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The past year, the copyright industry appears to have calmed down a bit, thinking it won the file-sharing wars. At the same time, people sharing culture and knowledge have done the same thing. This conflict is far from over. The two sides in the conflict over sharing culture and knowledge have rarely been further from each other in their view of the world. On one hand, you have the copyright industry, now content thinking it won the war against the net generation – or net generations by now (plural). File-sharing has stopped growing, the copyright industry observes, and controlled streaming is growing exponentially. New technology has produced a better offering that outcompeted the inferior pirate alternatives, and in the end, people wanted to do the legal thing, the copyright industry argues. But this is very far from the truth. The only true part of it is that the number of people sharing culture and knowledge is no longer growing exponentially, but that’s because the habit is saturated. One-third of young people in the US and Europe today share culture – in violation of the copyright monopoly – daily or almost-daily. A phenomenon can’t keep growing exponentially forever in a finite population: eventually, everybody’s doing it, and that’s the point we have arrived at now. Apart from that, it is true that the copyright industry has produced better offerings: Pandora, Netflix, and HBO streaming. But so have the people who manufacture their copies without a license. The Pirate Bay is ten years old; almost as old as Microsoft’s Windows XP, to put it in context. (Anybody remember Microsoft?) Yet, despite HBO’s successful and profitable subscription model, record numbers of us get our latest fix of Game of Thrones delivered automatically directly to our desktop the instant it is available, courtesy of RSS torrenting and EZTV, or your own favorite supplier. And if we don’t like torrenting, but actually like streaming? Turns out that the pirate equivalents of the commercial offerings far surpass the simplicity, accessibility, and ease of use of the copyright industry’s technology – and that’s not even going into selection and absence of laughingly stupid “not available in your country” messages. From Popcorn Time to Zona, the happy amateur sharers are miles and leagues ahead of the copyright industry. The technology that the copyright industry claims “already has won the war” for that obsolete industry? Well, it turns out that the net generation could use the same technology to build a lot better services still. Teens today make absolutely no distinction whether services are “legal” or not; they just grab stuff from where it’s easiest. In this environment, people on the other side – the people manufacturing unlicensed copies of knowledge and culture, and sharing those copies in turn – have also taken a victory for granted. We’re getting our Game of Thrones, we’re getting our movies and porn as we always have, what’s the big deal? The Pirate Bay team was sentenced in a mock trial five years ago to largely no effect whatsoever (except for those poor individuals), the site itself is still up, and new great services for manufacturing our own copies of knowledge and culture are appearing by the month. Why bother fighting? This is long over, right? Not so fast. SOPA and ACTA was just two years ago, in 2012. They were struck back, but their obfuscated spawn are already appearing. We’ve seen and heard the acronyms TPP, TTIP, CISP, CETA, and others. The copyright industry keeps working, it just does so out of the sunlight. In the end, this is about the power of narratives, the greatest power anybody has ever had. And the copyright industry isn’t giving it up without a fight. The file-sharing wars are far from over. There may be a bit of silence on the fronts at the moment. Enjoy it, and prepare for what’s coming. http://torrentfreak.com/the-file-sharing-wars-are-anything-but-over-140629/

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At every available opportunity copyright holders criticize Google for not doing enough to stop online piracy and every step taken by the search engine only results in more demands. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Bing flies largely under the radar, providing a video and TV show search tool that Google would not dare introduce. Google is only too aware of its currently unpopularity with rightsholders. While the search giant provides superb and often vital Internet services, the music and movie industries are desperate for infringing results to disappear from Google’s indexes. Every week the search engine receives millions of DMCA takedown notices requiring it to take case-by-case action, but the company’s reluctance to do something more permanent has made it search-engine-enemy-#1 with copyright holders who never miss an opportunity to lay on the criticism. In the background, however, Microsoft’s Bing flies comparatively under the radar. Sure it processes plenty of takedown notices too, but it receives little of the corporate pressure piled onto Google. This can only be a result of Google’s place in the market, since Mr Don’t Be Evil has done more than its rival to combat piracy. Case in point, Bing’s powerful and somewhat under-used streaming video search engine which offers to find TV shows from the get-go. While Google gets heavily criticized for its AutoComplete feature (which is already partially censored following copyright holder requests), Bing has no problem in first offering TV shows and then completing suggestions of what to watch. Tap in “BRE” and at the top of the list appears BREAKING BAD. We clicked the option – Bing delivered. The first few results are shown below but those are just the tip of the iceberg and more specific show searches hardly ever come up short either. The auto-suggestions at the top of the screen are there in case ideas run out too, helpfully pushing the user towards varies series and specific episodes. As can be seen from the image above, those who are fussy over the quality of the content being presented can filter by resolution too, right up to 1080p. Also, restricting searches to videos over 20 mins rejects many trailers and other samplers in favor of episodes and full length movies. Aside from being a pretty good search engine (it came up with some long-forgotten TV show pilots from the 1970s), Bing also has a rather nice trick up its sleeve. Hover a mouse over any video thumbnail shown in the results and its size will instantly increase to display a proper video preview of the content in question. As far as we’re aware, no other search engine online today does that. Of course, someone at Bing isn’t deliberately programming its engine to present infringing results, those are determined by intelligence gleaned from user search requests. That being said, if Google debuted a new “TV Show” search engine tomorrow and began auto-completing and auto-suggesting infringing TV content, weeks-long industry hysteria would ensue. It’s also worth pointing out that Google also has a decent video search which is almost certainly used by many, many more millions than Bing’s. It’s nowhere near as glossy and definitely not as ‘risky’ in how it presents content, but that won’t stop the search company from continuing to take most of the rightsholder flak due to its colossal userbase and its uncontested position in the market. Make no mistake, Google will remain in the firing line for the foreseeable future, even while other companies get away with much, much more. But their time will come, it’s almost inevitable, an event that could be triggered by Google caving in to increasing rightsholder demands. http://torrentfreak.com/bing-tv-show-search-flies-under-the-pirate-hunter-radar-140629/

