LibreELEC 9.0 (Leia) has finally arrived after a long gestation period. Based upon Kodi v18.0, the Final 9.0 release contains many changes and refinements to user experience and a complete overhaul of the underlying OS core to improve stability and extend hardware support. Kodi v18 also brings new features like Kodi Retroplayer and DRM support that (equipped with an appropriate add-on) allows Kodi to unofficially stream content from services like Netflix and Amazon.
Settings Add-on:
Changeable SSH passwords!
Default firewall (iptables) with simple configurations for Home/Public networks
Updates are moved to their own menu, other options are cleaned up a little
Safe Mode boot when Kodi experiences startup problems
Changeable SSH passwords and a default firewall configuration have been added to combat the increasing number of HTPC installs that can be found on the public internet. The increase is partly due to simple maths; our userbase has grown so the number of users inappropriately exposing their HTPC to the internet has also grown. The static password for libreelec is present on most/all password dictionary lists so it’s important we start encouraging users to change it (the first-run wizard will prompt when SSH is enabled).
More people are using VPN services for privacy without realising this exposes SSH/SMB/Web services. To combat this problem we have added simple firewall configurations for Home/Public networks; the Home configuration blocks inbound connections from non-private networks, e.g. traffic from the Internet to the public IP address used with the VPN connection.
As the Kodi piracy scene continues to decline we have seen an increase in users with outdated add-ons that cause problems during upgrades so “Safe Mode” counts Kodi startup crashes. After five startup failures it intervenes with a default (clean) configuration and prominent warning so users know there is a problem – but still have a working GUI to troubleshoot from.
Retroplayer:
Kodi v18 brings initial support for retro gaming and the ability to play hundreds of retro games directly from within Kodi. We provide a large number of emulator cores from our add-on repo, but no games (bring your own) although there are a couple of open source test game add-ons (2048 etc.) in our repo. In this first iteration of Kodi retro gaming support the user interface can be a little confusing and we still need to write-up some HOWTO guides for the wiki. Kodi developers are working on a game database (for Kodi v19) which will make the process of managing and using game ROMs easier in the future.
DVB Drivers:
We now offer a larger range of DVB drivers (depending on your platform) to choose from. The “DVB drivers from the latest kernel” option also includes the majority of Hauppage drivers which have been recently upstreamed into the kernel, which is great to see!
Rockchip:
Despite the 8.95.1 release number our Rockchip releases remain in an Alpha state with limited support. The Kodi version is updated but there are no significant video/audio improvements to the Rockchip 4.4 kernel codebase – and none planned. Our work on Rockchip support has refocussed onto the Linux 4.20 kernel to use the modern kernel frameworks needed for the next-generation Kodi video pipeline. This work is progressing nicely, but it means the 4.4 codebase “is what it is” until a future kernel bump.
New Devices:
Amlogic
Khadas VIM(1) – requires a clean install if using current community images
Libre Computer LePotato
Rockchip
96rocks ROCK960
ASUS Tinker Board
Firefly ROC-RK3328-CC
Khadas Edge
PINE64 ROCK64
PINE64 RockPro64
Popcorn Hour RockBox
Popcorn Hour Transformer
Radxa ROCK Pi 4
Rockchip Sapphire Board
Mqmaker MiQi
If you experience problems, please open an thread at our forum. You can also open an ticket at our issue tracker.
When UltraViolet was first launched eight years ago, it was portrayed as a convenient alternative to piracy.
The cloud-based service, backed by major Hollywood studios, allows users to store digital copies of purchased films and TV-shows, which they can then easily access on various platforms and devices.
In the years that followed UltraViolet amassed over 30 million users, but in recent times things went downhill. The number of supported retailers slowly started to drop and this week parent organization DECE threw in the towel, Variety reports.
According to the official announcement, the planned closure on July 31 was triggered by “market factors” including the rise of new platforms.
