A new report shows that the leak in California was nothing less than devastating. The post The Porter Ranch Methane Leak Was the Worst in US History appeared first on WIRED.
Month: February 2016
The Volcanoes of Nicaragua Sure Have Been Cranky This Year
Five volcanoes in Nicaragua have been restless so far in busy 2016 for the Central American nation. The post The Volcanoes of Nicaragua Sure Have Been Cranky This Year appeared first on WIRED.
This Bottle Crossed the Atlantic to Send an SOS for Wildlife
It took twenty-eight months for a bottle to travel from New York City to France, carrying a message about the environmental risks of plastic in the ocean. The post This Bottle Crossed the Atlantic to Send an SOS for Wildlife appeared first on WIRED.
Apple to FBI: You Can’t Force Us to Hack the San Bernardino iPhone
In its response to the court today, Apple said the 200-year-old All Writs Act doesn’t give court authority to compel it to assist government in hacking phone. The post Apple to FBI: You Can’t Force Us to Hack the San Bernardino iPhone appeared first on WIRED.
FBI’s Tor Hack Shows the Risk of Subpoenas to Security Researchers
Confirmation that the FBI subpoenaed information from Carnegie Mellon and used it in a criminal investigation should send a warning to white-hat hackers. The post FBI’s Tor Hack Shows the Risk of Subpoenas to Security Researchers appeared first on WIRED.
RIAA Wins $22 Million Piracy Lawsuit Against MP3Skull
Last year a coalition of record labels including Capitol Records, Sony Music, Warner Bros. Records and Universal Music Group filed a lawsuit against MP3Skull.
With millions of visitors per month the MP3 download site has been one of the prime sources of pirated music for a long time.
Despite facing a claim of millions of dollars in damages the owners of MP3Skull failed to respond in court. This prompted the RIAA to file for a default judgment, describing MP3Skull as a notorious pirate site that promotes copyright infringement on a commercial scale.
Listing 148 music tracks as evidence, the companies asked for the maximum $150,000 in statutory damages for each, bringing the total to more than $22 million. After careful deliberation this request has now been granted by U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke.
“Plaintiffs are awarded statutory damages from Defendants in the amount of $22,200,000, for which let execution issue,” Judge Cooke writes in her order (pdf).
In addition, the Judge has issued a permanent injunction preventing the site’s operators from engaging in copyright-infringing activity in the future.
On paper the case is another big win for the RIAA, who defeated a Grooveshark clone in a similar fashion last year. Whether it will do much to stop the infringements has yet to be seen though.
After the lawsuit was filed MP3Skull hopped from domain to domain and currently it’s still online, operating from mp3skull.yoga without any noticeable changes.
Mp3Skull is still active
To stop future abuse the RIAA was granted a permanent injunction which allows it to seize control of other MP3Skull domains, or compel the associated registry to sign them over.
“Defendants shall immediately transfer the MP3Skull Domains to Plaintiffs’ control,” the injunction reads, adding that the domain registry should step in if the operators fail to comply.
“…the top level domain registry for each of the MP3Skull Domains shall, within thirty days of receipt of notice of this Order, change the Registrar of Record for each MP3Skull Domain to a Registrar of Plaintiffs’ choosing,” it adds.
The permanent injunction lists various domain names but not the one with MP3Skull’s latest “yoga” TLD.
This is likely to trigger a cat and mouse game, with MP3Skull switching domains, hoping to evade the reach of the U.S. court order, until one of the parties decides to throw in the towel.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Source: TorrentFreak
Popcorn Time Fork Claims Official Relaunch After MPAA Shutdown
Last October the most popular Popcorn Time fork and the one most-closely linked to the original project shut down its website PopcornTime.io.
With rumors flying the worst case scenario eventually reared its head, with confirmation that the MPAA had filed a lawsuit against the project’s developers in Canada. The legal threats triggered a domino effect and several other contributors ceased working on the platform.
However, earlier this month people with outdated versions of the PopcornTime.io software began receiving updates declaring “Hail Hydra”, and with that the application started working once again.
Surprised at this sudden reanimation, TF asked around to find out who was behind it but no one wanted to claim responsibility. That’s understandable – no sane person wants the MPAA’s lawyers monitoring their every move. However, just over a week later and we now have the first official statement from the people behind the reincarnation.
Noting that an explanation is long overdue, the team (located at popcorntime.sh) are now attempting to clarify their mission and point out where they stand in what has recently become an extremely confused and messy ‘marketplace’.
