“Offensive Content” nonsense clauses in websites terms of service piss me off!

So for a few years I’ve been posting music to my soundcloud account, mostly extreme metal I write for two solo artist of mine. As of late, a theme has popped into my lyrics, a not-so-clean theme that I don’t normally write about, wanking. But since I am massively pro-wanking(tm) I decided to write 2 songs about it. So I uploaded one, not realizing, that soundcloud’s terms of service say you can’t do that, your content cannot be sexually explicit…. WTF! Here is the exact text from the terms and services section:

 

“Representations and Warranties

 

You hereby represent and warrant to SoundCloud as follows:

(i) Your Content, and each and every part thereof, is an original work by you, or you have obtained all rights, licences, consents and permissions necessary in order to use, and (if and where relevant) to authorise SoundCloud to use, Your Content pursuant to these Terms of Use, including, without limitation, the right to upload, reproduce, store, transmit, distribute, share, publicly display, publicly perform, make available and otherwise communicate to the public Your Content, and each and every part thereof, on, through or via the Website, any and all Services and any Linked Services.

(ii) Your Content and the availability thereof on the Platform does not and will not infringe or violate the rights of any third party, including, without limitation, any intellectual property rights, performers’ rights, rights of privacy or publicity, or rights in confidential information.

(iii) You have obtained any and all necessary consents, permissions and/or releases from any and all persons appearing in Your Content in order to include their name, voice, performance or likeness in Your Content and to publish the same on the Platform and via any Linked Services.

(iv) Your Content, including any comments that you may post on the Website, is not and will not be unlawful, offensive, abusive, libellous, defamatory, obscene, racist, sexually explicit, ethnically or culturally offensive, indecent, will not promote violence, terrorism, or illegal acts, or incite hatred on grounds of race, gender, religion or sexual orientation.

(v) Your Content does not and will not create any liability on the part of SoundCloud, its subsidiaries, affiliates, successors, and assigns, and their respective employees, agents, directors, officers and/or shareholders.

SoundCloud reserves the right to remove Your Content, suspend or terminate your access to the Platform and/or pursue all legal remedies if we believe that any of Your Content breaches any of the foregoing representations or warranties, or otherwise infringes another person’s rights or violates any law, rule or regulation.”

 

Look at part 4 above:

 

“Your Content, including any comments that you may post on the Website, is not and will not be unlawful, offensive, abusive, libellous, defamatory, obscene, racist, sexually explicit, ethnically or culturally offensive, indecent, will not promote violence, terrorism, or illegal acts, or incite hatred on grounds of race, gender, religion or sexual orientation.”

 

So basically they are not allowing people to upload merely offensive content of any kind. Define offensive? Some lyrics I write might offend the idiots out there? In fact you can say that any content can be offensive, because there will always be someone who will find it offensive.

 

Notice that it also outlaws “culturally offensive content”. WTF! Define culturally offensive? That is a complete subjective statement. Someone can find a song’s lyrics about zombies eating babies to be offensive or “culturally offensive”. It’s stupid, vague and idiotic that that, sexually explicit, obscene and indecent content are not allowed…… They are vague, subjective content definitions that all require the person ‘offended’ by them to find them offensive for it to be any of those….. Not objective. Is our country and our Internet such a nanny state now that offensive content has to be gotten rid of… For the children? WTF!

 

 

Also, what the fuck is the problem with sexually explicit  content? Both youtube and Soundcloud block this stuff and it’s completely normal and natural. Yet in this world it’s horribly offensive to even mention any kind of sexual content in lyrics. It’s like ‘all mentions of sex = bad for a children’s mind so we need to get rid of it’.  It’s stupid.

 

It’s really lucky of me to upload the music lyrics I do which can fit into some of these categories and not be deleted yet. I have had some suspicious problems with my soundcloud accounts in the past so maybe. I wish soundcloud would get rid of the ‘offensive’,’abusive’,’culturally offensive’,’obscene’,and ‘indecent’ clauses.  It isn’t needed. People offended by lyrics can put them in categories like this to get them taken down and that is NOT the way the Internet should work.

 

I’m not happy about this. This crap should not be on the Internet at all. Subjective content restrictions need to be Gotten rid of, completely. They don’t do anything positive. They just prevent people from being offended. It’s like accidentally or purposely offending people is a crime now. It shouldn’t be. Guess what folks…. you have the right to be offended. You have no right whatsoever to be shielded from offensive content because that’s fucking stupid. End of story.

 

 

 

The following corporations are all for the TPP treaty…

Image via CrunchBase

I am Doing some research on the trans-pacific partnership treaty which would force the US to adopt copyright laws that allow the government to abuse copyright law like no other. The TPP would make the government able to take internet communications which all ISPS would be required to collect by spying on customers to allow the government to find “alleged” copyright infringement, and simply make one accusation of infringement, by saying “this site is filled with pirated links”, without proof, and then force ISPS to tell the copyright holder, force intermediaries like google to shut down the sites in question, and would also penalize temporary copies (think youtube buffer copies) as infringement as well. The spying (deep packet inspection), would be used to frivolously find such buffer copies and then accuse anyone watching any video with anything copyrighted in them with criminal infringement for simply watching the video! Basically this allows the government to legalize censorship of/frivolous lawsuits directed at  any site they see one accusation of infringement on (99% of the internet), or any site the government accuses of infringement based on the fact that they don’t have to prove links on the site infringe. That would be enough to get you arrested and sued under TPP!! One FALSE accusation. According to this site (found while researching TPP), all these  groups/corporations/whatever all lobbied for the TPP, which could be used to take down 99% of the cool parts of the internet, including gaming websites (planetquake,etc), modding sites (moddb, ANY site that hosts mods that have one accusation of infringement), youtube, amazon mp3, internet radio (pandora, etc), indie music sites (soundcloud, reverbnation, etc), and blogging hosts and social networks. It’s scary how the language could be used to censor the internet for “alleged” infringement.

