Liuxia Wong received a letter last year from Hard Drive Productions claiming that she had used her IP address last year to share “Amateur Allure Jen” on BitTorrent. The porn studio told her that they would take her to court for $150,000 but she could settle for only $3,400. Wong didn’t take the bait and is taking the porn producer to court according to TorrentFreak.

Wong is fighting back and has hired Steven Yuen, an experienced IP litigator from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to sue Hard Drive Productions. In the lawsuit, Wong alleges that she did not download the work in question and attacks the porn studio on multiple accounts.

Hard Drive claims that the infringement took place on March 28, 2011. Wong did her research and found out that the film didn’t release until April 22, 2011. She claims that the letters “were designed to coerce her into settling the case despite the absence of any facts supporting liability against her.”

The lawsuit also claims that the letter from Hard Drive says that Wong could be indicted even if her router was unsecured and somebody else uploaded it. An assertion she dismisses as “erroneous.”

The best part is that she even throws up the opinion that you can’t copyright porn:

“Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, known as the Copyright Clause, empowers the United States Congress: ‘To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries,” the lawsuit details, adding:

“Early Circuit law in California held that obscene works did not promote the progress of science and the useful arts, and thus cannot be protected by copyright.”

Wong is asking the court to declare that she is not liable for infringement. She is also asking that the court to declare the company’s movie as not copyrightable and is illegal due to Hard Drive engaging in “solicitation, conspiracy to commit prostitution, pimping and/or pandering” during the making of the film.

Hard Drive Productions, all in all, seems to be pretty bad at this claiming damages over copyright infringement thing. They failed to mitigate alleged damages since they didn’t use the DMCA to have offending torrents removed.

They also hired non-California licensed investigators to monitor torrents which is in violation of the California Business and Professions Code.

We have the entire lawsuit for your perusal. It’s a fascinating read and if it goes in Wong’s favor, it could change the porn industry, at least in California.

Gov.uscourts.cand.250725.4.0

What I’m talking about it a concept design that takes forever alone to a whole new level. Meet the FLESHLiPad Holder.

What you’re seeing is a Fleshlight device attached to the bottom of an iPad. For those of you unfamiliar with Fleshlights, you can check out the site (a tad NSFW). As you can see, it’s basically a male sex toy that simulates a vagina. It’s actually a pretty huge industry, as prospective users can build their own or purchase toys modeled after famous pornstars – and yes, they are anatomically accurate.

It doesn’t take a genius to see why a person would want to have one of these devices attached to an iPad – and the mockup makes it pretty clear as well. I must reiterate, this is simply a concept design, but do you really think that this idea will sit around untapped for very long? I don’t think so.

[TvMiller via Geekologie]

Specifically, the Iran’s Supreme Court maintains, is that Saeed Malekpour, a Iranian-born 35-year-old who is a permanent resident of Canada, developed and promoted porn sites. Malekpour was visiting Iran to visit his ailing father when he was detained by a plain-clothes officer upon arriving to the country. The Guardian reports that his connection to the porn sites is questionable as the site managers were using photo-loading software Malekpour developed. Malekpour says that they used his software without his knowledge yet Iran extracted a televised confession from Malekpour that formed the basis for his conviction. Malekpour, however, recanted his confession in a letter he wrote in prison and stated that his confession had been made “under duress” (A link and excerpt of Malekpour’s letter can be found below).

Radio Free Europe spoke to Malekpour’s sister, Maryam Malekpour, after Iran confirmed his death sentence.

“All of Saeed’s activities were within the law,” Maryam Malekpour said. “He didn’t commit anything illegal. Saeed just wrote a computer program that could have been used by these immoral websites or any other website. Unfortunately, without his knowledge, the program was sold and used to upload photos on these immoral websites.”

Maryam Malekpour went on to tell Radio Free Europe that she found the court process to be a farce as it lacked a computer specialist who could corroborate her brother’s defense. Additionally, she agrees that his confession is counterfeit. “All the evidence they have against him is from his confessions,” she said told Radio Free Europe. “Saeed was in solitary confinement for about one and a half years and was under extreme physical and emotional pressure. For sure, anyone who is in this condition and wants it to end will confess to anything they’re asked.”

In order to help spread information about Saeed Malekpour throughout the Internet, United for Iran put together a short video about Malekpour’s plight:

Malekpour’s fate within the Iranian legal system has been tumultuous and unpredictable since his arrest. Iran Human Rights Voice issued a press release in summer 2011 “the Supreme Court had ‘quashed the death sentence.” The release continues, though, and says that “the Supreme Court declared months later it was unable to reach a voting decision on Saeed’s case due to existing discrepancies in the file that required resolving.” Eventually, after deciding to ignore the fact that the confessions were falsified or and even being unable to determine whether the trial was fair, one Iranian judge re-issued the death sentence.

