Month: August 2024

Webtoon Targets 170+ Pirate Domains Through DMCA Subpoena

In June, Webtoon Entertainment celebrated going public by sounding the closing bell at the Nasdaq exchange. Thus far, early investors haven’t been rewarded, but the company itself sees a bright future ahead. By targeting roughly 170 pirate site domains though a DMCA subpoena, it hopes to unmask their rogue operators and clear the path for future growth.

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

webtoonLaunched two decades ago, Webtoon Entertainment has established itself as one of the prime hosting platforms for short digital comics.

Partly owned by the South Korean company Naver, Webtoon rode the popular ‘webtoon’ wave all the way to the Nasdaq exchange, where it got a listing this summer.

With millions of creators on board, and roughly 170 million active monthly users, the webtoon company is seen as a growth story. While that may be the case, Webtoon’s first quarterly earnings report on August 8 wasn’t well received.

Webtoon’s Rough Start at Nasdaq

Instead of significant growth, revenues were more or less flat compared to a year ago. This was a disappointment to many investors and the stock price fell by more than 40%, ‘evaporating’ a billion dollars in market cap.

webtoon stock chart

For the company’s management, it would’ve been easy to point at piracy as a contributing factor. However, piracy wasn’t mentioned once in the official earnings report. It did get a brief mention during the conference call; Webtoon CFO David Lee mentioned that piracy is a concern for all user generated content services.

Webtoon has a positive outlook on its future and attributed the ‘disappointing’ results to currency headwinds. When currency exchange rates are kept stable, the company noted that year-over-year growth was 11%, topping expectations.

Eye on Pirates

While Webtoon doesn’t use piracy as a scapegoat, the company certainly considers it as a serious challenge going forward. This was made apparent in a SEC filing published a few days ago.

“As the copying and distribution of content over the internet proliferates, the risk of piracy, gray market sales, illegal downloading, file-sharing or other infringement, misappropriation and other violation of our intellectual property is likely to continue to increase,” Webtoon Entertainment states.

“We take various measures to prevent and monitor unauthorized use of our content, including developing proprietary technology to detect piracy and other technological measures,” the SEC filing adds.

These mandatory statements don’t address any novel concerns. Piracy has always been a challenge for the company, which sends out millions of DMCA takedown notices every month in an effort to contain the problem.

Not all sites and services are receptive to these takedown requests, however. Webtoon occasionally has to step up its efforts and address ‘pirate’ threats more directly, through cease-and-desist letters accompanied by legal threats, for example.

Webtoon Subpoenas Cloudflare to ‘Expose’ Pirates

Most ‘pirate’ sites don’t share their full names and contact details online, so getting to these people can be a challenge. Luckily for Webtoon, DMCA subpoenas may be useful to gather additional information.

A few days ago, Webtoon filed a DMCA subpoena request at a Texas federal court, compelling CDN service Cloudflare to expose the personal details of customers connected to allegedly-infringing domain names.

The legal paperwork lists close to 200 targets. After merging several subdomains, we end up with roughly 170 unique domain names, including those related to popular sites such as Bato.to, Mangareader.to, and Mangas.in, which all have millions of monthly visits.

mangalist

A declaration submitted by an attorney at Webtoon anti-piracy partner Remove Your Media, clarifies that the information requested will only be used to protect the publisher’s rights.

“The purpose of the accompanying subpoena is to obtain the identity of the alleged copyright infringer(s) in control of the internet domain(s)/website(s) listed in the subpoena. The information obtained will be used only for the purpose of protecting the rights granted to my client,” the declaration reads.

dmca subpoena

After reviewing the application, a court clerk signed the subpoena and Cloudflare now has until October 1st to respond. Judging from previous cases, the US-based Internet infrastructure company won’t contest the request for user details.

Effective, but Not Perfect

To what degree the information Cloudflare has on file will help Webtoon’s enforcement efforts has yet to be seen. Operators of pirate sites are known to use false identities and some are aware that their personal data can be discovered though DMCA subpoenas.

According to Webtoon’s previous experience, these legal efforts can certainly pay off. Last year, the company targeted 360 pirate domain names through a similar subpoena, which resulted in the shutdown of several sites.

Webtoon’s own reports suggested that 150 ‘sites’ went offline after they were targeted though the Cloudflare subpoena.

“After three months of hard work by Naver Webtoon, about 150 overseas illegal sites stopped operating. This is the result of Naver Webtoon’s action to issue a ‘Subpoena’ through a U.S. court, the first in the webtoon industry,” the company wrote in November.

