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Yahoo will be allowed to prove that it fought against the National Security Agency’s internet spying program, PRISM. A secret court ruled on Monday that the government should investigate how it can declassify the legal battle,

“The Government shall conduct a declassification review of this Court’s Memorandum Opinion of [Yahoo's case] and the legal briefs submitted by the parties to this Court,” reads the ruling, according to CNET.”After such review, the Court anticipates publishing that Memorandum Opinion in a form that redacts any properly classified information.”

Yahoo, Google and other Internet giants are fighting the federal government to disclose more aspects of the secret dragnet program, which they say have been exaggerated by the media. All participating companies must adhere to a strict gag order that forbids them from talking specifics about the alleged spying operation.

After it was first revealed that the government monitored emails, phone calls, and Internet browsing behavior of the top internet firms, it was also revealed that Yahoo had a lost a fight to prohibit the government from monitoring its users.

Now, at the very least, Yahoo will get to prove it fought…and this is what seems so insane. The NSA’s program is so secretive that being allowed to talk about how an organization lost a court battle is now considered a victory. The court decision does nothing to inform users about how they’re being monitored, let alone puts us on the path to greater oversight over the NSA. While its a nice first step, and will hopefully snowball into more transparency, the public is no better off.

It will just let companies confirm that we have, in fact, lost the fight to protect users against a still largely unknown spying program. Yahoo!

The same great design available on Android devices has made its way to the Google Play website.

That fresh, new card interface design that we've grown to love in the Google Play app has now made its way to the website. All the content is still there, they've just made it a bit easier to navigate and made it look a lot more modern and in-step with Android's new design language.

You can still rent and purchase videos, buy books and devices, subscribe to magazines, and even install Android apps right to your phone or tablet from the site. Now it's easier to discover content and navigate with big blocks that hold all the information you need. Differences include much bigger screenshots for Android apps and other content, and it's all done up in Google's webP format for speedy loading. There's even a menu sidebar on the left like we've seen in the new style of Google apps. It's a big change, but we're liking what we see. Check it out and see if you feel the same.

Source: Google Play; via +Google Play

At The New Yorker, Jon Michaud looks at why Frank Herbert's space opera, Dune, endures despite failing to ender the public consciousness the way Lord of the Rings and Star Wars have.

There are no “Dune” conventions. Catchphrases from the book have not entered the language. Nevertheless ... With daily reminders of the intensifying effects of global warming, the spectre of a worldwide water shortage, and continued political upheaval in the oil-rich Middle East, it is possible that “Dune” is even more relevant now than when it was first published. If you haven’t read it lately, it’s worth a return visit. If you’ve never read it, you should find time to.

A good article, which points out how the first novel's brilliance has been obscured by a distinctly second-rate franchise. A more salient reason Dune didn't penetrate massivedom, though, is simply that the movie wasn't good enough and it bombed. To seal the pop culture deal—and popular culture isn't quite the same thing as mere success or awareness—the screen is all-important. It's the moment of translation, the emergence of a story from the cocoon of literature to the glare of popular culture in all its splendor and squalor. A brilliantly-imagined but confused movie by David Lynch made Dune too weird, and a SyFy TV series made it too cheap. This puts it where Lord of the Rings was before Peter Jackson: pregnant with cinematic possibility, but misshapen by prior efforts.

But hey, it could be worse! You could be into Earthsea, which has had two movies made of it, each terrible in entirely different ways except one: both replaced the protagonist of color with a white dude.

Sports programming is driving up your television bill, and cable providers aren't happy about it. Though football, basketball, and baseball may seem to be some of the most watched content around, that's far from the truth: TV tracking firm Nielsen found that only four percent of households tune in to watch sports on average, reports The Wall Street Journal. But despite the low viewership, cable providers are paying disproportionately huge sums in order to carry networks like ESPN — and they're passing those costs along to consumers.

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An obesity gene that affects one in every six people could be partially treated thanks to a new study that's finally determined how it works. Researchers led by Rachel Batterham at University College London were looking into an obesity gene, known as FTO, and found that it caused people with a specific variation of it to maintain higher levels of ghrelin, a hunger-stimulating hormone, throughout their system. In people without the gene variation, ghrelin levels dropped after a meal — but in people with the specific gene variant, ghrelin levels remained high even after eating, keeping them hungry.

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Google's strategy with Google Glass is as brilliant as it is unconventional. While Glass isn't shaping up to be the next iPad, Google knows that there is plenty of potential for connected eyewear to help usher in a new era of wearable computing. Google also knows that without a sizable application ecosystem in place from day one, Glass may very well die on the vine. As such, the company released early prototypes to developers and put them to work as it gets ready to launch the eyewear sometime next year. We have already seen several interesting — and creepy — apps with plenty of time left before Glass becomes available to the public, and now Revolv has released a demo video showing just a few of the possibilities when Google Glass is integrated with a home automation system. In the video, a Revolv developer shows how easy it is to control lights, a door lock and even a Sonos music system with Google Glass. The full video follows below.

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Rovio and Lucasfilm have just confirmed that it will indeed launch a sequel to the much-beloved Angry Birds Star Wars game on September 19 across the globe. This confirms our earlier report from last week.

