Communications Technology

The film industry is using pirate tactics to beat the pirates – by employing “cyber hitmen” to launch attacks that take out websites hosting illegal movies.

Girish Kumar, managing director of Aiplex Software, a firm in India, told this website that his company, which works for the film industry, was being hired - effectively as hitmen - to launch cyber attacks on sites hosting pirated movies that don’t respond to copyright infringement notices sent to them by the film industry.

Kumar said 95 per cent of sites hosting illegal movies co-operated with notices, but a few - mostly sites hosting torrents and used primarily for illegal content - did not.

“Most movies are released on Friday morning at 10am in India,” Kumar said in a telephone interview. “The movie is released in the morning [and] by afternoon it’s on the internet.”

His company trawled the net to find movies uploaded, he said.

“What we do is we see all those links on the net,” he said.

“We find the hosting [computer] server and send them a copyright infringement notice because they’re not meant to have those links. If they don’t remove [the link] we send them a second notice and ask them [again] to remove it.”
In Australia, distrubuted-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are an offence under section 477.3 of the Criminal Code Act 1995, according to the Australian Federal Police. As for DoS attacks, which are different, according to Australian law a person is guilty of an offence if the person causes “any unauthorised impairment of electronic communication to or from a computer”.

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Samsung’s Apple iPad rival and worst kept secret after it was spotted on a Sydney train, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, was last night unveiled officially by the South Korean company.

Samsung’s Australian vice president, telecommunications division, Tyler McGee, told this website that Samsung Australia planned to release the tablet in Australia in the fourth quarter.

It would be available before Christmas, he said.

The tablet features a 7-inch LCD display and will run the latest Google Android 2.2 operating system, Froyo, at launch. It will be able to store up to 16 gigabytes of data internally and has a microSD slot that allows for an additional 32 gigabyte SD card.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab will also make use of both Wi-Fi and 3G technologies, allowing for internet access on the go. It will also feature a front and rear-facing camera.

The rear-facing camera, which utilises an LED flash and auto-focus, is 3 megapixels, while the front-facing camera, used for video calling, is of a lower quality - 1.3 megapixels.

The tablet will come in one model and weigh 380 grams, half that of its rival, the Apple iPad 3G with Wi-Fi.

No pricing has been announced and it’s not yet known if it will be sold outright as opposed to being tied to a telecommunications company like Telstra or Optus on a subsidised plan.

McGee said the pricing would be “competitive” to Apple’s iPad.

“At this point in time the [telcos] are still reviewing how we’re going to bring it to market,” McGee said. “In four weeks time we hope that [telcos] will have settled down with their plans and we should have something else to share then.”

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The Federal Court has extended an injunction preventing three Australian distributors from selling a world-first hack that allows Sony PlayStation 3 owners to run pirated games on the console.

The Australian online retailers OzModChips.com, Quantronics.com.au and Modsupplier.com, which sell the hardware hacks for all of the major games consoles, have been blocked by the Federal Court from selling the PS Jailbreak, described as the “world’s first PS3 mod chip”.

The case was first brought against the distributors last Friday and the injunction has been further extended until this Friday. It was initially in place until today, where the court was to hear Sony seek a permanent ban on the device.

Lawyers for Sony, Blake Dawson, were instructed not to comment to media on the case today.

A Modsupplier.com employee said he was instructed to offer “no comment” to media, whereas OzModChips.com instructed that an email support ticket be sent to its manager. Quantronics.com.au’s telephone number was engaged when a call for comment was attempted.

The judge who first heard the matter, Justice Dodds-Streeton, will again hear it this Friday. Justice Kenny heard it today and ordered that the orders that were previously made by Justice Dodds-Streeton be continued until Friday, when the case would go back before that judge.

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