At the end of September we reported on a nightmare scenario for videogame anti-tamper technology Denuvo.

With cracking groups chipping away at the system for the past few months, progressing in leaps and bounds, the race to the bottom was almost complete. After aiming to hold off pirates for the first few lucrative weeks and months after launch, the Denuvo-protected Total War: Warhammer 2 fell to pirates in a matter of hours.

In the less than two weeks that have passed since, things haven’t improved much. By most measurements, in fact, the situation appears to have gotten worse.

On Wednesday, action role-playing game Middle Earth: Shadow of War was cracked a day after launch. While this didn’t beat the record set by Warhammer 2, the scene was given an unexpected gift.

Instead of the crack appearing courtesy of scene groups STEAMPUNKS or CPY, which has largely been the tradition thus far this year, old favorite CODEX stepped up to the mark with their own efforts. This means there are now close to half a dozen entities with the ability to defeat Denuvo, which isn’t a good look for the anti-piracy outfit.

A CODEX crack for Denuvo, from nowhere

Needless to say, this development was met with absolute glee by pirates, who forgave the additional day taken to crack the game in order to welcome CODEX into the anti-Denuvo club. But while this is bad news for the anti-tamper technology, there could be a worse enemy crossing the horizon – no confidence.

This Tuesday, DSO Gaming reported that it had received a review copy of Bethesda’s then-upcoming survival horror game, The Evil Within 2. The site, which is often a reliable source for Denuvo-related news, confirmed that the code was indeed protected by Denuvo.

“Another upcoming title that will be using Denuvo is The Evil Within 2,” the site reported. “Bethesda has provided us with a review code for The Evil Within 2. As such, we can confirm that Denuvo is present in it.”

As you read this, October 13, 2017, The Evil Within 2 is enjoying its official worldwide launch. Early yesterday afternoon, however, the title leaked early onto the Internet, courtesy of cracking group CODEX.

At first view, it looked like CODEX had cracked Denuvo before the game’s official launch but the reality was somewhat different after the dust had settled. For reasons best known to developer Bethesda, Denuvo was completely absent from the title. As shown by the title’s NFO (information) file, the only protection present was that provided by Steam.

Denuvo? What Denuvo?

This raises a number of scenarios, none of them good for Denuvo.

One possibility is that all along Bethesda never intended to use Denuvo on the final release. Exactly why we’ll likely never know, but the theory doesn’t really gel with them including it in the review code reviewed by DSO Gaming earlier this week.

The other proposition is that Bethesda witnessed the fiasco around Denuvo’s ‘protection’ in recent days and decided not to invest in something that wasn’t going to provide value for money.

Of course, these theories are going to be pretty difficult to confirm. Denuvo are a pretty confident bunch when things are going their way but they go suspiciously quiet when the tide is turning. Equally, developers tend to keep quiet about their anti-piracy strategies too.

The bottom line though is that if the protection really works and turns in valuable cash, why wouldn’t Bethesda use it as they have done on previous titles including Doom and Prey?

With that question apparently answering itself at the moment, all eyes now turn to Denuvo. Although it has a history of being one of the most successful anti-piracy systems overall, it has taken a massive battering in recent times. Will it recover? Only time will tell but at the moment things couldn’t get much worse.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Without a doubt, YouTube is one of the most important websites available on the Internet today.

Its massive archive of videos brings pleasure to millions on a daily basis but its centralized nature means that owner Google always exercises control.

Over the years, people have looked to decentralize the YouTube concept and the latest project hoping to shake up the market has a particularly interesting player onboard.

Until 2015, only insiders knew that Argentinian designer Federico Abad was actually ‘Sebastian’, the shadowy figure behind notorious content sharing platform Popcorn Time.

Now he’s part of the team behind Flixxo, a BitTorrent and blockchain-powered startup hoping to wrestle a share of the video market from YouTube. Here’s how the team, which features blockchain startup RSK Labs, hope things will play out.

The Flixxo network will have no centralized storage of data, eliminating the need for expensive hosting along with associated costs. Instead, transfers will take place between peers using BitTorrent, meaning video content will be stored on the machines of Flixxo users. In practice, the content will be downloaded and uploaded in much the same way as users do on The Pirate Bay or indeed Abad’s baby, Popcorn Time.