Rovio’s Angry Birds Star Wars takes the same physics-based gameplay and puts it in a gravity-free environment, giving users new tricks and tools to destroy the piggies’ habitat and move on to other levels of destruction. With the sequel, Rovio will be launching brand new Angry Birds characters while slipping in a few new surprises.

The game, which follows the story of the three pre-quel Star Wars movies, will give users some new ways to interact with the game. To start, Rovio is combining its merchandise business with it’s mobile gaming business, with the help of Hasbro.

Hasbro will have 30 different “telepods,” which are simply physical fruitions of various characters, available at the time that Angry Birds Star Wars II launches. Users will then be able to scan those characters into the game using their phone or tablet’s camera. Telepods that “teleport.” Cute, right?

The second big change we’re seeing is that Angry Birds players will now have the option to taste Bad Piggies, as Rovio is letting users cross over “to the Pork side.” This essentially means that users can play as the pigs, which happen to be the bad guys, instead of as a bird.

This pulls from Rovio’s original game Bad Piggies, which reverses the roles of the villainous pigs and the heroic birds so that players are actually fighting on the piggies’ side.

As you’d expect, Rovio will also launch a new line of merchandise alongside the game, which will include toys, apparel, accessories, books and plush toys.

Rovio has confirmed that the original Angry Birds Star Wars has hit over 100 million downloads since first launching on the App Store, and there’s very little doubt that the sequel will perform any differently in the market.

Day in and day out copyright holders send hundreds of thousands of DMCA takedown notices to Google, hoping to make pirated movies and music harder to find.

During the past month alone copyright holders asked Google to remove 14,855,269 URLs from its search results. Unfortunately, not all of these requests are legitimate.

In some cases the notices are flagged as false because the content has already been removed from the original site. But the automated systems used by copyright holders also include perfectly legitimate content. While Google keeps a close eye on this type of “abuse” the search engine can’t spot them all.

One good example of such a mistake is contained in a recent demand by HBO. The network is faced with a high demand for pirated copies of Game of Thrones and over the past months they asked Google to remove tens of thousands of links to the popular TV-show.

Usually these notices ask Google to get rid of links to pirate sites, but for some reason the cable network also wants Google to remove a link to the highly popular open source video player VLC.

Pirate VLC?

The URL in question belongs to the torrent site TorrentPortal but as can be seen here, it doesn’t link to any infringing content.

The same DMCA notice also lists various other links that don’t appear to link to HBO content, including a lot of porn related material, Ben Harper’s album Give Till It’s Gone, Naruto, free Java applets and Prince of Persia 5.

Over the past months HBO and many other copyright holders have built up a dubious track record when it comes to DMCA takedown notices. In addition to many “bogus” claims the company also tried to have its own website removed from Google.

The above mistakes may be relatively harmless to the site owners, but they show once again how much can go wrong with these automated DMCA notices. This is particularly troublesome since Google is down-ranking sites based on the number of DMCA notices it receives for them.

Whether these mistakes can be rooted out is doubtful as there is very little incentive for copyright holders to improve their accuracy. Google, however, is determined to prevent abuse and mistakes.

“We still do our best to catch errors or abuse so we don’t mistakenly disable access to non-infringing material. Google continues to put substantial resources into improving and streamlining this process, including into identifying erroneous and abusive takedowns, and deterring abuse,” Google told us previously.

For now, however, these erroneous takedowns will continue.

Source: HBO Asks Google to Take Down “Infringing” VLC Media Player

Hitting the revenue streams of infringing sites has been a recurring theme in recent months.

Companies like PayPal have refused to do business with certain kinds of file-sharing sites, while payment processors and credit card companies have agreed to make life more difficult for controversial domains.

A key source of revenue for many sites is advertising and critics have been swift to attack companies that place ads on torrent, file-hosting and other similar sites for allegedly funding copyright infringement.

As such there has been pressure mounting for companies to be more choosy over where they try to attract business, and for advertising networks such as those run by Google to take better care over who they accept work from. Behind the scenes the voices have been heard.

Just a few moments ago David Jacobs SVP at AOL Networks revealed that together with Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, 24/7 Media, Adtegrity, Condé Nast and SpotXchange, his company has established a set of self-regulating best practices to address known infringing sites in their respective ad networks.

However, they also make a number of things abundantly clear from the start.

“Ad Networks do not control the content on third-party websites and are not able to remove websites from the Internet. Nor can Ad Networks engage in extensive or definitive fact finding to determine a particular party’s intellectual property rights,” the best practices document reads.

“Nevertheless, we believe it is useful for Ad Networks to maintain policies intended to discourage or prevent, to the extent possible, websites that are principally dedicated to selling counterfeit goods or engaging in copyright piracy and have no substantial non-infringing uses from participating in the Ad Network. The signatories to this Statement have individually decided to adopt these voluntary best practices in furtherance of that goal.”

The document says that signatories will implement procedures consistent with applicable laws, and will be mindful to balance copyright interests, including fair use, privacy and fair process. To this end, dialogue with content creators, rights holders, consumer organizations, and free speech advocates will be maintained.

The companies acknowledge that rightsholders are best placed to assess infringements of their own intellectual property rights but also note that if their word is to be acted upon, high standards of reporting are required.

