With the release of the film itself now just over a month away, the promotional campaign for The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug has hit frenzy mode. We’ve just had a batch of new posters released for the film, and now here comes the latest trailer, full of fresh moments.
This new look at the film certainly keeps up both the atmospheric spookiness of Smaug’s lair, the spider dwellings and the other dark corners of Middle-earth we continue to explore. Also featured? Lots of chances for Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and new character Tauriel (Evangeline Lily) to shine, plus Richard Armitage getting plenty of hero moments as Thorin. For those of you who want more of Luke Evans and his native Welsh accent as Bard, he’s here too.
The trailer, along with a new production diary that focuses on the last sprint of filming to grab remaining “pick-up” shots (and features Ian McKellen swearing!), premiered as part of a big Hobbit fan event that was held simultaneously in cities such as London, Los Angeles, New York, Mexico City and Wellington, New Zealand.
You can see the truncated version of the live broadcast below (skip to 21 minutes in to see the blog), which stops just before audiences at the physical events got to see around 20 minutes of footage. Empire was present at the London location and will have a full report up as soon as it’s written.
The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug is out on December 13. For much more on the film, including our exclusive set visit and four different covers, check out the current issue of Empire, available in shops and in various digital formats now.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
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Looking for the previous roundup editions? Find them here.
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For folks who need to know, and for those who can never read enough about Kit Kat
In case you're looking for more information about Android 4.4, or to use it's more delicious name, Kit Kat, Google has you covered. The official Android 4.4 Quick Start Guide (53 pages) is available free from Google Play. You'll need to have Google Play Books installed to read it, so if you're using an older phone you'll need to grab that from the Play store first.
A quick glance shows sections about home screen setup, using Google Now, notifications, the new Tap and Pay system, and just about everything else someone new to Android or Kit Kat would want to know. This should be a good read to get started, and if you still need a little help — no worries, we all do sometimes — the forums is the place to get it.
Nobody looks forward to the end of the work day more than Mr. Ludo
If you played board games as a kid, chances are you played Ludo, which also goes by Sorry!, Parcheesi, and other names. Now UK developer called Yo Ambulante has created a new Android version called Mr. Ludo. This particular take still offers the time-honored and simple gameplay that many of us know and love, but dresses it up with a charming office-based theme and both local and online multiplayer for up to four players. Oh, and it's free to play.
Valve really is serious about competing with the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 after all. The Seattle Times went to Valve's offices in Bellevue, Wash. and got to take a look at some early prototypes of Valve's Steam Machine consoles that will run on its free-to-use SteamOS gaming platform. From the picture that The Seattle Times published, the prototype Steam Machine looks a lot like an Xbox One: A large black box that will hook into your television and act as your main gaming interface. Valve representatives tell the Times that they're "trying to advance the stagnant PC hardware platform and provide an open platform on which other companies can innovate." Pictures of prototype Steam Machine consoles follow below.
Don't look now, but Windows Phone is gaining some serious momentum in Europe. The latest numbers from Kantar Worldpanel show that Windows Phone has actually surpassed iOS in market share in Italy, a significant victory for Microsoft that Kantar says is mostly due to strong sales of Nokia Lumia handsets. Overall, Kantar found that Windows Phone handsets now have a 13.7% market share in Italy while Apple's Italian market share has fallen to just 10.2%. Kantar has also found that Windows Phone has been gaining steam in other major European markets, as the platform now has a combined market share of nearly 10% in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Android is still far and away the market share leader on the continent, however, and accounts for 71.9% of smartphones sold in the five biggest EU markets.
What if getting help for a computer glitch, a leaky pipe, or a homework problem was as easy as clicking a button? What if you could connect via real-time video to a music teacher or a yoga instructor from the comfort of your home? What if you could get someone knowledgeable to get you “unstuck” when you really need it?
Today, we’re announcing Helpouts—a new way to get and give help over live video. Our goal is simple: help people help each other. We want to use the convenience and efficiency of the web to enable everyone, no matter where they are or what time it is, to easily connect with someone who can help.
