Tag Archives: USTR

Court Orders Aussie ISPs to Block Dozens of Pirate Sites

2017-08-18 Ernesto

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-aussie-isps-to-block-dozens-of-pirate-sites-170818/

Rather than taking site operators to court, copyright holders increasingly demand that Internet providers should block access to ‘pirate’ domains.

As a result, courts all around the world have ordered ISPs to block subscriber access to various pirate sites.

This is also happening in Australia where the first blockades were issued late last year. In December, the Federal Court ordered ISPs to block The Pirate Bay and several other sites, which happened soon after.

However, as is often the case with website blocking, one order is not enough as there are still plenty of pirate sites and proxies readily available. So, several rightsholders including movie studio Village Roadshow and local broadcaster Foxtel went back to court.

Today the Federal Court ruled on two applications that cover 59 pirate sites in total, including many popular torrent and streaming portals.

The first order was issued by Justice John Nicholas, who directed several Internet providers including IINet, Telstra, and TPG to block access to several pirate sites. The request came from Village Roadshow, which was backed by several major Hollywood studios.

The order directs the ISPs to stop passing on traffic to 41 torrent and streaming platforms including Demonoid, RARBG, EZTV, YTS, Gomovies, and Fmovies. The full list of blocked domains is even longer, as it also covers several proxies.

“The infringement or facilitation of infringement by the Online Locations is flagrant and reflect a blatant disregard for the rights of copyright owners,” the order reads.

“By way of illustration, one of the Online Locations is accessible via the domain name ‘istole.it’ and it and many others include notices encouraging users to implement technology to frustrate any legal action that might be taken by copyright owners.”

In a separate order handed down by Federal Court Judge Stephen Burley, another 17 sites are ordered blocked following a request from Foxtel. This includes popular pirate sites such as 1337x, Torlock, Putlocker, YesMovies, Vumoo, and LosMovies.

The second order also includes a wide variety of alternative locations, including proxies, which brings the total number of targeted domain names to more than 160.

As highlighted by SHM, the orders coincide with the launch of a new anti-piracy campaign dubbed “The Price of Piracy,” which is organized by Creative Content Australia. Lori Flekser, Executive director of the non-profit organization, believes that the blockades will help to significantly deter piracy.

“Not only is there decreasing traffic to pirate sites but there is a subsequent increase in traffic to legal sites,” she said.

At the same time, she warns people not to visit proxy and mirror sites, as these could be dangerous. This message is also repeated by her organization’s campaign, which warns that pirate sites can be filled with ransomware, spyware, trojans, viruses, bots, rootkits and worms.

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

Artists Protest RIAA for Trampling on Their Moral Rights

2017-08-18 Ernesto

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/artists-protest-riaa-for-trampling-on-their-moral-rights-170817/

Most people who create something like to be credited for their work. Whether you make a video, song, photo, or blog post, it feels ‘right’ to receive recognition.

The right to be credited is part of the so-called “moral rights,” which are baked into many copyright laws around the world, adopted at the international level through the Berne Convention.

However, in the United States, this is not the case. The US didn’t sign the Berne Convention right away and opted out from the “moral rights” provision when it eventually joined.

Now that the U.S. Copyright Office is looking into ways to improve current copyright law, the issue has been brought to the forefront again. The Government recently completed a consultation to hear the thoughts of various stakeholders, which resulted in several noteworthy contributions.

As it turns out, the RIAA doesn’t want artists, such as songwriters, to have moral rights. Crediting everyone who’s involved in making a song can be confusing and complicated the group notes, arguing against the addition of a new statutory attribution right.

The RIAA highlights that it would be costly for streaming services to credit everyone involved in the creative process. In addition, they stress that the likes of Spotify might not have the screen real estate to attribute all creators, without ruining the user experience with long lists of names.

“If a statutory attribution right suddenly required these services to provide attribution to others involved in the creative process, that would presumably require costly changes to their user interfaces and push them up against the size limitations of their display screens,” the RIAA writes.

These comments don’t sit well with songwriters and other creators around the world, who feel that the RIAA is putting trivial metadata issues above their rights. In a protest against the RIAA’s stance, several songwriter groups around the world are now joining hands to show their discontent.

The British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA), Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC), Songwriters Guild of America (SGA), Music Creators North America (MCNA), Council of Music Creators (CMC), and several others, have sent a strongly worded open letter to the RIAA accusing the record label group of betrayal.

“The RIAA’s argument prioritizes the inconvenience of dealing with accurate metadata over the principle of the protection of the rights of the people upon whose work the music business is built,” the letter reads.

“More fundamentally, RIAA’s comments are taken by many in the music creator community as a betrayal of our joint commitment to expand opportunities for creators. Unfortunately, this divergence of views gives our common adversaries an opportunity to divide our community.”

The groups warn that without proper attribution, songwriters and other contributors risk not receiving any compensation for the work they do. This puts the RIAA in the same camp as those who want to weaken copyright in general, the letter notes.

“Without accurate metadata, contributors to a work risk not getting paid. That’s a moral dilemma intrinsically linked to the issue of moral rights — and on this issue the RIAA has now aligned itself with those who seek to enfeeble IP rights.”

The RIAA’s stance goes even further than that of Creative Commons and the “copyleft,” according to the groups.

“Even anti-copyright groups like Creative Commons understand the importance of attribution. If the RIAA is seen as less artist-friendly than Creative Commons, the copyleft and all who seek to undervalue our work will benefit.”

While Creative Commons has more flexible views on copyright than the average entertainment industry company, describing it as “anti-copyright” goes a bit far. Still, the groups send a strong message to the RIAA, that the organization’s stance on moral rights is abhorrent.

The songwriter and artist groups stress that the RIAA might shoot itself in the foot, as it’s distancing the people it needs to further its interests around the globe. As for the metadata problems, they believe that the streaming platforms and other services will come up with a proper solution eventually.

“We believe there’s no doubt music platforms will come up with innovative and effective ways to give credit. Certainly there’s no need to set expectations at rock bottom as the RIAA did in their comments,” the groups write in their letter.

The groups urge the RIAA to revise its views and start collaborating with creators to address specific implementation problems. The record labels and creators should stand together as one, instead of going against each other.

It will be interesting to see if and how the RIAA responds to the critique.

While the US Government has yet to decide on the moral rights issue, in other countries the attribution right is taken very seriously. Just recently, a District Court in Isreal awarded a local music composer $223,000 in statutory damages because his name was removed from the credits of an online kids animation series.

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

Cloudflare Kicking ‘Daily Stormer’ is Bad News For Pirate Sites

2017-08-17 Ernesto

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-kicking-daily-stormer-is-bad-news-for-pirate-sites-170817/

“I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet.”

Those are the words of Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, who decided to terminate the account of controversial Neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer.

Bam. Gone. At least for a while.

Although many people are happy to see the site go offline, the decision is not without consequence. It goes directly against what many saw as the core values of the company.

For years on end, Cloudflare has been asked to remove terrorist propaganda, pirate sites, and other possibly unacceptable content. Each time, Cloudflare replied that it doesn’t take action without a court order. No exceptions.

“Even if it were able to, Cloudfare does not monitor, evaluate, judge or store content appearing on a third party website,” the company wrote just a few weeks ago, in its whitepaper on intermediary liability.

“We’re the plumbers of the internet. We make the pipes work but it’s not right for us to inspect what is or isn’t going through the pipes,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince himself said not too long ago.

“If companies like ours or ISPs start censoring there would be an uproar. It would lead us down a path of internet censors and controls akin to a country like China,” he added.

The same arguments were repeated in different contexts, over and over.

This strong position was also one of the reasons why Cloudflare was dragged into various copyright infringement court cases. In these cases, the company repeatedly stressed that removing a site from Cloudflare’s service would not make infringing content disappear.

Pirate sites would just require a simple DNS reconfiguration to continue their operation, after all.

“[T]here are no measures of any kind that CloudFlare could take to prevent this alleged infringement, because the termination of CloudFlare’s CDN services would have no impact on the existence and ability of these allegedly infringing websites to continue to operate,” it said.

That comment looks rather misplaced now that the CEO of the same company has decided to “kick” a website “off the Internet” after an emotional, but deliberate, decision.

Taking a page from Cloudflare’s (old) playbook we’re not going to make any judgments here. Just search Twitter or any social media site and you’ll see plenty of opinions, both for and against the company’s actions.

We do have a prediction though. During the months and years to come, Cloudflare is likely to be dragged into many more copyright lawsuits, and when they are, their counterparts are going to bring up Cloudflare’s voluntary decision to kick a website off the Internet.

Unless Cloudflare suddenly decides to pull all pirate sites from its service tomorrow, of course.

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

“Public Figure” Threatened With Exposure Over Gay Piracy ‘Fine’

2017-08-17 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/public-figure-threatened-with-exposure-over-gay-piracy-fine-170817/

Flava Works is an Illinois-based company specializing in adult material featuring black and Latino men. It operates an aggressive anti-piracy strategy which has resulted in some large damages claims in the past.

Now, however, the company has found itself targeted by a lawsuit filed by one of its alleged victims. Filed in a California district court by an unnamed individual, it accuses Flava Works of shocking behavior relating to a claim of alleged piracy.

According to the lawsuit, ‘John Doe’ received a letter in early June from Flava Works CEO Phillip Bleicher, accusing him of Internet piracy. Titled “Settlement Demand and Cease and Desist”, the letter got straight to the point.

“Flava Works is aware that you have been ‘pirating’ the content from its website(s) for your own personal financial benefit,” the letter read.

[Update: ‘John Doe’ has now been identified as Marc Juris, President & General Manager of AMC-owned WE tv. All references to John Doe below refer to Juris. See note at footer]

As is often the case with such claims, Flava Works offered to settle with John Doe for a cash fee. However, instead of the few hundred or thousand dollars usually seen in such cases, the initial settlement amount was an astronomical $97,000. But that wasn’t all.

According to John Doe, Bleicher warned that unless the money was paid in ten days, Flava Works “would initiate litigation against [John Doe], publically accusing him of being a consumer and pirate of copyrighted gay adult entertainment.”

Amping up the pressure, Bleicher then warned that after the ten-day deadline had passed, the settlement amount of $97,000 would be withdrawn and replaced with a new amount – $525,000.

The lawsuit alleges that Bleicher followed up with more emails in which he indicated that there was still time to settle the matter “one on one” since the case hadn’t been assigned to an attorney. However, he warned John Doe that time was running out and that public exposure via a lawsuit would be the next step.

