Month: January 2019

Raumfahrt: Raumsonde New Horizons passiert Ultima Thule

Geglückter Auftakt für das Jahr 2019: Die Nasa-Sonde New Horizons hat den Himmelskörper Ultima Thule planmäßig passiert und Daten darüber aufgezeichnet. Ultima Thule ist der bis dato am weitesten entfernte Himmelskörper, der von einem irdischen Raumfah…

Geglückter Auftakt für das Jahr 2019: Die Nasa-Sonde New Horizons hat den Himmelskörper Ultima Thule planmäßig passiert und Daten darüber aufgezeichnet. Ultima Thule ist der bis dato am weitesten entfernte Himmelskörper, der von einem irdischen Raumfahrzeug erforscht wurde. (New Horizons, Nasa)

New Law Will See Pirate TV Services Blocked By ISPs in Latvia

New laws that came into effect yesterday will see Latvian ISPs begin blocking ‘pirate’ sites that provide TV streams without a license. The blocking will be carried out extrajudicially on the orders of the National Electronic Media Council and will see unauthorized sites blocked for an initial period of six months.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Consumers wishing to access TV content are spoilt for choice these days. Masses of content is available via antennas, satellite dishes, cable, and – of course – the Internet.

The explosion of the latter has provided huge growth in access to legitimate platforms but alongside there are many thousands of unauthorized services, each looking to take a share of the massive pirate audience.

With no clear answer to stemming this consumption, many countries are turning to web-blocking, utilizing local ISPs as somewhat porous barriers to pirate content. The latest country to take this course of action is Latvia, which introduced new laws on January 1, 2019, in an effort to reduce unauthorized consumption.

Sites and services that rebroadcast “audiovisual programs” in the country without an appropriate license now face blocking by local ISPs. While the process will be carried out extrajudicially, it will be largely similar to regimes in other countries that practice blocking to counter infringement.

The National Electronic Media Council, which will administer the blocks, will first send out cease-and-desist notices to sites and services that are retransmitting TV and similar content without permission. They will be given 15 days to stop their activities or face their sites being placed on a national blacklist which will be actioned by local Internet service providers.

According to an investigation by Delfi, the state will be picking up the bill for administering the blockades, spending more than 333,000 euros in 2019 and around 280,000 euros each in 2020 and 2021.

Most of the money will be spent on the salaries of 10 new officials with the remainder being spent on other aspects of the regime including new software for monitoring the activities of ‘pirate’ sites.

The names and domains of all blocked sites will be published on a government website and will remain on the national blocklist for six months. It appears the authorities are preparing for the inevitable game of whac-a-mole by looking for new branches of similar services and quickly sending notifications for them to shut down.

The news that Latvia will crack down on ‘pirate’ TV streams comes after Ukraine-based set-top box manufacturer Infomir said it will do what it can to prevent infringement.

The company told TorrentFreak that it will begin blocking access to suspected infringing portals following complaints from “big copyright holders, anti-piracy associations, and companies that provide copyright management and protection services.”

Meanwhile, in the UK, a second High Court injunction has been granted in an effort to prevent Internet users from accessing illegal boxing streams. Obtained by Queensbury Promotions, the home of the legendary promoter and manager Frank Warren, it will remain in effect until 2020.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Retpoline: Linux-Kernel soll besseren Spectre-Schutz bekommen

Die bisher im Linux-Kernel neben anderen Techniken als Spectre-Schutz eingesetzten Retpolines sollen schneller werden. Ermöglicht werden soll das mit ganz viel Assembler-Code, wobei aber auch alle indirekten Code-Branches gepatcht werden sollen, nicht …

Die bisher im Linux-Kernel neben anderen Techniken als Spectre-Schutz eingesetzten Retpolines sollen schneller werden. Ermöglicht werden soll das mit ganz viel Assembler-Code, wobei aber auch alle indirekten Code-Branches gepatcht werden sollen, nicht nur ausgewählte. (Linux-Kernel, Linux)

Mobilfunk: Telekom will hohe 5G-Ausbau-Auflagen verhindern

Deutschland habe die längsten Genehmigungsverfahren für Antennenstandorte in Europa. Daneben gebe es begrenzte Baukapazitäten und Bürgerinitiativen, sagte der Telekom-Sprecher zur Klage des Konzerns gegen die Bundesnetzagentur zu 5G. (5G, Telekom)

Deutschland habe die längsten Genehmigungsverfahren für Antennenstandorte in Europa. Daneben gebe es begrenzte Baukapazitäten und Bürgerinitiativen, sagte der Telekom-Sprecher zur Klage des Konzerns gegen die Bundesnetzagentur zu 5G. (5G, Telekom)

Reporting When Pirate Releases Hit The Internet is Apparently Illegal Now

A PreDb is an online database that advises users when a particular pirate file hits the Internet. The vast majority of these services are for information purposes only and contain no links to pirated content. However, anti-piracy companies apparently cannot tell the difference between these and pirate sites. We caught up with the operator of SweTracker, which specializes in Nordic releases, for an inside look.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

While the vast majority of BitTorrent users will simply visit their favorite pirate site for a list of what is available, very often content hasn’t been released online yet. From simply trying to soon to waiting for a delayed release, checking sites can be a bit hit and miss.