“Accordingly, intellectual property holders are expected to be accurate in demonstrating infringement of their copyrights and trademark rights and to target only infringing conduct,” they explain.

Rightsholders will be expected to file correctly formatted complaints with the ad networks that show evidence that the allegedly infringing sites are indeed engaging in illegal activity.

In addition to identifying specific URLs where unauthorized activity is taking place, evidence must also include time-and-date-stamped screenshots and other technical information which shows that advertising from the ad network appears alongside the infringing activity.

In common with DMCA notices, the complaints must be accompanied by a statement that the person submitting the notice “has a good faith belief that the Illegitimate Activity is not authorized by the rights holder.” Whether that will encourage rightsholders to improve their accuracy and not misuse these new tools remains to be seen.

Valid notices will trigger an investigation and sites targeted by the infringement notices may well be asked to cease and desist from their infringing activity.

“An Ad Network may take steps including but not limited to requesting that the website no longer sell counterfeit goods or engage in copyright piracy, ceasing to place advertisements on that website (or pages within that website) until it is verified that the website (or pages within the website) is no longer selling counterfeit goods or engaging in copyright piracy, or removing the website from the Ad Network,” the agreement reads.

Websites affected by complaints will have a chance to appeal complaints via the filing of a counter-notice.

The advertising companies conclude by making it clear that aside from trying to deter infringing sites from advertising in the first instance, this is not a proactive arrangement.

“This Statement is not intended to impose a duty on any Ad Network to monitor its network to identify such websites,” the companies note.

“Similarly, it is understood that the voluntary best practices reflected in this Statement should not, and cannot, be used in any way as the basis for any legal liability or the loss of any applicable immunity or ‘safe harbor’ from such liability,” they sensibly conclude.

Source: Tech Giants Sign Deal to Ban Advertising on “Pirate” Websites

HTC One owners across Europe will start receiving the Android 4.2.2 update for the HTC one today. HTC started pushing out the update in Asia and Northern Europe a few weeks back, but now HTC UK and HTC One owners scattered across Europe are reporting that the update is now rolling out to their devices as well. So far, HTC One owners in the UK (unbranded, Orange, Vodafone & 3), Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Ukraine and Turkey claim to have received the updates.

As before, many are reporting that the Android 4.2 software update is preceded by a much smaller bug fix. The main update includes the latest build of HTC Sense 5, including lock screen widgets, home button customization (long press for menu, swipe up to launch Google Now), quick settings in the notification shade, advanced notifications, option to show battery percentage in the status bar, launcher bar enhancements, tweaks to BlinkFeed, improved HTC Zoe file management and six new video highlight themes. If you have not yet received the notification to download the Android 4.2 update on your HTC One, you can ping HTC’s update servers manually by going to Settings > About > Software Updates > Check now. 

If you’ve already received the Android 4.2.2 update on your HTC One, we’d love to hear what you have to say about the update process and the new features.

The 4.2.2. update for the #HTCOne started rolling out in the UK from today. Download it now: Settings > About > Software Updates > Check now

— HTC UK (@HTC_UK) July 15, 2013

Every week we cover new Android apps with Fresh Meat on Wednesday, followed by Android Gaming on Thursday and Top 10 app updates on Friday. On Mondays we look back to see which ones were the most crowd-pleasing among our audience. Read on for the 10 most popular Android apps among your peers from last week.

1. PowerLine

Powerline is a great app that provides a slick visual overview of your device.

2. Taskbar – Windows 8 Style

Great application for those looking to replicate the Windows look on their device.

3. Twilight

Twilight continues to be a constant on this list.  Hopefully our readers are well-rested after using this app.

4. dialapp: context aware dialer

Tired of your old dialer? dialapp is a solid dialer replacement that utilizes a new approach in managing your call history.

5. Kitty Play

Kitty Play is another app that helps you customize your device by providing numerous themes and wallpapers.

6. Scientific 7 Minute Workout

Spare time is a rare commodity for many of us today. The Scientific 7 Minute Workout app helps you maximize that time by providing a good workout routine in a very small time frame.

7. Google Maps

I can’t express how much I like this app. Google Maps is great at helping navigate and providing additional details about restaurants and services while you travel.

8. Floating Touch

Floating touch provides quick access to many settings options on your device including turning on/off wifi and adjusting the brightness.

9. GO Weather EX

From the makes of GO Launcher comes a great way to take a look at your local weather forecast.

10. US TV & Radio Free

US TV & Radio is another option in the growing number of services providing access to television without being tied to a specific provider.

GIF: Maps On The Web

Vince Miklos collects GIFs of Empires, from the Roman to Soviet. [io9]

Police in the UK have the power to seize mobile devices from any traveler entering the country, and can retain their personal data for as long as they see fit, according to a report from the Telegraph. Such blanket powers are outlined under UK counterterrorism laws, and are broadly applied to thousands of travelers each year — regardless of whether police establish grounds for suspicion before confiscating a device. The revelations, published late Friday, have raised concerns among civil libertarians and privacy advocates, and an independent reviewer is expected to propose tighter checks on border police this week.

According to the Telegraph, UK border officials can download a person's photos, contact lists, and call logs, and retain...

