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For more than a decade, Green Day has been perhaps the most explicitly political American stadium rock band. Ever since 2004’s “American Idiot” — Green Day’s multi-platinum, Broadway-adapted album that skewered the George W. Bush era — the pop-punk group has grafted more or less leftist rhetoric... View the full article

If “Tommy” is the Who’s great rock opera, its successor, “Quadrophenia,” might more accurately be described as the rock group’s great opera. That perspective is reinforced by “Pete Townshend’s Classic Quadrophenia,” which the Who’s lead guitarist and chief songwriter brought to the Greek Theatre... View the full article

When we first heard of the idea to use Bitcoin bounties to track down pirated content online, we scratched our heads. Snitching on copyright infringers is not a new concept, but the idea of instant cash rewards though cryptocurrency was quite novel. In theory, it’s pretty straightforward. Content producers can add a unique identifying watermark into movies, eBooks, or other digital files before they’re circulated. When these somehow leak to the public, the bounty hunters use the watermark to claim their Bitcoin, alerting the owner in the process. This helps to spot leaks early on, even on networks where automated tools don’t have access, and identify the source at the same time. Two years have passed and it looks like the idea was no fluke. Custos, the South African company that owns the technology, has various copyright holders on board and recently announced a new partnership with book publisher Erudition Digital. With help from anti-piracy outfit Digimarc, the companies will add identifying watermarks to eBook releases, counting on the bounty hunters to keep an eye out for leaks. These bounty hunters don’t have to be anti-piracy experts. On the contrary, pirates are more than welcome to help out. “The Custos approach is revolutionary in that it attacks the economy of piracy by targeting uploaders rather than downloaders, turning downloaders into an early detection network,” the companies announced a few days ago. “The result is pirates turn on one another, sowing seeds of distrust amongst their communities. As a result, the Custos system is capable of penetrating hard-to-reach places such as the dark web, peer-to-peer networks, and even email.” Devon Weston, Director of Market Development for Digimarc Guardian, believes that this approach is the next level in anti-piracy efforts. It complements the automated detection tools that have been available in the past by providing access to hard-to-reach places. “Together, this suite of products represents the next generation in technical measures against eBook piracy,” Weston commented on the partnership. TorrentFreak reached out to Custos COO Fred Lutz to find out what progress the company has made in recent years. We were informed that they have been protecting thousands of copies every month, ranging from pre-release movie content to eBooks. At the moment the company works with a selected group of “bounty hunters,” but they plan to open the extraction tool to the public in the near future, so everyone can join in. “So far we have carefully seeded the free bounty extractor tool in relevant communities with great success. However, in the next phase, we will open the bounty hunting to the general public. We are just careful not to grow the bounty hunting community faster than the number of bounties in the wild require,” Lutz tells us. The Bitcoin bounties themselves vary in size based on the specific use case. For a movie screener, they are typically anything between $10 and $50. However, for the most sensitive content, they can be $100 or more. “We can also adjust the bounty over time based on the customer’s needs. A low-quality screener that was very sensitive prior to cinematic release does not require as large a bounty after cam-rips becomes available,” Lutz notes. Thus far, roughly 50 Bitcoin bounties have been claimed. Some of these were planted by Custos themselves, as an incentive for the bounty hunters. Not a very high number, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not working. “While this number might seem a bit small compared to the number of copies we protect, our aim is first and foremost not to detect leaks, but to pose a credible threat of quick detection and being caught.” People who receive content protected by Custos are made aware of the watermarks, which may make them think twice about sharing it. If that’s the case, then it’s having effect without any bounties being claimed. The question remains how many people will actively help to spot bounties. The success of the system largely depends on volunteers, and not all pirates are eager to rat on the people that provide free content. On the other hand, there’s also room to abuse the system. In theory, people could claim the bounties on their own eBooks and claim that they’ve lost their e-reader. That would be fraud, of course, but since the bounties are in Bitcoin this isn’t easy to prove. That brings us to the final question. What happens of a claimed bounty identifies a leaker? Custos admits that this alone isn’t enough evidence to pursue a legal case, but the measures that are taken in response are up to the copyright holders. “A claim of a bounty is never a sufficient legal proof of piracy, instead, it is an invaluable first piece of evidence on which a legal case could be built if the client so requires. Legal prosecution is definitely not always the best approach to dealing with leaks,” Lutz says. Time will tell if the Bitcoin bounty approach works… Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services. View the full article