Those shutdowns included many prominent pirate sites including Aquamanga.com, which had more than 60 million monthly visits at its peak.

Time will tell if the most recent subpoena produces similar results but as long as it leads to the shutdown of sizable pirate sites, Webtoon will likely continue these anti-piracy efforts moving forward.

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A copy of the subpoena application, as well as some key exhibits is available here (pdf). A copy of the signed DMCA subpoena can be found here (pdf). A full list of all included domains, minus some duplicates, is included below.

1manga.co
1manhwa.com
1stkissmanga.io
1stkissmanga.me
astrascans.org
asurahunter.com
asuratoon.com
bacakomik.my.id
bacakomik.net
bacamanga.id
bato.to
burningtoon.com
chapmanga.net
clover-manga.com
cn.webmota.com
coffeemanga.io
comic24hnn.com
cosmicscans.id
doombreaker.com
doombreaker.org
dsectcomics.org
earlym.org
emperor-scan.com
emperorscan.net
enryumanga.com
eztoon101.com
fecomicc.xyz
flamecomics.me
freecomiconline.me
freemanga.me
fcmanga.net
god-manga.com
haremscann.es
harimanga.com
hippo-manga.com
hivetoon.com
hwago.org
immortalupdates.com
infinitelevelup.com
jimanga.com
joji-manga.com
kaiscans.org
kanmanhuala.cc
kingofmanga.com
klikmanga.id
komik20.com
komikcast.cafe
komikcast.cz
komikdaily.my.id
komikid.com
komikindo.co
komikindo.moe
komiku.com
komikuwu.com
kumomanga.com
kunmanga.com
kunmanga.to
lectormiau.com
leerolymp.com
likemanga.io
lscomic.com
lami-manga.com
luminous-scans.com
luxmanga.net
mafia-manga.com
manga-lucky.com
manga-za.com
manga18.me
manga18fx.com
mangabtt.com
mangaclash.com
mangadass.com
mangadex.tv
mangadop.net
mangaeffect.com
mangaesp.co
mangaextreme.com
mangafire.to
mangafox.fun
mangagalaxy.me
mangahasu.se
mangaindo.org
mangakatana.com
mangakakalot.tv
mangakakalot.net
mangakakalot.nl
mangakomi.io
mangaku.io
mangamelo.tv
mangamew.com
manganelo.tv
mangapanda.in
mangapill.com
mangaread.org
mangareader.cc
mangareader.to
mangarolls.com
mangascan.cc
mangatale.co
mangatown.com
mangatv.net
mangatx.to
mangauwu.com
manhuafast.top
manhuazone.com
manhwa-thailand.com
manhwa18.cc
manhwabtt.com
manhwaclan.com
manhwafull.net
manhwanew.com
manhwatop.to
manhwatube.com
mcreader.net
mercenary-manga.com
miku-manga.com
manytoon.me
murim-manga.com
murimrpgsimulation.com
murimscan.run
nanomachinemanga.com
nanomachinenow.com
natsu.id
niadd.com
night-scans.com
ninemanga.com
nitroscans.online
oktoon.com
omniscient-readersviewpoint.com
paragonscans.com
ped-manga.com
popsmanga.com
quest-supremacy.com
questismmanga.com
ranker-manga.com
raw.senmanga.com
rawrmanga.com
read-lookism.com
readcomicmanga.com
readrealityquest.com
regressorofthefallenfamily.com
retsu.co
romantikmanga.com
rose-manga.com
shibamanga.com
solo-max.com
spy-manga.com
teamxnovel.com
templescan.net
tenshi.id
thebreakermanhwa.com
thegodofhighschool.online
thetowerofgod.com
thunderscans.com
toomtam-manga.com
toongod.cc
toonily.me
towerofgodmanhwa.com
tukangkomik.com
tusmangas.org
visortmo.ws
webtoonhatti.net
webtoonscan.com
weimanga.com
weakherochapters.com
windbreakermanga.com
xenon-manga.com
xn--72ca0fwcc.net
xn--vv4b11c.com
yaoiscan.com
zahard.xyz

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

Google can’t defend shady Chrome data hoarding as “browser agnostic,” court says

Court reverses Google win in case from Chrome users who chose not to sync data.

Google can’t defend shady Chrome data hoarding as “browser agnostic,” court says

Enlarge (credit: Thomas Trutschel / Contributor | Photothek)

Chrome users who declined to sync their Google accounts with their browsing data secured a big privacy win this week after previously losing a proposed class action claiming that Google secretly collected personal data without consent from over 100 million Chrome users who opted out of syncing.

