Pirate streaming services remain widely appealing to a broad audience. At a fraction of the cost of regular subscriptions, they open the door to all sorts of entertainment.
This practice is a thorn in the side of rights holders, who are increasingly cracking down on this business. In the UK, anti-piracy group FACT has been leading the charge.
The group’s referrals have resulted in several successful convictions, which often include prison sentences. This morning, Steven Underwood, another FACT target, faced justice before the Truro Magistrates Court.
FACT suspected the man of selling pirate subscriptions and in January, the Police Regional Organised Crime Unit entered his home with a search warrant. They seized his phone and laptop, among other things, which later confirmed his involvement.
A follow-up investigation revealed that Underwood sold roughly £400,000 worth of subscriptions. That’s a substantial amount, but the yearly profits are likely much lower. The service may have been running for years already and the man likely had to pay a supplier as well.
The subscriptions provided access to a wide variety of content, including that of Sky, BT, and the Premier League.
While these types of cases can be drawn out, the seller admitted both copyright and fraud charges, FACT informs TorrentFreak. Following this guilty plea, the court’s main decision is to determine the appropriate conviction.
As is common with these announcements, details are scarce. The name of the streaming service or what it offered exactly is unknown. FACT CEO Kieron Sharp is, however, using the opportunity to warn other vendors.
“We are constantly working to remove sellers of illegal streaming subscriptions from the market and bring them to justice. The message is clear – if you are tempted to sell access to content that is not licensed or owned by you, you risk facing a criminal conviction,” Sharp says.
The sentencing of Underwood is scheduled to take place next month. He faces a maximum prison sentence of up to two years for the copyright offense, and ten years for fraud.
That said, history has shown that actual sentences depend on a variety of factors which can vary quite a bit.
This summer, FACT boasted that the mastermind behind the Dreambox service was sentenced to seven years and four months of jail time. A few weeks later, however, a seller of pirate streaming devices was handed a sentence of 300 hours unpaid community service.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/monitor-featured.jpg00Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-11-22 11:22:082019-11-22 11:22:08UK Man Admits to Selling £400,000 in Pirate Streaming Subscriptions
It will probably come as a surprise to many of you that the active team of Kodi developers is tiny – millions of users and yet only a handful of volunteers spending their spare time to do all the technical stuff at the heart of Kodi. In turn, there is another handful of valuable people providing user support, forum moderation, supervision of the addon repo, and so on. Sometimes, we have a need for specific skills that the team does not currently have. Well, that’s what has happened.
You can read all about the switch to Python3 here, an essential upgrade to one of the underlying tools which Kodi uses. This is a breaking change for us, and there is a lot of work that needs to be done to get things functional again. In turn, this has brought the lack of experience of (or even interest in) developing on the Windows platforms in the team to a crisis.
We are currently very short of active developers with in-depth, practical knowledge of developing and deploying C++ applications on Windows platforms, for both the desktop and UWP versions of Kodi. We especially need people:
who know and understand CMake, to bring packaging of Windows dependencies into line with those of our other actively-developed platforms.
with knowledge of the UWP API, and an interest in implementing Kodi as a UWP app running on Xbox, etc.
We cannot hold up releases of Kodi just for one or two platforms, no matter how large or active they may be or how many users they have. So there is a real risk that if new blood does not join the team, at least UWP (XBox) will have to be dropped for Kodi v20 and probably even Matrix v19.
Put bluntly, we need Windows developers. If that is you, and you’d be willing and interested to work on a project like Kodi, then we’d love to hear from you. We really want to say that our existing developers would be able to mentor as much as required, and we will certainly assist as much as we can, but in reality you need to be self-reliant and sufficiently experienced to be able to hold your own. Kodi is not a starter project, more a serious mountain that few conquer; it’s complex, but very rewarding too. A sense of adventure and enjoyment of unravelling mysteries and puzzles would help a lot.
Bottom line, without developer interest, the likelihood of there being a UWP release for v19 is slim, and v20 would be zero.
Your Kodi needs you!
Footnote: for those who may be interested, Team member Rechi has provided the following technical notes.
The current dependency system is mandatory for compilation on Android, iOS, macOS and tvOS. It can be also used for Linux, but we usually use system libraries (provided by the distribution). The process compiles all libraries needed for Kodi (link) from source, along with some required tools (link).