However, there’s a twist to the system that envisions content creators, content consumers, and network participants (seeders) making revenue from their efforts.

At the heart of the Flixxo system are digital tokens (think virtual currency), called Flixx. These Flixx ‘coins’, which will go on sale in 12 days, can be used to buy access to content. Creators can also opt to pay consumers when those people help to distribute their content to others.

“Free from structural costs, producers can share the earnings from their content with the network that supports them,” the team explains.

“This way you get paid for helping us improve Flixxo, and you earn credits (in the form of digital tokens called Flixx) for watching higher quality content. Having no intermediaries means that the price you pay for watching the content that you actually want to watch is lower and fairer.”

The Flixxo team

In addition to earning tokens from helping to distribute content, people in the Flixxo ecosystem can also earn currency by watching sponsored content, i.e advertisements. While in a traditional system adverts are often considered a nuisance, Flixx tokens have real value, with a promise that users will be able to trade their Flixx not only for videos, but also for tangible and semi-tangible goods.

“Use your Flixx to reward the producers you follow, encouraging them to create more awesome content. Or keep your Flixx in your wallet and use them to buy a movie ticket, a pair of shoes from an online retailer, a chest of coins in your favourite game or even convert them to old-fashioned cash or up-and-coming digital assets, like Bitcoin,” the team explains.

The Flixxo team have big plans. After foundation in early 2016, the second quarter of 2017 saw the completion of a functional alpha release. In a little under two weeks, the project will begin its token generation event, with new offices in Los Angeles planned for the first half of 2018 alongside a premiere of the Flixxo platform.

“A total of 1,000,000,000 (one billion) Flixx tokens will be issued. A maximum of 300,000,000 (three hundred million) tokens will be sold. Some of these tokens (not more than 33% or 100,000,000 Flixx) may be sold with anticipation of the token allocation event to strategic investors,” Flixxo states.

Like all content platforms, Flixxo will live or die by the quality of the content it provides and whether, at least in the first instance, it can persuade people to part with their hard-earned cash. Only time will tell whether its content will be worth a premium over readily accessible YouTube content but with much-reduced costs, it may tempt creators seeking a bigger piece of the pie.

“Flixxo will also educate its community, teaching its users that in this new internet era value can be held and transferred online without intermediaries, a value that can be earned back by participating in a community, by contributing, being rewarded for every single social interaction,” the team explains.

Of course, the elephant in the room is what will happen when people begin sharing copyrighted content via Flixxo. Certainly, the fact that Popcorn Time’s founder is a key player and rival streaming platform Stremio is listed as a partner means that things could get a bit spicy later on.

Nevertheless, the team suggests that piracy and spam content distribution will be limited by mechanisms already built into the system.

“[A]uthors have to time-block tokens in a smart contract (set as a warranty) in order to upload content. This contract will also handle and block their earnings for a certain period of time, so that in the case of a dispute the unfair-uploader may lose those tokens,” they explain.

That being said, Flixxo also says that “there is no way” for third parties to censor content “which means that anyone has the chance of making any piece of media available on the network.” However, Flixxo says it will develop tools for filtering what it describes as “inappropriate content.”

At this point, things start to become a little unclear. On the one hand Flixxo says it could become a “revolutionary tool for uncensorable and untraceable media” yet on the other it says that it’s necessary to ensure that adult content, for example, isn’t seen by kids.

“We know there is a thin line between filtering or curating content and censorship, and it is a fact that we have an open network for everyone to upload any content. However, Flixxo as a platform will apply certain filtering based on clear rules – there should be a behavior-code for uploaders in order to offer the right content to the right user,” Flixxo explains.

To this end, Flixxo says it will deploy a centralized curation function, carried out by 101 delegates elected by the community, which will become progressively decentralized over time.

“This curation will have a cost, paid in Flixx, and will be collected from the warranty blocked by the content uploaders,” they add.

