Youtube videos on Debunking Violent games BS being started by me.

Since I opened this blog to debunk BS claims made about violent games by certain groups who apparently all wanted extreme anti-violent games legislation passed (such as bans, 100% taxes on companies, taking down all sites related to violent games, etc), I've seen quite a bit of Youtube video's by other gamers talking about the so-called (or non-existant) link between violent games and school shootings, etc. Many of the video's were really well done, some weren't but none that I have seen have gone to lengths to debunk claims that are made against violent games that are utter BS, or fabricated. I am attempting to change this trend on Youtube to educate Gamers and Gaming Groups to the danger of fabricated claims being used against violent games that are possibly being done in an attempt to introduce draconian violent games legislation like Mr Poster boy Presidential Candidate is apparently supporting.  Here is a link to my first video of an extended series of video's all disproving various claims that are utter bunk, that are all being used to attack violent games.

Is the Government spying on people who watch youtube?

So, I was watching youtube, after hearing several horror stories about youtube bandwith being throttled by certain ISP's in America, from forums and such. So I decided to search on youtube to find out if someone had posted a video about it. Well I did. This video, was done by the author of the video I found which proved that certain ISPS are throttling youtube, through a hidden file that only can be accessed in windows explorer if you turn the "show all system files" feature in folder options on, not the "show hidden files" feature, mind you. This folder called "Content.IE5" is super hidden, and found on any machine that the main user uses IE as a default browser. It contains among other things, cache files from any site you visited, html files from sites you visit, but what really scared me, is that it also contains screenshots and in some cases, copied .flv files of certain youtube videos, taken of certain, but not all youtube videos you watch.

The person who did the above video, mentioned how he found this folder on his PC during a defragging and found the hidden folder with copied .flv files  of conspiracy theorist type video's only, but not other videos he had watched.  So he surmised IE has a secret system that was being used to spy on people by the government to find anti government types. I don't know if that's true, but if IE is in fact taking screenshots of certain youtube video's and not others, then it is a bad thing for everyone who still uses that really badly designed browser. So I decided to see for myself what would happen If I purposely browsed in IE on youtube for a 2 day test.

Since I didn't want to get hit with a nasty virus, I knew I would have to sandbox IE, like I do to any browser. I use Sandboxie on all my browsers due to nasty virus attacks I have gotten 2 times in the last 4 years on my PC, both unclean able by Antivirus products and both completely devastating my PC.  It's the only way to really prevent a virus attack these days. Antivirus software really sucks and doesn't prevent stuff at all due to many people on youtube reviewing them (look up mrizos on youtube), and finding out how much virus attacks they do not block. So I sandboxed my browser. But the other reason I sandboxed it was that sandboxie forces IE to put this folder in a plainly visible part of the sandbox I can freely copy to any part of my PC later. So after I was finished with youtube, I could simply just copy the folder "Content.IE5" to another folder and view that in Windows Explorer like the video I saw on youtube did.

So I started yesterday browsing youtube and other sites in a sandboxed IE session to see what youtube would be screenshoted to my Content.IE5 folder. What I found would shock me. I browsed a whole bunch of video's, from video game walkthroughs, to politcal type videos, which fit into 2 topics, anti-censorship, and anti-violent games BS. The anti-censorship videos mainly dealt with the TPP treaty I wrote about in my previous article. The anti-violent game BS  stuff were just video's posted by gamers, in a VBLOG format talking about how the whole link between violent games and violent crimes is utter BS. There is a lot of that on youtube, apparently. So I finished watching the videos and went back to my browser of choice, Chrome last night and posted some more blogs here. But before I went to bed I examined the content.ie5 folder I had copied out of my sandbox. What it showed is that screenshots of the video game playthroughs and the Anti-TPP videos were taken, at certain intervals. Simply excusing this as cache images of the video thumbnails doesn't add up, because multiple video's of one particular anti-TPP video made by a Japanese business man were found, and I knew right away that they were not thumbnails, more like regular screenshots taken by whatever program was taking them.