On Twitter, supporters posted articles and implored others to take action in order to save Malekpour’s life.

As mentioned already, Persian2English provided a translation of a letter that Malekpour wrote last March detailing the physical and psychological torture he has been subjected to since his “arrest”:

My name is Saeed Malekpour. I was arrested on October 4, 2008 near Vanak Square (in northern Tehran) by plainclothes agents who did not present an arrest warrant or identification. The arrest resembled an abduction. Afterwards, I was handcuffed, blindfolded and placed in the back of a Sedan. A heavy-set agent leaned his weight on me by positioning his elbow on my neck, and forcing my head down throughout the ride. They transferred me to an undisclosed location they called the “technical office.” When we arrived, a few agents severely beat me and verbally abused me. While I was handcuffed and blindfolded, they forced me to sign a few forms that I was unable to read. As a result of the physical assault, my neck was aching for several days and my face was swollen from the punches, slaps, and kicks. That night, I was transferred to ward 2-A of Evin prison. I was placed in a solitary cell 2m X 1.7m (6’2″ X 5’8″) wide. I was only allowed to leave the cell twice a day at specified times for some fresh air. However, I was blindfolded during the times I left the cell. The only time I was allowed to remove the blindfold was in my cell.

~

On one particular day, One of those very days, as a result of being kicked, punched, and lashed with cables on my head and face, my face became very swollen. I lost consciousness several times, but each time they would wake me up by splashing water on my face [and continued with the torture]. That night, they returned me to my cell. At the end of the night, I realized my ear was bleeding. I banged on the door of my cell, but nobody came. The next day, while half of my body was paralyzed, and I was unable to move, they took me to the Evin prison clinic. The doctor, after seeing my condition, emphasized that I should be transferred to a hospital. However, I was returned to my cell instead, and I was left on my own until 9:00pm. Three guards eventually transferred me to Baghiatollah hospital.

On our way to the hospital, the guards told me I was not allowed to give my real name, and ordered me to use the alias Mohammad Saeedi. They threatened me with severe torture if I did not follow their orders.

But don’t think that just because you’re browsing the porn tubes, that means you’re in a SOPA Blackout-free zone.

In fact, many popular streaming porn tube sites have joined in the SOPA protest, and their participation ranges from blacked out landing pages to censored logos.

PornHub has placed a “stop censorship” bar over their logo, reminding users that the site, like other tube sites, would struggle to exist under SOPA and PIPA:

In fact, other tube sites in the extremely popular PornHub network participating in the protest too. This includes Tube8 and SpankWire:

Xvideos and XNXX have gone to greater lengths in protest of the legislation. Upon visiting their sites, users are directed to a landing page that announces the blackout:

SOPA and PIPA are laws that would lead to a censored internet, in the name of copyright protection. You may not have heard about them yet as the big medias are hardly covering the subject because they are all in favor of SOPA. This new set of laws was about the pass silently (less internet = more TV). It would allow copyright holders to shut down any site with user generated content (even just a little as it could be seen facilitating infringements), without due process, and create an American internet blacklist.

You can then access the site, but with this warning message:

Thank you for reading all this, you can continue to our site by clicking anywhere, this time…

One of the most interesting SOPA protests comes from TBLOP, or The Big List Of Porn. TBLOP is exactly what it sounds like – a giant directory of some of the best tube sites, pic sites, blogs, aggregators, and porn torrents on the web. They have greyed out every site on their list that might not exist if SOPA and PIPA were to pass:

TBLOP NEEDS YOUR HELP TO STOP SOPA & PIPA! FREE PORN IS IN DANGER OF DISAPPEARING. This is because of two new bills being voted on in the USA, called SOPA and PIPA. If passed, these bills could block or ban most websites. See the list below? The faded sites may soon be gone forever.

It may seem like a trivial thing – to put up these SOPA notices on porn sites. But just think how many daily visitors these sites have. Any little reference could spark further research into the topic – and knowledge is power.

Of course, can you imagine the freakout if some of these porn sites would have shut down completely, not just participated in the protest with censor bars and landing pages? Since this was basically a warning shot, a “see what could happen” if you will, by all means, resume your previous activities.

