BookwormBookworm is a simple and powerful way to visualize trends in repositories of digitized texts.

Source: Bookworm

The creator of Popcorn Time, software which lets people watch movies illegally online, has chosen to reveal his identity and speak out about his experiences developing the site.TorrentFreak reports that 29-year-old designer Federico Abad from Argentina revealed his identity in an interview with Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv.Abad explained that he was inspired to create Popcorn Time because internet speeds in Argentina are so bad and because major movies often reach Argentinian cinemas months after they are released in the US.Developer Abad said that he recruited other people around the world using Twitter and Facebook. They worked overnight to create Popcorn Time and eventually “had concentration problems at work because of the project.” Abad said that he worked so hard on the project that his girlfriend left him.Popcorn Time let users illegally stream movies online for free. But it was shut down by Abad in 2014 after authorities put pressure on the site. Since then, other similar sites have launched that that use the same software. There’s even a Popcorn Time app.Popcorn TimeAbad said that he decided to shut down the project when he noticed that a lawyer working for Warner Brothers had viewed LinkedIn profiles belonging to developers working on Popcorn Time.“We do not know how, but he had managed to track us down. We were quite put out. We thought it was a scare tactic,” he said. “And we were frightened. None of us were anonymous anymore. They knew where we worked and where we lived.”

Source: The creator of piracy service ‘Popcorn Time’ has revealed his identity | Business Insider

On the 10th of August, for its 10th anniversary, The Pirate Bay (TPB) released a piece of software called the Piratebrowser, tagged with the headline: “No more censorship!”(Anon 2013b) It enables users who live in countries where access to TPB is blocked to circumvent national internet filters. It is a simplified version of a Tor network-based web-browser , which is used by many who want to stay anonymous and avoid the blocking and the surveillance of their online activities. The Tor network is used by: dissenters in oppressive countries with pervasive internet censorship; privacy-conscious users who wish to stay hidden from the surveillance machinery of spy agencies; leakers and whistleblowers; and users who wish to engage in various illegal activities from watching child pornography to buying drugs.

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Snowden Used the Linux Distro Designed For Internet Anonymity – Slashdot.

“When Edward Snowden first emailed Glenn Greenwald, he insisted on using email encryption software called PGP for all communications. Now Klint Finley reports that Snowden also used The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) to keep his communications out of the NSA’s prying eyes. Tails is a kind of computer-in-a-box using a version of the Linux operating system optimized for anonymity that you install on a DVD or USB drive, boot your computer from and you’re pretty close to anonymous on the internet. ‘Snowden, Greenwald and their collaborator, documentary film maker Laura Poitras, used it because, by design, Tails doesn’t store any data locally,’ writes Finley. ‘This makes it virtually immune to malicious software, and prevents someone from performing effective forensics on the computer after the fact. That protects both the journalists, and often more importantly, their sources.’

The developers of Tails are, appropriately, anonymous. They’re protecting their identities, in part, to help protect the code from government interference. ‘The NSA has been pressuring free software projects and developers in various ways,’ the group says. But since we don’t know who wrote Tails, how do we know it isn’t some government plot designed to snare activists or criminals? A couple of ways, actually. One of the Snowden leaks show the NSA complaining about Tails in a Power Point Slide; if it’s bad for the NSA, it’s safe to say it’s good for privacy. And all of the Tails code is open source, so it can be inspected by anyone worried about foul play. ‘With Tails,’ say the distro developers, ‘we provide a tongue and a pen protected by state-of-the-art cryptography to guarantee basic human rights and allow journalists worldwide to work and communicate freely and without fear of reprisal.'”

The Russian based “Pirate Pay” startup is promising the entertainment industry a pirate-free future. With help from Microsoft, the developers have built a system that claims to track and shut down the distribution of copyrighted works on BitTorrent. Their first project, carried out in collaboration with Walt Disney Studios and Sony Pictures, successfully stopped tens of thousands of downloads.

via Microsoft Funded Startup Aims to Kill BitTorrent Traffic | TorrentFreak.The Russian based “Pirate Pay” startup is promising the entertainment industry a pirate-free future. With help from Microsoft, the developers have built a system that claims to track and shut down the distribution of copyrighted works on BitTorrent. Their first project, carried out in collaboration with Walt Disney Studios and Sony Pictures, successfully stopped tens of thousands of downloads.

via Microsoft Funded Startup Aims to Kill BitTorrent Traffic | TorrentFreak.

BSA Global Software Piracy Study – Home.

24/7 Wall St.

Apple, which takes 30% of the revenue generated by downloads at the App Store has lost about $140 million from piracy. If Apple’s revenue was between $500 million and $700 million from the App Store since its launch, that is a significant loss. Despite this fact, Apple has been mute on the subject and done nothing to prevent acts of piracy, which is not unlike the stance it has taken on illegal music downloads to iPods. Even though piracy has caused a big financial loss for Apple, the income from the App Store is dwarfed by sales of iPhones and iPod touches. As big a problem as $150 million is for Apple, the $310 million cost of piracy to developers really makes it their problem. Apple intends to ignore the piracy of applications and will focus on the tens of billions of dollars that it makes on its hardware.

THISDAY ONLINE / Nigeria news / African views on global news

Microsoft’s attempt at discouraging Intellectual Property (IP) theft especially at the popular Computer Village in Ikeja may not have yielded any positive results, going by recent development in the area.
According to THISDAY investigation, the aftermath of the anti-piracy crusade launched by the software giant in collaboration with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) earlier in February has only accommodated more people in the illegal trade.