Strangely, absolutely none of the anti-video game violence videos were screenshotted at all, but the pictures from a descent 2 walkthrough were. It didn't make sense to me. But then I remembered what the video I watched earlier that got me into this said, it was mostly anti-government stuff that got screenshotted. So then it hit me. Something on my PC was somehow taking screenshots of certain video's that could be seen as a threat to the government or any legislation the public could oppose greatly, such as TPP, at least that's what I was thinking when I viewed these images that were in the subfolders of Content.IE5.

Now to prove that these screenshots have a ton taken of Anti-TPP video's being played, do a search on youtube for any video about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and you will get many video's that these screenshots came from. It seems like tons of video's that attacked the TPP got multiple screenshots taken of them but other video's I watched before attacking violent games censorship and ones saying violent games do not make people violent did not.

But the truth gets even scarier when you see what it screenshotted today. I decided to continue my IE test after clearing the sandbox so that the images above would not be copied to the new folder, then logged into youtube in IE sandboxed, and decided to completely watch a different type of video, rant videos made by gamers, ranting about violent games being linked to real crimes, like Columbine, the V-tech shooter, the Norway shooter, and the Aurora Shooter, all by the media. I watched a good 10 different video's, some really badly done, some really well done. Yet only one video uploaders video's were screenshotted, the one who was the most cynical and humorous by far, someone who happened to be Australian. This guys video seen here is what was captured, and other videos I watched by him were also captured. But the only thing is that only his videos were screenshotted, not the other 10 or so  I watched before. The thing is that the screenshot capturing done by whatever was doing it was logging his video's and no one elses. Now in australia there has been the biggest BS about violent games out of any country. Games over there if not good enough for the censors, they got banned, at least until the new law legalizing R18+ ratings went through. There has been a lot of morons in their government Bullshitting about how violent games cause crime, blah, blah, blah, including a certain former Parliment member who like a certain internet troll seen on gamepolitics, made it no secret that he thought gamers are shitheads, druggies, etc. So the bias against violent games, their companies, and the people who play them is really strong over there in the government, at least certain right wing groups, christian lobby, blah, blah, blah.  Another video screenshotted in the following videos shows another video game violence BS debunking done by a guy with long hair and a hat, which is also quite vulgar at times but makes the damn point it was meant to, which is all that counts. Somehow the screenshotter, which is unnkown to me what program it actually is, is screenshotting these video's as well. So it's screenshotting video game playthroughs of certain games but not others, but is screenshotting tons of Anti-TPP video's, and certain videos attacking attacks made against violent games by youtube content providers, but not all of them. Go figure. Here are the screenshots that were taken today to show I am not making this up:

As you can see, certain screenshots are quite mundane and can be debunked as cached images, but the sheer amount of anti-gaming BS and anti-censorship video's are quite high in these...  Now I cannot rule out the posibility my PC is Infected, allthough multiple Antivirus scans show nothing on the PC. However, this is quite scary to people who don't want their privacy violated. Who knows what is being done with these screenshots. Another video made by the person who discovered this on youtube, suggested that youtube bandwidth throttling and snooping on email accounts from free email services like yahoo mail and gmail was being done through other files in this folder. Since I would never trust the swiss cheeze that is IE to log in to my email account, I didn't even test that, even in a sandbox. It's quite scary how certain programs may be used to watch people who certain members of the government may think are a threat. You simply are not secure anymore online. I highly suggest that people sandbox their browsers, switch from IE, due to it's virus problems at the very least, install chrome instead and make sure that they visit sites like yahoo mail, or any other site that requires a log in and password with HTTPS enabled. You can download a free plugin called HTTPS enforcer to do that, and firefox users can use another plugin called HTTPS everywhere to automate this. It will help people stay anonymous online because HTTPS enables encrypted connections to every site that can use it if it uses it at all, and if TPP does pass this is at least a temporary solution to prevent "Deep packet Inspection" from being abused to sniff your data by ISPS who would give it to the government, incase data like that gets abused to arrest people for fraudulent reasons.

