Bogus Modified Doom caused Doom Moral Panic in Colorado.

A long time ago a time magazine article about columbine claimed a modified version of doom was found on Eric Harris's Aol Site, with several dubious features, all which have been debunked by me. The features include a "second shooter", "infinite ammo and extra weapons for both shooters" and the ability for the shooter who ran out of ammo first, to be killed upon this happening. I debunked these claims many, many times, because frankly, I am disgusted by news articles making up bogus crap to cause moral panics like this.  But I will again...  

The "second shooter" would require friendly AI, and in 1999 only one sourceport could even do this, MBF (Marine's best friend). But here is the issue, the ability to make any enemy in a modified dehacked patch (what Harris would need to do for this to work) requires documentation that didn't come out till 2000. Now to debunk the "infinite ammo and extra weapons for both shooters".  Number 1, infinite ammo is possible, but the extra weapons for both shooters is a complete nonsense claim. In 1999 adding new weapons without replacing existing ones was not possible, period. Dehacked was the only way to mod back then and it simply wouldn't allow you to do this because it was a simple EXE editor to change simple variables. The extra weapons for the second shooter, is the second worst claim in this article, it requires the ability to script an entity to do this, to create a completely new enemy that has the ability to use all weapons the player does, plus the impossible "Extra" weapons, this would require Zdoom, which didn't have the decorate language built into it necessary to do this till the mid 2000's.

Now you get the most impossible feature of them all, the ability for the "shooter who ran out ammo first" to die. This is frankly, not even doable without both Hexen format levels that allow you to "tag" any entity to keep track of it so the next part the scripting language to kill them apon running out ammo (also scripted), and the scripted language itself (ACS). This wasn't even possible till 2001 or later. The article is a bunch of bogus nonsense claims and inflammatory claims such as "They were playing their game in God Mode" and similar. But none of this stopped the writers to spread this nonsense to new articles featuring even more fake claims!!!! The Real stupid thing is that this claim of running out of ammo kills you is IMPOSSIBLE with the "unlimited" mentioned before in the same article!!! This writer got away with this nonsense and almost no one complained? WTF!

Lo and behold, an article by the Rocky Mountain News, mentioned how the same hate site tracking group that supposedly found this impossible to make in 1999 version of doom. But they only mentioned the infinite ammo, extra weapons, and second shooter claim, not the shooter who runs out of ammo dying first. They added their own dubious claim, Begging students that cried a phrase "`Lord, why is this happening to me?''.   This  article would be eventually mirrored on super columbine Massacre RPG's Site (a sick RPG based on the School Shooting) but eventually was deleted...  But here comes the weird thing. APA (The American Psychological Association started citing the false articles (one of them) in a paper proving "video game aggression" (misquoted as proving video games cause real life violence by many "Experts" on Talk shows or news station reports from 1997 to 2006).  This made it's way to an essay about the "effects" of violent video games and this is how I traced everything in reverse from the essay, to the APA paper, to the Rocky mountain news, and back to the Times article that made it up, and without me finding the Times and Rocky Mountain News Article I would never be able to debunk this... 

Later on A Denverpost Article mentioned the begging students that cried the phrase but the phrase was now "shouted" and changed to "" 'My Lord, why did you do this to me?' ".  So which is it? This or the older quote. Neither. It's fudged, made up, fabricated because they couldn't even get  the way it was said or the quote right! The Denverpost article also fails to even mention any of the modified doom features besides this so no one would know it's fake, and mentions that Harris made a Columbine High School Doom level, a known hoax, debunked by Snopes, and supposedly "proven" not to be a hoax by a pro-columbine-conspiracy journalist with no sense of the truth, quoting a report from a student saying Harris Did make the level, but the report in question he mentions most likely was based on the fake news article from the Conneticut Journalist who said the same exact same thing, "A Student friend of Harris said he made the School in Doom" but later own admitted he made the whole claim up. Lovely example of spinning the truth by idiots in Colorado, Isn't it?

But it's more than that... The 2 articles for Colorado Newspapers (the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News ones) are the only ones to mention the very Dubious "begging students" claims that can't even get the quote screamed by these begging students right, or how the quote was even said... Right after Columbine you got a ridiculously paranoid witch hunt for Video games and their players that was worst in Colorado. People started fanatically believing that violent games and Doom Caused the Massacre, and that there was no other factor, whatsoever. It was a 20'th century Witch Mob! They also thought that  players of such games were sicko sociopaths with no heart, like Eric Harris. This was happening all over Colorado and it lead to ban violent games legislation, and lawsuits. But what triggered it? I have a theory, these articles, indirectly or intentionally triggered it using the people' preconceptions of violent games as a base.

