Month: January 2016

Piracy comes in all shapes and sizes and even large multinationals can sometimes cross the line.

According to Font Brothers, American toy multinational Hasbro did so when it started to use the “Generation B” font for its My Little Pony products, without permission.

The Generation B font was created by Harold Lohner and is commercially exploited by Font Brothers.

One of the best known uses of the font is for the popular My Little Pony toys and videos. However, according to a complaint filed at a New York federal court Hasbro failed to obtain a proper license, so My Little Pony is using a pirated font.

“Defendant Hasbro has used or instructed others to use unauthorized copies of the Generation B Font in the creation of, but not limited to, all products, goods, merchandise, television and film properties, and advertising materials connected with the ‘My Little Pony’ product line..,” the complaint reads.

“Defendant Hasbro has created unauthorized and infringing copies of the Generation B Font Software and impermissibly distributed the same to third parties,” it adds (pdf).

Font Brothers claim that the font is being used across a wide variety of products and the company list various examples.

While small differences can sometimes be tricky to prove that an unauthorized font is used, in this case it is also used on Hasbro’s website. The stylesheet of the website specifically mentions the Generation B and a copy of the font stored and distributed through Hasbro’s servers.

My Little Pony website using the Generation B font

In the complaint Font Brothers write that they contacted Hasbro about the infringing use, but the toy maker refused to license the font for My Little Pony products and merchandise.

“Defendant has refused to comply with Plaintiff’s reasonable request for appropriate software licensing fees given the services already rendered by Plaintiff’s GENERATION B type font software, despite several demands for such action.”

As a result, Minnesota-based Font Brothers are claiming substantial damages and requesting a jury trial to resolve the matter.

“Font Brothers has lost, and will continue to lose, substantial revenue from Defendant’s wrongful use, copying, distribution, and creation of unauthorized infringing works based upon the GENERATION B font software.”

Considering the scope of the alleged infringements, which affect pretty much the entire My Little Pony line, the potential damages run into the millions. In addition, Font Brothers demand the destruction of all products and material which utilize the infringing font.

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

Source: TorrentFreak

Plastic shopping bags are remarkable feats of engineering, and consumers have taken them for granted this whole time.

The post Throwing This Out Here: Plastic Bags Are Amazing and You Should Appreciate Them More appeared first on WIRED.

Source: Wired.com Top Stories

As champions of less restrictive copyright law and advocates of greater online freedoms and privacy, the Pirate Party has stamped its mark on the online space in recent years.

As a niche political movement it has often taken a guerrilla approach to its activism, with strategies often designed to provoke a fierce response from perceived enemies.

In July 2011, the Czech division of the party did just that with a brave move designed to stir up sentiments against the Czech Anti-Piracy Union who had targeted a 16-year-old accused of posting links to infringing material on his website

Under the slogan “Linking is not a Crime” the Czech Pirate Party launched its own movie download site. Tipnafilm.cz had an attractive layout with links to content plus movie covers, embedded trailers, and links to reviews on sites such as iMDb. A second site, Piratskefilmy.cz, carried 20,000 links to more than 5,800 movies.

“We challenge the Anti-Piracy Union to stop bullying the under-aged and to aim its preposterous claims at the Pirate Party,” the pirates said.

Declaring “open war” on the anti-piracy outfit, the Czech pirates later launched TV focused site Sledujuserialy.cz (I Watch TV Series). With the previous two sites faded away, it is this site that has finally elicited the response the pirates had longed hoped for.

“A landmark political trial for Czech Internet is about to take place!” the party has just announced.

“On Thursday 21st January, the Czech pirate party was officially notified that it will be prosecuted in criminal court. The reason is their long-term political campaign “Linking is Not a Crime” in which the party ran a non-commerical website ‘sledujuserialy.cz’ highlighting an absurd interpretation of copyright monopoly law with regard to the Internet.”

Although it has taken more than four years to come to fruition, it appears the pirates’ plan progressed as predicted. Their taunting of the Czech Anti-Piracy Union resulted in the anti-piracy group filing a complaint with the police. The police are now prosecuting the Pirate Party over their TV piracy site.

Unusually for torrent site operators, the Pirate Party say they are glad they’re in trouble with the law.

“[The Pirate Party] welcomes the criminal case. Until now, the Czech Anti-Piracy Union has targeted only randomly chosen individuals with its bullying. The victims were in an unfair position as they faced expensive lawyers of lobby organisations which push the current repressive copyright monopoly regime. This time it’s different,” Czech Pirate Party chairman Lukáš Černohorský explains.

“Instead of teenagers, copyright industry lobbyists are now dealing with a political party which didn’t run the website for money but because of our conviction that linking is not and should not be a crime.”

The Party says it has been forced to take this action to fight the persecution of linking online, adding that sites including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube don’t face any action for doing the same, even though they operate their sites for-profit.

That being said, it’s unclear how Czech copyright law will draw a line between the party’s hand-curated TV show download site and user-generated content sites like YouTube, but finding out is clearly one of the party’s aims.

