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UK copyright body throws idle threats at Kodi box owners
Audio-visual enthusiasts know and recognise that Kodi is the swiss-army knife of media centres. But for lots of people around the world, the software is synonymous with movie and TV show piracy. "Fully-loaded" Kodi boxes have made the open-source platform a huge target for copyright authorities and rights holders, who are now using the courts to punish people who sell ready-made illegal streaming solutions. The end user has typically escaped punishment, but the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) is now warning UK owners that they too could see the long arm of the law tap them on the shoulder.
House Science Committee asks Trump to stop relying on fake news
Donald Trump, science skeptic and 45th president of the United States of America, woke up to a message (PDF) this morning from some of his harshest critics. Members of the House of Representative Committee on Science, Space and Technology have issued a letter expressing their concern for the future of the country. Specifically, they question how Trump can effectively govern when he relies so heavily on unverified information and shows blatant disregard for scientific fact.
Shia LaBeouf's anti-Trump livestream moves to the UK for 'safety' (update)
Since its launch in January, Shia LaBeouf's anti-Trump art piece has been mired in controversy. In its short life, "He Will Not Divide Us" has been shut down by New York's Museum of the Moving Image (its original home), played a part in LaBeouf's arrest following a scuffle and relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Fears over public safety have made it hard for LaBeouf and his two co-artists, Luke Turner and Nastja Säde Rönkkö, to find a permanent home for their project in America, so they decided to remove it from the US completely. It's now been adopted by the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool, England, where where a flag bearing the name of the project will be streamed live 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the remainder of the Trump presidency.
Social media led police straight to movie pirates
How can law enforcement agencies track down some of the world's most (in)famous pirates? The same way that we find out how our school frenemies are doing: stalking them on social media. TorrentFreak has investigated the recent convictions of three of the UK's biggest file-sharers to learn how exactly they were caught. It turns out that copyright enforcement officials are doing the same sort of armchair-sleuthing that we all do, only that they've got a hotline straight to the police.
Man lands in jail for using phone to pirate movie at the theater
The concept of someone recording films at movie theaters for pirating purposes seems so outdated. Yet, that's still happening in some parts of the world, apparently. Most recently, there's the case of Philip Danks, a 25-year-old UK man who just got sentenced to 33 months of jail time after using his phone to record a film in the theater and, subsequently, upload it to his website to let the internet download it at no cost -- at least initially. So which movie, you ask? None other than Fast & Furious 6. According to Universal Pictures, Danks' pirated upload was downloaded nearly 780,000 times, which the studio claimed resulted in a loss of about £2.5 million, or about 4.1 million in US dollars. After his initial arrest, and before he pleaded guilty to the charges yesterday, Danks took to his Facebook page to share his feelings about the ordeal: "Seven billion people and I was the first. Fuck you Universal Pictures." He's now facing 33 months in jail, while 120 hours of unpaid community service were served to a friend who helped him along the way.
