The Trans-Pacific partnership is BAD for the internet

I've been writing about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) for a few days on my other anti-censorship blog, Debunking utter Nonsense. Basically TPP is a huge and secret treaty among "pacific" countries that would (among other scarier things) 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.

The other things it would allow corporations to do, that is quite scary, is sue an entire company if  their laws don't favor that corporation, raise the price of medicine, lower food standards, and many more scarier things. But this article has to do with it's possible effect on the internet as a whole, as a huge IP section which was leaked, shows how far the mega corporations in the music industry want to mess up our net freedom for profit.

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 packet 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 send them to  the government authority in charge of figuring out which ones could be infringing, which would look at them closely to find out if a "temporary" copy is inside any of them and if it's infringing, according to them.  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!

The real problem, as highlighted by a blog post I did on Debunking Utter Nonsense, is that several key immunities offered by current US copyright law are thrown out the window, by the TPP. The TPP says that all copyright infringement, even accidental, and non-profit infringement, is considered criminal infringement. The US copyright law requires that a minimum profit of $1000 be made before the law says it is criminal infringement.  Under copyright law, the copyright moguls have to specify each individual infringing link on a site to take it down. Not so in TPP. TPP basically allows them to say "this site is filled with infringing links" (WITHOUT proof) and it's ok to take it down then. Just one baseless accusation. That's it. NO proof required! The TPP also makes it completely legal for the government to destroy anything used in the creation of the infringement, without proof, and without compensation, and any other thing that was created by the infringement work, so if that youtube video I gave the example for was used to create another video, that second video, and whatever was used to make it, can be legally destroyed also! The copyright law specifically states that only devices used commonly in criminal infringement like molds can be destroyed.  The TPP would also get rid of the exemption of copyright for non-profit educational uses completely, not require any action by the copyright holder before the government can do anything, and also allow copyright holders to penalize any and all transmissions of their copyrighted material on a PC, even legal ones, such as internet radio, legal mp3 file downloading sites like Amazon MP3/Itunes, and worse.

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

Now to help out some people who might be thinking of boycotting any corporation that is involved in the stakeholder groups supporting this pile of trash.  Here is a list of all supporting corporations, gotten from this site.  I probably won't buy from them till they change their crappy law to make it so that exact proof of infringing links is required, and that temporary copies are not counted, and that the government falsely accusing anyone of infringement gets the members involved fired, nor should you:

If Anyone reading this likes any of those sites I listed above, 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! Also, make sure to visit Open The TPP, to send your message to the stakeholders who all support the TPP at the current meeting by going to  this site and writing it and sending it there.