Episode: 1226
Title: HPR1226: TGTM Newscast for 2013-04-09 DeepGeek &amp; Pokey
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1226/hpr1226.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 21:57:09

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You're listening to TGTM News Number 94 Record for Tuesday, April 9, 2013.
You're listening to the Tech Only Hacker Public Radio Edition to get the full podcast
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The website is www.toolgeektme.us to buy and sell music originally purchased through iTunes.
DGTGM said it deleted the original music file, making it system similar to the way a used bookstore would resell books.
But U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan sided with capital records in its lawsuit against DGTGM,
ruling that the so-called first sale doctrine, which allows someone to resell a copyrighted book for example,
does not apply to digital music files.
DGTGM says it will appeal the ruling from torrentfreak.com dated April 2, 2013 by Andy.
Swedish police promised more resources to catch file sharers.
A report from Sweden's National Police Board proposes changes to the country's handling of copyright infringement and file sharing offenses.
The proposals have developed from meetings with entertainment company rights holders and include the creation of a single team focusing on intellectual property crimes,
plus more accessible forensic resources in order to successfully prosecute cases.
As the spiritual home of Pirate Bay plus dozens of torrent and other platforms, Sweden has become well known to file sharers around the globe.
Perhaps because of this perceived disruption, local authorities are slowly but surely taking a harder line towards copyright infringement.
With a view towards improving performance within the realm of intellectual property rights enforcement,
with the assistance of rights holders, the National Police Board, has carried out a review of its current position.
According to the report titled Police Authorities Handling Cases on IPR Violations,
police inspectors met with representatives from, quote, virtually all, and quote, rights holders affected by the file sharing of their products online.
The rights holders told the police that although the situation has improved since the appointment of special prosecutors three years ago, they still face capacity problems when it comes to reporting infringement offenses.
Currently, they are able to report only a small number of detected instances of infringement to the police,
but believe that if the police were better equipped, quote, significantly more crimes, and quote, could be reported.
Rights holders also complained that response times are simply too long.
Once a matter is reported to the police, there can be a long delay before they take enforcement's action, such as searches or raids.
There were also complaints that rights holders can spend a lot of money on investigations only to face a lack of response from the authorities.
There are further problems when it comes to technical ability.
Rights holders believe that police forensic IT investigations are not of a sufficiently high quality.
Quote, there is also a lack of technical competence of the investigators, leading to poorer quality capacity and interrogations,
and quote, the police report, a PDF link in the show notes.
Other complaints center around how police systems and personnel are structured and organized, and it perceived lack of leaders empowered to make quick decisions on cases pretrial.
The inspectors left the rights holders meetings with proposals that more investigators, police officers, forensic staff, and civilians should be employed and trained to tackle the issue.
The police have just published their report which proposes the creation of a single central group focused on the protection of intellectual property in order to tackle crime in an area which is said to be quote, developing rapidly, end quote, especially in technical terms.
Quote, such a group should consist of a head, investigators, administrative assistants, and designated IT forensic staff linked to the group.
With the current starting point, it is reasonable for the group to consist of around 20 people and quote, the police report, adding that links with the prosecutor should be improved.
Quote, intellectual property investigations are often very extensive and complicated.
A collective group would facilitate prioritization of cases and also facilitate contact with prosecutors and external parties such as plaintiffs, international authorities, and agencies end quote, they conclude.
For relevant links and to take your own try at pronouncing the Swedish National Police Board, see the link in the show notes to the torrentfreak.com article.
Also from torrentfreak.com dated March 31, 2012 by Ernesto. The Pirate Bay becomes number one file sharing site as cyber lockers collapse.
The Pirate Bay is now the most visited file sharing site on the internet, taking over the lead from the prominent one-click hosting sites such as four shared and media fire.
After a spectacular rise in the early years of this decade, cyber lockers are quickly losing ground while pit torrent sites continue to grow.
The shift in balance can be attributed to the mega upload shutdown and the changes in the cyber locker market that followed.
Less than two years ago, we published an overview of the most used file sharing sites covering both pit torrent and traditional cyber lockers.
At the time, one-click download sites were beating pit torrent sites by a landslide.
However, the cyber locker business changed dramatically following the mega upload shutdown last year and now the tables have turned.
The day ranked sixth the last time has become the most used file sharing site.
While the infamous pit torrent site certainly gained some new visitors in recent months, it mostly owes its number one spot to the traffic decline of several major cyber lockers.
The most likely explanation for the traffic drop at these sites is the mega upload shutdown.
As covered extensively in the past, many cyber lockers removed their affiliate plans, disabled public sharing, or implemented other measures to keep pirates at bay.
The result is a major shift in traffic patterns with both winners and losers.
Quite a few familiar names have fallen from the list, including rapid share, file serve and hot file.
Others, such as uploaded or put locker, picked up new visitors.
The overall pattern seems to be that pit torrent sites have regained some of the market share they lost earlier.
Half of all sites in the file sharing top 10 are pit torrent related, compared to only two in 2011.
With six newcomers in the list, it's clear that the file sharing ecosystem has been shaken up quite a bit.
Please see the original torrentfreak.com article for the top 10 list of the most visited general purpose file sharing sites that are available.
Torrentfreak used several traffic comparison and analytic tools to compile their list, including complete, quanta cast and Alexa.
