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Unmittelbar vor einer Abstimmung über die Gründung eines Betriebsrats versucht das Management des Hamburger Spielentwicklers Goodgame Studios laut Medienberichten, die Beschäftigten mit ungewöhnlichen Mitteln von der Wahl abzuhalten. (Goodgame Studios, Games) 
Unmittelbar vor einer Abstimmung über die Gründung eines Betriebsrats versucht das Management des Hamburger Spielentwicklers Goodgame Studios laut Medienberichten, die Beschäftigten mit ungewöhnlichen Mitteln von der Wahl abzuhalten. (Goodgame Studios, Games) 
The man appointed last week as Vladimir Putin’s key adviser on Internet related affairs recommended that copyright holders should stop being so demanding on piracy until the local economic situation improves. Surprisingly, it now transpires that Herman Klimenko has a secret life as the owner of a torrent site offering pirate content.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
As chairman of The Institute for Development of the Internet, Herman Klimenko already had a prominent role in Internet related affairs. But when Russian president Vladimir Putin eyed the 49-year-old to become his personal adviser on the Internet, Klimenko really struck gold.
Last week Putin signed a decree that officially enlisted Klimenko and it didn’t take long for him to address the issue of Internet piracy. However, instead of tough talk, Klimenko criticized web-blocking and suggested that copyright holders should wait for a better economic situation before “terrorizing” on the issue of piracy.
“Consumption of copyright content increases with economic growth, and when the situation is very serious, I think people do not have to unnecessarily terrorize these issues,” Putin’s adviser said.
“Pushing hard now on this topic, I think, is not worth it. When the economy improves, you should return to this issue.”
While Klimenko’s comments at least in part sound reasonable, copyright holders would’ve been disappointed by his lack of support. What they will be even more disappointed over is the allegations now surfacing about Klimenko’s links to online piracy.
Sources close to Russia’s Vedomosti have informed the publication that Klimenko is the owner of Torrnado.ru, a locally operated torrent site. As can be seen from the image below the site has a familiar feel and unless hell has frozen over the studios behind Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Terminator Genesis aren’t in agreement with their content appearing for free.
So how does someone like Klimenko end up with a torrent site under his belt? Well, it’s not being claimed that he’s the admin or sysop at Torrnado (that would be quite remarkable), but it appears that the site is indeed operated by a company owned by the Internet expert.
To begin, it helps to take a look at Torrnado’s WHOIS listing. We can see from the image below that the domain is owned by a company called ECO PC Solutions.
Checking out that company using company database SPARK Interfax reveals that the owner of ECO PC Solutions is Alevtina Jacobson. In December, ECO PC Integrated Solutions (with Jacobson at the helm) was announced as the operator of a brand new TV channel for MediaMetrics.ru, a service which measures Internet traffic to news stories from social media.
Completing the circle, MediaMetrics is owned by Herman Klimenko and he admits that Alevtina Jacobson was his employee.
Somewhat bizarrely, last evening Klimenko took to his Facebook page to comment on the reports that he’s the proud owner of a torrent site.
“An amazing story with torrents. On their own they are nothing illegal,” he wrote.
“You only need to cooperate with the creators and help them to fight for their rights.
Those who are not helping [rightsholders] are being punished. Those who are helping, are not being punished.”
A little later Klimenko posted again, listing various criticisms that have been made of him during his short time in power.
“Well of course the list of my sins is impressive,” he wrote.
“I’m shutting down [messaging app] Telegram. I’m building a Chinese-style Internet in Russia. I support the pirates. And i’m doing this all alone and at the same time.”
While Torrnado is hardly Russia’s most popular ‘pirate’ site (currently ranked 2,334 in the country by Alexa), the fact that it’s operated by a company owned by Klimenko is hardly something expected of a man in his position. Indeed, the law forbids those in “state service” to run a business, hence an announcement yesterday that his son Yuri would be taking control of some of his interests.