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.

This just in! A Certain presidential candidate wants a Complete ban on violent games!

While looking at how many of the candidates are for video game legislation of any kind, I came across a shocker, according to this site, which posted US presidential election candidates opinions on violent game legislation  A certain Presidential candidate  apparently  supports a complete ban on all violent games, yes that's right, a full ban to everyone, adults included, not just kids. (I'm not naming this candidate by name to protect my from possible fraudulent libel lawsuits from any candidate. I have no choice, the US Gov't won't make it so bloggers are immune to Libel, and don't make it so false claims of libel get thrown out before the lawsuit has been decided to go to trial.)

So He is quite possibly saying that he  wants to go every retailer that even dares to sell violent games, PERIOD. Apparently to "shield kids from the violence in society", we need to makes sure even ADULTS can't get "video games that are uber violent BLAH BLAH BLAH!".  And I assume he has lumped online retailers like amazon.com into his description, because they have no way to filter out kids because there is no way to tell age at all through amazon, so under his plan he would be taking down any possible retailer that could accidentally sell "uber" (as in any kind of violence in them) violent games to kids, even ones online that have no way of knowing what age their buyers are.. BAH!  Well under his description of what all of these games are like we would end up banning 99% of all the games ever made because 99% of video games have violent content, from sidescrollers, to FPS, to Third Person Shooters, To RPG's, to fighting games, to you-name-it. But apparently someone hasn't actually researched how many violent games are not Uber violent. Shocker!

Using an article from my other blog, the erosion of freedom, which was set up 3 years ago to debunk violent games related myths and to show my opposition of any kind of censorship, I will show right here, that unlike what certain people think, 99% of violent games are not uber violent...

Here is a quote from that blog's article in question which was written to debunk the most common violent game myths using a wikipedia list of all the FPS games made since 1986, to calculate how many fit the claim of the myth based on ones I have played or heard about:



"Claim  : Most FPS games are Ultra-Violent

Source : MANY, Many articles saying this in many ways, basically all saying most FPS games are uber violentbased on descriptions of one game (good example is all the articles describing games like Postal 2 to attack the Justices who voted against CA in EMA vs Brown)

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)"

So according to this data, which I measured myself, only 4.46% of all FPS games are "uber violent", not counting all the Third Person Shooters, RPG's, Fighting games, and Sidescrollers that I didn't count, so the actual % of violent games that are uber violent is actually much smaller than  that 4.46% figure.

First the GOP wages war on porn, and now thiis candidate's comments suggest he is willing to wage an unconstitutional war on all games with even a hint of violence. Under no circumstances should the US government even think of an outright ban on violent games to all age groups. The very thought of US even attempting to this is Obscene in itself. The scary thing is that, it's happened before in 2 states, right after columbine. Both states drafted bills that would have banned violent games to everyone but both failed thanks to the supreme courts. The government was so brainwashed by the newspapers all making up fake crap about doom (doom has pipebombs, allows you to kill kids, is a school shooting simulator, remember these?) to make it look like Harris/Klebold were solely influenced by it, that they had to attempt full bans. There is no excuse for this BS. Restrict all the games to adults all you want, but once the government even attempts to legislate morality in such a way so that any kind of ban, intended or not, happens, in such a way so adults cannot get violent games at all, or companies can't sell them to adults in stores, or the internet,  this country becomes a fascist state.  I have played over 100 FPS games since I was 13, and there was not a single time I felt like I was gonna get violent or aggressive due to them, ever. And there are millions like me, and only a few anomalies, and people the media labeled as "game obsessed", people who the media claim become violent due to violent games and only that, but in reality those people (School Shooters) most likely had other problems, like an obsession with violence in general, and terrorism, racism/white supremacy crap, mental illness, and other issues that would more likely cause real life violence than playing Doom, a game that came out in 1993! A game scapegoated by the media with questionable or possibly even hoaxed evidence,  like no other for crimes it did not commit, under the false tense of "saving the children" from violence caused by other issues! Go figure.... BLAH BLAH BLAH!

