Fahrdienst: UberX kommt nach Berlin

Der Fahrdienst Uber will in Berlin seinen Dienst X starten. Gleichzeitig baut die Firma ihr politisches Lobbying aus – und hat dafür eine prominente, gut vernetzte ehemalige EU-Politikerin angeheuert. (Uber, Politik/Recht)

Der Fahrdienst Uber will in Berlin seinen Dienst X starten. Gleichzeitig baut die Firma ihr politisches Lobbying aus - und hat dafür eine prominente, gut vernetzte ehemalige EU-Politikerin angeheuert. (Uber, Politik/Recht)

I Just Watched an Infringing Video and It Felt Pretty Bad

There are possibly millions of infringing videos on YouTube and for the most part users see it as a bonus. This week, however, I stumbled across a suspect video on the site and the resulting cascade of emotions made me wonder: Don’t we all appreciate copyrights and get annoyed by piracy when conditions are just right?

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

youtubefaceLike everyone reading this piece I have often seen pirated content on YouTube. The site is littered with hundreds maybe thousands of movies and TV shows, none of them uploaded by copyright holders.

Equally, if one wants to listen to just about any rare song, no matter how old, a YouTube search will uncover it. In most cases those songs haven’t been uploaded by their owners but when looking for any kind of desirable content, you have to have massive self-control to immediately click off.

Well this week, I did. And I was pretty infuriated while doing so.

While browsing one evening I noticed what I believed to be a new video from the Hydraulic Press Channel (HPC). For those who aren’t familiar with HPC it’s a channel, on YouTube, dedicated to crushing things in a hydraulic press. It’s almost as simple as that. It’s basic. It’s fun. And in a few months it has amassed a huge following.

What I clicked on was a video compilation of the top 10 things crushed by the channel, but something was wrong. The massively entertaining voice of channel host and resident crusher Lauri Vuohensilta was entirely missing. His wife wasn’t giggling in the background as she usually is either.

In fact, all I was witnessing was items getting crushed, one after the other and it left me cold. Then it dawned on me. I looked at the uploader name expecting the worst. I didn’t recognize it. Yep, this was an imposter. A freebooter.

hpc-fury

This was definitely not the Hydraulic Press Channel and a quick look at the video notes confirmed it.

“A compilation of everything hydraulic press channel has crushed yet. None of it is mine, all belongs to hydraulic press channel.”

So why take it then? It’s already available for free on the official channel, I found myself shouting.

Worse still, this “stolen” video had amassed more than 400,000 views and i’d contributed to that not just once but twice when I went back for the screenshot. Somehow I felt disproportionately annoyed that this stupid compilation was taking revenue away from the hugely funny Lauri and his giggling wife.

And in that i’m not alone. At the time of writing a third of the video’s votes are in the downward direction versus around one in 35 on the original channel. Furthermore, the comment section is littered with people angry that RandomStuff98 “stole” the content from Hydraulic Press Channel (HPC).

hpc-stolen

And here’s another interesting twist. I chatted with a couple of uploaders on a popular torrent site and although one didn’t express an opinion either way, the other said that he didn’t agree with people “stealing” YouTuber’s videos. This is coming from someone who uploads at least two dozen torrents a day.

With that in mind, one has to question how many of the outraged commenters on YouTube would also have concerns over the ethics of grabbing the latest leaked DVD screener from The Pirate Bay. My estimate is not very many of them.

I wasn’t sure why people “stealing” HPC’s content was so irritating but I presumed that it was partially down to the fact that the guy running the channel feels like “one of us”. He seems like an ordinary guy that you could go out and have a beer and a laugh with. That in itself makes it more personal, I suppose.

To get a bit more of an insight I shared my thoughts with musician and YouTube star Dan Bull who has tens of millions of hits under his belt. Did he have any idea why myself, a prolific torrent uploader, and plenty of YouTuber’s feel protective of more ‘amateur’ content?

“I think I can give you an explanation as to why mirroring a YouTube video is ethically different to sharing a Hollywood movie despite them being the same legally,” Dan told me.

“It’s a difficult topic as the same rationale that can be used for file-sharing, or abolition of copright, can be used to say that this kind of behavior is fine.
However, if you look a bit more closely, it’s really much more of a dick move than hosting a torrent file,” he continued.

“When you share a movie, you’re making something accessible to people who perhaps otherwise wouldn’t be able to see it. In contrast, when you simply mirror someone else’s YouTube video on your own channel, it’s not making the media any more accessible, it’s just redirecting traffic from the original uploader, who in most cases on YouTube is a small-time independent content creator.”

Dan notes that the DMCA and Content ID on YouTube allow original creators to takedown or monetize mirrored content, but he prefers not to use them.

“I am not a fan of either of those practices in any case as I don’t believe in the validity of intellectual property. But I do think that when uploading someone else’s content, you should always take a moment to consider whether it’s a dick move or not,” he concludes.