Montano was introduced to aspiring “model” Priscilla Caputo via some friends on Facebook. Montano says that on December 5, “she came to my place around 4 AM and stayed the night.” She spent another night on December 11. Then, when she came a-knockin’ a third time, perhaps in broad daylight this time, Montano says he turned her down… and she freaked out.

Caputo reportedly got one of Montano’s roommates to let her into the house while he was gone, whereupon she kicked in his bedroom door and trashed the room. Montano filed a police report. He says Caputo threatened to tell the cops he had raped her.

So, out come the restraining orders. A judge has awarded Montano a three-year restraining order, and one for Caputo as well.

Priscilla Caputo – also known as Priscilla Russo – has had some minor fame on the Internet due to her (mis)adventures in plastic surgery, dabbling in porn, and award-worthy duckface photos.

“You gotta have a gimmick.” – Ethel Merman

Apparently this isn’t so much fun for at least one person, who posted a complaint on Google’s Web Search Help forum:

Wow. Quite a fascinating conundrum we have here. Anyone have any guess as to why?

Anyone?

…..Any-one?

…..Bueller….?

Wait! – Maybe those results are appearing because the Internet is obviously overrun with lecherous hordes of young babysitter-porn hounds! Actually, that’s undoubtedly a scientific fact of the universe. Anyone familiar with Rule 34 will shrug off this event without any further concern but this problem demands our continued attention as nothing so far really explains why similar searches for “babysitters,” “teen babysitters,” or “good babysitters” don’t return the same lurid results as “young babysitters.” A search of “young babysitters” returns, save for the second and third results, an entire page of babysitter-themed hardcore pornography. However, searching the other terms I listed above, all you receive are sites legitimately associated with the honest profession of babysitting children.

This perplexing discovery beggars the important question: Why would Google’s search results for specifically “young babysitter” defile such an otherwise innocent inquiry on how to become a babysitter? What libidinous fascination with young babysitters has seeped so deeply into our cultural subconscious that, upon searching the Internet, this particular word pairing should automatically yield pants-shrinking depictions of prurient affairs?

The most likely answer? We’re all perverts and these results are probably completely appropriate (NSFW, by the way) to the motives of “young babysitter” Googlers. The information that Google provides us is based solely on humanity’s prevailing interest and, in this case, that mechanism happens to perform like a dark mirror in which we glimpse our twisted reflection snarling back at us. Occasionally someone doesn’t recognize this reflection, like the forum poster above, and confusion begins. According to Google’s results, when most of us hear “young babysitters” we cognitively index that construct as “sex with young babysitters.”

So let this be a lesson to all of you Internet searchers and would-be babysitters: be very careful with how you choose your search terms because something as seemingly benign as “young” could easily be an Internet synonym for yeahright.

On Monday, users began complaining that Facebook had turned into a porn site – saying that their news feeds were inundated with hardcore images. As the images spread, users began reporting violent pictures and gory images of animal abuse. The images were popping up on people’s feeds, claiming to have been posted by friends – although people had no idea that they were propagating the content.

Facebook has issued a brief statement, blaming the spread of graphic images on a “coordinated spam attack that exploited a browser vulnerability.” The specifics involved oblivious users adding “malicious javascript in the browser URL.”

Here’s the full statement:

Protecting the people who use Facebook from spam and malicious content is a top priority for us, and we are always working to improve our systems to isolate and remove material that violates our terms. Recently, we experienced a coordinated spam attack that exploited a browser vulnerability. Our efforts have drastically limited the damage caused by this attack, and we are now in the process of investigating to identify those responsible.

During this spam attack users were tricked into pasting and executing malicious javascript in their browser URL bar causing them to unknowingly share this offensive content. Our engineers have been working diligently on this self-XSS vulnerability in the browser. We’ve built enforcement mechanisms to quickly shut down the malicious Pages and accounts that attempt to exploit it.

We have also been putting those affected through educational checkpoints so they know how to protect themselves. We’ve put in place backend measures to reduce the rate of these attacks and will continue to iterate on our defences to find new ways to protect people.

So Facebook is limiting users’ exposure to the penises – which is good. Users were a little more than incensed over the spam. Of course, spam attacks aren’t anything new to Facebook – but this one appeared to be particularly malicious.

While Facebook cleans up this latest mess, it doesn’t hurt to talk about what you the users can do to prevent stuff like this from happening.

First and most importantly, stop clicking on stupid links. Have an eye for stuff that sounds out of character for your friends to post. Anything that offers you a look into something private, or contains any of the phrases “OMG” or “I can’t believe this” might be a clickjacking scam. If a link offers to tell you how many people have looked at your profile page, for the love of god, don’t click it.

