Adam Devine, Blake Anderson, and Anders Holm may go by different names in Netflix's Game Over, Man!--Alexxx, Joel, and Darren, respectively--but they're basically still doing their Workaholics characters. Netflix's latest original comedy is a variation on everything Workaholics fans love; it wouldn't be surprising at all to learn that Game Over, Man! began as a Workaholics movie, or an idea for a parody episode where the boys recreate Die Hard as only they could: dumber, gorier, meaner, and extremely funny. Recommending Game Over, Man!--or not--is easy: If you liked Workaholics, which ended its seven-season run on Comedy Central just over a year ago, you will probably like this movie. And if you found the show puerile and obnoxious, go ahead and pick one of Netflix's hundreds of other original movies or original TV series instead. This movie was even directed by Kyle Newacheck, the starring trio's Workaholics co-creator, frequent episode director, and occasional guest star (as the gang's drug dealer and fellow misfit Karl), and it was written by Holm. The story follows Alexxx, Joel, and Darren, three hotel housekeepers who dream of hitting it big with their latest scheme, a full body-controlled video game called "Skintendo." When a rich Instagram star--Utkarsh Ambudkar's obnoxious but likable Bey--throws a party at their hotel, the gang decide to pitch him on Skintendo in the hope he'll invest. Their plan is derailed when a group of terrorists led by the charismatic Conrad (Neal McDonough) and the psychopathic Irma (Rhona Mitra) take the partygoers hostage to extort Bey's fortune. Our heroes skulk around the hotel trying not to get killed while thwarting the bad guys, mostly by accident or dumb luck. The "Dew Crew," as they call themselves--because they love Mountain Dew--are playing versions of their Workaholics characters. Devine's Alexxx--three Xs--is an immature, drug-dealing man baby bursting with terrible ideas, Holm's Darren is an insecure drug addict, and Anderson's Joel--nickname "Baby Dunk"--is just Anderson, but not-so-secretly gay. They're supported by a hodgepodge of a cast, including Daniel Stern as the hotel's sleazy manager, Aya Cash as their hapless co-worker, and party guests including Joel McHale, Fred Armisen, Action Bronson, Shaggy, Steve-O, and Mark Cuban as themselves. Game Over, Man! isn't shy about its influences. One of the funniest jokes comes when the terrorists' hacker--Sam Richardson's Donald--insists that they didn't bring him along just "because I look like the black nerd from Die Hard," and he's sick of hearing about it. There are also a weird number of (granted, hilarious) references to the 1997 Robin Williams movie Flubber. The crew take full advantage of their freedom from cable's content restrictions, though not necessarily in the ways you might expect. Game Over, Man! must have a record number of penises in it, for example, including one that gets severed from its owner early on and returns later as a gross but gut-busting sight gag. This movie is also surprisingly gory, but always in a low budget way that makes exploding heads look like bursting water balloons full of fake blood. It's also not pulling any punches, whether it comes to the various celebrities at Bey's party or his adorable little chihuahua. Nobody is safe in this movie, which is admittedly fun, though it does go a little too far in a couple of scenes. By the end, the Dew Crew has scraped together what amounts to a semi-decent plan to save the hotel's remaining guests and convince Bey to invest in Skintendo (don't think for a second they lose sight of that dream, even as the bodies drop around them). That's after several terrible, failed plans and multiple bloody, hilarious scraps in which they count their bad guy kills like it's a video game. That includes one weirdly heartwarming run-in with two very murderous, very gay thugs who the boys attack as they're distracting one another in bed. There are plenty more good gags, fight scenes that will make you cringe with the creativity of their cartoonishly over-the-top violence, and stunts that include the gang hanging on an ironing board suspended a dozen stories up, and sending a Weekend at Bernie's-style animated corpse into a room full of machine gun-toting thugs. Game Over, Man! isn't smart, essential, or particularly well made. But it is a funny, blatant Die Hard tribute made by four friends whose specific brand of stoner-bro humor has earned them enough fans to justify their continued collaboration. If you count yourself among those fans, enjoy.

Dean Evans, best known as the creative director on Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, has left Ubisoft. Evans worked at the company for almost 12 years, contributing to Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed games as well as the Far Cry series; now, he plans on taking some time off to travel. According to Game Informer, Evans was most recently working on an unannounced project at Ubisoft that was canceled. The company offered to transfer him to a different team in Paris, but Evans decided to leave the company instead of moving to a different country. "I split with my wife, and then the project I was working on was canceled. All of this massive s--- going on at the same time and I started thinking, 'Is the best option for me to move to another foreign country?'" Evans explained. "I'm 40 this year, and it's so f---ing cliche, but you do think about it in the same way you do when you turn 30. These milestones, you start thinking about what you really want to be doing and whether you're making the right decision." His plans now consist of moving back to the United Kingdom and taking some time off to travel. He isn't in a rush to move on to a new job. "I've been in the business now for over 20 years, nearly 12 of those have been at Ubisoft," he said. "I've never really taken much of a break." There's a lot more in Game Informer's full interview with Evans here. Evans is most famous for spearheading work on Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, the bizarre, experimental, retro-futuristic expansion to Far Cry 3. If you're unfamiliar with Blood Dragon, it's definitely worth checking out; you can watch our review of it in the embed above. Additionally, be sure to take a look at our history of Far Cry feature here. In other Far Cry news, Far Cry 5 launches on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on March 27. Ubisoft recently detailed Far Cry 5's Season Pass, which comes with expansion packs that take place on Mars, in the Vietnam War, and in a zombie apocalypse and look like they take inspiration from Blood Dragon.

