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Google, Bing Anti-Piracy Agreement: ‘Neutral’ Searches, Domain Hopping Addressed

The industry first anti-piracy deal between Google, Bing and rights-holders has generated a lot of interest from consumer groups worried about the freedom of the Internet, to rights-holders worried that it doesn't do enough. But thanks for freedom of information requests from digital advocacy groups EFF Digital Rights Ireland, more details about the highly secretive deal has just been revealed.

Neutral Keywords

The heavily redacted document obtained by the EFF and Digital Rights Ireland make multiple mentions of something referred to as "neutral" keywords. These are keywords that do not have a piracy leaning, but despite this, search results will be manipulated to demote pirate related results and promote legal links. Manipulation of auto-complete terms will occur for neutral keywords as well, the document revealed.

Sharing of User Data

Controversially, both Google and Bing have committed to sharing user behaviour data with rights-holders, in order for the parties involved to "know your enemy" better.

"Search engines and rights holders will exchange detailed information on a confidential basis in order to better understand how users are searching for content," the document reads.

Domain Hopping

With piracy domains being demoted, it's expected the operators of these domains will switch to "clean" domains to regain ranking. Both search engines and rights-holders have agreed to efforts to curb this kind of behaviour.

"All parties will work with the [Intellectual Property Office] to evaluate how frequently copyright infringing websites, subjected to demotion, change their top-level domain (TLD), but otherwise retain substantially the same identity," the agreement reads.

"If this activity is sufficiently widespread as to justify it, search engines and rights holders should develop a process whereby rights holders can notify search engines of the occurrence so that, when verified, such domains can be appropriately demoted."

It's Not All Our Fault

While almost all of the concessions being made in the agreement are by the search engines, both Microsoft and Google have made it clear that rights-holders may be to blame for the lack of legal links in search results.

Rights-holders will agree to take into consideration the existence of legitimate sites and whether proper search engine optimisation techniques have been used, before laying the blame on the search engines.

And finally, it appears that those not signed up to this voluntarily agreement may also be able to "benefit" from any progress made as a result of this agreement, with all parties agreeing to share related non-confidential information with other search engines and rights-holders.

The full, redacted, agreement can be read here.

[via TorrentFreak]

New Automated DMCA Notices Hit Movie Pirates With $300 Fines

There’s a new threat on the horizon for BitTorrent pirates in the US. A new outfit called “Rights Enforcement” is using DMCA notices to send automated settlement demands to alleged copyright infringers. With an arsenal of known “copyright trolls” on side, it probably won’t shy away from taking matters to court.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Many Hollywood insiders see online piracy as a major threat, but very few are willing to target file-sharers with lawsuits or settlement demands.

Voltage Pictures was one of the pioneers on this front, at least in the US. Together with their legal team and BitTorrent tracking partner, the filmmakers have sued tens of thousands of people since 2010.

Initially, this was a very lucrative practice, as rightsholders were able to join many defendants in a single lawsuit. However, nowadays courts are more reserved, which is one of the reasons they started to look for alternatives.

One interesting development on this front is the company “Rights Enforcement.” This outfit tracks down BitTorrent pirates, but instead of taking them to court they send automated ‘fines’ via DMCA notices, asking for a $300 settlement.

By using the DMCA notice process, the rightsholders avoid expensive lawsuits. It also makes the settlement process easier to scale, since they can send out tens of thousands of ‘fines’ at once with limited resources.

While these schemes are not new, Rightscorp and CEG TEK have done the same, Rights Enforcement has a nasty sting in store for accused pirates.

The company is operated by lawyer Carl Crowell, who is best known for his work with various notorious copyright trolls. This includes the aforementioned Voltage Pictures, which filed lawsuits for several movies such as Dallas Buyers Club and The Hurt Locker.

These ties appear to be still intact, as the Rights Enforcement company lists several movies on its client list, many of which are linked to Voltage Pictures. Dallas Buyers Club is on there for example, as well as I.T., Mr. Church, Fathers & Daughters, Pay the Ghost, The Cobbler, and Good Kill.

Rights Enforcement Website

The client list suggests that that the makers of these movies are now trying to extract settlement money from alleged file-sharers through automated settlements, because this is cheaper and possibly more profitable.