Zoe Quinn went to the heart of Gamergate and has come back with a new book, Crash Override, a meditation on online communities and making the Internet safer. Quinn spoke with me for a few minutes about her new book and how we can help prevent kids from going down the Gamergate path. Her ultimate solution? Talking to people who harass her. By putting a voice to the name she was able to defuse… Read More View the full article

In light of the recent federal circuit ruling that Uber must hand over the due diligence report (the Stroz report) it conducted ahead of its acquisition of Otto, Waymo is requesting Judge William Alsup postpone the trial. The trial is currently scheduled to begin October 11. “It’s now clear why Uber had fought so hard to hide these materials from Waymo and the Court,” a… Read More View the full article

This summer, 19-year-old Amanda Gorman sat down to outline her priorities. As the very first U.S. youth poet laureate, a position she earned for her literary talent as well as her record of community engagement and leadership, she asked herself, "What do I want to accomplish?" Since Gorman took on the inaugural role, she's embarked on a national tour across the U.S. She hopes to make poetry accessible to America's young people, and has sought them out when she speaks and performs. She wanted to be the one sitting and listening, too. Young people around the country, she believes, deserve a say in what she does. Read more... More about Youth, Social Good, Poetry, Social Justice, and MashreadsView the full article

"For women in America who come forward with stories of harassment, abuse and sexual assault, there are not two sides to every story, however noble that principle might seem," writes Amber Tamblyn in a New York Times op-ed, following her Twitter exchange with James Woods. Woods' criticism of an upcoming film depicting a relationship between a 24-year-old and a 17-year-old led Tamblyn to come forward with a story claiming that Woods tried to pick her and a friend up when she was only 16. SEE ALSO: 7 influential feminists share the most powerful thing about being a woman "As they quietly chip away the last barriers of decency," Woods tweeted on Sept. 10, in reference to Call Me By Your Name, a 2017 film starring Armie Hammer. Hammer's response, accusing Woods of hypocrisy, prompted the reply by Tamblyn. Read more... More about Celebrities, Sexual Harassment, Amber Tamblyn, James Woods, and CultureView the full article

The Brooklyn rapper's debut album is due out soon. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/desiigner-previews-new-music-on-instagram-news.37366.htmlView the full article

Paid Content By: The Rockefeller Foundation As of 2017, 1.3 billion people around the world do not have access to electricity. Of those, 290 million men, women, and children are in India, unable to power their homes, livelihoods, and their dreams. Access to energy is a critical first step in powering basic needs such as clean water, securing food, access to health services, and sufficient lighting that enables learning and safety after dark. Just as important, insufficient and unreliable electricity also stands in the way of fulfilling economic potential: without energy, farms cannot produce as much yield, food spoils, small businesses cannot run, and village economies cannot thrive. As you read this right now on your screen, ask yourself: What powers your day? Read more... More about Supported, India, Electricity, Rockefeller, and Social GoodView the full article

Everyone loves a good baby animal picture. But for whatever reason, people seem to be largely repelled by baby fruit bats. We don't know why fruit bats get a bad rap, so we've decided to try to change things. SEE ALSO: Rare baby white koala looks for a name on Facebook We've compiled a collection of baby fruit bat pictures that we hope everyone will like, but we're worried that only some people will like them, while most will still find them to be absolutely disgusting. This one's cute, right? I don't see why anyone wouldn't equate this to a baby bear with wings. Image: Photo by Olaf Wagner/ullstein bild via Getty Images Read more... More about Humor, Reviews, Fruit Bats, Culture, and Web Culture View the full article

Black Swan didn't open big either, for what it's worth. Mother!, the latest mindf*ck from writer/director Darren Aronofsky with stars Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem, is off to a seemingly slow start at the box office. Despite opening this weekend in more than 2,300 theaters, the current three-day domestic estimate is $7.5 million. SEE ALSO: Audiences are all WTF about 'mother!' and we're here for it That's less than one-third of the movie's reported $30 million budget. It's still enough to land Mother! in the #3 slot on the weekend box office charts, behind fellow newcomer American Assassin ($14.8 million) and record-breaking horror champ It ($60 million). Read more... More about Entertainment, Film, Box Office, Jennifer Lawrence, and Javier Bardem View the full article

Read more... More about Tech, Gadgets, Apple, Iphone, and SupplyView the full article

JAY-Z brought out Damian Marley for “Bam” and dedicated “The Story of O.J.” to Colin Kaepernick View the full article

