November 29th, 2009 by admin

E’ appena uscito La strada delle croci (titolo originale Roadside Crosses), nuovo libro di Jeffery Deaver con protagonista Kathryn Dance, già apparsa in precedenza in La luna fredda e protagonista de La Bambola che dorme.
In questo romanzo, l’agente del California Bureau of Investigation specializzata in cinesica, la lettura del linguaggio del corpo, è alle prese con un potenziale assassino che preannuncia i suoi omicidi conficcando delle croci con la data del giorno dopo lungo una strada della penisola di Monterrey. A essere sospettato è Travis Brigham, che idolatra i killer della Columbine e della Virginia Tech, ed è ferocemente attaccato su un blog, “The Chilton Report”, su cui viene accusato di aver causato l’incidente stradale in cui sono morte due sue amiche. Tutte le vittime pare vengano scelte proprio per via dei loro interventi sul blog. Quando Travis sparisce usando tecniche apprese in un gioco di ruolo online, Kathryn, assieme allo sceriffo Michael O’Neil e al consulente informatico John Boling, deve lanciarsi in una frenetica lotta contro il tempo per scoprire la verità.

La strada delle croci, di Jeffery Deaver: lo trovi su IBS

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November 29th, 2009 by admin

La premiata ditta James Patterson – Maxine Paetro torna in Italia con Il settimo inferno, capitolo 7 della serie delle Donne del Club Omicidi e seguito de Il sesto colpo. Lo recensiamo oggi al ThrillerCafe.

Titolo: Il settimo inferno
Autore: James Patterson & Maxine Paetro
Editore: Longanesi
Anno di pubblicazione: 2009
Pagine: 380
Traduttore: Biavasco A.; Guani V.

Trama in sintesi
La detective Lindsay Boxer questa volta è alle prese con la sparizione del figlio del governatore della California, affetto da una malformazione al cuore.
Intanto, due piromani stanno mettendo a fuoco le più belle case di San Francisco, e con esse i proprietari. Presa tra i due casi, Lindsay si ritrova sotto pressione, ma le Donne del Club Omicidi saranno pronte a darle una mano.

Il settimo inferno è un libro nel classico “format Patterson”, con capitoli brevissimi e molta paratassi. Il risultato è una lettura che avanza rapida lungo i due binari conduttori, il primo di tipo soprattutto legal (correlato alla scomparsa del rampollo dell’ex governatore della California) e il secondo più sul procedural (l’indagine sulla serie d’incendi) con spruzzate di psychothriller quando cambia il punto di vista della narrazione. Dei due filoni, a mio parere, è meglio approcciato quello imperniato sul procuratore distrettuale Yuki Castellano, mentre la parte che vede protagonista Lindsay Boxer non mi è parsa sviluppata a dovere. Ma la sensazione è comunque che entrambe le trame, totalmente indipendenti fatto salvo il trait d’union delle Donne del Club Omicidi, siano troppo poco approfondite e che gli espedienti per tenere alta la tensione siano parenti lontani di quelli del primo Patterson.
Latita anche l’approfondimento dei personaggi, con gli antagonisti della Boxer abbastanza scontati e incolori, né lasciano particolare segno i pochi momenti di pathos che emergono dalle pagine.
Gli aspetti positivi del romanzo risiedono quindi tutti nella buona scorrevolezza e nell’assortimento delle protagoniste, oltre che in un paio di buoni colpi di scena, tra cui quello finale, però troppo tardivo.
Patterson negli ultimi periodi è diventato una macchina commerciale e le sue tante collaborazioni sembrano pensate più che altro per mettere il proprio nome su più copertine possibili, ma qualche titolo in meno e un po’ più di scrittura “sentita” a mio modo di vedere non sarebbe male.

Il settimo inferno, di James Patterson e Maxine Paetro: acquistalo su IBS!

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November 29th, 2009 by admin

SceneTorrents (ScT) has been a respected and well-connected private BitTorrent tracker for more than four years. An invite for the tracker was hard to find, but the lucky few that did get in had little to complain about, until today that is.

A few hours ago ScT put up a sad and unexpected announcement for its 20,000 members, as the site’s operators have decided to close the site for good tomorrow. Thus far the staff refuses to comment on the reason for the shutdown, which has resulted in widespread rumors among the site’s users.

