3 Count: Calculated Takedown

Casio goes on the offensive...

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1: Casio Used a Copyright Claim to Wipe This Hacker’s Calculator Mod Off the Internet

First off today, Samantha Cole at Vice Motherboard reports that electronics maker Casio has filed a pair of DMCA takedowns against a hacker that modified his Casio FX-991MS calculator to be controlled by magnets or add a simple chat program.

Casio filed the notices both with GitHub, where the code was stored and with YouTube, where he hosted a video showing off the project. The hacker, who goes by the name Neutrino, had said it was part of a project he gave himself while in lockdown. However, according to Casio, the project made illegal use of their code, prompting the takedown.

Neutrino claims that he has already filed a DMCA counter-notice and seeks to get both the code and the video restored. He claims that there was no stolen code and that the entire project was written from scratch. In the meantime, there is further debate as to whether the code is a cheating device that would allow students to cheat during tests.

2: Cloudflare Ordered to Reveal Operators of Popular Pirate Sites Manga1000.com

Next up today, Andy at Torrentfreak writes that Shogakukan, one of the largest manga publishers in Japan, has successfully won in its fight to compel Cloudflare to unmask the people behind the manga piracy sites Manga1000.com and Manga1001.com.

Cloudflare, which operates a content delivery network, helps send traffic to the websites in question and provide additional services that help keep them online. As such, Shogakukan, which is a Japanese company, used an American court to compel Cloudflare, which is American, to turn over the identity of the account holder. This is part of a larger legal campaign against such sites, which has already seen other major manga piracy sites targeted with lawsuits.

Cloudflare has until June 5, 2020, to turn over any information it has. However, it’s unclear if it actually has any useful information as it’s possible the sites simply used false information when registering.

3: Spotify Finally Removes its 10,000-Song Library Limit

Finally today, Chaim Gartenberg at The Verge reports that the music streaming service Spotify has removed it’s much-hated 10,000 song library limit. As such, users can now add as many songs as they want into their personal libraries and download to their devices for offline listening.

For its entire run, Spotify has had a limit on the number of songs in user libraries. Two years ago, the limit was raised from just over 3,000 to 10,000. However, the new change scraps the limit altogether, bringing Spotify to on par with Apple Music and other competitors.

The feature request to remove the cap had been one of the more popular ones on Spotify’s website for years and many Spotify users are celebrating the change.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

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