While these kinds of tactics are nothing new in copyright infringement cases, the amounts of money involved are huge, indicating something special at play. Indeed, it transpires that John Doe is a public figure in the entertainment industry and the suggestion is that Flava Works’ assessment of his “wealth and profile” means he can pay these large sums.

According to the suit, on July 6, 2017, Bleicher sent another email to John Doe which “alluded to [his] high-profile status and to the potential publicity that a lawsuit would bring.” The email went as far as threatening an imminent Flava Works press release, announcing that a public figure, who would be named, was being sued for pirating gay adult content.

Flava Works alleges that John Doe uploaded its videos to various BitTorrent sites and forums, but John Doe vigorously denies the accusations, noting that the ‘evidence’ presented by Flava Works fails to back up its claims.

“The materials do not reveal or expose infringement of any sort. [Flava Works’] real purpose in sending this ‘proof’ was to demonstrate just how humiliating it would be to defend against Flava Works’ scurrilous charges,” John Doe’s lawsuit notes.

“[Flava Works’] materials consist largely of screen shots of extremely graphic images of pornography, which [Flava Works] implies that [John Doe] has viewed — but which are completely irrelevant given that they are not Flava Works content. Nevertheless, Bleicher assured [John Doe] that these materials would all be included in a publicly filed lawsuit if he refused to accede to [Flava Works’] payment demands.”

From his lawsuit (pdf) it’s clear that John Doe is in no mood to pay Flava Works large sums of cash and he’s aggressively on the attack, describing the company’s demands as “criminal extortion.”

He concludes with a request for a declaration that he has not infringed Flava Works’ copyrights, while demanding attorneys’ fees and further relief to be determined by the court.

The big question now is whether Flava Works will follow through with its threats to exposure the entertainer, or whether it will drift back into the shadows to fight another day. Definitely one to watch.

Update: Flava Works has now followed through on its threat to sue Juris. A complaint filed iat an Illinois court accuses the TV executive of uploading Flava Works titles to several gay-focused torrent sites in breach of copyright. It demands $1.2m in damages.

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

Ensuring Security of Your Code in a Cross-Region/Cross-Account Deployment Solution

2017-08-16 BK Chaurasiya

Post Syndicated from BK Chaurasiya original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/ensuring-security-of-your-code-in-a-cross-regioncross-account-deployment-solution/

There are multiple ways you can protect your data while it is in transit and at rest. You can protect your data in transit by using SSL or by using client-side encryption. AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) is a managed service that makes it easy for you to create, control, rotate, and use your encryption keys. AWS KMS allows you to create custom keys. You can then share these keys with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) users and roles in your AWS account or in an AWS account owned by someone else.

In my previous post, I described a solution for building a cross-region/cross-account code deployment solution on AWS. In this post, I describe a few options for protecting your source code as it travels between regions and between AWS accounts.

To recap, you deployed the infrastructure as shown in the following diagram.

You had your development environment running in Region A in AWS Account A.
You had your QA environment running in Region B in AWS Account B.
You had a staging or production environment running in Region C in AWS Account C.

An update to the source code in Region A triggered validation and deployment of source code changes in the pipeline in Region A. A successful processing of source code in all of its AWS CodePipeline states invoked a Lambda function, which copied the source code into an S3 bucket in Region B. After the source code was copied into this bucket, it triggered a similar chain of processes into the different AWS CodePipeline stages in Region B.

Ensuring Security for Your Source Code

You might choose to encrypt the source code .zip file before uploading to the S3 bucket that is in Account A, Region A, using Amazon S3 server-side encryption:

1. Using the Amazon S3 service master key

Refer back to the Lambda function created for you by the CloudFormation stack in the previous post. Go to the AWS Lambda console and your function name should be <stackname>-CopytoDest-XXXXXXX.

Use the following parameter for the copyObject function – ServerSideEncryption: ‘AES256’

Note: The set-up already uses this option by default.

The copyObject function decrypts the .zip file and copies the object into account B.

2. Using an AWS KMS master key

Since the KMS keys are constrained in a region, copying the object (source code .zip file) into a different account across the region requires cross-account access to the KMS key. This must occur before Amazon S3 can use that key for encryption and decryption.

Use the following parameter for the copyObject function – ServerSideEncryption: ‘aws:kms’ and provide an SSEKMSKeyId: ‘<keyeid>’

To enable cross-account access for the KMS key and use it in Lambda function

a. Create a KMS key in the source account (Account A), region B – for example, XRDepTestKey

Note: This key must be created in region B. This is because the source code will be copied in an S3 bucket that exists in region B and the KMS key must be accessible in this region.

b. To enable the Lambda function to be able to use this KMS key, add lambdaS3CopyRole as a user for this key. The Lambda function and associated role and policies are defined in the CloudFormation template.

c. Note the ARN of the key that you generated.

d. Provide the external account (Account B) permission to use this key. For more information, see Sharing custom encryption keys securely between accounts.

arn:aws:iam::<Account B ID>:root

e. In Account B, delegate the permission to use this key to the role that AWS CodePipeline is using. In the CloudFormation template, you can see that CodePipelineTrustRole is used. Attach the following policy to the role. Ensure that you update the region and Account ID accordingly.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "AllowUseOfTheKey",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "kms:Encrypt",
                "kms:Decrypt",
                "kms:ReEncrypt*",
                "kms:GenerateDataKey*",
                "kms:DescribeKey"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:kms:<regionB>:<AccountA ID>:key/<KMS Key in Region B ID>"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Sid": "AllowAttachmentOfPersistentResources",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "kms:CreateGrant",
                "kms:ListGrants",
                "kms:RevokeGrant"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:kms:<regionB>:<AccountA ID>:key/<KMS Key in Region B ID>"
            ],
            "Condition": {
                "Bool": {
                    "kms:GrantIsForAWSResource": true
                }
          }
        }
    ]
}

f. Update the Lambda function, CopytoDest, to use the following in the parameter definition.

ServerSideEncryption: 'aws:kms',\n",
SSEKMSKeyId: '< keyeid >'  
//ServerSideEncryption: 'AES256'\n",

And there you go! You have enabled secure delivery of your source code into your cross-region/cross-account deployment solution.

About the Author

BK Chaurasiya is a Solutions Architect with Amazon Web Services. He provides technical guidance, design advice and thought leadership to some of the largest and successful AWS customers and partners.

Roku Gets Tough on Pirate Channels, Warns Users

2017-08-15 Ernesto

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/roku-gets-tough-on-pirate-channels-warns-users-170815/

In recent years it has become much easier to stream movies and TV-shows over the Internet.

Legal services such as Netflix and HBO are flourishing, but there’s also a darker side to this streaming epidemic. Millions of people are streaming from unauthorized sources, often paired with perfectly legal streaming platforms and devices.

Hollywood insiders have dubbed this trend “Piracy 3.0” are actively working with stakeholders to address the threat. One of the companies rightsholders are working with is Roku, known for its easy-to-use media players.

Earlier this year Roku was harshly confronted with this new piracy crackdown when a Mexican court ordered local retailers to take its media player off the shelves. While this legal battle isn’t over yet, it was clear to Roku that misuse of its platform wasn’t without consequences.

While Roku never permitted any infringing content, it appears that the company has recently made some adjustments to better deal with the problem, or at least clarify its stance.

Pirate content generally doesn’t show up in the official Roku Channel Store but is directly loaded onto the device through third-party “private” channels. A few weeks ago, Roku renamed these “private” channels to “non-certified” channels, while making it very clear that copyright infringement is not allowed.

A “WARNING!” message that pops up during the installation of these third-party channels stresses that Roku has no control over the content. In addition, the company notes that these channels may be removed if it links to copyright infringing content.

Roku Warning

“By continuing, you acknowledge you are accessing a non-certified channel that may include content that is offensive or inappropriate for some audiences,” Roku’s warning reads.

“Moreover, if Roku determines that this channel violates copyright, contains illegal content, or otherwise violates Roku’s terms and conditions, then ROKU MAY REMOVE THIS CHANNEL WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE.”

TorrentFreak reached out to Roku to find out how they plan to enforce this policy, but we have yet to hear back. According to Cord Cutters News, several piracy channels have already been removed recently, with other developers opting to leave the platform.

Roku’s General Counsel Steve Kay previously informed us that the company is taking the piracy problem seriously. Together with various stakeholders, they are working hard to address the problem.

“We actively work to prevent third-parties from using our platform to distribute copyright infringing content. Moreover, we have been actively working with other industry stakeholders on a wide range of anti-piracy initiatives,” Kay said.

Roku is not the only platform dealing with the piracy epidemic, the popular media player software Kodi is in the same boat. Kodi has also taken an active anti-piracy stance but they’re not banning any add-ons. They believe it would be pointless due to the open source nature of their software.

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

AWS Summit New York – Summary of Announcements

2017-08-15 Jeff Barr

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-summit-new-york-summary-of-announcements/

Whew – what a week! Tara, Randall, Ana, and I have been working around the clock to create blog posts for the announcements that we made at the AWS Summit in New York. Here’s a summary to help you to get started:

Amazon Macie – This new service helps you to discover, classify, and secure content at scale. Powered by machine learning and making use of Natural Language Processing (NLP), Macie looks for patterns and alerts you to suspicious behavior, and can help you with governance, compliance, and auditing. You can read Tara’s post to see how to put Macie to work; you select the buckets of interest, customize the classification settings, and review the results in the Macie Dashboard.

AWS Glue – Randall’s post (with deluxe animated GIFs) introduces you to this new extract, transform, and load (ETL) service. Glue is serverless and fully managed, As you can see from the post, Glue crawls your data, infers schemas, and generates ETL scripts in Python. You define jobs that move data from place to place, with a wide selection of transforms, each expressed as code and stored in human-readable form. Glue uses Development Endpoints and notebooks to provide you with a testing environment for the scripts you build. We also announced that Amazon Athena now integrates with Amazon Glue, as does Apache Spark and Hive on Amazon EMR.

AWS Migration Hub – This new service will help you to migrate your application portfolio to AWS. My post outlines the major steps and shows you how the Migration Hub accelerates, tracks,and simplifies your migration effort. You can begin with a discovery step, or you can jump right in and migrate directly. Migration Hub integrates with tools from our migration partners and builds upon the Server Migration Service and the Database Migration Service.

CloudHSM Update – We made a major upgrade to AWS CloudHSM, making the benefits of hardware-based key management available to a wider audience. The service is offered on a pay-as-you-go basis, and is fully managed. It is open and standards compliant, with support for multiple APIs, programming languages, and cryptography extensions. CloudHSM is an integral part of AWS and can be accessed from the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), and through API calls. Read my post to learn more and to see how to set up a CloudHSM cluster.

Managed Rules to Secure S3 Buckets – We added two new rules to AWS Config that will help you to secure your S3 buckets. The s3-bucket-public-write-prohibited rule identifies buckets that have public write access and the s3-bucket-public-read-prohibited rule identifies buckets that have global read access. As I noted in my post, you can run these rules in response to configuration changes or on a schedule. The rules make use of some leading-edge constraint solving techniques, as part of a larger effort to use automated formal reasoning about AWS.

CloudTrail for All Customers – Tara’s post revealed that AWS CloudTrail is now available and enabled by default for all AWS customers. As a bonus, Tara reviewed the principal benefits of CloudTrail and showed you how to review your event history and to deep-dive on a single event. She also showed you how to create a second trail, for use with CloudWatch CloudWatch Events.

Encryption of Data at Rest for EFS – When you create a new file system, you now have the option to select a key that will be used to encrypt the contents of the files on the file system. The encryption is done using an industry-standard AES-256 algorithm. My post shows you how to select a key and to verify that it is being used.

Watch the Keynote
My colleagues Adrian Cockcroft and Matt Wood talked about these services and others on the stage, and also invited some AWS customers to share their stories. Here’s the video:

— Jeff;

Game of Thrones Pirates Arrested For Leaking Episode Early

2017-08-14 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/game-of-thrones-pirates-arrested-for-leaking-episode-early-170814/

Over the past several years, Game of Thrones has become synonymous with fantastic drama and story telling on the one hand, and Internet piracy on the other. It’s the most pirated TV show in history, hands down.

With the new season well underway, another GoT drama began to unfold early August when the then-unaired episode “The Spoils of War” began to circulate on various file-sharing and streaming sites. The leak only trumped the official release by a few days, but that didn’t stop people downloading in droves.

As previously reported, the leaked episode stated that it was “For Internal Viewing Only” at the top of the screen and on the bottom right sported a “Star India Pvt Ltd” watermark. The company commented shortly after.

“We take this breach very seriously and have immediately initiated forensic investigations at our and the technology partner’s end to swiftly determine the cause. This is a grave issue and we are taking appropriate legal remedial action,” a spokesperson said.

Now, just ten days later, that investigation has already netted its first victims. Four people have reportedly been arrested in India for leaking the episode before it aired.

“We investigated the case and have arrested four individuals for unauthorized publication of the fourth episode from season seven,” Deputy Commissioner of Police Akbar Pathan told AFP.

The report indicates that a complaint was filed by a Mumbai-based company that was responsible for storing and processing the TV episodes for an app. It has been named locally as Prime Focus Technologies, which markets itself as a Netflix “Preferred Vendor”.

It’s claimed that at least some of the men had access to login credentials for Game of Thrones episodes which were then abused for the purposes of leaking.

Local media identified the men as Bhaskar Joshi, Alok Sharma and Abhishek Ghadiyal, who were employed by Prime Focus, and Mohamad Suhail, a former employee, who was responsible for leaking the episode onto the Internet.

All of the men were based in Bangalore and were interrogated “throughout the night” at their workplace on August 11. Star India welcomed the arrests and thanked the authorities for their swift action.

“We are deeply grateful to the police for their swift and prompt action. We believe that valuable intellectual property is a critical part of the development of the creative industry and strict enforcement of the law is essential to protecting it,” the company said in a statement.

“We at Star India and Novi Digital Entertainment Private Limited stand committed and ready to help the law enforcement agencies with any technical assistance and help they may require in taking the investigation to its logical conclusion.”

The men will be held in custody until August 21 while investigations continue.

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

New – Encryption of Data at Rest for Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)

2017-08-14 Jeff Barr

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-encryption-at-rest-for-amazon-elastic-file-system-efs/

We launched Amazon Elastic File System in production form a little over a year ago (see Amazon Elastic File System – Production Ready in Three Regions for more information). Later in the year we added On-Premises access via Direct Connect and made EFS available in the US East (Ohio) Region, following up this year with availability in the EU (Frankfurt) and Asia Pacific (Sydney) Regions.

Encryption at Rest
Today we are adding support for encryption of data at rest. When you create a new file system, you can select a key that will be used to encrypt the contents of the files that you store on the file system. The key can be a built-in key that is managed by AWS or a key that you created yourself using AWS Key Management Service (KMS). File metadata (file names, directory names, and directory contents) will be encrypted using a key managed by AWS. Both forms of encryption are implemented using an industry-standard AES-256 algorithm.

You can set this up in seconds when you create a new file system. You simply choose the built-in key (aws/elasticfilesystem) or one of your own:

EFS will take care of the rest! You can select the filesystem in the console to verify that it is encrypted as desired:

A cryptographic algorithm that meets the approval of FIPS 140-2 is used to encrypt data and metadata. The encryption is transparent and has a minimal effect on overall performance.

You can use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to control access to the Customer Master Key (CMK). The CMK must be enabled in order to grant access to the file system; disabling the key prevents it from being used to create new file systems and blocks access (after a period of time) to existing file systems that it protects. To learn more about your options, read Managing Access to Encrypted File Systems.

Available Now
Encryption of data at rest is available now in all regions where EFS is supported, at no additional charge.

— Jeff;

Thomas and Ed become a RealLifeDoodle on the ISS

2017-08-14 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/astro-pi-reallifedoodle/

Thanks to the very talented sooperdavid, creator of some of the wonderful animations known as RealLifeDoodles, Thomas Pesquet and Astro Pi Ed have been turned into one of the cutest videos on the internet.

space pi – Create, Discover and Share Awesome GIFs on Gfycat

Watch space pi GIF by sooperdave on Gfycat. Discover more GIFS online on Gfycat

And RealLifeDoodles aaaaare?

Thanks to the power of viral video, many will be aware of the ongoing Real Life Doodle phenomenon. Wait, you’re not aware?

Oh. Well, let me explain it to you.

Taking often comical video clips, those with a know-how and skill level that outweighs my own in spades add faces and emotions to inanimate objects, creating what the social media world refers to as a Real Life Doodle. From disappointed exercise balls to cannibalistic piles of leaves, these video clips are both cute and sometimes, though thankfully not always, a little heartbreaking.

letmegofree – Create, Discover and Share Awesome GIFs on Gfycat

Watch letmegofree GIF by sooperdave on Gfycat. Discover more reallifedoodles GIFs on Gfycat

Our own RealLifeDoodle

A few months back, when Programme Manager Dave Honess, better known to many as SpaceDave, sent me these Astro Pi videos for me to upload to YouTube, a small plan hatched in my brain. For in the midst of the video, and pointed out to me by SpaceDave – “I kind of love the way he just lets the unit drop out of shot” – was the most adorable sight as poor Ed drifted off into the great unknown of the ISS. Finding that I have this odd ability to consider many inanimate objects as ‘cute’, I wanted to see whether we could turn poor Ed into a RealLifeDoodle.

Heading to the Reddit RealLifeDoodle subreddit, I sent moderator sooperdavid a private message, asking if he’d be so kind as to bring our beloved Ed to life.

Yesterday, our dream came true!

Astro Pi

Unless you’re new to the world of the Raspberry Pi blog (in which case, welcome!), you’ll probably know about the Astro Pi Challenge. But for those who are unaware, let me break it down for you.

In 2015, two weeks before British ESA Astronaut Tim Peake journeyed to the International Space Station, two Raspberry Pis were sent up to await his arrival. Clad in 6063-grade aluminium flight cases and fitted with their own Sense HATs and camera modules, the Astro Pis Ed and Izzy were ready to receive the winning codes from school children in the UK. The following year, this time maintained by French ESA Astronaut Thomas Pesquet, children from every ESA member country got involved to send even more code to the ISS.

Get involved

Will there be another Astro Pi Challenge? Well, I just asked SpaceDave and he didn’t say no! So why not get yourself into training now and try out some of our space-themed free resources, including our 3D-print your own Astro Pi case tutorial? You can also follow the adventures of Ed and Izzy in our brilliant Story of Astro Pi cartoons.

And if you’re quick, there’s still time to take part in tomorrow’s Moonhack! Check out their website for more information and help the team at Code Club Australia beat their own world record!

The post Thomas and Ed become a RealLifeDoodle on the ISS appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

New Premier League Blocking Disrupts Pirate IPTV Providers

2017-08-14 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/new-premier-league-blocking-disrupts-pirate-iptv-providers-170814/

Top tier football in the UK is handled by the English Premier League (EPL) and broadcasting partners Sky and BT Sport. All face considerable problems with Internet piracy, through free web or Kodi-based streaming and premium IPTV feeds.

To mitigate the threat, earlier this year the Premier League obtained a unique High Court injunction which required ISPs such as Sky, BT, and Virgin to block ‘pirate’ football streams in real-time.

Although the success of the program was initially up for debate, the EPL reported it was able to block 5,000 server IP addresses that were streaming its content. When that temporary injunction ran out, the EPL went back to court for a new one, valid for the season that began this past weekend. There are signs the EPL may have upped its game.

As soon as the matches began on Saturday, issues were reported at several of the more prominent IPTV providers. Within minutes of the match streams going live, subscribers to affected services were met with black screens, causing anger and frustration. While some clearly knew that action was on the cards, relatively few had an effective plan in place.

One provider, which targets subscribers in the UK, scrambled to obtain new domain names, thinking that the existing domains had been placed on some kind of Premier League blacklist. While that may have indeed been the case, making a service more obscure in that sense was never going to outwit the systems deployed by the anti-piracy outfits involved.

Indeed, the provider in question was subjected to much chaos over both Saturday and Sunday, since it’s clear that large numbers of subscribers had absolutely no idea what was going on. Even if they understood that the EPL was blocking, the change of domain flat-footed the rest. The subsequent customer service chaos was not a pretty sight but would’ve been a pleasure for the EPL to behold.

An interesting side effect of this EPL action is that even if IPTV subscribers don’t care about football, many were affected this past weekend anyway.

TF is aware of at least three services (there are probably many more) that couldn’t service their UK customers with any other channels whatsoever while the Premier League games were being aired. This suggests that the IP addresses hit by the EPL and blocked by local ISPs belonged to the same servers carrying the rest of the content offered by the IPTV providers.

When the High Court handed down its original injunction it accepted that some non-Premier League content could be blocked at the same time but since that “consists almost exclusively of [infringing] commercial broadcast content such as other sports, films, and television programs,” there was little concern over collateral damage.