Or, if you translate that into actual game time: about 900 days. World of Warcraft's achievement system is something that a lot of players don't pay much attention to. In the Legion expansion, it helps you track the progress of overarching quests, but unless you're seriously bored and have nothing to do you probably won't spend a lot of time going back to older areas to complete their related achievements. Unless you're Xirev. He's a blood elf mage who, today, accomplished something that easily puts him in the top 0.1 percent of World of Warcraft's millions of players: He completed each of the 3,314 achievements—ranging from simple tasks to herculean feats like killing 250,000 players—available to date. Oh, and it only took him six years. "It was a very gradual process that started early on after achievements got introduced to the game in Wrath of the Lich King," Xirev tells me. He goes on to say that, at first, his intention wasn't to get every achievement. Instead, he just wanted a faster mount. Being a relatively casual player at the time, Xirev couldn't afford the high cost of training to ride mounts that would increase his movement speed to the maximum limit and also allow him to ride better mounts. But there was one loophole: Fast mounts earned through achievements would unlock the requisite level of riding skill automatically. Xirev says it was that need for speed that eventually got him turned on to achievement hunting. "The guild I was in at the time soon fell apart and I was left with a lot of time until the next expansion and a strong will to collect things in the game, so I started collecting everything." Overachiever Today, Xirev is 23-year-old Swedish student just about to start university in the fall. He tells me that, during Wrath of the Lich King and the expansions that followed, he was often playing World of Warcraft for five to six hours a day. With Legion, he frequently puts in ten or more hours. Over the years Xirev has tallied up between "850-900 days" worth of playtime, with 434 days on his blood elf mage alone. He also has 30 characters that are level 110—two of each class with an additional six mages. What's absolutely mind blowing about this is Xirev admits nearly all of that is active playtime spent hunting and grinding out achievements. "That is nowhere near the amounts other long time players have in this game but most of my game time is actual play time and not spent AFK in cities." To put this in perspective, World of Warcraft has 3,314 achievements that tally up to a maximum 29,210 achievement points (this site is more accurate than Blizzard's official tally). There's some oddness to account for, such as bugged achievements and the fact that, for some reason, Alliance characters can technically earn 10 more points than Horde players. It's also worth noting that, because World of Warcraft is always changing, some achievements become impossible to complete. To manage this, Blizzard retroactively deems them "Feats of Strength" or "Legacy" achievements. Tallying up all of those, Xirev has a grand total of 3,759 completed achievements. While a good chunk of these involve things players are doing anyway, like running world quests or completing new raids, others are a trial of patience and endurance. "Ask anyone who casually collects achievements and PvP is the area they have the most trouble in or don’t even try at all," Xirev says. That's because many of the PvP-related achievements require serious skill and extreme dedication to murder. One asks that you kill 250,000 enemy players, while others require maintaining an intimidatingly high rank during an entire competitive PvP season. Some seem impossible to even do today, like killing 50 enemy players in your own capital city (the days of raiding enemy cities is long over). Being a completionist in World of Warcraft doesn't just require time, it requires serious skill. I ask Xirev what achievement really stood out as painful. "It’s probably 'Going to Need a Bigger Bag,'" he says. "It requires you to collect every single rare item from a Mists of Pandaria zone called Timeless Isle, some of the rare items are obtained from rare spawns that can have very long respawn timers. I didn’t even touch that achievement for a long time because it only gives 10 points and nothing else for the amount of effort you need to put in to get it." And then there's the worst of them all: pet battles. "Sometimes Blizzard creates achievements that just seem cruel like having to win a bunch of PvP Pet Battles, they should at least give you a shirt ingame that says 'I had to win 5,000 PvP Pet Battles and all I got was 10 achievement points,'" Xirev says. For those unfamiliar, World of Warcraft has a Pokemon-esque battle system where players can make their pets duel. For most players, it's a system better left forgotten—but Xirev had no such luxury. While painful, the end result is that Xirev now belongs to World of Warcraft's most exclusive club. While he's far from the first person to collect every achievement, he is the first one to collect all of the ones added in Legion. What's more, his collection of mounts and pets is probably one of the most impressive of any player in the game. For someone who started out just wanting to get around a little faster, Xirev now has an unimaginable stable of stylin' rides. In fact, he has 424 of them. It's a fleeting accomplishment, though, since major updates always bring more achievements to complete. But I'm curious if, given the chance, Xirev would do it all again. "Honestly, not really," he says—and I'm not surprised (we are talking about almost three years of his life here). "If I could I would want to be able to play games casually, however I’m a completionist at heart and I actively try to stop myself from collecting stuff in other games than WoW and I end up getting bored of them much sooner because of that." Still, while his own achievement might be bittersweet, when Xirev shared his news with the community he was met only with adoration. Over on the World of Warcraft subreddit, moderators bent the rules against posting about achievements to allow Xirev's thread to stay up. Even Blizzard community manager Ythisens stopped by to admit that Xirev finally "beat the game" and that they'd just have to cook up some new achievements for him. For now, however, Xirev seems like me might be looking to take a breather. "I told myself that I could finally relax once I had gotten all achievements but I don’t really feel any different," he adds. "I still have things to collect that aren’t achievements and there will always be new achievements coming in the next expansion, focusing more on in real life things is already something I’m working on and maybe I won’t have much time for WoW soon."

Electronic Arts is at work on a new open-world Star Wars game, if a newly discovered job opening is any indication. Although the publisher has shared little information about what to expect from the rebooted version of Visceral's game following the studio's closure, we may now have a clue as to what form it will take. The job listing in question was recently published on EA's jobs site. It's for the position of lead online engineer in Burnaby, at EA's Vancouver studio, and it makes no attempt to hide what applicants will be working on. The opening sentence reads, "Lead a team to deliver Online features for a Star Wars Open World project." The rest of the listing doesn't share much else, though there are references to the game being multi-platform (which is little surprise) and a requirement to have "experience implementing Online features such as Matchmaking, Asynchronous interactions, Live services, Server-host migration, etc." We've reached out to EA for further details and will report back in the (unlikely) event it has anything to share. It's not the first time we've heard that EA might be at work on an open-world Star Wars game; a job listing back in 2013 also suggested as much. EA currently owns the exclusive rights to produce console and PC games based on Star Wars, but the last six months or so have been tumultuous. There was the Battlefront 2 microtransaction controversy, and before that, EA shut down Visceral Studios and confirmed major changes would be made to its Star Wars game (pictured above), which EA's Vancouver studio will continue to work on. We also know that Titanfall developer Respawn is working on a Star Wars game of its own. When the Visceral news was announced, executive VP of EA worldwide studios Patrick Soderlund said, "Our Visceral studio has been developing an action-adventure title set in the Star Wars universe. In its current form, it was shaping up to be a story-based, linear adventure game. Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. It has become clear that to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we needed to pivot the design." This sparked concerns about the future of triple-A single-player games. CEO Andrew Wilson denied that the moves were made because it was a single-player game that needed to become a live-service game. "It was more about, 'How do we get to a point where the overall gameplay experience was right for players?'" he said, adding that some of the assets and content Visceral had created might still be used in the new iteration of the game. Soderlund also denied single-player was to blame; like Wilson, he pointed to the issue of quality, which was seemingly reinforced by a Kotaku report at the time. Subsequently, CFO Blake Jorgensen suggested the linear, single-player nature was at least partially to blame, saying, "As we kept reviewing the game, it continued to look like a much more linear game [which] people don't like as much today as they did five years ago or 10 years ago."

