Nik Nak’s Daily Teaser — 8-3-2020: The CD

8th March, 2020.

Yes: I’ve got one last birthday present to come.

Dinner with the family, today.

At a little place in town I’ve never heard of.

It should be good.

~≈Ç≈~

Talking of which … ?

I went up to Brentwood Library, yesterday.   To reassure myself the laptop could connect up to the Library’s wi-fi.

It could.

I know I was … ummm … poking around, as well.

And cam across this page.

https://piratebay.surf/

Don’t bother trying to connect to it, you won’t with out a copy of TorBrowser.

Basically?

The link is a proxy — an indirect connection — to Pirate Bay.

Pirate Bay?   Allows us to download torrent files: specialised files that let you download various types of content.

Usually in conjunction with a torrent client: the type of app that does the downloading.

I downloaded the version of Ubuntu on my laptop via a torrent file, to give you an example.

But, famously?   The Torrent technique can also be used to download copyrighted material — movies, TV shows, what have you — for free: from sites like Pirate Bay, KAT, LimeTorrent, and the recently reestablished Demonoid.

So — in line with a pair of court orders from a few years ago — internet service providers are supposed to block access to them, and their proxies.

Given that?

How I managed to get through to a Pirate Bay proxy, yesterday?

I really don’t know … 

~≈Ç≈~

Nik Nak’s Daily Teaser — 17-8-2017: U C These Ds?

Blimey, HBO’s having issues … 

Just in case you didn’t know … ?

HBO is the TV company that airs the incredibly successful series, Game of Thrones.

Not only have they recently been had issues — having several scripts, and episodes, posted anywhere that’ll have them — but they’ve ALSO had next week’s sixth episode posted online.

By someone at HBO, itself.

By mistake.

It never rains, when it can pour … 

~≈≈~

Copyrght, Hargreaves … And stuff …

Oh, well, now …

It looks — LOOKS — like I can honestly turn around and say “Well, FINALLY” with both a certain amount of force.

And a certain amount of relief, as well.

Because, after a certain amount of consideration, Business Secretary, Vince Cable has announced the government’s response to the Hargreaves Report on Intellectual Property and Growth.

And it’s favourable.

»»·««

Just so you know, the report was published some time ago, and deals with the state of UK copyright law in the modern age: and, in part, how to deal with one or two of the anomalies of UK copyright law.

The bit of it that’s always struck me and many others as stupid, here … ?

Is the simple fact that in the UK, one cannot do what’s become known as format shifting.

In other words … ?

We can’t, legally, copy a CD or DVD we own from the original optical media, to our hard drive, and then to an iPod, MP3 player, flash drive*, external back up drive, home theatre computer … or the earlier models of Apple TV streaming device.

Ridiculous, really, isn’t it … ?

But, at ANY rate … ?

As you’ll have probably figured out, I’ve always thought that that was — speaking frankly — bloody stupid.

The law, in this sort of case, is not only an ass, but a bloody slow one, at that.

It’ll still be slow.

But if you’ve been watching the news, today, you’ll know that Business Secretary Vince Cable has announced the the coalition government will — in possibly the only good move I think they’ll make — be accepting those conclusions.

He also announced that the government will be dropping the web-site blocking aspects of the Digital Economy Act, that passed into law, just before the general election.

Mostly because of the legal moves afoot to force ISPs to block them: something I believe to be very dodgy ground. After all, it’s turning the people who provide you and me with access to the ’Net into policemen. And policemen I’d rather not have stomping around MY hard-drive, just on principle, thanking you … !

But, at ANY rate … ?

At any rate, this hopefully means that, now Mr Cable’s announced this … ?

It means we can all heave a collective sigh of relief.

Because we’re now no longer being made criminals, unintentionally.

»»·««

* I mention that as many modern models of DVD and Blu-Ray player/recorders, PVR and television set have USB ports on them, and happily play any correctly encoded video file on a USB flash drive.