As a consumer, simply complaining to the government and signing petitions, isn’t enough. IMHO. I am considering not buying anything from these groups  until (A) The TPP removes the temporary copies section to prevent buffer copies to be used in frivolous lawsuits takedowns of people who simply watch youtube videos of something that is allegedly infringement (there is a LOT of fraudulent youtube copyright claims especially to lets players, because content ID doesn’t require proof of copyright)  (B) removes the section that says the government doesn’t have to name every “infringing” link without proof of any kind for the ISP to take down the site and replaces it with direct confirmation from the copyright holder with proof of his copyright before the government forces the ISPS to remove said site (C) adds a section that requires a court order with proof of infringement included before the ISP can give deep packet inspection results to the government to find “alleged” infringement (D) Removes the section that mandates that copyright infringement for no profit is criminal infringement.  (E) Enacts Stiff penalties and jail time for falsely accusing someone of infringement, even if it was by accident, to be paid by both the government and the copyright holder.  If none of these changes happen or the US government even attempts to pass these provisions as  law without these changes I shall do everything in my ability to tell people who feel like they could be targeted under the buffer copies BS section for fraudulent infringement,  how to fool deep packet inspection using free plugins for browsers that are easily downloaded.  I already know how. Even if some of the corporations/etc on the list below didn’t lobby for the TPP for it’s IP chapter, It’s still a bad thing to lobby for something like this, and I still don’t really want to buy from them.

Corporations (how many times they lobbied for TPP)

Dow Chemical 12
Dairy Farmers of America 11
Generic Pharmaceutical Assn 11
News Corp 7
Biogen Idec 7
American Automotive Policy Council 7
Milliken & Co 6
Ann Taylor 6
Libbey Inc 6
Boilermakers Union 6
Abbott Laboratories 6
Communications Workers of America 6
Corning Inc 5
Cascade Designs 5
Gildan 5
Alliance for American Manufacturing 5
Footwear Distribs & Retailers of America 5
National Milk Producers Federation 5
McWane Inc 5
Net Coalition 4
Computer & Communications Industry Assn 4
Retail Industry Leaders Assn 4
Biotechnology Industry Organization 4
American Iron & Steel Institute 4
American Manufacturing Trade Action Cltn 4
Fiat SPA 4
National Amusements Inc 4
Express Scripts 4
Prudential Financial 3
International Longshoremens Assn 3
Herbalife International 3
American Farm Bureau 3
Library Copyright Alliance 3
Oceana 3
American Frozen Food Institute 3
Outdoor Industry Assn 3
USA Rice Federation 3
American Assn of Exporters & Importers 3
Homer Laughlin China Co 2
Technology Assn of America 2
National Corn Growers Assn 2
Campbell Soup 2
Animal Health Institute 2
Tyco Electronics 2
American Academy of Family Physicians 2
National Cattlemen’s Beef Assn 2
Cargill Inc 2
Tyson Foods 2
General Electric 2
American Fedn of St/Cnty/Munic Employees 1
Pharmaceutical Rsrch & Mfrs of America 1
Burlington Industries 1
Dell Inc 1
IBM Corp 1
Intel Corp 1
Public Citizen 1
Society of Chemical Manufacturers & Affl 1
Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids 1
Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund 1
NETWORK 1
New York Farm Bureau Federation 1
Illinois Agricultural Assn 1
Visa Inc 1
Nucor Corp 1

(there are others on the site I got this from, but naming them puts me in risk for a “libel” lawsuit, so I am not naming them here)

Sites possibly effected by TPP:

Amazon
Youtube
Facebook
Moddb
Itunes
3dgamers archive
ANY and All of the following gaming sites:
Seriously
Duke4ever
Doomworld
TESNexus
Doom3world
Fallout3nexus
Planethalflife
Func-Messgboard (look it up)
Quaddicted
Unrealsp.org
Beyondunreal.com
Payne Reactor
Planet Deus Ex
The Admirals Command Chamber
Tenfourmaps.telefragged.com
Underworldfans quake review site
Darkplaces
Zdoom.org
Gzdoom website
D2x-xl
Kmquake2
Prboomplus
Doom Legacy
DarkXL
DukePlus
Eduke32 website
Reverbnation
Purevolume
Soundcloud
4Shared
Myspace Music
Myspace
4Shared
Dropbox
FileFront/Gamefront
Atomic Gamer
Rapidshare
4Filehosting.com
Completegamer.net
Mediafire.com
Sendspace.com
Vimeo.com
Zippyshare.com
Blogspot
Wordpress

UPDATE:

Recently the Openmedia group emailed me with this link, it’s a form to email the supporters/drafters of the Trans-Pacific partnership with your concerns. They will display your posts on a wall when they get invited to the next meeting on sep 6-15. I already filled in mine, to give them my 2 cents, I suggest you do the same.  I signed up with them for updates send to my email, that’s how I got the link. Pretty lucky I did. Imagine the backlash when dozens of people email these people with what they all think. It could change the mind of the people and supporters “who are on the fence”, especially people who support video streaming sites, gaming sites, internet radio, etc. If you post the form, make sure to mention how it could be used to take down sites fraudulently, without proof by the government, how it could be used to arrest online video viewers for simply watching a allegedly copyrighted video on a video streaming site because of the temporary copies clause, and also mention how the links that are infringing don’t have to be mentioned all by name, just the assurance of the gov’t that the site has a lot of “infringing links”. It’s important that you don’t actually mention any sites I think could be affected by name,  like “youtube.com” or similar. You don’t want to give them ammo to go after such sites if it goes the way they want.