This is also what Rights Enforcement suggests on its website:

“Online infringement, including ‘peer-to-peer’ copying of material across the Internet is pervasive. Too often parties and rights holders are forced into the expensive forum of the courts,” the outfit writes.

“With filing fees of $400 and copyright damages in some jurisdictions reaching $150,000 for a single act, we work to permit rights holders to notify and address infringers and resolve their claims in an efficient and cost effective manner.”

The ‘sting’ with Rights Enforcement, is that they have a team of known ‘troll’ lawyers lined up to wave the legal stick. In other words, if targeted subscribers are unwilling to pay but mistakenly identify themselves, they can still be taken to court.

They are not shy to use this threat either. In their automated DMCA settlement notices Rights Enforcement warns that a failure to cooperate can lead to legal action.

“You may consider this a notice of potential lawsuit, a demand for the infringing activity to terminate, and a demand for damages from the actual infringer,” the automated email reads.

“We invite your voluntary cooperation in assisting us with this matter, identifying the infringer, and ensuring that this activity stops. Should the infringing activity continue we may file a civil lawsuit seeking judicial relief.”

It’s currently unknown who does the BitTorrent tracking, but according to defense lawyer Robert Cashman, it’s likely that the German outfit Guardaley is involved.

TorrentFreak spoke with Cashman, who has represented several accused pirates in the past. He is warning people against Rights Enforcement, describing it as a “monster” and the “evil twin” of settlement outfit CEG TEK.

The lawyer believes that the evidence used by Rights Enforcement might lead to inaccurate accusations, which Rights Enforcement will pursue in an aggressive fashion.

“So in essence, Right Enforcement will be a monster. It’ll be an evil version of what CEG-TEK strove to become,” Cashman says.

The link with CEG TEK comes up because it stopped sending out settlement requests recently. The company, which represented a current Rights Enforcement client in the recent past, now states on its website that it’s no longer offering settlement services. That said, we haven’t been able to find a direct link between the two outfits.

On a similar note, Rights Enforcement “boss” Carl Crowell was previously hired by another settlement firm, Rightscorp. While this may have served as inspiration, we haven’t seen any direct ties.

One thing’s for sure, though. Given the outspokenness of Crowell and the aggressive tactics he and other partners have employed in the past, this is certainly not the last time we’ll hear of Rights Enforcement.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

How experimental games dumped us into a giant trash bag with a flashlight

Annual “Alt.Ctrl” exhibition is still our favorite collection of GDC weirdness.

SAN FRANCISCO—The newest tradition at the Game Developers Conference is the "Alt.Ctrl" pavilion. Every year, hackers gather to present some of the weirdest games ever made. Some count as "video games," while others eschew screens and even computers for content that only barely qualifies as "digital entertainment."

We managed to play nearly all of the 20 games on show, and this gallery explores some of our favorites. It's also worth clicking through for more specific explanations of the weird content we got to go hands-, eyes-, and bellies-on with.

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Tech’s political impact? “14 people watch me on C-SPAN… 1M on Facebook”

Senator: Social media sites aren’t bad or good—ceding them to hate is the problem.

AUSTIN, Texas—Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) may not generate the same attention as our current tweeter-in-chief, but he embraces social media just as much. When serving as mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Booker gained a reputation for regularly interacting with constituents on Twitter. And today, as a US senator, he continues to post across a variety of media. Booker's been doing Facebook videos from his office at nearly a weekly clip since early December, and so far the senator finds the platform unparalleled when it comes to generating a response.

"At times, I see [Facebook videos] as more valuable than a speech on the senate floor," Booker told a capacity crowd during his keynote at the 2017 South By Southwest conference. "These are videos I put up for an audience to explain policy. In the senate, there are maybe 14 people watching me on C-SPAN, plus my mom makes 15. But my last Facebook video got something like one million views."

Ostensibly, Booker's speech served as the kick-off for the interactive portion of SXSW. But he often took the opportunity to touch on what he viewed as pressing political issues of the day: everything from the dangers of Jeff Sessions for a criminal justice system that's overly reliant on incarceration to the broken US food system (where tax dollars fund ads for food, fund campaigns telling you not to eat those foods, and then fund health resources to combat problems caused in the first place by government-supported foods). No matter the topic, Booker kept coming back to an overarching message about the need for love at this time of great division.

