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Nach einer Studie ging dem Aussterben immer eine Klimaveränderung voran, nur Homo sapiens konnte im Unterschied etwa zu den Neantertalern den Klimawandel der Vergangenheit überleben
Despite both Spotify and Deezer having a free-tier for listeners on a budget, some users prefer to use unofficial clients that allow them to obtain the premium service for free. Spotify has dealt with these users by threatening to ban accounts but Deezer is taking an altogether softer approach.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Today’s legal music streaming services are providing a service that would’ve been unimaginable 15 years ago.
Not only do they provide access to tens of millions of tracks, they do so conveniently, on multiple platforms, and at a fair price. In fact, streaming services like Spotify and Deezer go a step further by offering a free-tier that costs nothing.
In many respects and for most people, it’s the often-mentioned piracy-busting formula made reality. Of course, there are some outliers.
Despite ticking most boxes, streaming platforms still have to contend with piracy. In the majority of instances this is carried out either by people who can’t pay, want additional features such as permanent downloads of DRM-free music, or simply don’t want to consume the ads that make the free-tier possible.
These people often use custom or modified Spotify and Deezer applications, obtainable from a number of unofficial sources and installed mainly on the Android platform. They can remove ads, act as downloaders, and also remove other restrictions imposed by streaming platforms on their free-tiers. It’s unclear how many people use them but both Deezer and Spotify would like to mitigate their use.
Over the years, both Spotify and Deezer have taken action aimed at disrupting modded and custom clients from accessing their networks.
In 2017, Deezer targeted popular tool Deezloader and many related project forks. A year later, the company spoiled the party for reincarnation app Deezloader Reborn and later targeted Deezloader Remix.
Spotify has been active too. In March 2020, a law firm acting for Spotify took down a piece of Windows software that allowed users to download and remove DRM from music tracks while skipping ads. XSpotify, which also carried an ad-blocking feature, was described as a tool that “steals” Spotify encryption keys in breach of the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA.
Just two months later, Spotify sent a wave of DMCA notices to Github, hoping to make modded clients harder to find.
While the anti-piracy actions detailed above were never publicized by Spotify or Deezer themselves, sometimes the companies’ actions (when they directly involve pirating ‘customers’) become too big to hide. Most notably, around March 2018 Spotify mass-emailed an unknown number of users warning that their activity had been noted and their ‘pirate’ client had been disabled.
After thanking recipients for being Spotify users (even pirates need accounts), Spotify changed its tone.
“If we detect repeated use of unauthorized apps in violation of our terms, we reserve all rights, including suspending or terminating your account,” Spotify wrote.
This week, a number of people using modified Deezer clients received an interesting email directly from the ‘Deezer Security Team’. At least one user posted a copy to Reddit, with others confirming they’d received the same communication.
“We see you,” the email begins, with a small pirate flag waving alongside.
“We know that you’re not using the official version of Deezer, and we’re not going to stop you.”
As disarming sentences go, this is a pretty big one when it comes to piracy. While Deezer knows that these specific users are pirating its service, has their email addresses (and probably all of their IP addresses too), and could instantly ban them or worse, it says it will do absolutely nothing. Not even the threat of a ban makes it to the email.
The image above was posted with the title “Respect” suggesting that being nice to pirates is a better headline approach than being too aggressive. And, while there were some critical voices, there was also a lot of support for Deezer as a company.
Interestingly, however, the company’s message, that people should be worried about malware, wasn’t a topic of conversation in the places we found it reported.
Whether any of this will result in modded-client users signing up to Deezer is another matter but viewing the company as a friend, not a foe, might bode well for future relations. And keep people away from rival Spotify.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
In der letzten Zeit wachsen auch in der Umweltbewegung die Zweifel – und es gibt Theoretiker, die wieder auf Sozialismus und sogar auf Lenin zurückgreifen
Digging a trench across a fault reveals evidence of past quakes.
Enlarge / It may not look like much, but that red line marks the Gales Creek fault. (credit: Horst et al./BSSA)
Coastal denizens of the US Pacific Northwest are (or should be!) familiar with the significance of “the Big One”—a major earthquake just off the coast that will occur someday. The tectonic plate boundary, where oceanic crust slides downward beneath the North American continent, is capable of producing major shaking and an incredibly dangerous tsunami. This hasn’t happened in centuries, leading to a false sense of security, but the evidence is there for events deeper in the past.
But the plate boundary itself isn’t the only source of seismic danger. Near Portland, for example, there are a number of smaller active faults. There have even been moderate earthquakes in recent years to serve as reminders. In 1993, a magnitude 5.7 quake just 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of the city caused around $30 million in damage. Here, too, seismologists can look deeper into the past. And it shows that much bigger earthquakes are possible.
Today, we measure and quantify earthquakes with seismometers, but it’s possible to find physical evidence that testifies to past earthquakes. Paleoseismology relies on the fact that some things move during an earthquake, displacing their position. In the right situation, you can even see about how much the fault moved and put a date on each event. That allows for a rough estimate of earthquake magnitude, as well as the average time between major earthquakes. (Note that this does not mean we can predict the date of the next one. Earthquakes are not clockwork events.)