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Here's an Xtranormal Obama explaining the difference between his NSA spying and Bush's NSA spying:

Another important difference between my administration and the Bush administration is that when the Bush administration secretly spied on you, the Bush administration could not point to a single judge willing to say their program was legal. We, on the other hand, can point to such a judge. I'm not going to tell you who this judge is, or why he or she thinks our program is legal. If I did that, it would, obviously be harder for me to convince you that the program is legal. Instead, I'm just going to tell you that we secretly found one judge who was willingly to secretly say that it was legal for us to collect all of your data....

President Obama Address NSA Surveillance Concerns (via Techdirt)

'OK Google Now, what's the forecast for today?'

The torrent of Moto X leaks continue today, as a video from Canadian carrier Rogers has appeared online showing many of the headline features from Motorola's upcoming handset. The video also reveals that the Moto X will launch exclusively on Rogers in Canada this August, and come in black and white color options.

Among the Moto X's software tricks is a new voice command system that's always active — the video shows it linking in with Google Now to produce a weather forecast, and mentions that directions and alarms can be activated in the same way. And the notification dynamic has been changed up a bit, too — instead of a notification LED, Moto X pulses icons on its screen when its asleep, allowing you to see which apps have notifications waiting.

The camera app it also shown being activated with a double-twist gesture — presumably this is another "always on" feature that allows you to get to the camera at any time. And the app itself is different to what we've seen in stock Android — tap anywhere to take a photo, or long press to take a burst shot.

read more

Amazon has seven great apps for free in this one-day promotion

Amazon has a big app promotion going on today in their app store, and they are offering seven great apps in their freee productivity app bundle. These are popular applications that plenty of folks think are well worth their normal price, all free for Sunday July 14 only.

The apps are:

• WiFi File Explorer Pro by Dooblou (normally 99-cents)
• Documents To Go (Full Version Key) by DataViz, Inc. (normally $14.95)
• PrinterShare Mobile Print by Dynamix USA, LLC (normally $12.95)
• Tasks N Todos Pro by Handy Apps Inc (normally $5.99)
• Splashtop Remote Desktop HD by Splashtop Inc. (normally $8.99)
• Spacedraw Key by Scalisoft (normally $4.99)
• Splashtop Remote Desktop by Splashtop Inc. (normally $4.99)

You'll need the Amazon app store installed to buy these, and keep it installed while you're using them. This sounds like a great way to save some serious cash, and score some really nice apps while doing it.

More: Amazon

 

By now it’s no secret that intelligence agencies have real-time access to people’s online activities.

However, the same might soon apply to copyright holders too. That is, if AT&T puts one of its patents into action.

A few weeks ago we wrote about AT&T’s patent to track and monitor transfers over the BitTorrent network. While this was already quite worrisome in terms of privacy, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Last year the company obtained an even scarier patent, one that can detect copyright infringing material on an ISP network irrespective of the source. This means that even files uploaded to Dropbox or shared over instant messaging can be targeted.

The patent in question is named “Real-time content detection in ISP transmissions” and focuses exclusively on tracking and deterring online piracy. According to the telco, copyright infringement is a “recurring problem in Internet usage” that is hard to police without the proper tools.

“Policing such unauthorized transmission is difficult for copyright owners, because the sources of copyrighted materials may be elusive, or indeed may be legitimate possessors of copyrighted materials but do not have authorization to permit copies to be made,” the patent explains.

“Pursuing the illegal distributors of such materials is problematic because the users are often numerous and diffuse and individual legal action against multiple small users is expensive — as well as unsympathetic from a public relations standpoint when the users turn out to be teenagers or others whose motives are seldom to make a criminal profit.”

AT&T’s system can overcome these challenges by monitoring the traffic of users in real-time, and comparing the data transfers with a database of “pirated” or otherwise illegal files. When the system spots an unauthorized transaction, it can then take a variety of actions in reponse.

“The present invention preferably uses a currently available real-time network data management device which is capable of analyzing the complete flow of data packets in a data stream.”

“If the content of the identified data stream is a positive match with a database item, e.g., is a copyright infringement, then a responsive action is taken,” the patent explains.

AT&T describes a variety of responses the system could take, including the termination of the Internet account or reporting the pirating users to copyright holders or law enforcement. Another option would be to track the infringements and take action after several offenses, through a graduated response scheme.

“The responsive action, for example, might be to terminate the data transmission, to suspend the customer’s account, or to report the existence of the match to an interested party, such as a copyright owner or a law enforcement or security official, or to store the positive match to compare to later matches that are detected in subsequent transmissions to the same user or from the same sender.”

According to AT&T the tracking system can be deployed across a wide variety of Internet providers, who can then share a database of ‘prohibited’ files. While provicy advocates may dislike the plan, the telco sees only upsides, and notes that those who do nothing wrong are not targeted.

“The present invention thus can be seen to have many advantages: it is capable of identifying likely incidents of illicit content transmission, such as piracy of copyrighted material, confirming the presence of such content, and then taking action while preserving the privacy of those ISP customers who have no association with copyright infringement.”

Of course, there will be plenty of people who would argue that monitoring all customer traffic is quite privacy intrusive, with plenty of options for abuse.

There is no indication that AT&T will deploy the 1984-ish anti-piracy system anytime soon. However, the patent shows that they are at least considering it, and that’s already quite a shocker.