Valve has revoked an unknown number of Steam keys for the recently releasedSniper Elite III after developer and publisher Rebellion said they were stolen from one of its retail distributors. We still don’t know how many buyers were affected, but at the time of writing the Steam discussion thread where Rebellion made the announcement is almost 700 comments long. Many of the comments are from understandably angry customers, who didn’t know they were buying stolen keys. As Rebellion explained it to one of these angry buyers on its Facebook page, Rebellion asked Steam to revoke a batch of keys that was stolen from one of its distributors of the retail, hard copy version of the game. Rebellion believes these keys were sold to third-party key resellers like Instant Gaming. However, a post to Instant Gaming’s Facebook page claims that it bought the revoked Sniper Elite III Steam keys legitimately. “The resellers are NOT the problem,” Rebellion said on Facebook. “Those stores affected are NOT shady…The keys supplied to them were not as they seem - they were unlicensed, and unpaid for. This was reported to Valve and they revoked the keys.” Rebellion is offering Sniper Elite III’s Target Hitler DLC for free to all those affected by this issue. To be eligible for that, you’ll have to contact Rebellion by Friday, July 4 by following the instructions here. As for the price of the game itself, Rebellion is encouraging customers to contact the sellers in question and seek a refund immediately. http://www.gamespot.com/articles/sniper-elite-3-steam-keys-bought-in-good-faith-revoked-as-result-of-scam/1100-6420803/

Stephen “Stepto” Toulouse, the former Director of Policy and Enforcement for Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, is rejoining the company as the Director of Community Engagement at Black Tusk Studios, the Microsoft-owned studio currently working on the next Gears of War project. Jokingly known as the the “Head Banhammer,” as Director of Policy and Enforcement Toulouse was in charge developing and implementing policy for Xbox Live, as well as working with developers, press, and customers. Toulouse explained that his new role will be key in coordinating gamer feedback into future titles as well as keeping things fun and exciting with existing games. “I've been shadowing the Gears forums and looking at people’s thoughts,” Toulouse said on his personal blog. “I don’t just want us to make the best next generation Gears of War game ever, I want to make sure that everyone playing the game today feels just as good today and down the road in their investment into our amazing world as we do. There’s a Gears nation out there. I’m a part of it and it’s amazing.” You can hear more about Toulouse’s return to Microsoft and what he’ll be doing in his new role on the latest Major Nelson podcast. http://www.gamespot.com/articles/former-xbox-live-head-banhammer-joins-microsoft-s-gears-of-war-team/1100-6420804/

Last week, developer Stoic Games announced that its tactical role-playing game The Banner Saga will release on iPad, Android, and Windows tablets this summer, and console players might get a chance to play the game eventually as well. Speaking with Digital Spy, programmer John Watson said that Stoic has been working on the iOS and Android editions of the game since The Banner Saga was released on PC in January. Now that those version are on the way, Stoic hopes to release the game on consoles too. "The ideal would be to get some console ports out before the end of the year,” Watson said. “Whether we can make that happen or not, I don't know. Some things are easier than others. I think the game would be great on Vita, but I think that would come after other consoles. It's a path of least resistance thing; there's three of us.” Watson also said that he’d rather see the game on the PlayStation 4 before the PlayStation Vita because Stoic might need to make some changes to the game to take advantage of the PS Vita’s controls, which can use touch and button at the same time. Earlier this year Stoic was involved in a trademark dispute with Candy Crush Saga developer King, which claimed The Banner Saga is "confusingly and deceptively similar" to Candy Crush Saga. In March, Stoic announced it reached an agreement with King that enables both parties to protect their respective trademarks. For more on The Banner Saga, be sure to read GameSpot’s review. http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-banner-saga-could-come-to-consoles-ps-vita-after-tablet-release/1100-6420805/