SpaceX has confirmed that the Dragon capsule used to ferry cargo including supplies and experimentation material has returned to Earth as planned, with a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The Dragon went up to the International Space Station on SpaceX’s CRS-12 resupply mission, which launched in August. Dragon brought a number of experimental payloads to the ISS, including a… Read More View the full article

In the long history of weird Nintendo moments, this one stands out. Tucked away deep within the Nintendo Switch operating system is the data for an NES original, Golf. It's playable by one or two players using Switch Joy-Cons and it even appears to support motion controls... or it would, if anyone knew how to unlock it. SEE ALSO: 'Doom' is bringing intense, bloody action to Nintendo Switch For now, knowledge of Golf's existence on Switch comes entirely SwitchBrew.org, a wiki focused on hacking and analyzing the software powering Nintendo's latest console. It's not a piracy thing, however; "homebrew" programmers try to crack the code on gaming machines primarily to install software that wouldn't otherwise be supported. Read more... More about Entertainment, Gaming, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch, and Nes Golf View the full article

Just for once, it would be delightful to wake up, hop on Twitter, and not see Donald Trump acting like a complete idiot. Our immature commander-in-chief has once again outraged everyone with an unhinged Twitter retweet. On Sunday morning, Trump retweeted a GIF depicting his golf swing hitting a golf ball right into Hillary Clinton's back, forcing her to fall over. SEE ALSO: Obama is returning to his roots by announcing new community leader summit This. Is. The. President. Of. The. United. States. Of. America. Retweeting. Shit. Like. This. Unreal. Here's the original tweet showing Trump's "amazing golf swing": Read more... More about Twitter, Politics, Memes, Donald Trump, and Hillary ClintonView the full article

Hov gave a career-spanning headlining performance. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/watch-jay-zs-full-set-at-the-meadows-2017-news.37364.htmlView the full article

Sheep farmer Pyrs Williams with his flock at Hafod-y-Llan. Image: Grace Robertson/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Named for Snowdon, the country’s highest peak, the Welsh region of Snowdonia is a land of open, mountainous terrain and glacially carved valleys. With climate and soil unsuitable for most agriculture, the area has been a center for sheep farming for centuries. In 1951, the same year that the Snowdonia region was designated as a national park, Picture Post photographer Grace Robertson documented shepherds as they gathered their flocks from the mountainsides for the late-summer shearing. Read more... More about Uk, History, Retronaut, Wales, and Sheep View the full article

Is there a formal name for the fallacy of assuming that the status quo is sane? Such a name would become more useful with each passing year. There are a shocking number of examples, but I give you, as a perfect, vivid, front-of-mind example, the credit rating system of the United States of America, as exemplified by that radioactive disaster of a company called Equifax. It is well understood… Read More View the full article

Just to let you know, if you buy something featured here, Mashable might earn an affiliate commission. Work, dating, communicating with sketchy people on Craigslist: even if you’re not a shady character, you probably have some activity that you’d like to keep private. SEE ALSO: Channel your inner Uber driver with this car mount for your smartphone But there’s no reason to use the same phone number for everything and risk losing your anonymity. You need a second phone number that you can easily access from your existing smartphone. That's where the Hushed Private Phone Line comes in. For a small, one-time fee, Hushed gives you a second phone number that you can access over Wi-Fi or data from their simple, secure app. It gives you up to 3,000 texts or 500 minutes a year and lets you choose from hundreds of area codes across the United States and Canada. It also has all the features you’d expect from a normal cell phone like call forwarding and customizable voicemail. Read more... More about Iphone, Apps Software, Mashable Shopping, Shopping Stackcommerce, and Shopping SoloView the full article

President Trump, early in his Administration, has an opportunity to take a “giant leap for mankind” with a simple executive action –- save the International Space Station (“ISS”). Every generation or so, a US President has this chance of moving humankind further off-planet and into space. Kennedy challenged NASA and American industry to successfully conduct a… Read More View the full article

The Kodi team, operating under the XBMC Foundation, announced last week that a third-party had registered the Kodi trademark in Canada and was using it for their own purposes. That person was Geoff Gavora, who had previously been in communication with the Kodi team, expressing how important the software was to his sales. “We had hoped, given the positive nature of his past emails, that perhaps he was doing this for the benefit of the Foundation. We learned, unfortunately, that this was not the case,” XBMC Foundation President Nathan Betzen said. According to the Kodi team, Gavora began delisting Amazon ads placed by companies selling Kodi-enabled products, based on infringement of Gavora’s trademark rights. “[O]nly Gavora’s hardware can be sold, unless those companies pay him a fee to stay on the store,” Betzen explained. Predictably, Gavora’s move is being viewed as highly controversial, not least since he’s effectively claiming licensing rights in Canada over what should be a free and open source piece of software. TF obtained one of the notices Amazon sent to a seller of a Kodi-enabled device in Canada, following a complaint from Gavora. Take down Kodi from Amazon, or pay Gavora So who is Geoff Gavora and what makes him tick? Thanks to a 2016 interview with Ali Salman of the Rapid Growth Podcast, we have a lot of information from the horse’s mouth. It all began in 2011, when Gavora began jailbreaking Apple TVs, loading them with XBMC, and selling them to friends. “I did it as a joke, for beer money from my friends,” Gavora told Salman. “I’d do it for $25 to $50 and word of mouth spread that I was doing this so we could load on this media center to watch content and online streams from it.” Intro to the interview with Ali Salman Soon, however, word of mouth caused the business to grow wings, Gavora claims. “So they started telling people and I start telling people it’s $50, and then I got so busy so I start telling people it’s $75. I’m getting too busy with my work and with this. And it got to the point where I was making more jailbreaking these Apple TVs than I was at my career, and I wasn’t very happy at my career at that time.” Jailbreaking was supposed to be a side thing to tide Gavora over until another job came along, but he had a problem – he didn’t come from a technical background. Nevertheless, what Gavora did have was a background in marketing and with a decent knowledge of how to succeed in customer service, he majored on that front. Gavora had come to learn that while people wanted his devices, they weren’t very good at operating XBMC (Kodi’s former name) which he’d loaded onto them. With this in mind, he began offering web support and phone support via a toll-free line. “I started receiving calls from New York, Dallas, and then Australia, Hong Kong. Everyone around the world was calling me and saying ‘we hear there’s some kid in Calgary, some young child, who’s offering tech support for the Apple TV’,” Gavora said. But with things apparently going well, a wrench was soon thrown into the works when Apple released the third variant of its Apple TV and Gavorra was unable to jailbreak it. This prompted him to market his own Linux-based set-top device and his business, Raw-Media, grew from there. While it seems likely that so-called ‘Raw Boxes’ were doing reasonably well with consumers, what was the secret of their success? Podcast host Salman asked Gavora for his ‘networking party 10-second pitch’, and the Canadian was happy to oblige. “I get this all the time actually. I basically tell people that I sell a box that gives them free TV and movies,” he said. This was met with laughter from the host, to which Gavora added, “That’s sort of the three-second pitch and everyone’s like ‘Oh, tell me more’.” “Who doesn’t like free TV, come on?” Salman responded. “Yeah exactly,” Gavora said. The image below, taken from a January 2016 YouTube unboxing video, shows one of the products sold by Gavora’s company. Raw-Media Kodi Box packaging (note Kodi logo) Bearing in mind the offer of free movies and TV, the tagline on the box, “Stop paying for things you don’t want to watch, watch more free tv!” initially looks quite provocative. That being said, both the device and Kodi are perfectly capable of playing plenty of legal content from free sources, so there’s no problem there. What is surprising, however, is that the unboxing video shows the device being booted up, apparently already loaded with infamous third-party Kodi addons including PrimeWire, Genesis, Icefilms, and Navi-X. The unboxing video showing the Kodi setup Given that Gavora has registered the Kodi trademark in Canada and prints the official logo on his packaging, this runs counter to the official Kodi team’s aggressive stance towards boxes ready-configured with what they categorize as banned addons. Matters are compounded when one visits the product support site. As seen in the image below, Raw-Media devices are delivered with a printed card in the packaging informing people where to get the after-sales services Gavora says he built his business upon. The cards advise people to visit No-Issue.ca, a site setup to offer text and video-based support to set-top box buyers. No-Issue.ca (which is hosted on the same server as raw-media.ca and claimed officially as a sister site here) now redirects to No-Issue.is, as per a 2016 announcement. It has a fairly bland forum but the connected tutorial videos, found on No Issue’s YouTube channel, offer a lot more spice. Registered under Gavora’s online nickname Gombeek (which is also used on the official Kodi forums), the channel is full of videos detailing how to install and use a