September 2021 – Page 137 – news.buyenne.com

Wer zerstörte die Republik der Wolga-Deutschen?

Vor 80 Jahren begann die Deportation von 373.000 Sowjetdeutschen von der Wolga nach Kasachstan und Sibirien. Stalin fürchtete, sie könnten mit Hitler sympathisieren

Italian Police Report 240 Pirate IPTV Users For Prosecution

Guardia di Finanza, the Italian police unit tasked with financial crimes, says it has reported 240 subscribers of pirate IPTV services to the prosecutor’s office for further action. According to GdF, the suspects – most of which live in a single region of Italy – were identified after the authorities targeted a reseller of unlicensed streaming packages.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

For the past several years, Italian law enforcement authorities have been attempting to reduce the local availability of pirate IPTV platforms and related services.

In September 2019, a massive operation took down IPTV management service Xtream-Codes, which was believed to have serviced around 50 million end-users. With the outcome in that matter still pending, authorities have been concentrating on taking down IPTV services themselves and claiming grand results.

In February 2020, the focus shifted towards end-users of such services. An announcement from the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), the Italian police unit tasked with financial crimes, said that it had reported 223 IPTV subscribers to the authorities for the crime of “receiving stolen goods.” It now appears they are maintaining the pressure.

240 IPTV Subscribers Reported to Prosecutor’s Office

On Wednesday, several local media outlets in the city of Piacenza reported that 240 people, mostly from the city itself, had been identified as subscribers to a pirate IPTV platform offering Sky, Dazn, Mediaset Premium, Netflix and Amazon Prime content at the cut down price of just 10 euros per month.

The investigation was carried out by GdF and coordinated by public prosecutor Antonio Colonna. It was triggered in the early months of 2020 when the GdF of Rome identified a 60-year-old man who later admitted to be a reseller of pirate IPTV services.

Resellers are generally lower-tier players who sell on pirate IPTV packages from more major suppliers. However, they can keep records (such as names, physical addresses, email addresses and payment information) that allow the authorities to positively identify their customers.

That appears to have been the case here although the authorities also claim the use of “sophisticated tracing techniques” including financial investigations and other searches to identify the subscribers.

Subscribers Risk Fines of Up To 25,000+ Euros

Following last year’s announcement that 223 subscribers would be referred for prosecution, the authorities said that if found guilty, subscribers risked being found guilty of receiving stolen goods, 25,000 euro penalties, and even a jail sentence. While we’re unaware of information suggesting that anyone has been successfully prosecuted, the same kind of warnings were issued again this week.

According to PiacenzaOnline, the authorities are warning of fines ranging between 2,582 euros through to 25,822 euros, plus criminal violations relating to the use of equipment designed for the “illegal decoding of conditional access audiovisual broadcasts.” Only in the most serious of cases will the suspects be accused of receiving stolen goods, the publication notes.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Google: Gmail-Konten der ehemaligen afghanischen Regierung gesperrt

Google will offenbar verhindern, dass wichtigen Daten und Informationen in die Hände der Taliban fallen. (Google, Gmail)

Phil Tippett’s Mad God: A sensory feast for lovers of practical filmmaking

VFX legend’s love letter to practical effects and monster creation is be-a-u-tiful.

A teaser for Mad God.

By now, anyone who would agree to the label of "film fan" knows the legendary Phil Tippett. Perhaps the greatest visual effects artist of the last 50 years (if not ever), Tippett brought to life the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park and the creatures of Star Wars while also enriching many, many stellar visual feasts like RoboCop, Willow, and Starship Troopers. Heck, Starship Troopers producer Jon Davison has famously said he did that film for one reason: "I wanted to do a movie with Phil Tippett. I wanted to do a giant bug movie with Phil Tippett."

Despite his lengthy, award-riddled career, one filmmaking feat had eluded Tippett until this year—being the writer/director of a feature film. Tippett has finally crossed that goal off the list, too, with the arrival of Mad God on the festival scene (including its North American premiere at Fantasia Fest last month).

Say hello to the nameless central figure of Mad God. [credit: Tippett Studio ]

Tippett has apparently had the visions and ideas behind Mad God for three decades. But this passion project perennially remained on the back burner as he took on all those highly, highly successful commercial projects. This creative struggle has been chronicled somewhat in two documentaries, the career-retrospective Phil Tippet—Mad Dreams and Monsters and the Mad God behind-the-scenes project Worse Than the Demon (which his daughter Maya directed for her undergrad thesis). Recently, the VFX legend told The Observer he started working on Mad God after RoboCop 2, which means this dates back to 1990. (About three minutes of work on 35 mm from then made it to 2021).

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Queere Praxis

Von Wokeness und Cancel Culture. Was die LGBT- und andere Identitäten bewegt (Teil 3 und Schluss)

Wostotschny: Russischer Weltraumbahnhof soll 2022 fertig sein

Die Bauarbeiten an Russlands modernstem Weltraumbahnhof Wostotschny ziehen sich in die Länge. Nun hat Präsident Putin die Baustelle besucht. (Raumfahrt, Internet)

PAX-demic West impressions: Creating fun out of thin, masked air

Boots on the ground, mask on the face: We report on the weirdest PAX in years.

The opening queue for PAX West 2021, angle one. [credit: Sam Machkovech ]

SEATTLE—From the ongoing wreckage of a variant-riddled pandemic comes... a modest, regional, and relatively fun nerd convention.

My perspective on PAX West, arguably the largest Northwest expo dedicated to gaming culture, is biased by the lines, crowds, and hype I've seen attached to every incarnation since its first downtown Seattle sellout in 2007. Back then, the show was firmly attached to the webcomic Penny Arcade (also a Seattle creation), but the show's reputation grew quickly enough to become a multi-day, multi-building extravaganza.

Ever since, the fest formula has been increasingly divorced from its comic origins. The PAX model has officially duplicated and been liberally borrowed in other regions. In recent years, of course, a little worldwide dilemma got in the way.

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