Month: January 2023

Mehr Speicher auf kleinerer Fläche, das verspricht ein von Dell entwickelter Verbinder für RAM-Module. Er soll langfristig SO-DIMMs ersetzen. (RAM, Notebook)

Im neuen Youtube-Format von Golem.de stellen sich Chefs von Devs den Fragen von Matthias Schreuthner und des Publikums. In der Premiere sprach Interim-CTO Florian Gamper über Studium, Start-ups und Agile. (Chefs von Devs, GreenIT)

Huawei bietet mit den neuen Freebuds 5i eine überzeugende Alternative zu den Airpods Pro 2. Sie übertreffen die Apple-Stöpsel in einigen Punkten und sind dabei viel günstiger. Ein Test von Ingo Pakalski (Huawei, Test)

Beim Elektronikhändler Gravis können Kunden künftig nur noch bargeldlos bezahlen - Grund sei auch die geringe Nachfrage nach Bargeldzahlungen. (Gravis, Apple)

As Android-based piracy apps go, streaming app PikaShow ticks most of the usual boxes.

Compatible with smartphones, tablets and set-top boxes, PikaShow allows users to stream live TV channels in excellent quality or download the latest movies and TV shows for offline viewing.

For those with a preference for larger screens, PikaShow allows casting. Subtitles are also available, meaning that PikaShow can be enjoyed by viewers worldwide. The downside for PikaShow is that expanded reach means irritation for overseas rightsholders, not just local ones.

Disney, Star India, MPA, USTR

In 2022, the existence of the PikaShow app became intolerable for Disney Star, a wholly-owned Indian subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. After a criminal complaint to the Tamil Nadu Police Cyber Cell failed, Disney filed a First Information Report (FIR) with the Bengaluru Cyber Cell, alleging various crimes under computer abuse and copyright laws.

PikaShow didn’t shut itself down – it doubled down instead. After becoming the official sponsor of the Afghan cricket team during Asia Cup 2022, PikaShow was able to advertise its pirate streaming app via legal TV broadcasts watched by millions of people.

Describing this as a bold move would be a significant understatement.

Through its team sponsorship deal, PikaShow was able to advertise its pirate services on Star India’s official TV broadcasts of Asia Cup 2022. This meant that Disney effectively paid to advertise a pirate app it was already pursuing in a criminal action for illegally streaming its licensed content.

Adding insult to injury, PikaShow streamed Star India’s official TV broadcasts to its own users for free.

Rising Pressure, High Court Injunction

In the wake of its TV stunt, the MPA reported PikaShow to the United States Trade Representative. After targeting PikaShow in a May 2022 civil complaint, Star India filed a criminal complaint with the police in Delhi and then followed up with another copyright complaint at the High Court in Delhi.

In November 2022, the Court issued a broad injunction restraining the operator(s) of PikaShow. Companies doing business with PikaShow were ordered to hand over all available information on its operator. Registrars were told to suspend PikaShow’s domains, and every ISP in India received blocking instructions (pdf).

PikaShow didn’t shut itself down. But, as the saying goes, hindsight is always 20/20.

Police Arrest College Student

On Saturday, Anoop Shetty, Deputy Commissioner of Police, North East Division, Bengaluru City, confirmed the arrest of a man in northern India in connection with the PikaShow app.

“We have arrested Shisharam Badiya from his native place Rajasthan for copyright violation based on a complaint by Star India,” Shetty said.

According to Economic Times, the suspect is a college student who was arrested after police traced his cellphone number. He stands accused of illegally streaming Star India and Disney+ Hotstar content via PikaShow and monetizing those pirate streams through advertising.

While comments on Indian discussion platforms are a mixed bag, news of the arrest doesn’t appear to be generating much sympathy. Some suggest that monetizing pirated content was the problem, while others suggest that the only mistake was not escaping with the money. One poster simply expressed sadness at students destroying their futures.

Predictably, some comments note that since apps tend to come and go, others will appear to take PikaShow’s place. Whether PikaShow survives this or not (there’s no confirmation either way), PikaShow’s ‘place’ has been under threat for a while now.

At the time of writing, there are at least 100 domains with obvious ‘PikaShow’ branding. Dozens claim to offer the official app, but a hash value comparison of various APK files tells a very different story. There are a thousand pieces of advice for staying safe online, but if a site introduces its product with a flat-out lie, things won’t get any better from there.

