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BBC and FACT Shut Down Doctor Who Fansite
An anonymous reader writes with this report from Torrentfreak, excerpting: In just a few hours time the brand new season of Doctor Who will premiere, kicking off with the first episode 'Deep Breath'. There's been a huge build up in the media, but for fans who prefer to socialize and obtain news via a dedicated community, today brings bad news. Doctor Who Media (DWM) was a site created in 2010 and during the ensuing four and a half years it amassed around 25,000 dedicated members. A source close to the site told TF that since nothing like it existed officially, DWM's core focus was to provide a central location and community for everything in the 'Whoniverse,' from reconstructions of missing episodes to the latest episodes, and whatever lay between. But yesterday, following a visit by representatives from the BBC and Federation Against Copyright Theft, the site's operator took the decision to shut down the site for good.
no no, they were saying boo-urns, boo-urns
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Title says it all.
Don't worry, I'm sure it will regenerate soon enough.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Hmm.. Sounded something like this?
EX-TER-MI-NATE!
FACT was involved, so my first guess was that they were hosting full episodes, or perhaps links to torrents, but according to TFA DWM had refused to carry any of the leaked episodes from the new series which seems unlikely for a site turning a blind eye to copyright, yet further up is the following quote: "Often times, having watched stuff there led to me purchasing the exact same content on iTunes as well as all the various other content available for Doctor Who", which implies they were hosting episodes, or at least extensive clips.
So, is this a case of major fansite being shutdown for using a more copyrighted material than the BBC was prepared to stomach (in which case where was the friendly letter asking them to "tone it down a bit, please"), a copyright infringement portal being shuttered for hosting/linking to aired episodes and other content, some kind of trademark issue, or just a domain grab by the BBC ("doctorwhomedia.co.uk" is a fairly nice domain name, afterall)?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
He should have held on to the domain name. He may have been obigated to shut the site down, but nothing requires him to give the name over to them. I am not familiar with trademark law in England, but in the US they probably would have no standing at all, since they didn't enforce it over the course of the last four years. Indeed, I would expect that he can sue for damages, as they allowed hi to build a community and continue to generate interest for their product, choosing to wait until they released new episodes, choosing then and only then to try (successfully it seems) to take over the site and its community.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I suspect those in charge of the Dr Who franchise will end up wishing they could go back in time and reverse this stupid decision.. Especially once they see that the extermination order was signed by "The Master"...
http://doctorwhomedia.co.uk/ -- however, the domain is being transferred so the content might not stay there for long. At the time of writing (23 Aug 16.45 BST) there is roughly the story above and some chats at http://doctorwhomedia.chatango.com/, and whois shows the domain still owned byJonathan Carlyle .
No real indication why it was taken down ... talking about Dr Who cannot be a problem. Was there copyrighted material hosted ?
Really, if he really wasn't doing anything illegal in the first place, I can't see any reason he should have caved in on this... and this is in the UK, where it's my understanding that if you try to bring someone to court and lose, then you have to pay their costs, which I imagine exists to discourage overly subjective, baseless, or slapp-like lawsuits.
The fact that he yielded on this suggests to me that he was aware that a search warrant would find something on his computer(s) that shouldn't have been there in the first place. It's unfortunate the site is gone, but we're not actually seeing the whole story here. Sadly, because of how things have already went, we probably never will.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You know, occasionally I start to feel a bit guilty about pirating TV shows. So it's great when the copyright owners come along and shoot themselves in the foot like this, and remind me why I really shouldn't give a fuck. I mean, that site's users are some of the most loyal fans of your fucking show. They are the people most likely to spend money on merchandise, and to buy box-sets, and to go to show-related events. That site was doing nothing except positives for the Doctor Who show. If they wanted to exercise more control over their brand, they could have at least tried to work with the site first, or even take it over and let the same people continue to run the site under their oversight. Fuckwits.
That's how you troll right there.
Confusing with Bill and Ted? Someone in #nesdev last night confused Bill and Ted with Wayne's World so I can see how it might happen.
Now you can't even organize a group to talk about something that interests you, if you dont own the rights to the topic of discussion!?
From the summary:
DWM's core focus was to provide a central location and community for everything in the 'Whoniverse,' from reconstructions of missing episodes to the latest episodes, and whatever lay between.
The purpose of the site was not to let fans discuss their favourite episodes, it was to store and distribute copyrighted material without licence. This is precisely what copyright laws were designed to tackle. This isn't news, this isn't relevant to any serious discussion about copyright reform, this is the system working as intended.
That site was doing nothing except positives for the Doctor Who show. If they wanted to exercise more control over their brand, they could have at least tried to work with the site first, or even take it over and let the same people continue to run the site under their oversight. Fuckwits.
