December 2020 – Page 17 – news.buyenne.com

Propagandakrieg in und um Äthiopien

Einschüchterungen, Verhaftungen, Cyber-Mobbing und Diffamierung sind an der Tagesordnung

Andy Müller-Maguhn: Ein Assange-Vertrauter im Visier der CIA

Der frühere CCC-Sprecher Andy Müller-Maguhn staunte nicht schlecht, als er eines Tages sein Kryptotelefon aufschraubte. (rc3, CCC)

Sci-Hub & Libgen Face ISP Blocking in India After Publishers File High Court Complaint

A legal campaign by academic and scientific publishers to prevent Internet users from accessing Sci-Hub and Libgen has expanded to India. In a complaint filed at the High Court in Delhi, Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society, are demanding that local ISPs should block the sites to prevent copyright infringement.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. We have some good VPN deals here for the holidays.

More than thirteen years after the first pirate site was blocked following a court order in Denmark, movie, music and sports companies in dozens of countries have sought similar action.

More recently, publishing giants including Elsevier have also sought to protect their rights by targeting Sci-Hub (‘The Pirate Bay of Science’) and Libgen (Library Genesis), platforms that help to distribute scientific and academic papers to the masses, but without charging readers a penny.

New Complaint Filed at High Court in Delhi

In a new complaint dated December 21, 2020, Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society, aim to compel Indian ISPs to block both Sci-Hub and Libgen.

Naming Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan personally and the sites themselves, the complaint alleges that all “substantially indulge in online piracy by making available for viewing and download, providing access to, and communicating to the public, Plaintiffs’ literary works” via the Internet.

The companies acknowledge that Elbakyan has never hidden her connection to Sci-Hub but note that the sites themselves, accessible via multiple domains, have their WHOIS details hidden behind privacy services in many cases.

“Therefore, it is virtually impossible to bring the owners of the websites before this Honorable Court in order to ensure that the Orders of this Court are complied with,” the complaint reads.

To solve this accountability hurdle, the publishers have included Internet service providers as defendants in the complaint. Also named are the Department of Communications and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, to ensure they play their part in having the pirate platforms blocked in India.

Complaint is Voluminous But Relies on Tested Theories

At 2,169 pages long, the publishers’ complaint is huge by any standards. However, it appears to tread little new ground and instead bases itself on previously tried and tested procedures.

In particular, it leans heavily on complaints previously filed by Twentieth Century Fox and local Disney-owned media giant UTV Software Communications, which resulted in some of the largest torrent and streaming sites on the Internet being permanently blocked in India.

In the current complaint against Sci-Hub and Libgen, which is similar to the UTV case, the aim is to categorize the platforms as “rogue sites” worthy of the special actions available under a so-called “dynamic injunction”. In practical terms, this means that the plaintiffs’ won’t have to keep returning to court for additional injunctions when Sci-Hub and Libgen predictably launch new domains and mirror sites to avoid blocking.

According to Sci-Hub, the case was to be heard Thursday in the High Court of Delhi. In the same tweet, the platform also shared a full copy of the complaint, available here.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. We have some good VPN deals here for the holidays.

CCC-Hackertreffen: Online-Chaos auf dem rC3

Fluchende Vortragsredner, gestörte Übertragungen: Das Online-Hackertreffen rC3 kämpft am ersten Tag mit Technikproblemen. Ein Bericht von Friedhelm Greis und Moritz Tremmel (rc3, CCC)

Tracking – weiter als das Auge reicht

Wer die Routen von Flugzeugen, Schiffen, Zügen und Bussen verfolgen will, findet zahlreiche Apps für Android, iOS sowie Browser-basierte Lösungen. Ob diese auf Echtzeit-Ortung oder Hochrechnungen basieren, hängt vom Einzelfall ab.

Divers recover a WWII Code Machine from the Baltic Sea

Divers trying to clean fishing nets come up with a bit of history.

A deep-sea diver examines a heavily encrusted piece of machinery on the seabed.

