RSS Feeds
|
BR DE ES FR IT JP NL UK US
Babblebaby
|
Defamer
|
Gizmodo
|
Kotaku
|
Lifehacker
Australia loves censoring and filtering things on the internet, but its government hasn't had its fill yet. Next up: blocking BitTorrent in the entire country.
Condensed explanation: Digital rights management is a corporate pain in the arse that stops you from doing whatever you want with music and movies in the name of fighting piracy. But there's more to it.
Whether you're a piratin' granny, single mom or a full-on haxxor, you no longer have to dread waking up to an RIAA summons. They still might rat you out to your ISP, though.
In their latest attempt to block homebrew on the Wii, Nintendo has begun using a new revision of the Wii's optical drive--one that prevents any existing mod chip from functioning.
Posted by Nick Broughall at 2:00 PM on November 27, 2008
Arrr. There be gadgety plunder in this here story. According to legend, a company from the United Kingdom be using MP3 players to deter pirates from stealing their ships and making their cap'n walk the plank. Gone be the days of a grand old sword fight between seamen and pirates, it seems. Instead, the seamen be usin' something by the name of LRAD, which be standin' for "Long Range Acoustic Device", which blasts out warnin' messages at the Jolly Roger. And while it won't be sendin' you down to see Davey Jones, it will be causin' ya a great deal of pain if ya be gettin' to within a couple of hundred metres of the seaman's ship. Arrr. If ya be gettin' any closer than that, you be losin' your hearin' for good. An' no self-respectin' pirate be wantin' that, now, do they?
If ya be doubtin' the power of the humble MP3 player, know dis: the LRAD anti-piracy device be used last week against some Somali pirates off the coast of Yemen. Got within' 600 metres or so, they did, before they pointed there guns in the air and attacked another ship. Now I know what ye be thinkin': How do I get me hands on one of them there LRAD devices. Well, you can be hirin' a team of ex-military goons to be usin it for you for 14,000 pounds for three days. But that be plenty of time to plunder plenty of ships, methinks. Arrr.
[Agence France-Presse via PopSci]
Posted by Nick Broughall at 1:00 PM on November 25, 2008
Despite the fact that the movie studios are being total dickwads and suing iiNet for aiding and abetting piracy, the ISP is actually being even more pro-active in its fight against piracy in Australia than all the movie studios put together. How? By offering incentives to download legal entertainment, like having iTunes and ABC iView content unmetered for their customers (meaning you don't actually have to pay for content twice).
If that's not enough, according to Gus over at Lifehacker, they're planning on taking it one step further by launching an IPTV service in the middle of next year. They announced the service at their AGM, and while details are still extremely scarce, I can't help but applaud the ISP for sticking to its guns and standing up to the evil movie corporations and their lawyer henchmen.
I know I ranted on it the other day, but until we start getting some decent legal offerings for downloading TV shows and movies that we can watch where we want and when we want, piracy is going to remain. So kudos to iiNet for understanding and fighting the good fight.
Posted by Nick Broughall at 10:15 AM on November 21, 2008
Hey kids! Wondering what to do with your life? Why not consider a career in copyright law? Sure, it means selling a part of your soul to Beelzebub, but you'll never be wanting for work, seeing as how movie studios refuse to wake up to the fact that litigation won't stop piracy.
The latest case of film companies knee-jerk attempts to stop copyright infringement is to sue Aussie ISP iiNet. According to Asher Moses over at SMH, all the big studios are in on the action - Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox and Disney are all in on the lawsuit, plus The Seven Network (because filesharing of Sunrise is running rampant).
The argument is that iiNet infringed copyright by not stopping its users from illegally downloading copyrighted content. They apparently provided iiNet with "about 18" separate notices of the infringement and iiNet did nothing.
While Nintendo may have sealed out DS piracy tools from use on the DSi, according to this humble YouTube clip, one Japanese hacker may have already wormed his way into the system, loading his own code despite security measures. (Unfortunately, he did not share his methods.) So while we could still be a long way from loading emulators and DS games at will, it's certainly not a bad sign when a new system gets cracked open within 3 days of its release. [GBAtemp]
France's Senate just passed a law proposed in mid-summer that would cut the families of illegal fileswappers off from broadband internet access for a year. This makes France the first country to pop anti-piracy legislation against users, and it's probably not going to be the last.
Posted by Nick Broughall at 1:00 PM on November 3, 2008
Windows 7 looks like it will kick the pants off Vista, even if the two do look fairly similar. And now ZDNet is reporting that anyone keen on checking out the Windows 7 pre-beta that was distributed to media last week can, thanks to the wonders of bittorrent.
We're not going to point you in the direction of a pre-beta build of software, but in all honesty if you were that keen on checking it ut, you'd know where to find it anyway. Both the 32-bit and the 64-bit builds are available apparently.
Personally, I'm more than happy to wait for the full release to hit shelves. After Vista, I'm not too keen to rush into a new Microsoft OS too quickly, no matter how good it sounds.
[ZDNet AU]