For Windows, however, pre-compiled libraries (except FFmpeg and libdvd) and executables are downloaded (download-dependencies.bat) and then used to build Kodi. Because some libs depend on other libs, one has to recompile all reverse dependencies to be sure everything is still working. If an issue then shows up within a library, that one has to be compiled again (and maybe also, in turn, its reverse dependencies), packaged and re-uploaded, instead of simply fixing the issue in source code.
Where we’re trying to get to with Windows, then, is to have all necessary libraries compiled from source, as an integrated part of the build process, and thus replace the download-dependencies.bat, download-msys2.bat and make-mingwlibs.bat scripts.
The main changes for this can be found here as detailed in this pull request (link). It switches from downloading pre-compiled native executables to building them from source. Target libraries are only switched to compiling from source for x86-windows, arm-windowsstore, x86-windowsstoreand x86_64-windowsstore, because it currently contains only required dependencies. This means those platforms will lose some functionality until the libs are added. This can be done one by one and I can guide anyone who is interested. Once all optional libraries are added, x86_64-windows platform can also be switched to this dependency system.
While the war on IPTV still holds, a new development came out just today. One of the most upcoming vloggers, OMI In A Hellcat, previously known as Target In 1080p just released a video sharing with his audience that he got raided by the FBI. OMI whose real name is Omar, in previous videos has repeatedly stated that he had a $50.000.000 fortune. In his new channel on YouTube he is vlogging his daily activities, mostly buying crazy-expensive stuff for himself, family and friends. This extravagant lifestyle is most probably what made the authorities, the FBI in the specifics, take a closer look at his possessions. In the video which got pretty viral already Omar states that the FBI seized everything: houses, SD Cards, cars, bikes, computers, jewelry, phones, drones. And in the million dollar question “what happened with the FBI?” he goes “It was pretty much IPTV and taxes and shit and hiring the wrong CPA [accountant]. This is really important for you guys, make sure your taxes are paid for” he says. The “taxes and shit” seems to be a reference to pending tax evasion and money laundering charges following a three-year IRS investigation. According to him he didn’t paid taxes for more than two years.
Also in the same video he starts talking about his KODI related activities and most importantly about his IPTV experience. He claims that he has found a loophole by which he could create his IPTV company and restream cable as IPTV. I for first am shocked by the details he gave and confessed on camera. I think that whatever the case is, he should have consulted a lawyer and keep the rest for himself. As he should have done before with his high-end lifestyle. In previous videos he shared that he had long left the IPTV / streaming world but this last video seems to suggest otherwise.
If anything, from what he shared looks like he is still connected to the “grey” area of IPTV companies. And truth be told Gears TV and Reloaded TV, two of the IPTV brands he previously represented are both down as of yesterday. The message you will get when trying to access them is “Down For Maintenance” but by the shocking words of OMI we hear that everything is down and he will take the fall for all the people that are working with him. He also pointed out that he is certain that he will face jail time: “I paid for my channels. I did things the old school way. I used capture cards. I take full responsibility so anybody on my team and shit, I pretty much hope you guys don’t ever go to jail now”.
The video has even more shocking revelations and even a mention of someone being a confidential informant, most probably a member of his team. And while all those details are all public domain by his own intent, I really think I shouldn’t dive into it more. After all these are really serious accusations and whatever happened no life should be ruined. He unfortunately added something very dark which I really hope was a thing of a moment: “I’m gonna go on live….and i’m going to kill myself. I’m gonna go on live, express how I feel and then shoot myself on live.”
In conclusion, seems like this is more a money laundering / tax evasion case than a copyright issue. OMI has also some hosting business for gaming like servers for Grand Theft Auto and Minecraft. And with such a luxurious lifestyle, if you never paid taxes it is certain that you will get trouble from the IRS. I hope everything resolves for all people involved in the best and safest way and of course good luck to OMI himself. But if I may, I would also recommend to him to consult a lawyer and keep matters to himself. It doesn’t worth the views…
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Target-in-1080p-Aka-OMI-In-A-Hellcat-50.000.000-Fortune-Seized-By-FBI-Gears-TV-Shutdown.jpg10801920Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-11-21 16:48:382019-11-21 16:48:42Target in 1080p Aka OMI In A Hellcat $50.000.000 Fortune Seized By FBI – Gears TV Shutdown
It is not uncommon for anti-piracy groups to state that some ‘pirates’ make a lot of money.