Omensight is a rather peculiar take on a wartime story. Set shortly before and after the end of the world, you take on the role of a time-traveling deity who must turn back the clock and figure out how to prevent the end of all things. Developed by Spearhead Games--the same team behind Stories: The Paths of Destinies--the developer describes its alluring time-travel narrative as something influenced by the classic detective TV series Columbo. As an apocalyptic detective story, with regular moments action and platforming, it mashes up a number of different genres together, making for a rather unique and intriguing action-adventure game. With several factions at war, the escalating conflict in a world full of anthropomorphic beings eventually reaches a boiling point--resulting in the demise of all life. While that may seem like the end of the story, it's really only the beginning. Taking on the role of a timeless warrior known as The Harbinger, you're tasked with rewriting history to learn just how the end of the world was set into motion. As you meet each character and learn their story, you'll come to blows with many of the soldiers and monsters in the land who seek to stop The Harbinger from interfering in the conflict. Set within a time-loop of the final day, you'll have to pick a path and learn the fate of each of key character in order to prevent the end of the world from happening again. Taking cues from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, you'll have to be selective about your course of action when it comes to stopping the apocalypse. Each of the supporting characters' particular story takes place across the entire final day, forcing you to commit to one person of interest. After seeing their story through to the finish, the world ends and The Harbinger returns to his base of operations with another clue. Of course, all this meddling on The Harbinger's part won't go unnoticed, and in a number of cases you'll have to fight off enemies and creatures looking to stop you from interfering. Combat has a free-flow style rhythm to it, where you'll be able to bounce between multiple targets and use a number of time-bending powers to gain the upper hand. Moreover, many of the supporting characters you assist--some of which were meant to die in previous events before your interference--can help out during fights, leading to rather hectic battles when against a large group of enemies. While in the player hub--located outside of the present timeline--you can examine current clues, along with characters' relationships and connections, and upgrade The Harbinger before planning your next course of action. Though the flow of the narrative can initially come off a bit abrupt, and somewhat episodic, the background of the conflict gradually becomes more detailed--showing a greater depth of world history and each character's place in the world's final hours. One of the more striking elements of Omensight is its strong visual style which feels akin to The Secret of Nihm's balance of whimsical aesthetic with dark undertones. Set for a 2018 release on PC, Omensight presents its apocalyptic story in a way that shows great attention to the world it's set in. With some rather stunning visuals, and a charming artstyle that confronts a rather bleak atmosphere, Spearhead's upcoming action-adventure game about preventing the apocalypse before it happens is one to watch out for.

Dean Evans, best known as the creative director on Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, has left Ubisoft. Evans worked at the company for almost 12 years, contributing to Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed games as well as the Far Cry series; now, he plans on taking some time off to travel. According to Game Informer, Evans was most recently working on an unannounced project at Ubisoft that was canceled. The company offered to transfer him to a different team in Paris, but Evans decided to leave the company instead of moving to a different country. "I split with my wife, and then the project I was working on was canceled. All of this massive s--- going on at the same time and I started thinking, 'Is the best option for me to move to another foreign country?'" Evans explained. "I'm 40 this year, and it's so f---ing cliche, but you do think about it in the same way you do when you turn 30. These milestones, you start thinking about what you really want to be doing and whether you're making the right decision." His plans now consist of moving back to the United Kingdom and taking some time off to travel. He isn't in a rush to move on to a new job. "I've been in the business now for over 20 years, nearly 12 of those have been at Ubisoft," he said. "I've never really taken much of a break." There's a lot more in Game Informer's full interview with Evans here. Evans is most famous for spearheading work on Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, the bizarre, experimental, retro-futuristic expansion to Far Cry 3. If you're unfamiliar with Blood Dragon, it's definitely worth checking out; you can watch our review of it in the embed above. Additionally, be sure to take a look at our history of Far Cry feature here. In other Far Cry news, Far Cry 5 launches on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on March 27. Ubisoft recently detailed Far Cry 5's Season Pass, which comes with expansion packs that take place on Mars, in the Vietnam War, and in a zombie apocalypse and look like they take inspiration from Blood Dragon.

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has warned that further Western attacks on Syria would bring chaos to world affairs, as Washington prepared to increase pressure on Moscow with new economic sanctions. In a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani on Sunday, Putin and Rouhani agreed that the Western strikes had damaged the chances of achieving a political resolution in the seven-year Syria conflict, according to a Kremlin statement. “Vladimir Putin, in particular, stressed that if such actions committed in violation of the UN Charter continue, then it will inevitably lead to chaos in international relations,” the Kremlin statement said. Meanwhile, US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told CBS’ Face the Nation program that the US would announce new economic sanctions on Monday aimed at companies “that were dealing with equipment” related to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s alleged chemical weapons use. On Saturday, the United States, France and Britain launched 105 missiles targeting what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities in Syria in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7. The Syrian government and its ally Russia have denied involvement in any such attack. Responding to Haley’s remarks about the plans for new sanctions, Evgeny Serebrennikov, deputy head of the defence committee of Russia’s upper house of parliament, said Moscow was ready for the penalties, according to the RIA news agency. “They are hard for us, but will do more damage to the USA and Europe,” RIA quoted Serebrennikov as saying. In Damascus, Syria’s deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, met inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW for about three hours in the presence of Russian officers and a senior Syrian security official. The inspectors were due to attempt to visit the Douma site. Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for OPCW’s findings before attacking. Assad told a group of visiting Russian politicians that the Western missile strikes were an act of aggression, Russian news agencies reported. Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombed-out research lab, but also of Assad arriving at work as usual, with the caption “morning of resilience” and there were no immediate reports of casualties. Russian agencies quoted the politicians as saying that Assad was in a “good mood”, had praised the Soviet-era air defence systems Syria used to repel the Western attacks and had accepted an invitation to visit Russia at an unspecified time. Meanwhile Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow would make every effort to improve political relations with the West, TASS news agency reported on Sunday. Ryabkov also said Russia would study a UN resolution on Syria proposed by the US, France and Britain, but added that it would be hard to reach a compromise on the issue, TASS reported. It’s not known when the resolution would be put to a vote. “IT WAS RETALIATION, NOT AN ACT OF WAR” France persuaded President Donald Trump to stay in Syria and launch air strikes as punishment for an alleged chemical weapons attack, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday. Appearing in a two-hour live broadcast on French television BFM and online investigative site Mediapart, the 40-year-old leader said the US, Britain and France had “full international legitimacy to intervene” in order to enforce international humanitarian law. The allies fired missiles early on Saturday at three chemical-weapons facilities in Syria to punish the regime for the alleged use of chemical weapons in the town of Douma. “It was retaliation, not an act of war,” Macron said in justifying the operation a day before the French parliament was set to debate it. The air strikes marked Macron’s biggest foreign policy yet. Nearly a year into his term, the new president declared France the most active country on the diplomatic field and at the United Nations. “Ten days ago President Trump wanted the United States of America to withdraw from Syria. We convinced him to remain,” he said, speaking in the majestic room of Chaillot National Theater, with the Eiffel Tower shining in the background. He said France now wants to involve Western powers, Russia and Turkey in a new diplomatic initiative to find a sustainable political solution in Syria. Macron also offered to play the role of intermediary between the United States and Russia.