“In the years since UltraViolet’s launch, we’ve seen the emergence of services that provide expanded options for content collection and management independent of UltraViolet. This and other market factors have led to the decision to discontinue UltraViolet,” the statement reads.
While it’s not uncommon for services to go out of business when technology and markets progress, with digital content it’s often a sensitive issue. Especially for a platform that was once seen as a modern piracy alternative.
Those millions of UltraViolet users now realize that ‘cloud’ ownership is not the same as a physical Bru-ray or a DRM free download. The movies they own in their digital lockers will soon be locked up for good.
With this in mind, it’s interesting to revisit some comments industry insiders made about the service in the past.
Former DECE CEO Mark Teitell, for example, said that UltraViolet fulfills “a real belief among consumers that if they own [content], they should be able to watch it. No fear of losing things you buy, with the additional value that cloud storage eliminates problems if discs are lost, broken or scratched.”
Or what about Thomas Gewecke, former president of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, who previously described UltraViolet as “a new service for giving consumers a new relationship with ownership.”
This new relationship with ownership certainly has a new meaning now. After July 31, users can no longer access their movies on the UltraViolet service.
The good news is that in ‘most’ cases, users can still redeem their UltraViolet codes through the retailers which are still operating. This includes VUDU, Kaleidescape, and Sony Pictures.
“In most cases, we anticipate very little impact,” DECE notes. “While there could be some disruption, we do not anticipate this on a broad scale and are working diligently to minimize and avoid such instances.”
In all fairness, the digital ownership caveats are in no way limited to UltraViolet. Any digital media platform can ultimately go out of business. Or just as bad, depending on the rights, a movie could simply disappear from your library, including iTunes.
There is simply no guaranteed perpetual right of digital ownership for movie customers. But at least there are no scratched DVDs either.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/iptv-movies-film-feat.jpg2501179Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-02-02 01:05:312019-02-02 01:05:31Movie Piracy ‘Alternative’ UltraViolet is Shutting Down
The Tribler client has been around for well over a decade and during that time it’s developed into the only truly decentralized BitTorrent client out there.
Even if all torrent sites were shut down today, Tribler users would still be able to find and add new content.
The well-funded project is managed by dozens of academic researchers, which is a guarantee for continued development. One of the challenges in recent years has been to make torrenting via Tribler anonymous.
The Tribler team addressed this problem by adding a built-in Tor network to the client, routing all data through a series of peers. In essence, Tribler users then become their own Tor network helping each other to hide their IP-addresses through encrypted proxies.
This works reasonably well but has some downsides. A Tor-like network tends to be slower as files are shared through multiple connections. In addition, it relies on “exit nodes” whose IP-addresses remain visible to the outside world.
The latest Triber release, published today, aims to address these challenges in ways we’ve never seen before.
Professor Johan Pouwelse, leader and founder of the Tribler project, informs us that his lab at Delft University of Technology has bought 14.4 petabytes of Internet bandwidth. This bandwidth, provided by Leaseweb, will be used to scale-up the Tor-like privacy protection.
To pay for the bandwidth they sold a three-digit number of its Bitcoin stash. The University took an interest in Bitcoin in its early days and started mining years ago, and this money is now used for Tribler’s development.
While it’s certainly interesting to see that Bitcoin mining funded the bandwidth purchase, what Tribler is doing with it is even more important.
Tribler was the first torrent client to treat bandwidth as a currency. It added a blockchain which keeps track of people’s sharing habits and with the latest release users can now “mine” credits. The ultimate goal is to have a stable economy with users trading in bandwidth to ensure fast and anonymous downloads.
To kickstart this economy, Tribler will deploy “token robots” that can manage the bandwidth and operate exit points. This means that it’s easier for individual users to become anonymous.
“We create swarms of intelligent bots to manage bandwidth. These bots do as they are programmed, they can make smart decisions. We believe robots can’t be as easily corrupted as humans or forced to act against their own will,” Pouwelse says.
