Wednesday, May 20, 2020

TorrentFreak's Latest News

 

The Simpsons Writer Promotes Disney+ Premiere With Pirate Movie Screenshot
Andy, 20 May 09:10 PM

bart simpson illegal downloadingIn 2012, the short film 'The Longest Daycare' hit the big screen attached to screenings of the 20th Century Fox release Ice Age: Continental Drift.

At just five minutes long it's much shorter than a standard The Simpsons episode but, according to Al Jean who has worked on the show for more than 30 years, it was a "thank you" note to Simpsons fans who had stuck with the show for two-and-a-half decades. And things went well.

The Longest Daycare was nominated for an Oscar and now, more than eight years later, is about to make its debut on the streaming platform Disney+. That was pointed out by Al Jean himself just an hour ago on Twitter, who posted the following in celebration.

Al Jean Simpsons tweet

While that presents nothing out of the ordinary at first view, those who take the time to scratch below the surface will find something amusing. Clicking on the image to expand it fully reveals that the screenshot was taken from a pirate release of the show that was released more than seven years ago on torrents and then uploaded to YouTube.

The Longest Daycare

The release, Maggie.Simpson.in.The.Longest.Daycare.720p.HDTV.x264-2HD, is still being seeded today and can be found without too much difficulty on The Pirate Bay. The upload date on TPB is February 18, 2013 and the copy on Youtube, which currently has 88,337 views, was uploaded a day later on February 19, 2013.

We won't embed it here but as the screenshot below illustrates, this is the exact pirate release showcased in Jean's tweet, which is available all over the place for download albeit in much lower quality than will be available on Disney+ next week – hopefully.

Maggie SImpson YouTube

The big question perhaps is whether this was intentional. The writers of The Simpsons haven't shied away from the topic of piracy in the past, that's for certain.

In addition to Bart scrawling, "I must not illegally download this movie" on a school blackboard as penance for his sins, he has also been seen surfing 'The Bootleg Bay' on his laptop. The writers of the show have also been happy to poke fun at the heavy-handed tactics of Hollywood in their mission to chase down TV show and movie pirates.

All that being said, it could have been a good old-fashioned blunder. After all, Jean couldn't get a screenshot from Disney+ yet and YouTube is way more convenient, even if it does reveal a little bit more than perhaps intended.

DOH!

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

GitHub Reinstates Popcorn Time Code Despite MPA 'Threat'
Ernesto, 20 May 11:18 AM

For more than half a decade, Popcorn Time has been a thorn in the side of Hollywood.

The 'Netflix for Pirates' offers an easy-to-use application that opens the door to a library of thousands of streamable movies and TV-shows.

The Motion Picture Asociation (MPA) recognized this threat early on and pressured the original developers to throw in the towel. That worked, but it came too late as the open-source project was swiftly revived by others.

Today, Popcorn Time lives on through many project forks. The most popular is PopcornTime.app, which like its predecessor, shares its source code publicly on the developer hosting platform GitHub. This allows others to download, modify, and share it.

The MPA is not happy with this and took action recently. The movie industry group informed GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft, about the infringing nature of the software. According to the MPA, the application includes links to pirate sites, pirate APIs, and pirate torrent trackers, which are used to download pirated movies and TV-shows.

On top of that, the MPA suggested that GitHub itself may be liable for copyright infringement if the company fails to take action.

While the MPA's interpretation of the law is likely not shared by GitHub, the company did remove the Popcorn Time code. In most cases that would be the end of the story, but Popcorn Time was not backing off without a fight.

The developers submitted a DMCA counternotice explaining that the MPA's request is not legitimate. The code is owned by Popcorn Time, not the MPA, and Popcorn Time asked GitHub to restore access.

"The code is 100 % ours and do not contain any copyright [sic] material please check again," the developer wrote.

The app's developers made a good point here. The identified code (not the built app) is not directly copyright infringing and it contains no direct links to copyright-infringing material either. This means that a DMCA notice may not be the right tool here.

Faced with both requests, GitHub has now decided to restore full access to the Popcorn Time repository.

This decision doesn't necessarily mean that it agrees with the app developers, however. The DMCA simply prescribes that, following a counternotice, content can be restored after two weeks, unless the claiming party files a lawsuit.

In this case, the MPA chose not to file a lawsuit against the Popcorn Time operators, so the code repositories are back online again.

Whether the MPA will follow-up with further action has yet to be seen. However, the whole episode highlights an interesting issue. There is little doubt that the Popcorn Time application is a pirate app. However, the code, as hosted by GitHub, is not infringing per se. As such, regular takedown notices don't appear to work here.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

 
 
Powered by Mad Mimi®A GoDaddy® company

No comments: