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Microsoft will für den Edge-Browser nicht nur Eigenentwicklungen als Erweiterung. Ein Werkzeug soll zukünftig auch Erweiterungen für Chrome kompatibel machen. (Edge, Microsoft)

Gerade erst angekündigt und schon wieder ungültig. Microsofts Einschränkung der Betriebssystemunterstützung von Windows 7 und 8.1 für moderne Systeme wird jetzt um ein Jahr hinausgezögert. Selbst danach werden jetzt alle kritischen Updates verteilt - es gab zuviel Kritik. (Business-Notebooks, Microsoft)

These days there are essentially two ways to obtain music on-demand. One can buy MP3s from places like iTunes or for those looking to make their pennies stretch further, streaming solutions like Spotify are just what the doctor ordered.

Services that allow users to download MP3s are more expensive than streaming options and no wonder. Offline listening features notwithstanding, streaming is somewhat transient. Like a diamond, an MP3 is forever.

No surprise then that Spotify users squealed with excitement back in March 2013 when a new Chrome extension hit the web. Downloadify by Robin Aldenhoven allowed Spotify users to permanently download MP3s to their devices from the Spotify web interface, a move that sparked a frenzy of people doing just that.

Now, three years on, it appears that downloading MP3s from Spotify is a thing again. This time around it’s not quite as easy as installing a simple extension but for those with a PC and a modicum of patience it shouldn’t prove too much of a problem.

The original code for the aptly named Spotify Playlist Downloader (SPD) was created by Lordmau5 and has been kicking around for a few weeks. Given a few parameters it happily dumps playlists full of 160 kbps MP3s to the host machine in seconds and names them nicely too.

However, SPD requires people to fiddle around using a command line, something the majority simply can’t be bothered with. So, what SPD needed was for someone to come along and augment it with a nice Windows GUI to make the whole thing more user-friendly.

Thanks to dekiller82, Spotify Playlist Downloader now happily runs via a basic GUI, provided people also install NodeJS and Microsoft’s .NET framework up front.

Spotify Playlist Downloader

Admittedly it’s a bit clunky but it definitely works and does so with both premium and even free Spotify accounts. There are reports that free accounts can seize up after vigorous SPD use but eventually they begin to work again although no one seems to know why.

So with tens of millions of tracks now available to anyone with a PC, one might expect there are celebrations to be had. Indeed, in some quarters they’re probably going on right now.

But without the whole Spotify package, complete with recommendations, superb music discovery opportunities and a beautiful interface, the hand stacking, sorting and categorizing of MP3s feels somewhat primitive. Sure, the tracks come at a bargain price, but using them seems like a step back in time.

There’s little doubt that sooner or later Spotify will plug the hole exploited by SPD but in the meantime thousands of people will be greedily filling their hard drives with MP3s. For some it will entail grabbing some treasured classics but for others it will mean revisiting a life filled with soulless Windows Explorer folders that lead first to excitement and then musical dead ends.

Everyone knows that forbidden fruit is alluring but sometimes the realization dawns that while it’s definitely exciting, it’s not necessarily more tasty.

The license-bending, label-annoying Spotify Playlist Downloader project can be found here.

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

Wer Ubuntu 14.04.4 einsetzt und einen kompatiblen Grafikchip besitzt, der kann jetzt einen neuen Beta-Treiber von AMD herunterladen. Dieser setzt die Voraussetzungen für das Vulkan-API um. Allerdings mit einigen Einschränkungen. (Vulkan, AMD)

From website blocking in Australia to webpage removal by Netflix, read the news roundup for the week ending 20 March 2016

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Warner Bros. and Intel's lawsuit against a Chinese company that makes the HDFury devices has just been turned on its head, with the Chinese firm countersuing.

Warner and Intel sued LegendSky for making HDMI and DisplayPort devices that bypass the HDCP copy protection present, to allow for video capturing and conversion. While the initial lawsuit seemed fairly straight forward, especially after a spate of 4K rips flooded the torrent scene, rips that were eventually traced back to one of LegendSky's devices.

But LegendSky has hit back, claiming that the assertions made in the original lawsuit are simply not true, and that their devices do not strip HDCP protection at all.

Instead, LegendSky explains via their counterclaim, their HDFury devices merely convert the tough to strip newer HDCP versions to HDCP 1.4, which has been cracked since at least 2010.

LegendSky asserts that this type of conversion is actually allowed under the HDCP licensing agreement. Interestingly, LegendSky also notes that serveral HDCP licensees, including Netflix, Disney, NBC and CBS, have purchased HDFury devices for legitimate purposes.

