A production company and filmmaker are suing Netflix for $105 million, alleging the streamer lost a stolen drive containing an unencrypted master copy of the unreleased Nicolas Cage film Fortitude, which they claim damage its exclusivity and market value. Netflix denied responsibility for the lost film but said it takes content security seriously and has offered to monitor piracy sites for unauthorized copies. CBS News reports: The complaint filed on Wednesday in California district court alleges that the film's associate producer, Daniel Haido, hand-delivered an unencrypted master copy of the film to Netflix so the company could screen it as a potential buyer. Haido verbally instructed the employee to delete the files after the screening, according to the suit. A little over a week after the screening, Netflix emailed the filmmakers to say the drive had been stolen, the plaintiffs allege. "Someone stole a good amount of drives from our office desks this past week," a Netflix executive wrote in the email, according to the suit.
The complaint notes the movie, entitled "Fortitude," took over seven years to make and cost $45 million. It tells the story of a secret mission called Operation Fortitude during World War II that was orchestrated to mislead the Nazis about the Allied invasion of Europe. The film stars Nicolas Cage as Dusko Popov, a real-life spy during World War II, as well as Sir Ben Kingsley and Ron Perlman.
The plaintiffs said studios will now be dissuaded from buying the rights to the movie, knowing that a version of it could be released by a third party for free. "The film's value depended in significant part on its exclusivity as an unreleased, first-to-market work," the complaint states. "By losing control of the film, Netflix destroyed that exclusivity and materially, if not completely, impaired the film's marketability."
The complaint notes the movie, entitled "Fortitude," took over seven years to make and cost $45 million. It tells the story of a secret mission called Operation Fortitude during World War II that was orchestrated to mislead the Nazis about the Allied invasion of Europe. The film stars Nicolas Cage as Dusko Popov, a real-life spy during World War II, as well as Sir Ben Kingsley and Ron Perlman.
The plaintiffs said studios will now be dissuaded from buying the rights to the movie, knowing that a version of it could be released by a third party for free. "The film's value depended in significant part on its exclusivity as an unreleased, first-to-market work," the complaint states. "By losing control of the film, Netflix destroyed that exclusivity and materially, if not completely, impaired the film's marketability."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Last month, the story broke (alternate link) that Madison Square Garden uses facial recognition software on everyone entering the facility, and—among other groups—flags activists that oppose using facial recognition.
Turns out that the system was shut off for Taylor Swift’s wedding.
Evan Greer—one of the people that MSG alerts on—comments:
Ironically, Swift herself has reportedly used facial recognition at her own concerts to identify stalkers. This “privacy for me, surveillance for thee” attitude feels like a perfect encapsulation of the future we’re already living in: one where wealthy elites can afford privacy, while the rest of us are forced to live in a corporate surveillance panopticon.
Whatever privacy measures Swift had in place for the wedding seems to have worked. No photos have leaked online.
Met deze temperaturen heb je vast wel eens behoefte aan een heerlijk verfrissende duik in het water. Maar pas op! Door het warme weer groeit er op steeds meer plekken in Nederland blauwalg. Rijkwaterstaat adviseert mensen het water eerst even te proeven voordat je erin springt.
“We proberen ieder plekje met stilstaand water nauwkeurig te monitoren, maar soms zien we er wel eens een over het hoofd”, vertelt Hanneke Schoevers van Rijkswaterstaat. “Daarom adviseren wij iedereen: gebruik je verstand, ruik en proef of het water naar bedorven schimmel smaakt. Als dat zo is, duik er niet in.”
Menno (20) uit Meppel wist ternauwernood te voorkomen dat hij tussen deze giftige bacterie plonsde. “Ik vertrouwde die groen-blauwe kleur van de vijver achter ons huis niet. Het stonk ook enorm naar de dood. Toen heb ik een slokje genomen, en inderdaad: blauwalg.”
Vanuit zijn ziekenhuisbed roept Menno iedereen op om netjes de adviezen van Rijkswaterstaat op te volgen. “Ga nou niet met je domme kop een bommetje doen. Zo van ‘het kan heus wel’. Luister gewoon naar de experts. Het kostte mij nu al 5 kilometer kots. Moet je nagaan als ik er in was gesprongen.”
&
Rudakubana, serving life sentence for murders of three girls at dance event in 2024, charged with multiple assaults
The Southport killer Axel Rudakubana, serving life in prison for the murders of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event in 2024, has been charged with assaults on prison staff, police have said.
On 29 July 2024, Rudakubana, then 17, launched a frenzied knife attack in Southport, north-west England, killing Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine.