“Our goal is to change the copyright monopoly law so that people are not fined millions for sharing culture with their friends. However, until we achieve that, we will fight in courts over interpretation and enforcement of the law,” Černohorský concludes.

The Party says that in the coming days it will call on all organizations who care about the future of the Internet to join them in a massive demonstration against oppressive copyright regimes and recent proposals for increased online censorship and surveillance.

Pirate parties have a long history of supporting pirate sites, particularly The Pirate Bay.

At times the Swedish Pirate Party famously hosted parts of The Pirate Bay’s infrastructure which put them on a collision course with authorities there. Over in the UK, the local Pirate party was threatened with a lawsuit from the music industry after refusing to take down its Pirate Bay proxy service. It eventually complied in December 2012.

Most recently, last year the Norwegian Pirate Party announced its own DNS service to bypass ISP censorship of The Pirate Bay.

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

Source: TorrentFreak

This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

Spectre is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

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

Source: TorrentFreak

During the past couple of years there has been a steady wave of reports claiming that so-called ‘pirate’ sites are some of the worst offenders when it comes to hoisting junk, malware and viruses upon their users.

Usually commissioned or funded by entertainment industry groups, these reports often lead to a sense of déjà vu, with phrases such as “content theft” and “organized crime” painting an apocalyptic vision for anyone daring to use a torrent or streaming portal.

The stark warnings are somewhat ironic. As the movie, music and software industries continue their crusade to have mainstream advertisers boycott any site they have not authorized, file-sharing sites are increasingly forced into the advertising backwaters. This means that the chances of bad ads appearing in front of users is increasing.

Although it will never be said in public, anti-piracy groups are well aware of the importance of diminishing the user experience on pirate sites. If they’re difficult to access (web-blocking) and risky to use (dodgy ads), the free content on offer might not be so attractive. It’s cynical and also makes somewhat of a mockery of their efforts to ‘warn’ about the dangers of using pirate sites.

But as with all things in life the proof of the pudding is in the eating and there are millions of file-sharers gobbling up content, enjoying the experience, not falling ill, and returning to sites day after day. That in itself suggests that the catastrophic impact suggested in various reports isn’t playing out in the real world.

However, it would be irresponsible to suggest that these industry reports are all absolute nonsense. While admittedly completely self-serving, several have raised very good points about the dubious quality of advertising appearing on various ‘pirate’ portals.

It’s a bitter pill but it needs to be said. While there are thousands that don’t, there are large numbers of pirate sites that fall way below the standards those who pay their bills deserve. Why some site operators sink to these levels isn’t always clear, but aggressive redirects, misleading advertising, fake virus warnings and malware are always unacceptable.

For some reason streaming sites seem to be among the main offenders and in the worst case scenarios they bombard the user with an endless stream of dubious advertising techniques that can only be of major annoyance to their visitors.While acknowledging the return they get from these ads is minimal (hence their volume), from a business perspective it seems baffling to use customers as things to be beaten into submission.

Unless sites really don’t care whether a user comes back again tomorrow or not, it makes absolutely no sense to treat them and their machines with disrespect. Of course, some popups, ‘direct download’ buttons and affiliate sponsors are to be expected, but wouldn’t it be better to at least maintain some level of sanity?

Of course, one response to aggressive advertising is for users to become more aware of their ad blocking options. As a result they then join the growing ranks of users who not only use all the facilities of pirate sites without contributing a dime to their upkeep, but feel entirely justified in doing so. This raises another irony.

Some might question whether we should be surprised that people who obtain movies and music for free don’t want to contribute financially to pirate sites. But human nature is not that straightforward. There are droves of people who are not only happy to contribute to the health of a pirate site, but do so while supporting the likes of Netflix, Spotify and Steam.

In the end and when the entertainment industries finally sort themselves out, it will be a battle between those who treat their customers properly and those who have no idea. Release windowing expensive content over geo-blocked services is annoying, no doubt, but pirate sites laden with junk aren’t the solution.

Both sides need to treat their users with respect to maintain or increase market share. Let battle commence.

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

Source: TorrentFreak

Face it: That whole writing-it-down system isn’t really working for you.

The post You Need a Password Manager. Here Are Some Good Ones appeared first on WIRED.

Source: Wired.com Top Stories

Apps are going through some major shifts, which could be great news for consumers.

The post The Way You Buy and Use Apps Is About to Change Big Time appeared first on WIRED.

Source: Wired.com Top Stories

Fancasting allows people to imagine a world where anyone can play any role.

The post The Subversive and Cathartic Act of ‘Fancasting’ Movies appeared first on WIRED.

Source: Wired.com Top Stories

A blizzard of word salad threatened to engulf us this week; thankfully, feline lookalikes and Twitter stories provided a much-needed distraction.

The post While You Were Offline: Sarah Palin Delivers a Mildly Coherent Endorsement appeared first on WIRED.

Source: Wired.com Top Stories

But it may be a little too late for Jeb Bush.

The post The Dot-Vote Crusade to Defend Politicians From Cybersquatters appeared first on WIRED.

Source: Wired.com Top Stories