However, whenever that is the case, there’s a tendency for most in the piracy world to maintain a low profile.
Take that position, multiply it by a million. You’re now just halfway to the crazy world of YouTube sensation OMI IN A HELLCAT.
Regularly seen on his channel adding yet another supercar to his huge collection (a recent addition was a McLaren 720s Spider), OMI – real name Omar Carrasquillo – is the founder and owner of ‘pirate’ IPTV service Gears Reloaded.
There’s no suggestion that all of OMI’s rumored $50m fortune came from piracy (he reportedly owns real estate, a restaurant, and several other businesses) but it seems highly likely that the Gears Reloaded gig is well and truly over.
Starting early yesterday, users of the Gears Reloaded IPTV service reported rare downtime. The website connected to the service displays a message indicating ‘down for maintenance’ but according to OMI himself, that’s only part of the story.
“This ain’t clickbait. This ain’t fake, this is not fake. This is 100% real,” OMI said in a noticeably subdued live Q&A with his fans a couple of hours ago, streamed from a friend’s house in Philadelphia.
“I’m gonna let you guys know exactly…and by the way, the FBI is in here [the channel] watching right now as we speak. What i’m gonna need you guys to do for me, i’m gonna need you to buy that merch when it drops,” the persistent entrepreneur began.
“Pretty much they seized all my cars. One thing they didn’t seize was the things I was able to sell a few weeks ago, even a few days ago before this shit happened. A few cars and shit.
“When I tell you they took ‘everything’, they took every SD card, every camera, every television in my house – HOUSES. They took every car. They took ALL my Hellcats. They only thing they didn’t take was my dick because it’s attached to my balls.”
Describing himself for the benefit of newcomers, OMI insisted that his wealth isn’t the result of selling drugs. He began as an app developer for Kodi, one that “got hacked early on.” He then answered the million-dollar question – what happened with the FBI?
“It was pretty much IPTV and taxes and shit and hiring the wrong CPA [accountant]. This is really important for you guys, make sure your taxes are paid for,” he said.
That “taxes and shit” is apparently a reference to pending tax evasion and money laundering charges following a two-year IRS investigation. This is particularly interesting when one considers that OMI has regularly and persistently described pirate IPTV as legal.
“I hit a great area and exploited it and they just didn’t like it. I made a ton of money but at the same time a lot of the money I made super-legit,” he told the Q&A.
“I felt that what I was doing wasn’t illegal. Streaming is totally legal, it’s just the way they’re trying to word it, it’s a little different. But streaming isn’t illegal. It was never live television, it was always delayed television and there’s no laws against it. There’s no laws against it.
“This is Napster 2.0. This wasn’t killing anybody. If anything I saved hundreds of thousands of people [with] cheaper cable. IPTV is not illegal in the US. It isn’t. It isn’t. It’s illegal in other countries but it’s not illegal in the US.
“The [Copyright Act] has nothing to do with streaming and when they seize those servers and they realize there’s nothing being stored on these servers, you have nothing on me. Streaming is not illegal. I saw a window, I saw an opportunity, I exploited the fuck out of it. That’s all it is.”
In earlier videos, OMI said that he previously made lots of money from hosting services, including Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto servers. He also talked about selling huge numbers of Firesticks. Generally, it’s difficult to find a video where the amount of money he’s made isn’t either the sole topic of conversation or at least heavily featured.
But according to OMI, that might be more difficult in the future.
“[My friend] had to lend me a phone because I don’t have a phone. They seized millions of dollars out of all my accounts. They took all the cash I had laying around,” he says. “They took all my jewelry [a recent video has OMI apparently buying $300K’s worth], kids’ things, they took Xboxes, they took computers, laptops, cellphones. They didn’t even leave drones.”
Having previously watched a good number of OMI’s videos, his optimism and positivity have always shone through. That wasn’t the case during this Q&A. By his own estimation, he’s going to prison “for a few years” although he says he’ll also take the rap for those who worked with him.
Another particular point of interest is that OMI insists that entertainment companies never sued him.
“I could’ve dealt with the MPA or the NFL suing me, that never happened. They never gave me fair warning, which by law they have to. Especially when it comes down to a crime like this, when it comes down to ‘copyright infringement’. They were supposed to hit me with a seize operation, or a cease and desist.