Related articles

• The trans pacific partnerships threat to file hosting sites… (erosionoffreedom.wordpress.com)
• Trans-pacific Partnership’s corruption exposed….. (erosionoffreedom.wordpress.com)
• TPP’s threat to streaming video/music, and what we can do about it… (erosionoffreedom.wordpress.com)
• Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership is so dangerous to the modern PC user…. (erosionoffreedom.wordpress.com)
• File sharing infringement notice fee to stay at $25 (computerworld.co.nz)
• Enter Sopa X10 – The TPP, and Why it should be stopped (erosionoffreedom.wordpress.com)
• Copyright Tribunal going after alleged music pirates (radionz.co.nz)
• Avast, ye file sharers! Is Internet piracy dead? (oup.com)
• Breaking News! Hugo Awards Live Stream Shut Down Due to Copyright Infringement (graphicpolicy.com)
• LEAKED! TPP: the Son of ACTA will oblige America and other countries to throw out privacy, free speech and due process for easier copyright enforcement (boingboing.net)

The trans pacific partnerships threat to file hosting sites…

Image via CrunchBase

Right now, the US and 8 other countries are all negotiating a secret treaty, the “trans-pacific partnership agreement” (or TPP) behind the backs of the congress that according to a recent leak, would force each country who ratifies this faux treaty to pass extreme draconian “copyright” laws that will make the government able to read private data gotten by ISPS and see what stuff among this could be copyright infringement, and without any proof, simply make one claim of infringing links, and then force the ISPs to shut down the persons net connection and tell the copyright holder the government claimed the transmission/site infringed on, then force google/etc to remove the sites in question and filter them out from search results, basically giving the gov’t free reign to shut down anything and give copyright holders free reign to make millions of money off of frivolous lawsuits. Even worse, infringement of “temporary” copies (like buffer copies of youtube videos) are considered infringement under this, and even not making any money off of said “infringement” makes a person liable for criminal infringement under this. So basically simply watching a youtube video could get you arrested under this for copyright infringement, because watching one video that is copyrighted puts 1000’s of temporary copies on your HDD and the ISPS would catch this and find you guilty of infringement due to “downloading illegal copies”. What trash….

I mentioned in one of my latest articles about TPP, how Megaupload was shut down and my files, all video game mods, not infringing in any way, were all deleted.  It seems that TPP, which is being negotiated in secret in Leesburg VA, from SEP 6 to 15, could be used to shut down more sites like megaupload, which there are tons of…. And every single one is targeted by the copyright moguls as “piracy sites”, with claims of how each and everyone of these sites are profiting off of piracy, even though many of these sites have disclaimers that they are against piracy and will delete copyrighted files. And many of them do.

The Problem is that many of these sites have a “Premium” account that supports more file size for a price paid per month, usually from 30 to 100 dollars depending on the premium accounts size increase over the free account. Usually multiple premium account types exist with more of a price and more file size allowed. The problem is that none of the pirated files are uploaded to these premium accounts, at all. Pirates split their archives into 200 different copies all around 30 MB or so, to fit them on the free account, but to also make it so the person trying to illegally download them will have to download 200 files by clicking 200 links that all will open in new windows, why?

Pirate sites are almost always virus infected, the serious ones. And if they aren’t they require clicking on (virus filled) ad links that are to get access to the download links. The more time a pirated file downloader spends on the pirate site the more likely his PC will get infected to send out spam.  The problem is that file upload sites like megaupload cannot possibly profit off of files uploaded to their free account. The ads found on these sites fill the sites and no matter how “legal” a file you are downloading is, you will still get ads. Their profiting off the ads, but the crazy allegation that megaupload and others are “profiting off piracy”, is BS, plain and simple. The pirates don’t even have to pay more money to host their files, and don’t even want to do that. They make their money off of Spam/Virus related crap, and don’t want to have to pay more money to upload.

Now onto megaupload’s takedown. I had perfectly legal files on that site, all video game mods I was distributing on a video game modding blog, none of them were infringing, yet the copyright moguls and the executive branch morons dare to take it down and possibly “investigate” my files? Since the megaupload take down and investigation was done in complete secrecy by morons in the executive branch who refuse multiple requests by EFF and others to return files to their legal owners, who didn’t infringe, I have no way of knowing if my files are among them…. They deserve the crap they get out of this, Simply uploading to any file uploading site puts us legal uploaders in the crosshairs… you use megaupload, you’re a pirate, it’s that simple, they all think that…

It’s no surprise, that simply uploading to one of these sites gets a “pirate crosshair” (suspicion of piracy) put on you, due to this article. A big industry advertiser, GroupM, sets up ads for the music industry on other sites, apparently, hiring others to do the real work involved (correct me If I am wrong). They posted a massive, thousands of entries long, list of sites they forbid advertising to, due to the sites being “pirate sites”.  Surprise!!!!, every single fire hosting site you can think of is on this list, rapidshare, megaupload, zippyshare, filestube, dropbox (who has a policy against uploading copyrighted files), 4shared, sendspace, mediafire,  and even worse, filefront, telefragged, and soundcloud!!!! All of them besides the last 3 have had some pirated files on them, and that’s only a reality of free file hosting sites, the more files get uploaded, the more likely someone will post something “infringing” or “allegedly infringing”.

The real issue is that filefront, a gaming file hosting site is on this list. Filefront has absolutely NO infringing files on it, by default it can’t… All it does is host game demos, mods, addon levels, patches, editing utilities, all legal files related to video games.  Telefragged.com is a huge host for video game fan sites, all large in size, such as planetquake, any planet(instert game name here).com site, there are over 15 of them, planethalflife, planetdeusex, planetdoom, planet-you-name-it. Each one of these hosts dozens of dozens of other sites, many of them modding sites. Since modding involves distributing assets from the parent game with the mod to make it work, in certain cases, the chance that TPP will not be used to shut down one of these big sites is almost nonexistant. The infringing content on the mod site, really is on the big parent site, making that big parent site get taken down. Since that big parent site is really a subsite of telefragged.com, the request would move up the chain to telefragged, taking down ALL of these sites for copyright infringement under TPP, due to the “alledged” copyright infringement.  Then comes sites like 3dgamers archives which host thousands of levels for many many games, totalling in the millions for all games combined, plus mods. You get the same problem. There is not a single game out there that doesn’t have one mod that re-destributes content from the parent game, getting all of 3dgamers archive shut down. There goes every single brilliant doom megawad ever made due to one claim of copyright infringement on the whole site based on one mod for some completely different games. This isn’t even factoring in mods that take stuff from other games, which are quite common. You add in that and you get an overwhelming guarantee that the site will get shut down due to a copyright complaint.