For those looking for more information on whether content has hit the Internet yet, it’s possible to use a so-called PRE Database, or PreDb for short. These sites, which can be automatically or manually maintained, contain lists which detail release names, when they became available online, and other relevant information.

While some PreDb sites sometimes contain links to torrents or NZB files, for example, most toe the line from a copyright perspective. They are simple archives of information that cannot be claimed by copyright holders. That, however, doesn’t stop them from trying.

Recently, TorrentFreak had a discussion with the operator of SweTracker, a PreDb/tracer service that focuses on providing information for Nordic releases.

“As a Nordic user I wanted to see where all the Nordic releases are, where to find them, and who had them first,” he explained.

“Swenews.info [another release tracking site] still existed back then, but it didn’t say in plain text which specific tracker had the content, so you had to visit all the possible trackers. So then I decided to create my own version of Swenews but detailing the specific tracker. This was about two years ago.”

While many PreDb-style sites monitor for ‘Scene’ releases using information culled from IRC, SweTracker monitors BitTorrent trackers and publishes information on who won the ‘race’ to put content online first. It does not link to any pirate content whatsoever but anti-piracy companies regularly report the site to Google.

No infrining content but the complaints flood in

As the image above shows, SweTracker has been reported to Google many hundreds of times this year alone by anti-piracy companies who clearly cannot tell the difference between reporting news and offering pirate releases for download. SweTracker’s operator says he’s become used to the problem.

“My personal experience with [anti-piracy companies] is that they don’t really know how stuff works. They often state that users can download or stream movies directly from SweTracker, but that’s simply not true,” he explains.

“But, I try to make life easy and do remove the releases they ask me to remove.
They have contacted me via email several times.”

As far as we can tell, this level of cooperation really isn’t needed. However, SweTracker’s operator says that he’s had serious problems in the past when loose-cannon companies erroneously targeted his site.

He reveals that one company took its complaints about his site to Cloudflare and then to his own web-host, which responded by taking down his entire site until all of the files on it could be checked for infringement. This effort took almost a day during which the site was rendered completely inaccessible.

The problems facing SweTracker are not unique, however. There are perhaps a dozen similar sites online currently, with PreDb.org, PreDb.pw, and Pre.Corrupt-Net.org being among the most respected and visited.

PreDb.org states clearly on its main page that “There are absolutely NO downloads of copyright-protected works, hyperlinks to downloads, torrent files, magnet links, nzb files or similar content on any part of this web site” but that doesn’t prevent complaints.

Google’s Transparency Report indicates that at the time of writing, PreDb.org has had 2,204 URLs reported by content and anti-piracy companies, with Google removing the links from its indexes approximately 65% of the time.

A similar situation is faced by PreDb.pw, which has had 1,103 of its URLs reported to Google with requests that the company removes them from its search indexes. At the time of writing, Google has cooperated almost 85% of the time.

Quite why these sites are aggressively targeted isn’t clear, but it seems likely that simply having a release name on the site is enough to classify it as a full-on piracy resource. As we’ve pointed out dozens of times in the past, a simple whitelist could provide a very simple solution to this problem.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

New Horizons has a successful flyby of the Kuiper Belt’s bowling pin

Ultima Thule may have two lobes, or be two closely orbiting objects.

Image of a blurry bowling pin shape, as well as a drawing of its possible axis of rotation.

Enlarge (credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI; sketch courtesy of James Tuttle Keane)

While people around the world were celebrating the arrival of 2019, people at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland were hard at work. Billions of miles away, the New Horizons probe was flying past Ultima Thule, a small object in the Kuiper Belt. By Tuesday morning, the hardware had sent back a status report that indicated the flyby went as planned, and New Horizons now has lots of data from Ultima Thule that it will slowly send back to Earth over the coming months.

While we don't yet have any of the data that will tell us details about this relic of the Solar System's formation, images taken during the approach solved one of the mysteries that had arisen as New Horizons closed in. But one of the key questions—is Ultima Thule one object or two?—remains unanswered.

Prior to New Horizons' arrival at Ultima Thule, researchers obtained images as it eclipsed a background star. These suggested the body was oblong, rather than spherical. Yet, as the spacecraft got closer, it failed to detect any significant changes in brightness, as you'd expect if an oblong body was rotating.

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Mickey Mouse and Batman will soon be public domain—here’s what that means

The Internet stopped another copyright extension without firing a shot.

