Apple Joins Hollywood & Netflix on a Pirate Site Blocking Trip to Oz

Relative quiet over the past few months may have given the impression that Australia has lost interest in site-blocking injunctions. But just like waiting for a bus, suddenly two come along at once. The first aims to block Australians’ view of more than 30 pirate sites, a disproportionate number serving the pirate anime market. A brand-new application sees Apple in a surprise partnership with Hollywood and Netflix, because everyone has exclusives to protect these days.

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

kangaroo-ozUnless they already have links to existing platforms or can somehow benefit from traffic previously destined for a popular preexisting domain, most new pirate sites aren’t overnight success stories.

In a saturated market where most innovation takes place behind the scenes, if it happens at all, the next big thing may struggle to make any kind of serious impression. When dozens, even hundreds of similar platforms are already offering the same content, presented in a broadly similar way, potentially via the same interface, evidence of success may take months or even years to appear.

Popular in Months, Blocked Many, Many Months Later

In 2024, the most obvious outward indication of success for many sites is being placed on various rightsholder-maintained blocklists; they reward a site’s success or recognize its potential by stymieing further progress through the use of mostly regional ISP blockades. Australia has been methodically dealing with locally-significant sites in this manner since 2015, and via a more robust system since 2018.

Legislation has been developed to permit DNS and/or IP address blocking within a flexible ‘dynamic injunction’ framework, but when reading through an injunction signed off by Justice Nicholas at the Federal Court this week, it’s evident just how quickly things can change.

The original application was filed on November 9, 2023, headed up by local companies Roadshow Films and Village Roadshow Films, plus Disney, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Universal City Studios, Warner Bros., plus affiliates Netflix Studios and Netflix Worldwide Entertainment. The respondents in the matter, dozens of local ISPs operating under Telstra, Optus, TPG Telecom, Aussie Broadband, iiNet, Vodafone, and other branding, were asked to block over 30 pirate sites operating under dozens of different domains.

The sites include: bayofpirates, proxygalaxy, tvbayoplus, haitu, watch-free, bbmovies, wcoanimedubbedonline, 6movies, animeflv, hdwatch, 9movies, seriesonlinehd, soap2dayhd, 123moviesfree, watchmovies, movieshd, gogoanime, animepahe, losmovies, 4anime, extratorrents, limetorrents, nivod4, aniwatch, kissanime, and watchcartoononline

telstra-block

After years of tuning the process is now well understood, and there’s little to no opposition from anyone since the criteria for blocking speaks for itself. However, after four months of ensuring the paperwork is correct, the list itself is predictably in need of an update.

Since dynamic injunctions are flexible, there’s nothing that can’t be fixed, but even after being identified in some cases by their main domains and several alternatives, targets continue to move. Aniwatch stands out as a site known by millions, yet just a few weeks before the application was made it was called Zoro.to. Today, after yet another change, it operates from HiAnime.to.

Gogoanime, on the other hand, laughs in the face of such consistency. Currently operating from anitaku.to and gogoanime3.co, the last round of switches featured gogoanimehd.io and gogoanime3.net. And since it doesn’t matter how many times a site changes its domain, or if other similar domains are even operated by the same people, gogoanimex.to, gogoanime.video, gogoanime.sk, .tel, news, .bid, .ar, and all the others, can now be blocked in Australia regardless.

The studios have to compensate the ISPs for initial blocking at the rate of AUS$50 per domain (US$33), and then another AUS$50 per domain after that. Pirate sites could try to bleed the studios dry by maintaining a more vigorous domain-switching pace but as strategies go, there have been better ones; blocking carried out as part of this order will continue for three years, minimum.

The Second Blocking Bus Has Apple on Board

apple-blockedThe second application worthy of mention today was filed on March 13, 2024, and is unfortunately so new that precise details of the application are yet to be made available.

Until the real documents appear, we’ve put together the details of the request in a document available below. It features all the usual ISPs, the usual local rightsholders, plus members of the MPA including Netflix.