“They can autonomously buy servers using Bitcoin, self-replicate, operate a Tor-like exit node, and sell Tribler bandwidth coins to survive another month,” he adds.
More than 26 researchers worked on “terminator bots,” as they are called, and Pouwelse says that they are among the most autonomous and smart software bots out there.
“Terminator bots” presentation at the Second Annual Delft Blockchain Lab Symposium
By default, users are not operating as an exit-node in the pseudo-anonymity network. This can be changed in the settings, but people who choose to be an exit-node should be aware of the consequences.
Over the past several years, millions of euros have been spent on Tribler and related research. Professor Pouwelse and his team will continue this work during the coming years. They see themselves as a unique project without commercial interests.
There are others working on similar decentralization goals, combining BitTorrent with the blockchain. However, professor Pouwelse is not a fan of these initiatives.
“We are seeing Bittorrent bundling malware and promoting a spammy ICO offering. It is sad to see rot inside our great community. We are the only non-profit team advancing decentralization from the tested foundation of BitTorrent,” Pouwelse says.
Today the researchers released Triber V7.2 and those who are interested can take it for a spin.
As far as anti-piracy strategies go, website blocking is considered by entertainment industry players to be one of the most effective.
Following action by the movie, TV shows, music, sports and publishing industries, thousands of websites are blocked by ISPs in many countries, usually following copyright lawsuits against the providers themselves.
In Spain, following action by local music industry players including anti-piracy group AGEDI, even more sites can now be added to the growing list. Following a decision handed down by Barcelona Commercial Court No. 1, a total of seven torrent-based platforms will have to be blocked by local ISPs.
Perhaps the most recognizable of the group is 1337x.to, the world’s second most-visited torrent site according to TF’s recently published Top 10 Torrent Sites data. The site is blocked in many countries due to its popularity but against the odds, continues to grow.
Next up is LimeTorrents.cc, which ranked as the 7th most popular torrent site in our report. In common with 1337x, the site is subject to ISP blocking in several regions.
Two additional popular torrent indexers – Torlock.com and Torrentfunk.com – are also included in the group, along with ExtraTorrent.cd, a site that shares the name of the now-defunct giant ExtraTorrent but has no connection to the original.
Completing the list are Masquetorrent.com (which appears to be down), and Isohunt.to, which used to be a torrent indexing site but now redirects to TPB.wiki, a fairly comprehensive proxy and mirror site portal designed for unblocking blocked sites.
The decision by the Barcelona court means that major ISPs including Movistar, Vodafone, Orange, and others will soon have to begin blocking the sites. However, if ISPs use the same techniques as they did following previous court orders, a simple change of DNS will be enough for users to circumvent the blockade.
Local music industry group Promusicae (Productores de Música de España) welcomed the decision of the Barcelona Court, with president Antonio Guisasola noting that it contributes to “the end of the era of impunity” for pirates.
“We have suffered for many years at the hands of those who believed that music was a product that could be plundered and distributed without the slightest scruple,” Guisasola says.
“In the end, the efforts of creators and producers do not fall on deaf ears. Beyond the harsh generalized economic crisis, the music industry has suffered a bloody time that destroyed tens of thousands of jobs and put at serious risk the very development of our cultural fabric.
“The decisive changes implemented to favor new and more accessible modes of consumption require the backing of administrative and judicial authorities to rid themselves of the unfair competition of fraudulent businesses and resolutions such as this show that we are all moving in the right direction,” Guisasola concludes.
The music industry is not alone in its site-blocking efforts in Spain. Last year, Hollywood flexed its muscles to tackle sites offering movie and TV content illegally.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/court2-featured.jpg00Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-01-31 19:03:312019-01-31 19:03:31Court Orders 1337x, LimeTorrents, and More Blocked in Spain
Over the years we have covered dozens of piracy-related lawsuits, mostly from United States courts.
In many of these cases, defendants are foreign sites or services which don’t put up much of a fight.