So the big question now is what can IPTV providers and/or subscribers do to tackle the threat?

The first interesting thing to note is not all of the big providers were affected this past weekend, so for many customers the matches passed by as normal. It isn’t clear whether EPL simply didn’t have all of the providers on the list or whether steps were taken to mitigate the threat, but that was certainly the case in a handful of cases.

Information passed to TF shows that at least a small number of providers were not only waiting for the EPL action but actually had a backup plan in place. This appears to have resulted in a minimum of disruption for their customers, something that will prove of interest to the many frustrated subscribers looking for a new service this morning.

While the past few days have been somewhat chaotic, other issues have been muddying the waters somewhat.

TF has learned that at least two, maybe three suppliers, were subjected to DDoS attacks around the time the matches were due to air. It seems unlikely that the EPL has been given permission to carry out such an attack but since the High Court injunction is secret in every way that describes its anti-piracy methods, that will remain a suspicion. In the meantime, rival IPTV services remain possible suspects.

Also, a major IPTV stream ‘wholesaler’ is reported to have had technical issues on Saturday, which affected its ability to serve lower-tier providers. Whether that was also linked to the Premier League action is unknown and TF couldn’t find any source willing to talk about the provider in any detail.

So, sports fans who rely on IPTV for their fix are wondering how things will pan out later this week. If this last weekend is anything to go by, disruption is guaranteed, but it will be less of a surprise given the problems of the last few days. While some don’t foresee huge problems, several providers are already advising customers that VPNs will be necessary.

An IPTV provider suggesting the use of VPNs

While a VPN will indeed solve the problem in most cases, for many subscribers that will amount to an additional expense, not to mention more time spent learning about VPNs, what they can do, and how they can be setup on the hardware they’re using for IPTV.

For users on Android devices running IPTV apps or Kodi-type setups, VPNs are both easy to install and use. However, Mag Box STB users cannot run a VPN directly on the device, meaning that they’ll need either a home router that can run a VPN or a smaller ‘travel’ type router with OpenVPN capabilities to use as a go-between.

Either way, costs are beginning to creep up, if IPTV providers can’t deal with the EPL’s blocking efforts. That makes the new cheaper football packages offered by various providers that little bit more attractive. But that was probably the plan all along.

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

Nazis, are bad

2017-08-14 Eevee

Post Syndicated from Eevee original https://eev.ee/blog/2017/08/13/nazis-are-bad/

Anonymous asks:

Could you talk about something related to the management/moderation and growth of online communities? IOW your thoughts on online community management, if any.

I think you’ve tweeted about this stuff in the past so I suspect you have thoughts on this, but if not, again, feel free to just blog about … anything 🙂

Oh, I think I have some stuff to say about community management, in light of recent events. None of it hasn’t already been said elsewhere, but I have to get this out.

Hopefully the content warning is implicit in the title.

I am frustrated.

I’ve gone on before about a particularly bothersome phenomenon that hurts a lot of small online communities: often, people are willing to tolerate the misery of others in a community, but then get up in arms when someone pushes back. Someone makes a lot of off-hand, off-color comments about women? Uses a lot of dog-whistle terms? Eh, they’re not bothering anyone, or at least not bothering me. Someone else gets tired of it and tells them to knock it off? Whoa there! Now we have the appearance of conflict, which is unacceptable, and people will turn on the person who’s pissed off — even though they’ve been at the butt end of an invisible conflict for who knows how long. The appearance of peace is paramount, even if it means a large chunk of the population is quietly miserable.

Okay, so now, imagine that on a vastly larger scale, and also those annoying people who know how to skirt the rules are Nazis.

The label “Nazi” gets thrown around a lot lately, probably far too easily. But when I see a group of people doing the Hitler salute, waving large Nazi flags, wearing Nazi armbands styled after the SS, well… if the shoe fits, right? I suppose they might have flown across the country to join a torch-bearing mob ironically, but if so, the joke is going way over my head. (Was the murder ironic, too?) Maybe they’re not Nazis in the sense that the original party doesn’t exist any more, but for ease of writing, let’s refer to “someone who espouses Nazi ideology and deliberately bears a number of Nazi symbols” as, well, “a Nazi”.

This isn’t a new thing, either; I’ve stumbled upon any number of Twitter accounts that are decorated in Nazi regalia. I suppose the trouble arises when perfectly innocent members of the alt-right get unfairly labelled as Nazis.

But hang on; this march was called “Unite the Right” and was intended to bring together various far right sub-groups. So what does their choice of aesthetic say about those sub-groups? I haven’t heard, say, alt-right coiner Richard Spencer denounce the use of Nazi symbology — extra notable since he was fucking there and apparently didn’t care to discourage it.

And so begins the rule-skirting. “Nazi” is definitely overused, but even using it to describe white supremacists who make not-so-subtle nods to Hitler is likely to earn you some sarcastic derailment. A Nazi? Oh, so is everyone you don’t like and who wants to establish a white ethno state a Nazi?

Calling someone a Nazi — or even a white supremacist — is an attack, you see. Merely expressing the desire that people of color not exist is perfectly peaceful, but identifying the sentiment for what it is causes visible discord, which is unacceptable.

These clowns even know this sort of thing and strategize around it. Or, try, at least. Maybe it wasn’t that successful this weekend — though flicking through Charlottesville headlines now, they seem to be relatively tame in how they refer to the ralliers.

I’m reminded of a group of furries — the alt-furries — who have been espousing white supremacy and wearing red armbands with a white circle containing a black… pawprint. Ah, yes, that’s completely different.

So, what to do about this?

“Ignore them” is a popular option, often espoused to bullied children by parents who have never been bullied, shortly before they resume complaining about passive-aggressive office politics. The trouble with ignoring them is that, just like in smaller communitiest, they have a tendency to fester. They take over large chunks of influential Internet surface area like 4chan and Reddit; they help get an inept buffoon elected; and then they start to have torch-bearing rallies and run people over with cars.

4chan illustrates a kind of corollary here. Anyone who’s steeped in Internet Culture™ is surely familiar with 4chan; I was never a regular visitor, but it had enough influence that I was still aware of it and some of its culture. It was always thick with irony, which grew into a sort of ironic detachment — perhaps one of the major sources of the recurring online trope that having feelings is bad — which proceeded into ironic racism.

And now the ironic racism is indistinguishable from actual racism, as tends to be the case. Do they “actually” “mean it”, or are they just trying to get a rise out of people? What the hell is unironic racism if not trying to get a rise out of people? What difference is there to onlookers, especially as they move to become increasingly involved with politics?

“It’s just a joke” and “it was just a thoughtless comment” are exceptionally common defenses made by people desperate to preserve the illusion of harmony, but the strain of overt white supremacy currently running rampant through the US was built on those excuses.

The other favored option is to debate them, to defeat their ideas with better ideas.

Well, hang on. What are their ideas, again? I hear they were chanting stuff like “go back to Africa” and “fuck you, faggots”. Given that this was an overtly political rally (and again, the Nazi fucking regalia), I don’t think it’s a far cry to describe their ideas as “let’s get rid of black people and queer folks”.

This is an underlying proposition: that white supremacy is inherently violent. After all, if the alt-right seized total political power, what would they do with it? If I asked the same question of Democrats or Republicans, I’d imagine answers like “universal health care” or “screw over poor people”. But people whose primary goal is to have a country full of only white folks? What are they going to do, politely ask everyone else to leave? They’re invoking the memory of people who committed genocide and also tried to take over the fucking world. They are outright saying, these are the people we look up to, this is who we think had a great idea.

How, precisely, does one defeat these ideas with rational debate?

Because the underlying core philosophy beneath all this is: “it would be good for me if everything were about me”. And that’s true! (Well, it probably wouldn’t work out how they imagine in practice, but it’s true enough.) Consider that slavery is probably fantastic if you’re the one with the slaves; the issue is that it’s reprehensible, not that the very notion contains some kind of 101-level logical fallacy. That’s probably why we had a fucking war over it instead of hashing it out over brunch.

…except we did hash it out over brunch once, and the result was that slavery was still allowed but slaves only counted as 60% of a person for the sake of counting how much political power states got. So that’s how rational debate worked out. I’m sure the slaves were thrilled with that progress.

That really only leaves pushing back, which raises the question of how to push back.

And, I don’t know. Pushing back is much harder in spaces you don’t control, spaces you’re already struggling to justify your own presence in. For most people, that’s most spaces. It’s made all the harder by that tendency to preserve illusory peace; even the tamest request that someone knock off some odious behavior can be met by pushback, even by third parties.

At the same time, I’m aware that white supremacists prey on disillusioned young white dudes who feel like they don’t fit in, who were promised the world and inherited kind of a mess. Does criticism drive them further away? The alt-right also opposes “political correctness”, i.e. “not being a fucking asshole”.

God knows we all suck at this kind of behavior correction, even within our own in-groups. Fandoms have become almost ridiculously vicious as platforms like Twitter and Tumblr amplify individual anger to deafening levels. It probably doesn’t help that we’re all just exhausted, that every new fuck-up feels like it bears the same weight as the last hundred combined.

This is the part where I admit I don’t know anything about people and don’t have any easy answers. Surprise!

The other alternative is, well, punching Nazis.

That meme kind of haunts me. It raises really fucking complicated questions about when violence is acceptable, in a culture that’s completely incapable of answering them.

America’s relationship to violence is so bizarre and two-faced as to be almost incomprehensible. We worship it. We have the biggest military in the world by an almost comical margin. It’s fairly mainstream to own deadly weapons for the express stated purpose of armed revolution against the government, should that become necessary, where “necessary” is left ominously undefined. Our movies are about explosions and beating up bad guys; our video games are about explosions and shooting bad guys. We fantasize about solving foreign policy problems by nuking someone — hell, our talking heads are currently in polite discussion about whether we should nuke North Korea and annihilate up to twenty-five million people, as punishment for daring to have the bomb that only we’re allowed to have.

But… violence is bad.

That’s about as far as the other side of the coin gets. It’s bad. We condemn it in the strongest possible terms. Also, guess who we bombed today?

I observe that the one time Nazis were a serious threat, America was happy to let them try to take over the world until their allies finally showed up on our back porch.

Maybe I don’t understand what “violence” means. In a quest to find out why people are talking about “leftist violence” lately, I found a National Review article from May that twice suggests blocking traffic is a form of violence. Anarchists have smashed some windows and set a couple fires at protests this year — and, hey, please knock that crap off? — which is called violence against, I guess, Starbucks. Black Lives Matter could be throwing a birthday party and Twitter would still be abuzz with people calling them thugs.