“They never hit me with that. I would’ve took it right down,” he adds.
However, OMI also admits that he had been receiving takedown notices issued from the UK on behalf of “the European leagues”, which seems like a reference to either Premier League or UEFA blocking efforts. He also acknowledges receiving notices from Sky, HBO, and similar “fucking stupid channels.”
If there is a point where a defendant in a serious criminal case should stop talking and consult a lawyer, OMI doesn’t seem to know where that point is. He told viewers that the FBI is accusing him of “stealing channels” but he insists he always paid for his – before capturing them and distributing them to his customers.
“I paid for my channels. I did things the old school way. I used capture cards. I take full responsibility so anybody on my team and shit, I pretty much hope you guys don’t ever go to jail now,” he explained.
According to OMI, he knew an investigation was underway since an associate he names as ‘Hector Fuentes’ was a CI (an informant).
“So he used to come around and shit, with a little wire on and could see the wire through his fucking shirt and would say dumb shit to see how far it would get him. The mother-fucker was a confidential informant. The whole time, he was putting people in jail for a long time,” OMI claimed.
Considering this was a Q&A streamed live on YouTube, things then got dark, very dark indeed. OMI says that after being detained by the FBI and being run to the station, all he could think of was killing himself, live on YouTube.
“I’m gonna go on live….and i’m going to kill myself. I’m gonna go on live, express how I feel and then shoot myself on live.”
Thankfully, for everyone’s sake, that didn’t happen.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/fbi-warning.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-11-21 15:19:532019-11-21 15:19:53Gears Reloaded: FBI Just Took Everything, Says Pirate IPTV Boss OMI IN A HELLCAT
UK entertainment giant Sky is widely known for taking a hard line on everything piracy related.
In recent years the company has chased vendors of pirate subscriptions and hardware, both in and outside of court.
These efforts are meant to signal to the public that piracy, streaming piracy in particular, will not be tolerated. However, this message has apparently not hit home with one of the company’s own stars, Karl Pilkington.
Pilkington is an actor, comedian, and presenter who is widely known for “An Idiot Abroad,” the Sky 1 travel series with a comedic twist. He also worked with Sky on the documentary “The Moaning of Life” and more recently he ventured into the sitcom arena with the series “Sick of It”, again at Sky.
Sick of It is about to premiere its second season and to give his 1.5+ million fans on Facebook something to get in the mood, Pilkington recently decided to share an episode of the show from last year.
That usually isn’t a problem. However, Sky doesn’t share the show for free and only offers it on-demand but that didn’t prove to be too much of a hurdle for the show’s co-writer, who found a freely accessible streaming copy on Vimeo.
“For anyone who hasn’t seen it yet. Here’s an episode. Series 2 soon,” Pilkington wrote.
This clearly isn’t an official release. The tags on the video reveal that this copy was sourced from a ‘scene’ group, PLUTONiUM in this case, and reuploaded to Vimeo by someone named Gary. The same person also shared a copy of the first episode through the same account.
This means that Pilkington is effectively sharing a pirated copy of his own show with over a million people. And since Sky holds at least some of the rights, that’s not supposed to happen.
The ‘mistake’ didn’t go unnoticed. Commenters on Facebook highlighted that it was a pirate release and the same was pointed out on Reddit, where many appreciated the unusual move.
The question is, of course, whether this is indeed a mistake or some kind of PR stunt. Giving over a million people a free teaser may draw in some extra eyeballs and if that’s picked up by the news, it means even more exposure.
However, when we look closer at Pilkington’s previous engagement on Facebook we started to notice a trend. Apparently, he’s keeping a close eye on the comments. When someone said that she wasn’t familiar with Sick of It, but would like to watch it, Pilkington kindly shared a link.
And that wasn’t the first time either. The show’s co-writer has been doing this for weeks, sharing the same link to everyone who shows interest. In particular, those who don’t have access to it.
To us, it appears that Pilkington means no harm and simply wants to get people to see his show. That makes sense. As a creator, you want people to enjoy what you’ve made. The fact that he’s sharing a pirated copy may not have even entered his mind.
Whether Sky will like this is another question of course. At the time of writing all links are still online, but it wouldn’t be a massive surprise if they are soon taken down. Technically, Pilkington is now a repeat infringer so he could even lose his Facebook account.