Some rumors say that the end of ScT may be related to the raid of a topsite in The Netherlands earlier this week. According to the Dutch news site Tweakers, the ‘ranked’ topsite LOOP had its servers raided in Amsterdam, where 40 terabytes of data was stored. LOOP was (supposedly) one of SceneTorrent’s main content provider according to insiders.

According to other rumors, the shutdown could be a planned operation instead of a response to the raided topsite. In the last weeks the site has encouraged its members to donate, offering double rewards for those who pay up, allegedly raking in as much as $10,000.

Thus far both rumors remain unconfirmed, and the same is true for an eBay auction of the site that went up a few hours ago. Since the staff of the site is not talking, it will probably remain unknown why the site will close its doors now, or what their underlying motivation is.

Update: FSF published a short chat with ScT owner ‘Feeling’ who confirmed that the shutdown is not a hoax.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

November 29th, 2009 by admin

During September 2008, isoHunt founder Gary Fung grew tired of the threats from the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA). Instead of waiting for the CRIA to take action against him, Fung took the unusual step of suing the music industry outfit, seeking confirmation that the site’s operations are legal.

“This is our preemptive strike with a narrowly defined petition for Declaratory Relief that we do not infringe, in anticipation they are going to file their own lawsuit that we do infringe (their copyright),” Fung told TorrentFreak at the time.

In March 2009, isoHunt and the CRIA appeared in court where the judge ruled that the issues in question were too complex and consequences too far-reaching not to move to a full trial. This decision was appealed by isoHunt, but without result, meaning that isoHunt has to go through the costly process of a full trial.

This week, isoHunt’s founder continued his crusade and filed the statement of claim (pdf) with the Supreme Court. The document describes the functionality of the search engines he operates (isoHunt and sister sites Torrentbox and Podtropolis) and asks the court to declare that these do not violate Canadian copyright law.

Despite the worsening copyright climate in other parts of the world, Fung remains confident that Canadian law is on his side. “I have high hopes for Canadian copyright laws and its courts to not make the mistakes that have been made elsewhere in the world. We must fight the increasing noise we are drowned in, that file sharing is stealing,” he said.

“As for CRIA and member record labels, if you come to your sense of reason, I would love to talk to you outside of court. The ball you’ve dropped on us is back to you,” Fung concludes.

After the partial shutdown of Mininova yesterday, isoHunt is now the second largest torrent site around in terms of traffic, trailing only behind The Pirate Bay. However, all of Fung’s torrent sites combined draw more traffic than any other torrent site around. Aside from the three torrent sites mentioned in the case and despite the legal troubles, Fung recently launched Hexagon, a new ‘social‘ BitTorrent site.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

November 29th, 2009 by admin

When Lily Allen inflamed the UK, and indeed, much of the Internet with her views on piracy a couple of months ago, it was difficult to see who could come along and create more controversy on the issue. But of course, Britain has a secret weapon – Peter Mandelson.

Lord Mandelson, or ‘Mandy’ to those speaking of him affectionately, has truly set the cat among the pigeons with his Digital Economy Bill, pleasing almost no-one apart from Big Music and Big Movies, and alienating everyone from most of the ISPs in the country through to millions of Internet users.

In protest, ISP TalkTalk is running the Don’t Disconnect Us campaign, which is gathering great momentum after being endorsed by Stephen Fry earlier this week, and hopefully will receive yet another boost with the help of some catchy music and cutting lyrics.

Yes, just when you thought it was safe after ‘Dear Lily’ – musician Dan Bull is back, this time with a new track – ‘Dear Mandy’.

“I’ve just recorded and uploaded a new video, aimed at Peter Mandelson, and getting people to sign the petition against his three strikes bill,” Dan told TorrentFreak.

“The most worrying part of the Bill is that Mandy has given himself the power to create new legislation as he pleases, meaning he can pretty much do whatever he wants to people he suspects of copyright infringement,” added Dan, echoing the autocracy fears outlined by the Liberal Democrats last week.

“This is one of the most serious threats to privacy and presumption of innocence in the UK for a long time. I would urge people who are concerned about this to contact their MPs, and sign the petition, Dan concluded.

Here is Dan’s great new track – ‘Dear Mandy’ – and UK citizens, don’t forget to sign the petition!

Readers interested in hearing more about Dan can jump over to our side-blog over at FreakBits where we have published an interview.