The "hack Psychologists" who went on talk shows during the 1997 school shooting in Paducah came back in force in 1999 with claims of nonsense, such as how the Military uses games like this to break down the Inhibition to killl, even though a blogger from the Military disproved this here. But the claims that violent games desensitize people to real life violence were starting to be believed and these hack psychologists kept repeating this and the break down the inhibition to kill quote ad-nauseum.  One even wrote a completely fabricated book claiming it was true and hires internet trolls to cite this book in comments attacking violent games in articles in newspaper sites attacking violent games. So what would a person who refuses to question anything they hear and believes it all, and has no gaming and doom modding experience think when they read the denverpost article?, they would assume Harris could easily, in 5 seconds, with a menu in the game, make the supposed mod, and this leads them to believe that "Doom Caused Columbine". Why? They already believe that violent games make kids desensitized to real violence, which is just another way of saying that the kids playing such games, who before they played the games could tell the difference between reality and fantasy, loose that ability after obsessively playing them. Now combine that with the belief from the article that Harris was able with a click of a button turn doom into a school shooting sim, and you get people who think that this modified version of doom is responsible. Now comes the people wanting to sue id for allowing the game to be easily modified through a menu to make it a school shooting simulator. More backlash happens. Then you get paranoid people who are still trying to mourn the victims of the massacre, and not thinking straight as a result, assume that Doom had the school shooting simulator somewhere in it and it would have to if only "one click of a button" was needed to mod it like that. So in that case "doom" made harris want to kill the kids now, technically. Some people don't understand games at all, and don't even know what a Mod is, and they assume the original game is also a school shooting simulator. No where in any of these articles is it even made clear that the modded version required a lot of work with "third party" software and ID has nothing to do with this at all. That didn't help any... None of the people are non-gamers who read that article understand how doom. They just assume it's a violent game and they "assume" Doom is a school shooting Simulator. This lead to the BS claim "Doom Caused Columbine" after millions read and misinterpreted this article.

Obscure, now nonexistant Flash Game to blame for Sandy Hook? NRA are idiots!!!!

I know this is old news to many gamers, But when I read this, I immediately laughed but then got angry at how serious nonsense like this is... Behold, Wayne Lapierre and the NRA have got a vendetta against violent games, because in their mind, they have to scapegoat violent entertainment like all these gun nuts do all the time. In a lot of cases, I have seen, Gun Nuts tend to be anti-gamers. Which is worse, violent games or people Selling tools of REAL violence, that only a nutcase like Lanza or Harris would want to use to harm real people in a school shooting... Where are the other Millions of gamers committing school shootings once per week in the country, caused by their constant "exposure to violent games".  They don't exist. That's right, because Gamers for the most part Are not violent... The Few shooters that committed mass school shootings like Harris had Other Issues, like being raped by the police (!!! The real cause for columbine !!! not violent games!!! ), we don't even know Lanza's issue yet... Yet the scapegoating from the Nationalist Rhetoric ASSociation continues...   hmm...   So the NRA has to stifle the blame for something they may have caused. If they had nothing to do with this, why all the publicity on attacking a violent flash game that Doesn't exist anymore (Kindergarten Killers)   ?

It's not the first time some random 10 year old super violent game like Postal 2 has been used as an excuse to attack the gaming industry (in the media after Brown VS EMA dozens of articles kept on spewing nonsense about 99% of violent games having features like "peeing on kids", that were, Surprise(!) only found in Postal 2, One Damn game!!! )  But in this case the game was a random flash game hosted on a website that deleted it later, newgrounds.com, and the gaming industry, has Nothing to do with it... It's like Lapoopierre decided to look around for ONE game, flash or not that had murdering little kids part of it. He couldn't find a single one marketed by  the Industry as a real ESRB rated title (because it doesn't exist, DUH! - Despite how many idiots after columbine in newspapers tried to call Doom a School Shooting Simulator... More on that later).

To make things worse, this game wasn't even POPULAR on newgrounds.com. It was taken down in 2008! It hardly was a Big Smash hit all the 2 year olds are playing behind their mothers back because the "ESRB rated it teen like they do to all uber violent games because the industry is selling filth to our toddlers!".  Bullshit. This game wasn't even a real Boxed game. But you know what? Do the NRA really care? Of course they dont!  Because it's the scapegoat for the industry they have chosen and it will be used as proof that all violent ESRB rated games are like that in millions of biased, stupid, payed for by the NRA, news articles next. Mark my words. Just like Postal 2, which also wasn't even remotely popular, and crappy too...

