The LibreELEC 9.0 Alpha cycle has started! and releases for Generic (x86_64) and Raspberry Pi hardware have been published. At this stage there are still some important technical decisions to make and work to complete before we start Alpha releases for Amlogic, Rockchip and Slice hardware (August is also holiday season). There are no plans to release LibreELEC 9.0 images for NXP/iMX6 hardware as support was removed from Kodi some months ago. Support will be reinstated in a future LibreELEC release and we will update you on progress with the next-generation Kodi video pipeline (which makes that possible) soon.
Alpha releases are important to the team because we cannot test every scenario and sometimes sidestep issues without realising. The project needs a body of regular testers to go find the problems we miss. Testing will be particularly important for LibreELEC 9.0 as Kodi v18 includes substantial internal changes to VideoPlayer and introduces new retro-gaming capabilities.
TEST NOTES
Our current focus is the OS core and we are more interested in hardware and driver bugs than Kodi problems. Please report the issues you find by starting a thread in the forums or use our bug tracker. Raspberry Pi users are reminded that dtoverlay=lirc-rpi has now been deprecated. Please read the infrared remotes wiki page before updating.
** CAUTION **
Alpha builds exist for hands-on testing not a hands-off experience. If you run Alpha builds you must be willing to report issues and engage the LibreELEC and Kodi developers in hunting bugs. If you have no idea what a debug log is or “wife acceptance factor” is critical, these builds are not for you. If you want to run Alpha builds please make a backup and store it somewhere off-box first. Your failure to make a backup is not our problem.
Enjoy
LibreELEC 9.0 Alpha 003 (Kodi 18 Alpha 3)
To update an existing installation from within the Kodi GUI select manual update in the LibreELEC settings add-on and then check for updates; select the LibreELEC 9.0 channel and then the 8.90.003 release. To create new install media please use our simple USB/SD Creator App. The following .img.gz files can also be used to create install media or update the old fashioned way:
As one of the most popular consumer items in the whole world, music is important to billions of citizens globally. It’s also surrounded by a giant industry that for years has complained bitterly about online piracy.
More recently, however, there have been signs that illegally grabbing music from the Internet is not as prevalent as it once was. A new report from market research and data analytics firm YouGov only adds weight to that apparent shift.
The headline stat from the company’s Music Report is that just one in ten Brits are currently downloading music illegally. That’s down from almost double (18%) that figure five short years ago.
While this is already a decent reduction, YouGov says that the 10% figure is set to further decrease in the years to come.
More than six out of ten (63%) illegal music downloaders predict they’ll still be pirating in five years’ time but a significant 22% believe they won’t. Just over a third (36%) acknowledge that using unofficial sources for music is becoming more difficult but the summary doesn’t offer reasons why.
YouGov reports that the decrease in piracy can in part be attributed to the rise of legal streaming services such as Spotify. Indeed, its survey reveals that more than six out of ten (63%) former Brit music pirates now rely on a legal streaming service for their fix.
“It is now easier to stream music than to pirate it. And the cost is not prohibitive,” one respondent said. “Spotify has everything from new releases to old songs, it filled the vacuum, there was no longer a need for using [an] unverified source,” added another.
While the shift to legal services is certainly encouraging for the labels, millions of music consumers still obtain their content illegally.
According to YouGov, just over half of this group (51%) say that “exclusives” restricted to a single platform are an irritating factor with 44% claiming that they only download illegally when they can’t find the content elsewhere.
“While illegal downloads still present a significant challenge to the music industry, there appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel,” says Justin Marshall, Associate Director, YouGov.
“Our research reveals a change in behavior, with those that previously attained music by unlawful means now being enticed by the low costs and ease of use associated with streaming.”
Marshall says that since consumers are increasingly satisfied with legal services, trawling the Internet for illegal copies is no longer high on their agenda.
“Whether or not streaming is what finally banishes illegal downloads remains to be seen, but there are encouraging signs,” he concludes.
