Finally, we turn to Philipp, who is working to upgrade the Kodi windowing system in Linux from X11 to Wayland. As a PR is already posted, we are extremely excited about this project!

Wayland Support – yol

My main goal was quite simply to get Kodi to natively support Wayland again, if possible as well as it currently supports X11. The Wayland protocol is slowly but steadily gaining traction in the Linux world as successor to the X11 display server and is generally seen to replace it in the long term, which is why it is essential for Kodi to support it if it wants to continue to deliver a good user experience on Linux. As some may know, Kodi did already have a Wayland windowing implementation originally written by Sam Spilsbury during GSoC 2013, but it got removed from master for unsolved infrastructure reasons some time ago and was never on-par with the X11 implementation feature-wise.

June

I subdivided the main goal into a number of sub-goals/features in my initial proposal categorized as “basic” (i.e. necessary so you can reasonably use it at all), “additional”, and “possible extension”. In the first month, I dealt with all basic and some of the additional features. I had planned to salvage as much of the previous code as possible, but different design choices I made ultimately meant that I ended up writing most of it from scratch. Still, I was frequently checking the prior implementation to see which parts of Kodi I have to touch and how I can go about solving some specific aspects.

To get a bit more concrete here, where the approach differs most is how the Wayland protocol objects are used in object-oriented C++. Previously a home-grown approach was used, probably because there were no C++ bindings for libwayland-client at the time. The resulting wrapper code is quite tedious to write and maintain, which is why I decided to use the C++ waylandpp library as base. Even though it is not quite mature yet, I figured that my time would be better spent improving waylandpp than trying to come up with something new on my own. It is of course possible to use the C API of libwayland-client directly without any wrappers, but this is not a very nice solution since the Wayland protocol is really made out to be used in an object- oriented fashion if the language allows for it. Much to my delight, the author of waylandpp was very responsive and supporting, which means that all improvements and feature additions I made to waylandpp at this point are already merged upstream.

Unfortunately, it soon became clear that the aging windowing infrastructure of Kodi is not a good match for Wayland which does some things in a very different way. Wayland is designed such that clients have minimal control over the desktop for security reasons. This for example means that, unlike on X11, Windows, and most other windowing systems, applications cannot just set arbitrary video modes. They can only tell what their preference would be to the compositor, which then decides and in turn tells the applications what size they get. I do think that this is a good design decision since it solves a lot of problems that XRandR has like leaving the desktop in a bad resolution when a program crashes, but it does mean that a lot of things have to be done differently. The Kodi code assumes the traditional procedure of fetching a list of valid resolutions and then being able to switch to any resolution immediately and basically without failure. Changing this in a satisfying way would require quite a lot of refactoring that would have to touch all of the current windowing implementations, too. This is a lot of work, requires coordination with all platform maintainers, and is not realistic to be completed within the GSoC timeframe, so I have put this off for now and instead tried to make minimal adjustments to the Kodi resolution switching code that allow the Wayland implementation to work without impacting any other windowing system. The downside to this is that the Wayland code is not as clean as it could or should be and that there is an increased risk of weird stuff happening.

July

After getting most of the basic stuff out of the way in June and the first week of July, I focused on the two big remaining issues: Support for the wp_presentation Wayland protocol extension and windowed mode, the first of which was just merged this week. Put simply, Kodi now has a reliable way of determining how much time it takes from rendering a video frame until it appears on screen and does not have to resort to guesswork, improving AV sync. Also, it can be used as source for the video reference clock so that slight mismatches of the video fps with the screen refresh rate can be corrected by resampling the audio.

I worked on windowed mode support for the remainder of the month. I guess that it would not usually be expected to be a complicated issue, but most Wayland compositors require applications to draw and handle window decorations themselves (called client-side decorations) if they want to have any. I discussed with my mentor how to go about this and we decided to once again keep things local to the Wayland implementation and draw the decorations there as none of the other windowing systems currently requires this. The other option would have been to somehow integrate the decorations into the Kodi skinning system. This is of course nicer, but far more complicated and probably not worth the trouble. As media center, most users will use Kodi in full screen mode which is also the default, so window decorations that don’t look that nice will not be a big problem.

During the past two months I also had to learn that Wayland is still quite new to the scene and that a lot of bugs still lurk in the various components. I had to report and sometimes fix bugs in compositors and other third-party components such as mutter, weston, and libva. Finding these bugs and determining whose fault it is that something did not work as expected took more time than I had initially anticipated. I would like to thank the #wayland IRC community and specifically pq and SardemFF7 for their time and advice that helped me move forward several times.

