Author: Digital Digest | Latest News

The results and analysis for Blu-ray (and DVD) sales for the week ending 13th February 2016 are in. This is the week that Spectre was released, and as expected, it was the top selling Blu-ray title for the week.  

Read the rest of the stats and analysis to find out how Blu-ray (and DVD) did.

The results and analysis for Blu-ray (and DVD) sales for the week ending 6th February 2016 are in. Disney has finally taken Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs out of their vault and re-released it as a new edition, and it was the week's best selling Blu-ray title.

Read the rest of the stats and analysis to find out how Blu-ray (and DVD) did.

The hugely popular Kodi media player, which started life as XBMC, has recently found increasing popularity due to its association with piracy. But it's this association that the people behind the software now want to get rid of - by suing!

The open and modular nature of Kodi's system allows third party add-ons to installed to enhance the functionality of the player. In recent times though, some of these add-ons have focused on allowing users to more easily find and play pirated content. And because of the way add-ons smoothly integrate into the Kodi player, most users won't even notice that they are using an add-on, as opposed to just the core Kodi software.

Then there are hardware media player boxes that come pre-loaded with Kodi and piracy add-ons, and are sold by unscrupulous operators who often zero support once the add-ons cease to work - many users end up blaming Kodi for their woes, instead of identifying the real culprits. 

And as a result, many users now associated Kodi with piracy, and poor quality add-ons.

Team Kodi, the group responsible for developing and maintaining Kodi, now wants to sever these connections, and they're bringing out the big legal guns to do so. By using their legally owned trademark for the word Kodi, the team plans to go after anyone that is using the Kodi name to promote illegal acts, including those that sell hardware boxes whose primary use is piracy.

The team also plans to go after people pretending to be Kodi developers or team members to promote piracy add-ons.

"If you are making a video in which you claim to be a Kodi developer or Kodi team member or you are just using the Kodi name while assuring users that some pirate add-on is totally legal and isn’t going to break next week, we will do everything we can to take you down," says Kodi Product Manager Nathan Betzen.

With that said, Team Kodi isn't going to take on users who continue to use add-ons for piracy. 

"So while we don't love this use of Kodi, as long as you know what illegal and potentially dangerous things you are getting yourself into and accept the fact that the Team will not be providing you with any support, then you are welcome to do what you like," explains Betzen.

Chinese cracking group 3DM, only days before having announced a one year break from cracking, have announced they have broken the Denuvo anti-tampering system that have successfully protected games like 'FIFA 16'.

While Denuvo protects games from being cracked, it itself is not a DRM in the strictest sense. Instead, Denuvo protects existing DRM solutions from being tampered with, and it has been incredibly successful so far, with some games taking months to be cracked.

Denuvo is so effective that 3DM recently claimed that the games might become impossible to crack in just two year's time.

When the Chinese cracking group last week decided to take a one year long hiatus from releasing new cracks, which they said at the time was to give the PC gaming industry a breather, many questioned whether the move was due to the group's difficulties dealing with Denuvo. Still insisting on the original reasons for the hiatus, and faced with criticism from gamers who called 3DM quitters for having failed to break Denuvo, the group has now announced that they have already cracked Denuvo and that their year long break has nothing to do with "technical problem" - the Denuvo crack will act as proof of their words.

If the claims are true, then this will be a big blow to the game industry, who only last week had an uncracked Denuvo protecting their games, and one of the most prolific cracking groups taking a long break - now, they face the prospect of high profile games like 'Just Cause 3' and 'Tomb Raider: The Rise' being cracked and free to download and play for all.

From a new way to pirate to a new way to prevent piracy, read the news roundup for the week ending 15 February 2016

Continue reading ...

The MPAA and domain registry provider Donuts have signed a new voluntary agreement that may redefine how domain registrars will work with industry groups on copyright matters.

Donuts is the operator behind numerous new domain name extensions, including .EMAIL, .DATING and even .MOVIE. 

The new deal gives the MPAA special rights to identify and notify Donuts of any domains that may be engaged in serious copyright breaches, and once all the conditions are met, Donuts will be obligated to suspend that domain.

The conditions, however, seem to place the burden of proof with the MPAA and its members. In addition to providing evidence of "clear and pervasive copyright infringement", the MPAA and its members must also ensure that all other options have been exhausted, including contacting the website's registrar and host.

In addition, only human reviewed complaints can be submitted by the MPAA, thus preventing the automated bot based approach that has been widely used with other copyright notices, such as DMCA take-down requests.

In return, Donuts promises to process complaints expeditiously, but Donuts retains the right to point out concerns and queries regarding the complaint, which must be then addressed by the MPAA via amendments to the original complaint.

Despite these conditions, the MPAA was extremely pleased with the new deal, with MPAA chairman Chris Dodd lauding the ability for a tech company to work together with Hollywood to address the copyright problem.

"This agreement demonstrates that the tech community and content creators can work together on voluntary initiatives to help ensure vibrant, legal digital marketplaces that benefit all members of the online ecosystem," said Dodd.

The Pirate Bay now allows users to streaming the latest pirated movies and TV shows right in their browsers without having to use a fully fledged BitTorrent client.

The newly added ability comes via a new browser plug-in called Torrents Time, which turns your browser into a BitTorrent client, complete with VPN support for anonymity.

Instead of clicking on the magnet link to start the torrent download, users of The Pirate Bay can simply click on the new "Stream It" link to start an "instant" stream.

Well, not quite instant, because users have to install a browser plug-in the first time they try to stream a movie or TV show, and after that, it may still take a couple of minutes for the buffering before the stream starts.

There is also built-in casting support for Chromecast, Airplay and DLNA, allowing you to enjoy your torrent streams on the big screen.

For now, Torrents Time is free, with monetization coming via referrals to Anonymous VPN. The Torrents Time website hints at the arrival of "ad servers", which may mean ads being displayed within the streams. Torrents Time also promises to share revenue with publishers like The Pirate Bay, or any torrent website willing to integrate the Torrents Time plug-in into their torrent downloads.

The results and analysis for Blu-ray (and DVD) sales for the week ending 30th January 2016 are in. A relatively quiet week where the week's best selling new release, Goosebumps, was also the week's overall top seller.

Read the rest of the stats and analysis to find out how Blu-ray (and DVD) did.