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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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      Dell XPS 13 : Amazon explose le prix de ce rival du MacBook Air (-35%) COLLISION SYMBOL

      news.movim.eu / JournalDuGeek · 08:22

    Dell Xps 13

    En ce moment, une offre spéciale sur Amazon permet de s'équiper de l'ordinateur ultraportable Dell XPS 13 à un prix encore jamais vu. Si vous cherchez une alternative au MacBook Air, c'est un excellente choix.
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      Quantum computing progress: Higher temps, better error correction

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Yesterday - 22:24 · 1 minute

    conceptual graphic of symbols representing quantum states floating above a stylized computer chip.

    Enlarge (credit: vital )

    There's a strong consensus that tackling most useful problems with a quantum computer will require that the computer be capable of error correction. There is absolutely no consensus, however, about what technology will allow us to get there. A large number of companies, including major players like Microsoft, Intel, Amazon, and IBM, have all committed to different technologies to get there, while a collection of startups are exploring an even wider range of potential solutions.

    We probably won't have a clearer picture of what's likely to work for a few years. But there's going to be lots of interesting research and development work between now and then, some of which may ultimately represent key milestones in the development of quantum computing. To give you a sense of that work, we're going to look at three papers that were published within the last couple of weeks, each of which tackles a different aspect of quantum computing technology.

    Hot stuff

    Error correction will require connecting multiple hardware qubits to act as a single unit termed a logical qubit. This spreads a single bit of quantum information across multiple hardware qubits, making it more robust. Additional qubits are used to monitor the behavior of the ones holding the data and perform corrections as needed. Some error correction schemes require over a hundred hardware qubits for each logical qubit, meaning we'd need tens of thousands of hardware qubits before we could do anything practical.

    Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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      Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Yesterday - 20:25

    Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

    Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto )

    Unsealed court documents have revealed more details about a secret Facebook project initially called "Ghostbusters," designed to sneakily access encrypted Snapchat usage data to give Facebook a leg up on its rival, just when Snapchat was experiencing rapid growth in 2016.

    The documents were filed in a class-action lawsuit from consumers and advertisers, accusing Meta of anticompetitive behavior that blocks rivals from competing in the social media ads market.

    "Whenever someone asks a question about Snapchat, the answer is usually that because their traffic is encrypted, we have no analytics about them," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (who has since rebranded his company as Meta) wrote in a 2016 email to Javier Olivan.

    Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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      Sécurisez votre maison avec la Ring Alarm qui revient à son meilleur prix

      news.movim.eu / JournalDuGeek · 3 days ago - 14:32

    Ring Alarm

    Ring Alarm est un système de sécurité pour la maison développé par Amazon, il bénéficie aujourd'hui d'une énorme promotion à l'occasion des ventes flash de printemps !
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      Bradée à -74%, cette micro SD SanDisk 256 Go est parfaite pour votre Nintendo Switch

      news.movim.eu / JournalDuGeek · 3 days ago - 13:44

    Sandisk 256 Go

    Vous avez une Nintendo Switch ? Vous commencez à manquer d'espace et aimeriez installer d'autres jeux ? L'ajout d'une micro SD reste à ce jour la meilleure solution. Justement, Amazon propose en ce moment le modèle 256 Go SanDisk sous licence officielle Big N, à un prix frisant le ridicule.
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      It’s daylight e-robbery: how entrepreneurs feel powerless as their work is ripped off

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 3 days ago - 09:00

    It’s no longer just familiar designer goods that are faked. Counterfeiters now spread their net much wider

    After years of dealing with mental health issues, Kelly Robinson-Key found writing poetry helped her through the dark times. From there has emerged a cottage industry based around her inspirational “pocket poems”.

    But now the Wales-based poet has found herself “mentally drained” from fighting waves of counterfeit products that have copied her work, and are frequently for sale on some of the biggest online marketplaces.

    Continue reading...
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      Undertaxed and over here: why the UK welcomes US mega firms | Phillip Inman

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 5 days ago - 17:00

    Amazon and Google may be the most visible, but our lack of investment and regulation has let myriad American companies take over too much of UK life

    Americans love Britain, and in many ways the British admire Americans, but the benefits of the relationship are becoming increasingly one-way.

    That’s the argument set out in a book published next month documenting how US companies have made inroads into the UK economy by exploiting a desperate need for investment, weak regulation and a public that seems oblivious to the cost to themselves and, ultimately, the economy.

    Continue reading...
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      DJI Mini 3 : victime de la folie d’Amazon, ce drone neuf s’affiche au prix de l’occasion FACE SCREAMING IN FEAR

      news.movim.eu / JournalDuGeek · 5 days ago - 14:07

    Dji Mini 3

    Les ventes flash de printemps sur Amazon c'est encore jusqu'à ce lundi 25 mars. Pour cette opération de grande envergure, le cybermarchand n'hésite pas à casser les prix sur une multitude de produits. Preuve en est avec cette offre venue d'ailleurs sur le drone DJI Mini 3 neuf, vendu aujourd'hui à un prix tout bonnement incroyable.