Giganews

The World's Best Usenet Provider

Uncategorized

Golden Frog Adds 15 New VyprVPN Server Locations

Golden Frog added 15 new VyprVPN server locations in Algeria, Bulgaria, Egypt, El Salvador, Greece, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mongolia, Pakistan, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine and Uruguay. These additional server locations will offer our Diamond and Platinum members security and freedom when accessing the Internet in these regions. We are excited to see the expansion of VPN server locations in Golden Frog’s fight to defeat online censorship and to keep the internet open and accessible. At Giganews, we feel it is important to protect your Usenet connections with SSL and protect all of your internet connections with VyprVPN.

How to Access the New VyprVPN Server Location:

  • VyprVPN Desktop – If you use VyprVPN Desktop, the new server locations will automatically be available when you choose your server location.
  • VyprVPN Mobile – To enable the new server locations as an option using VyprVPN Mobile, simply log out of the app and log back in.

Giganews members with VyprVPN have unlimited access to 70+ server locations. They offer unlimited switching between server locations and have over 200,000 IP addresses, so server connections are always available.

Join Giganews at SXSW 2016

Join Giganews at the Take Back Your Internet Party During SXSW interactive on March 12th.

This year, the Take Back Your Internet is all about backdoor encryption. Encryption has been a hot topic around the world, with a fierce debate taking place between the governments wanting backdoors into encrypted communications and the tech companies building this technology into products. Our panel will be addressing backdoor encryption, exploring why encryption is an essential tool, the need for safeguarding security and how this issue is affecting people and the right to privacy around the world. The panel will include leaders from the policy, grassroots and business side, all providing unique perspectives on the issue. Come and enjoy a great panel, Texas BBQ, Drinks and networking.

DETAILS

Panel Topic: ” Do You Have the Right to Privacy? The Backdoor Encryption Debate”

Panelists:

  • Congressman Will Hurd – 23rd District of Texas
  • Nuala O’Connor – President & CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology
  • Daniel Schuman – Policy Director of Demand Progress
  • Philip Molter – Co-CTO of Golden Frog
  • Jim Cardle – Publisher & CEO of TexasInsider.org
  • Alan Fairless – Co-Founder & CEO of SpiderOak

Event Information:

WHAT: Take Back Your Internet Party & Panel – 2016
WHEN: Saturday, March 12 from 6-10pm
WHERE: Cooper’s Old Time Pit BBQ, 217 Congress Ave, Austin, TX 78701

Texas BBQ and Drinks will be served

RSVP:

You can learn more on the event page, and you can RSVP here.

Newsgroup Spotlight: rec.food.cooking

Welcome to our Newsgroup Spotlight where we highlight one newsgroup on Usenet by sharing some of the stories going on in that community. For the month of June, we present to you: “recs.food.cooking” (Over 1.7 million posts).

Recs.food.cooking is one of the most active newsgroups on Usenet. Posts are in the double digits on a daily basis. After all, who can say enough with headers like “Curry soup”, “Rabbit Bolognese” or “Corn and Green Chiles”?

But there’s more where that came from. “Pork tocino”, “Grilled beer Bratties”, and “Herbalicious chicken” fill the headers like a menu, as well as conversations about technique. For example, “Think about your knife use”, “Smoking on a gas grill”, “Fermenting Jalapenos”, and “White Lily flour substitute”. It’s an excellent way to join a group of people from all over trying to improve their skills.

Users poll the community for advice, “How many knives are too many?”, “Perfect dish in a wedding reception, anyone?”, and “Is it OK to eat moldy food?”.

Much like some of our other active newsgroups, the rec.food.cooking community branches out from its explicit topic. It’s not simply a recipe and advice sharing forum, but a place for news and lively discussion about “Sushi chef at Santa Monica restaurant sentenced in whale meat case” and “Trans fat ban”.

And ever the philosophical bunch, the conversation can turn to “How do you slice a slice?”, “Who’s Killing the Great Chefs of Food TV?”, and “Food Shame: The Morality of Eating”.

Feel no shame. For access to these stories, this newsgroup, and many, many more (over 110,000 newsgroups to match your interests), sign up for a Giganews account today. All accounts come with a 14 day free trial. And without further ado, here is a recipe from Usenet and a story to consider.

And how about a 5 minute black bean sauce rib recipe? (May 6, 2015)

Since black bean sauce has been in play lately, let’s rib it up.

Anything from steamykitchen is good eating – no exception here:

http://steamykitchen.com/203-chinese-steamed-spareribs-with-black-bean-sauce.html

  • 1-1/2 lbs pork spare rib (rib tips)
  • 2 tablespoons black bean sauce
  • 1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine (or dry sherry)
  • 2 teaspoons cornstarch
  • 1/2 teaspoon grated ginger (on microplane grater)
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon cooking oil
  • 1 teaspoon sesame oil
  • 1 teaspoon sugar

DIRECTIONS:

Cut the spareribs crosswise into 1″ – 2″ sections. Combine the rest of the ingredients. Transfer spareribs and sauce into a shallow, heatproof pan that will fit inside your wok (a pie plate or 9” cake pan works great.) Let marinate at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Set steaming rack inside of wok and fill with water almost up to height of rack. Turn heat to high and when water is boiling, turn heat to medium-high. Set pan with spareribs on top of a steaming rack in wok. Steam on med-high heat for 18-20 minutes until ribs are no longer pink. Make sure that when you are steaming that you don’t run out of water in the wok. Replenish with additional water, if needed.