Source: PRISM for Pirates: AT&T Invents The Ultimate Anti-Piracy System

It is once again time to discuss our favorite games from the past month. As usual, plenty of great games popped up in the Play Store last month, but we'll just be taking a look at five, with a list of honorable mentions to follow.

From action to explosive cartoon cats, there's something in the list that should satisfy just about every type of gamer. If you're looking for some new games to keep you busy this weekend, you'll find them here.

• [New Game] Bombcats: Special Edition Explodes Into The Play Store With No In-App Purchases, Lots Of Cats
• Rage Of The Gladiator Disappears And Reappears In The Play Store – Now Available To Everyone
• [New Game] Jones On Fire: You're A Fireman Saving Kittens From An Inferno In A Minecraft-Esque 3D World - Any Questions?
• Bombcats Special Edition Review: More Fun Than A Mountain of Catnip

Roundup: Our Top Five Picks For Best New Game From June 2013 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Looking for some new apps but don't have time to go through our longer roundups from the past month? No worries, we're back with a whole month's worth of apps boiled down into five picks guaranteed to improve your catalog. Not all the great apps of the month could fit on our list, so we'll follow up with some honorable mentions. Without further ado, let's get started.

DialApp

DialApp is a dialer replacement that retains some semblance of its stock counterpart, while seeking to drastically improve performance by guessing who you want to call, and making your call log infinitely smarter.

• Vine's 'Biggest Yet' Update Comes To Android With Video Channels, Revining, Capture Enhancements
• [New App] Maxelus Releases Space Colony, A Staggeringly Gorgeous Live Wallpaper
• Vine Gets 'Clear Cache' Option And More In Sizeable Update To 1.1
• Nexus 4 Bumper Case Back In Stock On US Play Store After Being Unavailable For Over A Month

Roundup: Our Top Five Favorite New Apps From June 2013 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

I love reading on my Kindle, but the screen is just too small and blurry to be useful for PDF files. While it's lacking in customizability, PDF4Kindle solves this problem pretty well by converting PDF files into Amazon's native .mobi format, all while being completely web-based.

Everyone's go-to ebook converting pocket knife, Calibre, can perform the same conversion (and a lot of others) just as well, but if you're on a computer that doesn't have it installed, or just don't want to wade through a ton of menus, PDF4Kindle is a fine alternative. You just upload a PDF file through the site, and download a .mobi a few moments later. I tested it out with a few PDF files, and while it has the normal formatting weirdness you'd expect from an ebook, all the content was there, complete with images and resizable text.

The app isn't magic, so it's not going to turn scanned pages into native text via OCR (try Papercrop to help reformat those files), but for any PDF with selectable text, it should do just fine.

PDF4Kindle (Free) via AddictiveTips

Here's a gallery of photos showing an enormous container ship breaking in two at the middle, and then the stern section sinking. The bow of the ship -- the Mitsui O.S.K. Lines's MOL Comfort -- was towed away, but burst into flames and broke free of its tow, off the coast of Gujarat, India.

On June 17, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines’ MOL Comfort began suffering from severe hogging and broke in two while underway from Singapore to Jeddah with a load of 7,041 TEUs. The crew escaped in life rafts and picked up by another merchant vessel... On June 27, the stern section began taking on water and sank with an estimated 1,700 containers and 1,500 metric tons of fuel oil. These photos sent to gCaptain were taken over a five minute period... On July 2, the MOL Comfort’s bow section broke free from its towing wire while in “adverse” sea conditions. Crews were able to reconnected and continue towing. Four days later, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines reported that on July 6, a fire broke towards the rear of the bow section of the MOL Comfort, and fire fighting efforts commenced.

The whole set is pretty amazing -- container ships are one of my prime fascinations, and to see these huge packetized lumps of consumer good being tossed around like children's blocks is terrifying.

A Look Back: MOL Comfort Incident Photos [25 PHOTOS] (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Kevin Fogarty at Slashdot: "For the second time in a month, Hewlett-Packard has been forced to admit it built secret backdoors into its enterprise storage products."

Back in March a lawsuit filed by attorney Boden Davidson on behalf of his client Contra Piracy targeted individuals said to have downloaded and shared the 50 Cent movie All Things Fall Apart.

Contra Piracy, a claimed non-profit group, said they had monitored 2,919 individuals infringing the movie on more than 280,000 occasions. In order to stop these infringements they need the identities of the file-sharers from ISPs.

As usual, Swiss-based Contra Piracy aren’t the creators of the movie. Instead the outfit obtained “enforcement rights” from Los Angeles-based Hannibal Pictures to pursue the action. With around $8m in settlements potentially on the table, it was certainly a deal worth doing.

However, thanks to documents recently filed with the courts, we can see that Hannibal Pictures, the apparent injured party in the case, are only set to collect 40% of any “income” generated as a result of them signing over P2P / BitTorrent distribution rights to Contra Piracy. The signing over of these rights is generating quite a lot of interest with the court too.

Chief Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte previously ordered Contra Piracy to show cause why the case should not be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction when it was noted that Contra only had “enforcement rights”. Contra was also ordered to hand over all documents relating to the rights agreements it had with Hannibal Pictures.