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

Durch Dazn-Guthabenkarten lässt sich die Preiserhöhung für Neukunden umgehen. Auch Telekom- und Sky-Kunden erhalten Dazn zum alten Preis. (Dazn, Verbraucherschutz)

Eine Alternative zum Raspberry Pi ist der Visionfive 2 derzeit nicht - wer etwas von Linux und Software-Kompilierung versteht, kann aber mit viel Spaß eine neue Plattform ergründen. Ein Test von Johannes Hiltscher und Sebastian Grüner (RISCV, Prozessor)

Over the past several months, we have repeatedly reported on Google’s decision to voluntarily remove pirate sites from its search results.

Google will do so if local court orders require ISPs to block access to the sites. These measures are geo-targeted at the applicable countries, which include the UK, France, and the Netherlands.

Thus far Google hasn’t publicly commented on its motivation but several rightsholders have confirmed the actions. Interestingly, however, Google is not the only search engine where pirate sites have gone ‘missing’. In fact, it’s quite a persistent problem on other search engines as well.

Bing’s Missing Pirate Sites

This week we conducted various tests on Bing’s search engine across multiple countries. This revealed that several of the top pirate sites only have their home pages indexed, while others are completely unfindable.

For example, when we use the site: command to find all Pirate Bay pages indexed by Bing there’s just one visible result. A message at the bottom clarifies that “some results have been removed” but that’s an understatement, as there are supposed to be millions.

For comparison, the same search on Google claims to return ~24,000 URLs from The Pirate Bay, provided that the site hasn’t been stripped completely due to the aforementioned voluntary removal process.

The problem is also apparent when searching for “Pirate Bay Linux”. On Bing this doesn’t return any useful results from The Pirate Bay, while Google lists a collection of relevant pages from the notorious torrent site.

This isn’t to argue that Google is better than Bing, we merely want to show the differences. Depending on the search term and your location, Microsoft’s search engine may provide better results for other search terms.

Bing’s meager search results are not limited to The Pirate Bay. The same applies to various other torrent sites such as Fitgirl-Repacks.site, and TorrentGalaxy.to. In addition, other pirate portals including 9anime.to yield the same result.

Entire Domains Disappear

The domains mentioned above still have their home pages listed, but the same can’t be said for many others.

When we search for 1337x.to there are no results (for that domain) at all, even though Bing does pull up the correct Wikipedia page in an information panel. Similarly, results are missing for Fmovies.to, Rarbg.to, and other popular sites as well.

For the record, these results are the same in the various geographical locations we tested.

And there’s more to this mystery, as other prominent pirate sites remain indexed as usual. This includes the most popular torrent site YTS.mx which, aside from a few DMCA takedowns, has numerous pages in Bing’s search results.

‘No Editorial Decision’

So what is going on here? Is this an anti-piracy measure? Or are these domains being punished for another reason?

When we reached out to Microsoft, the company couldn’t immediately give us an explanation. However, the team stressed that the removals are not the result of an editorial decision.

“We can share that we did not make an editorial decision to remove these domains. We have passed this along to our technical team,” a spokesperson informed us.

Whatever the reason, the removals are not without consequence. Several other search engines that rely on Bing data are missing the same results. This includes the privacy-centered search engine DuckDuckGo.

Colateral Damage

Last year we reported on an issue with disappearing pirate sites at DuckDuckgo. This was also related to Bing. While some links were put back manually by DuckDuckGo, these issues persist.

When we search for “rarbg” on DuckDuckGo, Rarbg.to is correctly identified as the official site and the top result.

This result is only triggered by certain keywords. When we search for “rarbg official site,” RarBG is nowhere to be found. Instead, we get the same results as we do in Bing.

That brings us to another side-effect of the disappearing sites. With the disappearance of the official domains, copycats are now making their way to the top results. These are generally more likely to show malicious advertisements or cause other trouble.

This copycat problem equally applies to Google, where demoted or removed sites are regularly replaced by dubious sites.

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

Apple is reportedly planning to build more of the components used in its products in-house. The company has long relied on third-party manufacturers for chips, displays, and other components. But after transitioning most of its Mac line of computers from Intel processors to Apple Silicon, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports the company has its sights set […]

The post Report: Apple to build its own microLED displays and wireless chips appeared first on Liliputing.

Tesla will seine Gigafactory in Grünheide um weitere 100 Hektar erweitern. Doch das kann noch einige Zeit dauern. (Gigafactory Berlin, Börse)