But perhaps the most interesting rightsholder is new arrival Apple Video Programming LLC, which owns the rights to Apple+ shows including Silo and Criminal Record, among many others, mostly exclusives.

apple-injunction-oz

The blocking order related to the November 2023 application is available here (pdf)

The application filed on March 13, 2024, featuring Apple hasn’t been made available yet so, in the meantime, the basic details can be found here (pdf)

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

Daily Deals (3-18-2024)

Anker’s Soundcore Space A40 true wireless earbuds feature active noise-cancellation and ridiculously long battery life when you use the included charging case. I picked up a pair almost a month ago and I’ve used them to listen to an audiob…

Anker’s Soundcore Space A40 true wireless earbuds feature active noise-cancellation and ridiculously long battery life when you use the included charging case. I picked up a pair almost a month ago and I’ve used them to listen to an audiobook and a half, plus a fair amount of music and I have yet to recharge […]

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Dell tells remote workers that they won’t be eligible for promotion

Report highlights big turnaround from Dell’s previous pro-WFH stance.

A woman in a bright yellow jacket is sitting in front of a laptop in emotional tension.

Enlarge (credit: Getty)

Starting in May, Dell employees who are fully remote will not be eligible for promotion, Business Insider (BI) reported Saturday. The upcoming policy update represents a dramatic reversal from Dell's prior stance on work from home (WFH), which included CEO Michael Dell saying: "If you are counting on forced hours spent in a traditional office to create collaboration and provide a feeling of belonging within your organization, you’re doing it wrong."

Dell employees will mostly all be considered "remote" or "hybrid" starting in May, BI reported. Hybrid workers have to come into the office at least 39 days per quarter, Dell confirmed to Ars Technica, which equates to approximately three times a week. Those who would prefer to never commute to an office will not "be considered for promotion, or be able to change roles," BI reported.

"For remote team members, it is important to understand the trade-offs: Career advancement, including applying to new roles in the company, will require a team member to reclassify as hybrid onsite," Dell's memo to workers said, per BI.

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Tesla settles with Black worker after $3.2 million verdict in racism lawsuit

Tesla and Owen Diaz both appealed $3.2 million verdict before deciding to settle.

Aerial view of Tesla cars in a parking lot at a Tesla facility.

Enlarge / Tesla cars sit in a parking lot at the company's factory in Fremont, California on October 19, 2022. (credit: Getty Images | Justin Sullivan)

Tesla has settled with a Black former factory worker who won a $3.2 million judgment in a racial discrimination case, a court filing on Friday said.

Both sides were challenging the $3.2 million verdict in a federal appeals court but agreed to dismiss the case in the Friday filing. The joint stipulation for dismissal said that "the Parties have executed a final, binding settlement agreement that fully resolves all claims."

Tesla presumably agreed to pay Owen Diaz some amount less than $3.2 million, ending a case in which Diaz was once slated to receive $137 million. As we've previously written, a jury in US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that Tesla should pay $137 million to Diaz in October 2021.

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Here’s what we know about the Audi Q6 e-tron and its all-new EV platform

Audi has bet big on its next flexible EV architecture, starting with this SUV.

An Audi A6 seen in a studio

Enlarge / This is Audi's next electric vehicle, the Q6 e-tron SUV. (credit: Audi)

MUNICH—Audi's new electric car platform is an important one for the company. Debuting in the new 2025 Q6 e-tron, it will provide the bones for many new electric Audis—not to mention Porsches and even Lamborghinis and Bentleys—in the coming years. Its development hasn't been entirely easy, either; software delays got in the way of plans to have cars in customer hands in 2023. But now the new Q6 e-tron is ready to meet the world.

There's some rather interesting technology integrated into the Q6 e-tron's new electric vehicle architecture. Called PPE, or Premium Platform Electric, it's been designed with flexibility in mind. Audi took the role of leading its development within Volkswagen Group, but the other brands within that corporate empire that target the upper end of the car market will also build EVs with PPE.