Continue reading...With run-times hitting three hours, you will probably need to take a bathroom break during this season’s blockbusters. Here’s a handy guide for your urination calculations
• ‘An intermission is a must’: why Greek cinemas are adding a loo break to The Odyssey
You will almost certainly need to urinate during Christopher Nolan’s epic. Do not make the same mistake I did, and sneak off after the big cyclops setpiece. You might assume that the plot will relax after this, but you will be wrong. If your cinema’s toilet is as far from the screen as my cinema’s, you will end up missing most of the Trojan Horse section. Much better would be to cling on until after the horse, because then you’ll only miss the Laestrygonians. These are the giants depicted on the film’s poster but you pretty much get the gist of the scene from the poster anyway.
Continue reading...Labour has regained the lead in polling but the new PM will need to widen his appeal further to win a general election
Andy Burnham has spent his first two weeks as prime minister in a blitz of hyperactivity. Bus fares, business rates, energy bill cuts, defence, Ukraine and devolution – he has been everywhere.
But at his speech on Wednesday at Jewish Care in north London, there was a stark reminder of how much even the most energetic prime minister can cut through.
Continue reading...Playing as recent arrival Lena, your challenges include learning a new language and uncovering family secrets – its developer hopes it will spread ‘a little more compassion’
The cosy house-sorting sim has become a much-loved staple of the PC indie scene. Titles such as Unpacking, A Little to the Left and Momento charm players with their detailed interiors and quiet narratives of lives lived and shared within the same four walls. For Clean Start, Polish developer Serious Sim has taken a different approach – here you play as domestic cleaner, Lena, an immigrant who has arrived in an unspecified western country with little knowledge of the local language, and a family to support back home.
From here, you’re tasked with cleaning a series of houses and apartments, polishing tables, tidying shelves and scrubbing muddy pawprints from kitchen floors. It seems you’re able to rearrange the rooms, giving them a personal feel, which is after all one of the most pleasing elements of the genre. You can also, we are reassured, pet the dog.
Continue reading...In Athens’ picturehouses, an interval is always a ‘non-negotiable’ – a chance to buy a beer, nip to the toilet – or pop the question
• Release schedule: when to wee and when to wait during this summer’s biggest movies
As the lights rose during a recent screening of The Odyssey at the Arian open-air cinema on the Athens riviera, nervous laughter floated into the breeze. Moments earlier, Odysseus’s men had morphed into pigs during a grotesque feeding frenzy fuelled by drugged cheese and wine. Now, as the Bangles’ Eternal Flame played on the house speakers, no one seemed especially tempted by the concession stand’s hotdogs.
This is presumably the sort of scenario Christopher Nolan hoped to avoid when he decided against an intermission in his nearly three-hour-long adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. In the epic’s country of origin, however, directors do not get the final word.
Continue reading...Ben Cohen says his ice cream company has been silenced by corporate ownership – and a boycott of Magnum brands could force a sale
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in the tub is still great, but the brand’s newest chocolate-covered ice cream bar on a stick?
“It ain’t the same,” Ben Cohen, the company co-founder, told the Guardian. Sure, the chocolate coating is still thick enough, but the ice cream itself is “kinda fluffy”, Cohen said – an insult in the ice cream world that suggests extra air was added to cut costs.
Continue reading...Combining grand melodrama with nuanced emotional character, Lucy Duncan and producer Niac’s collaboration sounds both timeless and true
From Hastings, UK
Recommended if you like Mary Margaret O’Hara, Tori Amos, Fiona Apple
Up next Old Feelings EP out now, album to follow later in 2026
The first time listening to Luki feels like a miraculous discovery of something timeless and true, as though they’ve been waiting patiently to be discovered in the noisy maelstrom of contemporary pop music. The collaborative alias of singer/composer Lucy Duncan and producer Niac, Luki write off-kilter showtunes performed as baroque art songs, embodying a seemingly contradictory combination of grand melodrama and nuanced emotional character.
Continue reading...Drought and extreme heat are killing plants, driving up prices while also making some farms economically unviable
“It’s a constant battle,” says Tim Young. He and his family have been tracking the rainfall on their Norfolk farm since 1976, and the data shows the last six years have seen two-thirds the amount of rain compared with previous years. The lack of water has become the number one risk to Young’s business.
This summer has seen record-breaking climate induced heatwaves scorch much of Europe, which combined with droughts and “apocalyptic” wildfires has made farming virtually impossible. France has faced down fires that its president, Emmanuel Macron, called the worst since the second world war and on Wednesday half of England was declared officially in drought, with July expected to be the driest on record after winter floods, according to the Environment Agency. So how are farmers bearing up under the pressure?
Continue reading...Max Porter, Daisy Johnson, Avni Doshi and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments
I recently read Gaining Ground by Joan Barfoot. It’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read about what it means to live with others, or decide not to; what we owe the people we love, the natural world, and ourselves. I also really enjoyed Robert Frost, by Robert Frost and Stacy Skolnik. It’s not that Robert Frost; it’s an itinerant young American Robert Frost who jots down his thoughts and observations on homelessness, food, value, music, drugs, the philosophical wastelands of contemporary life, and Stacy Skolnik has turned them into these delightful, oddly profound, poems. Also, coming soon, End Times Fascism by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. Everyone should read it. It tells us exactly what’s going on.