The worst thing, is this game is the LAST you want to use as a scapegoat. It is so Amateurly made... It is gory, but it has super hand drawn graphics that make it look so cheap, that trying to call it a "realistic depiction of real school violence" (they will try this...) is utterly stupid. You can't even move around in the game, it's all aiming and killing. If you kill the kids in each of the scenes, who all fight back(! - WTF! Yes they are all armed!!! Highly realistic... ) you go to the next scene. If you don't you die. It's strictly a flash shooting gallery game, sick, yes, disgusting, yes, but Realistic and bound to make kids shoot up a real school? NO WAY IN Hell. Too cartoony. Even a 10 year old can tell it's not real life....

That's besides the point here. The point is the NRA scapegoating is using something (on purpose) to demean 99% of the violent games that aren't even that violent, and don't have this kind of disgusting purpose (shooting up a school).  A previous article of mine debunked 5 extra violent game myths using a spreadsheet documenting all 605 PC FPS game releases. One was the idea that all violent games are uber violent... I quote:

"Ok… This isn’t so much a claim but a pattern among articles “damning”
Violent video games.  These articles use examples from 1 or 2 violent
games that are what I call “Uber Violent” games as proof that
“most games” are like them. Uber violent games are a rare thing.
What’s the definition of “Uber violent games”? Games that are so
violent that most people would find them tastlessly violent.
Out of all 605 FPS games ever made, only 4.46% are “Uber Violent”
like this. Only 14.81% of all 81 Popular FPS games could be
considered Uber Violent. These “Popular Uber Violent” Fps games
only make 1.98% of all FPS games ever released! (605)"

That's right, this 1 Example of a game that isn't a real Game marketed by the industry is being used
to demean Thousands of games that don't even come close, simulated combat with aliens/demons/zombies/etc is being scapegoated for causing the shooting,  by using an example from a poorly done FAN MADE CRAPPY ARCADE GAME.... Yeah... NRA is really pushing it.... The nonsense continues.

Video Game BS Youtube video Blog Series...

Recently, I have been re watching by Video Game Violence BS video's, that I did back last year in the summer to debunk nonsense spread about violent games I have heard over the year.  A lot of points I brought up were unique in that Me and my blogging of them have been the only people online to discuss them. So I decided to do a post with links to these videos, in light of the scapegoating that is going on right now because of the Sandy Hook School Shooting the media is scapegoating the Industry for causing and worse... (Child Molestation? WTF!?), yes violent games have been linked to that now, seriously...

A lot of points are brought up, including debunking the following myths:

-Video games cause real life violence
-Video games are used to break down the inhibition to kill in the Military
-Video games train school shooters
-School shooters became better shooters because of Doom (WTF!)

Also a lot of fake nonsense spread about the Columbine massacre by the media are brought up and debunked such as:

- Eric Harris said "On april 20'th, Doom will become reality" on his webpage
- Eric Harris modified to train the massacre with begging students, infinite ammo/weapons, a second shooter programmed in.

A lot about EMA vs Brown is brought up about how nonsense above was used in Amicus Brief by a right wing pro-censorship, pro-family, anti-freedom group from the midwest, in an attempt to Hijack the Supreme court in the Ema Vs Brown decision with Bogus info.


Anyway, here are the videos, enjoy...

Brand New:

Video Game Violence BS II: Part 1

Sandy Hook Nonsense:

I: Adam Lanza did not play Violent Games

II: Violent Gaming Companies and the players of such games being "Child Molestors"

III: The Rediculous Missouri Tax on Buying, Playing, Using, And Storing Violent games.

Recorded last year:

Part I:  Video Game Myths debunked...

Part II:  Faked News Articles after Columbine and their Debunking

Part III: Panic over Video Game Ads and the "fact" that violent games are marketed to kids Debunked.

Part IV: Religious Right wing groups and their attempt to Hijack the Supreme Court during EMA vs Brown

Part V: My personal experiences with anti-violence-in games trolls and the "Tornado of Bullshit" that fuels censorship

Part VI: New Nonsense about violent games debunked from a new attack site I found...

More on this rediculous tax on violent games...