When Nazi naval officers tossed their ship’s Enigma encryption machine overboard, they probably thought they were putting the device beyond anyone’s reach. Blissfully unaware that Allied cryptanalysts in Poland and at Bletchley Park in the UK had broken the Enigma code, the Nazis had standing orders to destroy their encryption devices to keep them out of Allied hands. Eighty years later, divers found the once-secret device tangled in an abandoned fishing net on the seafloor, and now it’s set to be put on display for everyone to see. LOL, Nazis pwned.

Research diver Florian Huber and his colleagues were trying to clear abandoned fishing nets from the Bay of Gelting, on the Baltic Sea near the German-Danish border, when they found the artifact. Derelict nets and other discarded fishing gear can still entangle fish, sea turtles, diving birds, and marine mammals like seals and dolphins. The World Wildlife Fund had hired the divers to clear them in November 2020.

“A colleague swam up and said ‘There’s a net there with an old typewriter in it,” Huber told the DPA news agency.

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Cars Technica’s best drives in 2020

The Civic Type-R brought the most smiles and a pair of hybrid SUVs surprised me.

Like most of us, 2020 turned out quite differently than we might have expected back in January. By the end of February, it was clear that COVID-19 was going to be a serious problem as auto shows and drive events started being cancelled en masse. But our local press fleets have remained in operation, and a calendar free of travel has meant more time to test cars here at home. Luckily, sitting in a car by one's self meets the requirements for social distancing, and a car interior can be a welcome change from spending all day every day at home.

All that means we've managed to test drive a respectable amount of new vehicles despite the new realities. These are the highlights of a year spent behind the wheel.

Hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and EVs

Just under half (15 out of 32) of the cars I reviewed this year were hybrids, plug-in hybrids, or battery electric vehicles. I logged the most miles in one of the more exotic hybrids on the list—the Acura NSX supercar. Ohio to Florida in three days remains a memorable trip, but it was hard work. Runner-up would be the Toyota Venza that took us to Cooperstown, New York and back in a day. Unlike the NSX, the Venza had very comfortable seats and adaptive cruise control. This plush crossover was one of my unexpected delights of the year.

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Menschenrechte, Demokratie und Diskussionskultur im Ausnahmezustand

Die Debatte über die Pandemie-Politik litt und leidet leider noch immer und immer wieder unter Angst, Einseitigkeit und Konformitätsdruck, auch unter Diffamierung und Ausgrenzung

Rising to meet the tide against the threat of coastal flooding

Faster and more accurate forecasts can save lives and property.

Christina Laughlin usually does whatever she can to avoid the flooding that plagues her neighborhood in Norfolk, Virginia, on the Chesapeake Bay. But on a blustery Sunday morning in October 2019, she donned a windbreaker and rain boots, grabbed her battered smartphone and deliberately headed straight to the high-water line.

Like her, hundreds of other locals were out and about that day, busy taking photos of the water and linking them to GPS markers during the year’s highest astronomical tide, known as the “king tide.” Norfolk is one of several eastern US coastal cities with record rates of sea level rise, and scientists hope that the data collected by these citizen scientists can help hone the ability to forecast exactly when and where damaging floods will occur.

Low-lying mid-latitude cities like Norfolk are especially vulnerable, says geographer James Voogt of the University of Western Ontario, one of the authors of a 2020 article in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources on climate events in urban areas. “You’ve got three things operating in the direction that increases the vulnerability of a city to flooding events,” he says: sea level rise, increased chances of severe precipitation events, and an abundance of impervious surfaces that prevent water absorption and encourage runoff.

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EU Study Proposes New ‘Anti-Piracy Act’ to Effectively Tackle Online Piracy

A recent study published through the European Parliamentary Research Service suggests that a new ‘EU Anti-Piracy Act’ is the most effective way to tackle online piracy of sports events and other premium content. This new legislation should harmonize anti-piracy policies and tools across EU member states, providing strong enforcement options including site-blocking.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. We have some good VPN deals here for the holidays.

EU Copyright In recent years the European Commission has proposed and adopted various legislative changes to help combat online piracy.