In an effort to appreciate the nuances behind the figures, TorrentFreak asked YouGov for a copy of the report. Sadly we were told that it won’t appear publicly since it’s part of a wider study being made available to clients.
That leaves the question of how “stream-ripping” (downloading music from sites like YouTube onto a user’s machine) fits into this overall decrease in music piracy. While the record labels once considered file-sharing sites and services as the work of the devil, today they’re much more likely to be heard complaining about stream-ripping and how this affects revenues.
It’s not clear whether stream-ripping is considered an illegal download as far as the report goes. However, there are plenty of signs that downloading music in this manner is gaining traction among younger people for whom YouTube is often the default music source. The labels are extremely keen to bring this kind of activity to an end.
All that said and despite the persistent piracy problem, the popularity of legal services, especially among pirates, cannot be ignored.
A report released by MUSO found that 91% of all pirates already have a streaming subscription, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify or Apple Music. That’s a higher rate than their non-pirating counterparts, of which less than 80% subscribe to legal services.
After several successful previous applications, last month Village Roadshow Films and Hollywood partners Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Universal, Warner Bros teamed up with Hong Kong-based Television Broadcasts Limited and Aussie distributor Madman Entertainment Pty Limited.
Together the companies filed an application for the broadest-ever blocking injunction at the Federal Court in Australia. If successful, it would compel Australia’s ISPs to block a record-setting 151 domains related to 77 ‘pirate’ sites.
The list of ISPs in the case is familiar. Telstra, Optus, Vocus, TPG and their subsidiaries are all named as respondents in the case with the addition of Vodafone, which was added after recently entering the fixed-line broadband market.
As obtained by ComputerWorld, the list of sites involved is now confirmed as follows:
What is notable about the list is the inclusion, for the first time, of sites such as Subscene, Subsmovies, YIFYSubtitles. As their names suggest, these platforms offer subtitles for the latest movies and TV shows, something that doesn’t sit well with any of the companies involved but particularly Madman Entertainment which specializes in Japanese anime.
“People unknown have recorded from the motion pictures … then translated the words into different languages and then those websites make available files that contain the subtitles in those languages,” counsel for the applicants told the Federal Court this morning, as reported by CW.
While most previous cases have passed the scrutiny of the Court relatively easily, this case – with the inclusion of subtitle sites – represents new ground. While the standard for infringement of video copyrights has been well tested in earlier applications, literary copyrights (in what are effectively scripts) are now under consideration for the first time.
As a result, the ever precise Justice Nicholas told the parties to ensure that no stone is left unturned in preparing evidence for the Court.
“You better make sure your evidence in relation to that is particularly thorough,” the Judge said.
“There’s some creep here occurring – I don’t say that critically… [but] it’s a new angle so I’ll need to look at that closely.”
Justice Nicholas won’t be short of source material for his studies. There are instances of subtitles sites being blocked in other jurisdictions and several cases where site operators have been successfully targeted (1,2,3) in legal action.
In common with most recent hearings, none of the ISPs listed as defendants in the case turned up for today’s case management hearing. The case itself is scheduled to be heard on September 7.
In parallel, Television Broadcasts Limited is currently tied up in a case of its own after applying for a blocking injunction last year against several unauthorized IPTV services. The case against A1, BlueTV, EVPAD, FunTV, MoonBox, Unblock, and hTV5 is seen as more complex by the Court, so a final decision is still pending.
The full list of sites and more than 150 associated URLs can be found here courtesy of Rohan Pearce.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/aus-feat.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2018-08-02 17:10:502018-08-02 17:10:50Movie & TV Show Companies Want Subtitle Sites Blocked Down Under
We hereby present you the third and last alpha build of Kodi v18 as we are going forward entering beta stage. This release is a continuation of the previous two with our continous focus on solving bugs and usability problems. So far it has proved to be quite solid to use as a daily driver for those who were brave enough to try it out. Of course you should still keep in mind it’s not a final release yet and that on any upgrade a small glitch could happen as we are still doing rework. Once you decide to give it a try it is highly recommended that you create a backup first.
