Tag Archives: illegal

[PS3] PS Jailbreak and Clones To Be Released

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Media have widely reported about the latest steps in hacking the Playstation 3 console. Obviously that tiny PS Jailbreak USB Dongle turns a consumer PS3 into a debug PS3, thus allowing to run games from the internal or from an attached USB harddrive. The price is said to be around 160US$. For legal reasons here in Germany we can’t like to PS Jailbreak supplyers.

Now PS3Hax.net reports that using PS Jailbreak on Sony’s Playstation Network is very likely to result in being banned:

According to SKFUand RichDevX, the Backup manager game ID (LAUN-12345) could be logged/recorded by Sony when logged into PSN (when online). This would obviously allow Sony to see who would be using the illegal PSjb/clone and we could very well see ban waves similar to the Xbox 360. Sony does currently ban PSN/consoles that results in the 8002A227 error code.

Redmondpie.com reports that latest rumors indicate that there are also chinese clones of the PS3 Jailbreak called X3Jailbreak on their way, priced at 40$.

It seems like the PS3 hacking as a business model is out of date even before it started. We suspect it it won’t take long until a free open source solution will be available on the net aswell…

[Media] Newspaper Articles About Copying And File Sharing

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Abstract

According to the RIAA the media industry is suffering heavy losses due to increased copying and file sharing in the last 10 years. Sanity and reason shows there must be something true with that argument. But are the numbers the media companies are providing correct? What can we learn from history?

The following links provide an uncategorized and unsorted mixture of links (in multiple languages) dealing with the topic of copying and file sharing. It is in no way complete and perfect, but is probably usable as a lateral cut thru that topic.

We will update this section frequently. Comments are highly appreciated.

Links

Date Headling Editor/Media Link
1977 Sind Leer-Cassetten der Tod der Schallplatte? (~ “Will blank tapes mark the end of vinyl?”) Bravo Link
1977 “Klang-Supermarkt zum Nulltarif” (~”Sound supermarket for free”) Spiegel Link
Late 1980s “Anti-DAT lobbying” Wikipedia Link
1992 “Audio Home Recording Act” Wikipedia Link
2003 “Studie: Illegale Kopien sind ein internes Problem der Filmindustrie” (~”Study: Illegal Copies Are Internal Problem Of The Filmindustry”) Heise.de Link
2006 “Studios See Big Rise In Estimates of Losses To Movie Piracy” Wall Street Journal Link
2006 “Raubkopie-Studie: Hollywood verliert 6 Milliarden Dollar” (~”Illegal Copy Study: Hollywood Loses 6 Billion US$”) Golem.de Link
2009 “COMMENTS OF PARAMOUNT PICTURES CORPORATION IN RESPONSE TO THE NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN WORKSHOP ON THE ROLE OF CONTENT IN THE BROADBAND ECOSYSTEM” Paramount Pictures Link
2009 “Hollywood-Studio will Suchmaschinen kontrollieren” (~”Hollywood Studio Aiming At Control Of Internet Search Engines”) Golem.de Link
2009 “How UK Government spun 136 people into 7m illegal file sharers” PCPro.co.uk Link
2009 “Blu-ray kann weltweiten DVD-Verkaufsrückgang nicht auffangen” (~”Worldwide Blu-Ray Sales Don’t Compensate Reduced DVD Sales”) Golem.de Link
2009 “Blu-ray Disc zieht an – DVD-Verkäufe rückläufig” (~”Blu-Ray Sales Increasing – DVD Sales Decreasing”) Big Screen Link
2009 “Artists’ lawsuit: major record labels are the real pirates”) Ars Technica Link
2009 “Sind Labels die wahren Piraten? Musiker verklagen kanadische Musikindustrie” (~”Are Labels The Real Pirates? Musicians Sue Canadian Musicindustry”) Tom’s Hardware Link
2010 “Observations on Efforts to Quantify the Economic Effects of Counterfeit and Pirated Goods” U.S. Government
Accountability Office		 Link
2010 “Verluste durch Filesharing sind stark übertrieben” (~”Losses From File Sharing Massively Exaggerated”) Big Screen Link
2010 “Seagate to preload hard drives with movies” Financial Times Link

[iPad] Israel’s Customs Confiscate Imported U.S. iPads

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Haaretz reports that several iPads have been confiscated by Israel customs during the last days. It seems the U.S. american iPads don’t comply with Israel’s wireless networks. Thus the Communications Ministry has legally blocked the import of iPads to Israel.