Meanwhile, there’s a trend of murderers with increasingly overt links to the alt-right, and everyone is still handling them with kid gloves. First it was murders by people repeating their talking points; now it’s the culmination of a torches-and-pitchforks mob. (Ah, sorry, not pitchforks; assault rifles.) And we still get this incredibly bizarre both-sides-ism, a White House that refers to the people who didn’t murder anyone as “just as violent if not more so“.

Should you punch Nazis? I don’t know. All I know is that I’m extremely dissatisfied with discourse that’s extremely alarmed by hypothetical punches — far more mundane than what you’d see after a sporting event — but treats a push for ethnic cleansing as a mere difference of opinion.

The equivalent to a punch in an online space is probably banning, which is almost laughable in comparison. It doesn’t cause physical harm, but it is a use of concrete force. Doesn’t pose quite the same moral quandary, though.

Somewhere in the middle is the currently popular pastime of doxxing (doxxxxxxing) people spotted at the rally in an attempt to get them fired or whatever. Frankly, that skeeves me out, though apparently not enough that I’m directly chastizing anyone for it.

We aren’t really equipped, as a society, to deal with memetic threats. We aren’t even equipped to determine what they are. We had a fucking world war over this, and now people are outright saying “hey I’m like those people we went and killed a lot in that world war” and we give them interviews and compliment their fashion sense.

A looming question is always, what if they then do it to you? What if people try to get you fired, to punch you for your beliefs?

I think about that a lot, and then I remember that it’s perfectly legal to fire someone for being gay in half the country. (Courts are currently wrangling whether Title VII forbids this, but with the current administration, I’m not optimistic.) I know people who’ve been fired for coming out as trans. I doubt I’d have to look very far to find someone who’s been punched for either reason.

And these aren’t even beliefs; they’re just properties of a person. You can stop being a white supremacist, one of those people yelling “fuck you, faggots”.

So I have to recuse myself from this asinine question, because I can’t fairly judge the risk of retaliation when it already happens to people I care about.

Meanwhile, if a white supremacist does get punched, I absolutely still want my tax dollars to pay for their universal healthcare.

The same wrinkle comes up with free speech, which is paramount.

The ACLU reminds us that the First Amendment “protects vile, hateful, and ignorant speech”. I think they’ve forgotten that that’s a side effect, not the goal. No one sat down and suggested that protecting vile speech was some kind of noble cause, yet that’s how we seem to be treating it.

The point was to avoid a situation where the government is arbitrarily deciding what qualifies as vile, hateful, and ignorant, and was using that power to eliminate ideas distasteful to politicians. You know, like, hypothetically, if they interrogated and jailed a bunch of people for supporting the wrong economic system. Or convicted someone under the Espionage Act for opposing the draft. (Hey, that’s where the “shouting fire in a crowded theater” line comes from.)

But these are ideas that are already in the government. Bannon, a man who was chair of a news organization he himself called “the platform for the alt-right”, has the President’s ear! How much more mainstream can you get?

So again I’m having a little trouble balancing “we need to defend the free speech of white supremacists or risk losing it for everyone” against “we fairly recently were ferreting out communists and the lingering public perception is that communists are scary, not that the government is”.

This isn’t to say that freedom of speech is bad, only that the way we talk about it has become fanatical to the point of absurdity. We love it so much that we turn around and try to apply it to corporations, to platforms, to communities, to interpersonal relationships.

Look at 4chan. It’s completely public and anonymous; you only get banned for putting the functioning of the site itself in jeopardy. Nothing is stopping a larger group of people from joining its politics board and tilting sentiment the other way — except that the current population is so odious that no one wants to be around them. Everyone else has evaporated away, as tends to happen.

Free speech is great for a government, to prevent quashing politics that threaten the status quo (except it’s a joke and they’ll do it anyway). People can’t very readily just bail when the government doesn’t like them, anyway. It’s also nice to keep in mind to some degree for ubiquitous platforms. But the smaller you go, the easier it is for people to evaporate away, and the faster pure free speech will turn the place to crap. You’ll be left only with people who care about nothing.

At the very least, it seems clear that the goal of white supremacists is some form of destabilization, of disruption to the fabric of a community for purely selfish purposes. And those are the kinds of people you want to get rid of as quickly as possible.

Usually this is hard, because they act just nicely enough to create some plausible deniability. But damn, if someone is outright telling you they love Hitler, maybe skip the principled hand-wringing and eject them.

MPAA Revenue Stabilizes, Chris Dodd Earns $3.5 Million

2017-08-13 Ernesto

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-revenue-stabilizes-chris-dodd-earns-3-5-million170813/

Protecting the interests of Hollywood, the MPAA has been heavily involved in numerous anti-piracy efforts around the world in recent years.

Through its involvement in the shutdowns of Popcorn Time, YIFY, isoHunt, Hotfile, Megaupload and several other platforms, the MPAA has worked hard to target piracy around the globe.

Perhaps just as importantly, the group lobbies lawmakers globally while managing anti-piracy campaigns both in and outside the US, including the Creative Content UK program.

All this work doesn’t come for free, obviously, so the MPAA relies on six major movie studios for financial support. After its revenues plummeted a few years ago, they have steadily recovered and according to its latest tax filing, the MPAA’s total income is now over $72 million.

The IRS filing, covering the fiscal year 2015, reveals that the movie studios contributed $65 million, the same as a year earlier. Overall revenue has stabilized as well, after a few years of modest growth.

Going over the numbers, we see that salaries make up a large chunk of the expenses. Former Senator Chris Dodd, the MPAA’s Chairman and CEO, is the highest paid employee with a total income of more than $3.5 million, including a $250,000 bonus.

It was recently announced that Dodd will leave the MPAA next month. He will be replaced by Charles Rivkin, another political heavyweight. Rivkin previously served as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs in the Obama administration.

In addition to Dodd, there are two other employees who made over a million in 2015, Global General Counsel Steve Fabrizio and Diane Strahan, the MPAA’s Chief Operating Officer.

Looking at some of the other expenses we see that the MPAA’s lobbying budget remained stable at $4.2 million. Another $4.4 million went to various grants, while legal costs totaled $7.2 million that year.

More than two million dollars worth of legal expenses were paid to the US law firm Jenner & Block, which represented the movie studios in various court cases. In addition, the MPAA paid more than $800,000 to the UK law firm Wiggin, which assisted the group in local site-blocking efforts.

Finally, it’s worth looking at the various gifts and grants the MPAA hands out. As reported last year, the group handsomely contributes to various research projects. This includes a recurring million dollar grant for Carnegie Mellon’s ‘Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics’ (IDEA), which researches various piracy related topics.

IDEA co-director Rahul Telang previously informed us that the gift is used to hire researchers and pay for research materials. It is not tied to a particular project.

We also see $70,000+ in donations for both the Democratic and Republican Attorneys General associations. The purpose of the grants is listed as “general support.” Interestingly, just recently over a dozen Attorneys General released a public service announcement warning the public to stay away from pirate sites.

These type of donations and grants are nothing new and are a regular part of business across many industries. Still, they are worth keeping in mind.

It will be interesting to see which direction the MPAA takes in the years to come. Under Chris Dodd it has booked a few notable successes, but there is still a long way to go before the piracy situation is somewhat under control.

—

MPAA’s full form 990 was published in Guidestar recently and a copy is available here (pdf).

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

Piracy Narrative Isn’t About Ethics Anymore, It’s About “Danger”

2017-08-12 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-narrative-isnt-about-ethics-anymore-its-about-danger-170812/

Over the years there have been almost endless attempts to stop people from accessing copyright-infringing content online. Campaigns have come and gone and almost two decades later the battle is still ongoing.

Early on, when panic enveloped the music industry, the campaigns centered around people getting sued. Grabbing music online for free could be costly, the industry warned, while parading the heads of a few victims on pikes for the world to see.

Periodically, however, the aim has been to appeal to the public’s better nature. The idea is that people essentially want to do the ‘right thing’, so once they understand that largely hard-working Americans are losing their livelihoods, people will stop downloading from The Pirate Bay. For some, this probably had the desired effect but millions of people are still getting their fixes for free, so the job isn’t finished yet.

In more recent years, notably since the MPAA and RIAA had their eyes blacked in the wake of SOPA, the tone has shifted. In addition to educating the public, torrent and streaming sites are increasingly being painted as enemies of the public they claim to serve.

Several studies, largely carried out on behalf of the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA), have claimed that pirate sites are hotbeds of malware, baiting consumers in with tasty pirate booty only to offload trojans, viruses, and God-knows-what. These reports have been ostensibly published as independent public interest documents but this week an advisor to the DCA suggested a deeper interest for the industry.

Hemanshu Nigam is a former federal prosecutor, ex-Chief Security Officer for News Corp and Fox Interactive Media, and former VP Worldwide Internet Enforcement at the MPAA. In an interview with Deadline this week, he spoke about alleged links between pirate sites and malware distributors. He also indicated that warning people about the dangers of pirate sites has become Hollywood’s latest anti-piracy strategy.

“The industry narrative has changed. When I was at the MPAA, we would tell people that stealing content is wrong and young people would say, yeah, whatever, you guys make a lot of money, too bad,” he told the publication.

“It has gone from an ethical discussion to a dangerous one. Now, your parents’ bank account can be raided, your teenage daughter can be spied on in her bedroom and extorted with the footage, or your computer can be locked up along with everything in it and held for ransom.”

Nigam’s stance isn’t really a surprise since he’s currently working for the Digital Citizens Alliance as an advisor. In turn, the Alliance is at least partly financed by the MPAA. There’s no suggestion whatsoever that Nigam is involved in any propaganda effort, but recent signs suggest that the DCA’s work in malware awareness is more about directing people away from pirate sites than protecting them from the alleged dangers within.

That being said and despite the bias, it’s still worth giving experts like Nigam an opportunity to speak. Largely thanks to industry efforts with brands, pirate sites are increasingly being forced to display lower-tier ads, which can be problematic. On top, some sites’ policies mean they don’t deserve any visitors at all.

In the Deadline piece, however, Nigam alleges that hackers have previously reached out to pirate websites offering $200 to $5000 per day “depending on the size of the pirate website” to have the site infect users with malware. If true, that’s a serious situation and people who would ordinarily use ‘pirate’ sites would definitely appreciate the details.

