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Wireless headphones are getting better all the time. Wireless earbuds too. And then there’s another, weird category – wireless, wearable speakers. They’re basically neckbands with speakers that point upward, allowing you to listen to…
Wireless headphones are getting better all the time. Wireless earbuds too. And then there’s another, weird category – wireless, wearable speakers. They’re basically neckbands with speakers that point upward, allowing you to listen to music, podcasts, or just about anything else without sticking anything over or in your ears. Sony launched a pair a few […]
The post Sony’s wearable speakers are back, they’re cheaper, and… maybe they make more sense in 2021? appeared first on Liliputing.
A group of independent movie companies want to hold Internet provider Frontier Communications liable for pirating subscribers. In addition to damages, the filmmakers request a site-blocking order, targeting The Pirate Bay, YTS, RARBG, and many others. As a bonus, the movie companies note that the most prolific pirates can be sued directly too.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Over the past two decades, online piracy has proven a massive challenge for the entertainment industries.
It’s a global issue that’s hard to contain, but Hollywood and the major U.S. record labels are at the forefront of this battle.
One of the key strategies they’ve employed in recent years is website blocking. US companies have traveled to courts all over the world to have ISP blockades put in place, with quite a bit of success.
Interestingly, however, site blocking is noticeably absent in the United States, which harbors the most pirates of any country in the world. This can, in part, be explained by legislative backlashes and legal uncertainty. But it’s noteworthy nonetheless.
In recent years, the tide slowly started to turn, with major copyright groups strengthening their calls for blockades. However, the first move in court now comes from a group of smaller movie companies, including Millenium Media and Voltage Pictures, which have built up an impressive anti-piracy track record in recent years.
While most piracy cases are handled by district courts, this case started at a New York bankruptcy court. More than a dozen movie outfits filed claims against Internet provider Frontier Communications, which was in financial trouble at the time.
The movie companies argue that the ISP is liable for the copyright infringements of its subscribers and claimed millions in damages. These claims were similar to the ones made by several record labels, which filed a separate federal lawsuit a few weeks ago.
Thus far the piracy angle of this bankruptcy case has remained under the radar but a recent filing caught our attention.
In a motion submitted last week, the movie companies ask the bankruptcy court to move the matter to the district court, noting that it’s better suited to deal with the “novel copyright issues” at the center of this matter.
These claims are in part similar to the several ‘repeat infringer’ lawsuits against ISPs that are currently handled by district courts around the country. However, the movie companies add a twist, one that could make it much more than a liability issue.
In addition to taking action against pirating subscribers, the movie companies also want Frontier to block pirate sites.
This is technically possible under the DMCA, which provides injunctive relief for copyright holders. Thus far the law has never been used that way, and the rightsholders believe that a bankruptcy court is not the best venue to handle the matter.
“Here, to adjudicate the copyright claims, the Bankruptcy Court would be required to [consider claims and issues including] the availability of injunctive relief provided in 17 U.S.C. §§502(a), 512(j) and 1203(b)(1) to order Frontier to block its subscribers from accessing notorious movie piracy websites originating outside of the United States..,” they write.
The same movie companies, represented by Hawaiian lawyer Kerry Culpepper, previously obtained user data from torrent site YTS. As such, they have evidence that some Frontier subscribers were registered users of the site.
“[S]ome of Frontier’s subscribers have registered for accounts with notorious piracy websites such as YTS and RARBG that the United States Trade Representative (‘USTR’) has listed as examples of Notorious Markets engaged in and facilitating substantial piracy.”
The motion suggests that the rightsholders want Frontier to block the pirate sites that are listed in the US Trade Representative’s annual list of notorious markets. This would include The Pirate Bay, YTS, RARBG and many others. However, exact details about the scope of the blocking request are not mentioned.
This is the first time that a group of copyright holders has requested a site-blocking order against an ISP. This means that it’s uncharted and precedent-setting territory. With that in mind, it makes sense if the issue is handled by a district court.
Whether the DMCA is indeed suited to issue blocking injunctions against ISPs is still an open question. Previously, other copyright holders, including the Motion Picture Association, have pointed out that there are several legal uncertainties.
The MPA said that it’s unclear whether ISPs can be required to block sites without a finding of liability. This typically happens in many other countries with so-called ‘no-fault’ injunctions. In this case, however, the movie companies are claiming that Frontier is liable for copyright infringing subscribers, so that box could be ticked by the court.
The case is still in its first innings but, if it moves ahead, it is bound to attract attention from other copyright holders, Internet providers, and the public at large.
Finally, the lawsuit may have more direct consequences for pirating Frontier subscribers too. The movie companies plan to obtain information on a percentage of the 89,000 subscribers who pirated their movies.