Then you have soundcloud, a place where indie artists share their music with fans. It allows downloads in mp3 format, and since many people stupidly assume that mp3 = must be pirated, it won’t be long before it gets shut down too. Like I said in the previous article, this could affect DOZENS of popular gaming, file upload, video sharing, indie music, and internet radio sites. The real problem is that GroupM either purposely or accidentally put telefragged.com, soundcloud.com,  and filefront.com on their blacklist. I can’t see how these inclusions on their list can be an accident, with the exception of filefront, because many other sites on their list had file as their beginning, they thought filefront was just another megaupload. But that simply cannot explain why telefragged and soundcloud got on the list accidentally. In My honest opinion the fact telefragged and soundcloud are one there is proof, to me, that the copyright moguls are going after game modding sites and indie music sites as well as true infringement sites, to erroneously claim they are all infringing. They need laws like SOPA/TPP to do this because under TPP, the gov’t doesn’t need to list every infringing link separately, just simply say any site is filled with infringing links, without proof, to make it so the ISP is forced to shut down the person who made the site, from the net, and to force Google/etc to filter it out and take down the site.

If the threat the TPP poses to sites like this doesn’t scare you, then maybe the threat it poses to youtube and amazon might scare you even more. Either way, we have a law being forced down on the congress via a bogus treaty, that could be abused even more than SOPA could if it got passed, on a global scale, to take down many, many sites, for “alleged” copyright infringement. You could get every single site that the govt accuses of having infringing links on it, taken offline, their owners arrested and sued, all behind the copyright holders back, millions of millions of people being arrested and sued  for merely watching youtube videos that have one thing the government says is copyright infringing, due to temporary copies being found on their hard drive by packet sniffing (deep packet inspection), which would be required to be done by ISPS to hunt for internet traffic that the government may find infringing, and all of this is being done behind the congresses back, the supreme court is being usurped, with no say on how constitutional this is, just for more money by copyright moguls? It isn’t right… Someone has to do some serious standing up to this. On openmedia.org there is a petition with over 100,000 signatures. If you think you could be affected by this, sign the petition. It’s being taken to the supporters at the next secret meeting in VA between Sep 6 and 15 as a protest by openmedia.  Also make sure to visit eff’s page to click one button and tell your Rep’s and Senators how you feel about this. Send your own custom message to tell them how much of the internet is in danger from this, mentioning how innocent sites such as gaming, file hosting, video sharing, indie music, and internet radio sites could all be shut down under this law for merely being accused of infringement, without proof, and that temporary copies found on people computers when viewing a video could get them in trouble with the law for copyright infringement simply because the government claimed the video is infringing and that they were purposely downloading the temporary copies, just by one allegation!!!  It’s important that citizens stand up to this and use the government rights to tell our congressmen we have to protest crap like this. If there is no fight, this will pass. Do you really want to be sued for $22,500,000 for simply watching a video? It could happen to you if you don’t take part in this. It’s a scary world, and it only gets scarier.

Sites that could be effected by this (printed out in each of the articles I write on TPP)

Amazon
Youtube
Facebook
Moddb
Itunes
3dgamers archive
ANY and All of the following gaming sites:
Seriously
Duke4ever
Doomworld
TESNexus
Doom3world
Fallout3nexus
Planethalflife
Func-Messgboard (look it up)
Quaddicted
Unrealsp.org
Beyondunreal.com
Payne Reactor
Planet Deus Ex
The Admirals Command Chamber
Tenfourmaps.telefragged.com
Underworldfans quake review site
Darkplaces
Zdoom.org
Gzdoom website
D2x-xl
Kmquake2
Prboomplus
Doom Legacy
DarkXL
DukePlus
Eduke32 website
Reverbnation
Purevolume
Soundcloud
4Shared
Myspace Music
Myspace
4Shared
Dropbox
FileFront/Gamefront
Atomic Gamer
Rapidshare
4Filehosting.com
Completegamer.net
Mediafire.com
Sendspace.com
Vimeo.com
Zippyshare.com
Blogspot
Wordpress

Related articles

• Enter Sopa X10 – The TPP, and Why it should be stopped (erosionoffreedom.wordpress.com)
• Trans-pacific Partnership’s corruption exposed….. (erosionoffreedom.wordpress.com)
• TPP’s threat to streaming video/music, and what we can do about it… (erosionoffreedom.wordpress.com)
• MediaFire with 50 Gigabyte free cloud storage, desktop client (ghacks.net)
• What Google’s New Stance on Copyright Infringement Means to Your Business (news.terra.com)

Trans-pacific Partnership’s corruption exposed…..

I’ve been writing about TPP here for the last few days, because In My Opinion, THIS is the big threat to the internet that SOPA wishes it was. For the people who haven’t read any of my posts and don’t know about this at all, TPP is a secret treaty being negotiated by 9 countries (including the US), that is being used to secretly pass downright stupid copyright infringement laws that will end up being abused like no other to take down sites the government finds “infringing”, that’s right, the copyright holder doesn’t have to complain, it’s the governments call, and even scarier according to this site, the government has to simply say the site has infringing links, without proof, without direct specification of which links are actually infringing and the ISPS will be forced to take it down, the person will be forced into jail, will probably be sued too,  because now the ISPS’s will be forced to tell copyright holders the names of anyone found guilty under the proposed legislation of copyright infringement, on the sole account of the government saying “this site infringes, these are the links, etc”. Only that. NO PROOF REQUIRED…

The site goes into the differences between the proposed legislation and the current US copyright law. Among other things, the current copyright law refuses to penalize people for infringing on copyright based on temporary buffer copies PC’s and other devices make, criminal copyright infringement requires at last $1000 dollars to be made with the illegal copies, while TPP would assume ALL copyright infringement is criminal, regardless of how much money is made, so therefore people infringing on copyright who do not make money off of it would all be guilty of criminal infringement under the TPP! It only gets scarier when you read some of the leaked text from the TPP leaked document, that the site linked above shows to see how draconian and corrupt the TPA really is…

“Each Party shall provide that in civil judicial proceedings . . . (b) its judicial authorities shall have the authority to order that materials and implements that have been used in the manufacture or creation of such pirated or counterfeit goods be, without compensation of any sort, promptly destroyed or, in exceptional circumstances, without compensation of any sort, disposed of outside the channels of commerce in such a manner as to minimize the risks of further infringements . . . .”