On Tuesday, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the prior court's finding that Google had properly gained consent for the contested data collection.

The appeals court said that the US district court had erred in ruling that Google's general privacy policies secured consent for the data collection. The district court failed to consider conflicts with Google's Chrome Privacy Notice (CPN), which said that users' "choice not to sync Chrome with their Google accounts meant that certain personal information would not be collected and used by Google," the appeals court ruled.

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The post These USB dongles will bring WiFi 7 to your existing PC appeared first on Liliputing.

Ars Technica content is now available in OpenAI services

Condé Nast joins other publishers in allowing OpenAI to access its content.

The OpenAI and Conde Nast logos on a gradient background.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

On Tuesday, OpenAI announced a partnership with Ars Technica parent company Condé Nast to display content from prominent publications within its AI products, including ChatGPT and a new SearchGPT prototype. It also allows OpenAI to use Condé content to train future AI language models. The deal covers well-known Condé brands such as Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Wired, Ars Technica, and others. Financial details were not disclosed.

One immediate effect of the deal will be that users of ChatGPT or SearchGPT will now be able to see information from Condé Nast publications pulled from those assistants' live views of the web. For example, a user could ask ChatGPT, "What's the latest Ars Technica article about Space?" and ChatGPT can browse the web and pull up the result, attribute it, and summarize it for users while also linking to the site.

In the longer term, the deal also means that OpenAI can openly and officially utilize Condé Nast articles to train future AI language models, which includes successors to GPT-4o. In this case, "training" means feeding content into an AI model's neural network so the AI model can better process conceptual relationships.

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Pixel 9 phones: The Gemini AI stuff, reviewed

A newcomer dives into AI with the Pixel 9 Pro.

Three Pixel 9 phones, but with the background set to an AI-generated moonscape, with another moon visible in the background.

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Google made its AI assistant, Gemini, central to its pitch to reviewers and the public—it's what makes Pixel phones different from any other Android phone, the company says. In fact, you have to go 24 minutes into Google's keynote presentation, and cringe through a couple of live AI demo failures, before Pixel hardware details are even mentioned.

I've been using a Pixel 9 Pro as my daily phone for about a week. There is almost nothing new about the Pixel 9 that is not linked to Gemini in some way, minus the physical design of the thing. So this review will look at how Gemini performs on the Pixel 9, which is Google's premier platform for Gemini at the moment. While some of the Pixel 9's AI-powered features may make it to other Android-powered phones in future Android releases, that's not a certainty. AI—as a free trial, as a custom Google-designed chip, and as an OS integration—is something Google is using to set Pixels apart.

I wrote a separate review of the three main Pixel 9 devices. But considering the Pixel 9 as a hardware-only product is strange. The short version is that the phones themselves are capable evolutions of the Pixel series and probably the best versions Google has made yet, and they're sold at prices that reflect that. If you love Pixel phones, are eager to upgrade, and plan to ignore Gemini specifically and AI features generally, that might be all you need to know.

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Pixel 9 family: The “just hardware” review (no AI)

Google’s AI says you can use Pixel 9 without AI. Is that a reason to upgrade?

Pixel 9, 9 Pro XL, and 9 Pro, left to right, lined up on neutral paper

Enlarge / For this "neutral," hardware-focused review of the Pixel 9 phones, I asked the Pixel to "reimagine" a "neutral white background." (credit: Kevin Purdy / Gemini AI)

I asked Google's Gemini Live chatbot, running on a new Pixel 9 Pro, how easy it was to use the Pixel 9 without all the Gemini AI features?

"It's definitely possible to use a Pixel 9 without Gemini," the bot responded in a remarkably casual voice. "While Gemini adds some cool features, your phone will still work pretty much the same as any other Android phone. You'll still have access to all the basic stuff like making calls, texting, taking photos, and all your favorite apps."

"But," I followed up, "didn't Google emphasize the Pixel 9 as a Gemini phone?"

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Pixel 9 Pro XL im Test: Pixel 8 Pro + mehr KI = Pixel 9 Pro XL

Google setzt beim Pixel 9 Pro XL voll auf die Kamera und natürlich auf KI – und nicht auf das schnellste SoC. Ob das funktioniert, haben wir im Test ausprobiert. Ein Test von Tobias Költzsch (Pixel 9, Smartphone)

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A Windows security update leaves dual-boot computers unable to load Linux

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The post A Windows security update leaves dual-boot computers unable to load Linux appeared first on Liliputing.