Currently included
A full changelog is nearly impossible to create and in this release article we will only cover the basics. For a more extensive list you can visit our wiki page v18 (Leia) changelog which will be update along the way. This third alpha release contain no big new features as we are focus on bugfixing only.
Make sure to also go through our news sections which contain all past announcements regarding the Leia release and some highlights of what it will contain.
Stability and usability is key
In general the whole stability has been improved quite a lot. The times you still get glitches or occasional crashes haven been reduced due to just ripping out not so well coded parts and replaced with a more structured design and standard. Not that the old code was bad however over time new insights were gained and having newer code standards just make it better. Untangling all parts or components and make them behave better next to each other has been one of the biggest efforts done so far.
Current available skins
Due to changes in how Kodi works skins need to be updated for each release. As of this moment we have the following ones have been update by their developers and are readily available from our repository.
More will follow at a later point in time when we approach final release.
The story continues
Although we don’t really have a clear future plan or clear cut goals (except making a great media center) we would welcome any developer who wants to spend time on getting Kodi better in every way. Either improving the core code to newer standards, fixing bugs or implementing a new feature we haven’t thought of. Compared to years ago the code has become better to understand and follow for newcomers to get started. Once we get something written down of certain to reach goals we will certainly share them.
You might also wonder when we will actually release this as a final version? Currently we don’t really have a set time however it should at least be somewhere this year so. There’s still enough room left for improvements however we could change our minds at any point in time and just call it ready enough to start the release cycle. In short we can’t say or promise anything. For now we will start doing the Alpa release on a regular bases to bring further balance to the force.
That’s about it for now and we’ll go back at improving this upcoming v18 release. Should you wish to give it a try a new version is readily available each day as well as nightly version. We can certainly recommend trying it out however take in mind that it’s not fully production and living room ready yet (take a backup). So far a guestimate of several tens of thousands users already use it so it can’t be that bad can it. You can get it from the download page clicking on the platform of choice and hitting the “pre release” tab. For Android and Windows we have an easy to use download add-on which you can find in our repository.
Go to the Official download page and choose the platform of choice and you will find these builds under the pre release tab.
If you do appreciate our work feel free to give a small donation so we can continue our effort. Just find the big “Donate” button at the top of the website.
With 2018 just beyond its midpoint, the year is proving to be a rollercoaster ride for Nintendo pirates.
News of exploits to allow the running of both pirate and homebrew code gave hope to tinkerers and buccaneers alike, but the fun has rarely lasted long.
It began when hacking veterans Team-Xecutor revealed that they’d developed a kernel hack for the Nintendo Switch. That led to news of a hardware solution that exploited a fundamental flaw in the Switch system, one that Nintendo would be unable to stop.
Or at least that was the theory.
In June, hacker SciresM announced that Nintendo had implemented tough anti-piracy measures that are able to detect whether a digital copy of a game has been purchased legitimately.
In basic terms, when people attempt to go online with a game, their Switch checks whether it can get a device authorization token from Nintendo. If a token is granted, the console can then obtain an application authorization token for the specific title being played. If Nintendo doesn’t like what it sees, it can prevent a console from going online.
Among potential pirates on the Switch platform, the news was met with huge disappointment. Online access is a massive part of today’s gaming world and killing it is a significant move from Nintendo. Unfortunately, the bad news isn’t going to stop with Switch measures.
On July 30, Nintendo released a software update (11.8.0) for the 3DS which on the surface didn’t appear to offer much.
“Further improvements to overall system stability and other minor adjustments have been made to enhance the user experience,” Nintendo promised.
However, it now transpires that Nintendo isn’t being completely open about what this update can do. Yet again, it’s been left to SciresM to make matters public.