This text basically says if someone is found guilty under TPP of “criminal infringement” (aka simply any kind of infringement under TPP), and their PC was used to “create” the infringement, the “judiciary authorities” would be forced to “destroy” their PC, to “minimize future infringements”, from that person. Now if the person is uploading illegal music/movies/whatever, that’s one thing. But the TPP also illegalizes any ALLEGED infringement from both permanent and temporary copies. Anyone viewing a video on youtube that is simply alleged to be infringing by the government would end up getting the temporary copies put on their pc. They would get their PC destroyed to “minimize future infringement”. See where this is going?

“Willful copyright or related rights piracy on a commercial scale includes: (a) significant willful copyright or related rights infringements that have no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain . . . .”

This makes it so even if an infringer doesn’t make money off the “infringement” he still is guilty of “Criminal Infringement”.

“. . . that its judicial authorities shall have the authority to order, among other measures, the forfeiture of any assets traceable to the infringing activity, and shall order such forfeiture at least in cases of trademark counterfeiting . . . .”

Lets say some video or some other site online is ACCUSED of infringement. If someone uses anything from that site/video to make something else, the government has the right to destroy that site/video too!

“. . . that its authorities may initiate legal action ex officio with respect to the offenses described in this Chapter, without the need for a formal complaint by a private party or right holder.”

The copyright holder does not have to publicly accuse the infringer. It’s the governments call to what is infringing, and they can “initiate legal action” for whatever reason they want whatsoever. This is free grounds for the government to accuse anyone of infringement without proof from the copyright holder…

“The TPP does not include a limitation on liability of nonprofit educational institutions, as § 512(e) does.”

Anything found infringing, created by a “non-profit educational institution”, would be treated as criminal infringement. Under copyright law there is a limitation on liability which prevents such institutions from being accused of this due to “educational value”. This would illegalize any infringement that is used for such value such as, video game commentary (!)/lets plays/ etc, news broadcasts, video game review, software reviews, etc.

“In the case of notices regarding an information location tool pursuant to paragraph (b)(i)(D) of Article 16.3, the information provided must be reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the reference or link residing on a system or network controlled or operated by or for it, except that in the case of a notice regarding a substantial number of references or links at a single online site residing on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, a representative list of such references or links at the site may be provided, if accompanied by information sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the references or links.”

Under the TPP, if the government merely claims a site has a lot of infringing links, that’s enough proof for them. Under current copyright law, the accuser has to prove what links are infringing. This allows TPP to be used for widespread frivolous attacks on anything the government deems infringing, without any proof whatsoever.  In the last article I posted, the sheer amount of youtube video’s that could be merely accused of copyright infringement is quite high.  It includes far more than infringing music uploads…

“Video game commentary, Video game reviews, Video game walkthroughs, Lets plays, video’s of mods for video games especially ones that include content from other games, their are tons of that,  videos of video games that have background music that just HAPPENS to be copyrighted by someone, video’s showing live performances of bands or videos of bands, even if those videos are uploaded by the BANDS OWN LABEL, behind the scenes videos of bands in the studio that play the tracks after being recorded, even though they are uploaded by the BANDS own label, advertisements for any site that hosts indie music, indie music directly uploaded to youtube by the ARTISTS THEMSELVES, indie music uploaded by an artist separately from their own indie hosting site (think reverbnation) not knowing that reverbnation/etc,  happened to copyright it,  clips from TV shows, even ones uploaded with the copyright holders permission, TV shows uploaded with permission, any video where the permission has been secured to upload it,  and any video someone claims fraudulent copyright on, without actually owning the copyright!”

That’s a lot the government can take down with TPP, without having to prove anything. Youtube video links count as links under the TPP, and all the government has to do is merely claim youtube is filled with infringing links and that will be grounded to take them down.

“Without prejudice to Articles 11(1)(ii), 11bis(1)(i) and (ii), 11ter(1)(ii), 14(1)(ii), and 14bis(1) of the Berne Convention, each Party shall provide to authors the exclusive right to authorize or prohibit the communication to the public of their works, by wire or wireless means, including the making available to the public of their works in such a way that members of the public may access these works from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.”

Under this, any site that has any link to something allegedly infringing, that allows people to view them whenever they want, can be blocked by copyright holders if they own the copyright. This is not limited to Youtube (obviously), Any site that links to any content hosted on any of the constantly called infringing hosting sites such as 4shared, amazon MP3 which allows people to purchase digitally mp3 music any time they want, which counts as ” making available to the public of their works in such a way that members of the public may access these works from a place and at a time individually chosen by them”, any and all game modding sites, they also count under this, basically any site that hosts content that someone thinks is infringing and allows access to free downloading.

Now… I looked up more info on the TPP, and wondered who was lobbying for this pile of crap law. I thought everyone’s favorite music industry representative would be on the list but they arent. MPAA is, however, surprisingly so is the ESA, the entertainment software association and many other tech groups, including Yahoo!. The list is on this site.  Under the TPP ANY of the following sites could be taken down…

Amazon
Youtube
Facebook
Moddb
Itunes
3dgamers archive
ANY and All of the following gaming sites:
Seriously
Duke4ever
Doomworld
TESNexus
Doom3world
Fallout3nexus
Planethalflife
Func-Messgboard (look it up)
Quaddicted
Unrealsp.org
Beyondunreal.com
Payne Reactor
Planet Deus Ex
The Admirals Command Chamber
Tenfourmaps.telefragged.com
Underworldfans quake review site
Darkplaces
Zdoom.org
Gzdoom website
D2x-xl
Kmquake2
Prboomplus
Doom Legacy
DarkXL
DukePlus
Eduke32 website
Reverbnation
Purevolume
Soundcloud
4Shared
Myspace Music
Myspace
4Shared
Dropbox
FileFront/Gamefront
Atomic Gamer
Rapidshare
4Filehosting.com
Completegamer.net
Mediafire.com
Sendspace.com
Vimeo.com
Zippyshare.com
Blogspot
Wordpress

If you are a fan of any of these sites, I highly suggest you talk to your congressmen about this treaty, being legislated behind their backs, circumventing the supreme court, for the sole purpose of government led

TPP FTA (TPPA): Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement Subordinates Nations (And People) To Corporations (Photo credit: watchingfrogsboil)

witch hunts against anyone they claim is copyright infringing. You do this with one click of a button at this site.