wide range of addons. The No-issue YouTube Channel tutorials But while supplying tutorial videos is one thing, providing the actual software addons is another. Surprisingly, No-Issue does that too. Filed away under the URL http://solved.no-issue.is/ is a Kodi repository which distributes a wide range of addons, including many that specialize in infringing content, according to the Kodi team. The No-Issue repository A source familiar with Raw-Media’s devices informs TF that they’re no longer delivered with addons installed. However, tools hosted on No-Issue.is automate the installation process for the customer, with unlisted YouTube Videos (1,2) providing the instructions. XBMC Foundation President Nathan Betzen says that situation isn’t ideal. “If that really is his repo it is disappointing to see that Gavora is charging a fee or outright preventing the sale of boxes with Kodi installed that do not include infringing add-ons, while at the same time he is distributing boxes himself that do include the infringing add-ons like this,” Betzen told TF. While the legality of this type of service is yet to be properly tested in Canada and may yet emerge as entirely permissible under local law, Gavora himself previously described his business as operating in a gray area. “If I could go back in time four years, I would’ve been more aggressive in the beginning because there was a lot of uncertainty being in a gray market business about how far I could push it,” he said. “I really shouldn’t say it’s a gray market because everything I do is completely above board, I just felt it was more gray market so I was a bit scared,” he added. But, legality aside (which will be determined in due course through various cases 1,2), the situation is still problematic when it comes to the Kodi trademark. The official Kodi team indicate they don’t want to be associated with any kind of questionable addon or even tutorials for the same. Nevertheless, several of the addons installed by No-Issue (including PrimeWire, cCloud TV, Genesis, Icefilms, MoviesHD, MuchMovies and Navi-X, to name a few), are present on the Kodi team’s official ban list. The fact remains, however, that Gavora successfully registered the trademark in Canada (one month later it was transferred to a brand new company at the same address), and Kodi now have no control over the situation in the country, short of a settlement or some kind of legal action. Kodi matters aside, though, we get more insight into Gavora’s attitudes towards intellectual property after learning that he studied gemology and jewelry at school. He’s a long-standing member of jewelry discussion forum Ganoskin.com (his profile links to Gavora.com, a domain Gavora owns, as per information supplied by Amazon). Things get particularly topical in a 2006 thread titled “When your work gets ripped“. The original poster asked how people feel when their jewelry work gets copied and Gavora made his opinions known. “I think that what most people forget to remember is that when a piece from Tiffany’s or Cartier is ripped off or copied they don’t usually just copy the work, they will stamp it with their name as well,” Gavora said. “This is, in fact, fraud and they are deceiving clients into believing they are purchasing genuine Tiffany’s or Cartier pieces. The client is in fact more interested in purchasing from an artist than they are the piece. Laying claim to designs (unless a symbol or name is involved) is outrageous.” Unless that ‘design’ is called Kodi, of course, then it’s possible to claim it as your own through an administrative process and begin demanding licensing fees from the public. That being said, Gavora does seem to flip back and forth a little, later suggesting that being copied is sometimes ok. “If someone copies your design and produces it under their own name, I think one should be honored and revel in the fact that your design is successful and has caused others to imitate it and grow from it,” he wrote. “I look forward to the day I see one of my original designs copied, that is the day I will know my design is a success.” From their public statements, this opinion isn’t shared by the Kodi team in respect of their product. Despite the Kodi name, software and logo being all their own work, they now find themselves having to claw back rights in Canada, in order to keep the product free in the region. For now, however, that seems like a difficult task. TorrentFreak wrote to Gavora and asked him why he felt the need to register the Kodi trademark, but we received no response. That means we didn’t get the chance to ask him why he’s taking down Amazon listings for other people’s devices, or about something else that came up in the podcast. “My biggest weakness, I guess, is that I’m too ethical about how I do my business,” he said, referring to how he deals with customers. Only time will tell how that philosophy will affect Gavora’s attitudes to trademarks and people’s desire not to be charged for using free, open source software. Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services. View the full article

G Herbo drops off a 5-track playlist for the fans. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/g-herbo-drops-off-a-prequel-to-his-humble-beast-debut-new-mixtape.117483.htmlView the full article

Russ won't let up. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/russ-taps-john-mayer-for-chords-on-wife-you-up-new-song.1975705.htmlView the full article

Amid cheating scandal, Kevin Hart speaks out. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/kevin-hart-issues-public-apology-to-wife-and-kids-amid-scandal-news.37363.htmlView the full article