Unless he takes action before Sky does, of course.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/piratefeat1.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-11-21 09:22:282019-11-21 09:22:28Karl Pilkington Shares a Pirated Copy of His Own TV-Show
Last year Cox settled its piracy liability lawsuit with music rights company BMG.
While the company hoped that this would be the end of its copyright woes, the next legal battle was already being prepared.
This time, the ISP was up against 53 music companies, including Capitol Records, Warner Bros, and Sony Music.
The rightsholders complained that Cox categorically failed to terminate repeat copyright infringers and that it substantially profited from this ongoing ‘piracy’ activity. All at the expense of the music companies and other rightsholders.
A year later the case is heading to trial where Cox will have to defend itself once again. However, not before some final issues are resolved.
In August, both Cox and the music companies requested summary judgments on several crucial issues. Among other things, the ISP requested a ruling that it’s not vicariously liable for copyright infringement.
This week US District Court Judge Liam O’Grady ruled on the requests. He decided to deny most, stating that these issues will be resolved at trial. The Judge did, however, issue a ruling on whether Cox had “knowledge” of the allegedly pirating customers.
The music companies asked to have this issue resolved before trial. It is a crucial question, as it determines whether the ISP can be held contributorily liable for pirating subscribers or not.
Cox first argued that the notices failed to identify many copyrighted works. For example, in some cases, the music companies only identified one song from a torrent that contained more works. In addition, the notices only highlighted infringements of sound recordings, not the compositions.
The court, however, waved away this defense and concluded that the notices are certainly specific enough when it comes to specific sound recordings. They include a title, timestamp, date, notice id, IP-address, and hash, among other things.
“Based on the level of detail included in the notices directed at Cox and its subscribers, there is no doubt that Defendants had more than just ‘generalized knowledge’ of infringement,” Judge O’Grady writes.
“Thus, the Court finds as a matter of law that there is no genuine issue of fact regarding the sufficiency of the RIAA notices in this case, and that they can support the knowledge element of a contributory infringement claim,” he adds.
The second question is whether these notices, which the RIAA sent, can lead to the conclusion that Cox had knowledge of the infringements in a legal sense. The ISP denied this, but according to the court, it’s clear that the notices are sufficient.
“It would be farcical to argue that Cox had no knowledge of the hundreds of thousands of notices it received indicating infringement for the works in suit,” Judge O’Grady writes.
“The notices were sent to an email address Cox created for the very purpose of receiving this information, and were processed by a corporate department dedicated to abuse and security for Cox.”
Finally, Cox also argued that it can’t be liable for alleged infringements that occurred through business subscribers, as it can’t identify individual users of these businesses. However, the court ruled that there is no ground to exclude business subscribers at this point.
All in all, it is clear that Cox had specific enough knowledge of pirating subscribers to hold it contributorily liable. However, to do so, a jury must also conclude that the ISP contributed to or induced the infringements. That will be decided at trial.
In addition to the “knowledge” question, Judge O’Grady also ruled that the music companies own or control the exclusive rights to all works that are part of the case, something Cox contested.
With these issues ‘resolved’ the case is yet another step close to trial, which is currently scheduled to take place next month.
—
A copy of US District Court Judge Liam O’Grady’s memorandum opinion and order is available here (pdf).
Way back in 2013, Movie2K was not only one of the most-visited pirate sites, but also one of the most popular platforms on the entire Internet.
Offering all of the latest movies and TV shows in a convenient interface, during February that year Movie2K was the 240th most popular site in the world.
In Germany, where the site was particularly well-received, it was the 19th most popular site, period, pulling more traffic than Twitter, Amazon, Apple and PayPal. Understandably, the site attracted plenty of anti-piracy attention but suddenly, at the end of May 2013, the site shut down without warning.
In its wake appeared Movie4K, a site that bore more than a passing resemblance to its similarly-named predecessor, but it now appears that the authorities in Germany had not simply forgotten about Movie2K or bringing those behind it to justice.
According to the Attorney General’s Office in Dresden, two men aged 44 and 37 were arrested last Thursday in the states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Bavaria. The men are suspected former operators of Movie2K.
The men are reported to have distributed 880,000 copies of movies and TV shows between the fall of 2008 when Movie2K was founded and May 2013 when it closed down. They are also suspected of operating the streaming site Stream2K.com.