Related articles

• TPP’s threat to streaming video/music, and what we can do about it… (erosionoffreedom.wordpress.com)
• Google To Crack Whip On Copyright Infringement Sites (valuewalk.com)
• Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership is so dangerous to the modern PC user…. (erosionoffreedom.wordpress.com)
• Enter Sopa X10 – The TPP, and Why it should be stopped (erosionoffreedom.wordpress.com)
• Skynet Police – The Infringement Wars (beanstalk-inc.com)
• Trans Pacific Partnership: SOPA through the back door? (ivpn.net)
• OpenMedia Comes out Swinging against TPP Treaty (in Mediacheck) (thetyee.ca)
• State of the Web: Will U.S. Internet users rally against the TPP? Not likely (digitaltrends.com)

TPP’s threat to streaming video/music, and what we can do about it…

I’ve been writing about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) for a few days. Basically TPP is a huge and secret treaty among “pacific” countries that would force them all to incorporate extreme, unfair and downright stupid copyright laws, not limited to forcing internet intermediaries (google, etc) to filter and block any content accused of “alleged” copyright infringement (aka no proof needed), as well as ISP’s having to shut down access to the people accused and forcing the ISP’s to tell the copyright holders about any of these people accused of “alleged” copyright infringement.

To make things worse, as I mentioned in the previous article, temporary copies found on people’s computers would be enough to make someone liable for copyright infringement, if found by “deep pack inspection”, a technique ISPS would be forced to use to find these temporary copies, which are downloaded in the thousands everytime someone watches 1 youtube video, listens to 1 streamed song off of sites like  soundcloud, reverbnation, purevolume, etc, all specializing in hosting indie music artists music.  The content doesn’t even HAVE to be infringing any copyright for the holder to take action, remember how many fraudulent content ID claims youtube allows, because youtube does not require proof the copyright holder actually holds the copyright! If TPP and the necessary Copyright laws pass this will only increase, by the thousands! Now let me tell you how easy it would be for temporary copies of an infringing work to get onto someones hard drive WITHOUT them actually downloading them…..

Hypothetical situation A:

Some bar is blasting pop music.  The bar’s radio station of choice has the right to play the music. Some guy happens to be walking outside filming himself going to the bar, for some other reason. The music ends up on his video. He uploads it to youtube.  The video is immediately marketed on google like all youtube video’s are, by making it go into the search results.  Someone finds the video. He watches it on his PC. Without his knowledge, around 1000+ temporary copies are created PER viewer, that don’t go away till the viewers clear their cache. And even if they do clear the cache, the damage has been done. Deep packet inspection would have found them the instant they are downloaded, because deep packet inspection involves looking at everything someone downloads with extreme scrutiny while the packets are moving from the youtube site to the person viewing it.  The ISPS would be legally forced to copy these packets and look at them closely to find out if a “temporary” copy is inside any of them and if it’s infringing.  IF The infringing song is found in the packets, the person is then liable for copyright infringement, even though he didn’t actually steal anything!

Hypothetical Situation B:

Repeat the above scenario with the following changes.  The video’ audio is cut out and replaced with a song the person happens to like. Now the person uploading IS guilty of copyright infringement. But that’s not the point. The song is popular and makes the video even more popular. 90% of the viewers don’t know of the song, but every single one of these viewers has 1000+ of these “temporary” copies on their hard drive. And because of the deep packet inspection, each and every one of these viewers, even ones who accidentally viewed the video when youtube automatically played it in part of a playlist due to an error or on purpose, are all guilty of 1000+ counts of copyright infringement under TPP!

Now to examine the damages the people would be facing looking at the latest RIAA case:

The defendant of the latest RIAA case was forced to pay $22,500 dollars PER song downloaded when he only downloaded 30 songs illegally that were only worth $0.99 per song originally. Imagine this number multiplied by 1000 or more, It gets SCARY, Scary like in $22,500,500 per defendant for merely VIEWING a video! In a court case where the entire viewership are co-defendants of eachother (assuming the video gets 100,000 views), that adds up to $2,250,000,000,000 in damages!

If you think the lawsuit bringer would not stoop too that level, you are wrong… RIAA already made the defendant of the case pay $675,000 for 30 songs! If the persons involved show the video starts showing off the video to people on his PC, that number increases even more, lets say he shows the video to 10 friends, that number becomes $225,000,000 for that defendant!!!!

The bar, the uploader, AND youtube would probably  ALL be liable under TPP for ALLOWING infringement as well. The bar allowed someone to copy a song off the radio, don’t think for a second the lawsuit bringer won’t prosecute them.  The original poster even if he didn’t put the song in the video on purpose, would STILL be held liable for allowing copies to be distributed in HIS video, even if the song was “accidentally” played in the video. Now to get to youtube.

Youtube has the reputation as the worst place on the internet, besides warez, where copyrighted material is available, and many people mistakenly believe that youtube profits off of piracy… Why? Their content ID system, which was set up to alert copyright holders to unauthorized infringers uploading their copyrighted works, allows the holders to upload samples of their copyrighted works (without proof), and gives them the option to either take down video’s matching it, or to put ads in the video’s. When people see ads in video’s and they see infringement in the video’s they think youtube are trying to profit off of this, but they aren’t. The Copyright holders are, because it’s THEIR choice not youtube…

Even if you think youtube’s copyrighted works only amount to tv show clips and music pirated as video’s you are in for a shock to what things could generate “alleged” copyright claims on youtube and what does. The following types of videos are considered infringing by someone, not necessarily the movie and music industry:

Video game commentary, Video game reviews, Video game walkthroughs, Lets plays, video’s of mods for video games especially ones that include content from other games, their are tons of that,  videos of video games that have background music that just HAPPENS to be copyrighted by someone, video’s showing live performances of bands or videos of bands, even if those videos are uploaded by the BANDS OWN LABEL, behind the scenes videos of bands in the studio that play the tracks after being recorded, even though they are uploaded by the BANDS own label, advertisements for any site that hosts indie music, indie music directly uploaded to youtube by the ARTISTS THEMSELVES, indie music uploaded by an artist separately from their own indie hosting site (think reverbnation) not knowing that reverbnation/etc,  happened to copyright it,  clips from TV shows, even ones uploaded with the copyright holders permission, TV shows uploaded with permission, any video where the permission has been secured to upload it,  and any video someone claims fraudulent copyright on, without actually owning the copyright!