From the summary:
DWM's core focus was to provide a central location and community for everything in the 'Whoniverse,' from reconstructions of missing episodes to the latest episodes, and whatever lay between.
The purpose of the site was not to let fans discuss their favourite episodes, it was to store and distribute copyrighted material without licence. This is precisely what copyright laws were designed to tackle. This isn't news, this isn't relevant to any serious discussion about copyright reform, this is the system working as intended.
The fact that he yielded on this suggests to me that he was aware that a search warrant would find something on his computer(s) that shouldn't have been there in the first place. It's unfortunate the site is gone, but we're not actually seeing the whole story here. Sadly, because of how things have already went, we probably never will.
We are seeing the whole story here, /. is just choosing not to cover it adequately. The site was hosting full episodes, which was the main reason anyone visited it. This isn't the BBC using overreaching copyright laws to leverage control over its brand, it's the BBC using the reasonable end of copyright law to protect its right to control the distribution of content.
"The purpose of the site was not to let fans discuss their favourite episodes, it was to store and distribute copyrighted material without licence. This is precisely what copyright laws were designed to tackle. This isn't news, this isn't relevant to any serious discussion about copyright reform, this is the system working as intended."
You are completely full of shit and I would like to know why you feel it is okay to come in here and just lie? They did not "store and distribute copyrighted material without licence".
I did a screensaver that had the "new series" (2005 on 'Rose' one) intro as an .avi that played back from RAM & had some pretty neat/unique tech in it by embedding that .avi into the .exe as a resource, extracting it directly to RAM & playing it back... was a HUGE hit, even with the site mod (who often gave me guff).
That "all said & aside": I offered it DIRECTLY to the BBC, no charge, & it's 'engine' was REPLACEABLE (meaning others series' of theirs could do it, since I offered the code & tech for free to them too), & FAR MORE EFFICIENT single moving part machinery done in a language that rivals & even exceeds MSVC++ in Borland Delphi 7.1 Object Pascal code.
They told me, after seeing it, I "violated their intellectual property"... I was like "WTF? I am offering it to you, for free, since it's TECHNICALLY FAR BETTER THAN THE CRAP FLASH ONES YOU USE NOW, & far, Far, FAR SAFER WITH LESS BUGS/SECURITY ISSUES!" & I was not 'selling it' either... it was 100% free.
They're fools.
APK
P.S.=> How stupid could they be? I'm a HUGE Dr. Who fan & have been since "Tom Baker" days (loved the series 2005 to present too, David Tenant rocks) - Well, They (iirc) also shut down the site it was on also like this article alludes to as well - dumbest thing you can do? ANGER YOUR FANS... you're NOTHING minus them!
... apk
Are you trying to get slashdot taken down? Stop talking about Dr. Who! BBC doesn't want word of mouth advertising for their shows.
Not to mention the fantastic Dune/Star Trek crossover. The best scenes are where Nurse Chapel seduces Baron Harkonnen (and much hilarity ensues) and Paul Atreided and Captain Kirk compare whether the Weirding way or the monkey kick are more effective. Best catchphrase "dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a Bene Tleilax facedancer."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Daleks have infiltrated the BBC.
If they're 'missing' it implies the "video" (actually it would be film) isn't available.
Reading at -1 is like having your soul sucked out and replaced by liquid nitrogen.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That would be the superior show Inspector Spacetime.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
So, in other words, reading at -1 is both friendlier and warmer than my ex-wife,
"The purpose of the site was not to let fans discuss their favourite episodes, it was to store and distribute copyrighted material without licence. This is precisely what copyright laws were designed to tackle. This isn't news, this isn't relevant to any serious discussion about copyright reform, this is the system working as intended."
You are completely full of shit and I would like to know why you feel it is okay to come in here and just lie? They did not "store and distribute copyrighted material without licence".
I'm going to hazard a guess that they were hosting links to torrent files of the episodes. Which should be legal but for some insane reason isn't.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ente...
"The purpose of the site was not to let fans discuss their favourite episodes, it was to store and distribute copyrighted material without licence. This is precisely what copyright laws were designed to tackle. This isn't news, this isn't relevant to any serious discussion about copyright reform, this is the system working as intended."
You are completely full of shit and I would like to know why you feel it is okay to come in here and just lie? They did not "store and distribute copyrighted material without licence".
I'm going to hazard a guess that they were hosting links to torrent files of the episodes. Which should be legal but for some insane reason isn't.
In response to the announcement on their Facebook users are lamenting that they can no longer use the site to stream full episodes of both new and classic Who. Clearly the site must have offered streams of full episodes for the users to be upset that they aren't there anymore.
I'm a UK citizen who pays taxes. I do not pay for a television license because I am not required to.
The methods I've seen have been mostly "slideshows" with audio tracks, and very rarely, someone recreating the video in an animated form.