That’s not true for the copyright infringement lawsuit a group of major record labels, backed by the RIAA, brought against Tofig Kurbanov last year.
The Russian operator of YouTube rippers FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com fought back with a motion to dismiss. This request was granted last week. Judge Claude Hilton ruled that the court lacked jurisdiction over these types of sites if they are operated from abroad.
“As the Websites are semi-interactive, the interactions with the users are non-commercial, and there were no other acts by the Defendant that would demonstrate purposeful targeting, the Court finds that Defendant did not purposefully avail himself of the benefits and protections of either Virginia or the United States,” the Judge wrote.
The legal win is a modern-day David vs. Goliath story. The record labels, good for billions of dollars in annual revenue, were defeated by the Russian operator of the two stream-ripping sites.
However, this battle isn’t over just yet. In his memorandum opinion, Judge Milton stressed that the labels are not allowed to refile their case in another district court. They can appeal the dismissal though, which is exactly what they’ve just done.
In a filing submitted yesterday, the record labels announce that they are appealing the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Via this route, they hope to overturn the dismissal.
Yesterday’s filing
“The court got it wrong,” RIAA spokesperson Cara Duckworth commented to Billboard.
“Its decision represents a big step backward in the protection of American culture and the creators that fuel it. We look forward to laying out our arguments in the weeks ahead,” she added.
During the appeal, the court will consider the arguments from both sides once more.
The owner of the sites, Tofig Kurbanov, has hired a team of legal experts from and will continue to fight back. Kurbanov himself has never been to the United States and his sites don’t purposefully target either Virginia or the US.
Val Gurvits, one of the attorneys who represented the site operator, informs TorrentFreak that the defense already expected the RIAA labels to appeal.
“We’re not at all surprised by the RIAA decision to appeal – this opinion really struck a blow at their strategy of suing people in places where they’ve never even visited, assuming that they’ll get a quick default judgment before the court ever realizes that there wasn’t any jurisdiction to begin with.”
The attorney doesn’t believe that the record labels are going to succeed. The District Court made a thoughtful and well-reasoned decision and it’s going to be hard for them to overturn on appeal, he says.
If the fact that .com and .biz domains are administered by companies located in Virginia is enough to establish jurisdiction, as the labels argued, then millions of foreign companies could be easily sued in Virginia, without any further presence there.
“At the end of the day, our client is an individual who lives in Russia, who has never been to the United States, and who had no substantive connection to the United States,” Gurwitz says.
“If he could be subject to personal jurisdiction here, then there’s no reason that an American citizen couldn’t be subject to jurisdiction in China or Russia for typing out lines of code in his living room in Boston. That would be a dangerous path to travel – the District Court wisely declined to go down that path and we think the 4thCircuit will similarly decline,” he adds.
The record labels, assisted by the RIAA, hoped to resolve the matter quickly but it didn’t turn out that way. For now, it’s clear that the stream-rippers and their operator have won the first battle.
During the month to come it will become clear whether the dismissal will stand or not. If the record labels lose the appeal as well, they could also choose to file a lawsuit in Russia.
<drum roll> … after another long gestation… the Kodi team is very pleased to announce the immediate availability of Kodi 18.0 “Leia” for all supported platforms (UWP for Windows Store and Xbox is working its way through the system as I type, so will be available shortly…). While we were planning to move more to a “release early, release often” model, this has some significant changes that really needed to be tested and bedded in before we launched it, so it did take a little longer than we’d hoped. It was, though, a worthwhile wait :)
To put it in some kind of context, this version includes:
Approaching 10,000 commits (code chunks changed)
More than 3000 pull-requests (collection of commits that were included in one go)
Nearly 9,000 changed files
Nearly half a million line of code added, and much the same number removed
Over 36 open source developers
A lot of dedicated free time conceiving, designing, developing and testing these changes (and all the infrastructure you see around them, including this web site)
Quite literally many, many cases of beer and wine
We’ve covered many of the detailed changes in this release in previous blog posts, but here’s a quick summary of what you’ll find in this new release:
Retroplayer gaming and associated game control support
One of the big features of this release: support for gaming emulators, ROMs and controls. This is a significant topic in its own right, so look out for future posts on this, but suffice it to say at this time that you now have a whole world of retro gaming at your fingertips, all from the same interface as your movies, music and TV shows. For the genuine experience as well, we’ve also introduced support for joysticks, gamepads, and other platform-specific controls, so the games will work just as was intended.