“Looks like 11.8.0 backports the Switch’s aauth ideas to 3ds — network comms now send an encrypted(?) copy of app ticket to the server,” he reveals.
“They may not act on it immediately, but like on Switch this lets [Nintendo] perfectly detect pirate accesses vs normal ones, and ban however they like.”
Looks like 11.8.0 backports the Switch's aauth ideas to 3ds — network comms now send an encrypted(?) copy of app ticket to the server.
They may not act on it immediately, but like on Switch this lets N perfectly detect pirate accesses vs normal ones, and ban however they like.
In basic terms, this means that Nintendo has brought its formidable Switch-based anti-piracy system to 3DS, meaning that users of both gaming devices now risk being banished to the offline gaming wilderness if they go online after sailing the piracy high seas.
While anti-piracy measures are commonplace and are often defeated by determined hackers, SciresM isn’t confident that people will find a way to defeat this system. In response to a user on Twitter who asked about a potential workaround, SciresM was pretty clear.
“It is not possible to do anything about,” he said.
The latest update for 3DS is just the latest setback for Nintendo hackers. Earlier this month, SciresM revealed that some Switch consoles discovered in the wild were not vulnerable to the supposedly unstoppable exploit found earlier in the year. This, thanks to Nintendo tinkering with the Switch processor via so-called ‘iPatches’.
However, in the back-and-forth world of console hacking, victories for console makers are often countered by hackers. In an announcement this week, Team-Xecuter revealed that the modified Switch units were on its radar and they too will fall.
“So don’t fear: we will deliver a solution for these new ‘unhackable’ switches in due time!” the team wrote.
Over the past decade there have been dozens of detailed reports researching the prevalence and effects of piracy.
With a wide array of results, it’s hard to draw uniform conclusions but as the research adds up, stable patterns start to emerge.
The Global Online Piracy Study, published by the University of Amsterdam’s Institute for Information Law (IViR) today, is an important contribution to this field.
The research is the result of extensive consumer surveys among 35,000 respondents, including over 7,000 minors, in 13 countries. Combined with similar data collected in 2014, it shows how online piracy habits are changing.
One of the main conclusions is that the number of online pirates is decreasing in most of Europe. This decline is visible in France, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Sweden. Of all surveyed countries, only Germany saw a slight increase in the number of pirates.
In the surveyed countries across Europe, the piracy rate among Internet users is the highest in Spain, but this is topped by Brazil, Thailand, and Indonesia in the full sample.
Number of Internet users accessing content illegally
TorrentFreak spoke to Dr. Joost Poort, one of the authors of the report, who notes that pirates and legal users are largely the same people. In fact, roughly 95% of all pirates also consume content legally, and they typically spend twice as much as their non-pirating counterparts.
This doesn’t mean that pirates are rich, of course. In fact, the research shows that a higher per capita income is linked to a lower number of pirates per legal users. In other words, ‘poorer’ countries have relatively more pirates.
Lower income = more pirates
When people are asked about the reason why they pirate, the cost factor is also frequently mentioned. Pirating is free which is convenient for those who have little to spend. But does that mean that it also leads to a decrease in sales? Is piracy hurting revenues?
According to the research, there’s an overall negative effect of piracy on media sales. However, this doesn’t apply to minors. The latter makes sense, as that group has relatively little to spend anyway.
“This study confirms earlier studies in finding statistical evidence that illegal consumption of music, books, and games displaces legal consumption,” the report reads.
“However, the displacement coefficients are surrounded with substantial uncertainty. Separating these results between minors and adults suggests that displacement occurs for adults and not for minors.”
What’s also worth highlighting is that piracy doesn’t affect all media and entertainment types the same. It even benefits some revenue streams.
For example, the data suggest that every ten music albums pirated leads to three extra concert or festival visits. However, at the same time, it leads to a significant drop in physical album sales and digital downloads, while music streaming remains unaffected.