I think there was a Magnum P.I./Simon & Simon cross over episode that was pretty good too.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
You can't. They erased bunch of them and likely some are gone forever because dumb.
I wasn't speaking about the copyright issue. The question was "how were they reconstructed without the video?"
Who apparently is both friendly and warmer than MY ex-wife.
It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Colonel Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D.
Wow.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Exterminate!
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I already told you how to configure a DNS server/resolver to not have vulnerability issues and we discussed vulnerabilities effecting hosts file as well as the inadequacies where blocking entire domains leads to multi-gb hosts files that Windows starts breaking with services on and running out of memory with.
I don't understand why your post targets adblock+, ghostery or request policy. I have never endorsed those as solutions to anything (I also consider them as a false sense of security. I've trivially bypassed the cookie stuff by storing unique values in RGB values of force-cached PNGs using HTML5 Canvas tag and the read pixels back out. I have also bypassed advertising blockers through tight integration with web content that makes it hard to produce a rule to target the advertisements).
It's not Delphi I was wowing about.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Are you sure you weren't just watching YouTube with the HTML5 renderer?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Why is this relevant even? I repeat: I don't understand why your post targets adblock+, ghostery or request policy. I have never endorsed those as solutions to anything.
I use DNS in a safe configuration with full domain blacklists for malicious sites. But you know this, because we've been over this before.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Of course, since you don't block entire domains, you could become trivially vulnerable if they just open a new subdomain, or even just do a wildcard subdomain.
We've discussed this extensively. I've told you before, I have seen no notable differences in power consumption. There is an increase in bandwidth consumption from using TCP, sure. However, I'm not exactly on some 5MB internet cap where it would make a difference.
Having a locally accessible DNS server on your machine that handles the resolutions over TCP with end points is more secure than a hosts file, that can only cover vulnerabilities that you're aware of and doesn't break geographical CDNs that use DNS to provide the relevant geographical IP address to connect to.
Unlike a hosts file, you can also block resolution completely of entire domains (or just subdomains, which is what you do) too. This blocking unlike hosts file, tells the browser, or any other application attempting to access said address, that it doesn't even exist and as such, a connection isn't even attempted to said address to begin with, leading to faster browser loading times.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
It's more secure when running with the configuration I told you previously, TCP based resolution.
But you can't blacklist an entire domain 'easily' in a hosts file. By 'entire domain', I mean, all subdomains and the domain it self. If I explain using a wildcard format:
google.com
*.google.com
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I've previously pointed out the shortcomings of hosts files to you. Such as trying to blacklist an entire domain requires generating every single combination of a subdomain for that domain. The intensive I/O usage to read that file into memory, the requirement for an immense amount of disk space (as opposed to the few lines for DNS) to block an entire domain, breaks standard windows services and while there are some additional overheads, it also reduce overheads that you have from hosts, such as the application attempting to establish a connection to a blocked address, rather than getting a resolution failure.
Apply said solution to a LAN server and you've mitigated any client system overheads (not that there is really anything that notable as far as overheads are when it comes to DNS to begin with).
Not when compared to the scenarios I am using the DNS server, such as blacklisting entire domains used by malicious users. The additional overhead in TCP resolution is acceptable for security purposes.
As for learning curve; if I was concerned about learning curve, I'd pre-package some DNS server in an installer with the right configurations and maybe write some GUI configuration tool (didn't you make one for hosts?).
I've already explained this to you previously, how do you not get it?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I'm talking about entire domains, stop being pedantic.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Show me a hosts file blocking the entire google.com domain (this includes every combination of subdomain).
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I'm using google.com as an example. I'm not telling you to use it.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
It's not illogical. I'm using google.com as an example to block. I am not going to link some actual real malware domain (where you really couldn't trust any subdomain it has) for obvious reasons.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I don't even see a challenge on that link.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
A:
1. - I don't endorse this or use this.
2. - I don't endorse this or use this.
3. - I don't endorse this or use this
B - True, but I can't remember a time when this issue even affected me or anyone else.
C - I think the trivial blocking of entire domains which can be done in a single line with DNS is faster. I think the lack of resolution of blocked domains is faster than a browser getting 127.0.0.1 and trying to connect to it etc.
D:
1. - Speed vs remote DNS, sure. vs local DNS? Eh, I get 0ms response times.
2. - Security - I think my method is safer, bocking entire domains that are owned by malicious entities instead of specific subdomains. Additionally, I think my TCP resolution setup in my DNS server is safer than hosts file with a blocklist and without the TCP resolution.
3. - Reliability - A locally running DNS server with similar configurations (pointing at specific IPs and what not) feasibly seems just as reliable?
4. - If you're concerned about anonymity, DNS is not where you should be starting.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.