So I've been reading up on the really badly written violent games tax bill coming from Missouri. My previous Post goes into it more. It basically levies a 1% tax on all violent games sold in the entire country, giving the proceeds away to "treat" non existant mental illnesses associated with the "exposure to violent games". But much more sinister is it's tax related "personal property" used, consumed or bought in  "this state" (without saying what "this state" is, Missouri or USA). Basically it taxing anyone who is "purchasing",  "using", "storing", or "otherwise" consuming violent games in "this state", to a tune of 1% of all the "personal property" that the person owns. I quote:

"144.1024.  1.  In addition to any other tax provided for by law, there is hereby levied

 upon persons storing, using, or otherwise consuming within this state, tangible personal

 property purchased or brought into this state, an excise tax on the storage, use, or other

 consumption in this state of all violent video games, based on the gross receipts or purchase

 price of such property at a rate of one percent."

Here is the real issue. If someone lives in whatever the blue hell "this state" is, any property in this state would  be have their value added into to the tax on any violent games they buy, use or otherwise consume... Everytime someone buys a violent game they could have to pay up to 100 dollars tax for this. I am not kidding. Here is a spreadsheet which I used to count what I own and it's price according to amazon.com.

The total value is around 5000 dollars. If I tried to buy, play, or store a violent game in "this state", I would have to pay an EXTRA 50 dollars tax each time!!!! That's ridiculous. What this could effect is insane.. Number 1, "this state" is not defined, so it is theoretically possible that It could be abused to prosecute  anyone in the US. Even worse, every time I tried to even play a violent game, I would be required to play 50 dollars again! For people playing games a lot of the day, that could be a 500 dollar charge per run of a violent game. 

Now you could say "this is not enforceable". Not true. All they need to do is stick a keylogger in anyone buying Internet access in "this state" that is designed to look for program names of games run, by screenshotting the desktop so that they can see what "violent" games are being played. Then apply the tax to the person who owns the computer.... It's not as "un-enforceable" as it seems.

Basically this is designed to punish people for merely owning violent games by, A) forcing them to pay obscene amount of money per game bought or played, and B) mandating "Treatment" for people who play violent games... Notice in the law it does not say treatment is only for children playing violent games, it is for anyone "exposed" to them.  The tornado of bullshit is touching down. Contact your senators, it is really important!!!

Comments attacking violent games on news articles, filled with BS, Surprise!!!!

For years, I have been seeing BS comments on newspaper articles that attack video games for controversial reasons such as causing school shootings, violent content, etc. Calling violent games "trash", "junk" or "garbage" is a common one I have seen thousands of times since 1999. Always being bugged by crap excuses like this and people saying crap about gamers, I committed myself to studying just how many of the comments from articles I found, could be considered inflammatory toward gamers, games, the industry, and most important, spread lies about violent games. The results were quite shocking, to say the least...
So I embarked on this study last year. The total results were from 7 parts published on my wordpress blog and the details are cited below... Part 6 is available here as well. (The first 5 out of 7 were deleted due to possible libel complaints down the road... I wanted to avoid that, but the specific comment types were recorded in another post online, but that was accidentally deleted last night)


"I am continuing my study into the nature of comments attacking violent games on articles in newspaper sites online. By definition the comments must fit these categories to be considered ‘attacking violent games’…

A) Spread lies about violent games

A2) Making up new lies about violent games .

B) Call for games to be banned outright

C) Call for games to be restricted to adults

D) Enforce negative gamer stereotypes

D2) Shows dislike, hate, or a grudge towards gamers.

E) A Bias towards gaming, such that the person commenting thinks games don’t deserve 1st amendment

protection,  the industry is marketing “trash” to my kids, etc.

F) Not sure what violence effects on kids are a restriction might be in order…

G) Attacking the ESRB due to some flawed thing like the FTC study or the fact ‘my 9 year old’ could get bulletstorm.

H) Wants violent game manufacturers sued or games boycotted.

The Previous 6 parts of the study found that, out of 77 comments, 57% were spreading lies about violent games, 31% had a clear bias towards violent games, 7% wanted violent games banned, or violent game makers sued, and 4% wanted violent games restricted to adults.

Results:

Out of all 97 comments in parts 1-7, 64 are spreading lies about violent games. That’s 65%

Out of 97 comments in parts 1-7, 26 have clear bias towards violent games, violent gaming companies, or the industry. That’s 26%

Out of 97 comments, 5 wanted violent games banned, and 5 more wanted the companies that make these game sued. that’s dropped to 5% for each.  3% wanted violent games restricted to adults.

Out of 97 comments, 7 made up totally new lies about violent games. that’s 7%. It’s small but still significant that this is happening.

