4AM is a prolific computer historian whose practice involves cracking the copy protection on neglected Apple ][+ floppy disks, producing not just games, but voluminous logs that reveal the secret history of the cat-and-mouse between crackers and publishers. (more…)
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Breaking the DRM on the 1982 Apple ][+ port of Burger Time
The Matchstick , a Firefox-OS-based Chromecast-style device, kickstarted on the promise of bringing open, user-rights-respecting video to our homes — then they decided to add DRM. Read the rest
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Open "Chromecast killer" committed suicide-by-DRM
A zero-day exploit for Jeep Cherokees allows hackers to control everything from the engine to the air-conditioning over the Internet, overriding the driver at the dashboard. Read the rest
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Hackers can pwn a Jeep Cherokee from the brakes and steering to the AC and radio
Ben writes, “Overdrive, which is one of the main suppliers of downloadable audiobooks to public libraries, announced that it is retiring its DRM-encrusted .WMA formats and pushing everything to DRM-free .mp3s .” This is a big deal. Audiobooks are the last holdouts for DRM in audio, and one company, Audible, controls the vast majority of the market and insists upon DRM in all of its catalog (even when authors and publishers object). Itunes, Audible’s major sales channel, also insists on DRM in audiobooks (even where Audible can be convinced to drop it). Audiobooks can cost a lot of money, and are very cumbersome to convert to free/open formats without using illegal circumvention tools. To stay on the right side of the law, you have to burn your audiobooks to many discs (sometimes dozens), then re-rip them, enduring breaks that come mid-word; or you have to play the audio out of your computer’s analog audio outputs and redigitize them, which can take days (literally) and results in sound-quality loss. Overdrive going DRM-free for libraries is a massive shift in this market, and marks a turning point in the relationship between the publishers/creators and the technology companies that act as conduits and retail channels for their work. It’s especially great that libraries are getting a break, as they have been royally screwed on electronic books and audiobooks up until now. This is in response to user preferences, widespread compatibility of MP3 across all listening devices and the fact that the vast majority of our extensive audiobook collection is already in MP3 format. This includes the audiobook collections from Hachette, Penguin Group, Random House (Books on Tape and Listening Library), HarperCollins, AudioGo, Blackstone, Tantor Media and dozens of others. Our publisher relations team is working closely with the very few remaining publishers who require WMA to seek permission to sell their titles in MP3 for library and school lending. We will soon be communicating the discontinuance of WMA sales, and then at a future date, we will announce when MP3 files will be the only supported format through OverDrive platforms. For libraries and schools that currently have WMA audiobook files in their collection, we will be working with the publishers of those titles to gain permissions to update your inventory to MP3. In the event that some titles are unavailable, an alternate solution will be offered to make up for the lost titles. Be on the lookout for announcements on our blog and from your Collection Development Specialist for a timeline of this process. OverDrive announces plan for audiobooks to be solely available in MP3 format [Heather Tunstall/Overdrive] ( Thanks, Ben! ) ( Image: DRM PNG 900 2 , a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from listentomyvoice’s photostream )
2013 was a banner year for the Pirate Bay, despite having been forced to change domain names half-a-dozen times. The site saw a 50% increase in uploads in 2013 , to 2.8 million links, presently being swarmed by nearly 19 million users. The Pirate Bay is reportedly developing a peer-to-peer browser that will be much harder to block using existing censorship techniques. Pirate Bay Uploads Surge 50% in a Year, Despite Anti-Piracy Efforts [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]
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Pirate Bay uploads up by 50% in 2013
Patrick writes, “After more than 125 years and countless crappy incarnations on film, A federal judge has issued a declarative judgment stating that Holmes, Watson, 221B Baker Street, the dastardly Professor Moriarty and other elements included in the 50 Holmes works Arthur Conan Doyle published before Jan. 1, 1923, are no longer covered by United States copyright law and can be freely used by creators without paying any licensing fee to the Conan Doyle estate.” The estate are notorious bullies, and have relied upon bizarre legal theories to extract funds from people who use the Sherlock canon characters in new works, even though those characters come from stories that are largely in the public domain. “They’ve heard about the way the estate is going around bullying people,” said Darlene Cypser, a lawyer in Denver and the author of a self-published trilogy about the young Holmes, for which the estate initially demanded a licensing fee. (She declined to pay, she said.) “This has been coming for some time. I’m glad Les decided to take it up.” Several other authors and publishers of Holmes-based work reported receiving somewhat friendlier versions of a threatening letter cited in Mr. Klinger’s complaint. In the letter Mr. Lellenberg suggested that the estate regularly worked with “Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and similar retailers” to “weed out unlicensed uses of Sherlock Holmes,” and would not hesitate to do so with Mr. Klinger’s volume as well. Mr. Klinger did pay a fee for a similar collection in 2011 at the insistence of his earlier publisher, but this time said he is calling the estate’s bluff. “It’s the ultimate case of the emperor having no clothes,” said Jonathan Kirsch, a publishing lawyer who represents him. “Everyone is making the decision to pay for permission they don’t need to avoid the costs and risks of litigation.” Suit Says Sherlock Belongs to the Ages [Jennifer Schuessler/NYT] ( Thanks, Patrick ! ) ( Image: A Study in Scarlet (Beeton’s Christmas Annual) , a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from 43021516@N06’s photostream )
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Sherlock and co are finally in the public domain