Digital Rights Management decryption support
Early days in many ways, but this opens a whole new world of content for Kodi. Depending on your hardware and licensing, Kodi can now access external DRM handlers and then play subscription content just like any other local media. This is significant in a time when so many people are switching to protected streaming content; there are already several add-ons available that make use of this functionality, and we genuinely hope that we’ll see support from other content providers in the future.
Music Library – new ways to explore and enjoy your music collection
Significant improvements including better filtering (media source, artist gender, type etc.); artist sort name; enhanced artwork; faster API access (particularly useful if you’re controlling Kodi by remote with the TV off). Creating and using the music library is even smoother than before. If you have never bothered to use the music library, or maybe never even used Kodi as a music player, then we encourage you to try this feature in Leia!
Live TV improvements, including support for new back-ends
Support for RDS (Radio Data System), automatic selection on startup (“boot to live TV/radio”, if you like), improved OSD and PVR information, enhanced EPG and PVR actions, and many more. Back end support has been updated across the board, with new support for Zattoo, Teleboy, and Sledovanitv.cz .
Binary addon support and the binary addon repository
While we’ve actually been using platform-specific binary addons for some time – think PVR addons and screensavers – there’s been a lot of work to expand this functionality and move to a more modular architecture as a result. This has effectively halved the main Kodi installer in size, as you now have the option to install some of these functions as you need them instead of them coming pre-bundled. The architecture also now opens the door for other types of pre-compiled binaries, perhaps to provide access to different media sources. The binary repository is currently available for Android, OSX and Windows; Linux users will still have to use the PPA, while iOS and UWP will continue to include the binary add-ons in the installer because of platform limitations.
Android Leanback and voice control
Kodi can now show its library contents on the main Android TV interface, with full voice functionality: unwatched random movies and unlistened-to albums, binge watch suggestions, and more. Voice integration allows you to search for content with Google Assistant, using the same feature for “voice typing” wherever you see the traditional Kodi on-screen keyboard.
Playback improvements (audio and video), including improved Blu-ray support
The video player is core to so much of what Kodi does, and some significant changes have been made to the architecture to ensure we’re better able to cope with 4K, 8K, HDR and similar, as well as keeping up with the variety of CODECs out there. Changes have been made to priority, to ensure that video gets the most attention from the CPU/GPU for smoothest-possible playback. Elements have been moved out into binary addons, so components can potentially be updated outside of the main Kodi code base.
We’ve also improved Blu-ray support in terms of disc detection and metadata, BD-J menu support (subject to Java support on the device), there are updated external interfaces for e.g. MPEG DASH and RTMP input, and there are improvements to 3d playback (including in 2D mode) and various changes to specific CODECs.
On the audio side, there’s a wealth of improvements and new support for all types of playback system: ALSA, PulseAudio, OSS, Pi Audio, DirectSound, WASAPI, Darwin, SndIO
“Estuary” skin modifications and changes to the GUI/skinning engine
Many of the other changes listed here have an obvious ripple effect on the Kodi interface, so we’ve made change to support these: the gaming modules and associated libraries and the PVR changes, for example. We’ve also updated keyboard layouts for more languages, updated image resources, changed API calls, improved response times with optimisations for e.g. scaling and redrawing.
Revised codebase and build guides
Starting with this release, our build guides are kept up-to-date against the current code base – current, as in (hopefully!) up-to-date against a single pull request or code commit. That means that we no longer need to maintain How-Tos and standalone guides, and you will be able to reliably find a build guide for any point in time, even retrospectively.