Last month Contra responded, stating that it had standing to sue for copyright infringement because it had been granted the right to copy and distribute the movie over the BitTorrent protocol.

However, the Court said that it needed to see further documents that had not yet been handed over, contrary to its earlier order. Judge Laporte clearly wanted to see details of the deal between Contra and Hannibal when she referenced an earlier Righthaven case in which it was deemed that Righthaven lacked standing based on a bare right to sue.

Contra were given a couple of days to come up with the paperwork and to clarify how the BitTorrent protocol would be used to “commercially distribute copyright works” as its agreement with Hannibal apparently allows it to. Their filing is interesting to say the least.

“The legitimate commercial distribution of copyrighted works via the P2P/BitTorrent protocol is certainly viable in a technological sense, however the extent of legitimate commercial distribution via P2P/BitTorrent in a market sense is severely limited by the rampant, mass infringements of copyrighted works utilizing the P2P/BitTorrent protocol,” attorney Boden Davidson wrote.

The Contra lawyer then goes on to promote the positive aspects of BitTorrent distribution, including the lack of expensive central servers needed to spread even the largest of files, therefore enabling cost savings which can be passed onto consumers in the form of lower prices. However, Contra says there are problems to be faced.

“While P2P/BitTorrent is an attractive opportunity for the low-cost distribution of copyrighted works, it is exceedingly difficult to create a legitimate P2P/BitTorrent market in light of the overwhelming infringements utilizing the protocol, e.g. the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works, for free,” Davidson writes.

“Lower prices in a legitimate P2P/BitTorrent market would be hard pressed to compete with the for free distribution in the immense black market, highlighting the need to sharply curb or eliminate the unauthorized copying and distribution of copyrighted works via the P2P/BitTorrent protocol.”

So, the suggestion here is that by signing the BitTorrent distribution rights over to Contra Piracy the company will somehow be able to clean up the network to the extent that piracy is wiped out, allowing Hannibal Pictures to use BitTorent to distribute their movie unhindered by pesky pirates determined to undermine the value of their product.

Will the court buy this quite amazing version of events? Are Hannibal Pictures really about to take BitTorrent by storm? Stay tuned…..

Source: We Need to Kill Piracy to Make BitTorrent Distribution Viable, Trolls Claim

Exclusive leaked photo shows Verizon's Moto X, and a small unexpected UI change

Hot out of the inbox is this picture of the Verizon Moto X in all it's LTE glory. While we don't get a look at the back or any of the expected customization areas of interest, this picture does give us a nice idea of the overall size of the phone, as well as a hint that it might be running a newer version of Android. We also note that the person handling the phone hasn't picked up on the Graves Method, or the Schmidt variant.

We see some, ahem, ample bezels at the top and bottom of the face of the phone, but overall the size looks fairly small by today's standards. The shape and outline remind us a lot of the Nexus 4, and we're guessing the two phones are similar in size. If you've not had a chance to check out a Nexus 4, think of a slightly shorter Galaxy S3.

More interesting may be the clue that we're seeing something different than Android 4.2.2 here. The background behind the soft-keys is semi-transparent. This could be a Motorola software customization, but with Android 4.3 supposedly right around the corner this could be a new look for the stock launcher.

A leaked roadmap points to an August release for the Moto X on Verizon, though we have no details or pricing. We are sure that it's coming, and everyone loves an early look.

Join the discussion in the Moto X forums

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For years entertainment industry groups have been demanding that Google does something about the “pirate sites” showing up in their search results.

Google has responded to these concerns by taking a variety of measures aimed at decreasing copyright infringement.

The company removed “piracy” related terms from their Instant and Suggest services, and later began downranking websites based on the number of DMCA requests they receive.

Despite these efforts, copyright holders want Google to step up their game. The RIAA has pointed out on several occasions that pirate search results still rank higher than legitimate stores.

Ideally, copyright holders want Google to completely remove clearly infringing domains from its search results, but according to Google’s Eric Schmidt that’s not going to happen anytime soon, at least not voluntarily.

“The industry would like us to edit the web and literally delete sites, and that goes counter to our philosophy,” Schmidt said in a press meeting at the Allen & Co. conference this week.

Google is well aware of the existence of infringing sites and the company’s anti-piracy efforts have reduced traffic to these, Google’s executive chairman insists.

“It is an absolute fact that there are pirate sites and we’ve done things to reduce the amount of people who use them,” Schmidt says.

That said, Google doesn’t believe it’s their role to police the Internet for potentially infringing sites. Instead, copyright holders should take the operators of these so-called rogue websites to court.

“Our position is that somebody’s making money on this pirated content and it should be possible to identify those people and bring them to justice,” notes Schimdt.

While the comments from Google’s chairman make it clear that his company isn’t going to delete any websites from its search results, it’s unlikely that copyright holders will back down anytime soon.

With the way things are going right now it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if the two camps end up battling out their differences in court sometime in the future.

Source: Google Refuses to Delete Pirate Websites from its Search Results

One of the best things about Android is being able to customize everything about your home screen, which you can do with a third-party application launcher. Android has plenty of great ones, but our favorite is Nova Launcher, which strikes a great perfect balance between incredible performance and high customizability without getting too gimmicky and difficult to use.

