Month: April 2020

Review: Chris Hemsworth shows his dramatic acting chops in Extraction

Streaming services like Netflix provide a much-needed platform for mid-level films

Chris Hemsworth plays a ruthless mercenary whose latest mission calls for recusing a drug lord's kidnapped son from Bangladesh.

Enlarge / Chris Hemsworth plays a ruthless mercenary whose latest mission calls for recusing a drug lord's kidnapped son from Bangladesh. (credit: Netflix)

Chris Hemsworth gets a chance to stretch his acting chops as a hardened mercenary hired to rescue the kidnapped son of a crime lord in Mumbai, India, in Extraction, a new original action thriller from Netflix. The film is produced by the Russo Brothers (Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: End Game), which is probably how the film snagged Thor himself as the star. (We can probably thank Netflix for Stranger Things' David Harbour's cameo appearance.)

(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

Joe Russo penned the script, and the duo tapped stunt coordinator Sam Hargrave to make his directorial debut. Hargrave's stunt work has been featured in several MCU films (Captain America: Civil War, Thor: Ragnarok, for example), as well as The Hunger Games franchise and Atomic Blonde.

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Motion Picture Association Doubles Down on Push for US Pirate Site Blocking

Responding to questions from US Senators, the Motion Picture Association is stressing that DMCA takedown notices alone don’t cut it anymore. The Hollywood group argues that the current legal framework should be complemented with other tools, such as pirate site blocking. The MPA believes that these blockades are highly effective and no danger to free speech, but that idea isn’t shared by everyone.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

For a long time, pirate site blocking was regarded as a no-go topic in US politics.

This was a remnant of the SOPA defeat, which drove copyright holders to focus on blocking efforts in other countries instead, with success.

Now that nearly a decade has passed, momentum is changing. After Canada became the first North American country to impose a pirate site blockade, the issue is now openly debated on the Hill. Just a few weeks ago, it was the main topic during a Senate subcommittee hearing.

This hearing was informative but also raised further questions from Senators Tillis, Coons, and Blumenthal, who asked participants to follow up in writing. Stan McCoy, President and Managing Director of the Motion Picture Association’s EMEA region, for example, was asked to go into the site-blocking issue in more detail.

His answers, which have now been published, are carefully worded but clearly suggest that “takedown notices” alone are not effective in stopping piracy. According to the MPA, the standard takedown procedure must be paired with site blocking.

“The lesson of our experience at the Motion Picture Association is that notice-and-takedown must be complimented [sic] by voluntary proactive measures and other legal tools, such as no-fault injunctive relief,” McCoy writes.

This experience comes from the various blocking efforts in other countries. These have shown that the process works without significantly affecting the availability of legal content.

[T]he experiences of numerous jurisdictions that have implemented site blocking to date demonstrate clearly that the remedy is highly effective and has posed no obstacle to innovation, nor has it adversely affected the internet and online services in those countries.

“Quite the contrary in fact: By curbing piracy, this remedy enhances the opportunity for legitimate services to flourish,” McCoy adds.

During the Senate hearing, it was stressed that site blocking is already an option in the US. Under DMCA section 512(j), copyright holders can request such an injunction, without making any changes to the current law.

At the time, MPA’s Stan McCoy said this was a “hypothetical remedy” that may not work, so Senator Tillis asked him to explain what the problem is.

In his response, McCoy writes that the MPA indeed believes that the relevant DMCA section allows courts to order pirate site blockades. However, the text of the law is not entirely clear on whether ISPs have to be held liable or not.

“[T]his provision suffers from some drafting ambiguity – including its location within the overall safe harbor regime – and has likely not been used due to concern by rightsholders that the provision might be interpreted as requiring a finding of liability on the part of the ISP,” McCoy responds.

According to some, this could be fixed by changing the provision to allow for so-called “no-fault” injunctions. However, the MPA understands that legislative change is not easy, so they are also looking for alternative legal options, while also trying to get ISPs and other intermediaries to cooperate voluntarily.

Throughout his answers, the MPA executive repeats that site blocking is an effective tool. In response to a question from Senator Coons, McCoy confirms that the US can implement a similar framework while providing adequate due process protections and without violating free speech rights.

“[M]any jurisdictions around the world that share a strong commitment to human rights, including freedom of speech, have implemented site blocking with due process safeguards appropriate to their legal systems,” McCoy writes.

The responses clearly show that the MPA is continuing to push US lawmakers to consider options for ‘no fault’ site-blocking injunctions in the US.

The hearing and subsequent questions also included different opinions, however. As highlighted earlier, former Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda stressed that the availability of affordable legal options should be the priority.

More recently, Daphne Keller of Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center cautioned senators that site blockades have led to negative consequences in other countries, and that foreign standards may prove to be problematic in the US.

“Whatever attempted safeguards may pass muster under European or international standards for protection of free expression, however, there will likely remain serious questions under the U.S.’s stringent constitutional standards,” Keller cautioned.

As said before, these recent developments are a clear change compared to previous years, when the site-blocking topic was largely avoided. The question is whether this will result in any concrete legislative proposals.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

What does COVID-19 mean for car design? We ask Jaguar’s Julian Thomson

Plus he tells us about the new F-Type and forthcoming electric XJ sedan.

  • Jaguar recently moved into a massive new design studio packed with advanced technology. But currently, everyone's forced into working from home because of the coronavirus pandemic. [credit: Jaguar ]

Adapting to the coronavirus lockdown and the move en masse to working from home has been easier for some professions than others. We've been doing it since day one here at Ars, because typing at a computer is just as easy to do at home as it is a crowded office. That's less easy if you're, say, a car designer. "The design studio is a big workshop; it's a big collaborative workshop," says Julian Thomson, Jaguar's director of design, who like the rest of the organization now finds himself working from home in the UK. We spoke with Thomson this week to see how that's affecting his 300-strong team, what legacy this pandemic might leave on the cars that get designed in the future, as well as what to look for in the recent F-Type design refresh and the forthcoming XJ electric sedan.

The last few weeks have required a little adaptation for the Jaguar design studio. "In an organization like Jaguar Land Rover there are a lot of people who do just stand at a computer screen all day. But it's very unnatural for a designer or a modeller to do that" he explained. Pre-pandemic, Thomson says he'd hardly ever be found in his office. "I['d] spend the majority of my time just wandering around looking at models, talking to people, seeing what they're doing. If I have a question, more often than not, I walk over on the person's desk," he told me.

Thomson—whose design credits include the original Lotus Elise and the first-generation Range Rover Evoque—has had the top design job at Jaguar for a little under a year, replacing his former boss Ian Callum last July. A couple of months later, he and the rest of the company's designers moved into a new design studio in Gaydon, England, a 130,000 sq ft (12,000m2) space with state-of-the-art CNC clay modeling equipment, VR caves, and an 36-foot (11m) 4K display wall. "A whole new studio was built around a very collaborative communicative space. And so now to be stuck in my attic tied to an iPad is pretty strange for me and has had its moments," he said.

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