Help might be a quick answer to a problem you’re having right now, like how to fix your garage door, or how to remove a computer virus; or it might be guidance completing a project, like building a deck. It might be learning a new skill, like how to speak conversational French or how to draw cartoons; or it might be general advice on how to improve your fitness or your writing (I could use this right now).
With Helpouts, you can choose who you get help from based on their qualifications, their availability, their price, their ratings and reviews. You can connect instantly or book in advance. You can get help from individuals or from brands you already know and trust, like Sephora, One Medical, Weight Watchers, Redbeacon (a Home Depot company), and Rosetta Stone. Once you’re in a Helpout, you can do more than just talk—you can share your computer screen, collaboratively edit a presentation, or record your Helpout. And if the experience doesn’t meet your expectations, we offer a full money back guarantee.
Today is just the beginning. We’re starting small and in a few categories. The number of people giving help on Helpouts and the type of help available will grow over time. Helpouts may not be suitable for every occasion, and it will take time to get used to interactions via real time video. We hope that the efficiency, convenience and global reach of Helpouts will make people’s lives easier in the long term.
We hope you’ll give Helpouts a try and give us your feedback through ratings and reviews, or talk to us on Google+, Twitter or Facebook. And if you’re interested in giving help on Helpouts yourself, let us know.
It’s time to make getting good help a whole lot easier.
A new trailer finally gives us a real look into Helix, the upcoming series from Battlestar Galactica creator Ron Moore. From the trailer — which is available over at Entertainment Weekly — Helix appears to be an eerie sci-fi thriller with plenty of obvious callbacks to The Thing through both its visuals and plot. The 13-episode season will follow scientists from the Centers for Disease Control who venture down to an Arctic research facility to look into a possible outbreak. Things begin to go awry once they arrive, if Helix's very first trailer is any suggestion, things could eventually get even creepier than what we see here.
The show isn't premiering until Friday, January 10th, but Syfy is apparently already talking about its...
A slight premium over U.S. pricing, but it's in stock and ready to ship
While Google's Chromecast app for Android broke U.S. exclusivity, the dongle itself still remains M.I.A. At least, officially, anyway. There was a brief time when Amazon customers could get their hands on them, but if you're wanting one now, online retailer Zavvi is the place to go. It'll cost you £39.99, which is more than it costs in the States, but shipping is free and they're in stock and ready to go according to its product listing.
What it doesn't say is how many there are, so if you really want one, acting quickly is your best bet. Hit up the source link below to order, and if you're still undecided, check out our full Chromecast review for everything you need to know.
After The Washington Post reported last week that the NSA was tapping into private networks at Google and Yahoo, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wasted no time in denying the allegations. Clapper said the report had "misstated facts, mischaracterized NSA’s activities, and drawn erroneous inferences about those operations." Today, the Post struck back with an even more detailed look at the NSA's network-tapping capabilities, including proprietary details that all but prove the agency was pulling data from the company's private lines.
It simply wouldn't be a new month without a new roundup of the top apps and games from the previous month. We've already gone over last month's very best apps - so what about games? There were plenty of new games to choose from last month, but a few really stood apart. We've compiled a short list once again of the very best games sure to enhance any Android user's catalog.
Google is not very good at keeping things a secret. Not very good at all. Photos, videos and various details surrounding the just-announced Nexus 5 smartphone had leaked for months leading up to the phone's debut, and it all started with Google accidentally posting a video that included a shot of the device. Now, staying true to form, Google has published a marketing photo on its website that likely reveals its next-generation Nexus tablet. The photo was first pointed out on a forum and then noticed by Ars Technica, which points out that the tablet has very slim bezels on the sides, on-screen buttons and a display that likely measures about 8 inches diagonally. The "Nexus 8" also bears an undeniable resemblance to LG's latest 8.3-inch tablet, which suggests that Google likely partnered with LG on its upcoming pure Google tablet as it did with the new Nexus 5. The full photo of the alleged Nexus 8 follows below.