Sage and ??? (March 20, 2015)

What other herbs or spices go well with sage? I know about the song, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. What would you season with fresh sage? Talk to me . . .

Janet US

——————————————–

With pork, goose and duck I love sage and onion stuffing.

——————————————–

Have you ever done fried sage leaves? Wonderful . Use them as a condiment on many different things.

http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Fried-Sage-Leaves

———————————————

Fried sage leaves with lambs liver, mmmmmmmm

———————————————

Sage leaves in a brown butter sauce is divine. Love it over pasta or anice steak

koko

———————————————

Saltimboca.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltimbocca

———————————————

Scrapple is sage, black pepper, and marjoram. I also insist in my lamb rub – with rosemary, pepper, and garlic. Sage is also the main component of “poultry seasoning” – along with thyme and marjoram.

-sw

SXSW Take Back Your Internet Recap

We were honored to be a sponsor of Golden Frog’s “Take Back Your Internet” panel and party. It was a great event with lively discussions about the open internet, what the privacy landscape will look like given the new FCC ruling, and much more. At Giganews, we believe in an open internet and privacy online. We were the first Usenet provider to provide SSL connections and we were the first to bundle encrypted VyprVPN service and storage to offer our members tools to take back their privacy online.

Take Back your Internet panel:

  • Marvin Ammori – Internet lawyer, activist, and scholar, Ammori Group
  • Edward Henigin – CTO of Data Foundry
  • Chip Pickering – CEO of Comptel
  • Gigi Sohn – The special counsel for public affairs at the FCC
  • James Waterworth – Vice President of CCIA Europe

Moderator: Rob Pegoraro, Veteran technology journalist

Thanks to all who joined us. You can view photos from the event and check out just a couple of our awesome Giganews members below tweeting out their support of @Giganews.

Giganews Wins Big Judgment Against Perfect 10 For Baseless Copyright Infringement Lawsuit

Earlier this week, Giganews secured a significant legal victory. And with it, an important validation of Usenet as one of the essential protocols of the Internet and recognition for the users who rely on it everyday.

The United States District Court for the Central District of California has ordered Perfect 10 to pay more than $5.6 million in attorneys fees and costs to Giganews. In granting Giganews’ motion for legal fees, the court recognized that:

“The Usenet services the defendants offer serve to foster an exchange of information or opinion on a particular topic from, say, the music of Wagner to Balkan politics to AIDS prevention to the Chicago Bulls,” and the Court took the position that Perfect 10’s “unmeritorious claims against the leading Usenet service provider in the country posed a serious threat to the public’s access to free and competitive expression.”

Giganews is obviously pleased with today’s ruling and hopes it will put an end to the tactics of a serial litigator whose primary business model appears to be filing unmeritorious suits and then unnecessarily driving up litigation costs in order to drive a settlement. Though we are pleased, this legal battle has been going on for four years. Any system where it takes that long, and millions of dollars to defend yourself from frivolous lawsuits is flawed. Part of our motivation for continuing the legal fight with Perfect 10 is standing up for the online service providers and Internet companies that are under constant attack from copyright trolls. We have followed the DMCA since its inception and call for copyright law reform to make it harder for baseless litigation to proceed.

The entire judgment is embedded below. You can also download it at this link:

https://truck.it/p/k5p0b1mCCx

Here are a few of our favorite excerpts:

“All of the evidence before the Court demonstrates that Perfect 10 is in the business of litigation, not protecting its copyrights or “stimulat[ing] artistic creativity for the general public good.”

“Perfect 10 has a long,documented history of sending service providers inadequate takedown notices under the DMCA that fail to identify specific infringing material, and then bringing suit for the service providers’ failure to respond to deficient DMCA takedown notices.”

“Despite numerous admonitions that its inadequate notices unduly burden service providers” and reminders that “the burden of policing copyright infringement falls squarely on” Perfect 10, Perfect 10 never attempted to submit a takedown notice in this action that Giganews could actually use. Indeed, even after Perfect 10 admittedly learned of a method to produce a takedown notice in “15 minutes” that would result in almost immediate removal of 90 percent of the Perfect 10 content on Giganews’s servers, Perfect 10 refused to do so.”

“Perfect 10’s lack of interest in helping … actually remove the material from Giganews’ servers is all the more salient in light of Perfect 10’s admission that it has never taken any substantial steps to avoid copyright piracy from its own website. Perfect 10 has never taken any steps to prevent the images it presents on its website from unauthorized use or instituted any security measures (such as a digital watermark) to identify or track individuals who download images from Perfect 10’s website and subsequently upload those photos onto the internet.”

