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Informationsfreiheitsgesetz gewährt Geheimdiensten eine “Bereichsausnahme”, jetzt soll die Geheimhaltung durch interne Anweisungen für alle Ewigkeit zementiert werden
Informationsfreiheitsgesetz gewährt Geheimdiensten eine “Bereichsausnahme”, jetzt soll die Geheimhaltung durch interne Anweisungen für alle Ewigkeit zementiert werden
Nach 250 Jahren kapitalistischen Wirtschaftens bedroht die hemmungslose Suche nach Nachschub für die längst ausgeschöpften Anlagemöglichkeiten für aufgehäufte gigantische Kapitalberge nicht nur das Weltklima, sondern auch den Weltfrieden. Ein Ausweg is…
In manchen amerikanischen Sheriff Departments tragen sich merkwürdige Dinge zu. Dort sollen tätowierte Gangs das Sagen haben
The Hollywood studios of the MPA plus Amazon and Netflix have obtained an injunction against ‘pirate’ IPTV provider Crystal Clear Media. The action comes in response to a lawsuit filed in the US last month, in which the companies alleged copyright infringement of thousands of movies and TV shows.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
In addition to serving cease-and-desist notices on various players involved in the supply of pirated movies and TV shows, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment often takes matters a step further.
Mostly via copyright infringement lawsuits filed in the United States, the global anti-piracy coalition has accused several providers of acting outside the law, hoping to shut the services down and achieve a damages award or significant settlement.
During August, ACE sued pirate provider Crystal Clear Media (CCM) under its business name TTKN Enterprises LLC. It also named Todd and Tori Smith of Florida as defendants, identifying them as the operators of CCM.
A key feature of the case is the emphasis placed on so-called VOD content. While CCM and other providers tend to provide thousands of live TV channels, they also delivered so-called 24/7 channels (which reportedly offered “marathons of Disney’s movie Frozen II and Warner Bros.’s Harry Potter movie collection”) along with other mainstream movies on-demand.
According to the complaint, CCM knew this was a problem after ACE successfully shut down the Vaders IPTV platform last year. However, instead of backing away, CCM continued to provide access to video-on-demand while cultivating a network of resellers dedicated to servicing existing and prospective CCM customers.
The ultimate goals of the lawsuit against CCM are to win a permanent injunction to take it offline while obtaining a substantial damages award. With statutory damages running to $150,000 per title infringed, significant amounts are on the table.
In the first instance, however, the ACE members – including Disney, Paramount, Amazon, Netflix and others – sought a preliminary injunction with a number of key elements. That was comprehensively achieved via an order handed down by Judge George H. Wu in a California district court this week.
Addressing the plaintiffs’ claims under 17 U.S.C. § 106 of the Copyright Act, Judge Wu ordered the defendants not to directly or secondarily infringe any of the rights owned or controlled by the plaintiffs in respect of their copyrighted works.
While that effectively prevents the CCM service from operating, the Judge also responded to requests from the plaintiffs to render unusable a wide range of domain names previously deployed by the IPTV provider.
“Except to as requested by Plaintiffs, Defendants shall not transfer or otherwise relinquish control to the domains: mediahosting.one, crystalcleariptv.com, ccmedia.one, ccbilling.org, cciptv.us, ccreborn.one, ccultimate.one, superstreamz.com and webplayer.us,” the order reads.
Along those same lines, the Judge further ordered GoDaddy, One.com and their respective registrars to disable access to the above domains while preventing them from being modified, sold, transferred or deleted. The WHOIS information of the domains must also be preserved, including all contact and similar identifying information.
Additionally, the listed domain companies, plus all others receiving notice of the order, must preserve all evidence that may be used to identify the people that used the domains in question to infringe copyright.
The original complaint alleges that CCM operated an “extensive and expanding” reseller network. These people bulk-bought “credits” from CCM that were converted to subscriber login credentials when purchased by customers.
“Defendants’ reseller program plays a pivotal role in their infringing enterprise. Defendants’ resellers market and promote CCM as a substitute for authorized and licensed distributors,” the lawsuit claims.
After hearing that this expansion poses an exponential infringement threat, Judge Wu agreed that the network of sellers must also be prevented from operating. With that, he granted permission for the entertainment companies to complete service of process on anyone acting in concert with the defendants, including resellers of the service.
“Upon receipt of a copy of this Order, these individuals and entities shall cease directly or secondarily infringing any of Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works through any means including publicly performing, reproducing, or otherwise infringing in any manner…any right under 17 U.S.C § 106 in any of Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works by continuing to provide access to Defendants’ service or by any other means,” the Judge added.
While CCM is already believed to be out of action, the above paragraph indicates that if resellers of CCM are currently offering other IPTV packages from a different supplier that also offer illegal access to the plaintiffs’ content, they must stop doing that too after receiving a copy of the order.
The preliminary injunction is available here (pdf)
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
“CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration,” reads one email.
Enlarge / Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), listens during a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus. Redfield may be finding himself trapped between scientists and political appointees. (credit: Getty Images)
Political appointees in the Department of Health and Human services are objecting to reports on the COVID-19 pandemic from the Centers for Disease Control, and are trying to exercise editorial control of future reports. That's the bottom line of an extensive report from Politico that was based on both internal emails and interviews with people in the organization. The problems apparently stem from the fact-based reports from the CDC running counter to the Trump administration's preferred narrative about the spread of the pandemic and the appropriate public health responses.
