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      Facebook let Netflix see user DMs, quit streaming to keep Netflix happy: Lawsuit

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · 20:40 · 1 minute

    A promotional image for Sorry for Your Loss, with Elizabeth Olsen

    Enlarge / A promotional image for Sorry for Your Loss , which was a Facebook Watch original scripted series. (credit: Facebook )

    Last April, Meta revealed that it would no longer support original shows, like Jada Pinkett Smith's Red Table Talk talk show, on Facebook Watch. Meta's streaming business that was once viewed as competition for the likes of YouTube and Netflix is effectively dead now; Facebook doesn't produce original series, and Facebook Watch is no longer available as a video-streaming app.

    The streaming business' demise has seemed related to cost cuts at Meta that have also included layoffs. However, recently unsealed court documents in an antitrust suit against Meta [ PDF ] claim that Meta has squashed its streaming dreams in order to appease one of its biggest ad customers: Netflix.

    Facebook allegedly gave Netflix creepy privileges

    As spotted via Gizmodo , a letter was filed on April 14 in relation to a class-action antitrust suit that was filed by Meta customers, accusing Meta of anti-competitive practices that harm social media competition and consumers. The letter, made public Saturday, asks a court to have Reed Hastings, Netflix's founder and former CEO, respond to a subpoena for documents that plaintiffs claim are relevant to the case. The original complaint filed in December 2020 [ PDF ] doesn’t mention Netflix beyond stating that Facebook “secretly signed Whitelist and Data sharing agreements” with Netflix, along with “dozens” of other third-party app developers. The case is still ongoing.

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      Hollywood Studios, Amazon & Netflix Sue ‘Evasive’ Pirate IPTV Operator From Texas

      news.movim.eu / TorrentFreak · 18:23 · 4 minutes

    tvnitro Operating a pirate IPTV service can be a dangerous endeavor, no matter where one’s located. In the United States, home to Hollywood and other major entertainment outfits, the risks are arguably even higher.

    In the past, we have seen several pirate IPTV businesses being taken to court , with rightsholders almost always on the winning side. These cases can result in million-dollar damages awards or even multi-year prison sentences , if the feds get involved.

    Despite this backdrop, some people are still willing to take a gamble. According to a new lawsuit filed at a Texan federal court, Dallas resident William Freemon and his company Freemon Technology Industries, are a prime example.

    Hollywood Lawsuit Against IPTV Operator

    The complaint, filed by Hollywood majors including Disney and Warner Bros, as well as streaming giants Amazon and Netflix, accuses the defendant of widespread copyright infringement.

    This alleged illegal activity involves selling presumed pirate IPTV subscriptions through domains such as instantiptv.net, streamingtvnow.com,streamingtvnow.net, tvnitro.net, cashappiptv.com, livetvresellers.com, stncloud.ltd, and stnlive.ltd, some of which remain online today.

    “Freemon operates an extensive and commercially scaled network of illegal streaming services that offers unauthorized access to live channels and video-on-demand streams of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted movies and TV shows,” the complaint reads.

    iptv

    The defendant is a familiar name for the entertainment companies, who have followed his actions for years.

    “Freemon has a long history of brazen disregard for copyright laws, and his early foray into internet piracy is the first link in the chain leading to his current web of illegal services,” they write.

    “Beginning in 2016 and continuing through 2019, Freemon sold illegally modified Fire TV Stick devices. These devices connect to a regular TV and allow customers to access unauthorized content.”

    Firesticks Lead to IPTV

    The ‘loaded’ Firestick business was promoted on X and Facebook and the complaint includes two dated screenshots from this activity. At the time, these devices were sold through firesticksloaded.com and firesticksloaded.biz, and Freemon was listed as the registrant for the latter domain.

    ads old

    These sites are long gone now but they offered a fruitful lead to other, potentially illegal, activities. The Firesticks domains were hosted on the same IP address as several other domain names and ultimately formed a trail to the controversial IPTV operations.

    Those IPTV services include ‘Streaming TV Now’, ‘Instant IPTV’, ‘Cash App IPTV’, and ‘TV Nitro’. Some of these were subsequently advertised through the YouTube channel @williamfreemon3378, which the plaintiffs believe belongs to the defendant.

    The YouTube videos are no longer online today as they were taken down following complaints from rightsholders, but they’re used as additional evidence to support the current lawsuit.

    “These YouTube videos —and their subsequent removal— nonetheless provide further evidence that Freemon is behind this web of services and that he knows he is committing infringement,” the complaint reads.

    freemon youtube

    TV Nitro and Other IPTV Endeavors

    According to the plaintiffs, ‘TV Nitro’ was the first IPTV service that Freemon was linked to. This service originally operated as ‘Nitro TV’ between 2019 and 2021. After subsequently going offline for two years, it recently reappeared.

    ‘Streaming TV Now’ is the most popular IPTV service according to the complaint. It first appeared online in 2020 and offers access to 11,000 live channels, as well as on-demand access to over 27,000 movies and 9,000 TV series.