For example, to which sites did hackers make this offer and, crucially, which sites turned down the offer and which ones accepted?

It’s important to remember that pirates are just another type of consumer and they would boycott sites in a heartbeat if they discovered they’d been paid to infect them with malware. But, as usual, the claims are extremely light in detail. Instead, there’s simply a blanket warning to stay away from all unauthorized sites, which isn’t particularly helpful.

In some cases, of course, operational security will prevent some details coming to light but without these, people who don’t get infected on a ‘pirate’ site (the vast majority) simply won’t believe the allegations. As the author of the Deadline piece pointed out, it’s a bit like Reefer Madness all over again.

The point here is that without hard independent evidence to back up these claims, with reports listing sites alongside the malware they’ve supposed to have spread and when, few people will respond to perceived scaremongering. Free content trumps a few distant worries almost every time, whether that involves malware or the threat of a lawsuit.

It’ll be up to the DCA and their MPAA paymasters to consider whether the approach is working but thus far, not even having government heavyweights on board has helped.

Earlier this year the DCA launched a video campaign, enrolling 15 attorney generals to publish their own anti-piracy PSAs on YouTube. Thus far, interest has been minimal, to say the least.

At the time of writing the 15 PSAs have 3,986 views in total, with 2,441 of those contributed by a single video contributed by Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel. Despite the relative success, even that got slammed with 2 upvotes and 127 downvotes.

A few of the other videos have a couple of hundred views each but more than half have less than 70. Perhaps most worryingly for the DCA, apart from the Schimel PSA, none have any upvotes at all, only down. It’s unclear who the viewers were but it seems reasonable to conclude they weren’t entertained.

The bottom line is nobody likes malware or having their banking details stolen but yet again, people who claim to have the public interest at heart aren’t actually making a difference on the ground. It could be argued that groups advocating online safety should be publishing guides on how to stay protected on the Internet period, not merely advising people to stay away from certain sites.

But of course, that wouldn’t achieve the goals of the ~~MPAA~~ Digital Citizens Alliance.

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

Building a Real World Evidence Platform on AWS

2017-08-09 Aaron Friedman

Post Syndicated from Aaron Friedman original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/building-a-real-world-evidence-platform-on-aws/

Deriving insights from large datasets is central to nearly every industry, and life sciences is no exception. To combat the rising cost of bringing drugs to market, pharmaceutical companies are looking for ways to optimize their drug development processes. They are turning to big data analytics to better quantify the effect that their drug compounds have on different populations and to look for new clinical indications for existing drugs.

A real world evidence (RWE) platform is loosely defined as an integrated set of services and products that life sciences companies use to securely acquire, store, and analyze large, often disparate datasets to gain insight into the functions of a specific drug or intervention. The petabyte-scale data generated from wearables, medical devices, genomics, clinical imaging, and claims (to name a few) allows pharmaceutical and other life sciences companies to build big data platforms to analyze these datasets. And many of them are doing it on AWS.

At the center of nearly every RWE platform is a data lake that houses different data types. It also stores the related metadata to identify where each piece of data came from, who owned it, etc. Analytics engines integrate the relevant streaming (e.g., wearables), structured (e.g., claims data), and unstructured (e.g., notes in electronic health records) data.

In this post, I highlight common architectural patterns that customers are using to maximize the value of real world evidence on AWS. The architecture presented here can be reproduced in multiple regions, so you can respect local data sovereignty requirements, when applicable, while conducting global studies. This post doesn’t cover all considerations for real world evidence (such as security and authentication), but instead focuses on the areas that are related to your data flow.

A data lake is your source of truth

The ability to integrate disparate data types is critical to maximizing the utility of RWE. Life sciences companies have to be able to store, search, and retrieve data of different types and sizes, including (but not limited to) the following:

Streaming data from wearables and medical devices
Structured data from genomics and claims data
Unstructured data from notes in electronic health records

A common solution to integrate these data types is a data lake. Data lakes allow organizations to store all their data, regardless of data type, in a centralized repository. Because data can be stored as-is, there’s no need to convert it to a predefined schema. And you no longer need to know what questions you want to ask of your data beforehand. You can use data lakes for ad hoc analyses, so you can quickly explore and discover new insights without needing to structure the data first, as you would with a traditional data warehouse.

Although there are many uses for storing real world evidence data in a data lake, here are a few examples of the processes it can facilitate for pharma and biotech companies:

Quickly access all data for a given subject, from clinical images to genomics to claims data.
Associate incoming RWE data with existing data in your RWE data lake, such as by subject or study.
Select specific windows in longitudinal studies (microbiome, metabolomics, etc.).

The following diagram shows an architecture of the features within a data lake and several examples of how data enters a data lake:

This architecture, which is entirely serverless and backed by Amazon S3, lets you scale your data lake to easily accommodate any data size for your RWE platform. Additionally, the components presented in this diagram can be secured via IAM controls and service policies. This enables you to secure and protect the sensitive information that often resides within an RWE platform. Amazon S3 is the canonical source for objects in your RWE data lake. You track and search metadata that is associated with these objects in a data catalog built on Amazon Elasticsearch Service and Amazon DynamoDB.

Let’s dive deeper into what this architecture does and how data makes it into the data lake:

Streaming (e.g., wearables), structured, and unstructured data is acquired from myriad devices and sources. Depending on the data size, you might use AWS IoT (streaming), AWS Storage Gateway (mid-size/continual batch), and AWS Snowball (large legacy datasets, such as imaging). AWS IoT writes to Amazon Kinesis Firehose, which transforms the telemetry data in-flight to land both transformed and raw data in Amazon S3.
When data lands in Amazon S3 buckets, an AWS Lambda function is invoked (either by trigger or manually).
This Lambda function writes to a data catalog that is fronted by Amazon API Gateway. The data catalog contains metadata about all the object data in Amazon S3, as well as data that resides in databases, such as Amazon Redshift.
An AWS Lambda function on the other side of API Gateway writes the appropriate metadata about the objects, such as the study that the data was generated from, into Amazon Elasticsearch Service and/or Amazon DynamoDB, which I refer to as the data catalog.

The data catalog mentioned in steps 3 and 4 is central to your data management. In most analyses, the first step is to build a data manifest of where the data-of-interest lies, which is discussed in later sections.

Normalizing data for real world evidence

As I previously mentioned, data can enter your real world evidence data lake in many different formats. In many cases, you might need to normalize this data into a specific format to ease downstream analysis. For example, you might have to integrate many different electronic health records that are stored in different formats. You also might have to transform genomics data, often represented as a variant call format (VCF) file, into a format that’s easier for big data technologies like Apache Parquet to query. While you can certainly analyze this data in the format in which it entered, it might be better for querying after it’s transformed into a different format, or into a different data store.

In the architecture shown in the following diagram, AWS Step Functions orchestrates the data normalization (extract, transform, load—or ETL) process. Step Functions is a serverless workflow service that ensures that your long-running ETL jobs execute in order and complete successfully. At a high level, you first query the data catalog to get a manifest of the data to be normalized. Normalization occurs on Amazon EC2 instances, and the results are then stored back in Amazon S3 or in databases such as Amazon Redshift for future analysis. Locations of these results data are also logged in the data catalog for future querying.

Here is an example Step Functions state machine for this process:

The following is the accompanying JSON that produces it:

{
  "Comment": "An example for data normalization in RWE",
  "StartAt": "GenerateDataManifest",
  "States": {
    "GenerateDataManifest": {
      "Type": "Task",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-east-1:<account-id>::function:GenerateDataManifest",
      "Retry": [ {
        "ErrorEquals": ["States.Timeout"],
        "MaxAttempts": 2
      } ],
      "Next": "SubmitNormalizationJob"
    },
    "SubmitNormalizationJob": {
      "Type": "Task",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-east-1:<account-id>::function: SubmitNormalizationJob",
      "Next": "GetNormalizationJobStatus"
    },
    "GetNormalizationJobStatus": {
      "Type": "Task",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-east-1:<account-id>:function: GetNormalizationJobStatus",
      "Next": "CheckJobStatus",
      "InputPath": "$",
      "ResultPath": "$.status"
    },
    "CheckJobStatus": {
      "Type": "Choice",
      "Choices": [
        {
          "Variable": "$.status",
          "StringEquals": "FAILED",
          "Next": "JobFailureCleanup"
        },
        {
          "Variable": "$.status",
          "StringEquals": "SUCCEEDED",
          "Next": "JobSuccessCleanup"
        }
      ],
      "Default": "Wait60Seconds"
    },
    "Wait60Seconds": {
      "Type": "Wait",
      "Seconds": 60,
      "Next": "GetNormalizationJobStatus"
    },
    "JobSuccessCleanup": {
      "Type": "Task",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-east-1:<account-id>:function:batchJobSuccessCleanup",
      "End": true
    },
    "JobFailureCleanup": {
      "Type": "Task",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-east-1:<account-id>:function:batchJobSuccessCleanup",
      "End": true
    }
  }
}

And here is the overall architecture:

Here are the steps in more detail:

Either a user or an application submits a POST request through Amazon API Gateway to process or transform a set of data. This request contains the query parameters that correspond to generating the data manifest. It is passed into an AWS Step Functions state machine, which orchestrates the ETL process.
A Lambda function queries the data catalog and builds a manifest that contains the location of the data of interest.
The manifest is passed to downstream Lambda functions in the state machine that orchestrate the batch workflow to process the data that’s specified in the manifest.
These Lambda functions submit jobs to AWS Batch to execute batch jobs on Amazon EC2.
Amazon EC2 processes the data (e.g., data normalization) and stores results back in Amazon S3 and/or Amazon Redshift.
Results data is then logged in the data catalog, using the process shown in the data acquisition diagram.

Analyzing and visualizing data in real world evidence

Ultimately, the value in real world evidence platforms is the value you derive from the wide variety of data that feeds into it. Big data analytics, such as Spark on EMR, machine learning with the Deep Learning AMIs, and healthcare data warehouses, are all fundamental to maximizing the value of RWE.

Given the wide array of questions you can answer, you want your architecture to be as flexible as possible. Your organization also might use business intelligence (BI) tools. Again, as with the data normalization tier, you can use Step Functions to orchestrate your workflow. You first build the data manifest and then submit each portion of your desired analysis to the relevant data location and compute options, such as Amazon EMR or Amazon Redshift. Your organization’s BI tool of choice, such as Amazon QuickSight or one offered by our AWS Big Data Competency partners, can extract and visualize the results.

Here is the workflow in more detail:

A user initiates a query on a dataset. In the context of RWE, this is largely analyzing a cohort in the context of a specific indication (drug response, etc.).
AWS Step Functions invokes a Lambda function to query the data catalog and build a manifest of data.
The manifest is passed to subsequent Lambda functions, which orchestrate the data analysis through different AWS services.
These analyses can include Amazon EMR for population-scale genomics, Amazon EC2 for HPC and machine learning, and Amazon Redshift for your healthcare data warehouse.
Results from each analysis are staged back in Amazon S3 and logged in the data catalog.
BI tools like Amazon QuickSight or Tableau, or data analysis workbooks like Jupyter can query Amazon S3 to visualize results, such as through Amazon Athena.

A practical example

Imagine that you are at a pharmaceutical company that is developing a drug to address a neurological condition. You have longitudinal data in the form of brain scans and have noticed that the drug compound under development seems to benefit a specific subpopulation of individuals. As a result, you determine to sequence the genomes of all the responders and non-responders to look for specific biomarkers that could indicate response levels. Success would result in a companion diagnostic that you could use alongside your drug to increase its overall efficacy by delivering it only to the responding population.

Let’s briefly look at how this study might play out in the steps of data acquisition, normalization, and analysis described earlier.

Data acquisition

Data from longitudinal brain imaging studies can be moved to AWS using AWS Snowball. Genomics data coming off your genome sequencers would land in Amazon S3 via AWS Storage Gateway and/or AWS Direct Connect. These datasets are stored in your data catalog where you track items such as date generated, anonymized subject ID, etc.

Data processing

Genomes are transformed from raw reads (e.g., FASTQ) to a human readable format (VCF) that identifies variations in a genome. These VCF files are subsequently extracted, transformed, and loaded into a format that is amenable to big data analytics, such as Parquet.

Data analysis

You build a data manifest of your brain scans in Amazon S3. You use the deep learning AMI and P2 instance family to build machine learning models to identify images that represent different stages in your disorder-of-interest. You then run association analyses that combine your genomics data with your brain imaging models and drug response data to identify what genomic variants associate with improved treatment outcomes. You can manage these analyses via Jupyter notebooks, or you can connect with your BI tool of choice to visualize your results.

It will always be day one for RWE

By implementing real world evidence platforms on AWS, you can quickly integrate and interrogate disparate healthcare data to advance human health. By designing your RWE platform to be flexible, you can readily incorporate new big data technologies as they become relevant to your needs. This enables you to innovate and discover at a quicker rate.

To read more about real world evidence on AWS, and how AWS Partner Network (APN) Premier Consulting Partner Deloitte has architected their ConvergeHEALTH platform on AWS, check out this guest post on the APN Blog!

Please leave any questions and comments below.

Additional Reading

The healthcare ecosystem has chosen a variety of tools and techniques for working with big data, but one tool that comes up again and again in many of the architectures we design and review is Spark on Amazon EMR. Will spark power the data behind precision medicine?

About the Authors

Dr. Aaron Friedman is a Healthcare and Life Sciences Partner Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services. He works with ISVs and SIs to architect healthcare solutions on AWS, and bring the best possible experience to their customers. His passion is working at the intersection of science, big data, and software. In his spare time, he’s exploring the outdoors, learning a new thing to cook, or spending time with his wife and his dog, Macaroon.

Growing up alongside tech

2017-08-09 Eevee

Post Syndicated from Eevee original https://eev.ee/blog/2017/08/09/growing-up-alongside-tech/

IndustrialRobot asks… or, uh, asked last month:

industrialrobot: How has your views on tech changed as you’ve got older?

This is so open-ended that it’s actually stumped me for a solid month. I’ve had a surprisingly hard time figuring out where to even start.

It’s not that my views of tech have changed too much — it’s that they’ve changed very gradually. Teasing out and explaining any one particular change is tricky when it happened invisibly over the course of 10+ years.

I think a better framework for this is to consider how my relationship to tech has changed. It’s gone through three pretty distinct phases, each of which has strongly colored how I feel and talk about technology.

Act I

In which I start from nothing.

Nothing is an interesting starting point. You only really get to start there once.

Learning something on my own as a kid was something of a magical experience, in a way that I don’t think I could replicate as an adult. I liked computers; I liked toying with computers; so I did that.

I don’t know how universal this is, but when I was a kid, I couldn’t even conceive of how incredible things were made. Buildings? Cars? Paintings? Operating systems? Where does any of that come from? Obviously someone made them, but it’s not the sort of philosophical point I lingered on when I was 10, so in the back of my head they basically just appeared fully-formed from the æther.

That meant that when I started trying out programming, I had no aspirations. I couldn’t imagine how far I would go, because all the examples of how far I would go were completely disconnected from any idea of human achievement. I started out with BASIC on a toy computer; how could I possibly envision a connection between that and something like a mainstream video game? Every new thing felt like a new form of magic, so I couldn’t conceive that I was even in the same ballpark as whatever process produced real software. (Even seeing the source code for GORILLAS.BAS, it didn’t quite click. I didn’t think to try reading any of it until years after I’d first encountered the game.)

This isn’t to say I didn’t have goals. I invented goals constantly, as I’ve always done; as soon as I learned about a new thing, I’d imagine some ways to use it, then try to build them. I produced a lot of little weird goofy toys, some of which entertained my tiny friend group for a couple days, some of which never saw the light of day. But none of it felt like steps along the way to some mountain peak of mastery, because I didn’t realize the mountain peak was even a place that could be gone to. It was pure, unadulterated (!) playing.

I contrast this to my art career, which started only a couple years ago. I was already in my late 20s, so I’d already spend decades seeing a very broad spectrum of art: everything from quick sketches up to painted masterpieces. And I’d seen the people who create that art, sometimes seen them create it in real-time. I’m even in a relationship with one of them! And of course I’d already had the experience of advancing through tech stuff and discovering first-hand that even the most amazing software is still just code someone wrote.

So from the very beginning, from the moment I touched pencil to paper, I knew the possibilities. I knew that the goddamn Sistine Chapel was something I could learn to do, if I were willing to put enough time in — and I knew that I’m not, so I’d have to settle somewhere a ways before that. I knew that I’d have to put an awful lot of work in before I’d be producing anything very impressive.

I did it anyway (though perhaps waited longer than necessary to start), but those aren’t things I can un-know, and so I can never truly explore art from a place of pure ignorance. On the other hand, I’ve probably learned to draw much more quickly and efficiently than if I’d done it as a kid, precisely because I know those things. Now I can decide I want to do something far beyond my current abilities, then go figure out how to do it. When I was just playing, that kind of ambition was impossible.

So, I played.

How did this affect my views on tech? Well, I didn’t… have any. Learning by playing tends to teach you things in an outward sprawl without many abrupt jumps to new areas, so you don’t tend to run up against conflicting information. The whole point of opinions is that they’re your own resolution to a conflict; without conflict, I can’t meaningfully say I had any opinions. I just accepted whatever I encountered at face value, because I didn’t even know enough to suspect there could be alternatives yet.

Act II

That started to seriously change around, I suppose, the end of high school and beginning of college. I was becoming aware of this whole “open source” concept. I took classes that used languages I wouldn’t otherwise have given a second thought. (One of them was Python!) I started to contribute to other people’s projects. Eventually I even got a job, where I had to work with other people. It probably also helped that I’d had to maintain my own old code a few times.

Now I was faced with conflicting subjective ideas, and I had to form opinions about them! And so I did. With gusto. Over time, I developed an idea of what was Right based on experience I’d accrued. And then I set out to always do things Right.

That’s served me decently well with some individual problems, but it also led me to inflict a lot of unnecessary pain on myself. Several endeavors languished for no other reason than my dissatisfaction with the architecture, long before the basic functionality was done. I started a number of “pure” projects around this time, generic tools like imaging libraries that I had no direct need for. I built them for the sake of them, I guess because I felt like I was improving some niche… but of course I never finished any. It was always in areas I didn’t know that well in the first place, which is a fine way to learn if you have a specific concrete goal in mind — but it turns out that building a generic library for editing images means you have to know everything about images. Perhaps that ambition went a little haywire.

I’ve said before that this sort of (self-inflicted!) work was unfulfilling, in part because the best outcome would be that a few distant programmers’ lives are slightly easier. I do still think that, but I think there’s a deeper point here too.

In forgetting how to play, I’d stopped putting any of myself in most of the work I was doing. Yes, building an imaging library is kind of a slog that someone has to do, but… I assume the people who work on software like PIL and ImageMagick are actually interested in it. The few domains I tried to enter and revolutionize weren’t passions of mine; I just happened to walk through the neighborhood one day and decided I could obviously do it better.

Not coincidentally, this was the same era of my life that led me to write stuff like that PHP post, which you may notice I am conspicuously not even linking to. I don’t think I would write anything like it nowadays. I could see myself approaching the same subject, but purely from the point of view of language design, with more contrasts and tradeoffs and less going for volume. I certainly wouldn’t lead off with inflammatory puffery like “PHP is a community of amateurs”.

Act III

I think I’ve mellowed out a good bit in the last few years.

It turns out that being Right is much less important than being Not Wrong — i.e., rather than trying to make something perfect that can be adapted to any future case, just avoid as many pitfalls as possible. Code that does something useful has much more practical value than unfinished code with some pristine architecture.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in game development, where all code is doomed to be crap and the best you can hope for is to stem the tide. But there’s also a fixed goal that’s completely unrelated to how the code looks: does the game work, and is it fun to play? Yes? Ship the damn thing and forget about it.

Games are also nice because it’s very easy to pour my own feelings into them and evoke feelings in the people who play them. They’re mine, something with my fingerprints on them — even the games I’ve built with glip have plenty of my own hallmarks, little touches I added on a whim or attention to specific details that I care about.

Maybe a better example is the Doom map parser I started writing. It sounds like a “pure” problem again, except that I actually know an awful lot about the subject already! I also cleverly (accidentally) released some useful results of the work I’ve done thusfar — like statistics about Doom II maps and a few screenshots of flipped stock maps — even though I don’t think the parser itself is far enough along to release yet. The tool has served a purpose, one with my fingerprints on it, even without being released publicly. That keeps it fresh in my mind as something interesting I’d like to keep working on, eventually. (When I run into an architecture question, I step back for a while, or I do other work in the hopes that the solution will reveal itself.)

