Ukraine Cyberpolice Shut Down Pirate Streaming Site

A pirate site which served copyrighted content over a nine-year period has been shut down by Ukranian cyberpolice. With half a million users, authorities say that OnlainFilm was among the top five most-visited sites in several countries. Five searches were carried out with computer equipment and cash seized.

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

While torrent sites were once the next big thing, streaming is now at the height of fashion.

A shocking number of platforms now offer instant access to massive movie and TV shows libraries, something the authorities seem powerless to do much about. Over in Ukraine, authorities say they have made a start.

For the past nine years Onlainfilm has been serving up movies to the masses but this week all that came to an end when local cyberpolice shut the operation down.

Government and police investigators report that after detecting “members of a criminal group” behind the site, police carried out five raids in the city of Khmelnytskyi located in the west of Ukraine.

One of the searched locations

“Online movie theater ‘Onlainfilm’ was among the five most-visited sites in several countries,” police said in a statement.

“Every day, the site was visited by half a million Internet users, and the number of video views exceeded two million. The total amount of videos posted on the site exceeded 50 TB.”

While police haven’t yet announced how many people were arrested, the image below reveals that hardware, money, and other items were seized during their searches.

Like many other sites of a similar nature, Onlainfilm took precautions to reduce the chances of detection. Police say that its operators used a reverse proxy server which enabled it to relay visitors’ requests to other servers hidden elsewhere.

In such cases, prosecutors and copyright holders tend to lead up front with claims of millions in lost revenues caused by sites such as Onlainfilm. However, authorities say those figures won’t be released until “the necessary investigative actions” have been carried out.

Ukraine’s reputation for low levels of intellectual property crime protection has placed the country firmly in the crosshairs of the United States Trade Representative.

The country is currently on the Priority Watch List with the USTR recently reporting that Ukraine had failed to “implement an effective means to combat the widespread online infringement of copyright” in the country.

Although Ukraine was featured quite heavily for other reasons, Onlainfilm was not listed in the USTR’s 2017 list of Notorious Markets.

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

Urheberrecht: Koalitionsstreit über Uploadfilter und Leistungsschutzrecht

In der Debatte um die EU-Urheberrechtsereform sind die Rollen klar verteilt. Während die Netzpolitiker in den Parteien gegen Leistungsschutzrecht und Uploadfilter sind, setzen sich Rechtspolitiker der Union und die Regierung dafür ein. Trotz des anders…

In der Debatte um die EU-Urheberrechtsereform sind die Rollen klar verteilt. Während die Netzpolitiker in den Parteien gegen Leistungsschutzrecht und Uploadfilter sind, setzen sich Rechtspolitiker der Union und die Regierung dafür ein. Trotz des anderslautenden Koalitionsvertrags. Ein Bericht von Friedhelm Greis (Leistungsschutzrecht, Urheberrecht)

Urheberrecht: Koalitionsstreit über Uploadfilter und Leistungsschutzrecht

In der Debatte um die EU-Urheberrechtsereform sind die Rollen klar verteilt. Während die Netzpolitiker in den Parteien gegen Leistungsschutzrecht und Uploadfilter sind, setzen sich Rechtspolitiker der Union und die Regierung dafür ein. Trotz des anders…

In der Debatte um die EU-Urheberrechtsereform sind die Rollen klar verteilt. Während die Netzpolitiker in den Parteien gegen Leistungsschutzrecht und Uploadfilter sind, setzen sich Rechtspolitiker der Union und die Regierung dafür ein. Trotz des anderslautenden Koalitionsvertrags. Ein Bericht von Friedhelm Greis (Leistungsschutzrecht, Urheberrecht)

Nintendo Implements Anti-Piracy Kill ‘Switch’, While Switch Piracy Can Brick Console

A hacker has confirmed that Nintendo’s Switch console now has code that can detect piracy and permanently ban your console from connecting online.The hacker, SciresM, posted his findings on reddit after examining the Switch’s code and explain…



A hacker has confirmed that Nintendo's Switch console now has code that can detect piracy and permanently ban your console from connecting online.