For video content, including movies, online piracy doesn’t appear to affect sales of physical copies or digital downloads. Here, however, cinema visits and online streams are severely impacted.
“For live concerts and music festivals, a positive sampling effect is found. For audio-visual content, no such sampling seems to occur for the cinema, which suffers from statistically significant displacement, as do digital streams.”
To give an illustration, the data suggest that ten downloaded movies would in general lead to four missed cinema visits.
While the research provides evidence for the negative effects of piracy, the authors don’t see any evidence that stricter copyright laws or enforcement against individuals are a good solution.
Instead, legal content providers should focus on making their work readily available for a good price.
“In terms of policy, obviously hunting down the industry’s largest customers is not the best of ideas. Rather, push for better availability, affordability, and findability of legal content. Affordability of large platforms in lower-income countries is certainly an issue,” Poort tells us.
“If you must do something in terms of enforcement, website blocking seems to be a much better strategy than going after consumers. There is some solid looking evidence for effectiveness in the UK.”
Finally, it is worth noting that this is a follow-up to a controversial EU-funded study. That report made headlines last year because the European Commission held it back. The latest version is funded by Google which had no such restrictions.
“This builds on the EU study that caught some traction because the commission was very reluctant to publish it. This time, Google financed it and respected our academic interests and independence so much better than the Commission did…,” Poort says.
—
A copy of Global Online Piracy Study is available here (pdf).
SimCity 2000 is without a doubt one of the most iconic games in history, one that paved the way for hundreds of other ‘building’ titles.
The game was first released in 1993 for Apple computers, but it later made its way to the PC and several gaming console platforms as well.
After more than a quarter-century, SimCity 2000 still receives plenty of interest from nostalgic gamers who like to relive their early gaming experiences. This is likely one of the reasons why developer Nicholas Ochoa decided to code a remake using the Electron framework.
The game, titled OpenSC2K, was released on GitHub earlier this year and received quite a bit of attention on sites such as Reddit and Hacker News.
While it is billed as an “open source” version, the remake did include original artwork, belonging to Electronic Arts. These images and sounds are definitely not free to use, something the developer is fully aware of now.
A few days ago Electronic Arts sent a DMCA takedown notice to GitHub asking the platform to remove the infringing repository from its site.
“Assets from the game SimCity 2000 are being infringed upon,” EA writes. The company points out that the game can be purchased legally through Origin where it’s still being sold for a few dollars.
While OpenSC2K is far from a full remake, Electronic Arts makes it clear that the SimCity 2000 assets are not for public use.
“The current audiovisual output of the repository creates content that infringes on Electronic Arts copyright. As long as that continues to happen, no other changes other than removal is sufficient to address the infringement,” the company writes.
Soon after this DMCA notice was submitted, OpenSC2K was indeed taken offline, replaced with GitHub’s standard DMCA notification.
The takedown effort didn’t come as a complete surprise to the developer. When he announced the project earlier this year, several people pointed out the potential copyright issues.
This is also the reason why the developer came up with an asset conversion tool early on. That would make it possible to replace the original artwork with open source content, however, due to some code changes and other priorities, this hasn’t happened yet.
TorrentFreak spoke to OpenSC2K’s developer who is currently trying to get a non-infringing version of the repository restored. He also mentioned that not just EA’s assets, but all his code was pulled offline without any type of prior notification.
“I was never contacted by EA or GitHub prior to the takedown – I received notification after the fact from GitHub. Nobody from EA has reached out since and I’m still waiting for GitHub to review my request,” Ochoa tells us.
“My plan right now once the repo is restored is the remove the copyrighted content and provide instructions on how to extract the assets directly from the original game files.”
The developer understands that EA has the rights to the graphics and DAT files he used. And he has no intention to use these files going forward. However, he would have preferred it if the game publisher came to him directly, instead of taking down all his work.
