Month: May 2023

Auf nur 4 GByte Videospeicher passen die Windows-Installation und der benötigte Arbeitsspeicher gleich mit. Möglich machen das Mods. (Windows 11, Microsoft)

With millions of fans all over the world, Spanish football league ‘La Liga’ is one of the most popular in the game.

In common with similar sports organizations, La Liga has a dedicated anti-piracy team that actively tracks and reports unauthorized live streams.

This sounds like a straightforward task but, in reality, it often turns into a perpetual stream of takedown notices. After all, the operators of piracy sites and apps have no intention of abiding by the law and pull out all the stops to avoid getting caught.

La Liga vs. Nodito

A recent takedown notice from La Liga illustrates this problem quite well. A few days ago the league sent a takedown notice to GitHub, asking it to remove an APK file that belongs to the user Nodoapps, known for the Spanish football streaming app Nodito.

“The National Professional Football League has among its main objectives the fight against piracy in the digital environment, in particular, the protection of its rights and those of its member clubs, and spends enormous human and technological resources to detect such misuse,” the notice starts.

La Liga explains that since the app links to live streams of First and Second Division games published without permission, GitHub should take the code offline.

“This user does not have any right to this type of links with illegal broadcasts, so the conduct described supposes a violation of said exploitation rights of audiovisual content of the National League Championship in its First and Second Divisions.”

The takedown notice was effective in the sense that GitHub acted swiftly. As a result, people who try to download the APK file through that link now see a 404 error instead. That doesn’t really solve the problem though.

New GitHub Link

Soon after the above-mentioned URL was reported and disabled, the same user began promoting a new GitHub download link through Nodoapps’ official linktree page. Simply putting the APK file in a ‘gg’ subfolder did the trick.

La Liga’s anti-piracy team is likely be aware of this and will probably send a new takedown notice to GitHub, asking the company to take this down as well. But even if all piracy was eliminated from GitHub overnight, the problem isn’t going away.

By now, the Nodito app is being shared all over the web on dedicated APK-sharing sites. The developers also posted a copy on Google Drive, which will likely be updated to a new URL once it’s removed.

Whack-A-Mole

The above shows how difficult it can be to effectively take down a pirate streaming app that doesn’t rely on a single domain. In fact, the developers have previously shown that they don’t mind rebranding the entire app if the situation calls for it.

Nodito isn’t the first streaming tool Nodoapps released. The software was previously known as “NogoGO,” until its site was hit by a DMCA takedown notice.

“We wanted to inform you that access to the NodoGO site has been removed due to a DMCA problem. As a result, the app disappeared and it’s no longer accessible to any user,” Nodoapps announced two weeks ago

“That is why we have had to create a new application called NODITO […] that we will share in our social networks,” the team added.

And indeed, in addition to the download options listed at Linktree, Nodoapps also promotes download options for the APK file on its official Telegram channel, Instagram, Twitter, and elsewhere.

Scammers Enter the Game

By now, the Nodito brand has taken on a life of its own, which can make it hard to spot which versions are official and which aren’t. This provides an opportunity for scammers to enter the game, and indeed, an unofficial “Nodito” made its way to the Google Play Store recently.

This app has been downloaded over 10,000 times in just a few days but according to Nodoapps’ official developers, it should be avoided at all costs.

“It is a scam, they ask for your phone number to ‘supposedly’ verify themselves but all they do is send you SMS. All they do is take advantage of Nodito’s name,” Nodoapps writes.

These types of scams are hard to avoid. Nodoapps knows from experience that sending a takedown notice may temporarily solve the problem, but dealing with scammers is a game of whack-a-mole too.

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

VAIO has been making PCs since the company spun out from Sony in 2014. For the most part the company has focused on Windows laptops sold in its home country of Japan and beyond. But now VAIO has unveiled a 10.4 inch Android tablet called the VAIO TL10. It’s available in Brazil for 1799 reais […]

The post VAIO TL10 Android tablet has a 10.4 inch FHD+ display and Unisoc T616 processor appeared first on Liliputing.

