European Commission Steps Up Fight Against Online Piracy

The European Commission is determined to step up the fight against online piracy and counterfeiting. To achieve this, it will support voluntary agreements to cut off revenue to piracy sites, while also exploring new blockchain-based anti-piracy technologies. In addition, the Commission provides detailed guidance on how current legislation should be interpreted.

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

The European Commission has had copyright issues at the top of its agenda for a while, resulting in several controversial proposals.

This week it presented a series of new measures to ensure that copyright holders are well protected, targeting both online piracy and counterfeit goods.

“Today we boost our collective ability to catch the ‘big fish’ behind fake goods and pirated content which harm our companies and our jobs – as well as our health and safety in areas such as medicines or toys,” Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska announced.

The Commission notes that it’s stepping up the fight against counterfeiting and piracy. However, many of the proposals are not entirely new for those who follow anti-piracy issues around the globe.

One of the main goals is to focus on the people who facilitate copyright infringement, such as pirate site operators, and try to cut their revenue streams.

“The Commission seeks to deprive commercial-scale IP infringers of the revenue flows that make their criminal activity lucrative – this is the so-called ‘follow the money’ approach which focuses on the ‘big fish’ rather than individuals,” they write.

Instead of using legislation to reach this goal, the Commission prefers to continue its support for voluntary agreements between copyright holders and third-party services. This includes deals with advertising and payment services to cut their ties with pirate sites.

“Such agreements can lead to faster action against counterfeiting and piracy than court actions,” the Commission writes.

Another tool to fight piracy appears on the agenda for the first time. The European Commission notes that it will also support the quest for new anti-piracy initiatives, including the use of blockchain technology.

“Supporting industry-led initiatives to combat IP infringements, including work on Memoranda of Understanding and exploring the potential of new technologies such as blockchain to combat IP infringements in supply chains,” the suggestion reads.

No concrete examples were given but earlier this week, European Parliament member Brando Benifei wrote an article on the issue in Euractiv.

Benifei mentions that blockchain technology can help independent artists collect royalty payments without the need for middlemen. In a similar vein, blockchains can also be used to track the unauthorized distribution of works.

In addition to broadening the anti-piracy horizon, the European Commission also released a new guidance on how the current IPR Enforcement Directive (IPRED) should be interpreted, taking into account various recent developments, including landmark EU Court of Justice rulings.

The guidance explains how and when it’s appropriate to issue website blocking orders, for example. In general, blocking injunctions are warranted when they are proportional and aimed at preventing concrete infringements.

The comprehensive guidance also covers the issue of filtering. Interestingly, the Commission clarifies that third-party services can’t be required to “install and operate excessively broad, unspecific and expensive filtering systems.”

This appears to run counter to the mandatory piracy filters that were suggested as part of the copyright reform proposal.

However, the Commission notes that in some specific cases, hosting providers (e.g. YouTube) can be ordered to monitor uploads. This is in line with a recent communication which recommended that online services should implement measures to automatically detect and remove suspected illegal content.

While the new plans continue down the path of stronger copyright protections, not all rightsholders are happy. IFPI is glad that the main problems are highlighted, but would have liked to have seen more concrete plans.

“We are disappointed that despite the European Commission recognizing the need to modernize IPRED and years of evidence gathering, today’s result is merely guidance to EU Member State governments. Soft law does not give right holders the tools they need to take effective action against pirate services,” IFPI writes.

On the other side of the divide, opposition to the previously announced EU copyright reform plans continues as well. Earlier today a group of over 80 organizations urged EU member states to speak out against several controversial copyright proposals, including the upload filter.

“The signatories warn the Member states that the discussion around the Copyright Directive are on the verge of causing irreparable damage to our fundamental rights and freedoms, our economy and competitiveness, our education and research, our innovation and competition, our creativity and our culture,” they say.

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

Get ready for a wave of Bitcoin forks

Are Bitcoin Uranium and Super Bitcoin the future of cryptocurrency? Or a big joke?

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

On August 1, a dissident faction of the Bitcoin community created a new payment network called Bitcoin Cash. There are lots of Bitcoin-derived spinoff currencies, of course, but this was unusual because it branched off from the existing Bitcoin blockchain. The result was the cryptocurrency equivalent of a stock split: everyone who owned one bitcoin before the split suddenly owned a "cash" bitcoin after the split.

Today, the value of Bitcoin Cash in circulation is about $20 billion. That makes it the third most valuable currency, after only the original Bitcoin and Ethereum. And this appears to be newly created wealth. The value of vanilla bitcoins didn't fall significantly on the day of the split, and it has since zoomed upwards so that the value of all conventional bitcoins is now around $150 billion.

With that kind of money on the table, it was inevitable that others would try the same trick. In early November, another group of Bitcoin developers publicly launched the Bitcoin Gold network. This version of Bitcoin swaps out Bitcoin's current mining process—where people compete for bitcoins by computing SHA-256 hashes using custom-designed mining hardware—with a memory-hard algorithm that, designers hope, will make it resistant to acceleration by custom hardware. The creators say they want to re-democratize Bitcoin mining, once again making it possible for anyone to earn Bitcoin Gold with their home PCs.