Valve Corporation, the video game developer responsible for Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress , and the digital distribution platform Steam, has an ambitious plan to reinvent the video game console. But don’t expect the so-called Steam Machine to take on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 quite yet. Right now, the company is focused on catching the attention of 65 million PC gamers who've historically turned to expensive custom rigs in the name of high-FPS entertainment — and it just might have a shot at that.
Last month, Valve invited us to its Bellevue, Washington headquarters to see one of the very first Steam Machines in action, try the Steam Controller, and obtain further insight into the company's plans.
Chrome: If you're sifting through your Netflix queue or suggested movies and TV shows, you can read a brief description of the title before you start it or queue it, but that's all. With the Netflix Trailer Button Adder extension for Chrome, you can also click to view a trailer so you know what you're getting into first.
Once installed, the add-on drops a "View Trailer" button beneath each title poster when browsing Netflix. Click the button to view a trailer, the screen dims, and a YouTube video pops up right over Netflix and plays the trailer for your movie, or even for the TV show or season of a TV show that you selected. It works seamlessly, like it's built-in to Netflix, and you can just click out of the video when you're finished with it. It's simple, to the point, and works well. Hit the link below to grab it.
KitKat makes it easier to swap or uninstall custom launchers
Many of us enjoy using custom home screen launchers on our Android phones, but the process of switching between them has never been entirely foolproof. That's changed in the latest Android 4.4 KitKat, which introduces a new top-level menu in the Settings app allowing you to select your default launcher. That means you don't have to traipse into the Apps menu, find your custom launcher, then clear its defaults to change back. The new Home menu also gives you an easy way to uninstall custom launchers, by pressing the trash icon next to it.
Check out our video above for a quick walkthrough on the Nexus 5.
Another month, another great set of apps released to the Play Store. Amid the Nexus season hysteria, plenty of worthy new apps entered the fray, vying for attention from Android users looking to spice up their catalogs.
Out of that list, we've chosen seven of the very best new apps, saving you the hassle of going through every entry. Of course we've got a brief list of runners up as well, but we'll take a closer look at the top six first.
The numbers of portable blood glucose monitors linked to smartphones are exploding, given that there are some 26 million diabetics in the U.S. alone and hundreds of millions globally. Glooko is a startup in this space. It helps diabetics to record and monitor their blood sugar levels by connecting one of 17 FDA-approved glucose meters with their smartphone. Another is iHealth Lab out of Mountain View, Calif., which has a portable Bluetooth-enabled blood glucose monitor that allows people to take a reading and have the results sync automatically to their iOS or Android device and stored in the cloud.
Now New York-based LabStyle Innovations has developed the Dario, a cloud-based, mobile health platform for diabetes and related blood glucose monitoring. It now plans to launch an iOS mobile application on December 12 in the U.K., Australia and New Zealand and will market a pocket-sized glucose meter.
The app works with the ‘all-in-one', pocket-sized, Dario blood glucose monitoring device, which comes complete with lancet, strips and a meter that connects to a smart phone. The device will be commercially available in Europe in a soft launch during the first quarter of 2014.
You'll also be able to link the Dario's iOS app to any glucose monitoring device by manually feeding in the information.
Over the longer term, the platform hopes to be able to integrate with insulin delivery and other diabetes devices.
LabStyle Innovations is a public company traded under the ticker symbol DRIO which formerly raised $12 million funding.
If you've stumbled on someone else's YouTube playlist of great music videos, movie clips, or other videos that you enjoy, you don't have to rebuild it yourself if you want it in case their account goes private or gets taken down. Copy YouTube Playlists is a webapp that will do the trick quickly and automatically.
The tool was built by Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration, and he shows you how to use it in the video above. He notes that YouTube used to give you a way to copy another user's playlists, but they've since removed it, so this tool will do it for you. You have to log in with your YouTube account (so the app can get permissions to create playlists on your behalf), and then you can paste in any playlist URL you want to duplicate. Set the privacy of your new playlist, and you're all set.
Of course, the tool only protects you if someone else's playlist vanishes—whether they delete it themselves, they delete their account, change their privacy, and so on. If a video in the playlist is deleted, it'll be removed from yours as well, so keep that in mind. Hit the link below to give the webapp a whirl.
My new Locus column, Collective Action, proposes a theory of corruption: the relatively small profits from being a jerk are concentrated, the much larger effects are diffused, which means that the jerks can afford better lawyers and lobbyists than any one of their victims. Since the victims are spread out and don't know each other, it's hard to fight back together.
Then I propose a solution: using Kickstarter-like mechanisms to fight corruption: a website where victims of everything from patent trolls and copyright trolls, all the way up to pollution and robo-signing foreclosures, can find each other and pledge to fund a group defense, rather than paying off the bandits.
It's the Magnificent Seven business model: one year, the villagers stop paying the robbers, and use the money to pay mercenaries to fight the robbers instead.
What would a Kickstarter for Class Action Defense look like? Imagine if you could pledge, ‘‘I promise that I will withhold license fees/settlements for [a bad patent/a fraudulent copyright fee/a copyright troll’s threat] as soon as 100 other victims do the same.’’ Or 1,000. Or 10,000. Hungry, entrepreneurial class-action lawyers could bid for the business, offer opinions on the win-ability of the actions, or even start their own kickstarters (‘‘I promise I will litigate this question until final judgment if 1,000 threat-letter recipients promise to pay me half of what the troll is asking.’’)
Basically, it’s the scene where the villagers decide to stop paying the bandits and offer the next round of protection money to the Magnificent Seven to defend them.
There’s a lot to like about this solution. Once a troll is worried about a pushback from his victims, he’ll need to raise a war-chest, and since the only thing a troll makes is lawsuits, he’ll start sending more threats. Those threats will attract more people to the kickstarter, raising its profile and its search-rank. The more the troll wriggles, the more stuck he becomes.
We could spin out a thousand possible variations on this – a pro-rated refund if the lawyer wins without spending all the money, or preferential shares to early entrants; a traditional plaintiff’s side class-action sister-project that goes after trolls who’ve lost their suits and uses their defeat as the basis for stripping them of every asset to their underwear and redistributing it to victims (and lawyers, of course – though that’s not a bad outcome, since it means lawyers might be willing to spend more on the ‘‘defense’’ part of the action in the hopes of a bigger payout down the line).
Can YouTube create live content that inspires watercooler zeitgeist moments like television? Google's giving it a shot with the YouTube Music Awards, a celebration of do-it-yourself Internet culture livestreaming on YouTube right now. It's chaotic, innovative, offensive, silly, and downright weird. But one thing's for sure. You won't see this on TV.
Creative director Spike Jonze's goal with the the YouTube Music Awards was to create “live music videos” on stage with artists like The Arcade Fire and Lady Gaga. You can read the New York Times' piece on the lead up to the YouTube Music Awards for more context on the production and its intention.
Judging by the concurrent viewer number shown on the livestream (hovering around 175,000 with a peak at 220,000 during Lady Gaga's performance) the show isn't a runaway hit. But we'll have to wait and see whether people take advantage of the option to watch the show on YouTube later.
We'll have more analysis after the event ends but for now, here's our live blog:
5:45 EST - Rather than awkward red carpet footage, viewers showing up early are being greeted with behind-the-scenes interviews and clips of how the New York City production came together.
6:00 – With little fanfare, hosts Jason Schwartzman (actor from Rushmore) and Reggie Watts (improv musician and comedian) have kicked off the first YouTube Music Awards. The microphones are bit quiet signaling this won't be the highest production value affair.
6:03 – For the first live music video, actress Greta Gerwig is dancing out her breakout woes to a new tune from Arcade Fire. The traditionally very serious band doesn't quite mesh with the funny faces and spaz-out dance moves Gerwig is tossing around.
6:05 – The hosts are already fumbling over themselves trying to keep the chaotic program on the rails. They introduce a sprawling medley of YouTube hits sung by tribute musicians and viral video stars like Walk Off The Earth (a whole band who plays covers by simultaneously playing a single guitar) and Tay Zonday of “Chocolate Rain” fame. It's ridiculous and campy, but the middle-school dance squad doing “What Does The Fox Say” was cute.
6:15 – The first YouTube Music Award for YouTube Breakthrough goes to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis for their “Thrift Shop” video. Macklemore tells the crowd they shot the video for just $5,000 with a bunch of their friends, highlighting the democratizing nature of YouTube. And in the first moment proving this is not television, after thanking his family and fiance, Macklemore thanks “the guy who used to sell me shrooms.”
6:25 – Lady Gaga draws the biggest audience of the night with a stripped down performance of her new song “Dope”, taking advantage of the lack of censors to sing “I know I fucked up again because I lost my only friend.” Instead of her typical sensational costumes, she's keeping it real in a flannel button up and baseball cap. With tears seeming to build behind her eyes, Gaga provides the most compelling moment of the evening when she cries out “I need you more than dope!”
6:30 – In one of many strange gimmicks, Schwartzman and Watts have to dig the name of the winner of the “Response Of The Year” award out of a set of birthday cakes. It goes to pop violinist Lindsey Stirling & Pentatonix for their cover of Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive". Sterling says “I owe everything about my success to YouTube. YouTube let me be true to my passion…true to myself.”
6:35 – Tyler The Creator of Odd Future (not A$AP Rocky as we originally wrote) and Earl Sweatshirt shoot a live music video by rapping from inside a rowdy moshpit.
6:40 – The most artistically successful part of the evening saw Lindsey Sterling flying on wires through a lightning-struck city scape. Her music gives the impression of hurdling through space and Jonze captured it vividly.
6:45 - The discombobulating nature of the event is starting to make it feel grating. When Taylor Swift song “I Knew You Were Trouble” wins the YouTube Phenomenon award for inspiring the most fan videos, Arcade Fire lead singer Win Butler comes out and “steals” the microphone, mimicking Kanye West's famous interruption of a Taylor Swift award speech year ago. Butler announces that obviously “Harlem Shake” should have won. It all feels a bit canned.
6:50 – Korean girl group Girls' Generation wins Video Of The Year. Their “I Got A Boy” video seems pretty boring and has had little domestic notoriety despite racking up 70 million+ views. It seems like an obvious nod to YouTube's international audience.
7:00 – MIA performs “Come Walk With Me” in psychedelic LED tunnel. Difficulty capturing the lights on camera detracted from what was probably quite dazzling in person.
7:10 – Eminem inexplicably wins “Artist Of The Year” despite his new album not being released until later this week. He beat out musicians who were actually huge this year like Justin Bieber and PSY, whose “Gangnam Style” now has 1.8 billion views.
7:15 – Well isn't that convenient. Eminem is the closing performance for the show…except he's nowhere to be found. YouTube quickly pipes in a jagged set of “highlight” clips from the show, followed by Reggie Watts freestyling to kill time. When Eminem appears five minutes later, his performance of “Rap God” is a middling attempt at higher brow art shot in black and white in a blank soundstage.
7:25 – That's all folks. Schwartzman and Watts seem to have completely run out of things to say as they close the show, with Watts thanking his home state of Montana. The last meaningful thing uttered before the stream cuts off was Spike Jonze saying thanking YouTube “for letting us make this mess.” Accurate.
So Did It Work?
The YouTube Music Awards was fun to watch. The entertainment oscillated between coming from appreciation for great musicians, being impressed by the artistic vision of the whole production, and cringe-worthy scenes when everything seemed ready fall apart. It was anything but boring, which is a huge improvement on the multi-hour Grammys. And it didn't run gags into the ground like the MTV Video Music Awards.
What was noticeably absent was the practically infinite money of Google. Keeping with the homemade style of much of its content, the hosted interludes between segments were rough around the edges. Cursing, drug references, and the breakneck pace kept it feeling young and fresh.
Still, the YouTube Music Awards could have been much better. The Eminem show lacked inspiration, and though Tyler The Creator's performance captured the aggression of his music, it looked like a crappy concert video you'd shoot yourself. Unrehearsed chit-chat and mediocre cinematography made it less than spellbinding.
Crystallizing the chaos, at one pointa stagehand (seen below in the middle back) had to come out on stage and tell Schwartzman and Watts they only had 20 more seconds of dead air to fill because Eminem was finally ready to go on.
Some in the YouTube creator community blasted the show for focusing on major label musicians rather than the stars who made their names on YouTube itself. Sterling did win an award and perform, and Destorm, another YouTube celeb also took home a play button statue, but it was the radio stars who got the top slots.
The biggest problem may be that the show lacked a “must-see/must-tweet” moment. There was no Britney Spears-Madonna kiss, Kanye West controversy, or jaw-dropping dance number. YouTube could have done more to engineer something blogworthy.
If you wanted an off-the-cuff, lo-fi awards show, YouTube delivered. It was fun, full of surprises and ambition. If you wanted something to rival television glitz like the MTV Video Music Awards or Grammys, you're gonna have to give YouTube some time to get its act together.
But if YouTube can do this well already, the TV networks have something to worry about. Google doesn't demand perfection, it demands progress, and the YouTube Music Awards made television look dated.
David Miranda is journalist Glenn Greenwald's boyfriend, but he's best known for being detained under the Section 7 of the UK Terrorism Act while changing planes at Heathrow. The cops held Miranda for nine hours, the maximum allowed under law, without access to counsel, using powers intended to allow the detention of people suspected of connections to terrorism. But it was clear to everyone that Miranda wasn't connected to terrorism -- rather, the UK establishment was attempting to intimidate people connected to the Snowden leaks through arbitrary detention and harassment.
Now that Miranda's lawyers are chasing down the people responsible, we're getting a more detailed picture of the process that led up to Miranda's detention. Before a Section 7 detention takes place, British cops have to file a form called a Port Circular Notice, and several drafts of the Notice used to detain Miranda have come to light.
The final draft argues that Miranda should be detained under terrorism law because "...the disclosure or threat of disclosure is designed to influence a government, and is made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within the definition of terrorism."
In other words: thoughtcrime.
Section 7 originated under the New Labour government, and was refined and perfected by the Tory/LibDem coalition.
The draft that was finally used states: "Intelligence indicates that Miranda is likely to be involved in espionage activity which has the potential to act against the interests of UK national security. We therefore wish to establish the nature of Miranda's activity, assess the risk that Miranda poses to national security and mitigate as appropriate."
The notice then went on to explain why police officers believed that the terrorism act was appropriate.
"We assess that Miranda is knowingly carrying material, the release of which would endanger people's lives. Additionally the disclosure or threat of disclosure is designed to influence a government, and is made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within the definition of terrorism and as such we request that the subject is examined under schedule 7."
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said the police assessment represented a "chilling" threat to democracy. "More and more we are shocked but not surprised," she said. "Breathtakingly broad anti-terror powers passed under the last government continue to be abused under the coalition that once trumpeted civil liberties.
"The express admission that politics motivated the detention of David Miranda should shame police and legislators alike. It's not just the schedule 7 detention power that needs urgent overhaul, but a definition of terrorism that should chill the blood of any democrat."
Pre-installed apps can sleep with the fishes if you know where to look to do it
Recent versions of the Android platform have enabled a pretty powerful little trick — the ability to put just about any app to sleep. It's one of those thing folks who rooted their phones have been able to do, but now anyone can, thanks to Android's built-in application manager.
If you're new to all this (and we're seeing plenty of new faces every day) you'll need to know how before you dive in. You could probably find a short and incomplete explanation in the user manual that came with your phone, but we've a better idea. AC Ambassador Haalcyon has written up a complete primer that will show you how to put any app into a coma, as he calls it. Take a few minutes to read through it, and you'll be ready to say goodbye to those apps you never wanted to begin with.
You've got a powerful little box in your hands. We're always here to help you learn how to effectively use it. Jump into the forums and have a look.
Lasers could prove to be the key in eliminating brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. New findings from researchers at Chalmers University of Technology and the Polish Wroclaw University of Technology have raised hopes that doctors may one day be able to cure the ailments without needing to touch surrounding brain tissue. Such a technique could also replace the chemical-based treatments used to treat amyloid protein aggregates today, which involve toxic components that can put patients at risk. The researchers discovered that it was possible to distinguish aggregations of the proteins thought to cause brain disease with the help of multi-photon lasers.
"We have found a totally new way of discovering these structures using...
As thousands of news reports, articles and research papers agree, today’s Internet is absolutely awash with infringing content. As a result, dozens of companies have appeared to try and stem the tide by sending out DMCA takedown notices on behalf of rightsholders.
The number of notices being sent out is nothing short of incredible. During the last full week of September, Google reported that it had processed a record breaking 5.3 million URL takedowns, that’s around eight every second. But yet again the record was short lived.
During the first full week of October, Google processed very close to 6.5 million notices in a single week, that’s an incredible 10.7 notices every single second of every single day.
Faced with a monumental task it’s no surprise that rightsholders make mistakes, everyone is prone to them of course, but some have the potential to cause real havoc.
In an effort to keep an eye on the situation TorrentFreak regularly scours Google’s Transparency Report and the archives on Chilling Effects, and every now and again we find some classics. Yesterday was one of those days.
On the front page of Google’s report the company now lists a few takedown notices that it received but decided not to take action against. As can be seen from the image below listing four instances, the final one targets Gmail.
The notice, which can be found here, was sent by a company called Piracy Patrol. It clearly lists https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/ as an infringing URL. Of course, that cannot sensibly be the case, and Google spotted the mistake on this occasion and on several others (1,2,3).
“I can only say it was human error – and a rather silly one at that,” Piracy Patrol’s Michael Ward told TorrentFreak.
Of course we all make mistakes, but this incident piqued our interest – do other companies also try to take down parts of Gmail in error? It turns out they do.
In an effort to protect its products from piracy, Microsoft Russia has been sending Google DMCA takedown notices over the past year, around 61,400 in total. One of the products it targets is Windows 8 but as can be seen from this DMCA notice and the accompanying image below, Microsoft can make pretty big errors.
Strangely enough, there are even more instances. UK-based anti-piracy company RipBlock has targeted Gmail on many occasions over the past year, the image below illustrates just one.
Speaking with TorrentFreak, RipBlock said that the submissions were a genuine mistake.
“It’s a simple case of human error. We are not in any way trying to have parts of Google mail taken down,” operations director Lee explained.
“All URLs we submit to Google for removal are checked by our staff, who do their best to avoid submitting incorrect URLs – but we are human and we occasionally make mistakes. Embarrassing for us, for sure, but that’s all.”
Other companies targeting Gmail during the past year include Czech takedown outfit Netlook (notice).
We’re not sure what would’ve happened if Microsoft or the others had been successful in taking down https://mail.google.com/mail/, but we can’t imagine it would help the operation of Gmail. Fortunately Google appears to be staying sharp.
Jesselyn Radack is a civil liberties attorney with the Government Accountability Project who has been in contact with Edward Snowden. In an ABC News interview, she reported that other NSA insiders have been inspired by Snowden's bravery and sacrifice and have come forward with further revelations about the organization's excess, criminality and lawlessness. She says that the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers has backfired, squandering the administration's credibility with its own operatives and inspiring them to speak out.
“I think the government hopes to chill speech by employees in the national security and intelligence fields, especially those at the NSA and CIA, but the unintended consequence is [that] more and more whistleblowers are coming through the doors of the Government Accountability Project (GAP),” said Jesselyn Radack, referring to the organization where she works as the National Security and Human Rights Director. “I think courage is contagious, and we see more and more people from the NSA coming through our door after Snowden made these revelations.”
Radack, an attorney who has met with and been in communication with Snowden, said “a handful” of people in the intelligence community have come forward since this summer when several major international newspapers began writing about the NSA’s classified foreign and domestic surveillance programs – stories based on thousands of secret NSA documents allegedly stolen by Snowden, a former NSA contractor.
Russo-kawaii overload: a tiny, cartoon-perfect mousie-wousie struggles heroically with a comically oversized biscuit. Spoiler alert: the mouse gets the biscuit in the end.
Jesselyn Radack is a civil liberties attorney with the 