Rust developer and Facepunch Studios founder Garry Newman said that prior to Rust, he was working on an online, Hitman-type game set in an open world similar to Grand Theft Auto. The codebase for the prototype, called Cash4kills, eventually became Rust, the survival game which became immensely successful while still in Early Access. But Cash4kills was going to be very different. “The one thing we don't like about the latest Hitman games is that the game seems to be about finding out what the level designer wants you to do, rather than just working out the best place to kill a guy,” Newman told PCGamesN in an interview. “We wanted it to be all free-form, with bullet entry stats, bonuses for clean kills and for being unspotted, shareable replays, then cash rewards in a backend that you could use to buy new weapons, etc. So you'd only get one chance at a kill and if you f****d it up you couldn't replay, you'd have to wait for the next contract via your real email.” That sounds pretty cool, but the fact that Rust was based on a prototype with very different ambitions has created a lot of trouble for Facepunch. If you launch Rust right now, you’ll be prompted to choose between “Play Rust,” and “Try Experimental.” The first option will lead to the game you’re familiar with that’s based on the prototype, and the second will take you to the experimental version, where Facepunch is changing “pretty much everything” with regular updates. “There were a lot of stupid decisions made in the old codebase,” Newman said. “That's probably unfair. There were a lot of decisions made when we didn't know what game we were making... There's a lot of systems that are integral to Rust, that are 3,000 lines long, that could be 100 lines long.” Newman said he isn’t getting rid of the old version of Rust, but that all the team’s efforts are going into the experimental build, which will get more servers and become more stable as it grows. For more on Rust, check out GameSpot’s previous coverage. http://www.gamespot.com/articles/rust-developer-was-prototyping-open-world-hitman-type-game/1100-6420806/