This includes the Copyright Directive which passed last year as well as the Digital Services Act, which was officially unveiled last week.

New EU Study Piracy of Sports Events

These laws aim to help copyright holders enforce their rights. However, according to a new report from the European Parliamentary Research Service, more changes are needed. Especially to protect the rights of sports event organizers.

The new study, released by the research service’s European Added Value Unit, suggests implementing new policies, including an “EU Anti-Piracy Act”. This is needed to deal with the increasing losses to copyright holders and the tax coffers of EU countries.

Relying on earlier research, the study estimates that there were 7.6 million subscriptions to illegal IPTV services in 2019. This generated €522 million in revenues and resulted in €113.5 million in missed annual VAT payments.

“If the same number of subscriptions were made legally, legal broadcasters’ revenues could increase by €3.4 billion each year,” the study estimates

“In addition to these revenue losses, legal broadcasters also suffer impacts on employment due to online piracy. The most cautious estimate suggests that each year up to 16,000 potential new jobs are lost as a result of online piracy of broadcasts of sports events.”

Policy Changes are Required

The EU study proposes several changes that could help to better tackle the streaming piracy problem. This is needed, it argues, because current enforcement tools are inefficient and differ from country to country.

One policy option could be to provide a new neighboring right over sports events. An even better option, according to the study, would be to grant a right of communication to the public to the producers of audiovisual works, including sports events.

The ‘communication to the public right,’ paired with the right of sports organizers to sue ‘infringers’ without the involvement of licensees, would be most effective.

EU-wide Blocking Injunctions

On top of this proposal, the study also suggests making dynamic blocking injunctions available in all EU countries and to allow rightsholders to instantly disrupt piracy when needed.

“A possible solution would be to implement a system of fast, dynamic and live blocking orders, harmonized at EU level through the use of ‘dynamic blocking orders’ and ‘live injunctions’.

“Along with the latter, it is necessary to adopt a legal provision granting sports events organizers (and any other producers of ‘premium’ content) the right to remove illicit content directly – through technological means – from any streaming server used by pirates.”

From Voluntary Agreements to a New Anti-Piracy Act

While there is no shortage of enforcement options and proposals, implementing these can be a challenge. The researchers have thought about this as well and give four future scenarios.

One could be to do nothing and rely on existing legal tools. However, the study concludes that this isn’t really an option, as piracy will remain a massive problem.

The first real option, according to the report, is to tackle the problems with voluntary agreements and private partnerships. For example, hosting providers could agree to shut down pirated content when asked, and ISPs could help to block sites and services.

“This solution, indeed, would have a high impact on the system, allowing a coordinated real-time take-down of pirated content, without causing further burden to courts and administrative authorities and alleviating costs and timing of public enforcement.

“The chances, however, to develop a network of code of conducts harmonized and available throughout the entire EU territory does not seem to be significant.”

The second option would be to update current laws, such as the E-Commerce Directive and the InfoSoc Directive, to ensure that the much-needed extra enforcement options can be implemented.

These changes are possible, the study notes, but the implementation into local laws may result in fragmentation and differences between EU Member States, something the researchers want to rule out.

New Anti-Piracy Act Most Efficient

The preferred option, therefore, is to adopt a new EU Anti-Piracy Act that includes all proposed changes.

“The most impacting proposition – Option 3 – would consist in the adoption of an ‘EU Antipiracy Act’, in the form of a newly adopted EU Regulation, providing for all those legal tools necessary to deploy an efficient digital enforcement against piracy,” the study concludes.

This new law wouldn’t change existing legislation but would be tailored specifically to piracy of sports events and other premium copyrighted content. That also includes music, films, and games.

The proposals are far-reaching and will be welcomed by copyright holders. However, the study also stresses that the feasibility is low, as implementing new EU legislation isn’t straightforward.

For now, this means that the EU Anti-Piracy Act is just another idea.

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A copy of the European Parliamentary Research Service study titled “Challenges facing sports event organisers in the digital environment” is available here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. We have some good VPN deals here for the holidays.