    “Freemon offers customer subscription packages for Streaming TV Now at prices ranging from $20 per month to $150 per year—depending on the package and billing cycle selected. The money goes to Freemon.”

    oppen

    In addition to offering IPTV packages to the public, the defendant is also accused of recruiting resellers through livetvresellers.com, presumably to expand the reach of his IPTV business.

    Warning Leads to Lawsuit

    Before taking the matter to court, Amazon, Netflix, and the Hollywood studios sent a letter to the defendant, asking him to stop all infringing activities. However, that didn’t yield the desired response. Instead of taking action, the defendant said he no longer controls the domains.

    “Freemon was not cooperative. He did not take down the Infringing Services and instead offered unsubstantiated claims that he transferred the associated domains,” the complaint reads.

    “Plaintiffs spent months negotiating with Freemon. Based on the lack of substantial change to the Infringing Services in the intervening times, including that the respective main domains are still hosted with the same hosting provider [Amarutu], Freemon is likely still controlling the Infringing Domains.

    “Freemon’s evasiveness is particularly concerning in light of his long history of willful infringement,” the plaintiffs add.

    The rightsholders allege that the defendant is liable for copyright infringement, either directly or indirectly. They therefore request a jury trial and appropriate damages.

    With 125 movies and TV shows listed in the complaint, maximum statutory damages can be as high as $18 million. The figure could increase further still, as the plaintiffs reserve the right to add more titles.

    For now, however, the priority seems to be to end the infringing activity. To that end, Amazon and the other plaintiffs request injunctive relief, including the handover of all infringing domain names and the destruction of all ‘pirate’ hardware.

    A copy of the complaint, filed yesterday at the District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas, is available here (pdf)

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

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      Liu Cixin: ‘I’m often asked – there’s science fiction in China?’

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 11:03

    Author of sci-fi epic The Three-Body Problem – newly serialised by Netflix – on ‘the greatest uncertainty facing humanity’ and how finding a secret copy of a Jules Verne novel inspired his career

    Chinese author Liu Cixin’s science-fiction novels have sold millions of copies all over the world, and have won him numerous awards, including the global Hugo award for science fiction in 2015. Now, the English translation of the first book in Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, The Three-Body Problem, is back in the Amazon bestsellers charts, after the release of a TV adaptation by the creators of Game of Thrones.

    But a decade ago, few in the UK had heard of Liu and The Three-Body Problem, which begins as a contemporary murder mystery and gradually builds into a story of alien contact. When it was first published here, Nic Cheetham, managing director of Liu’s UK publisher Head of Zeus, remembers being unsure if anyone would turn up for a book signing with the author in a London bookshop.

    Continue reading...
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      Une scène clé du Problème à 3 Corps a été auto-censurée dans le livre

      news.movim.eu / Numerama · 07:02

    La scène d'introduction de la série Le Problème à 3 Corps, sur Netflix, se situe en pleine Révolution culturelle, en Chine. Bien qu'elle soit aussi présente dans le livre de Liu Cixin, sa forte connotation politique n'a pas été sans poser problème.

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      « Vous êtes de la vermine » : pourquoi Netflix a affiché cette phrase partout dans le monde

      news.movim.eu / Numerama · Yesterday - 18:00

    vous êtes de la vermine

    Sur des écrans publicitaires comme sur des panneaux d'information, une même phrase est apparue un peu partout dans le monde, dans plusieurs langues. Elle est liée à une opération marketing menée par Netflix pour promouvoir Le Problème à 3 corps.

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      Peut-on voir Le Problème à 3 Corps sur Netflix sans avoir lu les livres ?

      news.movim.eu / Numerama · 2 days ago - 17:50

    La série de SF, qui fait un carton sur la plateforme, est adaptée du roman de Liu Cixin. Mais peut-on regarder Le Problème à 3 Corps sans rien connaître de cet univers scientifique et énigmatique complexe ?

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      Le casque VR dans Le Problème à 3 Corps est-il possible ?

      news.movim.eu / Numerama · 2 days ago - 14:07

    Une grande partie de l'intrigue de la série Netflix Le Problème à 3 corps repose sur l'utilisation d'un casque de réalité virtuelle, qui projette son porteur dans un jeu vidéo ultra-réaliste. Meta, Apple et HTC peuvent-ils atteindre un tel niveau technologique ?

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      DoodStream: Hollywood, Netflix, Amazon & Apple Sue “Rogue Cyberlocker”

      news.movim.eu / TorrentFreak · 4 days ago - 20:28 · 4 minutes

    doodstream The Motion Picture Association’s interest in file-hosting platform DoodStream first came to light in a submission to the USTR in October 2022 .

    The MPA described DoodStream as a video hosting service offering free storage and premium services including priority encoding and an ad-free experience. Videos uploaded to the platform were embedded on many other streaming sites, the MPA reported, and as a result, traffic was booming.

    The MPA estimated the site received 82.7 million visits in August 2022, while using the services of DDoS-Guard in Russia and OVH in France.