The copyright to <i>The Great Gatsby</i>—the 1925 novel, not the 2013 movie starring Leonardo di Caprio—will expire two years from today.

Enlarge / The copyright to The Great Gatsby—the 1925 novel, not the 2013 movie starring Leonardo di Caprio—will expire two years from today. (credit: Warner Bros. Picture)

As the ball dropped over Times Square last night, all copyrighted works published in 1923 fell into the public domain. Everyone now has the right to republish them or adapt them for use in new works.

It's the first time this has happened in 21 years.

Until the 1970s, copyright expirations were an annual occurrence. On January 1, 1977, works published in 1921 became free for anyone to use. But then an overhaul of copyright law—passed in 1976 but not taking effect until 1978—extended copyright protections by 20 years. As a result, the copyrights for 1922 works expired in 1998 instead of 1978.

Read 38 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Mickey Mouse and Batman will soon be public domain—here’s what that means

The Internet stopped another copyright extension without firing a shot.

The copyright to <i>The Great Gatsby</i>—the 1925 novel, not the 2013 movie starring Leonardo di Caprio—will expire two years from today.

Enlarge / The copyright to The Great Gatsby—the 1925 novel, not the 2013 movie starring Leonardo di Caprio—will expire two years from today. (credit: Warner Bros. Picture)

As the ball dropped over Times Square last night, all copyrighted works published in 1923 fell into the public domain. Everyone now has the right to republish them or adapt them for use in new works.

It's the first time this has happened in 21 years.

Until the 1970s, copyright expirations were an annual occurrence. On January 1, 1977, works published in 1921 became free for anyone to use. But then an overhaul of copyright law—passed in 1976 but not taking effect until 1978—extended copyright protections by 20 years. As a result, the copyrights for 1922 works expired in 1998 instead of 1978.

Read 38 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Killing in the name of: The US Army and video games

From the archives: The US Army has long used video games for training and recruitment.

Two unlikely allies: the US Military and the video game industry. Who knew?

Two unlikely allies: the US Military and the video game industry. Who knew?

Update: It's New Year's Day and Ars staffers are enjoying a winter break (inevitably filled with some wishful vacation research and cooking). As such, we're resurfacing a few favorites from the site archives—like this look at how the military has used video games (and vice versa). This story originally ran on December 7, 2008, and it appears unchanged below.

The branches of the United States military have had a strong presence in video games since the dawn of the medium, with appearances in genres from primitive arcade shooters to real-time strategy, first-person shooters, scrolling shooters, to the occasional beat-'em-ups. Few of these titles have actually had official military involvement or input, but recently that has begun to change. Not only have the different branches sponsored "official" games, but they have also used serious games to provide training for their soldiers. So the recent news that the US Army has decided to invest $50 million into video game development was not much of a surprise to the industry. After all, the Army has realized that video games are immensely useful tools, both for capturing the public's interest, as well as training soldiers in the art of war.

America's Army, the free-to-play first-person shooter that aims to give players a taste of what it's like to be a member of the Armed Forces, has been around since 2002. The shooter has garnered a number of awards over the years, and has managed to attract several million players on both PCs and consoles. While it has certainly proved popular with gamers, it isn't an outright recruitment tool in its own right. A more accurate description of the game would be that it's an aid in the recruitment process.

Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Killing in the name of: The US Army and video games

From the archives: The US Army has long used video games for training and recruitment.

Two unlikely allies: the US Military and the video game industry. Who knew?

Two unlikely allies: the US Military and the video game industry. Who knew?

Update: It's New Year's Day and Ars staffers are enjoying a winter break (inevitably filled with some wishful vacation research and cooking). As such, we're resurfacing a few favorites from the site archives—like this look at how the military has used video games (and vice versa). This story originally ran on December 7, 2008, and it appears unchanged below.

The branches of the United States military have had a strong presence in video games since the dawn of the medium, with appearances in genres from primitive arcade shooters to real-time strategy, first-person shooters, scrolling shooters, to the occasional beat-'em-ups. Few of these titles have actually had official military involvement or input, but recently that has begun to change. Not only have the different branches sponsored "official" games, but they have also used serious games to provide training for their soldiers. So the recent news that the US Army has decided to invest $50 million into video game development was not much of a surprise to the industry. After all, the Army has realized that video games are immensely useful tools, both for capturing the public's interest, as well as training soldiers in the art of war.

America's Army, the free-to-play first-person shooter that aims to give players a taste of what it's like to be a member of the Armed Forces, has been around since 2002. The shooter has garnered a number of awards over the years, and has managed to attract several million players on both PCs and consoles. While it has certainly proved popular with gamers, it isn't an outright recruitment tool in its own right. A more accurate description of the game would be that it's an aid in the recruitment process.

Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments