The news isn't good people. The TPP Treaty was passed. This will allow for tons of frivolous lawsuits targeting internet users. It would end 90% of what we know as the Internet due to it's draconian copyright provisions. These provisions would dramatically increase copyright terms, make the right to making copyrighted material online infringement, and might cause caching of "copyrighted" material to count as infringing. The last one is really bad folks. It allows the copyright moguls to sue anyone who watches a video they claim is copyrighted (they are already taking down copyrighted videos, videos they don't have the copyright for), and then the viewer would get their computer destroyed under the law, because the treaty makes the destruction of any device that was used in the infringement mandatory.
The section in the tpp text on DRM was really bad, according to this video. According to the video, any kind of DRM Breaking or any kind of action to circumvent DRM is considered infringement in the TPP Now. That includes modding. Since file formats used by the game developers can be thought of as DRM because they block people from getting access to resources in the game, under the tpp Modding such file formats could be considered infringement.
This could cause all of the following sites to go down:
Youtube
Blogging hosts
Facebook
File Lockers like 4shared and rapidshare (although they do host a LOT of infringing material)
music hosting sites like soundcloud and reverbnation
Gaming Sites that host "copyrighted" mods.
Modding hosting sites like Gamefront.com and Moddb.com
If you use any sites like these you must talk to your senator and/or representative to stop this nonsense...
We have to fight this.
Send this message to your senators an representatives using this particular site:
"I write today as a constituent to ask you to publicly state that you will vote “no” on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
The TPP Treaty includes draconian Copyright Provisions that would penalize "infringement" of copyrighted material online with destruction of the pc doing the "infringing" being destroyed as a punishment.
Over the years, the copyright holders have shown that they don't care that they do not own the copyright for the material they take down through copyright claims. False copyright claims are all over youtube.com and other places that allow user content to be uploaded. There are tons of groups that make a living on false copyright claims.
Even outside of youtube, copyright fraud is a huge problem. RIAA has made a habit of suing dead women, little children, all in an effort to get more money for their pathetic excuses for recording artists.
In previous drafts of the text, copyright infringement of temporary copies was placed in the copyright text. Watching a video on youtube creates temporary copies, which were going to be found by something called "deep packet inspection", a process the ISP's (Internet Service Providers) would have to do under the TPP Treaty's older versions. This would allow people to sue people who watch anything they say is copyrighted by them. Keep in mind that it doesn't require a real copyright offense for this to work. All it takes is one accusation of copyright infringement, and the content would be taken down, the person sued millions of dollars and their computer seized and destroyed by the government.
The section in the TPP that makes it infringement to circumvent any Copy Protection, could be abused to shut down modding sites. Modding for video games is a huge thing online. There are dozens of great mods for popular games. When modders mod games they often have to break into game files to do so. To the gaming companies this could be considered DRM breaking, because gaming files are often seen as a type of DRM to protect games from people trying to mod them. This will affect tons of modding sites.
If the TPP Passes, most of the internet would be taken down due to false copyright complaints. This includes sites like youtube, blogs, forums, gaming sites, an many more sites that don't naturally infringe on copyrights.
Is the extreme rise of fraudulent copyright lawsuits something you want to support?
If you support the TPP, you are supporting just that.
Thank you."
It's really important that we gamers act to prevent copyright legislation from passing in the US. That's critical to the future of the internet people. I can't stress that enough.
