Part of the Google I/Oonslaught yesterday was an update to Google Play Books for both Android and iOS. In and of itself it's not exactly ground-breaking, but Google'll now let you read books uploaded to your Google Drive (through Google Books), which means cloud-syncing for your own, erm, acquired books. Read More >>
Featured comment by jezzafool:
"I seem to be miss-understanding this as I can't 'open with Google play books' like I can with iBooks from Google Drive...." More »
It's one thing if your friends, family, and neighbours find out that you've been doing some torrenting. It's a bit worse if they find out what kind of porn you like. Unluckily for smut pirates everywhere, a new "pay-up-now" letter that's doing the circuit pretty explicitly threatens to go around telling people exactly that. Read More >>
Occasionally, Google (and some of its users) don't quite see eye-to-eye. Extensions to Google Chrome which provide functions that are both legally and morally dubious fall into that category, which is why they generally get removed. But if your morals are loose and your scruples few and far between, you can still get at the forbidden fruit -- including Spotify downloads -- it just takes a bit of work. Read More >>
Long-running Bittorrent tracker Demonoid appeared to be attempting another relaunch this week, although it's almost certain the return was a scam designed to trick people into visiting a malicious site to fill their computers with malware. Read More >>
The Prenda Law offensive against random porn downloaders has been blown apart by a US judge, who accused the claimants of lying, hitting those charged with unavoidable legal fees and generally trying to profit from the US legal system by "seeking easy money" from those hit by spurious cases. Read More >>
Featured comment by Rob Dennehy:
"There's more. When you open the PDF the first line above the introduction reads:
“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
—Spo..." More »
Today, Adobe announced the latest round of updates to its ubiquitous software suite, with its Creative Cloud subscription service taking centre-stage. Not only is the old Creative Suite moniker being dropped completely, but a whole slew of cloud-dependent features were introduced. While the updates will be a boon to a huge number of Adobe customers, it's going to annoy the hell out of one core Adobe demo: the pirates. Read More >>
Featured comment by Mr Tennent:
"They have a monopoly plain and simple, the software isn't massively ahead of its rivals, it was back in the day but most of the new features are just ..." More »
The Chief Content Officer of streaming giant Netflix claims the modern trend for easily streaming legal content is impacting on the more hardcore Bittorrent scene, with pirate traffic dropping in countries when Netflix switches on its servers. According to Netflix's Ted Sarandos, this is because "...people are mostly honest." Read More >>
Every gripping pirate story has to involve at least one scene set on some godforsaken island with palm trees, and the epic Pirate Bay saga is no exception. Just days after fleeing for Iceland, everyone's favourite torrent site is now ending in .SX. A tot of rum for anyone who can tell me what country the .SX domain belongs to. Read More >>
The UK's Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act has been passed, putting controversial new copyright laws regarding what's known as "orphan works" into place for photos put online. The changes mean that if there's no clear identifying meta data in images, anyone can use and sub-license them and the owners have little recourse to complain. Read More >>
Featured comment by odysseus:
"Outright wrong. You retain all rights to your images uploaded to Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, but you do have to grant them a licence to your ima..." More »
An incredibly clever bit of anti-piracy work has been implemented by the maker of Game Dev Tycoon, with the developer releasing its own cracked version to the file-sharing web sites -- complete with game-breaking piracy elements that make playing it increasingly futile. Read More >>
An updated McAfee product will kindly warn you should you attempt to download pirated material or visit dodgy web sites, politely offering alternative legal sources of files instead. We can see this catching on with literally three or four people. Read More >>
Featured comment by Piercy:
"I only download the stuff I do because of the stupid delay between the US airing and the UK Airing. I like getting involved in the community for show..." More »
Featured comment by Sam.Amiri.021:
"Sam correct me if I'm wrong but the court order was on "ThePiratebay.net", how come that Virgin Media has already blocked the new one!?" More »