Whether the torrent revelations will affect Klimenko’s position as Putin’s adviser will remain to be seen but at the very least and at long last, someone in a position of authority actually understands how a torrent site works.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
16 GByte Videospeicher für High-End-Grafikkarten: Samsung hat begonnen, High Bandwidth Memory mit 4 statt 1 GByte pro Stapel zu produzieren. Der eignet sich für kommende Pascal- und Polaris-Karten. (Grafikhardware, Speichermedien) 
16 GByte Videospeicher für High-End-Grafikkarten: Samsung hat begonnen, High Bandwidth Memory mit 4 statt 1 GByte pro Stapel zu produzieren. Der eignet sich für kommende Pascal- und Polaris-Karten. (Grafikhardware, Speichermedien) 
Mit mehr als einer Million Euro will Facebook in Europa Menschenrechtsorganisationen und Forschungseinrichtungen unterstützen. Damit sollen Hasskommentare bekämpft und Toleranz gefördert werden, so Managerin Sheryl Sandberg. (Facebook, Soziales Netz) 
Mit mehr als einer Million Euro will Facebook in Europa Menschenrechtsorganisationen und Forschungseinrichtungen unterstützen. Damit sollen Hasskommentare bekämpft und Toleranz gefördert werden, so Managerin Sheryl Sandberg. (Facebook, Soziales Netz) 
Bureau also concerned drones could create a hazard, take “unauthorized” game video.
Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, CA., home to Super Bowl 50 and the San Francsico 49ers. (credit: Travis Wise)
Federal authorities, who have been baffled by more than a dozen attacks on San Francisco Bay Area data lines, are probing whether there is any connection between that vandalism and the Super Bowl. The NFL's big game will be played February 7 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, just south of San Francisco.
An Internal memo between the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and others says the agencies have no "credible threats to or associated with Super Bowl 50 or related events." But the memo, obtained by NBC's News 4 in Washington, DC, says the spate of fiber optic cable severings across the San Francisco Bay Area raises "the concern individuals may be using these incidents to test and prod network durability in conjunction with a more complex plot."
The FBI declined to respond to Ars' inquiry. A former FBI agent familiar with the memo, however, stressed that the authorities have not found any credible threats and that the agencies were considering every possible nefarious scenario they could think of before the big game.
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Victorious textbook salesman Supap Kirtsaeng now wants his attorneys’ fees.
Petitioner Supap Kirtsaeng in 2014. (credit: Doug Kari)
Supap Kirtsaeng built himself a business on eBay buying textbooks in Asia and reselling them to students in the US. That practice made him the target of a copyright lawsuit by John Wiley & Sons, a large textbook company that didn't like Kirtsaeng undercutting their US prices. Lawyers for Wiley said that they should control the right to import their copyrighted works.
Kirtsaeng won a resounding victory in 2013, when the Supreme Court said he was protected by the first-sale doctrine. He'd bought the books legally and could resell them, even if that involved moving the books across the border.
After his win, Kirtsaeng sought to get his attorneys' fees paid. In the US legal system, parties must generally bear their own expenses. However, copyright law allows for judges to "award a reasonable attorney’s fee to the prevailing party," at their discretion. Because of that provision, fee-shifting is more common in copyright cases.
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Attempts to plug the well have made the site more unstable; blowout risk is an issue.
On Saturday, regulators in California decided to hold off on a plan to capture and burn the natural gas that is leaking from a broken storage well just north of Los Angeles, citing the risk of a “catastrophic explosion,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
The well at the Aliso Canyon storage facility has been leaking since October 23, belching massive amounts of methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas, into the air. Methane is not only bad for climate change, it’s also extremely flammable.
At first, California regulators wanted to take advantage of that property of methane by capturing and burning off the gas coming from the well. That would have reduced the methane’s impact on the environment somewhat while Southern California Gas, the company that owns the Aliso Canyon facility, finished drilling the relief well to plug the underground reservoir feeding the leak. As National Geographic noted in an article last week, "Flaring gas has a much lower impact on the climate than a vent directly into the atmosphere—the flame converts gas into an amount of carbon dioxide that will have 30 times less warming potential in the near term.”
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Wenn sich Unternehmen zusammenschließen, geht es meist um Arbeitsplätze, Patente und eine marktbeherrschende Stellung. Die EU-Kommission will künftig aber verstärkt auch auf die Datenbestände der Unternehmen achten, um Monopole und unfairen Wettbewerb zu verhindern. (
iOS 9.3 wird nachts einen Blaulichtfilter aktivieren, der die Farbabstimmung wärmer macht. So soll der Nutzer besser einschlafen können. Doch der Night-Shift-Modus setzt ein iPhone oder iPad mit 64-Bit-Prozessor voraus. Besitzer älterer Geräte bleiben außen vor. (
Amazon will mit seinen Lieferdrohnen künftig innerhalb von 30 Minuten Bestellungen ausliefern. Die Prime-Air-Fluggeräte sollten Strecken ab rund 16 km fliegen, hat ein Amazon-Manager verraten. (
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