There can be little doubt that if Flixxo begins ‘curating’ unsuitable content, copyright holders will call on it to do the same for their content too. And, if the platform really takes off, 101 curators probably won’t scratch the surface. There’s also the not inconsiderable issue of what might happen to curators’ judgment when they’re incentivized to block curate content.

Finally, for those sick of “not available in your region” messages, there’s good and bad news. Flixxo insists there will be no geo-blocking of content on its part but individual creators will still have that feature available to them, should they choose.

The Flixx whitepaper can be downloaded here (pdf)

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Founded in 1991, Epic has developed and published computer games for over a quarter century.

The North Carolina company is known for titles such as Unreal, Gears of War, Infinity Blade, and most recently, the popular co-op survival and building action game Fortnite.

A few weeks ago, Fortnite released the free-to-play “Battle Royale” game mode for the PC and other platforms, generating massive interest from gamers. Unfortunately, this also included thousands of cheaters, many whom have been banned since.

Last week, Epic stressed that addressing Fortnite cheaters is the company’s highest priority, hinting that they wouldn’t stop at banning users.

“We are constantly working against both the cheaters themselves and the cheat providers. And it’s ongoing, we’re exploring every measure to ensure these cheaters are removed and stay removed from Fortnite Battle Royale and the Epic ecosystem,” the company wrote.

It turns out that this wasn’t an idle threat. TorrentFreak has obtained two complaints that were filed in a North Carolina federal court this week, which show that Epic is launching a legal battle against two prolific cheaters.

The two alleged cheaters are identified as Mr. Broom and Mr. Vraspir. Both are accused of violating Fortnite’s terms of service and EULA by cheating. This involves modifying and changing the game’s code, committing copyright infringement in the process.

“The software that Defendant uses to cheat infringes Epic’s copyrights in the game and breaches the terms of the agreements to which Defendant agreed in order to have access to the game,” the company notes.

From the complaints

The two complaints are largely the same and both defendants are accused of ruining the fun for others.

“Nobody likes a cheater. And nobody likes playing with cheaters. These axioms are particularly true in this case. Defendant uses cheats in a deliberate attempt to destroy the integrity of, and otherwise wreak havoc in, the Fortnite game.

“As Defendant intends, this often ruins the game for the other players, and for the many people who watch ‘streamers’,” the complaint adds.

Both defendants are connected to the cheat provider AddictedCheats.net, either as moderators or support personnel. They specifically target streamers and boast about their accomplishments, making comments such as ‘LOL I f*cked them’ after killing them.

According to Epic’s complaint, Vraspir was banned at least nine times but registered new accounts to continue his cheating. He also stands accused of having written code for the cheats.

Broom was banned once and previously stated that he’s also working on his own cheat. He publicly stated that he aims to create “unwanted chaos and disorder” in Fortnite and said the game was the highest priority of the cheat provider.

With the two lawsuits, the game publisher hopes to put an end to the cheating.

Both defendants face $150,000 in statutory damages for copyright infringement. The complaint further lists breach of contract and circumvention of technological measures as additional claims.

While taking out two cheaters is just a drop in the ocean, Epic is sending a stark warning to people who don’t play by the rules.

Fortnite

—

Here are copies of the full complaints against Vraspir and Broom.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Last month The Pirate Bay caused some uproar by adding a Javascript-based cryptocurrency miner to its website.

The miner utilizes CPU power from visitors to generate Monero coins for the site, providing an extra source of revenue.

The Pirate Bay only tested the option briefly, but that was enough to inspire many others to follow suit. Now, a few weeks later, Pirate Bay has also turned on the miners again.

The miner is not directly embedded in the site’s core code but runs through an ad script. Many ad blockers and anti-malware tools are stopping these request, but people who don’t use any will see a clear spike in CPU usage when they access the site.

The Pirate Bay team previously said that they were testing the miner to see if it can replace ads. While there is some real revenue potential, for now, it’s running in addition to the regular banners. It’s unclear whether the current mining period is another test or if it will run permanently from now on.

The miner does appear to be throttled to a certain degree, so most users might not even notice that it’s running.

Pirate Bay load requests

Running a cryptocurrency miner such as the Coin-Hive script TPB is currently using is not without risk. Aside from user complaints, there is an issue that may make it harder for the site to operate in the future.