How the GOP's war on Porn could be used to silence violent gaming sites.

Looking through 1 of the 4 sites I use to find "controversial" stuff online, techdirt.com, I came across more info on a ridiculous porn/obscenity blocking/filtering plan that Mitt Romney and the GOP are sponsoring to mandate filtering of porn on all new computers being manufactured.  The article is here.  The problem I have with this is 2 fold...   1) Obscenity is very broadly defined, and has been used in laws restricting games to adult based on things that fit the 3 prong test with violence substituted for sexual content, many many times. The definition of Obscenity is below, taken from the wikipedia page I found while searching for it.

"The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."


Now lets look at info on the the law CA tried to pass in 2006 that got voted down by Scotus in Brown VS EMA, found on this site.  I quote:

 "  AB 1792, as amended, Yee. 
Violent  video games.
   Existing law 
 prohibits the distribution
 of harmful matter, as defined, to minors.  Existing law defines
harmful matter with reference to, among other things, its appeal to
the prurient interest and its depiction of sexual conduct.
   This bill would set forth legislative findings and declarations
regarding the harmful effects of violent video games on minors.  It
would 
  prohibit a person from knowingly distributing or
exhibiting to a minor  any video game that appeals to minors'
morbid interest in violence, that enables the player to virtually
inflict serious injury upon human beings or characters with
substantially human characteristics in a manner that is especially
heinous, atrocious, or cruel, as defined, and that lacks serious
literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.  The
bill would exclude from this 
prohibition  any game in which the visual depiction of violence
occurs as the result of simultaneous competition between 2 or more
players  , as specified.... <BLAH BLAH BLAH>"

Notice how the bill "borrows" the obscenity statute as a guide that CA would use to decide what games would be fined?  The utterly subjective and biased "lacks serious artistic, political, or scientific value for minors" could be used to fine ANY game that offended the judges in CA, and no store would even know what could be fined, leading to the mass taking of any game that has any violent content off the shelves, period. IMHO, this was the reason SCOTUS found  the bill unconstitutional.  Now what does this do with any filtering of Porn or Obscenity being abused to filter violent game sites? 

If the CA bill abused the obscenity statute to  try to give CA the right to accidentally or purposely cause a chain reaction of stores taking violent games off the shelf, by fining games that offend them, what's to stop the government filter to be abused, to filter out sites for games that have some sexual content, Duke3d, etc?  Even if the filter itself is put into filter Porn sites, you saw from my previous article how filters many times also block gaming sites anyway.. And stupid ones like ones for tame games rather than violent ones. The Libraries of Conservative states already filter out any and all "harmful to minors" things which could be abused by libraries to filter out violent game sites.  What's to stop the GOP to filter out other "undesirables" like sites for violent games, file sharing, web mail, file hosting, blogs, video game modding sites, secretly in a filter that is publicly advertised as an anti-porn filter, but has all things the GOP simply like, like those kinds of sites, put in it's filter, secretly?

Why Mandatory Web Filtering is stupid....

There are people out there who praise web filtering, and say how It's the greatest thing to protect children online. There are others who say "these non-child friendly sites, why do we even allow them?" and mandate mandatory filtering for all, such as Australia and it's mandatory filtering program called the "great Aussie firewall" which was stopped a few years ago due to complaints that it would block video game sites...
You read it right... Gaming sites..  Censorship is never right, even if kids are the reason for it. Already many states have mandatory regulation in public libraries to block sites found "harmful  to minors", as vague as that seems. The statues are vague and have no specific content that must be blocked, so they basically allow the libraries to chose what sites are harmful to minors to block them.  This extends into schools, including colleges as well in many cases. I tried 2 filters, and both gave me complete control over what sites to block...
Talk about scary ways they could be abused to block out something the person running the school/library doesn't like.  So what's the whole thing about gaming sites being harmful to minors, anyway?