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Star Trek: Discovery is about to leave space dock for its sophomore mission, as star Doug Jones confirms season two of the CBS All Access series begins filming tomorrow (April 16, as of this writing). After spending over a decade off the airwaves, Discovery finally returned Star Trek to its original home on television in 2017, though not without controversy. Rather than airing on a traditional network or popular streaming service, it was decided the series would be exclusive to the brand new All Access subscription service, which offered little in original content beyond Discovery and The Good Fight, a spinoff of The Good Wife. The show also raised some Vulcan-esque eyebrows by making Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), the show’s unconventional lead character, into a never before mentioned adoptive sister of Spock. After a surprisingly dark and violent first season that showcased a brutal was with the Klingons, the season ended with the promise of an encounter with the USS Enterprise, helmed by Captain Christopher Pike (the recently cast Inhumans refugee Anson Mount). There’s been much speculation about what the new season could hold, and it seems like we’ll likely be getting answers soon as production gets underway. Series star Doug Jones – fresh off his fantastic performance in Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar winner The Shape Of Water – let fans know he was about to suit back up as Discovery’s cautious first officer Commander Saru by shaving his head. Check it out via his Twitter account below. https://twitter.com/actordougjones/status/985614857033498624 With the Klingon war seemingly in the rearview mirror, Discovery’s producers have promised a second season that will more strongly evoke the ethos of classic Star Trek, and will settle some long brewing questions about how exactly the events of the series fit into the larger Star Trek narrative. The show also figures to delve into a much anticipated corner of Star Trek lore, as a deleted scene from the first season finale revealed Mirror Georgiou has been inducted into the shadowy Federation cabal known as Section 31, which has its origins in the fan favorite Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and figured prominently in Star Trek Into Darkness. Despite some narrative shakiness in its debut season – undoubtedly influenced by the show’s well documented behind the scenes chaos that saw series creator Bryan Fuller quit before production began – the show has an unquestionably strong ensemble cast, anchored by Martin-Green and Jones, as well as Anthony Rapp as the prickly Lieutenant Stamets and Mary Wiseman as the awkward but goodhearted Ensign Tilly. Almost every iteration of Star Trek took a quantum leap forward in quality in its second season. Hopefully that’s a trend Discovery can emulate.

Simon Pegg says “I know we’re doing more” when it comes to the question of whether the cast of the latest Star Trek franchise will reunite for another movie. Pegg has been a favorite with American audiences since the British actor and screenwriter’s breakthrough debut, the horror comedy Shaun of the Dead in 2004. One of the biggest fans he attracted was director J.J. Abrams, who cast him as the brilliant off-field technician Benji Dunn opposite Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt in the 2006 action hit Mission: Impossible III, and his character made such big impressions that he’s remained a big part of the Mission: Impossible franchise ever since. Not surprisingly, Abrams found a ingenious way to incorporate his friend and collaborator in the 2009 reboot of the Star Trek franchise in the coveted role of the Enterprise’s chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, a role he reprised for the sequel Star Trek Into Darkness in 2013 and again for 2016’s Star Trek Beyond. Pegg also shared a screenwriting credit for Star Trek Beyond with Doug Jung, and while the third film in the series posted a solid $343.4 million at the global box office (which was in line with 2009’s worldwide take of $385.6 million), the tally was far less than the global earnings Star Trek Into Darkness ($467.3 million); leaving the future of the rebooted film series in limbo. Despite the disappointing turnout for the third film, Pegg’s mind is still very much on making Star Trek 4. And while it was immediately announced that Chris Hemsworth would be reprising his role as George Kirk – the father of James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) – for the fourth Star Trek film, the buzz about what’s next for the franchise remained relatively quiet until last December when news surfaced that Quentin Tarantino was developing a new Star Trek film, which he would possibly direct. And while Pegg doesn’t think Tarantino will ultimately helm the next film, he appears confident Star Trek 4 will definitely happen. In a new interview with TheQuietus, Pegg says: “We all got this email the other day from J. J. Abrams just sort of saying, ‘um, oh guys, Quentin Tarantino came in the office and pitched this and we’re gonna think about it. We were like, what? People just assume, I think, because it’s Quentin that it will be R-rated but he is a massive Star Trek fan … who knows! … I know we’re doing more. I’d love to – I love those guys. It’s, of course, difficult because we lost Anton [Yelchin] and moving forward without him still feels unimaginable.” The good news for Star Trek fans is, Pegg isn’t alone in his hopes for a fourth film. Karl Urban (Dr. McCoy) said last month that he was “confident” Star Trek 4 would start filming within the next year, and Zachary Quinto earlier this month said three scripts for the film were in development. Quinto offered another update this week, saying there were “plans afoot to do at least one if not more movies” by Paramount Pictures. No matter how things all shake out, it sounds like in one form or another, Star Trek will be back on the big screen with its 2009 crew, sadly minus Yelchin. The big question remains when – but it’s a certainty that fans of the franchise would likely want Paramount, Abrams or possibly Tarantino to take their time and get things right instead of rushing Star Trek 4 into production just for the sake of doing another Star Trek film