Last week we reported that CDN provider Cloudflare had suspended the account of torrent proxy site ProxyBunker, flagging its coin miner as malware. This means that The Pirate Bay now risks losing the Cloudflare service, which they rely on for DDoS protection, among other things.

Cloudflare’s suspension of ProxyBunker occurred even though the site provided users with an option to disable the miner. This functionality was implemented by Coinhive after the script was misused by some sites, which ran it without alerting their users.

The Pirate Bay currently has no opt-out option, nor has it informed users about the latest mining efforts. This could lead to another problem since Coinhive said it would crack down on customers who failed to keep users in the loop.

“We will verify this opt-in on our servers and will implement it in a way that it can not be circumvented. We will pledge to keep the opt-in intact at all times, without exceptions,” the Coinhive team previously noted.

The Pirate Bay team has not commented on the issue thus far. In theory, it’s possible that a rogue advertiser is responsible for the latest mining efforts. If that’s the case it will be disabled soon enough.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

It has been nothing short of a disastrous week for movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

Accused of sexual abuse and harassment by a string of actresses, the latest including Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow, the 65-year-old is having his life taken apart.

This week, the influential producer was fired by his own The Weinstein Company, which is now seeking to change its name. And yesterday, following allegations of rape made in The New Yorker magazine, his wife, designer Georgina Chapman, announced she was leaving the Miramax co-founder.

“My heart breaks for all the women who have suffered tremendous pain because of these unforgivable actions,” the 41-year-old told People magazine.

As the scandal continues and more victims come forward, there are signs of a general emboldening of women in Hollywood, some of whom are publicly speaking out about their own experiences. If that continues to gain momentum – and the opportunity is certainly there – one man with his own experiences of Hollywood’s wrath wants to play a prominent role.

“Just the beginning. Sexual abuse and slavery by the Hollywood elites is as common as dirt. Tsunami,” Kim Dotcom wrote on Twitter.

Dotcom initially suggested that via a website, victims of Hollywood abuse could share their stories anonymously, shining light on a topic that is often shrouded in fear and secrecy. But soon the idea was growing legs.

“Looking for a Los Angeles law firm willing to represent hundreds of sexual abuse victims of Hollywood elites, pro-bono. I’ll find funding,” he said.

Within hours, Dotcom announced that he’d found lawyers in the US who are willing to help victims, for free.

“I had talks with Hollywood lawyers. Found a big law firm willing to represent sexual abuse victims, for free. Next, the website,” he teased.

It’s not hard to see why Dotcom is making this battle his own. Aside from any empathy he feels towards victims on a personal level, he sees his family as kindred spirits, people who have also felt the wrath of Hollywood executives.

That being said, the Megaupload founder is extremely clear that framing this as revenge or a personal vendetta would be not only wrong, but also disrespectful to the victims of abuse.

“I want to help victims because I’m a victim,” he told TorrentFreak.

“I’m an abuse victim of Hollywood, not sexual abuse, but certainly abuse of power. It’s time to shine some light on those Hollywood elites who think they are above the law and untouchable.”

Dotcom told NZ Herald that people like Harvey Weinstein rub shoulders with the great and the good, hoping to influence decision-makers for their own personal gain. It’s something Dotcom, his family, and his colleagues have felt the effects of.

“They dine with presidents, donate millions to powerful politicians and buy favors like tax breaks and new copyright legislation, even the Megaupload raid. They think they can destroy lives and businesses with impunity. They think they can get away with anything. But they can’t. We’ll teach them,” he warned.

The Megaupload founder says he has both “the motive and the resources” to help victims and he’s promising to do that with proven skills. Ironically, many of these have been honed as a direct result of Hollywood’s attack on Megaupload and Dotcom’s relentless drive to bounce back with new sites like Mega and his latest K.im / Bitcache project.

“I’m an experienced fundraiser. A high traffic crowdfunding campaign for this cause can raise millions. The costs won’t be an issue,” Dotcom informs TF. “There seems to be an appetite for these cases because defendants usually settle quickly. I have calls with LA firms today and tomorrow.

“Just the beginning. Watch me,” he concludes.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.