August

In the last few weeks I finished windowed mode, investigated some outstanding issues not directly related to Wayland such as touch screen handling, and am now trying to get my work merged mainline. I do hope that no big issues pop up that could prevent the merge, but I’m optimistic – the pull request is already live [https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/12664]. Apart from fixing the outstanding review comments, I plan to look at identifying possible memory leaks and multi-threading races with valgrind and ThreadSanitizer.

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For several decades the basic shape of the piracy market hasn’t changed much. At the top of the chain there has always been a relatively small number of suppliers. At the bottom, the sprawling masses keen to consume whatever content these suppliers make available, while sharing it with everyone else.

This model held in the days of tapes and CDs and transferred nicely to the P2P file-sharing era. For nearly two decades people have been waiting for those with the latest content to dump it onto file-sharing networks. After grabbing it for themselves, people share that content with others.

For many years, the majority of the latest music, movies, and TV shows appeared online having been obtained by, and then leaked from, ‘The Scene’. However, with the rise of BitTorrent and an increase in computer skills demonstrated by the public, so-called ‘P2P release groups’ began flexing their muscles, in some cases slicing the top of the piracy pyramid.

With lower barriers to entry, P2P releasers can be almost anyone who happens to stumble across some new content. That being said, people still need the skill to package up that content and make it visible online, on torrent sites for example, without getting caught.

For most people that’s prohibitively complex, so it’s no surprise that Average Joe, perhaps comforted by the air of legitimacy, has taken to uploading music and movies to sites like YouTube instead. These days that’s nothing out of the ordinary and perhaps a little boring by piracy standards, but people still have the capacity to surprise.

This week a man from the United States, without a care in the world, obtained a login for a STARZ press portal, accessed the final three episodes of ‘Power’, and then streamed them on Facebook using nothing but a phone and an Internet connection.

From the beginning, the whole thing was ridiculous, comical even. The man in question, whose name and personal details TF obtained in a matter of minutes, revealed how he got the logins and even recorded his own face during one of the uploaded videos.

He really, really couldn’t have cared any less but he definitely should have. After news broke of the leaks, STARZ went public confirming the breach and promising to do something about it.

“The final three episodes of Power’s fourth season were leaked online due to a breach of the press screening room,” Starz said in a statement. “Starz has begun forensic investigations and will take legal action against the responsible parties.”

At this point, we should consider the magnitude of what this guy did. While we all laugh at his useless camera skills, the fact remains that he unlawfully distributed copyright works online, in advance of their commercial release. In the United States, that is a criminal offense, one that can result in a prison sentence of several years.

It would be really sad if the guy in question was made an example of since his videos suggest he hadn’t considered the consequences. After all, this wasn’t some hi-tech piracy group, just a regular guy with a login and a phone, and intent always counts for something. Nevertheless, the situation this week nicely highlights how new technology affects piracy.

In the past, the process of putting an unreleased movie or TV show online could only be tackled by people with expertise in several areas. These days a similar effect is possible with almost no skill and no effort. Joe Public, pre-release TV/movie/sports pirate, using nothing but a phone, a Facebook account, and an urge?

That’s the reality today and we won’t have to wait too long for a large scale demonstration of what can happen when millions of people with access to these ubiquitous tools have an urge to share.

In a little over two weeks’ time, boxing legend Floyd Mayweather Jr fights UFC lightweight champion, Conor McGregor. It’s set to be the richest combat sports event in history, not to mention one of the most expensive for PPV buyers. That means it’s going to be pirated to hell and back, in every way possible. It’s going to be massive.

Of course, there will be high-quality paid IPTV productions available, more grainy ‘Kodi’ streams, hundreds of web portals, and even some streaming torrents, for those that way inclined. But there will also be Average Joes in their hundreds, who will point their phones at Showtime’s PPV with the intent of live streaming the biggest show on earth to their friends, family, and the Internet. For free.

Quite how this will be combatted remains to be seen but it’s fair to say that this is a problem that’s only going to get bigger. In ten years time – in five years time – many millions of people will have the ability to become pirate releasers on a whim, despite knowing nothing about the occupation.

Like ‘Power’ guy, the majority won’t be very good at it. Equally, some will turn it into an art form. But whatever happens, tackling millions of potential pirates definitely won’t be easy for copyright holders. Twenty years in, it seems the battle for control has only just begun.

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

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Over the years there have been almost endless attempts to stop people from accessing copyright-infringing content online. Campaigns have come and gone and almost two decades later the battle is still ongoing.

Early on, when panic enveloped the music industry, the campaigns centered around people getting sued. Grabbing music online for free could be costly, the industry warned, while parading the heads of a few victims on pikes for the world to see.

Periodically, however, the aim has been to appeal to the public’s better nature. The idea is that people essentially want to do the ‘right thing’, so once they understand that largely hard-working Americans are losing their livelihoods, people will stop downloading from The Pirate Bay. For some, this probably had the desired effect but millions of people are still getting their fixes for free, so the job isn’t finished yet.