Of course, infringement is infringement, whether it’s ripping off the work of Hydraulic Press Channel or sharing the movies made by the studio members of the MPAA. Yet somehow it feels quite different. Few (if any) YouTube users complain about people uploading infringing blockbuster movies to the site yet HPC “pirates” get it with both barrels from commenters with no obvious respect for copyright law, only a sense of what is “right”.

If there was a way to bottle that kind of reaction and apply it to mainstream content, Hollywood might crack the piracy problem. But what aspect of this strange situation can they harness, what’s the secret recipe, and how can it be utilized? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

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

HBO Warns Game of Thrones Pirates, Removes Torrents

HBO is going all out to limit Game of Thrones piracy. The company is sending out thousands copyright infringement warnings to alleged pirates, encouraging them to get an HBO subscription. In addition, the company is requesting torrent sites to remove Game of Thrones torrents, at a rate rarely seen before.

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

got6Tomorrow night the third episode of the latest Game of Thrones season will appear online, both through official and unauthorized channels.

With millions of people all around the world eager to see how Jon Snow is doing, the interest on various pirate sites will be massive once again.

While HBO generally seems quite cavalier when the piracy topic comes up, the company is actively trying to contain the fallout behind the scenes.

Since the start of the new season the company’s anti-piracy partner IP Echelon has sent thousands of warnings to ISPs, urging them to take action against alleged pirates.

The warning mails in question include the IP-addresses of BitTorrent users who were caught sharing recent episodes of Game of Thrones, and the notifications HBO asks the ISPs to alert the associated subscribers to prevent further infringements.

“As the owner of the IP address, HBO requests that [ISP] immediately contact the subscriber who was assigned the IP address at the date and time below with the details of this notice, and take the proper steps to prevent further downloading or sharing of unauthorized content and additional infringement notices.”

HBO warning

gotmaildmca

While these notices are pretty common, HBO now also encourages ISPs to point subscribers toward legal options, something we haven’t seen in the past.

“We also encourage you to inform the subscriber that HBO programming can easily be watched and streamed on many devices legally by adding HBO to the subscriber’s television package,” the notification adds.

Legally, ISPs are not obligated to forward these emails, which are sent as a DMCA notification, but many do. In any case, HBO doesn’t know the identity of the alleged pirates, so there are no legal strings attached for the subscribers in question.

Aside from targeting alleged pirates, HBO has another strategy to deter people from pirating Game of Thrones.

Since the start of the sixth season the company has aggressively targeted torrent sites with takedown requests. While some sites simply ignore these, popular indexes and search engines such as KickassTorrents and Torrentz have removed links to hundreds of torrents.

Torrent removed

gotkatgone

In some cases, the most popular torrents are removed a few minutes after they appear online. This is much quicker than average, suggesting that HBO’s anti-piracy partners are monitoring the situation in real time and on a broad scale.

A search on KickassTorrents shows that the most popular torrent releases for the first two episodes have been removed. Similarly, a search for Game of Thrones on Torrentz notes that links to the 100 torrents with the most peers are all gone.

It’s clear that HBO is doing all it can to limit the distribution of pirated Game of Thrones episodes. However, the question remains as to whether it will be enough to really deter a significant number of downloaders from finding copies on other sites, where they are still readily available.

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

The connected car may be the dumbest idea ever, but it’s not going away

How long before every new car for sale is connected—and hackable?

You might think connecting your car to your phone is the dumbest thing ever, but neither the tech nor auto industries are giving up on it any time soon. (credit: Getty Images | Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg)

As you might imagine, we at Ars get bombarded with PR pitches about connected cars. Devices that plug into your car's OBDII port. Smartwatch integration with new models direct from the factory. Cars that alert you if you've left your keys behind. These are just the tip of the iceberg, and more ideas like them are coming from both the tech and auto industries. LTE modems are becoming widespread in new models and not just in luxury cars—try buying a Chevrolet without embedded 4G.

There's just one problem: most Ars readers, in my experience, think connecting a car to the internet is the dumbest thing you can do on four wheels. Who can blame them? Last year saw a litany of car hacks that affected aftermarket devices but also security flaws direct from the factory—1.4 million Fiat Chrysler vehicles had to be recalled as a result.

The problem is with the digital nervous system of our cars. Back when automotive network standards were being created, the idea that cars would use the Internet to interface with the outside world was ludicrous. And so, there's little—or none—of the sort of network security in place that you'd take for given if designing things from a clean sheet. As long as you have access to the Connected Area Network (or CAN), your electronic hooks are into the engine, the brakes, and even the steering.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Opinion: Tesla’s self-induced jet wash

Deadlines, delays, and departures dog Model 3.

Telsa Model Ss in the company's European production center in Tilburg, Netherlands. (credit: Getty Images | Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg)

Wake turbulence can ruin your day. Large aircraft deposit a strong ground-bound vortex that can cause huge altitude losses for other aircraft following them.

