Copyright exemption lets you modify old games to keep them running

You no longer have to dread the day that a game developer shuts off its servers and renders your favorite title unplayable. As part of a series of DMCA copyright exemptions, the US Library of Congress has granted long-sought permission to disable authentication server requirements in games where a server’s shutdown will completely break the experience. Historians can even hack the consoles themselves, if necessary. This doesn’t allow you to tweak games where you’d only lose multiplayer modes, but it does mean that at least some aspects of a classic game will live on. Via: Electronic Frontier Foundation Source: Copyright.gov (PDF)

Read More:
Copyright exemption lets you modify old games to keep them running

17-Year-Old American Sentenced to Eleven Years In Prison For Tweets Supporting ISIS

An American teenager was sentenced to 11 years in prison today for providing material support to terrorism . But Ali Shukri Amin, just 17 years old, never committed violence in the name of radical Islamic terrorism. His crime was running a Twitter account that celebrated the terrorist group and taught others how to send money through Bitcoin. Read more…

More:
17-Year-Old American Sentenced to Eleven Years In Prison For Tweets Supporting ISIS

Voyager’s Golden Record For Aliens Now Available On SoundCloud

An anonymous reader writes: For years you’ve been able to listen to the sounds recorded on the golden records carried by the twin Voyager spacecraft online but NASA just made it a bit easier. The orginization just uploaded the recordings to SoundCloud. Now you can listen to a continuous stream of clips instead of clicking back and forth to hear the different tracks. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See the original article here:
Voyager’s Golden Record For Aliens Now Available On SoundCloud

Music Industry Argues Works Entering Public Domain Are Not In Public Interest

An anonymous reader writes: With news that Canada intends to extend the term of copyright for sound recordings and performers, the recording industry is now pushing the change by arguing that works entering the public domain is not in the public interest. It is hard to see how anyone can credibly claim that works are “lost” to the public domain and that the public interest in not served by increased public access, but if anyone would make the claim, it would be the recording industry. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continue Reading:
Music Industry Argues Works Entering Public Domain Are Not In Public Interest

ESA Rebukes EFF’s Request To Exempt Abandoned Games From Some DMCA Rules

eldavojohn writes It’s 2015 and the EFF is still submitting requests to alter or exempt certain applications of the draconian DMCA. One such request concerns abandoned games that utilized or required online servers for matchmaking or play (PDF warning) and the attempts taken to archive those games. A given examples is Madden ’09, which had its servers shut down a mere one and a half years after release. Another is Gamespy and the EA & Nintendo titles that were not migrated to other servers. I’m sure everyone can come up with a once cherished game that required online play that is now abandoned and lost to the ages. While the EFF is asking for exemptions for museums and archivists, the ESA appears to take the stance that it’s hacking and all hacking is bad. In prior comments (PDF warning), the ESA has called reverse engineering a proprietary game protocol “a classic wolf in sheep’s clothing” as if allowing this evil hacking will loose Sodom & Gomorrah upon the industry. Fellow gamers, these years now that feel like the golden age of online gaming will be the dark ages of games as historians of the future try to recreate what online play was like now for many titles. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See the original article here:
ESA Rebukes EFF’s Request To Exempt Abandoned Games From Some DMCA Rules

TrueCrypt Alternatives Step Up Post-Cryptanalysis

msm1267 writes: What’s next for TrueCrypt now that a two-phase audit of the code and its cryptography uncovered a few critical vulnerabilities, but no backdoors? Two alternative open source encryption projects forked TrueCrypt once its developers decided to abandon the project in early 2014, giving rise to VeraCrypt and CipherShed — and both are ready to accelerate growth, compatibility and functionality now that the TrueCrypt code has been given a relatively clean bill of health. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Taken from:
TrueCrypt Alternatives Step Up Post-Cryptanalysis

The Maker Of The Trollface Meme Is Counting His Money

You’re probably familiar with this image, the infamous “trollface” that’s circulated the Internet for years. Someone drew the original trollface, and it’s 24-year-old Carlos Ramirez. Read more…

See the original article here:
The Maker Of The Trollface Meme Is Counting His Money

Blu-Ray Players Hackable Via Malicious Discs

An anonymous reader writes: Some Blu-Ray disc interactive features use a Java variant for UIs and applications. Stephen Tomkinson just posted a blog discussing how specially created Blu-Ray discs can be used to hack various players using exploits related to their Java usage. He hacked one Linux-based, network-connected player to get root access through vulnerabilities introduced by the vendor. He did the same thing against Windows Blu-Ray player software. Tomkinson was then able to combine both, along with detection techniques, into a single disc. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read More:
Blu-Ray Players Hackable Via Malicious Discs

Chilling Effects DMCA Archive Censors Itself

An anonymous reader sends this report from TorrentFreak: The much-praised Chilling Effects DMCA archive has taken an unprecedented step by censoring its own website. Facing criticism from copyright holders, the organization decided to wipe its presence from all popular search engines. A telling example of how pressure from rightsholders causes a chilling effect on free speech. … “After much internal discussion the Chilling Effects project recently made the decision to remove the site’s notice pages from search engines, ” Berkman Center project coordinator Adam Holland informs TF. “Our recent relaunch of the site has brought it a lot more attention, and as a result, we’re currently thinking through ways to better balance making this information available for valuable study, research, and journalism, while still addressing the concerns of people whose information appears in the database.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See original article:
Chilling Effects DMCA Archive Censors Itself

Porn Companies Are Going After GitHub

rossgneumann writes Porn production companies are currently engaged in a scorched earth copyright infringement campaign against torrenting sites with URLs containing specific keywords and Github is getting caught in the crossfire. Several Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaints filed to Google by companies representing various porn companies in the last month alone have resulted in dozens of legitimate Github URLs being removed from the search engine’s results, TorrentFreak first reported.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Link:
Porn Companies Are Going After GitHub