Continue reading...Small Birds Singing by Matthew Welton; The Channel by Jana Prikryl; Stepmother by Helen Mort; Drunken Driving by Martina Evans
Small Birds Singing by Matthew Welton (Carcanet, £12.99)
Written in unrhymed couplets that shrink and grow across the page like a concertina going through its scales, Welton’s poems focus attention on the city through the seasons: weeds through concrete, wasps emerging from the gaps between bricks, frozen towels on a clothesline, the shadows of jackdaws on a lawn. His gaze is neutral, and it often falls on that which we’d normally turn away from, things slightly out of place, or that disturb our sense of propriety: “more cardboard in the recycling bin / than the recycling bin can contain”. This is a poetry of things, like the poetry of Francis Ponge, but as Welton says: “no thinginess without thought”. Welton’s thoughts – though whether they are his or whether they emerge from his surroundings or from the act of writing itself, it is impossible to say – are couched in deliciously riddling couplets: “it is not the habit of patterns / to emphasise the pattern of habits”. He reminds us forcefully that poetry is all around us and within us, that anything can go in a poem: a sandwich, a desiccated lump of duck shit, the pile of junk left outside a house during a refurbishment. Poems can mirror our world in all its messiness, and in doing so let us see it a little bit better.
The Channel by Jana Prikryl (Faber, £12.99
The casual violence of King Lear, the greed, the bureaucracy, and the indifference to human life, make the play particularly resonant to contemporary audiences. In her fourth collection, Prikryl channels the voice of Cordelia to think back through her own family story of displacement from the Czech Republic. Shakespeare’s Lear becomes “a document of fact / of things that happened and keep happening”, enabling Prikryl to explore her own separation from friends and family and her experiences of migration, where home is nowhere. In Dover Calais a ferry trip to France is meshed with the story of Cordelia’s exile, morphing into an account of a ferry disaster which in turn cuts to a scene where refugees make for shore in small boats: “Waves / unreal, and driving rain, the two-year-old / left face-down on a beach nine years ago / came up for me”. Like the scissored-off hospital undershirt in In the Mould, Prikryl’s language cuts off, ending abruptly: “or was the famous sweetness / of grandmother a bluff / which through and through was too”. This rewiring of the sentence creates dazzling leaps of thought, jumping from refugee camps to Shakespeare’s Fool battling with a tsunami of text messages to dissident window cleaners out of the novels of Milan Kundera to tender moments shared with her father. It’s a bold “stepping out of form” that turns its back on the neatness of the lyric, and by doing so creates a new poetic language which, like the language of Calvino in Invisible Cities, is able to connect everything to everything.
The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world
Continue reading...
Een opvallende ontdekking deze week in een hotel in Dordrecht. Daar vonden de schoonmakers meerdere pinpassen, een creditcard, een rijbewijs en een identiteitskaart in een van de hotelkamers. De namen en de foto's op de passen waren niet hetzelfde als de hotelgast die in de kamer overnachtte.
Een opvallende ontdekking deze week in een hotel in Dordrecht. Daar vonden de schoonmakers meerdere pinpassen, een creditcard, een rijbewijs en een identiteitskaart in een van de hotelkamers. De namen en de foto's op de passen waren niet hetzelfde als de hotelgast die in de kamer had overnacht.
FOTO (ANP) - Infantino, met een hoed waar 'Infantino' op staat
De geloofwaardigheid van Gianni Infantino doet dezer dagen een beetje denken aan de Spaanse grensbewaking. Terwijl de UEFA en de CONCACAF (en de AFC) lieten weten dat ze de plannen van Gianni en zijn 40 rovers om het WK te verkopen verschrikkelijk vinden, kwam de FIFA met een statement waarin eigenlijk staat dat iedereen gek is, behalve de FIFA. Maar nu stapt ook 'senior advisor' Carlos Cordeiro van de FIFA op vanwege de plannen. En zo is Infantino, net als tijdens het WK, toch een beetje die knakker die de klaagt bij de ANWB dat er niet één spookrijder is, maar wel 100. Overigens blijft de UEFA zelf ook een smerige corrupte club is die het voetbal en zijn ouwe moer maar al te gouw voor een paar grijpstuivers in de aanbieding doet. Maar goed, nu Arne Slot toch geen bondscoach wordt zou zo'n boycot ons helemaal niet slecht uitkomen eigenlijk. Zin in gewoon een lekker wedstrijdje NAC-VVV binnenkort.
Social
peaceful-jp-scenery has added a photo to the pool:
Akihabara
秋葉原
And Akihabara was close, too.
そして、秋葉原も近かったです。
Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, Japan