“Perfect 10 is not a “starving artist” in need of protection from an award of attorneys’ fees – it is a serial plaintiff operating on a self-proclaimed business model of litigation. In light of Perfect 10’s well-documented improper motive in bringing suit the Court has little concern that an award of attorneys’ fees in this action will discourage “starving artists” from protecting their copyrights. If anything, it will discourage serial litigants from bringing unmeritorious suits and then unnecessarily driving up litigation costs in order to drive a settlement. Such a result is entirely consistent with the purpose of the Copyright Act, and this factor weighs in favor of an award of attorneys’ fees.”

“Because copyright law ultimately serves the purpose enriching the general public through access to creative works, is peculiarly important that the boundaries of copyright law demarcated as clearly as possible. To that end, defendants who seek to advance a variety of meritorious copyright defense should be encouraged to litigate them to the same extent that plaintiffs are encouraged to litigate meritorious claims of infringement… Thus a successful defense of a copyright infringement action may further the policies of the Copyright Act every bit as much as a successful prosecution of an infringement claim by the holder of a copyright.”

Giganews Secures Another Legal Victory in Its Copyright Battle With Perfect 10

Today marks an important milestone in the history of Usenet. We’ve announced that the US District Court for the Central District of California once again ruled in our favor in our long running defense against a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Perfect 10.

On Thursday, the magistrate judge for the case ruled that we presented the court with extensive evidence against Perfect 10, showing discovery noncompliance, numerous violations of court orders, and pervasive failures by Perfect 10, its attorneys and its witnesses. The court is now in the process of determining the reasonable amount of monetary sanctions and whether these sanctions should be assessed against Perfect 10 and/or its counsel.

We’ve always rejected the veracity of Perfect 10’s allegations and believed strongly in our position. As a result, we forced Perfect 10 to litigate this case on the merits. In November, the court granted us a series of summary judgment decisions on the various copyright claims in the case, rejecting all the different theories and claims that Perfect 10 had asserted. The rulings followed extensive discovery and fact finding.

Perfect 10’s response to our approach was to engage in a pattern of systematic abuse of the discovery process and outright disregard of the court’s orders. We are pleased with the magistrate judge’s ruling and we look forward to the Court’s final determination on monetary sanctions to be assessed. In addition to the recent rulings, the court had previously dismissed Perfect 10’s allegations of trademark infringement, publicity rights violations, and unfair competition. The court also earlier specifically ruled that Perfect 10 had not shown fault in Giganews’ process of handling notifications of claimed infringements or our repeat infringer termination policy.

We’re happy about this win not only for Giganews, but for the good people of Usenet who have enjoyed our services for so many years.

Copies of Thursday’s findings are available here: https://truck.it/p/fogjd4KOcz

VyprVPN app currently not working on iOS 8

Update: A fix is now available for VyprVPN for iOS 8. Please read Golden Frog’s blog post for instructions.

For now, the VyprVPN for iOS app will not work with iOS 8 and can result in your Internet connectivity being temporarily broken. However, even though the app is not working, manual setup still works. If you have a VyprVPN profile installed on your iOS 8 device, first delete your VPN profile and then follow these iOS manual setup instructions for Giganews members.

Golden Frog has a full explanation of the problem and fix on their blog here: http://www.goldenfrog.com/blog/vyprvpn-not-working-with-ios-8

It’s a Gigahoax – Giganews is NOT an FBI Operation

Giganews has always supported the Open Internet and fought for the personal freedoms that the Open Internet enables. Unfortunately, one of those freedoms is the ability for anyone to say almost anything they want, whether or not it is true or factual, and for others to believe it. Yesterday, Giganews was accused of being an FBI operation by an ex-employee through the well-known Cryptome.org. This accusation is completely false, and the accuser offers no evidence to support the claim.

Cryptome’s failure to contact us to validate the allegations or respond to our concerns has lessened their credibility. It does not seem that Cryptome is in search for the truth, which leaves us to question what are their true motives. Sorry, Cryptome – Giganews is NOT an FBI operation. You’ve been duped.

Giganews is in the impossible position of proving a negative. If we say our list of employees does not include any FBI employees, then they must be “using false identities.” If we say the named FBI operatives don’t look like any of our employee photos, “the pictures must have been altered.” Even the denial itself is used as further evidence of the truth of the accusation. In a court of law, such an accusation would never stand up to scrutiny, but on the Open Internet, opinions can be formed by only a few words on a popular website. Fighting the lies only emboldens those who tell them – Feeding the Troll.

What we can do is stand on our long history of supporting the Open Internet and the privacy of our customers:

  • We are one of the few providers left still offering access to a full Usenet news feed
  • We led the way in introducing encrypted SSL connections for Usenet access
  • We worked with Golden Frog to provide the easy-to-use VyprVPN Personal VPN service with our Usenet accounts
  • Giganews customers were the first to get access to Golden Frog’s Dump Truck secure storage service
  • Giganews and Golden Frog brought together those that fight for online privacy at our SXSW Take Back Your Internet Panel.
  • Giganews spoke, just today, before the Texas State Legislature in support of proposed Texas privacy legislation.

Actions speak louder than words, and these are the actions of a company that supports customer privacy and a free and open Internet. Giganews has not and will not be controlled by any government organization, and we will continue to provide the best Usenet service to our customers.