    “DoodStream operates a partner program that offers financial remuneration, either per download or stream depending on the country of origin,” the MPA informed the USTR in its ‘notorious markets’ submission.

    DoodStream rates doodstream-partner

    A year later in a new submission to the USTR, the MPA described DoodStream as a ‘top priority’ for its anti-piracy efforts.

    DoodStream in the Spotlight

    In its October 2023 submission to the USTR’s notorious markets report, the MPA’s cyberlocker and video streaming category listed DoodStream front and center as the priority problem. The MPA still believed the site was operating from OVH in France but also listed other companies as hosts, including Online S.A.S., Hetzner Online GmbH, and Interkvm Host10 SRL.

    The MPA noted that the Delhi High Court had ordered ISPs to block DoodStream in 2023, a measure also handed down by a French court during the same year. The Paris court noted that the site “encouraged the infringement of copyright and related rights by setting up tools specifically designed for the mass and illicit sharing of protected content.”

    “The operators are located in India,” the MPA informed the USTR.

    Entertainment Giants Team Up Against DoodStream

    Two months later, Karyn Temple, Senior Executive Vice President and MPA Global General Counsel referenced DoodStream before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet ( pdf ) . DoodStream continued, business as usual, until now.

    In a lawsuit being heard at the High Court of Delhi, eight plaintiffs are listed as follows: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Amazon Content Services LLC, Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Disney Enterprises, Inc., Netflix US, LLC, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Universal City Studios Productions LLP and Apple Video Programming.

    A total of six defendants include the domains doodstream.com, doodstream.co, dood.stream and their underlying websites (defendants 1-3), plus a server (defendant 4) used by defendants 1 to 3 which allegedly facilitates storing and dissemination of illegal content. Defendants 5 and 6, neither of whom have been named, are reportedly site operators.

    According to counsel for the plaintiffs, “rogue cyberlocker websites provide an infrastructure specifically designed to incentivize hosting, uploading, storing, sharing, streaming, and authorize the downloading of copyrighted material without obtaining authorization from the plaintiffs.

    Claims Against The DoodStream Defendants

    The plaintiffs allege that a massive amount of infringing content to which they have exclusive rights, is uploaded by users on the defendants’ websites.

    “Counsel for plaintiffs say the studios approached defendants upon noticing this infringing content, first in June, 2023, after they discovered the identity as to who was operating these websites, who happen to be individuals based in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India, arrayed as defendants nos. 5 and 6,” an order from the court reads.

    “This, according to plaintiffs’ counsel, was achieved after some effort since the WHOIS details of defendant nos. 1 to 3 were masked.”

    The court notes that the plaintiffs continuously pursued the defendants to take the infringing content down. However, despite promises to comply, a mechanism built in to the site simply generated new links whenever content was supposedly removed.

    “Further, uploaded content would also generate a link which could be disseminated by the uploader and therefore, potentially could be disseminated through parallel websites. Thus, as per counsel for plaintiffs, the takedown itself was elusive and of no effect, since the system immediately permitted generation of a new link.”

    The court notes that through this mechanism, DoodStream becomes a “hydra-headed monster” that is difficult to police through takedowns alone.

    Plaintiffs Want DoodStream Shut Down

    The plaintiffs submit that DoodStream should either be comprehensively blocked or a Local Commissioner should be appointed to take over the administration of the sites. However, counsel for the defendants told the court that their clients are prepared to “exhaustively and completely” remove the plaintiffs’ content from the platform.

    Due to the link generation mechanism in operation on the site, the plaintiffs expressed concern that content taken down would nnot stay down. The defendants offered assurances that they would “change the features on their websites’ architecture” to ensure that once the process of takedown is complete, regeneration would not be allowed.

    In view of this undertaking, the court ordered ( pdf ) all content belonging to the plaintiffs to be taken down within 24 hours, and ordered the defendants to hire a chartered accountant to disclose all revenue generated by the sites since their launch.

    The case is listed for hearing on April 8, 2024.

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

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      Streaming apps are trying to bundle their way out of customer disenchantment

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 4 December - 19:36

    Michael Keaton's Batman

    Enlarge / Michael Keaton in The Flash , which is streaming on Max. (credit: YouTube/Warner Bros.)

    Streaming services are on thin ice with many customers. With price hikes becoming a norm for streaming services, subscribers are reconsidering the value of streaming apps and whether subscriptions are worth the cost. In a bid to mollify disgruntled customers and make their packages seem more economical and simple, streaming services are bundling up.

    Verizon announced today that its myPlan wireless phone customers will be able to get Netflix and Max, both with ads, for $10 per month total per phone line. Netflix with ads is usually $6.99 per month, while Max's ad tier is $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year. That means Verizon customers can save up to $6.98 per month with the new bundle, which Verizon will begin offering on December 7.

    The new offer joins two other deals that Verizon already offers that bundle its wireless service with TV streaming. One lets customers add ad-free Disney+ and Hulu and ESPN with ads for $10 per month per line. Another lets customers add Apple One , which includes Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Arcade, and iCloud+, for $10 per month per line.

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