Platform Specifics
As a multi-platform application, Kodi inevitably has to be updated in different ways for different operating systems, whether that’s simply to keep up or whether it’s to unlock new functionality. Android gets API bumps, speech-to-text, SD card support, among other things; BSD gets all-round improved support, especially on the video (VAAPI/VDPAU) side; Linux gets DRM, Mir/Wayland support, numerous video improvements, and build system changes; iOS gets support for iOS 10, improved VDADecoder support, and general improvements on both TVOS and arm64 IOS; and Windows finally gets 64-bit binaries, along with improved UWP compilation, enhancements to image rendering, and another slew of general platform-specific improvements to how we handle libraries and APIs.
… And Other Things
Of course, there have also been a huge number of other changes, some of which will be invisible to very many users. Bluetooth support, CMake build system, visualisations and screensavers, improvements to the JSON-RPC API, improved code stability, performance. and security (as well as general code clean-up in many core areas), remote control changes, web interface changes, logging changes, dependency changes… the list goes on. Do take a look at the change log and detailed commit history (below) if you’re really interested in looking behind the curtain!
The V18 “Leia” T-shirt
Inspired by the “galaxy far, far away” theme, our resident artist Sam went above and beyond and designed perhaps the coolest Kodi announcement video of all time.
We loved his work so much that we’re modelling the Kodi 18 shirt after it, along with more art to come. Here it is, our newest, coolest shirt: K-18L – available in several shirt colours and not just black or white.
Changelog
The Kodi 18 changelog wiki page gives a list of changes for this release; those seeking a more technical listing can view the merged pull requests on GitHub.
Thanks
As always, this is a huge team effort, and our collective thanks go out to all the developers who submitted code, whether that was thousands of lines of a core new feature or a couple of lines to fix a skin bug. Thanks go out to the ecosystem of add-on and skin developers who updated or created new add-ons to use new functionality in Kodi 18.0. Likewise, we’re indebted to the many beta and release candidate testers who took time to explore the pre-release application, file bug reports, test fixes and assist the team with resolving issues. And finally … special thanks go our to our tireless team of forum moderators, and all those who spend time in our forum and enjoy being part of our community to share tips and tricks and help others. Without all of you, this project would be nothing.
Help!
If you experience any issues or find any remaining bugs, please post in the General Support section of our forum (please be mindful of our forum rules when posting!). If you have fixes for issues please submit a pull request with your changes to our master branch on GitHub. We also welcome users who want to help answer questions in the forum or write articles for the wiki.
Donate
To show support and appreciation for Kodi, please consider making a donation or purchasing merchandise such as a T-shirt or Raspberry Pi case. All donations or profits go to the XBMC Foundation and are typically used for team travel to attend conferences, operating expenses, hardware and software licences for developers, legal fees, and the annual developer conference.
Anyone old enough to have enjoyed music before the dawn of the Internet will probably have recorded music from the radio.
Armed with C60 or more capacious C90 cassettes, it was a tradition in many countries to press play and record when the local chart shows were airing, thus capturing the pop hits of the day.
The resulting recordings were deliberately peppered with DJ chatter to reduce their quality but for many, this was the first step in enjoying music on repeat and on demand, without buying original vinyl.
These days music platforms are much more advanced but a service offered over the past few years by Germany-based ZeeZee presented a new take on these old traditions.
Users of ZeeZee.de were able to make requests to the service to provide music tracks for download. However, instead of licensing tracks like Spotify might, for example, the service scanned online radio stations while ‘listening’ out for the tracks to be played. At this point ZeeZee would record them before offering the user the opportunity to download.
This activity attracted the negative attentions of record labels in Germany, Universal Music in particular. As far back as 2014, the music giant discovered that the album Mit den Gezeiten by local band Santiano (which had been a number one hit) was being offered for download by ZeeZee.