Update: Our previous pick for the App Directory was Launcher Pro, which we still think is good if you're stuck with a Gingerbread phone or really like its features. We've renamed that post to be the best android launcher for pre-4.0 devices.

Nova Launcher

Platform: Android
Price: Free ($4 for Nova Launcher Prime)
Download Page

Features

• Smooth scrolling and customizable 2D and 3D scroll effects
• Infinite scrolling across the app drawer and home screens
• Customizable app drawer that supports transparency and multi-directional scrolling
• Customizable dock with infinite scrolling and multiple pages of icons
• Multi-item select for bulk adding apps or widgets to folders or home screens
• Theme support, including support for themes from the now-defunct ADW Launcher
• Customizable icons via downloadable icon packs or icon packs from ADW Launcher
• Customizable colors for launcher accents, windows, and tools
• Customizable folder icons, backgrounds, and more
• Support for widgets in the dock
• Complete control over widget placement on-screen, including the option to overlap them if you want to save space
• Support for importing your previous icon layout and widget positions from another launcher or your phone's stock launcher
• Uninstall apps directly from the home screen or app drawer
• Folders in the App Drawer and custom Folder tabs (Prime Only)
• Customizable quick-launch gestures to launch apps or shortcuts from the home screen (Prime Only)
• Option to hide unwanted or unused apps from the app drawer without uninstalling them (Prime Only)
• Unread SMS, Gmail, and missed call badges in the dock icons (Prime Only)

Where It Excels

Nova Launcher is probably one of the most well-regarded app launchers at Google Play. (It's important to note that for the purposes of this roundup, we're considering whole launcher replacements—not add-on application switchers or shortcut tools that live on top of the launcher you already use.) It's fast, flexible, and customizable without bogging down your phone with a ton of unwanted bloat. It's highly polished and actively updated. Even if you don't want a ton of tweaking options and controls, you can pare it down to make it look and feel like a stock Android app launcher.

Nova was one of your favorite launchers so long ago, and even now that the age of app launchers has in many ways passed (thanks to Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean becoming more ubiquitous), it's still well regarded and well loved, and a lightweight alternative launcher if you want something simpler, more customizable, and less bloated than Sense or TouchWiz on your 4.0+ device. We have to give them props for bringing Jelly Bean's launcher tools and options to ICS devices, and you can see in our featured Android home screens that it has a ton of customization potential.

Regardless, the bottom line is that even though it's immensely customizable and tweakable, it's still fast and easy to use. If you want the options, they're there. If you don't, you can still have a fast, flexible, and hassle-free Android experience.

Where It Falls Short

Of course, it would be nice if Nova were available for more Android devices, like those running Gingerbread, but we're not holding our breath on that. Aside from that, we can't ding it on much else. A lot of the best features are reserved for Prime, but it's not too expensive and worth the four dollars you'll spend on it. It could be a touch more customizable, especially compared with its major competition (which we'll get to in a moment), but that's about it.

The Competition

Nova Launcher's primary competition is Apex Launcher (Free, $4 Pro), and honestly, either of the two could easily have been our favorite. They're both under active development, both pack tons of features, and both are fast, flexible, give away a lot of great features for free but are definitely worth the money you'll spend on their respective pro versions. Apex's tablet version is all but unmatched, and its latest overhaul makes it really attractive. Plus, rolling in support for Dashclock Widget, a great way to customize your lock screen, with Apex Notifier really sets Apex apart from the rest of the pack. The trick is that Notifier requires running another app in the background, which is a little bit of a pain, but not too much.

Regardless, most of the customization options you'll find in Nova you'll also find in Apex. Infinite scrolling, hiding unwanted apps, scrolling and transition effects, customizable app drawer, icon packs, skins, they're all there. If Nova doesn't appeal to you, Apex certainly will. You may even like it better, and we can't blame you for that. It is missing a few features Nova does have, but they're seriously neck and neck, and on a different day we might award the top spot to a the other one.

Between Nova and Apex, that's the bulk of the competition for ICS+ devices. There's always Stock, or running no launcher at all, especially if you have a Google Edition or a Nexus device, which we'd have to recommend unless you really like the customization and theming options that one of these two offers. If speed and a hassle-free experience is what you're looking for—that is, you want your launcher to get out of the way and let you do what you want to do—stock is the best option if you have it. If you don't, we think Nova (or Apex) will give it to you.

A number of you pointed out we initially missed the previously mentionedAction Launcher Pro ($4), which packs a number of unique features that many other launchers don't have, including special gestures called "covers" for launching applications from within folders without having to open them first, "shutters," which allow you to swipe an icon and instantly generate a widget for the app, and more. Plus, Action Launcher Pro can easily import your layout and settings from other launchers, including Apex and Nova. The only downside is that there's no free version, so you'd better know you want it before you buy it.

Still, these aren't the only players here. Previously mentionedEverything.Me (Free, in beta) is a flexible, customizable launcher replacement that adds home screens, backgrounds, icons, and more with just a few taps. It still requires 4.0+, but you can browse tons of pre-built launcher configurations just by searching for them.

Similarly, Buzz Launcher (Free, in beta) is another launcher we've mentioned that also takes the hassle out of configuring your home screens. Browse a massive catalog of user-created and submitted home screens, select the one you like, and it's instantly applied to your phone, complete with any icons, apps, gestures, or tools required to make it happen. To boot, you can also customize every aspect of your launcher yourself if you prefer—the choice is yours.