Since SUVs are still super-popular, Audi is kicking off the PPE era with an SUV. But the platform allows for other sizes and shapes—next year, we should see the A6 sedan and, if we're really lucky, an A6 Avant station wagon.

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GOG partners with Amazon Luna to let users stream games to TVs, tablets, and other devices

GOG sells over 9,000 DRM-free PC games including new releases and classic titles (GOG used to stand for Good Old Games), including titles that are playable on Windows, Mac and Linux. But now the company plans to get into game streaming, allowing users…

GOG sells over 9,000 DRM-free PC games including new releases and classic titles (GOG used to stand for Good Old Games), including titles that are playable on Windows, Mac and Linux. But now the company plans to get into game streaming, allowing users to play some games on a smart TVs, phones, tablets, and other […]

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Qualcomm’s “Snapdragon 8s Gen 3” cuts down the company’s flagship SoC

The “s” moniker doesn’t make it better than the old 8 Gen 3 chip.

The promo image for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip.

Enlarge / The promo image for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip. (credit: Qualcomm)

Qualcomm's newest smartphone SoC is the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3. Years of iPhone "S" upgrades might lead you to assume this was a mid-cycle refresh to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is a "specially curated" version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. That means it's a slightly slower, cheaper chip than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is still Qualcomm's best smartphone chip.

The older, better Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has a core layout of one 3.3 GHz "Prime" Arm Cortex X4 core, five "medium" A720 cores (three at 3.2 GHz, two at 2.0 GHz), and two "small" 2.3 GHz A520 cores for background processing. This new "S" chip swaps a medium core for a small one, for a 1+4+3 configuration instead of 1+5+2. Everything is clocked lower, too: 3 GHz for the Prime core, 2.8 GHz for all the medium cores, and 2 GHz for the small cores.

The modem is downgraded to an X70 instead of the X75 in the 8 Gen 3 chip. That theoretically means a lower max download speed (5Gbps instead of 10) but since you would actually need to be granted those speeds by your carrier, It's not clear anyone would ever notice this. It also sounds like the X70 is more power-hungry, since it only has "Qualcomm 5G PowerSave Gen 3" instead of "Qualcomm 5G PowerSave Gen 4" on the flagship chip. We don't think Qualcomm has ever given a technical explanation of what this means, though. The SoC is still 4nm, just like the 8 Gen 3. Video maxes out at 4K now instead of 8K.

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Elon Musk’s xAI releases Grok source and weights, taunting OpenAI

Amid criticism of OpenAI’s closed models, Musk makes the Grok-1 AI model free to download.

An AI-generated image released by xAI during the launch of Grok

Enlarge / An AI-generated image released by xAI during the open-weights launch of Grok-1. (credit: xAI)

On Sunday, Elon Musk's AI firm xAI released the base model weights and network architecture of Grok-1, a large language model designed to compete with the models that power OpenAI's ChatGPT. The open-weights release through GitHub and BitTorrent comes as Musk continues to criticize (and sue) rival OpenAI for not releasing its AI models in an open way.

Announced in November, Grok is an AI assistant similar to ChatGPT that is available to X Premium+ subscribers who pay $16 a month to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. At its heart is a mixture-of-experts LLM called "Grok-1," clocking in at 314 billion parameters. As a reference, GPT-3 included 175 billion parameters. Parameter count is a rough measure of an AI model's complexity, reflecting its potential for generating more useful responses.

xAI is releasing the base model of Grok-1, which is not fine-tuned for a specific task, so it is likely not the same model that X uses to power its Grok AI assistant. "This is the raw base model checkpoint from the Grok-1 pre-training phase, which concluded in October 2023," writes xAI on its release page. "This means that the model is not fine-tuned for any specific application, such as dialogue," meaning it's not necessarily shipping as a chatbot.

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