirate Bay co-founder stresses that 1337 Services LLC is owned by a foundation, which is information they would have gladly shared if asked. The company is operated by many people who may feel left out now, as they may also want to be labeled as copyright thieves.

“My co-workers may be upset that they don’t get any credit for 1337’s work now, so I’m so sorry. They also want to be notorious copyright thieves,” Sunde notes.

Neither Sunde nor 1337 Services are defendants in the case. They are little more than a passing mention, perhaps to make it appear as if there’s something more going on than there is.

In earlier court filings the movie company actually referred to 1337 Services as a privacy service, which wasn’t clarified in the most recent filing.

Finally, Sunde points out that he’s not really a copyright thief. While he may have duplicated a file or two, he never ‘stole’ anyone’s copyright, which is simply impossible. This is something the US Copyright Office can confirm.

While Sunde is not in any trouble, in this case, Faizan is. Hellboy Productions accuses him of direct and contributory copyright infringement. The movie company claims to have suffered $270,902.58 in damages and would like to have that compensated.

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A copy of the amended complaint Hellboy Productions filed against Muhammad Faizan 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.

Movie Company Links ‘Notorious Copyright Thief’ Peter Sunde to MKVCage Lawsuit

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

A group of movie companies, operating under the parent company Millennium Funding, is pursuing legal action against key piracy players.

Through various copyright infringement lawsuits and DMCA subpoenas they have gone after targets ranging from Popcorn Time through YTS, to Showbox and MKVCage.

Hellboy Productions accuses Faizan of promoting and distributing pirated copies of its movie. The complaint also lists 35 John Doe defendants, who presumably downloaded the film.

The movie company writes that Faizan began “operating the website mkvcage.nl” together with 1337 Services LLC, which is associated with Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.

Peter Sunde informs TorrentFreak that he’d never heard of MKVcage until now. He is also not aware of any abuse emails regarding the domain name.

“My co-workers may be upset that they don’t get any credit for 1337’s work now, so I’m so sorry. They also want to be notorious copyright thieves,” Sunde notes.

Neither Sunde nor 1337 Services are defendants in the case. They are little more than a passing mention, perhaps to make it appear as if there’s something more going on than there is.

In earlier court filings the movie company actually referred to 1337 Services as a privacy service, which wasn’t clarified in the most recent filing.

—

A copy of the amended complaint Hellboy Productions filed against Muhammad Faizan 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.

Daily Deals (2-21-2020)

CBS All Access normally offers a 7-day free trial for new subscribers to the online video streaming service. But if you sign up by February 28th and use the coupon DETECTIVE at checkout, you can get the a whole month free. Returning subscribers can als…

The post Daily Deals (2-21-2020) appeared first on Liliputing.

Made in USA: Glasexperte Corning und Qualcomm bieten 5G Small Cells

Mit Corning und Qualcomm sind zwei US-Unternehmen im Bereich RAN aktiv, wie Trump es sich wünscht. Doch die 5G Small Cells arbeiten nur im Millimeterwellenbereich. (Corning, Qualcomm)

Facebook offers to pay users for their voice recordings

Makers of smart speakers have faced criticism for sharing data without consent.

Facebook is offering to pay its users for personal information including recordings of their own voice, in a rare example of internet companies directly compensating people for collecting their data.

The recordings, made through its new market research app Viewpoints, will help to train the speech recognition system that powers Facebook’s Portal devices, which rival Amazon’s Echo speakers and its Alexa virtual assistant.

Makers of smart speakers including Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google faced criticism last year when it emerged that they were routinely sending users’ voice recordings to human moderators, without revealing the practice to customers or obtaining their consent.

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An extended interview with Atrus himself, Myst creator Rand Miller

If you have a couple of hours, come learn everything about how Myst came to be.

Video shot by Justin Wolfson, edited by Aulistar Mark. Transcript is still processing and will be posted as soon as it's ready (should be within 24 hours).

A couple of weeks back after running our War Stories piece on Oddworld, we took a chance and published an extended cut of the interview with Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning. Readers responded very well to the extended interview, so we're doing it again—this time with Myst creator Rand Miller.

To produce our War Stories video on Myst and its CD-ROM-based design challenges, we spent more or less the entire day at the Cyan offices in beautiful Washington state, where Rand and his team were the very soul of hospitality (they even insisted on buying coffee for the crew while we were shooting). The pastoral setting—everything looked so much like Myst island!—brought out the storyteller in Rand and, as usually happens with these things, we got way more stories and tales of game design out of him than we ever could have crammed into a 15-minute video.

So here we are, with Rand unleashed. Hear more about the creative process behind The Manhole and the magical tool that was HyperCard! See Rand talk about Cosmic Osmo and the transition from black and white to color game design! Feel the... uh... OK, there's no tactile component to this whole deal, so you'll have to come up with something on your own to feel. (Maybe grab a Myst box and give it a squeeze, or, you know, whatever you're into.)