Back in the days when arcade conversions were often enough to make or break a home console, the earth-shattering news that Nintendo had secured a port of Capcom's Final Fight for its soon-to-be-released Super Famicom sent shockwaves through playgrounds all over the globe. In this pre-Street Fighter 2 world, Final Fight was the biggest ticket in town; a side-scrolling brawler in the tradition of Renegade and Double Dragon, it boasted massive character sprites, a wide repertoire of attack moves and instantly accessible gameplay. Nestled neatly within Nintendo's 16-bit launch line-up, it was a definite system seller - despite the fact that cartridge memory constraints meant the two-player mode, third character Guy and an entire level were left on the cutting room floor. While Sega fans would eventually get a port of Final Fight for the Mega CD three years later, back in 1990 the news was nothing short of devastating. The Mega Drive was famed for its superlative arcade ports - which included Capcom favourites Strider and Ghouls 'n' Ghosts, both skilfully converted by Sega itself under license - and prior to the announcement of the Super Famicom edition, there were idle rumours that Final Fight was headed to Sega's console under a similar arrangement. When that didn't happen though, rather than admit defeat in the battle of the side-scrolling fighter, Sega did something which has been a common practice in the video game industry since its very inception: it plagiarised. Streets of Rage - or Bare Knuckle, to use its Japanese moniker - was as close as Mega Drive owners were ever going to get to Final Fight at that point in time. One of the three playable characters - Axel Stone - bares more than a passing resemblance to Final Fight's hero Cody, right down to the white T-shirt, tight stonewash jeans and sporty sneakers. The core mechanics are also very similar; both games expand on the template laid down by Double Dragon and focus on combination attacks and grapple moves, the latter of which can be finished off with a throw - perfect for crowd control as the hurled assailant becomes a wrecking ball which can be used to take down other enemies. The heroes in the original game are so hard they are impervious to cannon fire. However, with the development team responsible for the superlative Revenge of Shinobi behind the wheel, Streets of Rage was never likely to end up as just a slavish clone. It may take a healthy amount of inspiration from Capcom's 1989 coin-op - a game which itself built upon the groundwork laid down by the likes of Technos in the '80s - but it brings its own ideas to the table as well. Grapples don't just involve knees to the groin and throws - you can vault over your stunned opponent before delivering a head-crunching suplex onto cold, unremitting concrete. In co-op play, players can grapple one another and unleash a special airborne attack, and tapping the A button results in one of the most unintentionally amusing special attacks in the history of games: a police car rolls into view and delivers a shower of napalm death from above, an offensive move which decimates your enemies but somehow manages to leave you entirely unscathed. Still, it looks plenty cool. Given the popularity of games that involve repeatedly punching people in and around the face, it's perhaps unsurprising that Streets of Rage found a receptive audience on the Mega Drive. Playgrounds erupted anew with heated arguments about format dominance - Sega fans had a side-scrolling fighter with a proper two-player mode and three characters, while Nintendo owners continued to cite the better-known Capcom release and its massive, screen-filling sprites. There was still room for doubt, but this was effectively removed when Sega launched Streets of Rage 2 in 1992. UK residents may still be able to recall that awesome moment during the first episode of GamesMaster rival Bad Influence when a grinning Andy Crane gleefully revealed hitherto unseen footage of the game in full, pugilistic flow. The effect was dramatic, making the sequel one of the most eagerly anticipated releases in the history of Sega's console. Streets of Rage 2 remains one of the finest side-scrolling brawlers in existence Played today, Streets of Rage 2 has lost none of its ability to entertain and delight. It's a marked improvement over the already brilliant forerunner; the sprites are larger, more detailed and boast superior animation, while the roster of playable characters has been increased by one. Each fighter has the usual combos and grapple attacks, but this time around additional special moves take the place of the ranged assault of the trigger-happy police force. Tapping A on its own unleashes a 360-degree attack that depletes your health bar slightly, just like in Final Fight - but combining the same button with a direction executes a totally different - and more focused - special move. Double-tapping forward and B delivers yet another special offensive option, this time one that doesn't incur a stamina penalty. Factor in a much wider degree of variety between characters (all three fighters in the original effectively had the same movesets) and you've got a game which iterates successfully on an already excellent concept. Streets of Rage 2 is widely acknowledged as one of the finest examples of the genre, if not the best side-scrolling brawler of all time. Sega's triumph was made all the more sweet by the fact that Capcom's SNES-exclusive Final Fight sequel - released around the same time - was a crushing disappointment, comparatively speaking. By the time Streets of Rage 3 appeared in 1994, it could be said that the side-scroller's status as a system-seller was coming to an end. Capcom's Street Fighter 2 had established one-on-one combat games as the de facto genre of choice for arcade players, and just as before, wily old Nintendo had secured the first domestic conversion for its own hardware. History would repeat itself; Sega got sloppy seconds with Street Fighter 2: Special Champion Edition a year after the port of the SNES original, but the damage was effectively done - not just for Sega, but for games like Streets of Rage and Final Fight in general. Thrill-seeking players now craved the competitive edge which only titles like Street Fighter 2 could deliver; rather than working cooperatively with their friends, they preferred to test their mettle in a one-on-one contest featuring magical fireballs and spinning piledrivers. As a result, Streets of Rage 3 perhaps didn't get the plaudits it deserved when it was first released. Its graphical similarity to the second game didn't help; while the 24 megabit cart ensures that it's certainly a looker, it doesn't deliver the same dramatic visual shift witnessed between the releases of the first two instalments. Still, the combat engine has been cleverly augmented, with additional special moves accessed more easily using Sega's excellent six-button control pad, released in the wake of the Mega Drive Street Fighter 2 port. So complex is the game's selection of moves that the Japanese edition of title was issued with a fold-out quick-reference sheet, allowing players to more easily familiarise themselves with each character's repertoire. On paper, the third instalment is clearly the best of the trilogy, yet it gets talked about a lot less than its immediate forerunner. Perhaps it was simply a matter of timing - Sega's 16-bit console was beginning to show its age, and the Saturn and PlayStation were just around the corner - but the reaction to Streets of Rage 3 was curiously muted when compared to the rapturous welcome that greeted its predecessor. The fan-made Streets of Rage Remake uses assets from the trilogy to create the definitive version of the game. It would be totally remiss - not to mention downright rude - to speak about the Streets of Rage trilogy without touching upon Yuzo Koshiro's amazing work on the soundtrack which accompanies the series. While modern players will know him best for the superlative audio witnessed in Atlus' Etrian Odyssey range of DS and 3DS role-playing titles, Koshiro arguably cemented his reputation on Sega's hardware. The music created for the first Streets of Rage still sounds effortlessly cool even by today's standards, and in the console wars of the early '90s it gave long-suffering Mega Drive owners something to feel smug about when faced with their Nintendo-loving mates - all of whom will have wasted no time in pointing out the aural superiority of the SNES. Streets of Rage 2 was blessed with just as appealing a soundtrack, and while the third game's frantic and largely experimental jungle music divided fans at the time (Koshiro developed a process which randomly generated tracks, a method which has been favoured by cult dance acts like Aphex Twin), it has aged better than many will have anticipated back in 1994. All three soundtracks were wildly ahead of their respective times, and constitute some of the finest audio ever to be generated by the Mega Drive's oft-derided Yamaha YM2612 sound chip. With side-scrollers falling rapidly out of favour, Sega held back on a fourth Streets of Rage outing. Core Design was commissioned to produce a 3D Streets of Rage 4 for the 32-bit Saturn, which ironically would eventually see the light of day under the name Fighting Force on the Saturn's rivals, the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64. Since then, the list of abortive attempts to resurrect the series has grown at an alarming rate. Japanese studio Ancient - founded by Koshiro himself - prototyped a 3D Streets of Rage for the Sega Dreamcast with an optional first-person perspective, but it would sadly never see the light of day - an apparent causality of Sega's increasingly cautious approach during this turbulent period. Now-defunct Swedish studio Grin - responsible for rebooting Capcom's Bionic Commando - was apparently working on a new entry which was abandoned when the company folded in 2009, while Backbone Entertainment - the team behind the Sega Vintage Collection on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade - pitched a sequel a couple of years ago along with another for stablemate ESWAT, but neither came to anything. Finally, there was an effort by Crackdown 2 creator Ruffian Games to update the concept - another project which never got past the prototype stage. Sega hasn't entirely forgotten about the franchise - the original Mega Drive game was convincingly updated last year by emulation experts M2 on the 3DS as part of Sega's 3D Classics range, adding stereoscopic 3D support and an amusing mode where enemies can be dispatched with a single punch, Fist of the North Star-style. However, outside of incredible fan projects like the highly polished Streets of Rage Remake, the future of Sega's side-scrolling series remains uncertain. Despite paying lip service to fans with the 3DS port, Sega today appears to be largely disinterested in mining its previously profitable back catalogue. Of course, there's the very important question of how a franchise set in what is now a very unfashionable genre could possibly be updated for a modern audience; Capcom's effort to revive its famous side-scrolling fighting brand in the PlayStation 2 title Final Fight Streetwise was an unmitigated disaster, possibly illustrating that some of gaming's most esteemed names are destined to remain locked away in the past. Perhaps that is why Streets of Rage inspires such a tremendous degree of affection from retro enthusiasts; unlike its inspiration and long-time rival Final Fight, it didn't outstay its welcome with needless sequels. Or maybe it's because Sega's smack-happy lineage arguably represents the absolute zenith of the genre, and any subsequent releases would merely be gilding an already exquisite lily.