They've used the Alexa rank in their table as well as showing their rank from the 2011 list.
From TechDirt.com, April 4, 2013, by Mike Maznick.
Federal Trade Commission awards $50,000 prize for ideas on killing robocalls.
From the die-rachial from cardholder services die, department, we mentioned last fall that the FTC had declared Rachel from cardholder services as enemy number one.
Referencing the all-too-common spammy robocaller scams that many of us have received on our phones.
It has now awarded two $25,000 prizes out of 744 entries and ways to help block such robocalls.
According to the FTC, Sardar Danis and Aaron Foss will each receive $25,000 for their proposals, which both use software to intercept and filter out illegal pre-recorded calls using technology to blacklist robocaller phone numbers and whitelist numbers associated with acceptable incoming calls.
Both proposals also would filter out unapproved robocallers using a cap-chef-style test to prevent illegal calls from ringing through to a user.
Of course, now the follow-up questions.
Will these solutions actually be put in place and work?
And how long will it take for robocallers to root around these solutions?
Also from TechDirt.com, dated April 3, 2013, by Nick Pearson.
Can commercial VPNs really protect your privacy? From the, it depends, department.
Nick Pearson is the founder of IVPN, a privacy-focused VPN service, and electronic frontier foundation member.
As TechDirt readers are no doubt well aware, online surveillance laws are undergoing a major revamp across the Western world.
From Australia to the UK, law enforcement agencies are taking the opportunity to gain unprecedented powers over the data they can monitor and are blaming the crackdown on everything from illegal file sharing to terrorists.
With Western nations becoming increasingly hostile towards the concept of online anonymity, it's not unreasonable to suggest the use of commercial VPNs will likely gain more traction.
Indeed, there's already some evidence supporting this.
But can VPNs really safeguard your privacy today? And in the future, what kind of protection can you expect with the legal landscape changing so rapidly?
VPNs under fire.
VPNs have come under serious scrutiny since mid-2011 after one of the leading services on the market played a pivotal role in the arrest and prosecution of a member of Hacker Group Laws Sec.
This kicked off the debate amongst file sharers and privacy groups, whether VPNs offered any real protection for their users at all.
As Torrin Freak pointed out, many are no more effective than a regular ISP due to self-imposed data retention policies.
It's certainly true all VPNs have the ability to track users and log their data.
Many do so because they don't consider themselves privacy services and logging helps identify repeat DMCA infringers and quickly troubleshoot network issues.
Others do so seemingly because of a poor grasp of their country's laws. Of course, anyone concerned about privacy should not sign up to a service that's retaining data.
Privacy oriented VPNs approach this issue by using a non-persistent log stored in memory on gateway servers that only stores a few minutes of activity, FIFO.
That time window gives the ability to troubleshoot any connection problems that may appear, but after a few minutes no trace of activity is stored.
As you may know, the EU's data retention directive came into effect in 2006 requiring, quote, public communications services end quote, to hold web logs and email logs amongst other data.
IVPN, along with a number of other EU-based VPNs, believe their services are excluded from this requirement and they do not abide by it.
So far, there's been no cases we're aware of compelling VPNs to retain this information. Indeed, from a user perspective, the presence or absence of retention laws seem rather arbitrary, given how many US-based VPNs willingly retain data, despite no government mandated policy being in place, at least not yet.
When law enforcement and VPNs collide, so what happens if a law enforcement agency approaches a VPN, serves a subpoena, and demands the company trace an individual based on the timestamp and the IP address of one of their servers.
VPN services, like all businesses, are compelled to abide by the law. However, there is no way of complying with the authorities if the data they require does not exist.
One of the few ways law enforcement could identify an individual using a privacy service without logs, is if they served the owner a gag order and demanded that they start logging the traffic on a particular server, they know their suspect is using.
Nick Pearson says he would shut down his business before cooperating with such an order and any VPNs serious about privacy would do the same.
So unless law enforcement were to arrest the VPN owners on the spot and recover their keys and passwords before they could react, your privacy would be protected, a changing landscape.
But the biggest threat to VPN usage is the changing legal landscape. The waters around the issue presented by VPNs are still being tested and laws may indeed be amended in the future to prevent such services operating in certain jurisdictions. So how do you navigate all this?
In all honesty, there are no easy answers. Picking a host country based on their current law isn't going to help much in the long term.
By far, the best measure you can take is to choose a VPN that demonstrates a commitment to user privacy, examine the company's small print or better yet, contact the owners and ask them upfront how far they go to protect your personal data.
Ensure the company is committed to keeping users informed of any emerging threats to its service and before buying any lengthy subscription.
Make sure the VPN is willing to read homicide should its host country change any relevant laws.
This article is just riddled with links plenty of self promotion and a healthy comment threat if you want to check out the original article on techdirt.com. The link should be in the show notes.
Other headlines in the news to read these stories follow the links in the show notes how capitalism conquered the internet and how we can take it back.
Massive leak of emails and records reveals identities of rich politicos who hide wealth and offshore accounts.
Staff been produced by the TGTM news team editorial selection by DeepGeek. Views of the story authors reflect their own opinions and not necessarily those of TGTM news or its readers.
News from techdirt.com iww.org and rostory.com used under arranged permission.
News from torrentfreak.com and the South African Civil Society Information Service www.sacs.org.ca.
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