Creative Commons has released version 4.0 of its sharing-friendly, easy-to-use copyright licenses . The new licenses represent a significant improvement over earlier versions. They work in over 60 jurisdictions out of the box, without having to choose different versions depending on which country you’re in; they’re more clearly worded; they eliminate confusion over jurisdiction-specific rights like the European database right and moral rights. They clarify how license users are meant to attribute the works they use; provide for anonymity in license use; and give license users a 30 day window to correct violations, making enforcement simpler. Amazingly, they’re also shorter than the previous licenses, and easier to read, to boot. 30-day window to correct license violations All CC licenses terminate when a licensee breaks their terms, but under 4.0, a licensee’s rights are reinstated automatically if she corrects a breach within 30 days of discovering it. The cure period in version 4.0 resembles similar provisions in a some other public licenses and better reflects how licensors and licensees resolve compliance issues in practice. It also assures users that provided they act promptly, they can continue using the CC-licensed work without worry that they may have lost their rights permanently. Increased readability The 4.0 license suite is decidedly easier to read and understand than prior versions, not to mention much shorter and better organized. The simplified license structure and use of plain language whenever possible increases the likelihood that licensors and reusers will understand their rights and obligations. This improves enforceability of the licenses and reduces confusion and disagreement about how the licenses operate. Clarity about adaptations The BY and BY-NC 4.0 licenses are clearer about how adaptations are to be licensed, a source of confusion for some under the earlier versions of those licenses. These licenses now clarify that you can apply any license to your contributions you want so long as your license doesn’t prevent users of the remix from complying with the original license. While this is how 3.0 and earlier versions are understood, the 4.0 licenses make it abundantly clear and will help remixers in understanding their licensing obligations. What’s New in 4.0
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New CC licenses: tighter, shorter, more readable, more global
Full Screen Mario is Josh Goldberg ‘s complete remake of the classic Super Mario Brothers in HTML5. You can play re-creations of the original levels, make your own in an HTML5-based level editor, or play any of an infinite number of randomly generated levels.
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Super Mario fully implemented in HTML5
Yesterday, I wrote about an expert witness’s report on Prenda Law ( previously ), the notorious porno copyright trolls (they send you letters accusing you of downloading porn and demand money on pain of being sued and forever having your name linked with embarrassing pornography). The witness said that he believed that Prenda — and its principle, John Steele — had been responsible for seeding and sharing the files they accused others of pirating. After hearing about this, the administrators for The Pirate Bay dug through their logs and published a damning selection of log entries showing that many of the files that Steele and his firm accused others of pirating were uploaded by Steele himself, or someone with access to his home PC. The Pirate Bay logs not only link Prenda to the sharing of their own files on BitTorrent, but also tie them directly to the Sharkmp4 user and the uploads of the actual torrent files. The IP-address 75.72.88.156 was previously used by someone with access to John Steele’s GoDaddy account and was also used by Sharkmp4 to upload various torrents. Several of the other IP-addresses in the log resolve to the Mullvad VPN and are associated with Prenda-related comments on the previously mentioned anti-copyright troll blogs. The logs provided by The Pirate Bay can be seen as the missing link in the evidence chain, undoubtedly linking Sharkmp4 to Prenda and John Steele. Needless to say, considering the stack of evidence above it’s not outrageous to conclude that the honeypot theory is viable. While this is certainly not the first time that a copyright troll has been accused of operating a honeypot, the evidence compiled against Prenda and Steel is some of the most damning we’ve seen thus far. The Pirate Bay Helps to Expose Copyright Troll Honeypot [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]
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Pirate Bay outs porno copyright trolls: they’re the ones pirating their own files
In the UK, the movie industry’s lobby group gets to requisition huge numbers of police officers to raid peoples’ houses, solely on their say-so. Here’s the story of one man who was raided by ten cops, who arrived in five cars, along with representatives from FACT (the horribly named Federation Against Copyright Theft). The FACT agents directed the arrest of a 24-year-old man, along with the seizure of all his computers and storage media, on the basis of an “emergency” search-warrant. The FACT agents conducted the bulk of his questioning at the police station, with the cops acting as stenographers. When the man was bailed, the bail sheet specified that he had been arrested for a “miscellaneous offense.” He has been banned from entering any cinemas in England or Wales as a condition of bail. As TorrentFreak notes, FACT offers cash bounties to cinema workers who disrupt people thought to be “cammers” who are recording movies in cinemas. They paid more than a dozen such bounties last year, but did not have a single successful prosecution. “This morning I was arrested at my home under suspicion of recording and distributing Fast and Furious 6 and a few other titles,” the arrested man told TorrentFreak. Mp> After seizing numerous items including three servers, a desktop computer, blank hard drives and blank media, police detained the 24-year-old and transported him to a nearby police station. Despite the ‘emergency’ nature of the raid, no movie recording equipment was found. “At the police station I was interviewed by the police together with FACT (Federation Against Copyright and Theft). During questioning they asked me about Fast and Furious 6, where I obtained a copy from and if I was the one who went and recorded it at the cinema.” Despite police involvement, as in previous cases it appears they were only present in order to gain access to the victim’s property, sit on the sidelines taking notes, and for their powers when it comes to presenting crimes for prosecution. “I was detained for 3 hrs 12 minutes, out of that I was questioned for approximately 40 minutes. One police officer and two FACT officers conducted the interview. The police officer sat back and let FACT do all the questioning, so FACT were running the show,” the man reports. Five Undercover Police Cars Sent To Arrest Single Alleged Movie Pirate [Andy/TorentFreak]
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UK film industry requisitions cops for massive raid on suspected pirate, get to question him at police station