The dollar has trader softer today, which has driven EUR-USD to a one-week peak at 1.1213 and USD-JPY to a two-week low at 108.83, although some yen outperformance was a factor in the latter. The yen rallied with as the mood in most stocks markets in Asia remained cautious, while currency strength in turn exacerbated losses on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The Nikkei 225 underperformed the region notably with a 2.3% loss.
FX trade was relatively quiet in N.Y. on Wednesday, with the dollar mixed overall. Incoming data included a better headline manufacturing ISM outcome, though internal components were relatively disappointing. Construction spending fell, though was offset by large prior month upside revisions. Generally damp global PMI data put a dent in overall sentiment, which weighed on commodity and equity markets. FX trade slowed ahead of the ECB meeting on Thursday, and the U.S. ADP jobs report, which will firm up forecast for Friday's key BLS employment report.
In recent weeks thousands of pirates have received warnings in their mailboxes, and the company is also fervently trying to take down links to pirated copies of the show, with some success.
Besides targeting full copies of episodes, HBO also appears to have an eye on unauthorized compilations that focus on scenes without costumes, which are quite a common occurrence.
Sites such as Pornhub list thousands of clips of Khaleesi, Margaery Tyrell, Melisandre and others, fully uncovered. While this isn’t a new trend HBO now says that it’s taking action in response.
“HBO is aware of the issue and is in the process of getting material taken down from Pornhub,” the company said in a statement.
A quick search revealed that a lot of compromising material is still readily available, but some videos have indeed been removed. This includes the Daenerys Targaryen compilation video below.
Since the videos are uploaded by Pornhub users the site itself enjoys safe harbor protection. This means that there’s little else HBO can do other than issue regular takedown requests to protect their assets.
That said, Pornhub is well-aware of the interest in Game of Thrones. In an ‘insights‘ article last month the site analized various trends. Among other things it reported a massive spike in GoT searches before this year’s season premiere.
Popular search terms include “sex scene,” “khaleesi,” “boobs,” “nude” and “parody” while further analysis revealed that Emilia Clarke (Khaleesi) was also by far the most popular Game of Thrones actress on the porn site.
Of course HBO has the right to remove the infringing footage, but the company has reportedly targeted various porn parodies as well. These can in theory be contested, but thus far we haven’t seen any signs of this.
Interestingly, HBO is not the only company that’s worried about having their brand on prominent display at the porn site. A few days ago several users reported that Blizzard began cracking down on Overwatch inspired porn on Pornhub as well.
Whether HBO’s actions will be good enough to keep GoT nude videos from spreading has yet to be seen. Once something’s on the Internet, it’s generally pretty hard to take down, and highlighting the problem may even have an adverse effect.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
The yen outperformed on a safe haven bid as stocks markets and oil prices declined, while sterling extended broad declines that started yesterday amid a combo of revived Brexit risks and much weaker than expected mortgage lending data. Elsewhere, the Aussie dollar rallied following strong Australian GDP data, while the U.S. dollar posted a mixed performance, correcting from a two-day low versus the euro while losing ground to the yen and Australian dollar, and gaining versus the underperforming pound.
The Pirate Bay, however, is somewhat of an exception. For many torrent sites, dealing with a flood of DMCA takedown requests (or their EU equivalent) is a part of everyday life. For those who want to stay online, complying with them is often seen as essential.
As a result it is extremely common to visit big sites to view a torrent only to find that it has been removed by rightsholders. One site that complies with DMCA takedown notices is market leader KickassTorrents (KAT).
While no overall stats are provided by the site, disappearing torrents are common phenomena, much to the disappointment of many users. However, one particular user has more than the average reason to feel deflated this morning.
‘Zorro’ is one of the few users on KAT to have achieved the rank of Elite Uploader. He describes himself as a male from Uganda although there are signs he could hail from somewhere in Asia. Overall, Zorro has uploaded well in excess of 2,400 torrents to KAT but today they have all been removed following copyright holder action.
In a broken English response to VIruz, another KAT uploader who thought the torrents had been taken down over the period of a day, Zorro revealed the truth.
“Not in one day..it’s within 12 minutes,” Zorro explained.
To underline the scale of the takedown, the image below provided by Zorro himself shows the mass of popups he received from KickassTorrents when the torrents were deleted. It’s quite a sight to behold.
Of course, for many copyright holders to coordinate on a single day would be quite a thing, but dealing with Zorro was a little more straightforward.
All of Zorro’s torrents contained content belonging to game engine and asset company Unity, with most appearing to have been sourced from its Asset Store.
Zorro says he has suspicions that a user he previously complained about may have had something to do with his torrents being removed. While that’s certainly possible, a much more convenient explanation is at hand.
Yesterday at Unite Europe (video), Unity made an important announcement. Noting that Unity isn’t as accessible as it could be, the company announced a new strategy.
“So, we wanted to simplify. We wanted to give more value. With our three new products we’re confident we have increased the ability for you to reach the largest audience, provided increased no worry access to the latest tech and made Unity more affordable,” Unity said.
The details are available here, but essentially Unity now has a completely free tier (not even a credit card required) through to Plus, Pro, and enterprise solutions.
Meanwhile, Zorro and his fans are now staring at where his uploads used to be. In addition to the 2,400 taken down by Unity, Zorro says he personally deleted the rest. However, he appears to be relatively upbeat.
“Never mind somehow I survived. And still I am here at KAT with more stronger courage. Sooner or later I will reupload everything. I will reupload all 2506 torrents in a new way. From now on I will work like a hacker bandit,” Zorro says.
While there will be plenty of users who are disappointed at this turn of events, it’s perhaps a sign of the times that other uploaders on the site consider these events to be an occupational hazard to be taken in one’s stride.
“Well the company [Unity] that wants it down wants it down for a reason…it’s their hard work being pirated off of. Have to look at the whole thing that way,” said an uploader called Jagwar.
“Kat just complies with their request. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. We all know if we upload a torrent there’s a chance it will be removed due to copyright owner request. Seems like that guy just got unlucky.”
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
The yen rallied on a safe haven bid, with stocks in Asia mostly turning lower following a slew of mostly underwhelming manufacturing PMI reports, from China, to Japan itself, to Taiwan, Indonesia and through to India. Japanese capital spending figures, meanwhile, showed a less severe than expected slowdown in growth, while the final May manufacturing PMI report was revised up a tad to 47.7, from 47.6, but this was still a three-year low and down from 48.2 in April.