In more recent years, notably since the MPAA and RIAA had their eyes blacked in the wake of SOPA, the tone has shifted. In addition to educating the public, torrent and streaming sites are increasingly being painted as enemies of the public they claim to serve.

Several studies, largely carried out on behalf of the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA), have claimed that pirate sites are hotbeds of malware, baiting consumers in with tasty pirate booty only to offload trojans, viruses, and God-knows-what. These reports have been ostensibly published as independent public interest documents but this week an advisor to the DCA suggested a deeper interest for the industry.

Hemanshu Nigam is a former federal prosecutor, ex-Chief Security Officer for News Corp and Fox Interactive Media, and former VP Worldwide Internet Enforcement at the MPAA. In an interview with Deadline this week, he spoke about alleged links between pirate sites and malware distributors. He also indicated that warning people about the dangers of pirate sites has become Hollywood’s latest anti-piracy strategy.

“The industry narrative has changed. When I was at the MPAA, we would tell people that stealing content is wrong and young people would say, yeah, whatever, you guys make a lot of money, too bad,” he told the publication.

“It has gone from an ethical discussion to a dangerous one. Now, your parents’ bank account can be raided, your teenage daughter can be spied on in her bedroom and extorted with the footage, or your computer can be locked up along with everything in it and held for ransom.”

Nigam’s stance isn’t really a surprise since he’s currently working for the Digital Citizens Alliance as an advisor. In turn, the Alliance is at least partly financed by the MPAA. There’s no suggestion whatsoever that Nigam is involved in any propaganda effort, but recent signs suggest that the DCA’s work in malware awareness is more about directing people away from pirate sites than protecting them from the alleged dangers within.

That being said and despite the bias, it’s still worth giving experts like Nigam an opportunity to speak. Largely thanks to industry efforts with brands, pirate sites are increasingly being forced to display lower-tier ads, which can be problematic. On top, some sites’ policies mean they don’t deserve any visitors at all.

In the Deadline piece, however, Nigam alleges that hackers have previously reached out to pirate websites offering $200 to $5000 per day “depending on the size of the pirate website” to have the site infect users with malware. If true, that’s a serious situation and people who would ordinarily use ‘pirate’ sites would definitely appreciate the details.

For example, to which sites did hackers make this offer and, crucially, which sites turned down the offer and which ones accepted?

It’s important to remember that pirates are just another type of consumer and they would boycott sites in a heartbeat if they discovered they’d been paid to infect them with malware. But, as usual, the claims are extremely light in detail. Instead, there’s simply a blanket warning to stay away from all unauthorized sites, which isn’t particularly helpful.

In some cases, of course, operational security will prevent some details coming to light but without these, people who don’t get infected on a ‘pirate’ site (the vast majority) simply won’t believe the allegations. As the author of the Deadline piece pointed out, it’s a bit like Reefer Madness all over again.

The point here is that without hard independent evidence to back up these claims, with reports listing sites alongside the malware they’ve supposed to have spread and when, few people will respond to perceived scaremongering. Free content trumps a few distant worries almost every time, whether that involves malware or the threat of a lawsuit.

It’ll be up to the DCA and their MPAA paymasters to consider whether the approach is working but thus far, not even having government heavyweights on board has helped.

Earlier this year the DCA launched a video campaign, enrolling 15 attorney generals to publish their own anti-piracy PSAs on YouTube. Thus far, interest has been minimal, to say the least.

At the time of writing the 15 PSAs have 3,986 views in total, with 2,441 of those contributed by a single video contributed by Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel. Despite the relative success, even that got slammed with 2 upvotes and 127 downvotes.

A few of the other videos have a couple of hundred views each but more than half have less than 70. Perhaps most worryingly for the DCA, apart from the Schimel PSA, none have any upvotes at all, only down. It’s unclear who the viewers were but it seems reasonable to conclude they weren’t entertained.

The bottom line is nobody likes malware or having their banking details stolen but yet again, people who claim to have the public interest at heart aren’t actually making a difference on the ground. It could be argued that groups advocating online safety should be publishing guides on how to stay protected on the Internet period, not merely advising people to stay away from certain sites.

But of course, that wouldn’t achieve the goals of the MPAA Digital Citizens Alliance.

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

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Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has been very active over the past several years, targeting uploaders on various sharing sites and services.

They cast their net wide and have gone after torrent users, Facebook groups, YouTube pirates and Usenet uploaders as well.

To pinpoint the latter group, BREIN contacts Usenet providers asking them to reveal the identity of a suspected user. This is also what happened in a case involving a former customer of Eweka.

The person in question, known under the alias ‘Badfan69,’ was accused of uploading 9,538 infringing works to Usenet, mostly older titles. After Eweka handed over his home address, BREIN reached out to him and negotiated a settlement.