The sheer amount of video’s where alleged infringement could occur is about 99.9% of youtube video’s then. Even if some of these were not even infringing in the first place, the temporary copies found on the Hard drive of all the viewers would Guarantee that the copyright moguls and their clients would get even more money than they even deserve for this. Due to all the temporary copies being produced of copyrighted material that happens to be uploaded by people who own the rights, the amount of frivolous lawsuits resulting from this will SKYROCKET to the MILLIONS per years by people apparently downloading 1000 copies per video, without actually TRYING to do that. Simply viewing a video will get people thrown in jail and sued.  This will result in More money being given to the Copyright holders in court for something the defendant didn’t even do!  This WILL be used to shut down youtube because of this. Imagine a megaupload trial X100 with youtube for ALL of this PLUS Temporary copies, IP address info given to the copyright holders for ANYONE who Dared to watch any of these videos in question. Anyone who even visited youtube and got into it would be at risk for having to pay 1000X what that defendant did due to the temporary copies!!!!

What’s next after youtube??? If even ONE game related video from that list gets an alleged infringement tag, the copyright holders would get noticed. Now comes greedy gaming companies, suing major modding sites  AND lets players, people linking to those lets plays, for ALLOWING the copyrighted infringing material to be “distributed”, because of the temporary copies found on people’s HDD after viewing the lets plays. You would then get THEM suing youtube.  I watch DOZENS of lets plays, because I love seeing other people playing games. It helps me get into new ones, and helps me to see good strategies in games I have already played. People like me would be targeted also. This whole thing would not end there however.  Any modding site that hosts any kind of mod for any video game that includes content from another game would then be targeted. Here’s the thing. THERE ISN’T a modding site that DOESN’T do this. Every single game has at least ONE mod that does this… Even modified models/graphics/sprites/textures or ones that are based or inspired would get every single Modding site in trouble. And since 99% of the modding sites are hosted by BIG gaming sites dedicated to the game they mod, those parent sites would be next…. You have 99% of the internet sites dedicated to any video game being taken down due to this!!! The following sites could be gone, Doomworld, Duke4ever, Planetquake, PlanetDeusEx, Planethalflife, TESNEXUS, ANY and All game related file hosting sites (gamefront, atomic gamer, etc),  and ALL other big gaming sites that happen to host mods, nevermind MODDB and other modding sites dedicated to hosting the latest mods, ALL would be targeted under this… But that is just  the microscopic tip of the iceberg…..

Streamed video in youtube is only 1% of the total streamed content online… the rest include internet radio sites, like Pandora, Snakenet internet radio and others, and ANY site that has streamed music on it. After defeating youtube and modding sites, Amazon probably will  be the the music industry’s next target, for it’s Amazon Mp3 download service and Amazon cloud drive, which recently got heat from the music industry for allowing people to host their own BOUGHT music on the cloud….  Amazon MP3 Allows people to buy music legally online and the price is much lower (9.99 for album vs 20+ per Phsyical CD), due to the lack of packaging and medium.  However the music industry probably won’t like this because they think they don’t make enough money from REAL cd’s from amazon so… Next comes the Big Amzon.com take down where they demand Amazon get taken down because they are distributing “pirated” mp3 files.  Even though Amazon is not. Just because the service is “legal” does not mean the industry won’t file a big lawsuit. Under TPP the chance is MUCH greater this will happen, due to the fact the ISPS have to block any site that has any allegation of infringing content on it. One Mogul saying “Amazon Mp3 is all pirated stuff” is enough to get Amazon.com shut down too. It’s the only good source of music to many people, not just me, because of the fact of  the perfect selection of music and the cheap price. But that scenario only the tip of the iceberg….

There are literally Dozens of indie music hosting sites, ALL with streaming capabilities. A big one is soundcloud, another big one is reverbnation. I had my own metal music hosted on both for a while. Then you add in myspace music and facebook too because plugins for the later and the first allow streaming music. ANYONE DARING to listen to any music from any of these sites IS LIABLE for copyright infringement under the TPP, due to the temporary copies being made, thousands from one song being played!!!

Next come the number 1 enemy of Piracy morons everywhere, sites like 4shared, zippyshare, mediafire, megaupload, rapidshare, which all have LEGIT files being hosted.  Under the TPP, the ISPS’s have to filter and block ANY site that has been ACCUSED of infringement, that includes ANY of the following sites, and if one of these sites haven’t been accused, they will eventually, I guarantee it. This list,  which I shall constantly print on any article bashing the TPP and use as tags to get the sites owners (hopefully) involved in the attack against the TPP.

Amazon
Youtube
Facebook
Moddb
Itunes
3dgamers archive
ANY and All of the following gaming sites:
Seriously
Duke4ever
Doomworld
TESNexus
Doom3world
Fallout3nexus
Planethalflife
Func-Messgboard (look it up)
Quaddicted
Unrealsp.org
Beyondunreal.com
Payne Reactor
Planet Deus Ex
The Admirals Command Chamber
Tenfourmaps.telefragged.com
Underworldfans quake review site
Darkplaces
Zdoom.org
Gzdoom website
D2x-xl
Kmquake2
Prboomplus
Doom Legacy
DarkXL
DukePlus
Eduke32 website
Reverbnation
Purevolume
Soundcloud
4Shared
Myspace Music
Myspace
4Shared
Dropbox
FileFront/Gamefront
Atomic Gamer
Rapidshare
4Filehosting.com
Completegamer.net
Mediafire.com
Sendspace.com
Vimeo.com
Zippyshare.com
Blogspot
Wordpress

If Anyone reading this likes any of those sites I highly suggest you click the take action button on this linked page by the EFF, so that your Congressman know about  the BS that’s being done BEHIND THEIR back by the executive branch, CIRCUMVENTING the Supreme court, and Congress to allow the copyright moguls  to sue 1000X as much people, for simply viewing a video!