“After the ‘MPAA incident’, we’re a little diminished, and we’ve chosen a new direction: we’re shifting from an active development of Popcorn Time to a more or less resilience-driven development,” the team announced.
Although at this point the team aren’t being more specific, in this case ‘resilience’ appears to be avoiding the fate of the people who became known to the MPAA last year. Some of those people were quite open about their work on Popcorn Time and few measures were taken to hide identities, which in hindsight was probably their undoing.
This time around things seem to be taking a different shape. Instead of working on what is probably an illegal application, it appears that the software’s former developers are now working on ‘Butter‘, a relatively new streaming project with neutral technology and no illegal content.
However, the work and development that goes into Butter will then be leveraged by a separate team to power the variant of Popcorn Time using the .SH ccTLD.
“Most of our old teammates have left the ship to focus on a new technology, they called it Butter, and we use their platform as a base to make Popcorn Time,” the team says.
“The bonus is that we, as well as other existing and future projects, will indirectly profit from all the changes brought in Butter.”
So what we appear to have here is a line being drawn in the sand. On one side is Butter, a project that developers can work on (possibly) without fear of being tarnished with the stigma of Popcorn Time. On the other, people working on a Butter-based Popcorn Time who hope that they don’t suffer the same fate as their predecessors did last year.
The team behind the new variant has also addressed the question of monetization of the Popcorn Time platform. The founding ethos, which was only adhered to 100% by the original, original project, was to make no money. Generating money is seen as an Achilles’ heel by some and the PopcornTime.sh team say they will return to a zero revenue setup.
“We’d like to add that we do not accept any donation and have no interest in monetizing Popcorn Time by any way: our philosophy hasn’t changed,” they note.
But far beyond the dangers of monetization and the wounds inflicted on Popcorn Time by the MPAA, the ‘brand’ has been tarnished in recent months by a crowded marketplace filled with Popcorn Time clones, copies and wannabees. The new team also addresses these problems.
“The last four months have been chaotic. We’ve seem some forks keeping up the good work and others who just wanted to attract users into a trap of adwares & malwares. We would like to take a moment to thank the Reddit Community for taking things over while we were in standby.”
So what is the current state of play? Well the problem from potential users’ perspectives is that no one is really able to say absolutely definitively which forks are totally trustworthy and which ones aren’t, since everyone is keen to hide their identities and remain unaccountable.
As a result it’s no longer possible to publicly point to a set of trustworthy developers and use their credentials to give credibility to a project. Not to say that some haven’t tried, however.
A diagram that has been circulating on Reddit attempts to put the current mess into an easy to understand format but claims that the Time4Popcorn fork (which incidentally has offered the most consistent service throughout) is somehow untrustworthy have never been backed up by solid proof.
Also, since no one is prepared to confirm who is behind the .SH version, users simply have to take their word for it that they are somehow linked with and/or trusted by the .IO team that was taken down last year. That assumption does generally exist but since there is no consistency and no public face it’s almost impossible for anyone to give it an official stamp of approval.
Perhaps the most important point is no matter who one speaks to about any variant of Popcorn Time, there is nearly always an element of bias. Some point to open source being the yardstick, others suggest that making no money is they key. Most users simply don’t care as long as free movies appear. In future the proof of the pudding will probably have to be in the eating.
In any event, at least for now there appears to be three main editions of Popcorn Time (loosely PopcornTime.sh, Popcorn-Time.se and PopcornTime.ml), each with their own lines of development but only the former based on Butter. Whether it’s wise for them all to carry the same name is a matter for them but in any event confusion is likely to persist, as is the ever-looming threat from Hollywood.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Source: TorrentFreak
Photos: The Californians Who Braved the Huge Porter Ranch Gas Leak
Photographer Jessica Pons was on the ground at Porter Ranch during the SoCal gas leak, documenting the people and places effected by the disaster. The post Photos: The Californians Who Braved the Huge Porter Ranch Gas Leak appeared first on WIRED.
Instagram’s Cracking Down on Weed, But These Apps Love Pot
Instagram and Facebook may not be 420 friendly, but these other guys sure are. The post Instagram’s Cracking Down on Weed, But These Apps Love Pot appeared first on WIRED.
Culture Podcast: We’re Still Shaken Up About The Witch
From Robert Eggers’ new indie horror movie to Netflix’s new show about love in Los Angeles, we’ve got a lot to talk about on this week’s culture podcast. The post Culture Podcast: We’re Still Shaken Up About The Witch appeared first on WIRED.