“The movie claimants will likely assert claims against the more prolific ones of these subscribers that pirated the motion pictures,” Culpepper writes, noting that both Frontier and its subscribers will have a right to trial by jury.
All in all, the movie companies stress that this case concerns important copyright questions that have nothing to do with bankruptcy. As such, they would like the matter to move to a district court.
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A copy of the motion to withdraw reference, filed at the New York Bankruptcy Court, is available here (pdf).
The full list of movie claimants includes Voltage Holdings, LLC; Backmask, LLC; Union Patriot Capital Management, LLC; Venice PI, LLC; Bedeviled, LLC; MON, LLC; Colossal Movie Productions, LLC; TBV Productions, LLC; Definition Delaware LLC; I Am Wrath Productions, Inc.; Hannibal Classics Inc.; Justice Everywhere Productions LLC; Badhouse Studios, LLC; After Productions, LLC; Rise Up, LLC; Status Update LLC; Morgan Creek Productions, Inc.; Shock and Awe, LLC; Fun Mom Dinner, LLC; Dead Trigger Movie, LLC; YAR Productions, Inc.; Gunfighter Productions, LLC; Ace in the Hole Productions, LP; SF Film, LLC; The Rest of Us, Inc.; Killing Link Distribution, LLC; Cell Film Holdings, LLC; Dallas Buyers Club, LLC; Screen Media Ventures, LLC; Rambo V Productions, Inc.; Millennium Funding, Inc.; Millennium IP, Inc.; LHF Productions, Inc.; UN4 Productions, Inc.; Millennium Media, Inc.; Bodyguard Productions, Inc.; Hunter Killer Productions, Inc.; Fallen Productions, Inc.; HB Productions, Inc.; Laundry Productions, Inc.; Black Butterfly Film, LLC; AMBI Distribution Corp.; Dubious Productions, Inc.; Rupture CAL, Inc.; Future World One, LLC; Groove Tails Productions, LLC; Family of the Year Productions, LLC; Eve Nevada, LLC; After II Movie, LLC; Wonder One, LLC; and American Cinema International, Inc.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
After a 2018 test, “Midnight Patrol” system officially rolls out to 60 Tencent games.
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)
Tencent, the world's largest Chinese video game publisher, has taken an extreme step to comply with its nation's rules about limiting minors' access to video games. As of this week, the publisher has added a facial recognition system, dubbed "Midnight Patrol," to over 60 of its China-specific smartphone games, and it will disable gameplay in popular titles like Honor of Kings if users either decline the facial check or fail it.
In all affected games, once a gameplay session during the nation's official gaming curfew hours (10 pm to 8 am) exceeds an unspecified amount of time, the game in question will be interrupted by a prompt to scan the player's face. Should an adult fail the test for any reason, Tencent makes its "too bad, so sad" attitude clear in its announcement: users can try to play again the next day.
This week's change doubles down on a limited facial-scan system implemented by Tencent in the Chinese version of Honor of Kings in 2018. Since that rollout, we've yet to hear exactly how the system works. Does it determine a user's age based on facial highlights? Does it cross-reference existing facial data—and possibly leverage any of its home nation's public facial-scanning systems? Tencent has not clarified any of Midnight Patrol's technical details.
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Chime isn’t actually a bank—it’s a “neobank” with less federal regulation.
Enlarge / Putting the dollar in the box is easy—but getting it back out can sometimes be a months-long ordeal. (credit: PM Images)
Chime is a banking application which serves millions of users—but it's not actually a bank. And it racked up an unusually large number of consumer protection cases over the last year—920 complaints at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and thousands at the Better Business Bureau. The majority of the CFPB complaints regard forced account closure—accounts closed against a consumer's will without immediately refunding the consumer's account balance in the process.
Only 197 of the 920 complaints against Chime at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are tagged as involving a "closed account"—but as ProPublica reports, the CFPB complaints are inconsistently labeled, and details of many of the other 723 complaints involve forcible closures also. (By contrast, industry behemoth Wells Fargo has only 317 CFPB complaints tagged "closed account" over the same time period—and Marcus, a Goldman Sachs owned online bank with 4 million customers, has only seven.)
Although opening a Chime account is quick and easy—the app is straightforward, and the creation process requires no credit check and is done in minutes—account closures may happen just as rapidly. ProPublica recounts multiple similar stories of Chime customers who received cryptic emails stating, "Following a recent review of your Spending Account, we regret to inform you that we have made the decision to end our relationship with you at this time."
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The Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite launched just a few weeks ago with a starting price of $160. But the tablet is already on sale for $30 off. You can pick up a version of this 8.7 inch Android tablet with a MediaTek Helio P22N processor, 3GB of RAM, and …
The Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite launched just a few weeks ago with a starting price of $160. But the tablet is already on sale for $30 off. You can pick up a version of this 8.7 inch Android tablet with a MediaTek Helio P22N processor, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage for $130. […]
The post Daily Deals (7-07-2021) appeared first on Liliputing.