The hacker, SciresM, posted his findings on reddit after examining the Switch's code and explained just how Nintendo plans on stopping pirates.

Switch gamecarts are signed with a certificate that could be banned if Nintendo detects you're not using a legitimate copy. Games will connect online to an authentication server to check for the game's legitimacy. Repeated offences could see your console banned from connecting to online services.

Nintendo's drastic anti-piracy actions are in reaction to the jailbreaking of the Switch late last year, which has now allowed homebrew and pirated games to work on the popular console.

The hacking group that discovered the flaw, Team Xecutor, eventually released the SX Pro dongle that allows it to run custom firmware, SX OS to allow all this to happen. Both the device and the software are not free, which is why Team Xecutor may have taken the unusual step to put copy protection features in a software that disables copy protection.

UK-based security researcher Mike Heskin found out the hard way that such a security feature existed, when his Switch console was bricked by the copy protection code. The SX OS's copy protection will lock the Switch with a randomly generated password if it detects someone is trying to hack or reverse engineer the code. 

Heskin believes that even with normal usage of the custom firmware, the lock may engage and brick your console. Team Xecutor has since acknowledged the existence of the bricking code, but denied that it could be triggered by normal usage, while Heskin has confirmed that the bricking process can be reversed.

Heskin has also accused Team Xecutor of plagerising code.

[via The InquirerTorrentFreak]

Wochenrückblick: Zahltag!

Google Pay startet in Deutschland, Apple Pay nicht. VW schickt ein Auto auf einen Berg. Sieben Tage und viele Meldungen im Überblick. (Golem-Wochenrückblick, Internet)

Google Pay startet in Deutschland, Apple Pay nicht. VW schickt ein Auto auf einen Berg. Sieben Tage und viele Meldungen im Überblick. (Golem-Wochenrückblick, Internet)

Medical board puts infamous doc on probation for toddler vaccine exemption

Dr. Bob Sears will take medical and ethics courses and be monitored.

Enlarge / Dr. Robert Sears in his Capistrano Beach, CA office on Aug 8, 2014. Among his many books on pediatrics, Sears has written The Vaccine Book, in which he discusses possible side effects from vaccines. (credit: Getty | Don Bartletti)

Dr. Robert Sears, a pediatrician infamous for promoting alternative vaccine schedules that allow parents to delay or entirely avoid the life-saving jabs, has been placed on a 35-month probation by the Medical Board of California.

The punishment stems from an accusation filed by the board in 2016 claiming Sears demonstrated gross negligence in the case of a two-year-old. The board alleged that Sears gave the young patient an exemption from all future vaccinations without reviewing any of the child’s medical records, including those that indicate which vaccines the child had received and any subsequent reactions the child suffered. Sears instead relied on an account from the child’s mother, who said the child went limp and that the child’s kidneys and intestines “shut down” after vaccinations.

The board also cited Sears for later examining the child for a head injury after the child had reportedly been “‘hit on head with hammer’ by Dad.” Sears failed to follow up with standard neurological testing, the board wrote.

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New hinge API gives more hints about Microsoft’s 2-screen “Andromeda” device

Two-screen hinged devices are getting explicit API support.

Enlarge / The "Surface Phone" is speculated to be some kind of dual-screen device. (credit: Microsoft)

We've seen from patent filings and leaked timelines that Microsoft seems to be working on a dual-screen handheld device codenamed Andromeda. Some new APIs found in the latest Windows 10 preview provide more evidence, even offering clues as to its capabilities.

Twitter user WalkingCat spotted an API for devices with two screens and a hinge. Applications can query the orientation of the two screens and the position of the hinge. The hinge's position is reported as being one of several options: closed, concave, convex, flat, and full.