On 9th September Destiny will launch on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One and Xbox 360 - but not PC. It's an unfortunate situation for many who had hoped to play Bungie's next first-person shooter with a mouse and keyboard. And for many it seems like a strange omission, given the game was built on PC in the first place. Surely it wouldn't take much time or effort for Bungie to release a PC version, then? "The truth is it's not that simple," design lead Lars Bakken told Eurogamer during a recent studio tour. "I wish it was that simple. It's pretty complicated. That doesn't mean it can't happen in the future, it just means it won't happen right now." Destiny is Bungie's first multiplatform game in over a decade, and its first on a PlayStation platform. The studio handles development of all the versions internally, rather than outsourcing development to other studios. It even handles quality assurance itself - one of the many reasons there are over 500 people currently working on the game inside Bungie's Bellevue, Washington base. "The console SKUs are really important for us and that's what we're focusing on," Bakken continued. "We're doing it all internally ourselves. That's a huge endeavour. That's not something we've ever done before. "So when I'm playtesting and I'm trying to play PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PS3, that's a lot of work. Adding another thing on there is just crazy. It's crazy to think of right now." Bungie COO Pete Parsons echoed Bakken's response when we quizzed him on the same subject. "I think four platforms on day one is a lot, considering we've been a one platform team for a very long time," he said. "What is also true is that, as you might imagine, we're all hardcore PC players. We play everything. It doesn't matter if it's a phone, PC or console, we play it. And there are 500 people up there. So we care a lot about the PC. "But this is a huge and ambitious project for us, and just getting it on one console would be a momentous challenge. Getting it on four on the same day is something we've never even tried before. We wanted to get it right, and we didn't want to add in tonnes more risk." Parsons also said creating and releasing a PC version of Bungie's shared world shooter would not be as easy as many believe, because all versions of the game connect to the same persistent video game world, which itself extends to multiple platforms. "It is not nearly as simple as you think," he said. "It is one central world no matter what the platform, and so that requires lots of intensive thought. "Frankly, it's not a thought we can spend time thinking about right now. Just building up the game and putting it across generations of platforms, and working on platforms we've never worked on before with the PlayStation 3, these are very big challenges. I'm thankful we have the engineering team we do." While it seems certain that Destiny will not launch on PC alongside the console versions, what chance post-launch? Or, perhaps, what chance of a PC version of future Destiny games? "I look forward to our future conversations around PC," Parsons said, cryptically. "We love the PC. We hear it too. We ask the question of ourselves."

Google has started to remove certain search results in the European Union in compliance with the region's "right to be forgotten" initiative. The company told the Wall Street Journal that it began removing search results on Thursday, after engineers modified the search engine's technical infrastructure to cull through the massive amount of data on the service and scrub all mention of certain topics. The European Union Court of Justice last month made a landmark ruling when it ordered Google to allow people to request that it remove search results that they might find damaging to their person or just embarrassing. The individuals have a right to privacy that extends to Internet searches, and and therefore search engines much take the steps to review and, when appropriate, remove those undesirable search results, the court said. Google fought hard to prevent the law from being enacted. The company has argued for the years it has taken to get to this point that it does not control the information that goes out on different sites around the Web. Google has said that the original publisher should bear the burden of removing content, and only then will it be automatically removed from Google search results. Google's defense was brought up in several cases brought against the company, including most notably one from former Formula 1 chief Max Mosley, who had appeared in salacious pictures posted to the Web. For years, he had been trying to get those images removed, and the "right to be forgotten" (PDF) initiative should allow him to achieve just that. The first cases on the matter date back to 2011, when owners of homes that were repossessed felt that their privacy was being infringed as results showed their past financial troubles years later. Just a few weeks after the ruling, Google created an online form for concerned users to ask to have information taken down. The process for Google is long and arduous, if nothing else. The company receives a complain, must assess it under the court's ruling that items can be removed if they're "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed." If Google deems results fall into that category, they will be removed. If Google decides against it, however, the company must notify the requester, who then can head back to court to force Google to make the change. According to the Journal, Google has received over 41,000 requests for removal. The company hasn't said how many of those items have been removed. Although the ruling requires all search companies, including Yahoo and others, to comply, Google, as the far and away leader in search in Europe, has taken the brunt of the ruling. In addition to scrubbing some search results, Google has added a new message at the bottom of its pages, telling searchers that some results may have been removed in cooperation with the EU's ruling. That statement is placed on all searches related to individuals or certain events, according to the Journal's sources. http://www.cnet.com/news/google-starts-scrubbing-searches-under-eus-right-to-be-forgotten/