"What is the message of the series? Is it a dark message, or is it a light message? I think the end of this episode looks like the answer to that question," outgoing showrunner Scott M. Gimple said. [This story contains spoilers from the season eight finale of AMC's The Walking Dead and the comic book series the show is based on.] The Walking Dead ended its eighth season Sunday with the long-awaited conclusion to the "All-Out War" storyline from the comics and the battle between Rick and Negan. And, in a larger sense, the episode closed one chapter and opened a surprising new one in the AMC zombie drama. Unlike many of the finales that came before it, Sunday's closer did not feature any major character deaths. Instead, the show's large cast of series regulars all survived, with one moving over to spinoff Fear the Walking Dead. That set up the series to open a new, hopeful chapter that comes as current showrunner Scott M. Gimple steps down to oversee the entire franchise for AMC, with Angela Kang taking over the zombie drama in season nine. The conclusion of the war between Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) followed some of the events of creator Robert Kirkman's comic series: Rick — inspired by Carl's dying wish for a life of "something more" — opted to spare Negan's life after the rivals went toe to toe. Despite being outnumbered by the Saviors, Rick's group came out victorious thanks to Eugene (Josh McDermitt), who manufactured faulty ammunition for Negan that ultimately took out a number of Saviors. That turned the tide in Rick's favor and ultimately allowed him to honor Carl's (Chandler Riggs) hope that he'd create a peaceful future without violence. While Rick still slit Negan's throat, he opted to keep his enemy alive and have the man who killed Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) serve instead as a reminder of how they are building a new civilization — and that world has changed from his rule of terror. "Whatever conclusion we have will have been earned by what has transpired this season and seasons before it and how it all cumulatively adds together," outgoing showrunner Scott M. Gimple told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the finale. "What is the message of the series? Is it a dark message, or is it a light message? I think the end of this episode looks like the answer to that question." Rick and Michonne (Danai Gurira) deliver that message of hope to Negan following a brief time jump that sets the stage for The Walking Dead — under Kang — to start anew after Gimple said Sunday's finale would be a conclusion of sorts to the first chapter of the series. "We knew for a long time that this season was, in many ways, the end of a chapter of the show," Gimple said. "The difference that people will be seeing in season nine and beyond are going to be pronounced. It's going to be a very different show with characters handling very different issues, challenges and threats than we've seen before. These characters will be different in a lot of ways." As for if Negan can be redeemed, Negan revealed that his random selection of Glenn and Abraham wasn't actually random — he tells Rick that he didn't want to kill a father in front of his son. Season eight included many nods to the show's 100 episodes that came before it, with a handful of nods to the pilot. Sunday's finale featured a pre-outbreak Rick walking with a young Carl in a scene that Carl described in detail in the letter he left for his father. "We wanted to close out this first chapter in a way that honored everything that came before season eight," Gimple said. All told, Carl's death helped Rick set the stage for the new, hopeful and peaceful chapter of the series. As for the question of Rick's fate that had been set up since the premiere, the image of the badly bleeding former sheriff with red eyes leaning against a tree came at the end of his fight with Negan and helped to cement the season's larger message: his mercy prevailed over his wrath (at least for now). It's worth noting that "Mercy" was the title of the season eight premiere, while "Wrath" was the name of the finale. https://twitter.com/WalkingDead_AMC/status/985697032093470721 Meanwhile, star Lauren Cohan's future with The Walking Dead remains unclear as the actress, who has played the key role of Maggie since season two of the zombie drama, has been locked in a months-long contract renegotiation with AMC. (She still does not have a contract to return, though Gimple said there would be news on that front "soon.")Cohan recently signed on as the female lead in the ABC action drama pilot Whiskey Cavalier. Sources say ABC and Whiskey producers ABC Studios were amenable to allowing the actress to return in a limited capacity to potentially close out Maggie's storyline. Cohan's deal for Whiskey Cavalier does leave the door open for her to return to the series on a more limited basis should she and AMC close the gap and agree to a new deal. (Walking Dead typically begins production on new seasons in the spring, when most broadcast shows have already wrapped.) Even with the uncertainty surrounding Cohan, the finale set up a new story for Maggie, who was furious that Rick opted to leave Negan alive. Her season eight story ends with a vow to Jesus (Thom Payne) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) that she would avenge Glenn's death by eventually killing Negan. Sunday's finale also launched Morgan (Lennie James) into the world of Fear the Walking Dead as the character Rick first encountered back in the pilot continues to have trouble with the guilt of what he's done and opted to leave Alexandria. In the interim, he left for the Heaps and invited Jadis (who reveals her real name is Anne) to return to Alexandria. As for what comes next, the episode opened the door for Kang and company to explore a few other comic book arcs. In the comics, after Negan is taken prisoner, Rick begins a barter system with all of the communities — Alexandria, the Hilltop, the Kingdom and even the Sanctuary. While the days of peace that follow the sizable time jump in the comics last for a number of issues, it isn't long before a new war is on the horizon. Sunday's finale offered a few key clues that The Walking Dead may indeed be ramping up to introduce Alpha and the Whisperers as the next battle that follows Negan is the so-called Whisperer War. For those who haven't read the comics — and this is a major spoiler — the Whisperers are a group of survivors who use the skins from the dead as a disguise for survival. Alpha is the group's female leader who, much like Jadis was when the Heapsters were first introduced, is light on words and isn't open to making new friends, let alone working with other communities. Alpha also happens to control a massive herd of the undead, which she uses as a weapon (and to threaten Rick). In his speech to the Saviors and the rest of the survivors, Rick points to a massive herd off in the distance as the lone enemy. Another clue that the Whisperer storyline could be coming lies on that same battlefield, which is lined with a number of fence posts. While it seems like a throwaway piece of scenery, in the comics, those spikes of sorts serve as a boundary between Rick and the Whisperers. (And a final resting place for a number of beloved characters, which we won't spoil here.)

The top prize at the Hong Kong Film Awards was earned by Ann Hui’s wartime drama “Our Time Will Come.” The film also ran out as the numerical winner, collecting five awards on Sunday night from its 11 previous nominations. For Hui, it was her sixth time as winner of the best director prize. The annual event was given a boost by the presence of Indian superstar Aamir Khan was on hand to hand out prizes. Khan is in Hong Kong to promote the theatrical release of his “Secret Superstar, which has already become a major hit in China. Another notable winner was Louis Koo Tin-lok, who won the best actor award for action film “Paradox.” Widely popular, Koo picked up his first ever acting prize just a few weeks ago, for the same film, at the Asian Film Awards. As yet, there have been no reports of TV coverage of the event being disrupted in mainland China. In past years, live transmission of the Hong Kong awards has been cut due to political sensitivities surrounding winning films “Ten Years” and “Trivisa.” In a move to promote socialist values and sideline foreign influence, China’s entertainment industry regulators are currently cracking down on a wide range of content and industry figures. Hui’s film, which features resistance forces at the time of Japan’s invasion of British colonial Hong Kong, endured its own political embarrassment last summer. It was announced as the opening film of the Shanghai International Film Festival. But shortly after it was replaced by Bille August’s “The Chinese Widow,” which was deemed more politically suitable.

Chamath Palihapitiya, former Facebook vice president for user growth, isn't the only one who believes his former employer is ripping apart the fabric of society. Palihapitiya triggered an unexpectedly intense backlash after revealing that he feels "tremendous guilt" for his role in building the social media giant, warning that, if you feed the beast, that beast will destroy you..." "I feel tremendous guilt." "I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. That is truly where we are." "I would encourage all of you, as the future leaders of the world, to really internalize how important this is. If you feed the beast, that beast will destroy you. If you push back on it you have a chance to control it and reign it in." "There is a point in time when people need a hard break from some of these tools." "The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we've created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it's not an American problem — this is not about Russians ads. This is a global problem." "So, we're in a really bad state of affairs right now, in my opinion. It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other." "And, I don't have a good solution. You know, my solution is I just don't use these tools anymore. I ahven't for years. It's created huge tension with my friends. Huge tensions in my social circles." ...He later walked his comments back after twitter users suggested that he maybe donate some of the money he made off the enterprise to a worthy cause. And now, shortly after it published reports about a survey showing 10% of US Facebook users deleted their accounts in the wake of the company's latest data-privacy scandal, Recode is back with another scathing story about Facebook's public identity crisis. Tavis McGinn, Mark Zuckerberg's former personal pollster, conducted a survey that exposes just how reviled Facebook is in many parts of the world. Indeed, up to 33% of responds in Australia, Canada and the UK say Facebook is having a "negative impact on society." Americans have a similarly negative perception of FB, with just 32% (about 54 million people) of the population also believing that Facebook has a negative impact. For context, that makes Facebook more popular than Marlboro cigarettes, but worse than McDonald's. n fact, the only countries where distrust in Facebook was relatively low were countries like Japan, where few people use Facebook. McGinn, who recently opened his own polling firm after leaving Facebook after six months, said he didn't ask what, specifically, these negative impacts might be - but he says he has an idea. "In the U.S. obviously we’re very focused on election interference, and in the U.K. they’ve been focused on that as well with Brexit," McGinn told Recode. "But there are also things like, ‘how does it affect children, how does the platform create addiction, how does the platform encourage extremism, how does the platform push American values onto other countries?’" There’s also the issue of Facebook’s data policies, which McGinn, who spent three years at Google, says are a result of Facebook’s DNA. "The culture has always been focused on driving usage, on getting more people to use and how to get them to spend longer on the platform," he said. "It influences every decision, large and small." And here's the kicker: McGinn conducted his poll in January and February. Which means that, judging by the decline in user engagement - which had already been on the decline before the Cambridge Analytica scandal - negative perceptions of the company have probably worsened.