In the jet wash of a gob-smacking 325,000 pre-orders—at $1,000 each—for the upcoming Model 3 in just one week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk had bad news for his investors on Thursday. He told them the July 1, 2017 start date for production "is not a date that will actually be met." While this would be the fourth production delay for the Model 3 since the concept was first floated several years ago, the news doesn't stop there. New, more aggressive production goals have been set, even though Tesla is losing primary executive staff responsible for achieving them. The financial performance of the company has also worsened.

Tesla is already struggling to meet production deadlines for its current Model S and Model X units.
Quality glitches with the Model X's "falcon wings" and seat latches have led not just to production delays, but apprehension about the X's positive initial reception. Tesla is actually suing its supplier for the doors.

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Lavie Tidhar’s novel Central Station is a mosaic of posthuman problems

Review: Novel offers a realistically weird picture of life on a far-future space station.

Detail from the cover of Central Station, by Lavie Tidhar. (credit: Sarah Anne Langton)

The scope of Lavie Tidhar's new novel Central Station may be galactic, but each of its many, many co-existing layers of reality are connected by one locale: the ever-present space port of Central Station, an unimaginably massive building that joins the human past on Earth to its rapidly evolving future. Trying to summarize Central Station is like trying to summarize an entire season of a soap opera, except there are no heroes or villains, and, you know, the plot's mysterious baby scandal is about who engineered him in the vat and to what purpose. Adding to the drama is the Conversation: an inescapable, interconnected network that touches (almost) all people throughout the space-time continuum.

Central Station grew out of 13 linked short stories, some previously published and some new, which is what grants World Fantasy Award-winning author Tidhar such a broad canvas. His interwoven mix of human and non-human lives is full of characters crashing into the world and sending out ripples like stones thrown into a pond.

Is the main thrust that prodigal son Boris Aharon Chong has returned to Central Station, with an alien parasite in tow, to face the family, woman, and otherworldly child he abandoned in different ways? (In the cast list at the back of the book, Boris Chong is described as having “issues”—an understatement.) Is the central plot the forbidden battlefield romance between Isobel Chow and a robotnik named Motl, a being that stopped being human as we understand it long ago? Is the story the machination of the Oracle, Ruth Cohen, and the rag-and-bone man Ibrahim, who are all joined with non-human, digital, sentient life forms called Others? What of techno-vampire Carmel and her romance with the least technologically capable human in the story, the node-less and thus data-less Achimwene Haile Selassie Jones? And what's up with the manufactured boys Kranki and Ismail anyway?

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From XCOM to golems—cardboard games with digital brains

Three designers talk about the pros—and cons—of tech-powered tabletop titles.

Board gaming is in the midst of a creative “golden age.” But while games thrive on innovation, a paradoxically conservative streak runs through the hobby when it comes to the most fundamental technological shift of the 21st century: the rise of the smartphone.

While publishers have pushed out digital adaptations of hit games like Catan, Carcassonne, and Ticket to Ride, this is generally a one-way movement; few digital apps and tools are used in physical board games. But there are exceptions.

One of the first high-profile attempts at an analog-digital hybrid was XCOM: The Board Game. Released in 2015, the game offers a cooperative, multiplayer reimagining of the revered video game series that tasks players with repelling an alien invasion of the Earth. Created by Canadian designer Eric Lang, it uses a smartphone app to coordinate the aliens’ sinister plans to enslave the planet.

Read 34 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Doppio dual-screen smartwatch concept (video)

Doppio dual-screen smartwatch concept (video)

Two screens are better than one (sometimes) when you’re using a desktop computer. But what about a laptop? You can get secondary displays for those too.

Let’s go smaller: what about smartwatches?

Maybe one day you’ll be able to get a dual-screen version of that too.

Doppio is a smartwatch concept that incorporates two displays that can be configured in a variety of ways. For instance, one screen can rest on top of the other for a sort of standard, single-screen view.

Continue reading Doppio dual-screen smartwatch concept (video) at Liliputing.

Doppio dual-screen smartwatch concept (video)

Two screens are better than one (sometimes) when you’re using a desktop computer. But what about a laptop? You can get secondary displays for those too.

Let’s go smaller: what about smartwatches?

Maybe one day you’ll be able to get a dual-screen version of that too.

Doppio is a smartwatch concept that incorporates two displays that can be configured in a variety of ways. For instance, one screen can rest on top of the other for a sort of standard, single-screen view.

Continue reading Doppio dual-screen smartwatch concept (video) at Liliputing.

Geforce GTX 1080: Die neue schnellste Grafikkarte taktet extrem hoch

Nvidias Geforce GTX 1080 mit Pascal-Architektur soll eine Titan X locker übertreffen: Der Chip der Grafikkarte nutzt 2.560 Shader, die dank 16FF-Prozess lange nicht mehr gesehene Frequenzen erreichen. (Nvidia Pascal, Grafikhardware)

Nvidias Geforce GTX 1080 mit Pascal-Architektur soll eine Titan X locker übertreffen: Der Chip der Grafikkarte nutzt 2.560 Shader, die dank 16FF-Prozess lange nicht mehr gesehene Frequenzen erreichen. (Nvidia Pascal, Grafikhardware)