If you do find that you have fallen victim to something like this, it doesn’t hurt to change your password. And make sure that your privacy settings are set pretty tight on who can tag you in a photo.

Of course, if your friends fall victim to these spam attacks, you might not be able to stop the flood of unwanted imagery from hitting your news feed. Hopefully, with a little help from Facebook’s security team and a little more common sense from users, we can make this kind of thing happen less frequently.

If so, then you’re not alone. An unidentified Facebook hack is hijacking users’ accounts to post images of extreme gore, animal abuse and hardcore porn. Apparently, the images will appear as updates from your friends on your news feed. Of course, the images and links have nothing to do with the people that are supposedly posting them – your Nana is probably not flooding your feed with hardcore porn.

It’s thought that the pictures are probably spread through clicking malicious links. Nobody here at WebProNews has seen any of the images in question (we must have friends that aren’t stupid are cautious), but according to multiple sources, the images are extremely graphic. We’re talking dead babies, bashed-in heads, mutilated animals, erect penises and hardcore intercourse. So this isn’t your typical Facebook link scam asking you to “watch this video OMFG HILARIOUS,” although that might be how it starts.

The origin of the exploit is still unclear. What is clear is that users’ feeds are being overtaken by the images and the users “propagating” the content are unaware that they are doing so. There are also reports of messages requesting link clicks and mass photo tagging. Here’s what Sophos’ Naked Security had to say:

It isn’t presently clear precisely how the offending content has been spread – whether users are falling for a clickjacking scheme, are being tagged in content without their knowledge, have poorly chosen privacy settings, have been tricked into installing malicious code, or have fallen victim to another vulnerability inside Facebook itself.

So people could be clicking on harmless-looking links to something about one of the Kardashians and BOOM – penises and guts are being spread from their account. A quick check of Twitter shows that this problem is affecting quite a few users:

Some are suggesting that the issues might have something to do with Anonymous and a rumored “Guy Fawkes Virus,” which is supposed to attack Facebook. There’s been no confirmation on this from Anonymous (not like it’s always easy to get “confirmation” from Anonymous).

In a way, watching everyone freak out over some penis pictures popping up on their feeds is kind of funny. On the other hand, there are young teens on the site – and even your grandma in some cases. Plus, nobody really wants to log on to Facebook and see a dead baby.

There’s a lot of bitching going on right now about all of these images, and a lot of threats from people saying they are going to leave Facebook. But if we know one thing about people and their Facebook it’s that people never really leave Facebook – no matter how much they bitch.

Facebook is no stranger to porn/odd images spam. But according to most reports, this incident includes much more graphic material than the normal fare. Facebook told ZDNet that they “are aware of these reports and are investigating the issue.”

View more daily infographic round-ups here.

Search Engine Journal looks at Porn vs. the Internet:

Source: Infographic: Porn vs The Internet [NSFW]

Halloween By the Numbers:

via

The Lifecycle of a page on StumbleUpon:

Luckily, we didn’t visit the Sesame Street YouTube channel yesterday, as we may have had to have a conversation I’m not ready to have yet.

The channel was hacked, and the videos of muppets teaching things were replaced by apparently hardcore porn. Classy, hackers. Classy.

According to TheNextWeb, which broke the news, it was about 22 minutes before Google pulled the content. With YouTube being the second largest search engine (as Google often likes to remind us), I’m guessing that was more than enough time for some children to see some stuff.

Last night, the SesameWorkshop Twitter account tweeted out the following:

That leads to a Facebook post, saying:

We apologize for any inconvenience our audience may have experienced today on ourSesame Street YouTube channel.  Our channel was compromised and we are presently working with YouTube/Google to restore our original content. We always strive to provide age-appropriate content for our viewers and hope to resolve this problem quickly. 

Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley shows a screenshot of what the channel’s profile info was changed to. This includes the user name: Mredxwx. This is a real YouTube user, who has since uploaded this video claiming it was not him:

The hacked profile info also included the message: “WHO DOESN’T LOVE PORN KIDS? RIGHT! EVERYONE LOVES IT! IM MREDXWX AND MY PARTNER MRSUICIDER91 ARE HERE TO BRING YOU MANY NICE CONTENT! PLEASE DON’T LET SESAME STREET TO GET THIS ACCOUNT BACK KIDS PLEASE…LET ME AND MRSUICIDER91 HAVE IT AND WE GONNA MAKE ALL THE AMERICA HAPPY!”

Sigh.