It's been a while since GO Launcher EX (Free), was the crowd favorite, and while development stalled for a while, it looks like it's been recently updated with new features. The team behind GO Launcher EX let it languish for a while, but it still has a ridiculously large user community, runs exceptionally well on lower-end phones, and offers a ton of configuration options, skins, icons, wallpapers, and other tweaking tools you can add on top of it. The trouble with all of those options is that they slow down the launcher something fierce, so you have to be careful how much tweaking you really do. It's also possible that GO Launcher EX's recent updates have something to do with the development team's newest project, the $16 Next Launcher 3D, which by all accounts is stunning, customizable, and really impressive—just really tough to recommend to anyone at that price.

Similarly, for customization fans, ADW Launcher (Free, $3 for ADW Launcher EX) offers broad compatibility with Android devices from 1.6 all the way up, offers ICS-style features to almost all of those devices without taxing system resources, and is still skinnable and customizable. Dozens of skin packs and icon packs are available at Google Play for ADW. ADW and ADW EX are designed for people who really want to customize their devices, even if it means sacrificing speed to get there. Here's the bigger problem though: Development on ADW is all but stalled, and the apps may be abandoned. ADW EX was updated in February, but ADW itself hasn't been updated since November 2012—not even with bug fixes or patches, which doesn't bode well.

Our pick for phones running Gingerbread and below, LauncherPro (Free, $3.50 Pro), has long been abandoned by its developer. It still runs buttery smooth on lower end devices, but it's hard to recommend when it's not getting even basic bug fixes or patches, especially as new devices keep coming out. If you do have an older, Gingerbread phone and hate your launcher, give it a try, but everyone else can pass.

Speaking of lower-end phones and pre-ICS devices, if you are stuck with one and want the same kind of launcher that Ice Cream Sandwich offers, you may want to try the previously mentioned Holo Launcher (Free), which brings the lean and trim features of ICS's launcher to Android phones running 2.2+.

For more Android launcher options, check out our Android Launcher tag page. We've discussed many more we don't have room for here, and if these options don't work for you, something there likely will.

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Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.

1993 Movies: These Movies Are 20 Years Old

Before parting with any Android device, review this hardware and software checklist

With the ever-growing Android market, more and more people are buying and selling Android phones and tablets every day. Some people — like myself — depend on the value of their used devices to purchase the latest and greatest. But before shipping that phone or tablet off to its new owner, it is vital to make sure everything important has been removed.

The top concern for many folks in this position is that of privacy protection. Personal information like phone numbers, emails, and compromising pictures are things nobody wants falling into the wrong hands. It's also a good idea not to send any "extras" along with the device, like any one of the cards (microSD, SIM, etc.) that could be hiding in various nooks and crannies of any Android phone or tablet.

Of course, before removing any hardware or erasing any data, you'll want to backup the important things to keep or transfer to another device. Whether it be applications, music, or family photos, it needs to be correctly copied over to removable storage on the device itself or to a personal computer.

Let's get started.

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Toothless and Hiccup go flying, and it's magic

The first How To Train Your Dragon was an unexpectedly moving and rather wonderful story of a boy and his giant flying reptile, and we've been eagerly looking forward to the second instalment. Now a teaser has appeared online, offering a brief action sequence from the film that suggests all the lyricism of the first film is present and correct (even amid the gross-out gags and Viking pratfalls). 

The story this time sees a now-older Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) still partnered with dragon Toothless and exploring far beyond his home village of Berk, once a Viking outpost plagued by dragons and now one that's partnered with them. Says the official synopsis:

"The thrilling second chapter of the epic How To Train Your Dragon trilogy brings back the fantastical world of Hiccup and Toothless five years later. While Astrid, Snoutlout and the rest of the gang are challenging each other to dragon races (the island’s new favorite contact sport), the now inseparable pair journey through the skies, charting unmapped territories and exploring new worlds. When one of their adventures leads to the discovery of a secret ice cave that is home to hundreds of new wild dragons and the mysterious Dragon Rider, the two friends find themselves at the center of a battle to protect the peace."

Yes, it's a trilogy, as seems the norm nowadays - but if they're all as good as the first, that would be no bad thing. We like the idea of Hiccup and Toothless as their own little USS Enterprise though, and the confidence of giving us a teaser that's just a bloke and his dragon soaring through the air.

All the original voice cast back for this one, so expect America Ferrera as Astrid, Kristen Wiig as Ruffnut, Jonah Hill as Snotlout, T.J. Miller as Tuffnut, Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Fishleg, Craig Ferguson as Gobber and Gerard Butler as Stoick the Vast. Kit Harrington joins the cast as someone IMDb lists as "Dragon Prince", who we suspect is the aforementioned Dragon Rider and doubt is a Game Of Thrones spoiler.

Dean DeBlois is directing and wrote the screenplay (he also directed the first with Chris Sanders), based very, very, very loosely on the books by Cressida Cowell.

How To Train Your Dragon 2 is out on June 20, 2014, with the sequel due in 2016. Hopefully by the time the latter hits cinemas someone will have dealt with the pressing matter of breeding us all dragons of our own.