Refusing to cease-and-desist out of court, in November 2014 the label filed for an injunction and damages at the Regional Court of Hamburg. During December 2016, the Court found in favor of the plaintiff and ZeeZee was ordered to stop its activities.
The case went to appeal but the outcome remained the same. In a ruling handed down by the Appeal Court of Hamburg earlier this month, ZeeZee was found to have acted illegally and to have no defense under Germany’s private copying exception.
The Court found that while users had requested the tracks, it was ZeeZee that fetched and reproduced them, later making them available for download. The infringing copies, therefore, had to be attributed to ZeeZee, not the end users of its service, in line with the limits on private copying highlighted in a 2017 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The decision was welcomed by local music industry group, BVMI.
“Another clear signal from a German court: Anyone wishing to derive personal gain from another’s content by hiding behind the private copy rule must be prepared to be unmasked and suffer the legal consequences,” said René Houareau, Managing Director Legal & Political Affairs at the BVMI.
“A business model which does so is not in line with current laws. As the court states, ‘tapping’ internet radio stations in order to provide customers with an apparently free-of-charge copy from an unknown source, is specifically not covered by the private copying exception.”
On November 22, 2018, the Higher Regional Court of Munich reached the same conclusion in a case against stream-ripping service MusicMonster.fm, which also recorded tracks played on online radio stations to provide content to its customers.
The case, brought by Sony Music, also ended with a declaration that the service cannot rely on the private copying exception so is both unlicensed and illegal.
In Germany, exceptions for private copying attempt to balance the freedom to copy content with the right of rightsholders to get paid. While levies cover copies made at home for personal use, it’s now clear that sites like ZeeZee and MusicMonster need to obtain licenses to operate legally.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/court2-featured.jpg00Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-01-29 22:00:282019-01-29 22:00:28Stream-Ripping Site Acted Illegally, German Court Rules
Over the past decade, various entertainment industry groups have lobbied hard for tougher anti-piracy measures.
The harder it is for people to download something through unofficial channels, the more revenue will flow to the creators, the argument goes.
However, a new study by Indiana University researcher Antino Kim conducted together with colleagues from the University of Texas-Dallas and the University of Washington, suggests that this is not always the case.
The findings from their economic impact model are published in the latest edition of the MIS Quarterly Journal, in an article titled “The ‘Invisible Hand’ of Piracy: An Economic Analysis of the Information-Goods Supply Chain.”
According to their analysis, piracy limits the pricing power of both the creator and the retailer. This reduces the impact of double marginalization, which occurs when creators and retailers both add significantly to the price of a product.
Because piracy is seen as a form of “shadow competition” the price of a product, such as an HBO cable subscription, is pushed closer to the economic optimum. At that optimal price point, everyone is better off, including the broader economy.
“When information goods are sold to consumers via a retailer, in certain situations, a moderate level of piracy seems to have a surprisingly positive impact on the profits of the manufacturer and the retailer while, at the same time, enhancing consumer welfare,” Kim and his co-authors write.
“Such a win-win-win situation is not only good for the supply chain but is also beneficial for the overall economy,” they add.
The researchers mention Game of Thrones piracy as an example. The TV-show is widely known to be the most pirated series in history but HBO is not going to extremes to stop the public from sharing these episodes, which may be a good thing.
Following the logic of the paper, the threat of piracy keeps the price of HBO cable subscriptions down. Neither HBO (creator) nor the cable and satellite TV operators (retailer) are overcharging, despite their relative monopolies. This means a better price point and more legitimate consumers.
The authors of the article note that creators and retailers don’t have to encourage piracy all of a sudden. However, turning a blind eye to it may be in their own best interests in some cases.
“The implication is simply that, situated in a real-world context, our manufacturer and retailer should recognize that a certain level of piracy or its threat might actually be beneficial and should, therefore, exercise some moderation in their anti-piracy efforts,” the researchers write.