YouTube is venturing into the radio market for the first time. Starting July 11, YouTube will host a weekly show called YouTube 15 on SiriusXM to showcase some of its most popular musical artists, the companies announced Thursday. The show will air every Friday on SiriusXM's pop channel, Hits 1. YouTube has long been a place where up-and-coming artists and entertainers of all type have tried to get noticed. Young singers often post music videos on YouTube. Some have even made a name for themselves, topping more than a million views. For YouTube, this foray is a first. Google's video service has historically been loath to venture into other territories. By inking a deal with SiriusXM, YouTube will try to reach people who might not already turn to YouTube as a music source. Neither YouTube nor SiriusXM said exactly what videos will be on the weekly show, but the companies said the list will familiarize listeners with the most popular and top trending music videos on YouTube. Jenna Marbles, a popular YouTube video creator, will host YouTube 15. Marbles, whose real name is Jenna Mourey, shares videos about her life and has over 13 million followers. Her videos have been collectively viewed over 1.5 billion times. CNET has contacted YouTube for comment. We will update this story when we have more information. http://www.cnet.com/news/youtube-inks-deal-with-siriusxm-to-bring-music-hits-to-radio/

US player Omar Gonzalez reacts to his team's advancement to the next round of the World Cup.Getty ImagesThe final scores for US v. Germany and Ghana v. Portugal are in -- and the results for ESPN World Cup video streaming show a blowout. The games, which would help determine whether the US, Germany, Ghana, or Portugal would advance out of the "Group of Death" into the knockout round, brought 1.7 million concurrent viewers to the WatchESPN video-streaming service, a new record for the company. The games had high drama and some practicalities working in the favor of heavy ESPN streaming. They were high-stakes match-ups to determine who would advance (in the end, it was a goal difference advantage for the US over Portugal that gave the US its ticket). It, obviously, involved the national team for ESPN's biggest market, the US. And it came at 9 a.m. PT/noon ET, a time when the greatest number of Americans are likely to be away from their living rooms -- and needed a way to watch the action. And Thursday had two concurrent games occurring, piling up reasons to stream. The heavy online demand led to some complaints on Twitter and elsewhere about stuttering, dropped streams, and other performance issues. ESPN said it investigated some limited issues due to unprecedented demand during the first half. Many factors can contribute to difficulty streaming, including service coverage, the device's processing capability, etc. The game may have been a record for streaming video generally. Akamai, a major content-delivery-network operator, has been tracking traffic from the 50 rights holders around the globe that are working with the company to stream the tournament -- and posting the data to a live, updating site. Though the official stats for today won't be available until tomorrow, a live graph tracking usage in real-time shows the biggest spike of the World Cup so far. The previous record was last week's Brazil-Mexico match with 4.59 terabits per second of streaming video on Akamai's network, surging above the previous highs during the tournament and the 3.5 Tbps for the US-Canada men's hockey semifinal during the 2014 Winter Olympics. While Akamai verifies the final numbers, a representative said it was fair to estimate traffic exceeded 6 Tbps during the combination of the two games, the highest peak for a live sports event the company has ever delivered. At least, it's the highest until the next big match. Update, 2:31 p.m. PT: Added Thursday's Tbps estimate from Akamai. http://www.cnet.com/news/us-loses-to-germany-but-world-cup-streaming-scores-big/