Out of 97 comments, 4 enforced negative gamer stereotypes.  (4%)

Out of 97 comments,  4 showed a clear hate or dislike towards gamers. (4%).

Lies that are made up from the blue seem to be getting more popular in the last few articles. These lies are brand new, and are being spread by commenters. They are not from various news articles, or psychologists. These ones are troubling. Who would gain from complete nonsense being spread about a violent game by people who knowingly spread these lies that they know are not true? If you make up a total nonsense claim about a violent game you know you haven’t heard before, you have to know it’s a lie… Right? So who would gain?

Do anti-gamers sign up under fake names and spread more lies?

I can’t say. But these lies seem to hint at that. These aren’t the things I have heard from the so-called “experts” on media violence. These are totally new to me….  And they are false… But…  Do we really have a generation of libeling right wing anti-violent games groups hiring members to sign up with fake names to make up BS claims about violent games and post them in comments? I think we do. But I can’t prove it. But if they ARE doing this… It is VERY alarming… I will keep track of these lies that seem to be made up by commenters to see if others repeat them in other articles. I have an idea to see how many people are gullible enough to believe nonsense that is spread. More on it later…."

Now to read the worst of the comments and my response (if I responded to it in the original surveys at all):

(A certain comment, quoted from part 6)

“And it games cause violence, so be it. If a gamer tries to be violent with you, remember this one rule of thumb, so to speak. Since gamers spend a lot of time inside playing games, they are physically weak. As long as you can avoid their powerful, unnaturally strong thumbs, you should be able to subdue them.”

Pitiful. Who in the hell actually thinks that “violent gamers” should be “subdued”. Someone who hates gamers who think gamers cause school shootings, like that idiot who threatened to kill me on the newspaper forum back in 1999 after Columbine. This goes beyond a mere perpetrating anti-gamer stereotypes and goes to wanting them physically hurt. Is this a trend? First we’re bullies, and now we need to be “Subdued”. Moronic.

Source : https://www.npr.org/templates/story/storyComments.php?storyId=137660609&pageNum=1

(source story DELELTED to cover it up?)

“others are using pseudo facts to support their bias towards games in the guise of anti-censorship”.

Source : http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10430358-17.html

"games have 'passive and casual avatar rape and murder' in them"  

2 Words : Custer’s Revenge. 1989! Stop making this damn fake claim of rape simulators up… It’s idiotic. These people read biased articles that keep putting that lie in the game and everyone believes this  tripe. It’s ridiculous.

Source : The same link that was deleted above

“Remember when the cigarette companies kept saying that no one had “proven” that cigarettes CAUSE cancer? So we continued to let the ads run where all the kids could see them. Lots of people died. Has it yet been scientifically proven that cigarettes cause cancer? Do you believe they do anyway?

Here’s the future of gaming: TVs as big as your entire living room wall. Life size enemies. Realistic wireless game guns with a loud bang and a huge kick. Maybe actual gun makers will make a wireless game clip that you can pop in the real gun where the bullet clip goes. Maybe someone will make an accessory that throws fake blood all over you when you shoot a game enemy at close range.

That’s OK, because no one has scientifically proven that violent games make the players more prone to violence. Until they do, let the carnage continue! “

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10430358-17.html

Now you can see the idiocy being spread by commenters and how many comments attacking violent games are filled with anti-gamer stereotypes, hate towards gamers, games, the industry, etc, and how much they spread complete lies, fabrications, all designed to make violent games look bad after a school shooting. Every time I heard the media using fake claims like "violent games make kids violent/aggressive", "violent games are used in the military to break down the inhibition to kill", "violent games link to real life violence is greater than cigarettes link to cancer", "Violent games are being marketed to kids", "violent games are recruitment tools", "violent games that allow you to rape and pee on people", "violent games that allow you to stalk virtual women and rape them", "violent games are training tools", etc, I always here at least 1 commenter per article respreading them, and in some of the claims, you get "special anonymous advertisers" repeatedly and maliciously advertising the book for the author who made up the "video games are being used in the military to break down the inhibition to kill" BS claim, on talk shows after Columbine, a Hack Psychologist. You also get TONS of comments, on how gamers are psychopaths, sociopaths, how gamers should be subdued, how we're "gamer shitheads", how we are "gamer druggies", how gamers are all potential school shooters, and much worse. It's a real problem, because the exact same claims made about gamers being sociopaths/potential school shooters/violent people were also made by certain anti-gaming fundies on newspapers as well, after 1 or 2 immature gamers threatened their lives.... Being a death threat victim myself from similar people to the people  who claim they are being threatened (and multiple ones claim they did, without proof of course), it makes them look like complete hypocrites, because they unknowingly (or knowingly) support people who intentionally make other peoples lives miserable on message boards just to prove "gamers get violent", as  the moron troll on the message board of a newspaper did to multiple gamers 24/7 for 3 months, and said "I have enough evidence that gamers get violent" (the responses to their death threats probably), has been swept under the rug and covered up. It's pathetic. The fact that there are people out there that think all gamers are sociopath's because of people like Eric Harris, or any other damn reason, I don't give a fuck, is sick in itself....  I know at least 10 guys who have played video games before, 5 were serious gamers, NONE were sociopaths. Maybe 1 or 2 gamers are "sociopaths" but that's just a goddamn coincidence, not proof that games take completely normal children and turn them into sociopaths... Sheesh..