One of the internet filters I tried is a free one called OpenDNS. I also looked at another site called "free internet", which also blocks gaming sites by default...  OpenDNS is not just web filtering, it is a free DNS service to reroute traffic from dangerous (virus) sites that happens to offer a free internet filtering program. I tried it out.... And was shocked how much dubious, not so harmful to minors type stuff was included with full filtering. The following categories of stuff were filtered:

Gaming sites
Sexuality oriented sites
Porn sites
File sharing sites
Web mail
Forums (!)
Gambling
and some others I can't remember now..

Most of these could be considered stuff you don't want kids to see, but gaming sites, forums, webmail, why are they even on the list? So I got curious. I decided to sign up with OpenDNS's free filtering service to test 50 or so sites to see what ones are blocked, assuming I was browsing the internet where OpenDNS was forced down my throat due to mandatory filtering laws (hypothetical ones).  The results were, well stupid...  Number 1, a ton of gaming sites got blocked, including doomworld, planetquake,planethalflife, rockstar.com, planetduke, blood.com, and the site for my favorite video game, Deus Ex.   But even worse the following gaming sites which report on gaming news were also blocked, Rock Paper shotgun, Gamepolitics.com, g4tv.com, kotaku.com. Then you get the downright retarded entries which were blocked for no good reason whatsoever: Fpscreator.com, TesNexus.com, 3dgamers archive, filefront,com, bioware.com (!),  planetdescent.com (!) , and the site of a free descent 2 source port, d2x-xl.   But almost ALL sites for video games that are quite controversial were allowed by this filter, including duke4.net, fear3.co.uk, callofduty.com, seriouszone.com, and others, yet Planetdescent and d2x-xl's sites get blocked? Descent is pretty much the coolest and least violent series of FPS games, you fly around destroying robots, yet the big site for duke nukem 3d, which approaches x-rated terms in violence, is allowed?  Then sites like  rock paper shotgun, and kotaku get blocked for being gaming news sites, what good reason is there for that? Then comes the ones that "really" piss me off, Bioware.com, TesNexus.com, and Gamepolitics.com. Gamepolitics is a game related politics site, not a violent games site, bioware makes RPG games that are mildly violent with one or 2 with same sex relationships that got ripped on Fox News (Mass Effect), besides that their games are less about gore and more about strategy, yet their entire site gets blocked for 1 controversial game? (that shouldn't be, none  the less!). Then you get tesnexus.com, a modding site for a tame yet really good RPG games in the elder scrolls series. Why block that?  None of those games are really that violent at all. Fallout3Nexus, for Fallout 3 wasn't blocked and it's the most violent rpg ever made? Add in 2 file hosting sites for games, Filefront.com, and gamers.org, both blocked. Why? Are they afraid that some kid will download some mods for a game he probably doesn't own... Why filter out files. You need the game and a PC to even play them. Librarians would probably catch the kid trying to burn a cd with  the game demo or attempting to play it in the library. For mods, you need the damn game the mod is for to play it, and a demo won't do. Patches, same thing. Why block file sites whatsoever. There is no reason why, unless the people thought game file hosting would lead to school shootings, or something utterly stupid like  that. It makes no sense whatsoever to block this way, PERIOD.

Other types of sites blocked are web mail sites like gmail and yahoo mail, which have absolutely no reason to block. I had yahoo mail since I was 20 for gods sake. Why filter that out? You then get all the file hosting sites online like 4shared, mediafire, rapidshare, dropbox, etc. All of these have a reputation for hosting pirate files, and they do. But they also host plenty of completely legal files, including mods for video games. There have been plenty of links to video game files on sites like this, posted on forums. Sometimes the only way to be able to host a file is to use a service like this, and simply blanketing them as "pirate" sites is stupid, but unfortunately, it makes no sense to block the host, when you could block the actual warez sites with the links to the 200 files you need to download the pirated stuff, because without that you will never find all 200 files with a simple internet search due to the fact that each link to one of these sites has a completely different account character list and file name, and the character list is a random string of characters, 30 long, that makes it almost impossible to find one file after you found the previous file through a web search.