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Das wäre mal ein neuer Ansatz: Wer sich auf Werbung einlässt, bekommt im Gegenzug ein TV-Gerät, ohne dafür zahlen zu müssen. (TV & Monitore, Fernseher)

Es gibt neue Erkenntnisse zum Angriff auf die IT-Infrastruktur bei Western Digital, der sich vor über einem Monat ereignet hat. (Western Digital, Malware)

Die Kommunen verlangen finanzielle Unterstützung, um Schulen, Krankenhäuser und Verwaltungsgebäude umzurüsten. (Energiewende, Energie & Klima)

Gmail sorgt mit seiner neuen Anzeigenplatzierung für Aufregung unter den Nutzern. Die Werbung erscheint nun inmitten der E-Mails. (Gmail, Google)

Im Vergleich zum Vorjahr gibt es bei der Post dennoch wesentlich mehr Beschwerden bezüglich der Zustellung von Briefen und Paketen. (Post, Bundesnetzagentur)

Hosting companies, CDN platforms and consumer ISPs face an increasing risk of being held liable for the activities of their customers.

At least in theory, copyright law in both the United States and Europe should provide adequate protections for intermediaries but if a chink appears in the armor, nothing can stop rightsholders filing a lawsuit. When they do, things can get very expensive, very quickly.

According to its website, UK-based CDN company DataCamp shifts a lot of data via its CDN77 service; 120 Tbps network capacity over six continents, with 140+ private peerings connecting 3,000+ networks. In February 2022, U.S. broadcaster DISH Network filed a $32.5m lawsuit against DataCamp, claiming that it failed to deal with copyright infringing customers.

Filed in an Illinois district court, the complaint claimed that pirate IPTV services Banjo TV, Bollywood IPTV, Comstar TV, Express IPTV, Gennie TV, Gold TV, IPGuys, Istar, Red IPTV, Sky IPTV, and Zumm TV, were all customers of DataCamp.

DISH said it sent “hundreds of notices” requesting removal of content under the DMCA, along with copies of lawsuits and judgments relating to pirate IPTV services.

According to DISH, DataCamp’s response was lacking and since it failed to “adopt and reasonably implement” a repeat infringer policy despite having servers in the United States, the company could not rely on the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA.

“Tactical Leverage” Lawsuit

In a motion to dismiss, DataCamp described the DISH lawsuit as a means to “gain tactical leverage” over alleged direct infringers, i.e the people behind the named IPTV providers.

The company informed the court that knowledge of its customers’ activities would be “technologically impossible” since all traffic is completely encrypted, including between the providers and their customers. As for the infringement notices, DataCamp said it forwarded them to the relevant customers since they were best placed to remove any infringing content.

DISH wasted no time filing a response to DataCamp’s motion to dismiss and DataCamp was equally swift with its own reply. The filings revealed zero progress in the dispute and a canyon between each side’s interpretation of where safe harbors end and liability begins.

Confidentiality Agreement

After a couple of weeks of relative calm, the parties agreed on a confidentiality order and from there, nothing but silence until December 2022. A status report revealed that DISH had served requests for production on DataCamp and that the company would engage in “rolling” document production.

As part of that process, DataCamp was required to hand over invoices and customer support ticketes for the eleven pirate IPTV services named in the DISH complaint.

In an apparent effort to provide at least some confidentiality, DataCamp said it had “designated its production of its customers’ information (which includes location and payment information) as Attorney Eyes Only under the protective order.”

The report further revealed that DISH and Datacamp had engaged in settlement discussions. DISH had made an intital offer back in October 2022 and DataCamp responded two weeks later. A week or so before Christmas last year, DataCamp still hadn’t received a response.

Motion to Dismiss Denied

Late March 2023, the Court dismissed DataCamp’s motion to dismiss, without prejudice to later refiling if their settlement negotiations come to nothing.

A settlement conference is currently scheduled for May 23, 2023, at the request of both parties. This week the court agreed an extension of the fact discovery deadline to allow the companies more time to resolve the lawsuit via a settlement before incurring additional costs associated with depositions.

In a joint status report filed on May 5, the parties report that DISH provided a settlement letter to DataCamp on May 2. The CDN company says that it will send its response to DISH by May 16. The contents of those letters are unlikely to appear in public but even for a successful, profitable company like DataCamp, the numbers probably won’t make for great reading.

Court documents referenced above can be found here (1,2,3,4,5, pdf)

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