New Program by Sony Pictures Imageworks and Industrial Light & Magic Streamlines CG File Sharing

July 29, 2010 by Yonah · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services

Industrial Light & Magic and Sony Pictures Imageworks, two major companies in the visual effects business, have teamed up to launch an open-source software as a solution for sharing large, complex CG files.

The need for such a viable solution was dictated by the increasing difficulty in sharing digital files between various software, sites and vfx studios due to the growing in size and complexity of the files being shared. To this adds the fact complex visual effects projects make often the job of multiple f/x studios which makes the file sharing ability really imperative.

The fruit of the collaboration between the two giants is “Alembic” an ILM/SPI project, a file format developed to give sharing of complex images more speed and efficiency. The project was announced on Tuesday at the Siggraph computer graphics conference in Los Angeles by the chief technology officers of both companies, Richard Kerris of ILM and Rob Bredow of SPI.

The chief technology officers of the two companies, Richard Kerris of ILM and Rob Bredow of SPI, announced Alembic on Tuesday at the Siggraph computer graphics conference in Los Angeles.

“The goal is to have as many people involved as possible to do what’s best for the industry,” said Kerris, while according to Bredow, Imageworks is pretty happy with Alembic having tested it already on few productions.

Alembic will become available next month at alembic.io and via SPI’s open-source software site.

Tags: file sharing service, file-sharing

Motorola Preparing the Launch of A Cloud-Based File Sharing Tool

July 28, 2010 by Yonah · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services

Recently Motorola filed a patent which lets you believe that the company has been busy developing some sort of a cloud-based file sharing service.

The new tool called “Family Room” which some say could be an addition to the MOTOBLUR, the company’s software which provides social media updates in one collective space and also offers back up solution, is described by Motorola as follows:

“Cellular phone software that allows users to share digital content, including, but not limited to, content included on calendars, chat rooms, photo albums and shared music platforms”

At a first glance it seems Motorola might be working on a technology resembling that used on Microsoft’s defunct device, the KIN.

We’ll keep you updated.

Tags: file sharing service

Permissiveness Added to American Anti-Circumvention Laws

July 27, 2010 by Yonah · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues

While ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) lines up US as one of the advocates of severe copyright rules (abroad), it the laws surrounding anti-circumvention don’t seem just as tough.

The Courthouse News Service mentioned late last week that according to a court’s decision, the mere act of breaking a digital lock is not, in and of itself, an infringement.

The report says:
“Merely bypassing a technological protection that restricts a user from viewing or using a work is insufficient to trigger the (Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s) anti-circumvention provision,” Judge Garza wrote for the New Orleans-based court.

“The DMCA prohibits only forms of access that would violate or impinge on the protections that the Copyright Act otherwise affords copyright owners.”

The new court rules issued by the Librarian of Congress at the US copyright office have caught everyone’s attention right away. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) hailed this development seen as a victory that will cut off the unjust source for so many lawsuits (six new classes of non-infringing activities have been designated):

(1) Motion pictures on DVDs that are lawfully made and acquired and that are protected by the Content Scrambling System when circumvention is accomplished solely in order to accomplish the incorporation of short portions of motion pictures into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment, and where the person engaging in circumvention believes and has reasonable grounds for believing that circumvention is necessary to fulfill the purpose of the use in the following instances:

(i) Educational uses by college and university professors and by college and university film and media studies students;

(ii) Documentary filmmaking;
(iii) Noncommercial videos

(2) Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset.

(3) Computer programs, in the form of firmware or software, that enable used wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telecommunications network, when circumvention is initiated by the owner of the copy of the computer program solely in order to connect to a wireless telecommunications network and access to the network is authorized by the operator of the network.

(4) Video games accessible on personal computers and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully obtained works, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing for, investigating, or correcting security flaws or vulnerabilities, if:

(i) The information derived from the security testing is used primarily to promote the security of the owner or operator of a computer, computer system, or computer network; and
(ii) The information derived from the security testing is used or maintained in a manner that does not facilitate copyright infringement or a violation of applicable law.

(5) Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. A dongle shall be considered obsolete if it is no longer manufactured or if a replacement or repair is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace; and

(6) Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.

According to CrunchGear comments, the new stipulations allow you to bi-pass the CSS of a DVD for the purpose of Fair Use. The ruling was also interpreted as no longer interdicting the jail-break of your phone.

No doubt the new more tolerant stance will make Americans happy especially since it’s so rarely we see a copyright related ruling that doesn’t actually go against people narrowing their liberties even more.

(source: Zeropaid)

Tags: copyright infringement, legal, US

MMS Compared to Limewire. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint & T-Mobile Face New Copyright Infringement Suit

July 27, 2010 by Yonah · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues

Some interesting news related to a lawsuit that has all the major US mobile carriers involved including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, & T-Mobile was picked up recently by Techdirt. According to the site, the company Luvdarts claims these providers are no better than file sharing networks that spread illegal content and goes as far as comparing them to Limewire and Gnutella.

Luvdarts LLC, a multimedia messaging (MMS) content creator, is accusing the aforementioned carriers of copyright infringement because their customers have shared MMS content illegally. The company demands that wireless carriers, which fall outside the DMCA safe harbor protections as service providers (not exactly true), pay damage fines for 9,999-100,000 counts of copyright infringement (at $150,000 per infringement). Wow!

LuvDarts+Complaint+-+DocStoc –

Tags: copyright infringement, legal, US

Top 10 Most Downloaded Movies via BitTorrent

July 26, 2010 by Yonah · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services, Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games, Tops

Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor in "The Ghost Writer"

TorrentFreak has published the data they collected with the top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent for the week ended July 25. All the films included in this chart are DVDrips (unless mentioned otherwise).

Roman Polanski’s (brilliantly) return on the big screen, the thriller ‘The Ghost Writer’ is this week’s leader; the following two positions are occupied by two new entries ‘Operation Endgame’ and the highly anticipated ‘Inception’ (cam version for now).

The list also features a special p2p release of ‘The Yes Men Fix The World’ (courtesy of the P2P video distribution platform VODO.net) on #6.

Rank	Last week	Movie	Rating/Trailer
1	(4)	The Ghost Writer	7.8/trailer
2	(…)	Operation Endgame	6.6/trailer
3	(…)	Inception (cam)	9.3/trailer
4	(…)	Diary of a Wimpy Kid	6.1/trailer
5	(1)	Clash of the Titans	6.0/trailer
6	(…)	The Yes Men Fix the World	7.5/trailer
7	(2)	Death at a Funeral	4.8/trailer
8	(7)	The A-Team	7.5/trailer
9	(3)	Repo Men	6.2/trailer
10	(10)	The Bounty Hunter	5.1/trailer