Then you get the complete ban on social networking, which is well... Stupid.  Almost every single big social networking site, such as myspace, youtube, facebook, etc, are all blocked and made it look like someone was trying to redirect me to a fraudulent site,  to boot. This will  scare people who try to go to these sites to make it look like their infected with redirection malware which normally does this kind of  thing, with an Error box in chrome  that fooled even me, thinking that some malware had infected my PC when I tried to visit youtube, until I read it closer. I simply cannot understand the reasoning behind the panic on social networking. Sure, a kid could become obssessed with them, and they give out personal info, but as long as you know what you are doing, you're fine.  But the  youtube thing pisses me off. Youtube's primary focus is video streaming, NOT social networking, unlike myspace and facebook. By demanding these things get blocked, the mandatory filtering groups will be cutting off all lets plays, all walkthroughs, and tons of other stuff that simply are not even close to harmful to minors.  Now, none of this was meant as an attack on OpenDNS, I just think if they mandate filtering in the US, and use something similar to OpenDNS, in terms of site types to block, they will end up blocking TONS of sites that aren't even remotely harmful to minors, and let a lot in too. Filtering is not the answer, really.

Hoaxed Evidence used to blame Doom for Columbine?

This might be a very long post. I don't care. I have to get this off my chest. First thing's first, I will say is that I have been a gamer since 1993 when I started playing Simcity, Wolf3d, Doom, the list goes on. I have played every single big FPS game for the PC till around 1999. Then came the columbine massacre. Despite how horrible it was (I am NOT condoning it), what pissed me off is how the media kept on blaming violent games.  Doom was blamed for it almost right away. Claims that the shooters were influenced by it. Blah Blah Blah... I started reading really bad, sensationalist articles on newspapers around that time, all blaming Doom for the crime, saying they were living in a game world, playing out the game in "god mode", and how doom had pipebombs, the ability to kill children, and many worse. Blah, blah, blah....  Then came the article and the incident that caused me to become an pro-violent games pro-freedom anti-censorship activist.

An article was written by a Colorado newspaper which I won't mention here by name. It said that some hate site tracking group found a modified version of Doom on Eric Harris's AOL page, which they claimed was used to plan the shooting, with begging students saying a quote "oh lord, why are you doing this to me...", and other dubious features.  I couldn't stand the game-bashing by the media any more so I signed up to that newspapers forums, and posted how I couldn't stand the lies being spread by newspapers making up bunk claims to make violent games look like a cause of what we would learn later was a botched terrorism attack by two really messed up individuals, not game obsessed murderers turned that way by Doom. I physically blamed the media and condemned people in schools trying to "reform" and "discipline" Doom playing students after the shooting, and complained about 2 bills that were being worked on in 2 states legislatures that would have completely banned violent games, to adults, not just kids.

Immediately I was threatened by an internet troll, using a fake name, who started insulting me right and left, and called me and some other pro gamer types on the forum "gamer shitheads", and then threatened my life after anger drove me to say a particularly rude reply in return, with an underhanded attempt to quote themselves from a previous post saying "you're sick" as something I said later on... The whole thing wen't on and on, with the same old BS replies to anyone who even dared defend Doom, every sentence was quoted, and followed by insults, then the next sentence, more insults, etc. The insults were lewd, sexually explicit and full of swears, threats, racial slurs, you name it.  After 3 months of this happening every 1 minute 24/7, with only a few breaks, and 99% of the forum posters on the Troll's side condemning the "gamers who like to twittle with their joysticks" - yes another quote by a moron who sided with the troll,  the troll then was asked "prove that Harris was Inspired by Doom", and then he used an internet hoax "doom will become reality"  to back it up, which I debunked on my first blog post at my old wordpress blog, which is here. So that's what I set out to do, debunk BS claims said about violent games. And I did for 3 years on that blog, but a lack of followers and viewers have always stymied me there.. So I am posting this article here... Now onto the main point of this article..