Facebook revealed that since last summer it's been fighting a court order that required it to disclose social-media information involving hundreds of people. "This unprecedented request is by far the largest we've ever received -- by a magnitude of more than ten -- and we have argued that it was unconstitutional from the start," Chris Sonderby, Facebook's deputy general counsel, wrote in a statement Thursday. The situation raises concerns over privacy in the digital age, when much of a person's sensitive information is often available online and on mobile devices. This week, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected warrantless searches of cell phones, saying the practice went against the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable search and seizure. The court added that modern cell phones are "not just another technological convenience." Facebook, the largest social network in the world, asserted that the search was "overly broad" and allowed the government to keep the seized photos, private messages, and other information indefinitely. It has called for the government to return the data and claimed the search ignored the Fourth Amendment.Facebook said 381 people's accounts were subject to warrants out of an unspecified New York court, though only 62 were later charged in a disability fraud case. The company said it was under a gag order, preventing it from discussing the case or notifying the people affected until recently. Facebook, as well as other tech companies like Google and Apple, discloses data on the number of search warrants, subpoenas, and emergency disclosures requests it receives from government bodies. Facebook said that from July to December 2013, it received 12,598 total requests from US law enforcement, requesting information from 18,715 users or accounts. In all, some data was produced from 81 percent of the requests, Facebook said. http://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-reveals-search-warrant-of-hundreds-of-accounts/

The Oculus Rift virtual-reality headsetCNETMozilla programmers have begun a project to adapt the Web for virtual-reality interfaces such as the Oculus Rift, starting with test versions of its own Firefox browser. In virtual reality, computer-generated sensory input substitutes for actual reality persuasively enough that a person feels present in the electronic realm -- strap on the goggles, and you're fully immersed in an interactive 3D scene. It's been a hot area of research for years, but now Oculus has begun convincing the world that virtual reality is going to move out of the lab and into the real world, so to speak. Facebook certainly is convinced, agreeing to buy Oculus VR for $2 billion in a deal expected to close this month -- though it's also finding that building gadgets for consumers brings a raft of unexpected costs beyond the acquisition price. Meanwhile, Sony has debuted its Project Morpheus VR headset, and Samsung could enter the VR market, too. And although Google's low-budget cardboard VR headset, revealed this week, isn't a serious project, it does reflect the enthusiasm for the idea. Mozilla, which is trying to ensure that the Web keeps up with other computing domains, has begun adapting the concept with Firefox prototypes that work on virtual-reality interfaces. "We are adding native support for VR devices to early experimental builds of Firefox, so that Web developers can start experimenting with adding VR interactivity to their websites and content," said Vladimir Vukicevic, Mozilla engineering director in charge of gaming and special projects, in a blog post Thursday. "This is only the first of many steps that we'll be taking over the coming weeks and months." If his effort succeeds, it could mean that people have an entirely new way to browse the Web -- one with dynamic, computer-generated 3D realms instead of flat pages of icons and text. Vukicevic has significant credibility in the area -- he is the co-inventor of WebGL, which provides browsers with a hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, and has led efforts to improve browser gaming. WebGL has spread from Firefox to all major desktop browsers, and it provides a foundation for WebVR, too. The obvious draw for virtual reality today is videogaming, but as Vukicevic sees it, browsers are a natural fit for an exploratory interface. "The opportunity for VR on the Web is particularly exciting. The Web is a vibrant, connected universe where many different types of experiences can be created and shared. People can be productive, have fun, and learn all from within their browser. It is, arguably, an early version of the Metaverse," he said, referring to the 3D virtual-reality world in Neil Stephenson's 1992 sci-fi classic "Snow Crash." "The browser is the portal through which we access it." Getting Web standards to catch on requires that other browser makers also support them so Web developers can count on them. Mozilla got a favorable signal: Google programmer Brandon Jones said he planned to implement WebVR in Chrome. It seems the virtual reality support won't be integrated into the main branch of Chrome development. "I don't think we should implement this feature in trunk. As far as I can tell, WebVR unrelated to our goals for 2014," said Adam Barth, a Chrome leader. And though there's lots of enthusiasm for Oculus Rift, VR fans have to overcome some historical baggage. In the Web domain in particular, one effort two decades ago called Virtual Reality Markup Language fizzled despite some early hype. As Google's Jones cautioned: "There's a long ways to go before we can consider shipping anything." http://www.cnet.com/news/firefox-virtual-reality-for-the-web/