Movie2K before its closure
A spokesperson for the Prosecutor General’s Office told SWR that the man from Rhineland-Palatinate had been living there for some time and that extensive evidence had been seized including computer equipment, cell phones, cash and documents.
Investigators claim that the suspects generated “several million euros” from advertising and other methods via Movie2K, which stepped in to become one of the world’s largest illegal streaming portals after the demise of Kino.to. That site was shut down following one of the most significant anti-piracy operations in history.
The Attorney General’s Office further revealed that a third man was arrested in Berlin last week. He is described as a 37-year-old real estate entrepreneur who was detained under suspicion of money laundering offenses.
It’s claimed that the individual worked with the former operators of Movie2K in the fall of 2013, managing some of the revenues generated by the men by making financial investments and obtaining real estate in Saxony, Brandenburg and Berlin.
The numbers under discussion are significant, with the authorities claiming that the alleged money-launderer received more than 5.1 million euros from the other suspects through a Dutch mailbox company alone by mid-2016.
The home and business addresses of the defendants were searched with the support of officials of the Land Office of Criminal Investigation Berlin and the Criminal Investigation Police Bamberg.
As highlighted by Tarnkappe, the Prosecutor General’s Office was previously involved in the case brought against Kino.to. It’s suspected that there were links between that now-defunct site and the operators of Movie2K.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/arrest-feat.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-11-20 13:20:172019-11-20 13:20:17Police Arrest Three in Prolonged Movie2K Piracy Investigation
Raids, shutdowns, legal action, settlements, and even technical issues have caused many sellers of ‘pirate’ IPTV to shut down in recent months.
The end to the problem for broadcasters, however, seems as far away as ever, with large numbers of providers and sellers managing to service the illicit market, despite serious setbacks.
Hoping to make a dent in the supply chain, police in Spain say they have carried out an operation to “dismantle” a service that sourced raw TV streams and distributed them, supplied VOD content, and then sold packages to clients.
The investigation began in 2017 when officers of the Central Cybercrime Unit became aware of a Facebook page where access to pirate TV was being offered.
Investigators determined that those behind the operation were capturing channels broadcast by the major TV outfits and uploading them to servers operated by different companies abroad. At the same time, they operated a sales and marketing division, to sell their product to the public.
In total, 12 people were identified as suspects, with four people said to have been in charge of capturing the broadcast signals and distributing them, managing access to content, attracting customers, and collecting the cash through various platforms.
The remaining eight were considered resellers of the services. These individuals obtained access to the main platform from the four operators at a reduced cost in order to market these subscriptions to their own customers in Spain and overseas.
Image credit: Policia Nacional
The two-year investigation came to head last Friday when the 12 suspects were arrested when raids were carried out on addresses in Madrid, Toledo, Alicante, Murcia, Gran Canaria, Tenerife and other locations.
Seven websites and two social media profiles were shut down and 86 decoders, 15 hard drives, 10 computers, NAS drives, 17 mobile phones, a ‘high-end’ vehicle and more than 22,000 euros in cash were seized.
According to police, the as-yet-unnamed service generated an estimated 1,000,000 euros for its operators who are now charged with various offenses including intellectual property crimes, belonging to a criminal organization, and money laundering.
In our ongoing mission to bring you the very greatest (and most reliable) media centre software in the world, it’s time to let another point release escape into the wild. Usual rules apply: this isn’t about features, it’s about stability and usability.
As usual, you can find a full summary of closed pull requests on GitHub, but the summary would be…
Interface/Look-and-Feel
Estuary and GUI info fixes, including scrollbar behaviour, icon names, label changes
Add dual support for Artist Slideshow 2.x and 3.x
Fix to always allow ‘Black’ screen saver
Fix wrong sort order list for music playlists node
Playback/Display
Fixes to external subtitle playback
Fixes to support for archives over UPnP
Fixes to “queue item” and “play next” for STRM files with Plugin URL
Fixes to “hide watched” status for videos
Fixes to resume handling when marking a file as unwatched
PVR
Fixes to EPG database storage, start/stop of PVR service
Fix handling of open modal dialogs
Fixes to commercial skip (EDL) processing
Other/General Fixes
Multiple Android changes around windowing, secure decoder and SDK versions
Multiple iOS changes, including support for iPhone 11 and 7th generation iPad, plus fixes for touch input, overlapping drawing surfaces, sandbox checks, notch support.