“I just wish they’d have reached out first, I would’ve gladly removed the content quickly and without issue,” Ochoa tells us.
What remains, for now, are a few screenshots and YouTube videos of the remake in action.
—
Note: This article was updated shortly after publication in include Ochoa’s comments.
In many jurisdictions it’s common for those who commit wrongs online to be responsible for their own actions. In Germany, things haven’t been so straightforward.
Due to a legal concept known as ‘Störerhaftung’ (‘interferer liability’), a third party who played no deliberate part in someone else’s actions can be held responsible for them.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this legal quirk has made itself known in a number of file-sharing cases where customers have used someone else’s WiFi to commit infringements.
While this was convenient enough for copyright holders (there was always someone to blame), it meant that few people wanted to operate open WiFi. This stood in stark contrast to the situation in many other EU countries where open WiFi networks are both ubiquitous and good for trade.
In 2016, the German government promised to do something about the problem by
ensuring places like cafes and hotels would exempt from costs for court proceedings when people use their infrastructure for things such as infringement.
In 2017, regulation was put in place to help facilitate greater access to open WiFi but the environment remained chilled. Despite assurances operators wouldn’t be prosecuted under German law, many believed that EU law might still hold them liable.
Last week, however, an important step was taken when Germany’s supreme court upheld the 2017 amendments to the Telemedia Act. The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) decided that the legislation is indeed compatible with EU regulations.
The case relates to an incident back in 2013 when a man challenged a company attempting to fine him for sharing a game online. DW reports that the IT worker had been running several open WiFi networks and Tor servers, one of which was used to download and share the game Dead Island.
In common with many copyright-troll style cases, game owner Deep Silver, a subsidiary of Koch Media, demanded that the man pay 1,000 euros to make a supposed lawsuit go away.
Acknowledging there should be a means for incidents of copyright infringement to be dealt with, the BGH found that WiFi providers can be told to prevent access to file-sharing services and even block entire websites, something which helps copyright holders prevent sharing of their works.
In 2016, in a case involving Pirate Party member Tobias McFadden, the European Court of Justice previously ruled that WiFi providers cannot be held liable for third-party infringements providing local courts or authorities can order WiFi providers to take measures to stop repeat incidents of infringement.
“[T]he directive does not preclude the copyright holder from seeking before a national authority or court to have such a service provider ordered to end, or prevent, any infringement of copyright committed by its customers,” the Court found.
The case ruled upon last week is now likely to head off to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for a final decision.
In recent years, Google has had to process an incredible number of takedown requests, aimed at ‘pirate’ sites in search results.
While most of these notices do indeed list links to copyright-infringing content, not all are.
There are the obvious errors, where Wikipedia, Justice.gov, or NASA are targeted, for example. But even sites with a clear pirate stigma have pages that are not directly infringing.
Take The Pirate Bay’s homepage, which contains the iconic pirate ship logo, a search box, as well as some other links. However, there is no direct mention of copyright-infringing content that warrants a ‘takedown.’
That doesn’t prevent copyright holders and various reporting agencies from trying to remove it from Google though. Data provided by the Lumen team, which maintains an archive of all the DMCA notices Google search receives, shows that Pirate Bay’s homepage has been targeted dozens of times.
This year alone, at least 15 separate takedown notices ask Google to remove ThePirateBay.org from its index. Most of these are sent by the reporting agency Digimarc, on behalf of book publishers such as Penguin Random House, Kensington Publishing, and Recorded Books.
The most recent was sent just a few days ago, accusing TPB’s homepage of hosting or linking to an infringing copy of “Star Wars: The Original Radio Drama.” A few days earlier a similar notice accused the same page of linking to the French version of Stephen King’s The Running Man.
These notices also list other totally unrelated links which are hard to explain, as the image below shows. However, we won’t dwell on that here.