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Portugals Ministerpräsident António Costa hatte vor, die Tracing-App “StayAway Covid” verpflichtend zu machen. Datenschützer gingen auf die Barrikaden – mit Erfolg
Tesla’s Cybertruck, GM’s $113,000 Hummer, Ford’s (e)F-150—then there are the startups.
The shape says Aston Martin Bulldog, the materials say Delorean DMC12. [credit: Tesla ]
The electric pickup trucks are here. Or almost here, at least.
General Motors dropped a pretty penny to debut its new electric Hummer during the World Series on Tuesday, with a two minute, 15 second ad that took up an entire commercial break. But you won’t be able to drive the $112,595 truck off the lot until at least next fall. Tesla staged a smashing reveal for its Cybertruck pickup nearly a year ago, but it hasn’t yet built the factory in Texas that will make the thing—reservation holders can probably expect their truck late next year. Other contenders on the horizon include the Rivian R1T, which, after delays, should show up around June; the Lordstown Endurance(sometime in 2021); the Bollinger B2 (probably next year); the Ford F-150 EV(due mid-2022); and the Nikola Badger (thanks to the company’s leadership troubles, who knows). The competition for the hearts and minds of the American electric pickup truck buyer is bound to be intense.
Here’s the problem: No one knows who that American electric pickup buyer is. “It’s not like people have been asking for this,” says Jessica Caldwell, the executive director of insights at Edmunds. “I don’t think people have been sitting around and thinking, ‘You now what I need? A pickup with an electric motor.’”
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Die neue Rakete kommt erst 2022, angeblich ist Covid-19 die Ursache. Aber die Probleme liegen tiefer. (Raumfahrt, Virus)
Mit der Schadsoftware Triton wurden Industrieanlagen angegriffen. Die USA sanktionieren nun ein russisches Forschungszentrum. (Malware, Virus)
Beim Beenden kann Chrome Cookies und Webseitendaten löschen, das machte der Browser jedoch nicht bei Youtube. Google spricht von einem Bug, der mittlerweile behoben sei. (Chrome, Google)
GitHub has removed the open-source YouTube-DL repository as well as several forks. The developer platform took action following a takedown request from the RIAA. The music group argues that the code is primarily used to download copyrighted content and also violates the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Every day, copyright holders send out millions of takedown notices to various services, hoping to protect their works.
Most notices target content that’s clearly copyright-infringing, but others are open to interpretation or debate.
This is also the case with a takedown notice that was sent by the RIAA this week. The music industry’s anti-piracy group asked GitHub to remove the open-source YouTube-DL repository as well as several forks.
YouTube-DL is widely used by individuals and some stream-ripper sites to download videos from YouTube.com and other platforms. These can range from public domain videos to copyrighted music tracks.
GitHub responded swiftly to the notice and removed all of the YouTube-DL repositories, which now show a DMCA takedown notification instead.
While these stream-ripping tools can be used to download non-infringing content, as digital rights group EFF highlighted in the past, millions of people use them to download personal copies of music tracks.
In fact, the music industry sees stream-ripping as the single biggest piracy threat. This is also how the group motivates its takedown request to GitHub.
“The clear purpose of this source code is to (i) circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube, and (ii) reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings owned by our member companies without authorization for such use.”
As we have seen in the past, RIAA cites the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, which prohibits the public from bypassing technological protection measures. While it’s YouTube’s protection measures being bypassed in this case, the RIAA member labels are among the ‘victims.’
According to the RIAA, the source code includes several samples that show how people can download tracks from Icona Pop, Justin Timberlake, and Taylor Swift, without permission.
“The source code notes that the Icona Pop work identified above is under the YouTube Standard license, which expressly restricts access to copyrighted works only for streaming on YouTube and prohibits their further reproduction or distribution without consent of the copyright owner,” RIAA writes.
According to the RIAA, YouTube-DL’s code is primarily designed and marketed for circumventing YouTube’s technological measures, which violates 17 USC §§1201(a)(2) and 1201(b)(1) of the DMCA.
While there is little jurisprudence in US Courts about stream-rippers specifically, the music group points to a decision from the Hamburg Regional Court in a similar case, which found that YouTube’s “rolling cipher” is an effective technological protection measure under EU law.
TorrentFreak reached out to the YouTube-DL developers to hear their side of the story but they prefer not to comment for now.
However, it appears that they don’t plan to throw in the towel just yet. The yt-dl.org website remains online and it still lists a recently modified version of the code.
In addition, the website was updated to remove links to GitHub pages that were taken down. This includes the about page, which now long longer lists the name of the developers.
The YouTube-DL takedown is part of a broader campaign against stream-ripping tools. The RIAA labels are also engaged in a lawsuit against two popular YouTube-ripper sites in the US, and continue to remove these and other services from Google’s search results.
At the same time, YouTube itself is engaged in a proxy war against similar sites.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Die neue Rakete kommt erst 2022, angeblich ist Covid-19 die Ursache. Aber die Probleme liegen tiefer. (
Mit der Schadsoftware Triton wurden Industrieanlagen angegriffen. Die USA sanktionieren nun ein russisches Forschungszentrum. (
Beim Beenden kann Chrome Cookies und Webseitendaten löschen, das machte der Browser jedoch nicht bei Youtube. Google spricht von einem Bug, der mittlerweile behoben sei. (
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