Dan’s MySpace page can be found here and his album ‘Safe’ is available from FreshNut but can also be downloaded digitally from iTunes, Amazon, Napster and all good file-sharing networks.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

November 27th, 2009 by admin

Metropoli è il primo romanzo di Jonathan Rabb tradotto in italiano (Cairo Editore). Il libro è ambientato nella Berlino del 1927, una città corrotta e devastata, in cui il commissario capo della Kriminalpolizei Nikolai Hoffner (al suo secondo caso, dopo Rosa) deve indagare sulla morte di Gerhard Thyssen, trovato senza vita nel bagno di una suite della Ufa (Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft), la casa di produzione cinematografica che cerca di rubare alle major di Hollywood il primato mondiale.

La scena pare indicare un suicidio, ma Hoffner non n’è convinto. S’addentra nel passato della vittima e scopre un torbido retroscena di sesso, droga e affari che gira attorno a una rivoluzionaria tecnologia destinata a cambiare la storia del cinema: il sonoro sincronizzato. Le indagini tirano in ballo il noto regista Fritz Lang e sua moglie Thea von Harbou, il boss del crimine Alby Pimm e l’editore Hugenberg, esponente di primo piano della destra reazionaria. Ma anche la nuova fiamma di Hoffner, una talent scout statunitense che lavora per la Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, e i suoi due figli: Georg, sedicenne, che ha da poco abbandonato gli studi per entrare alla Ufa e Sascha, il maggiore, che senza dirlo al padre s’è iscritto al Partito nazionalsocialista del Gauleiter Joseph Goebbels.

Jonathan Rabb, per chi fosse interessato, sarà a Milano per interviste lunedì 14 dicembre e sabato 12 dicembre presenterà Metropoli al Courmayeur Noir in Festival.

Metropoli, di Jonathan Rabb: acquistalo su IBS!

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November 27th, 2009 by admin

Oggi, domani e dopodomani (26 – 27 – 28 Novembre) a Genova si tiene la quinta edizione del Festival della letteratura del crimine “Genova si tinge di giallo“.
Anche quest’anno sono numerosi e di rilievo gli ospiti presenti: trentacinque, per quattordici interventi, con diciotto editori coinvolti. Tra i nomi maggiormente di spicco, Bruno Morchio (oggi), Gianfranco Nerozzi (domani), Alan D. Altieri, Grazia Verasani e Franco Limardi (sabato).
Nei tre giorni si terranno inoltre conferenze sul tema: Liguria e crimine: violenza, criminalità, morte a cura del Centro di Ricerca Criminalistica di Genova.
E ancora, la mostra fotografica Delitti efferati in Liguria, storie degli eventi attraverso le immagini del tempo e la rassegna d’arte Probabili indizi.
Per maggiori informazioni, potete consultare il sito dell’Associazione Satura che organizza la rassegna.

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November 27th, 2009 by admin

With an impressive 175,820,430 visits and close to a billion page views in the last 30 days, Mininova set a record that they will be unable to break in the near future. Last August a Dutch court ruled that Mininova had to remove all links to ‘infringing’ torrent files, with disastrous consequences.

Since it is technically unfeasible to pre-approve or filter every potentially infringing torrent file, the Mininova team decided to throw in the towel and only allow torrents to be submitted by approved uploaders. This move resulted in the deletion of more than a million torrents, many of which were not infringing any copyrights at all.

Thankfully, there are still plenty of alternatives for those BitTorrent users who are looking for the latest Ubuntu, OpenSUSE or Fedora release.

Below we provide a random list of public torrent sites that are still open, but there are of course hundreds more sites we could have included. If your personal favorite is missing, feel free to post it in the comments below – preferably with your reasons why it should be included in any upcoming lists.

1. Vertor

2. SeedPeer

3. Torrentreactor

4. Alive Torrents

5. KickassTorrents

6. BTjunkie

7. isoHunt

8. yourBitTorrent

9. The Pirate Bay

10. Fulldls

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

November 27th, 2009 by admin

Mininova’s decision to delete all infringing torrents from its index marks the end of an era that started five years ago.

In December 2004, the demise of the mighty Suprnova left a meteor crater in the fledgling BitTorrent landscape. This gaping hole was soon filled by the dozens of new sites that emerged to fulfil the public’s increasing demands for torrents. Mininova became the most successful of all.

Mininova was founded in early 2005 by five Dutch students, just a month after Suprnova closed its doors. The site started out as a hobby project created by tech-savvy teenagers, but in the years that followed the site’s founders managed to turn it into a successful business that generated millions of dollars in revenue.