The CDC documents at issue are termed Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which provide rapid summaries of the state of our knowledge about public health issues. Typically, they're the product of a CDC-backed investigation into a known issue; in the past, they've focused on things like outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. While they don't have the weight of peer-reviewed literature, they're widely considered to be scientifically reliable, and their rapid publication makes them a valuable resource for public health officials.
It's easy to see how the reports' accurate information could be viewed as counter to the preferred message of the Trump administration. Trump has made reopening schools a centerpiece of his pandemic policy, but CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly reports have described how SARS-CoV-2 can spread rapidly in a school-aged population, how young children can bring the disease home and pass it on to adults, and how children can suffer severe complications from the disease.
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Phone-location dataset shows correlation with election results.
Enlarge / Hurricane Irma as it strikes Florida. (credit: NASA EO)
Before Hurricane Irma hit Florida in 2017, radio entertainer (and Florida resident) Rush Limbaugh falsely ranted that landfalling hurricanes are “never as strong as they’re reported,” claiming that life-saving forecasts are exaggerated “to advance this climate change agenda.” Beyond his radio audience, the comments generated a fair amount of news coverage. Yet Limbaugh evacuated his beachfront mansion a few days later.
Given the cultural polarization about certain scientific facts, it’s fair to wonder if these irresponsible falsehoods had a discernible impact on evacuations. UCLA’s Elisa Long, Keith Chen, and Ryne Rohla used a phone-location dataset to find out. They compared evacuations for Irma to those in Texas for Hurricane Harvey and to Florida’s 2016 Hurricane Matthew.
The dataset includes anonymized locations from millions of phones, so it requires some simplified processing. Each phone’s home location is defined by its most common location in the week previous to the first hurricane alert. Then, for a window of time around the hurricane, evacuations are determined by a change in location that lasts at least 24 hours.
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Persistent online conspiracy theory repurposes itself for new audiences around the world.
Enlarge / BOSTON—A man wearing a QAnon vest held a flag during a No Mandatory Flu Shot Massachusetts rally held outside of the State House in Boston on Aug. 30, 2020, to demonstrate against Gov. Charlie Baker's order for mandatory influenza vaccinations for all students under the age of 30, an effort to lower the burden on the health care system during the COVID-19 pandemic. (credit: Boston Globe | Getty Images)
The online phenomenon known as QAnon is evolving beyond its pro-Trump roots and spreading rapidly into new global communities, despite efforts by social media platforms to stamp out the world’s most persistent conspiracy theory.
Cryptic posts by the group or individual known as “Q” first began appearing on the imageboard 4chan in 2017, propagating a theory that swiftly gained traction online in which the US president is leading a battle against a “deep state” that wields control over the country.
In July, TikTok blocked several hashtags, while Twitter banned thousands of accounts. Last month, Facebook launched a sweeping crackdown on the movement, including shutting down 790 QAnon-related groups.
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For the past 10 years, IFTTT (If This, Then That) has been offering a free service that lets you connect cloud services using recipes. For example, I used it to dump my daily Fitbit stats into a Google Spreadsheet for a few years. But now IFTTT is goi…
For the past 10 years, IFTTT (If This, Then That) has been offering a free service that lets you connect cloud services using recipes. For example, I used it to dump my daily Fitbit stats into a Google Spreadsheet for a few years. But now IFTTT is going Pro, which means that after October 7th, […]
The post Lilbits: IFTTT goes Pro, and Eero goes WiFi 6, and Bluetooth goes… vulnerable appeared first on Liliputing.
No film critics were at risk in the making of this review—thank you rural Texas drive-ins.
John David Washington stars in Christopher Nolan's forthcoming film Tenet.
NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas—The biggest irony in this summer's cinematic saga over Tenet—director Christopher Nolan's latest heady time travel detective movie that he and his studio insist must play in The Theater
despite a worldwide pandemic—is that the film itself will inevitably get lost. Whatever performances, ideas, and dazzling set pieces Nolan manages to imbue into this film have and will become secondary to the bigger industry struggles. What does reopening theaters safely look like? Is it too soon to do so? Does limiting the release of such a high profile film to theaters become unethical if it puts viewers at risk? And if the bottom line continues to motivate all this, does pivoting to VOD-first, even temporarily in the midst of unprecedented health challenges, mean eventually transitioning to that model (and its potentially smaller revenue ceiling) forever?
All that stuff sat on my mind when I received two emails last month. The first, on August 11, seemed to be testing the water. "How do you feel about attending a 'press only' (no guests) in a playdate theater, where there will be social distancing and face masks required?"
My response: lol, no. Even movie theaters boasting HEPA Filter Vacuums and 25 percent capacity run directly in conflict with World Health Organization advice that suggests the best way to minimize COVID-19 risk is to avoid the Three Cs: crowded places, close-contact settings, and confined or enclosed spaces. The Texas Medical Association placed "going to the movies" near the top of its COVID-19 risk scale alongside experiences like "going to a theme park," "eating at a buffet," and "attending religious service with 500+ patrons." If you haven't read the news in the US lately, it remains not good: we're about to surpass 200,000 COVID-19 deaths in the very near future as communities grapple with things like school re-opening, football season, and in-person voting.
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