According to LegendSky, the real reasons for the lawsuit has nothing to do with piracy, and more to do with the bottom line.

"In reality, then, the Complaint is a bludgeon to use against Defendant so as to unlawfully expand the scope of Plaintiffs’ copyright monopolies, and protect Plaintiff DCP’s HDCP monopoly licensing rents in the relevant market," LegendSky writes in their counterclaim.

LegendSky has asked the court to dismiss the original complaint, and has even gone as far as asking for damages and penalties to be awarded against the plaintiffs.

Since 2005 the SXSW music festival has published thousands of free tracks from participating artists.

For some of the first releases the festival organizers created the torrents for the artist showcases themselves, but since 2008 this task has been taken over by the public.

Luckily all of the SXSW showcase MP3s are still freely available on the festival’s site for sampling purposes, so it only takes one person to get a torrent up and running.

For the past several years Ben Stolt has taken the time and effort to put all the MP3s on BitTorrent, and the latest 2016 release consists of two torrents containing 1,593 tracks.

That’s a record-breaking 10.39 gigabytes of free music in total, almost four times the file size of the first torrent in 2005.

All the tracks released for the previous editions are also still available for those people who want to fill up their harddrives without having to invest thousands of dollars. The 2005 – 2016 archives now total more than 69 gigabytes.

Every year SXSW torrents are a great success, with many thousands of music aficionados downloading gigabytes of free music across virtually every genre from both established acts and upcoming bands.

TorrentFreak spoke to Ben Stolt who spends several hours preparing the releases each year, in part for his personal pleasure.

“My motivation is in part selfish, because, like many others, my friends and I all use the contents of the torrent to prepare for our week at SXSW Music. But without fail the emails start coming in January and February asking if there will be a torrent,” Stolt says.

“Many people come back every year, so I can’t leave them hanging,” he adds.

The job comes witch challenges though. SXSW doesn’t always make it easy to publish the tracks. For example, a few years ago Stolt had to start re-writing the ID3 tags based on the artist pages, as SXSW stopped doing so.

“Without that, the tracks would be a giant mess and mostly unidentifiable since the file names on the SXSW site are purely numeric. Also in 2014 they abruptly switched to using SoundCloud for the samples, but that was thankfully short-lived and things were back to normal the next year,” Stolt notes.

The efforts pay off though. Many people love the SXSW torrents which attract tens of thousands of downloaders each year. For some, it almost makes up for not being able to attend the festival in person.

“Appreciate the amount of work involved to make it happen. Can’t get to SXSW, so having these torrents available are the next best thing,” one downloader responds.

This year’s SXSW music festival is currently underway in Austin, Texas and ends on Sunday. The torrents, however, are expected to live on for as long as there are people sharing.

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

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In 2010 a fresh movie piracy brand began to conquer the Internet. Bypassing the so-called ‘Scene’, YIFY joined a new breed of release groups who publish their work directly to torrent sites.

In fact, YIFY, which later rebranded to YTS, started its own torrent website featuring high quality releases of the latest movies.

As the years went by the group amassed a huge following, and a year ago its website generated millions of pageviews per day. A true success story, but one that ended abruptly last October.

Hollywood sources tracked down the founder of YIFY and filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit in New Zealand. This meant the end of YIFY and YTS, but surprisingly the case was never heard in court.

Instead, both parties agreed to a private settlement outside of court, keeping the identity of one of YIFY’s key players out of the public eye. However, this didn’t last long.

Last week a New Zealand court confirmed the identity of the YIFY founder to the local Sunday Star Times. The news outlet reported that the movie studios filed their lawsuit against Yiftach Swery, a 23-year-old app and website developer.

Several years ago YIFY told TorrentFreak that the name was “just a random alias” but this explanation is hard to maintain now.

While we have always doubted the randomness of the popular tag, Yiftach Swery leaves little room for speculation.

Indeed, we confirmed with someone in the know that the YIF part is derived directly from the founder’s name. In theory, the same could be said for YTS but this stands for “YIFY Torrents Solutions,” our source says.

It’s worth noting that Yiftach was not the only person behind YIFY. In fact, towards the end he was no longer actively involved in encoding and uploading movies.

How many other people were involved in the group remains unknown. TorrentFreak did hear that other people connected to YIFY have been “approached” by the movie industry over the years, but Yiftach is the only one who signed a settlement deal.

One thing is very clear though, the original YIFY team is not coming back. Instead, Yiftach and his former colleagues will probably focus on picking up their regular lives again.

That said, the YIFY name lives on in the memories of million of pirates. While most of its shine has been lost, YIFY will certainly go down in history.

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

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