With increased popularity also came numerous complaints from copyright holders, who saw their intellectual property being shared by users of the site. For years Mininova has complied with these takedown requests, but earlier this year the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN decided to take the torrent site to court nonetheless, demanding that the operators proactively filter torrents pointing to copyrighted material.

The case went to court in June and a few weeks later the verdict was announced. The judge ruled that Mininova is not directly responsible for any copyright infringements, but ordered it to remove all torrents linking to copyrighted material within three months, or face a penalty of up to 5 million euros.

To avoid having to pay these penalties, the Mininova team saw no other option than to disable access to all torrents except those that were uploaded to their content distribution platform. This means that only approved uploaders can share torrents through the site for now.

During the last few months, Mininova has extensively tested several filtering techniques, but none of these proved 100% effective. “It’s very unfortunate that we’re forced to take this action, but we saw no other option,” Mininova co-founder Niek told TorrentFreak.

Mininova still hasn’t decided yet whether they will appeal the verdict, Niek further told TorrentFreak. They have appealed the verdict pro-forma, which gives the company more time to decide whether they will indeed continue with the appeal. As it looks now, a successful appeal is the only option for Mininova to bring all torrents back.

In the meantime the Mininova team will focus on other projects besides Mininova, as well as growing the number of users for their content distribution platform.

The implications of Mininova’s decision will have a huge impact on the BitTorrent community. The millions of Mininova users and uploaders have to look for a new home, but perhaps even more importantly, Mininova had the largest collection of user-submitted torrents that were used by dozens of smaller torrent indexers.

More information on the consequences and background of Mininova’s decision will be addressed in a follow up article.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

November 27th, 2009 by admin

The copyright infringement case of AFACT – representing several Hollywood studios – and Aussie ISP iiNet (multiple links to all our earlier coverage can be found here, here, here, here and here) is set to conclude today.

Lead barrister for AFACT, Tony Bannon, continued with his aggressive approach to this case by issuing warnings to Australia’s Internet service providers on the issue of copyright infringement.

He said that iiNet and other ISPs who don’t want to handle copyright infringement notices (such as those issued by his clients) are happy to take money from their subscribers, but are shirking their responsibilities. The solution to this, he said, was for them to shut down.

“They [ISPs] provide a facility that is able to be used for copyright infringement purposes. If they don’t like having to deal with copyright notices then they should get out of the business,” he said, as quoted by ITNews.

This reluctance to deal with infringement notices at the behest of the studios has been one of the main points of contention in the case. The studios feel that iiNet should hand infringement notices to their customers and even disconnect them, while iiNet feels that it has no obligation to do so under the law, particularly when acting on the unverified evidence of a 3rd party.

Bannon went on to say that iiNet had made zero effort to deal with even a small percentage of the alleged infringements on their network, commenting: “…they say they can’t send a single notice to anybody, it’s like saying they can’t stop physical violence happening to the person next to them because there’s physical violence happening all around the world.”

Bannon said he believed that terminating a customer or two on allegations of infringement would have sent out a clear message to other potential infringers. But of course, iiNet knows that if they complied with that request the studios would be back saying “you did it there, why can’t you do it here…here….here….here…..”

Bannon went on to say that while iiNet denied it had any control over BitTorrent clients and the potential for users to operate them for infringing purposes, it did have the power to render the software useless.

“But if the user isn’t online there’s nothing the BitTorrent client can do to infringe,” Bannon told the court.

For its part, iiNet sits firmly behind Section 112E of the copyright act:

A person (including a carrier or carriage service provider) who provides facilities for making, or facilitating the making of, a communication is not taken to have authorised any infringement of copyright in an audio visual item merely because another person uses the facilities so provided to do something the right to do which is included in the copyright.

Earlier the Internet Industry Association (IIA) had applied to contribute to the case as amicus curiae, or ‘friend of the court’. Justice Cowdroy decided today that the industry group would have little to add to the case, since the issues it planned to raise had already been covered in detail by iiNet, mostly concerning the ISP’s commitments under the Copyright Act and Telecommunications Act 1997.

Earlier this week at their annual general meeting, iiNet boss Michael Malone gave company shareholders some painful news. The costs of defending the AFACT case had amounted to $4m AUD (approx $3.7m US).

The court proceedings are scheduled to conclude today, but the verdict will not be issued for several months.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.