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Doom reboot teased with new screens, Game Informer preview

Overly brown visual filter removed; still no release date beyond “2016,” however.

Bethesda Softworks

Cacodemon time!

9 more images in gallery

Until we get our hands on a video game's preview build, we know better than to fully trust a screenshot gallery, but if the final version of this year's Doom reboot—formerly known as Doom 4—looks anywhere near as good as its latest screenshot tease suggests, then we're in for quite the demonically charged visual treat.

Game Informer scored the latest exclusive look at the upcoming first-person shooter's solo campaign, and its feature calls out an apparent back-to-Doom's-roots system of gameplay, including color key cards and a lack of gun reloading or "sprint" button. New features include a "weapon wheel" that slows time down, a la Fallout 4's VATS system, to let players pick weapons—though longtime series weapons the BFG and the chainsaw each get a dedicated button (a d-pad arrow and the X button, respectively) as a sort of "panic" option; also, the game's weapons will now be bolstered by way of hidden, collectible "mods," including shotgun attachments that turn the weapon into a chargeable, buckshot-powered grenade launcher.

The preview seemed pretty scant on details, including vague hints about an "upgrade" system that will let players pick perks like running speed and weapon-swapping speed, and it didn't come with any new video reveals. In very good news, the screenshots above include a lot more color and a lot less of the unbecoming, overly brown filter from the game's E3 2015 reveal, and they include stunning now-gen interpretations of series baddies like the cacodemon. Game Informer promises more Doom information throughout the month of January at its dedicated portal page. Hopefully, that will include a solid release date, which we still don't have beyond a vague "2016" window.

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Will Supreme Court tackle 1st Amendment issue in Madden NFL litigation?

Expression in movies, plays, books, music, and video games hangs in the balance.

(credit: Electronic Arts)

Electronic Arts is making good on its year-old promise that it would fight to protect its stated First Amendment right to produce one of the world's most popular video games, Madden NFL,  while using the likenesses of pro players without their permission.

The video game maker has now rushed from the virtual gridiron to the US Supreme Court, where EA claims it is being punished for producing a game that looks too real. Electronic Arts is asking the justices to review a federal appellate court decision from last year that found EA cannot claim that the use of the players' images were "incidental" and covered by the First Amendment.

"We hold EA's use of the former players' likenesses is not incidental because it is central to EA's main commercial purpose—to create a realistic virtual simulation of football games involving current and former NFL teams," Judge Raymond Fisher wrote (PDF) for the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The same San Francisco-based federal appeals court in 2013 sided with NCAA college football players in their lawsuit against EA, a ruling that resulted in a $40 million settlement.

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Reddit publishes real-life dead-tree book of its “best” AMAs

Includes the likes of Sir Attenborough, Denzel Washington, and “Double Dick Dude.”

In a rather odd move, community hub Reddit has published a book of what it believes to be its best Ask Me Anything subreddit snippets. For the princely sum of $34.99 in the US only (or $4.99, £3.28 for an e-book version in the UK) you too can be the proud owner of a collection of soundbites from Reddit oddities and famous celebrities immortalised in physical form.

Split into categories that include "Inspiring," "Ingenious," and "Fascinating," the book includes contributions from the likes of Idris Elba, Sir David Attenborough, and Denzel Washington, the latter of which spills the beans on "Why he doesn't want movie star friends," and what his favourite pizza topping is (it's plain old tomato and mozzarella, in case you were wondering).

Some of the wackier AMAs make an appearance too, including "The Man Who Died Twice," "My Ex Tried to Kill Me," and of course "Double Dick Dude." There's also neat artwork and introductions from redditors at the beginning of each AMA. Naturally, you can just read all the AMAs in the book online for free over at Reddit, although, given Reddit's AMA navigation isn't exactly simple, that they've been collated and edited down does make them easier to digest.

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Motörhead: Lemmys Trauerfeier wird bei Youtube übertragen

Musikfans in aller Welt trauern um Motörhead-Gründer Lemmy, der heute beigesetzt wird. Sie können die Feier im Netz verfolgen – und sich dafür einsetzen, dass Lemmy ins Periodensystem der Elemente einzieht. (Nachruf, Youtube)

Musikfans in aller Welt trauern um Motörhead-Gründer Lemmy, der heute beigesetzt wird. Sie können die Feier im Netz verfolgen - und sich dafür einsetzen, dass Lemmy ins Periodensystem der Elemente einzieht. (Nachruf, Youtube)

Raumfahrt: DLR will Philae wachrütteln

Es ist vielleicht der letzte Versuch, noch ein Lebenszeichen vom Landefahrzeug Philae auf dem Kometen 67P/Tschurjumow-Gerassimenko zu bekommen: Experten vom DLR wollen den Lander wachrütteln – im Wortsinn. (Rosetta, Raumfahrt)

Es ist vielleicht der letzte Versuch, noch ein Lebenszeichen vom Landefahrzeug Philae auf dem Kometen 67P/Tschurjumow-Gerassimenko zu bekommen: Experten vom DLR wollen den Lander wachrütteln - im Wortsinn. (Rosetta, Raumfahrt)

BREIN Takes 343 ‘Pirate’ Sites Offline, Warns Uploaders

Anti-piracy outfit BREIN has produced a detailed overview of its achievements in 2015. In addition to taking almost 350 sites offline after threatening their hosts, the Netherlands-based group targeted key individuals in the file-sharing space, including release group members and the moderator of major torrent site.