The poster who threatened me on the forum of the newspaper said one very suspicious thing, "I have enough evidence to prove gamers get violent". This post was taken down no more than 20 minutes later. 3 years later the entire forum was removed, all of it, and then the email address on "justicemail.com" was completely removed from their system, in fact the whole system was completely purged.  Justice mail is advertised as "email for the law community" or was then.... So the thought crossed the mind of my friend who was there to fight the troll for me, "it's a lawyer!!!". So for a few years I kept on trying to reverse trace the morons email with NO good results on 100's of reverse email lookups. I needed info on who this moron was... But every attempt lead to "no results", over and over again.

So I gave up, and forgot about it, till I opened the wordpress blog 3 years ago and debunked the hoax. That brought back bad memories, and I started wondering about the news article with the modified version of Doom found on the AOL site of eric harris. Immediately something pissed me off about it the first time I read it. I had a "gut" feeling it was a much more elaborate hoax like the Doom will become reality one, but couldn't really prove it. While researching BS claims made by violent game haters that mentioned Doom and Columbine one day for a blog post I ended up discovering this thesis which claimed Doom was licensed by the military to train soldiers to kill better (a lie, Doom was used as an Unnoficial mod to train group tactics, not to break down the inhibition to kill - a BIG lie spread by anti-gamers (my term for radical censors who spread lies about violent games)), and the fact that a modified version of doom was found by the same exact hate site tracking group without the begging students but with "2 shooters, infinite ammo, and extra weapons for both shooters".  I knew right away the 2 shooters and extra weapons were NOT doable by Doom in 1999. I've been editing doom since 1995, I know what can be done and what can't be done. In 1999, the only way to modify a doom .exe is with the program dehacked. There were no source ports with the features needed then.  So this Thesis was spewing Bogus claims. But further research found out that the claims were quoted from an APA paper which is not online anymore. It mentioned the same features 2 weapons, infinite ammo, extra weapons, and so did an article from another Colorado news paper, but that newspaper article was even more dubious, because it mentioned the quote said by dying students in the mod, but it was a completely different quote than in the first newspaper article I read , plus "infinite weapons" as a feature, something NO Fps can do. There is no way to even have infinite weapons, the idea simply doesn't compute. Weapons are a finite asset, not something you can never run out of, in fact running out of weapons is impossible, It's ammo you run out of, not weapons. The idea is so dumb that I don't know where to start.  Further research lead to the original source of the BS, an article written by a magazine writer talking about columbine on the first 3 pages, and then mentioning this modified version of doom being found on the AOL page again with no sign of the begging students being mentioned, but the article did mention the 2 shooters, infinite ammo, extra weapons and one feature that I knew Doom could not do "when one of the shooters ran out of ammo, he died". Or something along those lines.

Ok... That's the long part out of the way. Now to the more interesting part, proof that all of these articles are putting claims in that simply cannot be done in Doom...  Here is a screenshot from the program dehacked I mentioned above.

This shows the property set used for all "things" that dehacked allows you to edit. Examples of things, for the non-Doom Editing people out there, are Ammo, Items, Weapons, monsters, basically anything that can move and isn't a wall, floor, etc. Every thing in the game uses this exact set of properties. Lets say I was trying to make a "second shooter" in dehacked. I would need a property to make one of the peaceable enemies in the game (lets say the chaingunner), friendly to attack enemies that look like students, via some graphic editing used.  You look closely and you can see that there is no property for friendly AI, whatsoever... But that's not even the last part in these articles that is an outright impossible claim.

Here is the Generic Player Properties, cheat changing panel and weapon properties list in Dehacked. The generic properties allow the player to have more total bullets, more total health, armor, and more ammo at the start of any level. The weapon properties allow someone to change properties of each weapon in the game. Adding "extra weapons" for each "shooter" with this is simply impossible. Why? Doom has only 8 weapons, Fist/Chainsaw/Pistol/Shotgun/Chaingun/Rocket Launcher/Plasma Rifle and BFG. Doom 2 adds the double barreled shotgun. There is absolutely no way to add a new weapon without replacing an old weapon, with this program. Look for a "new weapon" button. You won't find one. Dehacked won't let you do that. Another claim of the article, proved to be impossible.