One of the takedown attempts
Over the years, The Pirate Bay’s homepage has been targeted more than 70 times. And even then we’re only counting the official domain names, ThePirateBay.org and ThePirateBay.se.
The oldest public notice we could find was sent by the American sports promotion company Zuffa. In January 2013 the company identified several infringing Pirate Bay links, but also added in the site’s homepage.
While there’s no shortage of reports, TPB’s homepage is still in Google’s index.
Since TPB’s homepage is not infringing, Google categorically refuses to remove it from its search results. While the site itself has been downranked, due to the high number of takedown requests Google receives for it, ThePirateBay.org remains listed.
Google did remove The Pirate Bay’s homepage in the past, by accident, but that was swiftly corrected.
“Google received a (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) take-down request that erroneously listed Thepiratebay.org, and as a result, this URL was accidentally removed from the Google search index,” Google said at the time.
“We are now correcting the removal, and you can expect to see Thepiratebay.org back in Google search results this afternoon,” the company added.
Protecting children in our society is one of the noblest things one can do. In both the physical and digital worlds, children need high-quality guidance.
While most of this support should come from parents and others closely involved with a child’s upbringing, groups like UK non-profit Internet Matters are there to provide advice when the adults around need help themselves.
This week the London-based group teamed up with the Mumsnet website to publish a guide titled “Internet safety and the dangers of digital piracy.” Perhaps unsurprisingly given recent trends, the report focuses on the apparent threats posed by “fully-loaded” set-top boxes running Kodi and similar applications.
“[I]f your children stream illegal content online, also known as digital piracy, it can expose them and you to cyber threats, disturbing pop-ups and unexpected harmful content,” the guide notes.
“The risks typically associated with digital piracy can take place on dodgy websites and preloaded streaming devices, sometimes known as Kodi boxes, but they can also occur through any number of illegitimate apps on mobiles, tablets or smart TVs.”
While some of the claims made in the guide are overly generic, it does make some very good points. Accessing content from illegal streaming sites rarely comes with the age restrictions available on services such as Netflix, for example, so parents should always be aware of the risks and act in a supervisory role.
“Explicit adverts may pop up and there’s no standard organization of age-restricted content, meaning 18+ films like Fifty Shades can sit right next to U-rated content such as Finding Nemo,” the guide notes.
The guide also correctly states that some fully-loaded devices can come with porn apps installed. Again, it’s the responsibility of the parent to ensure that their children aren’t left unsupervised to use such a device, particularly (given their child’s age) they were probably the one to buy it.
There are few complaints when it comes to the guide’s legal advice either. As part of the EU, streaming copyrighted content in the UK is illegal, as is marketing and selling pre-loaded devices configured for piracy. All ok so far, but then the guide mixes apples and oranges to spook the unknowledgeable reader.
“Whilst families haven’t yet been the target of police investigations, the consequences
of watching pirated content should be considered, both from a legal standpoint
and the inappropriate content children could be exposed to,” the guide notes.
“For example, a man was recently hit with an £85,000 demand for sharing his stream of a pay-to-view boxing match on Facebook with over 4,250 people.”
The kind of person who can get value from this kind of basic guide isn’t going to appreciate the differences between someone who streams to the public and someone who watches a stream at home. Simply reading “£85,000 demand” might be enough for them to throw their device in the trash (which may have been the intention), but perhaps we’re being a little bit picky here.
Statements like these, however, deserve no such leeway.
Like the majority of claims in the guide, this statement is offered without citing a source. So, we contacted Internet Matters to ask where this information had been obtained. Unfortunately (and despite having several days to do so) they didn’t respond.
The reason we asked is simple: we don’t believe either element of the claim is true. So, we approached some experts for their opinions. We asked two questions based on the precise wording of the Internet Matters claim.
1. Are pirate sites the most common source of malware infection? If not, what is the most common source/vector?
2. Does streaming pirated media put devices at direct risk of infection?
The first responses came back from respected security expert Mikko Hypponen from F-Secure.