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

piratekayAnti-piracy outfit BREIN has been one of the leading pro-copyright groups for many years.

Focusing on piracy in the Internet space, Netherlands-based BREIN has a track record of targeting torrent and other similar sites operating within its jurisdiction.

In recent years BREIN has began producing annual reports detailing its activities of the preceding 12 months. The group has just published its 2015 edition and its clear the outfit has been busy.

Site takedowns

One of BREIN’s main strategies is to take piracy sites offline, something it regularly achieves by threatening their hosting providers. BREIN’s reputation is well-known in the Netherlands so in many cases minimum coercion is required. That results in big headline numbers.

According to BREIN’s report, 343 pirate sites were taken down in 2015. The vast majority (150) are described as “link farms”, forums and similar platforms where links to files on third-party hosting sites are shared.

Streaming sites came in second place with 96 takedowns, with torrent sites in third with 63. Seven of the sites related to Popcorn Time.

BREIN says that pirate sites often try to hide their true locations behind Cloudflare’s services but that doesn’t appear to hinder the group when attempting to shut them down and trace their owners. When they can be tracked to The Netherlands, some are given the opportunity to enter into a settlement.

“A signed withdrawal statement with a penalties for future infringement plus a contribution towards costs and damages must be paid. How high that is depends on the circumstances of the case,” BREIN explains.

Targeting uploaders and other community members

While there has been some activity in the past, during 2015 BREIN made a number of announcements relating to its pursuit of individual file-sharers. Targeting those at the more serious end of the scale, BREIN cherry-picked a few individuals responsible for uploading lots of content.

Among them were three members of release group DRT. They were subjected to a court order and agreed to settle with BREIN. According to the anti-piracy group, they also did some snitching on other members of their group.

In separate action, BREIN targeted the brains behind release group DMT. He reportedly settled for thousands of euros and put up a warning on torrent indexes including KickassTorrents.

Together with another busted colleague the pair subsequently tried to pay their ‘fines’ via a crowdfunding operation. That was eventually discontinued after reported threats from BREIN. The anti-piracy group now confirms that it considered the fundraiser as generating income from illegal activities.

Earlier in the year, BREIN said it also obtained an injunction against “an important moderator” on one of the “largest illegal BitTorrent sites”. In line with BREIN policy, the site itself was not named.

In 2016, BREIN says its pursuit of important pirates will increase and that it has deployed “special software” to help with the task.

“The system is registered with the Dutch data protection authority (CBP) which has issued a certified statement after examination the legality for the processing of personal data in this system by BREIN,” the anti-piracy group reports.

In future, those caught by BREIN will be required to sign a cease and desist agreement and pay a contribution towards costs and damages, which currently amount to around 12,500 euros.

Targeting Google

In 2015, BREIN says it sent more than 5.7 million infringing content reports to Google. That brings its grand total to more than 12.5 million notices since it began its takedown program in 2012.

brein-google

BREIN’s report is available here (Dutch)

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

Game Piracy Group’s Warning: Game Cracking Impossible in Two Years’ Time

The founder of a Chinese cracking forum has warned that game cracking may become an impossible task, thanks to anti-tampering technology Denuvo.Denuvo is unlike traditional copy protection solutions in that it’s an anti-tampering system that is us…



The founder of a Chinese cracking forum has warned that game cracking may become an impossible task, thanks to anti-tampering technology Denuvo.

Denuvo is unlike traditional copy protection solutions in that it's an anti-tampering system that is used to protect existing DRM solutions. How it works exactly is still a closely guarded secret by the Austrian company behind the technology, but what it most likely does is to employ code obfuscation to make it hard for crackers to examine and make changes to the code.

With an ever increasing level of encryption, the founder of the Chinese cracking forum, Bird Sister, fears that within two years' time it will become far too difficult to break the copy protection on games, at least in a timely fashion. 

Even now, games are proving far too difficult to break to make it worthwhile for pirated game downloaders. Whereas games used to be cracked within a day of release, recent games such as the soccer game FIFA 16 has yet to be cracked despite being released in September. The first month of a game's release is extremely important for game publishers, as this when most of the sales occur. If Denuvo can successfully delay the pirated version's timely release, even if the game will be eventually cracked, then this will give game publishers exactly what they want.

If Bird Sister's prediction proves true, it would seem that Denuvo would be the perfect solution for game publishers, but its use is still not widespread due to several reasons. For one, it's a relatively high cost solution to implement, and there have been unsubstantiated reports of performance problems associated with the use of Denuvo.

US Attorneys General say Volkswagen has refused to turn over internal documents

The automaker is citing German privacy laws as justification for not cooperating.

According to reports from the New York Times and Reuters, the Volkswagen Group is refusing to turn over e-mails and correspondence from its top executives to US Attorneys General (AG), citing German privacy laws.

AGs from Connecticut and New York told the two news outlets that they were outraged with Volkswagen’s reluctance to comply fully with their investigations. The two AGs are part of a larger group of 48 top state lawyers, which has launched a probe into Volkswagen’s defeat device scandal. (The two AGs who are not participating in the civil investigation represent California and Texas and are “conducting their own inquiries,” according to the New York Times.)

The scandal broke open in September when the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a notice of violation accusing Volkswagen of selling 580,000 diesel vehicles with illegal software installed on them to goose results on federally mandated emissions tests.

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