This points at not just a hinge but a 360-degree hinge similar to those found on Lenovo's Yoga laptops and HP's various 360 systems. Further, it implies that the new device will have some functionality when fully closed or when opened all the way up with a screen showing front and back.

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Report: Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 has DeX support, will work as secondary monitor

Samsung’s DeX platform lets you connect some of the company’s latest smartphones to a dock to use the phone like a desktop computer. Soon you may be able to do the same thing with a Samsung tablet. According to SamMobile, the upcoming Samsu…

Samsung’s DeX platform lets you connect some of the company’s latest smartphones to a dock to use the phone like a desktop computer. Soon you may be able to do the same thing with a Samsung tablet. According to SamMobile, the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 will be the first Samsung tablet with DeX support. […]

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Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

With the aim to protect the interests of copyright holders, Google is making ‘pirate’ sites more difficult for its users to find. This week the search engine revealed more information about the scope of this effort. Thus far, Google has downranked 65,000 sites, a measure that led to a 90% reduction in referrals from search results.

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

The entertainment industries have repeatedly accused Google of not doing enough to limit piracy while demanding tougher action.

Ideally, groups including the MPAA and RIAA want search engines to remove clearly infringing websites from their search results entirely, especially if courts have previously found them to be acting illegally.

While Google doesn’t want to remove whole sites, the critique did prompt the company to make changes.

For example, in 2014 it updated its core algorithms aimed at lowering the visibility of “pirate” sites. Using the number of accurate DMCA requests as an indicator, these sites are demoted in search results for certain key phrases.

“Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in search results. This ranking change helps users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily,” Google explained.

While the effects were felt immediately, it’s been unclear how many sites were affected by the algorithmic change. This week, the search engine is filling in some of these blanks.

In a comment to Australian media, Google states that it has demoted 65,000 sites in search results, a list that’s still growing every week. In total, the company received DMCA takedown requests for over 1.8 million domain names, so a little under 4% of these are downranked.

The result of the measures is that people are less likely to see a pirate site when they type “watch movie X” or “download song Y.” This means that these sites see a drop in visitors from Google and a quite significant one too.

“Demotion results in sites losing around 90 percent of their visitors from Google Search,” a Google spokesperson told The Age.

Indeed, soon after the demotion signal was implemented, pirate sites were hit hard. However, pirates wouldn’t be pirates if they didn’t respond with their own countermeasures.

In recent years, many infringing sites have hopped from domain to domain, in part to circumvent the downranking efforts. In addition, Google’s measures also created an opportunity for smaller, less reputable, sites to catch search traffic that would otherwise go to the main players.

Overall, however, it’s probably safe to argue that Google’s demotion efforts lowered the search engine’s referrals to pirate sites.

That said, demands to do more won’t subside. In Australia, Village Roadshow co-chief Graham Burke has been especially vocal. He has accused Google of profiting from piracy-related traffic and wants the search engine to permanently remove infringing sites from search results.

Blaming piracy for declining revenues, Burke noted this week that there are “empty desks everywhere … we can’t compete with stolen goods being sold for free.” And he is not alone.

Google sees things differently of course. The company has repeatedly highlighted that it has taken several measures to address the piracy concerns, while noting that the entertainment industries have a responsibility of their own as well.

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

Intel’s next-gen NUC mini PCs will have 28W Coffee Lake processors

The gaming-oriented Intel Hades Canyon NUC with an Intel Kaby Lake-G processor is technically the first of Intel’s min computers to feature an 8th-gen Intel processor. But the company’s first mainstream NUC systems with 8th-gen chips are co…

The gaming-oriented Intel Hades Canyon NUC with an Intel Kaby Lake-G processor is technically the first of Intel’s min computers to feature an 8th-gen Intel processor. But the company’s first mainstream NUC systems with 8th-gen chips are coming later this year. While most older NUC systems featured the same kind of 15 watt processors you’d typically find […]

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