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Deals of the Day (11-30-2017)

The Asus Transformer Mini may not be the most powerful 2-in-1 computer money can buy, but it’s a relatively compact option for folks that prefer a 10 inch tablet to a Surface Pro-like 12.3 inch or larger screen. And with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of s…

The Asus Transformer Mini may not be the most powerful 2-in-1 computer money can buy, but it’s a relatively compact option for folks that prefer a 10 inch tablet to a Surface Pro-like 12.3 inch or larger screen. And with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, it has beefier specs than older 10 inch […]

Deals of the Day (11-30-2017) is a post from: Liliputing

LG Gram lightweight notebooks get 8th-gen Intel Core update

The LG Gram line of laptops are ridiculously light. The latest models measure about 0.6 inches thick and an LG Gram laptop with a 15.6 inch display weighs just 2.4 pounds, while a 13.3 inch model is just 2.1 pounds. Oh, and those new models also sport …

The LG Gram line of laptops are ridiculously light. The latest models measure about 0.6 inches thick and an LG Gram laptop with a 15.6 inch display weighs just 2.4 pounds, while a 13.3 inch model is just 2.1 pounds. Oh, and those new models also sport Intel’s new quad-core 8th-gen Core “Kaby Lake Refresh” […]

LG Gram lightweight notebooks get 8th-gen Intel Core update is a post from: Liliputing

Report: Nest might be folded into Google’s hardware team

Nest might lose its status as an independent Alphabet company.

(credit: Nest)

A report from the Wall Street Journal claims that Google's parent company Alphabet is "considering" folding Nest into the Google hardware team. The report says the move would allow Google to "more tightly integrate its services with Nest," which would let Google compete better in the connected home market. The report doesn't go into much more detail than that. Questions about what would happen to the Nest brand or how exactly a Google integration would work are left unanswered.

Nest was acquired by Google in 2014, where it was made into "a Google company"—a company that existed inside Google, but was more or less run independently. When the Alphabet era began in 2015, Nest was spun off into an independent company under the Alphabet umbrella. In 2016, Nest CEO Tony Fadell left the company, and since then Alphabet has not seemed quite sure what to do with Nest.

Nest has struggled inside Google (and later Alphabet) since its acquisition in 2014. The expectation was that an infusion of Google's cash and resources would supercharge Nest, and while the company quadrupled its headcount under Google/Alphabet and acquired companies like Dropcam and Revolv, new products (other than a rebranded Dropcam) were few and far between. Nest's smart thermostat and smoke detector existed before the acquisition. The only new products under Fadell's tenure were rebranded Dropcams.

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Bungie: Destiny 2 bekommt Alexa-Sprachbefehle

“Alexa, bitte aktiviere meine stärksten Waffen”: Mit solchen Sprachbefehlen können Spieler ab sofort in Destiny 2 kämpfen. Dazu verwendet das Actionspiel Alexa von Amazon, sogar ein Lautsprecher im Ghost-Design ist demnächst erhältlich – alles allerdin…

"Alexa, bitte aktiviere meine stärksten Waffen": Mit solchen Sprachbefehlen können Spieler ab sofort in Destiny 2 kämpfen. Dazu verwendet das Actionspiel Alexa von Amazon, sogar ein Lautsprecher im Ghost-Design ist demnächst erhältlich - alles allerdings vorerst nicht in Deutschland. (Destiny 2, Spracherkennung)

Why would you put a touchscreen display on headphones?

Wireless headphones have a lot of things going for them. There are no cords to get tangled up. And they can work with phones that may lack an audio jack, for instance. But most wireless headphones do still need to be paired with a phone, laptop, or oth…

Wireless headphones have a lot of things going for them. There are no cords to get tangled up. And they can work with phones that may lack an audio jack, for instance. But most wireless headphones do still need to be paired with a phone, laptop, or other gadget via Bluetooth. The upcoming Debussy smart […]

Why would you put a touchscreen display on headphones? is a post from: Liliputing

Amazon unveils new ways for developers to make money through Alexa, expands Alexa’s global reach

Amazon’s Alexa voice service is about three years old at this point, and developers have created thousands of “skills” that let you play games, control smart home gadgets, book a ride on a car share service, get recipes, and more. But…

Amazon’s Alexa voice service is about three years old at this point, and developers have created thousands of “skills” that let you play games, control smart home gadgets, book a ride on a car share service, get recipes, and more. But Amazon’s been slow to actually give developers ways to get paid… which sort of […]

Amazon unveils new ways for developers to make money through Alexa, expands Alexa’s global reach is a post from: Liliputing

Big invasive snails are driving birds of prey to get bigger

In central Florida, the prey remakes its predator.

Enlarge / A snail kite with its prey of choice. (credit: US Fish and Wildlife)

The term “Anthropocene” was coined to connote humanity’s recent and indelible impact on the Earth. But it is not only geology and the climate that we have altered; our shuffling of species around the globe has thrown wrenches into many an ecosystem. The invasive species we import have been shown to change rapidly upon entering new territory, but how native species respond to these interlopers has not been as well documented.

In central Florida, there is an endangered bird, the snail kite, that, as its name implies, prefers to dine on apple snails. The size and shape of the kites’ curved bills have adapted to be perfect for plucking the snails out of their shells. These native snails are about an inch in diameter. By around 2009, exotic snails—“considered one of the world’s worst invaders,” according to a new study of this particular predation—had taken over. They are about three times as big as the native snails.

Using a combination of demographic data and genetic analyses of the birds, researchers have found that the new, larger snails have ended up facing larger birds with larger bills. The birds’ body mass increased, and the length of their bills increased—just the change required to cope with the larger prey. Not only did bill size increase, it even increased relative to body size, so even though the birds are larger, they still have more pronounced bills.

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