An Aereo transcoder.Joan E. Solsman/CENTAereo, the startup that the Supreme Court this week said was illegally retransmitting broadcast TV over the Internet, said it will "pause" operations as it figures out its next move, adding that the company's "journey is far from done." "We have decided to pause our operations temporarily as we consult with the court and map out our next steps," Chief Executive Chet Kanojia said in a letter posted to the company's blog Saturday. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court handed down a victory to the broadcasters suing to shut down Aereo, deciding the company is fundamentally the same as a cable company yet doesn't pay broadcasters the same fees cable companies must, a violation of the Copyright Act. (CBS, the parent company of CNET, is one of the broadcasters suing Aereo.) MORE ON THE AEREO RULING How Supreme Court ruling affects Aereo, the cloud, and you Aereo is illegal, Supreme Court says, in big win for broadcasters The Supreme Court decision, while affecting little more than an estimated 100,000 subscribers to Aereo, had wider implications, raising legal questions for cloud-based services Dropbox and Apple's iCloud and tipping the balance in the way courts may interpret copyright law toward protecting intellectual property rather than fostering innovation. Kanojia was clear that Aereo isn't ready to concede defeat following the high court's ruling, which was unequivocal that Aereo's current business model violates copyright law despite the company's argument that it is simply an equipment rental service. However, the letter from the startup indicates not only that Aereo has hope for its own future but also that it remains dedicated to the public's ability to access broadcast TV with an antenna, no matter the antenna's size or location. The case will return to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously rejected a preliminary injunction to stop Aereo, within about 30 days following the high court's decision. The appeals court must decide whether to order the parties to file supplemental briefs or to proceed based on what both sides have already told the court, but the Supreme Court's ruling gives the Second Circuit little choice but to issue the injunction. Aereo could decide to try to bring the case to a full trial with a different line of legal argument -- a daunting prospect given the Supreme Court has already sided against it -- or the company could settle with the broadcasters in some fashion. Saturday, Aereo said subscribers had until 8:30 am PT Saturday to watch live television or any stored shows on their remote DVR, and would be refunded their last paid month. Aereo charges $8-$12 for its service, which dedicates a mini-antenna to each subscriber to capture over-the-air TV signals, store them in a remote DVR, and stream them to connected devices in a member's home. Kanojia said in his letter that the outpouring of support for Aereo was "staggering." "The spectrum that the broadcasters use to transmit over-the-air programming belongs to the American public, and we believe you should have a right to access that live programming whether your antenna sits on the roof of your home, on top of your television or in the cloud," he wrote. http://www.cnet.com/news/aereo-plans-pause-after-supreme-court-ruled-it-illegal/

The latest stable version of the popular BitTorrent client uTorrent has reinstated an advanced feature that allows users to disable a prominently displayed banner ad. The shortcut in the options menu is still absent, but those who know where to look can enjoy an ad-free experience once again. With roughly 150 million monthly users uTorrent is by far the most used BitTorrent client around. This dazzling number is a dream for most advertising agencies, but not all uTorrent users appreciate an ad-filled application. When the makers of uTorrent made the client ad-supported two years ago there was a small user revolt. As a result, parent company BitTorrent Inc. chose to make the ads optional. However, earlier this month the company appeared to have changed this position. Without public notice the banner position in the lower left corner was made permanent. The bottom left ad(s) Previously, users had the option to turn the ad off through the options dropdown menu but this option was removed. The advanced setting that allowed users to disable the banner ad disappeared as well. Fast forward a couple of weeks and the uTorrent team now appears to have reconsidered its position. The latest stable release, which came out just before the weekend, reinstated the advanced setting. “Added back: Feature gui_plus_upsell in advanced settings,” the changelog reads. BitTorrent Inc. hasn’t commented publicly on the forced advertisement issue, but it seems plausible that the company reconsidered its earlier decision after users voiced their complaints. However, since the ad can only be disabled through the advanced settings, it’s expected that most users will never turn it off anyway. In addition to the toolbars and other software bundled with uTorrent, ads are an important source of revenue for BitTorrent Inc. Last year the company said that uTorrent is good for five billion ad impressions a month. Judging from these numbers the revenue potential is enormous, as long as you don’t alienate the users. Banner can be disabled now http://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-makes-advertisement-optional-again-140629/

The former admin of a pair of file-sharing sites that had their domains seized in 2012 has this week been handed a 22 month suspended jail sentence. Also punished were the man's parents, who were sentenced to 10 months after using their bank account to accept site advertising revenue. Back in February 2012, Italian media began reporting on the sudden closure of two popular file-sharing sites said to have 270,000 users. Acting on a court order, the Guardia di Finanza (financial police) seized the domains of Scaricolibero.com and Filmgratis.tv and ordered ISPs to block the IP addresses of the sites’ servers in the Netherlands. The order also authorized seizure of bank accounts connected to the site. The order was granted based on allegations of copyright infringement from local entertainment companies and claims of receiving stolen goods/money laundering. At the time the sites were said to be making around $300 a day from advertising. It’s taken more than two years but this week the Italian legal system finally wrapped up the case against the sites’ former operator and his family accomplices, finding all three guilty as charged. Fortunately the now 23-year-old will not spend any time behind bars, having been handed a 22 month suspended sentence after generating around 137,000 euros from the sites. Interestingly, his parents also became involved in the case after allowing their bank account to be used to collect advertising revenue. “The parents, who owned the bank account where the money from ads were allocated, were sentenced for money laundering,” Enzo Mazzo of music industry group Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana informs TorrentFreak. The couple received a 10 month suspended sentence after benefitting to the tune of 48,000 euros. “It’s a very good decision,” Mazza adds. “Our anti-piracy team FPM assisted during the case and we are really satisfied with the decision which has shown clear evidence of the link between piracy and the collection of money through advertisements.” In the future FIMI and its local associates will be looking to take a more proactive approach by stopping revenue reaching pirate sites in the first place. Earlier this month a new Italian coalition announced its plans to continue the “follow-the-money” theme being played out around Europe and the United States. http://torrentfreak.com/parents-pirate-site-admin-sentenced-money-laundering-140628/