 

Related articles

• Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership is so dangerous to the modern PC user…. (erosionoffreedom.wordpress.com)
• Enter Sopa X10 – The TPP, and Why it should be stopped (erosionoffreedom.wordpress.com)
• Trans Pacific Partnership: SOPA through the back door? (ivpn.net)
• Can You Go to Jail for Downloading Movies? (blogs.lawyers.com)
• LEAKED! TPP: the Son of ACTA will oblige America and other countries to throw out privacy, free speech and due process for easier copyright enforcement (boingboing.net)
• Copyright Laws for Communicators: Your Questions, Answered (us.cision.com)
• OpenMedia Comes out Swinging against TPP Treaty (in Mediacheck) (thetyee.ca)

Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership is so dangerous to the modern PC user….

Image via CrunchBase

While browsing the internet for more info on the TPP, which I wrote about in my previous article, I came across This Page posting Articles on TPP. The TPP, Like SOPA Before it, would severely criminalize and censor any “alleged” copyright infringement. But one thing I did not know about till today is that “Temporary copies” of copyrighted work would get you thrown in jail or sued… What are temporary copies?

Every time your PC connects to a site to view a site, stream audio from internet radio, stream video from youtube, etc, it makes at least one temporary copy on your PC. In the case of youtube video’s, Up to thousands of temporary copies, all less than 1 second long are made.  Everytime you  view copyrighted art on a website that has the rights to use it, temporary copies are made on your PC, till you clear your cache.  Under TPP all the temporary copies could get you in trouble for copyright infringement. Youtube (even though it does have tons of infringing stuff on it) could get some people into SERIOUS trouble. Imagine viewing one video that has something infringing in it and being sued for over 1000 violations due to the fact that 1000 plus temporary copies were found on your HDD because you were too lazy to clear your temp files. Think that is fiction? If TPP passes it won’t be…

But that isn’t really the scary part… The article above is on a site that also has another article called “what’s actually in the TPP?”. The site clearly states that the TPP would force internet services like google, and ISP’s to perform something called “deep packet inspection”, to look for these temporary copies, among other things. Imagine millions of people being sued for copyright infringement for simply VIEWING the Web!!! Under TPP this is would be reality. Simply viewing one video on youtube that just happens to infringe on something would download the 1000 or so temporary copies onto the persons HDD. Deep packet inspection comes next and finds them… Imagine being sued for something that happens all the time on people’s PC, 1000 times over…. Even worse, people like Quizgroupmovies and other “copyright holders”  have proven time and time again that simply claiming they own the copyright is enough. They don’t have to actually own it….  IF tpp passes then there will be a HUGE rise of fraudulent lawsuits against people for merely viewing a video, by people claiming to own it, but they won’t have to own it in the first place. The Copyright moguls do not care if their claims are fraudulent. They just want money. More and more money.  Recently a guy was forced to pay $22,500 PER SONG for downloading only 30 songs that normally would be $0.99, by the RIAA. That’s over 20,000 times more than what their worth!!!! Imagine that X10 for simply viewing one video! Hell the video doesn’t even have to violate the Morons copyrights. They can just claim it does. Simply put, TPP will legalize whole sale frivolous lawsuits for any reason whatsoever.

This could cause Serious problems for internet radio. Internet radio uses streaming (which always causes temporary copies to be created) as it’s core.  Simply listening to one artists music on something like Pandora or any site hosting music that has streaming music abilities, could get your arrested under the TPP… Every single indie music upload site such as purevolume, reverbnation, soundclick, soundcloud, they all have streaming music. Hell my indie metal solo artist is on soundcloud. Already soundcloud has been labeled a “piracy” site because it allows artists to make their music free downloads as mp3’s.  Imagine what will happen if TPP is passed and someone from some copyright group  decides to call anyone who dares to listen to ANY of the artists on ANY of these sites, infringing for 1000+ counts due to temporary copies? It would be HELL for anyone caught listening to internet music in ANY form if what below (deep packet inspection) comes true. You would possibly get thousands of lawsuits, all frivolous, all against people daring to stream music on any of these sites… None of the streaming music has to infringe for their copyrights for them to press charges on ANYONE daring to listen to them. Frivolous lawsuits WILL result from this, I guarantee it…

The people who claim that their music and movies are being pirated and that their losing money over it are the biggest morons alive. They represent crappy fake pop artists an even worse, (c)rappers, and horrible movie makers. Music has simply gone down the tubes so much lately it isn’t funny. Do these people deserve $22,500 per 30 songs “allegedly” stolen? Hell No! They certainly don’t deserve billions of dollars because someone dared to listen to a video online that happened to contain their song. That person didn’t steal their song!!! The temporary copies on that persons HDD should not be reason to throw someone in jail for multiple counts of “copyright infringement”, the most fraudulent “crime” I have ever heard of ever…

The only reason we are seeing this is because SOPA and ACTA failed. That was partially because of people contacting their reps complaining about them. Even with that happening with TPP, there is less chance it will do anything because A) We don’t know the entire treaty because it’s being negotiated in secret B) And it’s a treaty not a bill and there is less chance the supreme court could get involved, or no chance at the worst. Still People who value freedoms and people who are against the fraudulent Copyright infringement BS copyright moguls have been doing lately should really contact their REP’s about this. If you don’t know how to do that, visit this site to do it with one click of a button.

Related articles

• Enter Sopa X10 – The TPP, and Why it should be stopped (erosionoffreedom.wordpress.com)
• TPP Creates Legal Incentives For ISPs To Police The Internet. What Is At Risk? Your Rights. (eff.org)
• EFF: TPP’s Temporary Copies Provision (fairdeal.net.nz)
• OpenMedia Comes out Swinging against TPP Treaty (in Mediacheck) (thetyee.ca)
• LEAKED! TPP: the Son of ACTA will oblige America and other countries to throw out privacy, free speech and due process for easier copyright enforcement (boingboing.net)
• Skynet Police – The Infringement Wars (beanstalk-inc.com)
• Civil rights groups warn secret copyright treaty might add liability risks for ISPs (computerworld.co.nz)
• Trans-Pacific trade talks: Deal must protect tech, Internet companies (utsandiego.com)
• Google Releases Algorithm Update to Punish Copyright Violators (hubspot.com)
• Elton John Sued for Copyright Infringement (jdjournal.com)