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The most detailed maps of the world will be for cars, not humans

Here, Civil Maps, and even Nvidia are all working on a new kind of cartography.

Here

The weight of the automotive and tech industries is fully behind the move toward self-driving cars. Cars with "limited autonomy"—i.e., the ability to drive themselves under certain conditions (level 3) or within certain geofenced locations (level 4)—should be on our roads within the next five years.

But a completely autonomous vehicle—capable of driving anywhere, any time, with human input limited to telling it just a destination—remains a more distant goal. To make that happen, cars are going to need to know exactly where they are in the world with far greater precision than currently possible with technology like GPS. And that means new maps that are far more accurate than anything you could buy at the next gas station—not that a human would be able to read them anyway.

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Classic bot-programming game Robo Rally has not aged well

Ars Cardboard looks at Richard Garfield’s “chaos classic.”

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com—and let us know what you think.

“This is the worst game I’ve ever played in my life.”

My friend spat the words through gritted teeth with the kind of vehemence normally reserved for YouTube comment threads. I considered calling a halt to the game, packing it away, and finding something less infuriating to play instead. Then I looked around and saw the bright-eyed grins on the faces of everyone else around the table.

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There’s now only one US state where mug shots aren’t public records

The latest law will provide fresh material for the online mug shot business racket.

In a 53-14 vote that took place days ago, South Dakota's legislative House passed legislation that makes arrest booking photos public records. The measure, which cleared the state's Senate in January, will be signed by Governor Dennis Daugaard.

With that signature on Senate Bill 25, (PDF) South Dakota becomes the 49th state requiring mug shots to be public records. The only other state in the union where they're not public records is Louisiana.

The South Dakota measure is certain to provide fresh material for the online mug shot business racket. These questionable sites post mug shots, often in a bid to embarrass people in hopes of getting them to pay hundreds of dollars to have their photos removed. The exposé I did on this for Wired found that some mug shot site operators had a symbiotic relationship with reputation management firms that charge for mug shot removals.

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Alphabet: Waymo will Uber das autonome Fahren verbieten lassen

Müssen die autonomen Autos von Uber in der Garage bleiben? Das will die Alphabet-Tochter Waymo erreichen – per Gerichtsbeschluss. (Uber, Politik/Recht)

Müssen die autonomen Autos von Uber in der Garage bleiben? Das will die Alphabet-Tochter Waymo erreichen - per Gerichtsbeschluss. (Uber, Politik/Recht)

Our new (mixed) reality: Early adopters have become HoloLens believers at work

Whether it involved trucks, buildings, or banquettes, AR/MR headset has made life easier.

It’s been roughly two years since Microsoft unveiled its augmented/mixed reality (AR/MR) HoloLens headset and about one year since the first publicly available dev kits went on sale. But ever since launching this impressive piece of tech, Microsoft has instead seemed content with letting Virtual Reality (VR) take the limelight. Take its recent Creators Update presentation in October as an example. Microsoft revealed tons of upcoming 3D functionality to benefit both VR and AR, but the headlines came when the company announced hardware OEMs like HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, and Acer would be making VR headsets of their own with Microsoft software powering the experience.

Throughout HoloLens’ short existence, Microsoft has repeatedly emphasized how this product, still a first-generation device, was simply not yet consumer-ready. In these first two years of HoloLens public awareness, Microsoft would only focus on building partnerships and use cases that showcased the business and enterprise applications for this new augmented/mixed reality platform.

The terms AR and MR are often applied interchangeably, but MR is used most often by Microsoft when describing the HoloLens technology. No matter what you want to call it, this approach has several practical advantages compared to VR. Not only is it much less likely to trigger the type of discomfort associated with so-called "simulator sickness,” but the ability to overlay holographic elements onto real-world environments makes the HoloLens particularly suited to training and education applications, for example.

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Überwachung: US-Heimatschutz durchsucht automatisiert Social-Media-Konten

Was posten Besucher auf Facebook, Google+ oder Twitter? Das US-Heimatschutzministerium will die Social-Media-Konten von Visa-Antragstellern automatisiert durchsuchen lassen. Erste Tests verliefen jedoch nicht so erfolgreich. (Politik/Recht, Soziales Ne…