Russia has an adequate response to any attempts by the US to pressure it with the use of force, Vladimir Yermakov, head of the Foreign Ministry’s Department for Weapons Control and Non-Proliferation, said. “The American myth of it entering the era of all-round and undivided domination existed for less than a dozen years, but is now in tatters,” he said, adding that Russia is back in its historic role of “one of the guarantors of stability and justice in global affairs.” Washington has to begin taking to Russia as soon as possible because “the military-technological weight of the US keeps steadily decreasing on the international arena,” Yermakov said.

Bashar Assad praised the quality of Soviet-made air-defense systems after the US, UK, and France bombarded Syria on Saturday, Russian MPs said after a meeting with the Syrian president in Damascus. “Yesterday we were faced with an American aggression. And we were able to repel it with Soviet missiles from the 1970s. Since the 1990s, the American films presented the Russian weapons as lagging. And now we see who really lags behind,” Assad was cited as saying by MP Dmitry Sablin. Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry said that Soviet-made S-125, S-200, Buk, Kvadrat and Osa systems, used by the Syrian military, intercepted 71 out of the 103 missiles fired by the US and its allies.

'No release of chemicals is best proof there were none' – employee of bombed Syrian research site An engineer at the now-bombed-out research facility north of Damascus, which the US claims was the heart of Syria’s chemical weapons program, says the labs were making medicine and testing toys for safety. RT Arabic correspondents have visited one of the main targets of the US-led missile attack on Syria, the Scientific Studies and Research Center in the Barzeh district in northern Damascus. The three-story building was pelted with 57 Tomahawk missiles launched from US warships and 19 air-to-surface missiles, the Pentagon said. The massive bombardment left it lying in ruins, with its walls and roof almost completely collapsed and lab equipment scattered around. The morning after the strike, several media outlets, including RT, AFP, CBS News and others were given a tour to the former research facility, now little more than a pile of rubble. Said Said, an engineer at the facility, told RT Arabic that the very fact that such a trip was possible should serve as an evidence that no chemical weapons program was run at the site. "You can see for yourself that nothing has happened. I've been here since 5:00 a.m. No signs of weapons-grade chemicals," he said. The researcher said he had worked at the facility for decades, and it used to develop medicine and household chemicals. Speaking with AFP, Said said that the center's work mainly revolved around devising antidotes to scorpion and snake venoms, as well as testing food, medicine and children's toys for safety. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had visited the site several times and never found any traces of banned chemicals. Since Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention under a deal brokered by Russia and the US in 2013, the UN chemical watchdog repeatedly confirmed its full compliance with its obligations to dismantle and remove its chemical stockpiles. In June 2014, the OPCW declared Syria free of chemical weapons. Said confirmed that the inspectors "several times visited the site with a thorough inspection." He noted that the OPCW, as well as all inspection team members, received "major assistance" from the facility's employees during the raids. "We even provided them with a special place where they could collect and pack test samples taken during the inspection," he told RT. The inspectors, he told AFP, would stay in the rooms on the upper floor and use the laboratory equipment, and the staff was "cooperating with them completely." Being a civilian research center, the staff did not believe it would be identified as the primary target for an attack. "As we work in civilian pharmaceutical and chemical research, we did not expect that we would be hit," Said told AFP. The allegations that that Barzeh was an integral part of Syria's chemical program were "totally incorrect," he stressed, speaking to CBS News. The Pentagon said that it hit three targets in Syria, two military bases and the Barzeh facility, alleging that all three were pillars of the Syrian chemical weapons. Announcing the strikes, US General Kenneth McKenzie said that the US military "believe that by hitting Barzeh, in particular, we've attacked the heart of the Syrian weapons program." However, reports by the UN's chemical watchdog, the latest of which was filed just a month ago, suggest otherwise. The report on the first inspection that was conducted between 26 February and 5 March 2017 says that "the inspection team did not observe any activities inconsistent with obligations under the Convention," noting that Damascus had provided unimpeded access to the inspectors "to all selected areas." The follow-up inspection, carried out in November, did not find any incriminating evidence either. The March 2018 report reiterates: "As stated in previous reports, all of the chemicals declared by the Syrian Arab Republic that were removed from its territory in 2014 have now been destroyed."

Former FBI director James Comey said in an ABC News interview on Sunday that U.S. President Donald Trump is a dangerous, “morally unfit” leader doing “tremendous damage” to institutional norms. Comey, fired by Trump in May last year, was worried the president may be open to blackmail by Russia given claims he was present when prostitutes urinated on each other during a 2013 Moscow visit. Comey’s firing came as the Federal Bureau of Investigation was probing possible connections between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia’s meddling in the American elections. Russia has denied interfering in the election and Trump has denied any collusion or improper activity. Comey said in the exclusive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, which aired at 10 p.m. on Sunday (0200 GMT on Monday), that it is “possible, but I don’t know” whether Russia has evidence to back up the allegations about Trump’s Moscow trip. “A person ... who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it, that person’s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds. And that’s not a policy statement,” Comey said. “He is morally unfit to be president,” he added. Comey has a tell-all book, “Higher Loyalty,” due out on Tuesday. The book’s imminent release - and the slated ABC News interview - prompted Trump to hurl a new set of insults at Comey earlier on Sunday, challenging accusations made in the book, and insisting that he never pressed Comey to be loyal to him. “Slippery James Comey, a man who always ends up badly and out of whack (he is not smart!), will go down as the WORST FBI Director in history, by far!” Trump wrote early on Sunday in one of five Twitter posts aimed directly at Comey. The news outlets have obtained copies of Comey’s book before its formal release. In it, Comey wrote that Trump, in a private meeting, pressed the then-FBI director for his loyalty. Comey told ABC News that the title of the book came from a “bizarre conversation” he had with Trump at the White House in January 2017 shortly after his inauguration. “He asked for my loyalty personally as the F.B.I. director. My loyalty’s supposed to be to the American people and to the institution,” Comey said in the interview. The FBI has long tried to operate as an independent law enforcement agency. “I never asked Comey for Personal Loyalty. I hardly even knew this guy. Just another of his many lies. His “memos” are self serving and FAKE!” Trump said on Twitter. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” expressed qualified support for Comey. Asked whether Comey was a man of integrity, the Republican speaker said: “As far as I know,” but added that he did not know him well. Asked about Trump’s use last week of the words “slime ball” to describe Comey, Ryan said: “I don’t use words like that.”