Now to show off comments making complete NEW lies up, all completely false, but apparently some people besides wackos in anti-gamer right wing religious groups like to make up false claims about violent games...

“But the videos in question, which the court ruled that kids can see, allows them to virtually stalk, beat, rape, and defile virtual women in a range of perverse and degrading ways. That is purely sick”

THERE ARE NO GAMES THAT ALLOW PEOPLE TO DO THESE THINGS….

Source : http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/sex-and-the-supremes/

“It’s offensive and embarrassing the Supreme Court will afford murder in all its contexts—self-defense, revenge, military mission, zombie killer, mobster—and variety–disembowelment, decapitation, abassination, guns, chainsaws—more protection that sex.”

Most of these things aren’t even murder…… Only assassination, mobster are… The rest are either military combat, “self-defense”, or combat…. how is “zombie killer” murder? Idiots like this astound me. Especially when they bring up disembowelment, and and decapitation, which are rare in most violent games!

Source : http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/sex-and-the-supremes/

"1 comment of type A2) Making up new lies about violent games – Claims violent games as training tools to recruit military at young age, says violent games ‘permanently burn memories’ into the minds of children, blah-blah blah… Common. Back up your crap. You can’t therefore it’s a lie."

Source : http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10430358-17.html

1 Comment of type A2) Making up new lies about violent games – Claims violent games and action movies have too much things happening at once, overloading the brain, causing ‘anti-social behavior’ in kids. WTF?

Source : http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10430358-17.html

“But the videos in question, which the court ruled that kids can see, allows them to virtually stalk, beat, rape, and defile virtual women in a range of perverse and degrading ways. That is purely sick”

Source : http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/sex-and-the-supremes/

"The Commenter Claims just because he drove around for days and because of the length, he was forced to automatically do things without knowing he did them, the ‘kids that play games 18,20,24 hours a day will go into kill mode!’ Is this another hack psychologist worshipper unknowingly or knowingly advertising his best seller?"

Now they are making up utter crap about games in comments.... Some of these comments seem like something a moron in a right wing pro-censorship group would say, like the "perminantly burn memories", and "overloading the brain", and the "going into kill mode" ones...  In my honest opinion we have a bunch of pro-censorship morons both saying things like this, all completely made up to the media, especially after school shootings, and also on forums with fake names. I can't prove it, but those 3 comments are too suspicious to ignore, in light of all the very similar nonsense made up claims anti-gamers keep on making on talk shows, newspapers, etc after a school shooting. I have heard every single goddamned fake claim being made up about violent games by the anti-gamer right wing morons. I know them all by heart... These ones are new to me... What actual gain would a normal person have to actually post some claim they made up to make games look bad on a message board? None. Now what gain would a right wing anti-gaming moron from one of  those anti-gaming groups that keep spreading crap about violent games in the media, have to post something like this on forums? More people could believe the lies they post, and their claims could be spread to other forums. It all spirals out of control when one person online says one fake claim, others repost it quite quickly, everyone believes it because people today have been brainwashed to believe everything they hear.  This effect, greatly aids such right wing violent game censors, trust me it does..

This whole spread of lies is, IMHO, part of a much bigger scheme to get violent games banned for 1 reason, they offend religious right nutjobs.  There is evidence to suggest in many places that the media makes up utter crap about violent games, and the politicians believe it. But that isn't enough to get a ban to happen, because they need faked evidence to sway the supreme court, to fight against a claim of unconstitutionality. Faked evidence in the form of hoaxes were spread in April/May 1999 and in an Amicus Brief done by a right wing pro-family group, these hoaxes were cited as evidence to prove violent games make people violent.... This group has been known to recycle 2 very false claims about violent games over and over again, the claims that games have "decapitation of prostitutes" and "sodomizing victims with broomsticks". This groups claims cannot be true, because research done by me on my wordpress blog revealed how fake these 2 claims are. 