Everyone hates the old ways of authentication. But change comes with its own drawbacks.
Not exactly a 25-character, randomized string of numbers, letters, cases, and symbols. (credit: Dan Goodin)
There are certain sci-fi promises the future is supposed to hold: jetpacks, flying cars, a Mars colony. But there are also some seemingly more attainable goals that somehow also always feel just on the horizon. And one of the most tantalizing is the end of passwords. The good news is that the infrastructure—across all the major operating systems and browsers—is largely in place to support passwordless login. The less-good news? You're still plugging passwords into multiple sites and services every day, and you will be for a while.
There's no doubt that passwords are an absolute security nightmare. Creating and managing them is annoying, so people often reuse them or choose easily guessable logins—or both. Hackers are more than happy to take advantage. By contrast, passwordless logins authenticate with attributes that are innate and harder to steal, like biometrics. No one's going to guess your thumbprint.
You likely already use some version of this when you unlock your phone, say, with a scan of your face or your finger rather than a passcode. Those mechanisms work locally on your phone and don't require that companies store a big trove of user passwords—or your sensitive biometric details—on a server to check logins. You can also now use stand-alone physical tokens in certain cases to log in wirelessly and without a password. The idea is that, eventually, you'll be able to do that for pretty much everything.
Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Everyone hates the old ways of authentication. But change comes with its own drawbacks.
Not exactly a 25-character, randomized string of numbers, letters, cases, and symbols. (credit: Dan Goodin)
There are certain sci-fi promises the future is supposed to hold: jetpacks, flying cars, a Mars colony. But there are also some seemingly more attainable goals that somehow also always feel just on the horizon. And one of the most tantalizing is the end of passwords. The good news is that the infrastructure—across all the major operating systems and browsers—is largely in place to support passwordless login. The less-good news? You're still plugging passwords into multiple sites and services every day, and you will be for a while.
There's no doubt that passwords are an absolute security nightmare. Creating and managing them is annoying, so people often reuse them or choose easily guessable logins—or both. Hackers are more than happy to take advantage. By contrast, passwordless logins authenticate with attributes that are innate and harder to steal, like biometrics. No one's going to guess your thumbprint.
You likely already use some version of this when you unlock your phone, say, with a scan of your face or your finger rather than a passcode. Those mechanisms work locally on your phone and don't require that companies store a big trove of user passwords—or your sensitive biometric details—on a server to check logins. You can also now use stand-alone physical tokens in certain cases to log in wirelessly and without a password. The idea is that, eventually, you'll be able to do that for pretty much everything.
Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Call-ID-Spoofing und verbotene Roboteranrufe für eine Querdenker-Demo in Stuttgart: Die Bundesnetzagentur gibt auf. (Bundesnetzagentur, Internet)
Call-ID-Spoofing und verbotene Roboteranrufe für eine Querdenker-Demo in Stuttgart: Die Bundesnetzagentur gibt auf. (Bundesnetzagentur, Internet) Later this year Intel plans to launch its first Alder Lake mobile processors designed to combine two different CPU architectures on a single chip. The idea is to deliver up to a 14-core processor that features a mix of high-performance and energy-effi…
Later this year Intel plans to launch its first Alder Lake mobile processors designed to combine two different CPU architectures on a single chip. The idea is to deliver up to a 14-core processor that features a mix of high-performance and energy-efficient CPU cores. But Alder Lake-P chips won’t be the first processors from Intel […]
The post Intel’s unpopular Lakefield chips reach end of life a year after launch appeared first on Liliputing.
“It does no good to throw Blue Origin under the bus.”
Enlarge / Jeff Bezos (right), the founder of Blue Origin and Amazon.com, and Tory Bruno, CEO of United Launch Alliance, display the BE-4 rocket engine during a press conference in 2014. (credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
In about two weeks Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos will mark a triumphant moment after 21 years in the spaceflight business. He will climb aboard his New Shepard launch system, blast above the Kármán line into outer space, float around inside his capsule, and then return to Earth beneath parachutes.
It seems unlikely that everyone in the space community will be celebrating. Bezos made his fortune at Amazon through competitive pricing and timely delivery of goods to his customers worldwide. But so far at least, his Blue Origin space company has been a less reliable vendor.
This has been especially of concern to United Launch Alliance, which is relying on Blue Origin-built engines for its new Vulcan rocket. The US Space Force is also watching, as it is counting on the Vulcan booster to help launch some of its most precious satellites into orbit. Blue Origin's powerful BE-4 rocket engine, which burns methane and liquid oxygen, is years late.
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