Gold rocketed to nearly $1,365 on Wednesday in New York, which is well above the $1,350 that Michael Oliver suggests is when technical price watchers will finally start to head into the yellow metal and related investments like gold stocks. But alas the banking cartel had other ideas and exercised a 100-tonne “pretend gold” smackdown in the gold paper futures markets starting at about noon that day, just to make sure the greatest competition in the world to the dollar didn’t start to lead to a loss of confidence. This of course is nothing new. The Gold Anti Trust Action Committee (GATA) has been documenting paper market manipulation of the gold markets now for decades. Isn’t it interesting that more virtual gold trades in one day on the LBMA than is mined in an entire year. Whatever it takes, including endless wars to try to keep the petrodollar alive and trillions of dollars spent on blood and treasury. I truly believe Eisenhower’s fears of the endless power of the Military Industrial Complex are now playing out.

Firaxis is also changing the way that religion affects loyalty. England have taken a bit of a battering in Civlization 6 recently, with a series of nerfs making it harder to win with Queen Victoria. Developer Firaxis plans to put that right in its spring update, after which Victoria's Pax Britannica leader bonus will grant a free unit both when you settle in a foreign continent and when you build a Royal Navy dockyard in that new city. That additional unit should make it easier to expand your borders. The update, which doesn't yet have a release date, will also tweak the loyalty system introduced in the Civilization 6: Rise and Fall expansion. You'll now get more loyalty from cities following the same religion as you, and less from those following a different religion. The team at Firaxis is also changing the way that joint wars work. You'll now be able to declare wars with a Casus Belli, which is a justification for war in specific circumstances that will mean you'll get fewer warmonger penalties. Both the player and the AI will also be able to join joint wars that have already begun, gaining the benefit of the Casus Belli in the process. Lastly, the update will tweak the AI and add a few more historic moments, which essentially act as achievements marking important milestones. No full patch notes for now—they'll arrive alongside the update.

One of the most well known brands in audio equipment Sennheiser has announced the new HD 300 PRO headphones and HMD 301 Pro communication headset. The headsets are aimed at remaining comfortable while still providing high fidelity sound for those working backstage in front of the camera, or even at home. Sennheiser To Launch Pro Audio 300 Pro Series Lineup In August “Comfort was a paramount design criterion for the circumaural 300 PRO series, thanks to multiple field tests and a thorough fine-tuning process, these headsets have met with very high user approval. We found operators and engineers to be incredibly pleased to listen to a pair of headphones that was modelled so closely on the legendary HD 250 Linear.” - Nicole Fresen – product manager at Sennheiser. The 300 PRO series is a pleasure to wear due to a combination of factors, including new padding material, a comfort zone for the temples of glasses and split headband padding that removes any pressure from the sensitive area of the fontanelle. The headphones have also been given a new fork design that ensures their contact pressure is evenly distributed over the entire ear pad, ensuring both increased comfort and excellent sealing against outside noise. For inspiration during the design process, Sennheiser’s acoustic engineers turned to the HD 250 Linear, a classic model that is still highly regarded amongst professionals today. Despite the difference in the ear cup shapes, the engineering team was able to get extremely close to the precise, linear sound reproduction of the original model, thus placing the HD 300 PRO at the peak of Sennheiser’s monitoring headphone portfolio. The detailed, linear response makes the 300 PRO series ideal for music-makers, too. The Pro 300 series also features the detachable cables you should expect from a high end production quality set of cans like these. It should help in handling noise due to a small series of coils that decouple the cable from the headset. The series come with a rugged, bendable and twistable headband and customizable nameplates to feature a company logo on the ear cups. The new headset models also feature a noise-compensated, super-cardioid boom microphone for clear communications in loud production environments. They are also fitted with Sennheisers ActiveGard technology which keeps you from going deaf from sudden sound bursts which they claim does not interrupt the audio signal and is compliant with European EC directives for safety in the workplace. Model Information HD 300 PRO – the new top-of-the-range monitoring headphones HD 300 PROtect – as HD 300 PRO, with selectable (on/off) ActiveGard . HMD 300 PRO – closed, circumaural communications headset, selectable (on/off) ActiveGard , noise-compensated dynamic, super-cardioid boom microphone, cable to be chosen separately according to production environment HMD 300-XQ-2 – as HMD 300 PRO, with detachable cable featuring XLR-3 and ¼” jack connectors HMD 301 PRO – as HMD 300 PRO but single-sided headset with side support Pricing has not been announced but they will be releasing in August 2018