I also made two simple Pokémon ROM hacks this year, despite knowing nothing about Game Boy internals or assembly when I started. I just decided I wanted to do an open-ended thing beyond my reach, and I went to do it, not worrying about cleanliness and willing to accept a bumpy ride to get there. I played, but in a more experienced way, invoking the stuff I know (and the people I’ve met!) to help me get a running start in completely unfamiliar territory.

This feels like a really fine distinction that I’m not sure I’m doing justice. I don’t know if I could’ve appreciated it three or four years ago. But I missed making toys, and I’m glad I’m doing it again.

In short, I forgot how to have fun with programming for a little while, and I’ve finally started to figure it out again. And that’s far more important than whether you use PHP or not.

More on the Vulnerabilities Equities Process

2017-08-09 Bruce Schneier

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/08/more_on_the_vul_1.html

Richard Ledgett — a former Deputy Director of the NSA — argues against the US government disclosing all vulnerabilities:

Proponents argue that this would allow patches to be developed, which in turn would help ensure that networks are secure. On its face, this argument might seem to make sense — but it is a gross oversimplification of the problem, one that not only would not have the desired effect but that also would be dangerous.

Actually, he doesn’t make that argument at all. He basically says that security is a lot more complicated than finding and disclosing vulnerabilities — something I don’t think anyone disagrees with. His conclusion:

Malicious software like WannaCry and Petya is a scourge in our digital lives, and we need to take concerted action to protect ourselves. That action must be grounded in an accurate understanding of how the vulnerability ecosystem works. Software vendors need to continue working to build better software and to provide patching support for software deployed in critical infrastructure. Customers need to budget and plan for upgrades as part of the going-in cost of IT, or for compensatory measures when upgrades are impossible. Those who discover vulnerabilities need to responsibly disclose them or, if they are retained for national security purposes, adequately safeguard them. And the partnership of intelligence, law enforcement and industry needs to work together to identify and disrupt actors who use these vulnerabilities for their criminal and destructive ends. No single set of actions will solve the problem; we must work together to protect ourselves. As for blame, we should place it where it really lies: on the criminals who intentionally and maliciously assembled this destructive ransomware and released it on the world.

I don’t think anyone would argue with any of that, either. The question is whether the US government should prioritize attack over defense, and security over surveillance. Disclosing, especially in a world where the secrecy of zero-day vulnerabilities is so fragile, greatly improves the security of our critical systems.

Disney Ditching Netflix Keeps Piracy Relevant

2017-08-09 Ernesto

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/disney-ditching-netflix-keeps-piracy-relevant-170809/

There is little doubt that, in the United States, Netflix has become the standard for watching movies on the Internet.

The subscription service is responsible for a third of all Internet traffic during peak hours, dwarfing that of online piracy and other legal video platforms.

It’s safe to assume that Netflix-type streaming services are among the best and most convenient alternative to piracy at this point. There is a problem though. The whole appeal of the streaming model becomes diluted when there are too many ‘Netflixes.’

Yesterday, Disney announced that it will end its partnership with Netflix in 2019. The company is working on its own Disney-branded movie streaming platforms, where titles such as Frozen 2 and Toy Story 4 will end up in the future.

Disney titles are among the most-watched content on Netflix, and the company’s stock took a hit when the news came out. In a statement late yesterday, Disney CEO Bob noted that the company has a good relationship with Netflix but the companies will part ways at the end of next year.

At the moment no decision has been made on what happens to Lucasfilm and Marvel films, but these could find a new home as well. Marvel TV shows such as Jessica Jones and Luke Cage will reportedly stay at Netflix

Although Disney’s decision may be good for Disney, a lot of Netflix users are not going to be happy. It likely means that they need another streaming platform subscription to get what they want, which isn’t a very positive prospect.

In piracy discussions, Hollywood insiders often stress that people have no reason to pirate, as pretty much all titles are available online legally. What they don’t mention, however, is that users need access to a few dozen paid services, to access them all.

In a way, this fragmentation is keeping the pirate ecosystems intact. While legal streaming services work just fine, having dozens of subscriptions is expensive, and not very practical. Especially not compared to pirate streaming sites, where everything can be accessed on the same site.

The music business has a better model, or had initially. Services such as Spotify allowed fans to access most popular music in one place, although that’s starting to crumble as well, due to exclusive deals and more fragmentation.

Admittedly, for a no-name observer, it’s easy to criticize and point fingers. The TV and movie business is built on complicated licensing deals, where a single Netflix may not be able to generate enough revenue for an entire industry.

But there has to be a better way than simply adding more streaming platforms, one would think?

Instead of solely trying to stamp down on pirate sites, it might be a good idea to take a careful look at the supply side as well. At the moment, fragmentation is keeping pirate sites relevant.

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

Pirate Domain Blocking ‘Door’ Should Remain Open, RIAA Tells Court

2017-08-08 Ernesto

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-domain-blocking-door-should-remain-open-riaa-tells-court-170808/

As one of the leading CDN and DDoS protection services, Cloudflare is used by millions of websites across the globe.

This includes thousands of “pirate” sites which rely on the U.S.-based company to keep server loads down.

While Cloudflare is a neutral service provider, rightsholders are not happy with its role. The company has been involved in several legal disputes already, including the RIAA’s lawsuit against MP3Skull.

Last year the record labels won their case against the MP3 download portal but the site ignored the court order and continued to operate. This prompted the RIAA to go after third-party services including Cloudflare, to target associated domain names.

The RIAA demanded domain blockades, arguing that Cloudflare actively cooperated with the pirates. The CDN provider objected and argued that the DMCA shielded the company from the broad blocking requirements. In turn, the court ruled that the DMCA doesn’t apply in this case, opening the door to widespread anti-piracy filtering.

While it’s still to be determined whether Cloudflare is indeed “in active concert or participation” with MP3Skull, the company recently asked the court to vacate the order, arguing that the case is moot.

MP3Skull no longer has an active website, and previous domain names either never used Cloudflare or stopped using it long before the order was issued, the company argued.

The RIAA clearly disagrees. According to the music industry group, Cloudflare’s request relies on “misstatements.” The motion wasn’t moot when the court issued it in March, and it isn’t moot today, they argue.

Some MP3Skull domains were still actively using Cloudflare as recently as April, but Cloudflare failed to mention these.

“CloudFlare’s arguments to the contrary rely largely on misdirection, pointing to the status of domain names that expressly were not at issue in Plaintiffs’ motion,” the RIAA writes.

Even if all the domain names are no longer active on Cloudflare, the order should remain in place, the RIAA argues. The group points out that nothing is preventing the MP3Skull owners from relaunching the site and moving back to Cloudflare in the future.

“By its own admission, CloudFlare took no steps to prevent Defendants from using its services at any time. Given Defendants’ established practice of moving from domain to domain and from service to service throughout this case in contempt of this Court’s orders, Defendants could easily have resumed — and may tomorrow resume — their use of CloudFlare’s services.”

In addition, the RIAA stressed that the present ruling doesn’t harm Cloudflare at all. Since there are no active MP3Skull domains using the service presently, it need take no action.

“The March 23 Order does not require CloudFlare to do anything. All that Order did was to clarify that Rule 65, and not Section 512(j) of the DMCA, applied,” the RIAA stresses.

While it seems pointless to spend hours of legal counsel on a site that is no longer active, it shows the importance of the court’s ruling and the wider site blocking implications it has.

The RIAA wants to keep the door open for similar requests in the future, and Cloudflare wants to avoid any liability for pirate sites. These looming legal consequences are the main reason why the CDN provider asked the court to vacate the order, the RIAA notes.

“It is evident that the only reason why CloudFlare wants the Court to vacate its March 23 Order is that it does not like the Court’s ruling on the purely legal issue of Rule 65(d)’s scope,” the RIAA writes.

It is now up to the court to decide how to move forward. A decision on Cloudflare’s request is expected to be issued during the weeks to come.

—

The RIAA’s full reply is available here (pdf).

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

Foxtel Targets 128 Torrent & Streaming Domains For Blocking Down Under

2017-08-08 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/foxtel-targets-128-torrent-streaming-domains-for-blocking-down-under-170808/

In 2015, Australia passed controversial legislation which allows ‘pirate’ sites located on servers overseas to be blocked at the ISP level.

“These offshore sites are not operated by noble spirits fighting for the freedom of the internet, they are run by criminals who profit from stealing other people’s creative endeavors,” commented then Foxtel chief executive Richard Freudenstein.

Before, during and after its introduction, Foxtel has positioned itself as a keen supporter of the resulting Section 115a of the Copyright Act. And in December 2016, with the law firmly in place, it celebrated success after obtaining a blocking injunction against The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound and isoHunt.

In May, Foxtel filed a new application, demanding that almost 50 local ISPs block what was believed to be a significant number of ‘pirate’ sites not covered by last year’s order.

Today the broadcasting giant was back in Federal Court, Sydney, to have this second application heard under Section 115a. It was revealed that the application contains 128 domains, each linked to movie and TV piracy.

According to ComputerWorld, the key sites targeted are as follows: YesMovies, Vumoo, LosMovies, CartoonHD, Putlocker, Watch Series 1, Watch Series 2, Project Free TV 1, Project Free TV 2, Watch Episodes, Watch Episode Series, Watch TV Series, The Dare Telly, Putlocker9.is, Putlocker9.to, Torlock and 1337x.

The Foxtel application targets both torrent and streaming sites but given the sample above, it seems that the latter is currently receiving the most attention. Streaming sites are appearing at a rapid rate and can even be automated to some extent, so this battle could become extremely drawn out.

Indeed, Justice Burley, who presided over the case this morning, described the website-blocking process (which necessarily includes targeting mirrors, proxies and replacement domains) as akin to “whack-a-mole”.

“Foxtel sees utility in orders of this nature,” counsel for Foxtel commented in response. “It’s important to block these sites.”

In presenting its application, Foxtel conducted live demonstrations of Yes Movies, Watch Series, 1337x, and Putlocker. It focused on the Australian prison drama series Wentworth, which has been running on Foxtel since 2013, but also featured tests of Game of Thrones.

Justice Burley told the court that since he’s a fan of the series, a spoiler-free piracy presentation would be appreciated. If the hearing had taken place a few days earlier, spoilers may have been possible. Last week, the latest episode of the show leaked onto the Internet from an Indian source before its official release.

Justice Burley’s decision will be handed down at a later date, but it’s unlikely there will be any serious problems with Foxtel’s application. After objecting to many aspects of blocking applications in the past, Australia’s ISPs no longer appear during these hearings. They are now paid AU$50 per domain blocked by companies such as Foxtel and play little more than a technical role in the process.

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

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