Month: April 2020

COVID-19: Der Coronavirus und die Zivilisation

Ausgangssperren sind ein Ausdruck von Hilflosigkeit, nicht von Macht, besonders in Deutschland verbreiten alternative Medien, dass die Corona-Krise ein aus finsteren Motiven fabrizierter Fake ist

Ausgangssperren sind ein Ausdruck von Hilflosigkeit, nicht von Macht, besonders in Deutschland verbreiten alternative Medien, dass die Corona-Krise ein aus finsteren Motiven fabrizierter Fake ist

YTS Agrees to a Million Dollars in Piracy Settlements and Remains Online

Popular torrent site YTS has ‘settled’ another piracy lawsuit, this time with seven movie companies. The site’s operator and an associated business agreed to a consent judgment totaling $1,050,000 in damages. YTS removed the relevant movie torrents from the site but remains online. The site’s users are not in the clear though, and risk being sued as well.

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

Traditionally, when copyright holders go after pirate sites their main mission is to shut them down permanently.

This strategy has resulted in the demise of thousands of websites over the past decade or so.

In some cases these shutdowns are easy, only requiring a cease and desist order to be delivered to the owner’s home address. However, there are also prolonged legal battles, such as the one against isoHunt.

In Hawaii, a group of movie companies, tied to films such as ‘Hitman’s Bodyguard,’ ‘Hunter Killer’ and ‘Mechanic Resurrection,’ has taken a different path. They sued the operator of the popular torrent site YTS.mx last year but are allowing the site to stay online, under certain conditions.

The tactic previously became public when attorney Kerry Culpepper struck a deal between YTS and other movie companies. This allowed YTS to stay online as long as it paid damages and made sure that their films were not listed at the torrent site.

Now, a group of seven related movie companies has agreed to a similar deal. In a consent judgment, signed at the Hawaii federal court a few days ago, the torrent site operators agreed to pay $150,000 to each company, which amounts to a total of $1,050,000 in damages.

The consent judgment lists a person named Senthil Vijay Segaran and the company Techmodo as the YTS operators. In addition to paying over $1 million in piracy damages, they also agreed to remove the torrents of the movie companies, and prevent these from being reuploaded.

While a monetary settlement is not unprecedented, it is quite unusual that YTS is being allowed to continue to operate as usual. Aside from removing torrents that point to the seven movies, nothing appears to have changed. YTS still lists hundreds of other pirated movies.

This pragmatic stance may perhaps be the easy option for all involved. However, it does seem odd, especially considering the recent anti-piracy push from Millenium Media co-president Jonathan Yunger, who urged US Congress towards more stringent anti-piracy legislation.

“Piracy is an existential threat to our business and the livelihoods of all the individual creatives who work so hard to bring entertainment to audiences,” Yunger told Congress last month.

This is worth mentioning since Yunger’s company produced many of the movies that are at the base of this lawsuit. In fact, most of the companies that signed a deal with YTS are affiliates of Millenium Media.

YTS.mx today

The precise motivations are open to speculation, at least for now. However, we do know that these consent judgments are not the end of the story. At least not for YTS users.

After the first deal was announced a few months ago, the movie companies started filing lawsuits against YTS users. This included some who were using a VPN. The associated complaints further included information that appeared to have come directly from the torrent site’s database.

So, it’s possible that the rightsholders received more from YTS than money alone. Details from the user database perhaps? That would be in line with earlier enforcement efforts, where the film companies obtained user information from the operator of the piracy app CotoMovies.

TorrentFreak spoke to the attorney of the movie companies this week who confirmed that YTS users are indeed at risk. However, in recent weeks, no new lawsuits have been filed as far as we can see.

We will keep a close eye on these and other cases to see if more details emerge.

In addition to the proposed consent judgment against YTS, the seven movie companies also agreed to a similar deal with the operator of YIFYmovies.is. This torrent site was considerably smaller and shut down months ago, however, the operator also agreed to pay $1,050,000 in damages, on paper.