“The iPad device sold exclusively today in the United States operates at broadcast power levels [over its WiFi modem] compatible with American standards,” explained the officials. “As the Israeli regulations in the area of WiFi are similar to European standards, which are different from American standards, which permit broadcasting at lower power, therefore the broadcast levels of the device prevent approving its use in Israel,” said the officials.

Don’t try to bring iPad to Israel in your hand-baggage. It would be confiscated anyway.

Read more on Haaretz.com…

[Muzaq] Former Universal CEO Calls For Culture Flatrate

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Former CEO of Universal Music Germany Tim Renner has called for a culture flatrate in the german Rolling Stone magazine.

Renner said, potential music buyers could be offered unlimited access to the music industry’s repositories for €12,90 (~US$17,50) per month.

Furthermore at the address of the music industry he argues: “Instead of fighting with ghosts, it’s all about starting a business”.

In 2004 Renner left Universal Music and wrote the book “Kinder, der Tod ist gar nicht so schlimm” (~”Kids, the death is not as bad as it seems”) – his personal opinion to the music industry’s future.

Links

» Tim Renner on Motor.de…
» Rolling Stone Germany: Renner fordert Kulturflatrate für 12,90€…
» Amazon.de: Kinder, der Tod ist gar nicht so schlimm…

[Muzaq] Incomplete-MP3 Store Alpha

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The Situation

As an addition to our periodical music reviews we now offer to get those tracks legally as mp3 downloads from our own site here. We don’t expect big sales here. We see this as another experiment in our large field of experiments.

As this is all about gathering experiences, we currently offer this service for the U.S. and for Germany only.


The Quality

The quality of the mp3 files is very good. The mp3 files have round about 256kBits/s compressed variable bitrate.


Your Benefits

You get real mp3’s  without digital rights management (DRM) or watermarks. You can play mp3 files virtually on any mobile music player around, mp3’s are of course compatible to Apple’s iPods or iPhones or Palm’s Pre.

And yes: this is legal. No downloading from dark places. And the best: we teamed up with Amazon, thus allowing you to use Amazon as your payment service to get our finest mp3 selections.


The Prices

The prices vary depending on the size and the amount of tracks. LP’s usually cost about US$9.98 (€9.98). EP’s vary between $3.00 – $5.00.

Links

» Incomplete-News.Com: Incomplete-MP3 Beta Store (USA)…
» Incomplete-News.Com: Incomplete-MP3 Beta Store (Deutschland)…

Preview is limited to 30secs at the moment…

[iPhone] Apple disallows SDK to be used for jailbreak Apps

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According to ArsTechnica.com Apple’s latest update of the iPhone SDK agreement contains terms that explicitly forbids developers to use the iPhone SDK to be used to create applications that require jailbreak.

We don’t expect that this will either stop people from developing apps for jailbroken iPhones, as we feel this is a problem Apple addresses in the wrong manner, nor do we think this will stop the hackers like the iPhone Dev Team to create jailbreaks. As long as certain applications (like browsers) are not allowed in the AppStore and as long as Apple denies access to the underlying BSD Unix, people will go on enabling these features on a different way.

The recent developments like the CydiaStore show that there is a market for Apps that run on jailbroken iPhones.

[News] iTunes Gift Card Algorithm Cracked

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On auction sites worldwide chinese faked iTunes gift card serials are getting sold for a lot less money than their iTunes value. Currently 200US$ gift cards cost about 3-5US$ in China. In Europe prices vary between 40-60€ per 200US$ gift card.

This issue reveals that Apple seems to have at least one problem: either they don’t have a database of valid gift card keys at all, but is only using checksum algorithms to test for validity of these cards – or their database of valid gift cards has backdoors that have been found by some chinese guys. Although – as always – Apple did not comment on this yet, they are most likely working on this problem.

We strongly recommend to not buy iTunes gift cards currently via auction sites. It is fraud and by knowingly buying those faked codes you are accountable. Moreover technically will Apple block these codes.

Always remember: if it’s too cheap to be true, it is fake.