MacOS fixes around windowing, where only a portion of the screen was correctly rendered
Log files improvements around verbosity and security
Shoutcast improvements
Various fixes and improvements to add-on settings, package build documentation, build system, advancedsettings.xml, skin/profile changes and many other subsystems
The nature of point releases is that most of these changes won’t be visible to most people unless they address a specific problem you’d stumbled across. That said, they’re all real bugs, and real fixes, so thanks as always to all who found a bug, took the time to report it and, in some cases, provided a fix.
The full v18.5 changelog can be found in our GitHub milestone. If you want to read back on what was actually changed in v18 itself, you can find the corresponding articles in the blog posts – Kodi 18, Kodi 18.1, Kodi 18.2, Kodi 18.3 and Kodi 18.4.
Application delpoyment on different platforms (notably, Google Play and the Microsoft Store) varies due to circumstances outside of our control. It may thus take a few more days to appear everywhere, so just stay tuned.
Matt Lowne is a very popular YouTuber with a passion for the simulation game Kerbal Space Program. Since 2013 he’s amassed close to 56 million views but late last week, his video world was turned upside down.
In common with many YouTubers, Matt didn’t want any copyright issues on his channel. So, to play things safely, he obtained the track ‘Dreams‘ by Joakim Karud from YouTube’s very own audio library for use in his intro. Unfortunately, this strategy of obtaining supposedly risk-free music from a legitimate source still managed to backfire.
Very early last Friday, Matt says he received a “massive barrage” of emails from YouTube, targeting “pretty much all” of his KSP videos. The emails said that Matt’s videos “may have content owned or licensed by SonyATV, PeerMusic, Warner Chappell, Audiam and LatinAutor.”
A clearly exasperated Matt took to YouTube, noting that any ads that now show up on his videos “split up the revenue between all the companies listed” in the emails, with Matt himself “allowed to keep what’s left of that.” He doesn’t know what that amount might be, because he says there’s just no way of knowing.
After highlighting the vague use of the word “may” in YouTube’s emails to him, Matt then went on to describe the real “kick in the gut”, which revolves around the track itself.
‘Dreams’ composer Joakim Karud allows anyone to use his music on YouTube, even commercially, for free. And the fact that Matt downloaded the track from YouTube’s own library was the icing on this particularly bitter cake.
“So I guess this library can’t be trusted at all,” says Matt. “YouTube might just remove songs from it after the fact and then shrug off any consequences for videos that use that music as you know, shit happens.”
Matt said he had to time out to manually protest the automated claims against his account but he says his overtures were immediately rejected, “almost like it’s an automated bot or something.” But things get worse from there.
After contesting each claim and having all of those rejected, Matt says the only option left is to appeal every single one. However, if an appeal is lost, the video in question will be removed completely and a strike will be placed against his account.
It’s three strikes and you’re out on YouTube, so this is not an attractive option for Matt if the music companies somehow win the fight. So, instead, Matt is appealing against just one of the complaints in the hope that he can make some progress without putting his entire account at risk.
Matt says he won’t be able to risk putting any music in his videos in future, because even with the best intentions, a “billion-dollar corporation” can simply decide that they “would like to start benefiting off your blood, sweat and tears.”
Worryingly, searches online show that not only are other people affected by similar mass complaints, but there may – may – be an explanation for what is going on here.
“SonyATV & Warner Chappell have claimed 24 of my videos because the royalty free song Dreams by Joakim Karud (from the OFFICIAL YOUTUBE AUDIO LIBRARY BTW) uses a sample from Kenny Burrell Quartet’s ‘Weaver of Dream’,” a Twitter user wrote on Saturday.
Sure enough, if one turns to the WhoSampled archive, Dreams is listed as having sampled Weaver of Dreams, a track from 1956 to which Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC and Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. own the copyrights.
If the trend of claims against ‘Dreams’ continues, there is potential for huge upheaval on YouTube and elsewhere. Countless thousands of videos use the track and as a result it has become very well-known. Sadly, people trying to claim it as their own is nothing new but fingers crossed, common sense will sort out the present issues.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/youtube-feat.jpg3211200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-11-19 07:17:132019-11-19 07:17:13‘Royalty-Free’ Music Supplied By YouTube Results in Mass Video Demonetization