The 44-year-old man has now agreed to pay a settlement of €4,800. If he continues to upload infringing content he will face an additional penalty of €2,000 per day, to a maximum of €50,000.

The case is an important victory for BREIN, not just because of the money.

When the anti-piracy group reached out to Usenet provider Eweka, the company initially refused to hand over any personal details. The Usenet provider argued that it’s a neutral intermediary that would rather not perform the role of piracy police. Instead, it wanted the court to decide whether the request was legitimate.

This resulted in a legal dispute where, earlier this year, a local court sided with BREIN. The Court stressed that in these type of copyright infringement cases, the Usenet provider is required to hand over the requested details.

Under Dutch law, ISPs can be obliged to hand over the personal details of their customers if the infringing activity is plausible and the damaged party has a legitimate interest. Importantly, the legal case clarified that this generally doesn’t require an intervention from the court.

“Providers must decide on a motivated request for the handover of a user’s address, based on their own consideration. A refusal to provide the information must be motivated, otherwise, it will be illegal and the provider will be charged for the costs,” BREIN notes.

While these Usenet cases are relatively rare, BREIN and other parties in the Netherlands, such as Dutch Filmworks, are also planning to go after large groups of torrent users. With the Usenet decision in hand, BREIN may want to argue that regular ISPs must also expose pirating users, without an intervention of the court.

This is not going to happen easily though. Several ISPs, most prominently Ziggo, announced that they would not voluntarily cooperate and are likely to fight out these requests in court to get a solid ‘torrent’ precedent.

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

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With the whole world going crazy for Game of Thrones, another TV series has been turning some serious numbers. Produced by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, crime drama ‘Power’ has been pulling in around eight million viewers per episode.

After premiering in June 2014, Power is now seven episodes into season four, which is set to reach its climax on August 27. But somewhat typically for the Internet these days, fans won’t necessarily have to wait another three weeks to find out what happens. During the past few hours, the final three episodes of ‘Power’ leaked online.

While that’s something in itself, this leak is possibly the most bizarre to take place in the history of piracy. Having been tipped off that screener episodes were available online, TF went looking for evidence. We found it, but it wasn’t what we expected.

The leaks consist of the three episodes (one complete, the other two missing a few minutes) being played back on an iPhone. A white one. With a broken screen.

Power leaks: Broken iPhone edition

The off-center nature of the image above isn’t typical though and most of the time the main picture is both central and well-defined, with surprisingly clear audio. It’s certainly not going to win any prizes for quality but for the extremely impatient it offers some kind of relief.

The big question, of course, is how these episodes happened to find their way onto that battered iPhone in the first place. Incredibly, the videos themselves provide the answers, with the thoughtful ‘cammer’ explaining in several voice-overs how he gained access to one of STARZ hottest properties.

“This is like the special, this is only for the people that work at STARZ that watch this shit. My man sent me the whole log-in shit. I had to pay that n******r though,” he said.

The log-in referenced by the leaker appears to unlock press access to unreleased content on mediaroom.starz.com. That page has been taken down since, quite possibly due to the leak. Thanks to the video though, we can see how the portal looked on the leaker’s phone.

Unreleased ‘Power’ episodes on the STARZ portal

“That’s the whole series bitch, but I can’t log out though, so I can’t send it to you. The man says don’t log out. So i’m gonna watch these last two episodes and then spoil it for y’all,” the ‘cammer’ said over one of the episodes.

The original claim that theses were screener copies holds up. Throughout all three episodes, an occasional message appears across the bottom of the screen, declaring that the episodes are “for screening purposes only.”

Screener copies, for your eyes only

If the whole situation isn’t bizarre enough so far, the episodes contain quite a bit of complaining from the ‘cammer’, mainly due to his arm aching from holding up the recording phone for such a long time.

Why he didn’t simply place it down on the table isn’t clear. He managed it with the playback phone, which is seen leaning against a large water container throughout, something the ‘cammer’ believes is pretty badass.

“You see, I got my shit propped up like a G,” he said, placing the phone against the water bottle. “Next episode, definitely not holdin’ this shit, so you n*****s gotta relax.”

If this whole scenario isn’t crazy enough, the ‘cammer’ polishes off his virtuoso performance by turning the ‘cam’ phone around and recording his own face for several seconds. To save his embarrassment we won’t publish an image here but needless to say, he is extremely easy to identify, as is his Facebook page, where the content seems to have first appeared.

While there’s clearly no criminal mastermind behind these leaks, dumping unreleased TV shows online can result in a hefty jail sentence, no matter how poorly it’s done. The gentleman involved should hope that STARZ and the FBI are prepared to see the funny side. Fingers crossed….

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

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