This whole thing is been engineered to create the violent game bans the censor/anti-gamers want.... The thing is that the media spreading lies and hoaxes being made by the media and others are being used to hijack the supreme court now.... You then add in justices who are for violent games through the election of a conservative christian president (like the candidate who supports a complete game ban), and what's to stop the supreme court from having a hung jury (and going back to the law that was passed before they looked at it on grounds of unconstitutionality), or even finding it constitutional via faked evidence in Amicus Briefs and 4 justices who support the idea of a violent games ban. This could happen if you add these 2 things in, the faked evidence in Amicus briefs and new justices who support bans... It's scary... Something must be done about it and the lies being spread... More on that for another article or video... Stay tuned gamers

Insite into the Controversy Surrounding certain Video game Mods... (old blog repost)

(This blog post was posted on my other blog at wordpress a few years ago but got deleted for some other reason. I am reposting it here)

After reading about that article complaining about the ‘game’ (really a Half-life 2 MOD)  school shooter 2012, I began to wonder how the people writing the biased article linked in that debunking got their hands on the mod. It’s not like the mod was popular. It wasn’t even popular in the HL2 Community, so how the hell did the people attacking the game on the article find out about it?

Mod communities are closed communities. Fans of the game the mod is made for, and only those fans, go to the communities looking for mods for it.  So how does a nanny state representitive who wants to find the newest violent game to complain about find out about a mod, to complain about it?  In the case of a real game like GTA, there is countless ads on TV, articles about it coming out, etc. For mods none of this exists.  So for someone to find that mod to attack it on a site, must mean that they are in the Community releasing the mod, at least I think so. Do the anti-gamers go to gaming mod sites, and then write articles complaining about the mod being released by the mainstream video game press… It seems likely this is the case…

Only problem, is this is the only time that I’ve EVER seen a mod for a game, be targetted like it’s a game, by the violent game attackers. The thing is that this is not the first time someone has made some tasteless school shooting level or mod for a game. Go to Doomworld idgames site (where doom levels are hosted) and you will find this lovely gem, from back in 1997. Overlooked by all the anti-gamers. Was really the same thing as school shooter : american tour 2012, minus the kill yourself ending. Not that I like this kind of game, but….. It’s been done before. What caused SSAT 2012 to get so much negative press? It's content is horrible, making light of the school shooting tragedies, make no mistake, but if this article would never have been written, no one would have commented on it outside the gaming community. There are tasteless mods for many games online... None are complained about in the media.

Who is inside these communities finding this stuff to write about? Is it someone being an idiot and seeing all the bad responses to get something to laugh at, because he has a sick sense of humor? Is he someone doing this on purpose to see how idiotic the comments are about violent games, to see what misconceptions they spread? Was the whole mod made for that purpose? Or is the writer some anti-gamer latching onto a mod that is tasteless to use it as ammo to attack Valve software with. It's not like Valve hasn't been hit with lawsuit threats before. Some lawyer threatened to sue valve when 'he' (the lawyer - in a news article, no less) named counterstrike as an influence to the V-Tech Killer's rampage. With no other proof that Cho played counterstrike, presumably to use it as ammo against valve in some big lawsuit, even though valve did not make Counterstrike. The thing is that he said that 'Cho Played Half-life'.  Currently, the articles slamming the Mod (or "game" as they label it for this purpose) don't mention Valve. But what if one did? The company who has developed some of the best FPS games ever (half-life, HL2, Portal, Left 4 dead 1/2) would be ruined.... Out of all the gaming companies that DON'T deserve this kind of link to a school shooting, valve is it.  Their games are usually puzzle intensive, where combat is a challenge, and violence is not rewarded like in GTA. They pretty much started the ideas that formed the tactical shooter revolutioin, and lead to Far Cry, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., etc.


 Valve would get lawsuit threats, a crapload of media complaints, and maybe even another senate hearing that could lead to stronger restrictions, a govt enforced rating system that I think could be abused to 'effectively' ban violent games to all age groups in the US. Is this the purpose of the article......
I don’t know. But I would love to find out

Google lists thousands of takedown notices of Fraudulent "Infringing" Content

So I was reading how google would put any site lower in their search results based on copyright takedown notices given to them by copyright holders. On an article about this (not the linked one), there was a link to this google site showing how many takedown notices google receives per month and what sites are complained about. Most are free file hosting sites, and warez sites, but some big surprises crept in..