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Google cracks down on location-tracking Android apps

New Play Store policy will make apps justify background location access.

Alongside the launch of the Android 11 Developer Preview, Google announced a plan to crack down on Android apps that request the user's location in the background. Just as we saw with Google's pushback against apps that use the accessibility APIs for things that aren't accessibility related, Google will be flexing the power it has over the Play Store and manually reviewing apps that request location data in the background.

Writing about the new policy, Google says, "As we took a closer look at background location usage, we found that many of the apps that requested background location didn’t actually need it. In fact, many of these apps could provide the same user experience by only accessing location when the app is visible to the user." The company says that apps on the Play Store will soon be evaluated by humans to see if the apps actually need the background location permissions they are requesting. Google lays out the following criteria for requesting background location:

Later this year, we will be updating Google Play policy to require that developers get approval if they want to access location data in the background. Factors that will be looked at include:

Does the feature deliver clear value to the user?

Would users expect the app to access their location in the background?

Is the feature important to the primary purpose of the app?

Can you deliver the same experience without accessing location in the background?

All apps will be evaluated against the same factors, including apps made by Google, and all submissions will be reviewed by people on our team.

The blog post also lists a timeline for the new location rules:

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Coronavirus patients flew to US after CDC “explicitly recommended against it”

State Dept. overruled health experts amid unexpected test results, report says.

Jumbo jets arrived to evacuate US citizens from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, with people quarantined onboard due to fears of the new COVID-19 coronavirus, at the Haneda airport in Tokyo on February 16, 2020. - The number of people who have tested positive for the new coronavirus on a quarantined ship off Japan's coast has risen to 355, the country's health minister said. (Photo by Kazuhiro NOGI / AFP) (Photo by KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP via Getty Images)

Health officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not want 14 people who had tested positive for the new coronavirus to be flown back to the US, among hundreds of other uninfected people—but the CDC experts were overruled by officials at the US State Department, according to a report by The Washington Post.

On Sunday, February 16, the 14 positive people flew from Japan to the US on State Department-chartered planes. They were among over 300 others, all evacuees from the luxury cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, which had an explosive outbreak of COVID-19 cases.

The cruise ship, initially carrying 3,711 passengers and crew, had been quarantined in Yokohama, Japan since February 3, after a former passenger tested positive on February 1. But the quarantine efforts failed to curb the spread of the virus on board, and case counts steadily climbed during the 14-day confinement. Even in the last days, health officials in Japan were still reporting dozens of new cases.

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A weed dealer’s $59M lesson: Don’t hide Bitcoin keys with a fishing rod

The man reportedly “regarded [the loss] as punishment for his own stupidity.”

If only it were this easy to catch lost Bitcoin credentials.

In a world where various mass breachers dictate the use of strong, randomized passwords more than ever, reliable and secure credentials management is paramount in 2020. One Irish drug dealer has evidently learned this lesson the hard way.

This week, the Irish Times reported the sad tale of Clifton Collins, a 49-year-old cannabis grower from Dublin. Collins quietly grew and sold his product for 12 years, and he amassed a small fortune by using some of that revenue to buy bitcoins around 2011 and 2012 before the price of the cryptocurrency soared. But in 2017, state authorities on a routine overnight patrol spotted and then arrested Collins with an estimated $2,171 of cannabis in his car. The man quickly earned himself a five-year jail sentence.

According to the Times: as part of authorities' investigation, Ireland's Criminal Assets Bureau discovered and confiscated 12 Bitcoin wallets belonging to Collins totaling nearly $59 million (reportedly the biggest financial case in CAB's 25-year-history). There was only one problem—CAB couldn't access the accounts because Collins had lost the keys.

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Onward film review: Pixar rolls a 20, nails homage to D&D-styled adventure

Pixar’s clever appropriation of D&D, fantasy lore is anchored by a memorable story.

Ian (left, voiced by Tom Holland) and Barley (Chris Pratt) don't always get along as brothers, but in <em>Onward</em>, they must join forces to figure out a magical mystery.

Now that Pixar's latest film is officially in US theaters, we are resurfacing our review, which was originally published on February 21st.

Pixar's latest feature-length film, Onward, doesn't reach US theaters until March 6, and it's rare for us at Ars Technica to review a film so far in advance of its launch. When we do, it's usually for good reason.

In Onward's case, that's because we haven't seen a film so easy to recommend to Ars Technica readers in years. We know our average demographic: parents and older readers who are deeply fluent in decades of nerd culture and who appreciate films that offer genuine laughs, likable characters, and tightly sewn logic in family-friendly fashion without compromising the dialogue, plot, or heart—or beating an original, previously beloved franchise into the ground. Pixar has come out screaming with a film that feels focus-tested for that exact audience, and I'm already eager to attend the film again in two weeks.

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