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Call of Duty: Black Ops Leaks To BitTorrent – Or Does it?

Posted: 23 Oct 2010 04:47 AM PDT

After warnings this week that retail copies had been stolen from a pressing plant, a leak of Call of Duty: Black Ops, the follow up to last year's mind-bogglingly successful Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, seemed inevitable. As Activision sends in investigators directly to people with a copy, thousands of people on The Pirate Bay are waiting for a torrent to complete - but is it the real deal?

Black Ops It’s been nearly a year since I, along with millions of others, all queued up for hours like idiots waiting to get our hands on a copy of the biggest game in history.

For almost everyone, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 didn’t fail to disappoint, it’s become pretty much a permanent fixture in the drive of my Xbox 360 and has only been out a handful of times in the last year to make way for Forza 3 and the classic GTA IV.

And in just over two weeks the whole cycle of madness will start all over again.

Developed by the Treyarch studio, Call of Duty: Black Ops will be released worldwide on November 9th and I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy, so much so that I pre-ordered the damn thing a couple of months ago. But some people already know how awesome it is because they managed to get hold of some leaked copies a few days ago. Bastards.

It all began earlier this week when it was reported that Xbox 360 retail versions of the game had been stolen from an Alabama pressing plant and that Treyarch’s community manager, Josh Olin, had been feverishly trying to contain the problem. The article on HookedGamers included screenshots of Olin’s Twitter discussions and also a couple of game screenshots, now removed due to a copyright complaint by publisher Activision.

Things had taken a turn for the unusual. Last week a YouTuber called 504Ghostmaker announced he had a copy of the game. He’d seen it advertised for sale on a chat forum and offered the seller $150 for it. The seller wanted $400. After striking up a deal he went to a Chili’s restaurant and met up with a guy called Ungodly to collect. So far, so good.

But later 504Ghostmaker, who also goes by the name Computer Healer, got a call from IP Cybercrime, a company hired by Activision to investigate the leak. They said they knew he had a copy of the game, apparently very politely, and gave him the chance to return it, which he did.

In a series of four videos posted to YouTube, Computer Healer tells his full story and says he had no bad intentions.

"I never made a copy of the game. I never said I was going to leak this game," he explained. "Was I going to give a copy to my friends? Yes…. I wanted to play my game…. The best game I ever played….I wouldn't have sold the f****** for a million dollars."

But Healer wasn’t the only person with a copy, and IP Cybercrime’s nicely, nicely approach didn’t work first time with everyone. Apparently a young kid who had a copy of the game refused to co-operate with IP’s investigators so they contacted someone else with real authority to force compliance – his mother.

Other people with copies of the game are also confirmed to have handed them over, but now BitTorrent downloaders are hoping that the inevitable has happened. Uploaded by ‘Anonymous’, the Call.Of.Duty.Black.Ops.XBOX360-COMPLEX torrent on The Pirate Bay is getting rather a lot of attention at the moment but the big question is, is it real?

Although the release is packed up in multiple .RAR files as one might expect, the NFO file included with the release contains nonsense. While some commenters are claiming the release is real, others are stating the opposite. However, if one screenshot doing the rounds is to be believed (it’s impossible to confirm its authenticity without discovering and cross referencing all the peers currently on the torrent), not even Treyarch are convinced this is a fake torrent and are doing their own tests.

Treyarch leeching the CoD torrent

Treyarch Black Ops

This isn’t a ‘Scene’ release either so verifying its quality via the usual channels before downloading isn’t really an option. Furthermore, unlike the Xbox 360 beta version of the game which leaked out earlier, it doesn’t appear to be on Usenet either, which would be unusual for a working copy of a game this huge. There are also sundry other pointers which shout ‘fake’ but nothing conclusive until those who have completed downloads start filing reports.

Personally I’m hoping that this torrent is a fake. When I jump into Black Ops on November 9th I really, really don’t want to be shot, tubed, knifed, claymored and otherwise killed to death every 5 seconds by people who have had more than two weeks to practice before me.

So, to all those thinking of getting in dozens of hours worth of gameplay training in before me, think again. Remember last year’s epic Xbox Live banning of all those playing Modern Warfare 2 before its retail date on modded boxes? Is it worth the risk just to get a jump on me? Thought not ;)

We’ll update this post later in the day when we find out if the release is real or not

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Leaked Letter Exposes Sarkozy’s Repressive Anti-Piracy Agenda

Posted: 22 Oct 2010 06:33 AM PDT

Next week France will host a European conference on online freedom of expression. The conference is a French-Dutch initiative to draft a code of conduct against Internet censorship. However, a leaked memo makes clear that French President Sarkozy is urging his Minister of Foreign Affairs to turn it into a promotional campaign for the Hadopi anti-piracy legislation instead.

booo For years, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been at the forefront of the war against Internet piracy. Earlier this year he booked a major victory when he got Hadopi, his three-strikes anti-piracy bill, signed into law.

Under France's new Hadopi law, alleged copyright infringers will be hunted down systematically in an attempt to decrease piracy. Alleged offenders have to be identified by their Internet providers and they will be reported to a judge once they have received three warnings, of which the first were sent out recently.

Now that Sarkozy has got his way in France, the President is eager to conquer the rest of Europe with his draconian anti-piracy measures. To do so, he goes as far as hijacking an upcoming conference aimed at drafting clear rules against censorship and for freedom of expression on the Internet.

In a leaked letter that was exposed by the citizen advocacy group La Quadrature du Net, Sarkozy makes it clear that he has other plans for the conference that was initiated by the French and Dutch governments. The letter was sent by Sarkozy to the French Minister of Foreign affairs, and details how the conference can be used to promote France’s anti-piracy agenda.

According to Sarkozy, the October 29 conference offers an “opportunity to promote the balanced regulatory initiatives carried on by France during these past three years, and in particular the HADOPI law in the field of copyright, which has recently been supported by the European Parliament, as well as the measures taken to fight the new cybercrime phenomena.”

Not only does this letter show how far the French President is willing to go to spread his ideals, Sarkozy is also twisting the facts while doing so. The European Parliament has never openly supported Hadopi. Sarkozy is most likely referring to the recently passed Gallo report, but although that allows for more strict anti-piracy measures, it does not explicitly endorse three-strikes legislation.

Sarkozy

sarkozy

The letter makes it apparent that Sarkozy is indifferent to the massive critique of his plans, and that’s he’s bold enough to use a conference that should strengthen freedom of expression online, to push his own agenda. A dangerous development according to his opposition.

“This international conference on freedom of expression could become the Trojan horse of Sarkozy and his friends’ repressive and obsolete vision of the Internet,” Jérémie Zimmermann, spokesperson for La Quadrature du Net said.

“This coarse manipulation of French diplomacy, disregarding our most fundamental values, is one more example of the alliance between the entertainment industries and a few politicians, who seek to control the public space to remain in power. There is now a huge risk that this repressive vision of the Internet spreads out to the rest of the world”, Zimmermann concluded.

Indeed, there is no doubt that the French President would rather protect the interests of the entertainment industry than the rights of European citizens. And he’s determined to succeed, whatever it takes.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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Saturday, October 23, 2010