First, nearly half of the 2000 links I looked through when browsing page 1 to the page where the 2000 link was posted, were porn sites. A lot of blogging sites crept in as well, and so did facebook, twitter, and other social networking. However, their have been copyright takedowns of gaming file hosting sites as well, probably fraudulent ones.

Here are 10 screenshots showing what sites were given fraudulent takedowns, all circled in red.. These results were set per month so the URLS listed were all complained about in 1 month.

I saw quite a bit of blogger listed, mainly because there are blogger blog with pirated content on them, but wordpress? Sounds like a fraudulent claim, because I refuse to believe that wordpress hosts 763 URLS that have infringing content on them.

Yahoo? WTF!  It's a search engine and doesn't actually host anything that could be considered pirated or infringing. With 1808 "Url's" to boot. I refuse to believe that this is a valid takedown notice, mainly because besides yahoo mail (which nothing pirated can be hosted on), and my.yahoo, what else do you have?

No We have the 335 Facebook takedown notices. Now on facebook, there might be some infringing content, but 335? Sounds awfully fradulent to me. I refuse to believe that 335 URLS have been found per month with obvious infringing content.  Same thing with the below twitter.com takedowns. Twitter doesn't even allow people to host anything but file links with very short descriptions and short 30 character "tweets", where are the 333 twitter infringing URLS? Made up, that's where!

Yet another fraudulent search engine takedown notice with 274 URLS of "infringing content" that is supposedly on a site that can't even host that stuff. Google.com has search results and the mere idea that they are linking to infringing material might cause these "takedown notices" but there actually isn't any material on google that is infringing, and notice how this said "google.com", as in the search engine, not youtube, not gmail, not anything else but the search engine itself... Sounds really fishy to me.

Now we got 239 quite possibly fraudulent takedown notices of content on Scribd.com, a document hosting site.  I've never heard of scribd.com even being used to host copyrighted material, and while these results could be genuine, I'm not so sure... Moving on...

Now HERE is the one that pisses me off. Gamefront, formally known as filefront, is a gaming file hosting site, a really big one. It has thousands of video game demos, patches, mods, etc. Not once have I ever encountered anything pirated being hosted there... And I have never even heard of it being associated with piracy, but yet we get 232 takedown notices per month on a gaming file hosting site which probably deletes anything that could be infringing. Are these legit? Hell NO! These sounds fraudulent beyond belief. It's like 2 copyright holders and 2 more organizations insisted on filing takedown notices on all legal files, because If you believe that filefront/gamefront has mostly legal files, how the hell can they have 239 pirated URL's discovered per month? It sounds really fishy, fishy like an attempt to take down mods or something like that...

Now we get 192 takedown notices for dailymotion.com, a video sharing site. Whether these takedowns are legit or not remains to be seen, but judging by youtube and it's thousands of fraudulent takedown notices done by people trying to make a buck off of innocent uploaders, you really cannot trust these to be genuine, can you?

Another yahoo.com search result... Moving on...

Finally, another 66 livejournal URL's being "found" per month, by 26 quite possibly bogus copyright holders, and 19 "organizations". I have never heard of livejournal as a source for infringing stuff, and I refuse to believe that 66 have been found per month.....

What we have here, is an example of Copyright Fraud being done on a large scale by people trying to shut down sites that host LEGAL, Non-infringing content. Not once have I discovered any infringing (full games,etc) files on Filefront, or infringing content on Google itself, or on yahoo or wordpress  or on Scribd, etc. Infringing documents maybe but 239 per month? Yeah Right!!! It seem like most of these circled ones are quite questionable at least and obviously fraudulent at worst. And to bring up another completely different subject : Look at all the porn sites listed.... Is copyright law being abused to shut down porn?

It looks like it is, maybe part of the GOP's "War on Porn" that they announced recently. If the morons in the right wing can over abuse copyright  law to take down Porn, then they can abuse it to take down any site that gets their panties in a bunch (Porn, Violent Games, Modding Sites, Youtube, Social Networking), because I don't believe that Porn is infringing, hell I don't see how 16,000+ notices on tons of  porn sites are all infringing on someones copyright. I see how they are all fraudulent to censor them too..

If these results are the ones that will all be listed lower in the search results, then the internet has already been censored, and it will only get worse...

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.