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Hong Kong’s TVB and Australia’s Roadshow Films are both seeking to block set-top-box based copyright infringement A Hong Kong-based broadcaster is seeking to have an Australian court hand down orders forcing major Internet service providers to stop their customers from accessing the proprietary app marketplaces used by a range of set-top boxes. Currently the Federal Court of Australia is hearing two cases that target unauthorised streaming, largely via set-top boxes, of copyright material. One has been brought by Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) and subsidiary TVBO Production. The other has been brought by Australia’s Roadshow Films, with the backing of Columbia Pictures, Disney Enterprises, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal and Warner Bros. Both applications, which were heard on Friday in the Federal Court in Sydney, use provisions in Australian copyright law that allow injunctions to be granted compelling telcos to block their subscribers from accessing overseas-based “online locations” that infringe, or facilitate infringement of, copyright. If the proposed injunctions are granted, customers of Telstra, Optus, TPG and Vocus, and the companies’ subsidiaries, will be affected. Previous applications using the site-blocking provisions have focused on websites that offered download services, links to download services or streaming services. The current Roadshow application targets an Android app called HDSubs+. Although it can run on any device that supports Android apps, it has been designed for set-top boxes that run the Google-maintained platform. HDSubs+ is linked to a subscription service, the court heard. That service, which gives users a key to enter into the app, costs around $240 a year or $30 a month. Some set-top boxes have been sold with an activation key as part of a bundle, the court heard. The app offers both a video on demand feature and access to streaming TV, including Disney, Fox and BBC channels. Roadshow is seeking to block around 10 domains linked to HDSubs+. The application targets four categories of online locations linked to the app. The first three deal with user authentication, provision of electronic program guide data, and software updates for the app. The fourth provide what counsel for Roadshow Julian Cooke described as “content management services”; they are contacted by an Android device running HDSubs+ when it seeks to stream a piece of content and provide the device with the IP address of a server housing the relevant movie or TV stream. The app has gone through a number of evolutions since Roadshow hired computer forensics expert Rod McKemmish to scrutinise its operation late last year. McKemmish gave evidence at the Friday hearing that installed HDSubs+ apps had at one point been forcibly upgraded to a similar app, named PressPlayExtra, and at a later stage replaced by an upgraded version of the HDSubs+ app. Roadshow said that there was evidence that the operators of the service had made some changes in response to its legal action, including making unavailable some of the movie titles that the company had listed in its initial application. The site-blocking regime requires that applications prove “the primary purpose of the online location is to infringe, or to facilitate the infringement of, copyright”. In a February case-management hearing for the Roadshow application presiding judge Justice Nicholas said he will “need to be satisfied by evidence to the point where I’ve got a good understanding of how it all works - I know precisely what the relationship is between the box the programs that are accessible at these URLs and the sites at which they are downloaded.” TVB was also represented at its Friday’s hearing by Cooke. The TV company wants to have the same telcos listed in Roadshow’s application block online services linked to seven Android-based set-top boxes: A1, BlueTV, EVPAD, FunTV, MoonBox, Unblock, and hTVS. The set-top boxes are largely focused on streaming Chinese language content, the court heard. The company’s application is rendered somewhat complex by the uncertain copyright status in Australia of some of its live broadcasts. At the hearing the company acknowledged that China is not a party to the 1961 Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations; however, it argued the broadcasts should receive the protection accorded to cinematograph films because TVB also records them for later ‘replay’ TV Services. The application could potentially come unstuck if the broadcasts are not entitled to protection because of the “primary purpose” test under the site-blocking regime. In addition to seeking to block the online services associated with a number of apps that run on the set-top boxes — including video-on-demand, live broadcasts, and replay TV — TVB said it wants ISPs to block access to the app marketplaces associated with what it dubs the “illicit streaming devices” (or ISDs). The company acknowledged that many of those marketplaces, which are somewhat akin to the Play marketplace offered by Google for Android devices, contain apps that aren’t specifically focused on copyright infringement — for example, Netflix and YouTube apps. However, the company argues that the primary purpose of the marketplaces is to facilitate copyright infringement and that the non-infringing apps can be downloaded elsewhere. The two applications are both modelled on website-blocking injunctions previously granted to Roadshow, Foxtel and music industry organisations. TVB will present further evidence relating to the copyright status of its broadcasts at an additional hearing in May.

The music industry has always been freaked out by piracy and the loss of revenue that comes with people stealing music. If you’re of a certain vintage, you may remember the hysteria manifested in the Home Taping is Killing Music campaign launched in the U.K. in 1981 that came complete with a half-million-dollar TV ad campaign. The industry blamed weak sales on people who were wantonly recording albums onto blank cassettes and making mixtapes for the car or this new thing called the Sony Walkman. It even came with a cute punky logo. https://shawglobalnews.files.wordpre...ng?w=280&h=231 Both artists and executives tried to convince the public that if we wanted music on cassette, then we’d better bloody well go out and buy a legal copy from the record shop. Even making a copy for personal use was portrayed as evil and immoral. A decade later, pressure from the industry killed consumer use of Digital Audio Tape and the Digital Compact Cassette, two technologies that allowed for perfect duplication of copyrighted material. A copy protection scheme called the Serial Copy Management System was created especially to hobble the abilities of the new machines. Meanwhile, the full-court press against the old-school cassette continued. In 1997, “private copying” was added to the Canadian Copyright Act, allowing for a levy to be assessed against blank cassettes and hidden by the manufacturer or importer in the retail cost of the tape. The idea was for this money to be redistributed to artists as compensation for music that was illegally copied and thus deprived artists of sales income. Within two years, Canadians were paying 23 cents on each blank cassette and 60 cents on each MiniDisc. Canadians also ended up paying exponentially more for a spindle of blank CDs than our friends in America, thanks to a per-disc levy of 29 cents. Multiply that by 25, 50 or 100 discs on a spindle, and things quickly got expensive. Future Shop (remember them?) had packages of 50 on the shelf for more than $30, while I remember seeing U.S. retailers selling the exact same package for less than US$10. It also didn’t matter that you might be using cassettes, MiniDiscs and CD-Rs for non-musical, non-piracy purposes, such as audio books, books for the blind and data backups. Everyone paid the levy regardless of the end use. By the time we got to the late 2000s, the landscape had changed dramatically. We’d moved beyond copying music to cassette or burning music to CDs, and the talk turned to “digital audio recorders,” devices like iPods, mobile phones, MP3 players, computer hard drives — anything that could store music in digital form. This became known as the “iPod tax,” which asked for a tariff placed on MP3 players and other devices capable of storing music. The government actually began collecting these tariffs — the Copyright Board assessed as much as $25 on an iPod with a capacity more than 15 GB with an increased ask of up to $75 per iPod in 2007 — but ultimately had to repay $27 million when it was ruled copyright laws governing computer equipment made no provision for such fees. The iPod tax was declared dead and buried. Once again, though, the concept of levies on digital devices has risen zombie-like to fight another day. A House of Commons committee starts hearings this week on a review of Canadian copyright law. A group called the Canadian Music Policy Coalition, which represents 17 music associations, is circulating a document containing concepts it would like to see enacted. The 30-page report entitled Sounding Like a Broken Record: Principled Copyright Recommendations asks for the following: (a) New levies on consumer devices like smartphones and tablets, a request far beyond the old iPod tax. How much? That’s yet to be determined. (b) A requirement that Internet service providers keep an eye on what content we’re consuming and, if necessary, to police its use. That means monitoring usage, using “content recognition technologies,” blocking content and then reporting back to the music industry (“Provide feedback to the intellectual property community.”) (c) Asking that the industry have the ability to cancel agreements with Internet companies if the benefits of those companies become “disproportionate” — whatever that means. (d) An extension of the term of copyright. The group wants intellectual property protected for the life of the creator(s) plus an additional 50 years. (This is when it would be good idea to read up on how Mickey Mouse has been changing copyright terms for years.) You can’t fault the industry for trying to protect its intellectual property, for pushing for more revenues and for trying to achieve copyright protections it sees in other territories. That’s the whole purpose of a lobby group like this. But it’s also worth noting that the Canadian music industry hasn’t been in this good a shape for years. SOCAN, the Canadian performing rights collection, has been reporting record revenues for its membership. The rise of streaming music services, like Spotify, has cut piracy through file-sharing drastically. Same thing with the amount of BitTorrent traffic. There are tough anti-piracy measures already in the works. And we don’t “stream rip” music nearly as most other countries. I know copyright law can be dry and dull, but if we don’t keep tabs on things, music consumers could end up paying more for the things we take for granted.