“This could manifest itself in them tolerating piracy to a certain level, perhaps by turning a blind eye to it. Such a strategy would indeed be consistent with how others have described HBO’s attitude toward piracy of its products,” they add.
The findings are based on an economic model which is limited to retailer sold information goods. Piracy doesn’t always have a positive effect but this research shows that it can help keep market prices balanced, which is an intriguing conclusion.
It highlights a positive aspect of piracy that has been overlooked before are certainly something for companies and governments to be aware of then they consider future anti-piracy measures.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/jackrunning-featured.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-01-29 06:59:242019-01-29 06:59:24Tolerating Piracy Can Benefit Consumers, Creators and Retailers, Research Finds
Russia has firmly established itself as one of the leading countries utilizing site-blocking to counter content considered unfavorable by the state or corporate interests.
Many tens of thousands of platforms are blocked for many reasons, from the promotion of terrorism to copyright infringement. Every week new sites are added to the country’s national blacklist which local ISPs are required to frequently check in order to prevent their subscribers from accessing forbidden platforms.
Given that blocking is supposed to reduce piracy, new research from Russian anti-piracy company WebKontrol throws up a few interesting angles on this online war.
For example, the company says that in 2017, the number of torrent sites offering content to the Russian market sat at around 1,300. However, last year – in the face of overwhelming blocking measures – that number grew to around 2,000.
In 2018, torrent sites accounted for just over a fifth of the ‘pirate’ market (streaming platforms dominate with more than 70%) but due to multiple links to the same content appearing on most platforms, torrent links accounted for around 40% of the available links to pirated material.
Further underlining the importance of torrents, despite a smaller share of the market, the company reports that in 87% of cases, the first public copies of premiere titles appeared on torrent sites first, before spreading out to other platforms such as streaming and hosting sites.
“According to WebKontrol’s, data, out of various website types, the number of streaming resources had increased by 2% – from 69% to 71% [2017 v 2018] – which placed the streaming websites in the leading position,” the company told TF.
“The share of torrent-trackers has also increased by 3% – from 19% to 22%. At the same time, the analysts have noted that the number of link sites and cyberlockers went down from 5% to 3%, and from 6% to 3% respectively.”
In 2017, the number of pirate sites offering content to Russian audiences dropped by 10% but in 2018, WebKontrol detected a 43% increase, amounting to an additional 9,500 sites. But despite this bad news, overall piracy appears to have dipped slightly, with the huge increase in sites put down to site owners’ responses to Russia’s aggressive blocking system.
“The overall traffic of pirate sites is decreasing notwithstanding the fact that the number of such sites is growing rapidly. Presumably, the main reason for this is the newly created mirror sites,” WebKontrol CEO Olga Valigourskaia informs TorrentFreak.
“Administrators of the pirate resources tend to create mirror sites as quickly as possible after their original domains are blocked. Rights holders, on the other hand, instantly block these mirrors using an administrative procedure, so there is no chance for these sites to gain any significant traffic. Some pirates simply stop creating new mirrors after a few blocking procedures.”
Meanwhile, Russia is further investing in site-blocking with the introduction of a new system. Telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor reports that to date, 660 large telecoms operators have switched to a new mechanism which allows sites to be blocked more efficiently.
“The new mechanism allows service providers to receive data from the Unified Registry [national blacklist] for only updated or changed entries instead of downloading the entire data set,” Roscomnadzor reports.
“Earlier tests have shown that the time taken by operators to reduce access to prohibited resources is reduced from 30–40 minutes to 4–6 minutes.”
Adoption of the new system is not mandatory but given the importance of site-blocking to the Russian government, ISPs are being encouraged to make use of it in order to “increase the effectiveness of measures taken to limit access to illegal resources.”
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Over the years we have covered dozens of piracy-related lawsuits, mostly from United States courts.
Over the past decade, various entertainment industry groups have lobbied hard for tougher anti-piracy measures.