“Pirate sites are not the most common source for infections, and it hasn’t been since the early 1990s. Today, the most common ways of getting infected are via malicious email attachments, browser plugins and extensions and web exploit kits,” he told TorrentFreak.
“Streaming pirated media is not a security risk, as long as the user does not install additional applications, browser plugins or codecs to stream.”
We also received a detailed response from Luis Corrons, Security Evangelist at Avast, who told us that the Internet overall is the most common source of malware, but websites are not the sole driver.
“If we look at some of the biggest malware outbreaks, like SQLSlammer, Blaster or the recent WannaCry attack, they all are network worms that have infected millions of computers without having to visit any webpage,” Corrons explained.
“The problem with pirate sites is that it’s hard to know who is behind them. If you visit YouTube or Vimeo, most people are familiar with their parent companies. But in the case of some obscure websites, there’s a chance they could have been built by cybercriminals looking to infect visitors, steal credentials and personal information.”
While it’s certainly possible that pirate sites can be a source of malware, Bogdan Botezatu, Senior E-Threat Analyst at Bitdefender, told us it is extremely difficult to assess the amount of malware on pirate sites, not least since many sites come and go on a regular basis.
However, he did indicate that when content from pirate sites is consumed via set-top devices, there’s less of a risk than when people access it via a web browser.
“Since these web services offer streaming through Kodi add-ons, the user never really get to interact with their home page, but rather with the Kodi dashboard. Most of these addons load content from [pirate] websites and stream it via Kodi. This dramatically minimizes the chances of the user interacting with rogue ads or deceptive links,” Botezatu explained.
So does Botezatu agree with Internet Matters when they claim that streaming pirated media itself “puts devices at direct risk of infection”?
“No, not directly, although I would not recommend anyone to resort to this,” Botezatu said.
“With extremely few exceptions where some vulnerabilities in the user’s video player could be exploited to run arbitrary code, media streaming is safe. I am unaware of any campaigns that use movie files for malware dissemination other than the Wimad Trojan back in 2012.”
The stance that streaming media is not inherently dangerous is shared by Corrons at AVAST.
“Streaming media does not pose any particular risk level of infection. It doesn’t matter if the media is pirated or not,” he said.
While it’s a bit of a shame that Internet Matters had to claim things that aren’t true to drive its point home, they’re by no means the only organization to do so.
Earlier this year, the Industry Trust for IP Awareness made a similar claim, noting that “Illegal streaming websites are now the number one propagation mechanism for malicious software as 97% of them contain malware.”
With assistance from Adam Kujawa, Director of Malware Intelligence at Malwarebytes, we debunked that statement back in February. It’s disappointing but not entirely surprising we’ve having to do so again several months later.
There are plenty of valid reasons for not letting kids loose with piracy-configured boxes, not least since they could see content that adults might prefer them not to. Notably, however, the exact same thing can be said about YouTube and Facebook, or even the Internet in general.
When anyone uses the Internet for anything there are security risks, so parents should always tell their kids to be cautious when they’re online, no matter what the device or content being consumed.
Surprisingly, the Internet Matters report – which has a strong focus on malware – doesn’t even mention installing anti-virus or anti-malware software to protect devices. Concerned parents should note that both can be obtained for free and are easy to install.
The Internet Matters guide (which despite the criticism does contain great advice on parental responsibility) is available here (pdf)
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/facepalm-featured.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2018-07-29 08:03:512018-07-29 08:03:51No, Pirate Sites Are Not the #1 Online Source For Malware
Over the past decade there have been dozens of detailed reports researching the prevalence and effects of piracy. 
In many jurisdictions it’s common for those who commit wrongs online to be responsible for their own actions. In Germany, things haven’t been so straightforward.
In recent years, Google has had to process an incredible number of takedown requests, aimed at ‘pirate’ sites in search results.