Now look at the above image again. Is there any variable that stores the players current ammo at any time editable through dehacked? No. That variable is always in memory and can't be edited directly, because it always changes. The problem is that  there is no way to make the player die if he runs out of ammo, period.  No way. No variable for current ammo on that screen at all. So how could someone have even made a feature where the shooter who runs out of ammo dies first?

This first image again of the player's properties. Look for a property or ability to make the player die first when he runs out of ammo. There is none!!! No way whatsoever to even do this!!! In fact the magazine article in question even says the modified version of doom had infinite ammo then said the player who ran out of ammo dies first. How is that even possible when running out of ammo is impossible with infinite ammo? IT ISNT! As you can see many of these features this modifed version of doom had simply don't work in 1999. Not till 2000 did friendly AI even become a real thing in Doom Sourceports via Dehacked, and not till 2002 did ACS scripting, the first scripting language get implemented in Doom that would have made "killing the player who ran out of ammo first" even doable.

The more I look at this, the more I see how suspicious this article and the Doom will become reality hoax seem. The 3 articles (the magazines one, the first colorado newspapers one, the 2nd colorado newspapers one) all mention the same hate site tracking group, but cannot even get the features consistent among them. The first article, the magazine one failed to even mention any begging students. The second one, which was published by a colorado newspaper, doesn't even mention the running out of ammo and dying thing, but mentions that the quote was cried out, and Infinite weapons. Then the 3rd article, the one by the 2nd colorado newspaper, mentions a completely different quote, says it was shouted, not cried, and left out everything else, the infinite ammo/weapons, the dying when running out, etc. The more you look at it, the more it looks like a sloppily done article series with impossible in doom claims done by 3 newspaper/magazine writers, that all borrowed the same hate site tracking group but added in their own features, all in an attempt to cause a massive outcry against violent games. If these articles and the doom will become reality hoax never even happened, the link between the shooters and Doom would be less defined...
All I know is that certain things just don't add up to me.

The hoax mentioned above, "Doom Will become Reality" is used in over 7 pages of anti-video game attack sites, all blaming doom for columbine. We still don't know who put up the hoax on the fake Eric Harris AOL page mentioned at this site,  (look at the link on the bottom right). This site proved it was a hoax but was swept under the rug by such attack sites. The only other site corroborating the fact that this was a hoax was "mysteriously" taken offline by someone. I found it search results, some newspaper. It is gone now. Now you take the articles with the impossible features and search for them, using this quote from the second newspaper article,  in the search results, and you get over 13 pages of results. (make sure to let google put in the search results that are omitted). You combine the search results for the doom will become reality hoax search and the search with the quote and you get over 20 pages of results all claiming these articles are genuine and are reporting the god-fearing truth, but only 3 pages debunking them with facts, 4 at one point but it was taken down. The problem is that none of these attack sites even proved without a shadow of a doubt that this modified version of doom was even real. In fact no one has. All of the other Eric Harris Wads are available online if you search for eric harris wads. People around 1999 were trying to get their hands on addons by him for some sick reason, but not once on his AOL site did he even mention this modified version of Doom. And since the way file/website hosting works involves knowing the exact file path needed to download it off his site, which intern requires finding a link posted by someone else (who found it), how did  this hate site tracking group even find it, without knowing the directory listing of all his files on his AOL site? If it really wasn't found by people in the doom community like all of his other wads, how could they have known the file name? I don't think they could have hacked his password in time, but maybe it is possible...

However even if they did find something, these claims dispute any rational idea that this mod even existed at all.  More questions, less answers, that's all I have to say.  I will keep writing here about more video game related BS said by the media, debunking it if I can, if I can't I simply won't post it. I also have to talking about the Trans-Pacific Partnership more. Enjoy.