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Here is a copy of the consent judgment, signed by the YTS operator as well as Venice PI LLC, MON LLC, Millennium Funding Inc., Bodyguard Productions Inc., TBV Productions LLC, UN4 Productions Inc., and Hunter Killer Productions Inc.

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

That no-click iOS 0-day reported to be under exploit doesn’t exist, Apple says

Other critics also question evidence and say 0day may have been confused with simple bug.

That no-click iOS 0-day reported to be under exploit doesn’t exist, Apple says

Enlarge (credit: Titanas)

Apple is disputing the accuracy of this week’s report that found attackers have been exploiting an unpatched iOS bug that allowed them to take full control of iPhones.

San Francisco-based security firm ZecOps said on Wednesday that attackers had used the zero-day exploit against at least six targets over a span of at least two years. In the now-disputed report, ZecOps had said the critical flaw was located in the Mail app and could be triggered be sending specially manipulated emails that required no interaction on the part of users.

Apple declined to comment on the report at the time. Late on Thursday night, however, Apple pushed back on ZecOps’ findings that (a) the bug posed a threat to iPhone and iPad users and (b) there had been any active exploit at all. In a statement, officials wrote:

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Faebook launches Messenger Rooms (Chat with up to 50 people, send links to non-FB users)

Video conferencing system Zoom has seen its user base explode over the past few months as millions of people stay at home to slow the spread of COVID-19. So it’s not surprising to see rivals starting to copy some of Zoom’s most popular feat…

Video conferencing system Zoom has seen its user base explode over the past few months as millions of people stay at home to slow the spread of COVID-19. So it’s not surprising to see rivals starting to copy some of Zoom’s most popular features. Case in point — Facebook has launched a new group video […]

HiSense Q5 is a 10.5 inch Android tablet with an E Ink screen

This week Chinese device maker unveiled a new line of smartphones with color E Ink displays. But they’re not the company’s only new E Ink devices. The Hisense Q5 is a 10.5 inch tablet with a grayscale E Ink display, an octa-core processor, …

This week Chinese device maker unveiled a new line of smartphones with color E Ink displays. But they’re not the company’s only new E Ink devices. The Hisense Q5 is a 10.5 inch tablet with a grayscale E Ink display, an octa-core processor, and Android 10 software. It’s expected to be available in China on […]

Amazon reportedly used merchant data, despite telling Congress it doesn’t

Amazon is a competitor to its own third-party merchants, and probes abound.

An Amazon warehouse on a sunny day in Germany on April 2, 2020.

Enlarge / An Amazon warehouse on a sunny day in Germany on April 2, 2020. (credit: Patrick Pleul | picture alliance | Getty Images)

Amazon accounts for about a third of all US Internet retail sales, but it didn't get there entirely on its own. It did so, in part, with the assistance of hundreds of thousands of smaller vendors who signed up to sell their goods on Amazon's third-party merchant marketplace, which accounts for more than half the company's retail sales. In theory, those agreements were beneficial for all involved: shoppers could easily one-stop-shop for products, merchants could rely on Amazon's front and back-end infrastructure instead of building out their own, and Amazon could get a nice consistent cut flowing in.

The calculus of who benefits most from these arrangements, however, has changed over time. Amazon now offers a wide array of its own in-house brands, making it a direct competitor to many of the merchants who rely on its platform to reach consumers. That would be challenge enough, but the behemoth also captures sales data from those third-party vendors, then uses it to launch its own product lines and undercut the smaller firms, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The WSJ reviewed internal company documents showing Amazon executives requesting and accessing data from specific marketplace vendors, despite corporate policies against doing so. More than 20 former employees told the paper the practice of flouting those rules was commonplace. "We knew we shouldn’t," one former employee said of accessing that data. "But at the same time, we are making Amazon branded products, and we want them to sell."

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