Infopost on CAS
I’ve seen a lot of misinformation going around about CAS, the Copyright Alert System, AKA the Six Strikes system. Hopefully this will clear things up.
What CAS isn’t:
- CAS is not a law. It is not SOPA or CISPA. It does not directly involve law enforcement agencies.
- CAS cannot see the files already on your hard drive.
- CAS cannot directly monitor your internet traffic.
- CAS does not give a flying fuck about your reaction gifs, manips, fanfiction, etc.
- Rightsholders cannot directly see your personal information such as name and address without getting a subpoena. They must go through your ISP, who already has that information connected to your IP because you pay them.
What CAS is:
- CAS is a partnership between major rightsholders such as the MPAA and RIAA, among others, with major American ISPs AT&T, Cablevision, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable.
- The copyright holders monitor major public bittorrent trackers. They get the IPs of users downloading infringing files, and notify their ISPs.
- The ISP then steps in to give users warnings. This begins with emails and phone calls, but quickly escalates to forcing you to watch copyright propaganda, blocking your access to certain sites, and eventually capping your internet speeds or restricting your internet access entirely.
- There is an appeals process, which must be done within 14 days of the warning and costs $35 per appeal.
- For repeat infringers, the copyright holders may seek legal action. To do this they would need to subpoena your personal information from your ISP. All they have before that is your IP address.
Why this is bad:
- It violates presumption of innocence.
- It sets a precedent for corporate vigilante justice—corporations finding and punishing crime in a manner they see fit.
- It poses a serious threat to internet cafes and libraries that offer public internet access, making vital services less accessible to disadvantaged and impoverished Americans. Edit: Yes, this is true. Even though large corporations like Starbucks might still be able to provide free wifi, providing free wifi at all is against the TOS in most business internet packages. This means that most of the free internet available to people is technically not supposed to be offered, but this is not enforced. This could leave many people, especially the rural poor, without internet when they had internet before.
- It is a form of censorship.
- It violates the right to privacy.
- We are piratey pirates who like to pirate.
How to not get in trouble:
- Secure your wifi connection, and make sure all members of your household understand what CAS is and how to avoid problems with it.
- If you download copyrighted material, do not use public bittorrent trackers without a VPN. There are multiple alternatives: cyberlockers, Usenet, IRC, FTP, private bittorrent trackers, etc. Avoiding major public torrent sites like The Pirate Bay entirely is the safest way. Downloading material not protected by any of the CAS affiliates is probably relatively safe. (Anime, warez, bookz, etc.) If you must use a public tracker, use a VPN. FYI, Usenet and the good VPNs are not free. The other things mentioned here generally are.
- Google instructions for these things if you don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.
How to fight CAS:
- There’s some White House petitions: check out this one here and this one over here. The White House has already issued this statement: “[the] agreement is a positive step and consistent with our strategy of encouraging voluntary efforts to strengthen online intellectual property enforcement and with our broader Internet policy principles, emphasizing privacy, free speech, competition and due process.” Since this is not law, government probably isn’t the most effective way to fight it, nor does the government seem likely to take a stance against this, but it can’t hurt to raise as much hell as possible anyway. Sign it, make some noise.
- Call your ISP and voice your displeasure. If at all possible, switch your ISP to one not supporting CAS, and inform both ISPs that this was why you switched. THIS IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE METHOD.
- Pirate anyway. Don’t be stupid and pirate through the channel they’re obviously watching, but don’t slack in your piracy. Show them that these measures only anger their customers and don’t actually do shit to protect copyright.
- Contact the MPAA and RIAA and so forth and tell them you won’t be buying their products until they cease this war on internet piracy. They can have customers or they can treat everyone like criminals, but they can’t have both.
Hopefully we can all stop running around like chickens without heads claiming the police are coming for our reaction gif folders? Yes? Good. Pirate safely, folks.
Edit: my claim that CAS would impact open wifi was challenged, so I added two sources for that statement as well as some further details. I wish it were not true, but it is.
“We really don’t own our stuff anymore (at least not fully); the manufacturers do. Because modifying modern objects requires access to information: code, service manuals, error codes, and diagnostic tools. Modern cars are part horsepower, part high-powered computer. Microwave ovens are a combination of plastic and microcode. Silicon permeates and powers almost everything we own. This is a property rights issue, and current copyright law gets it backwards, turning regular people — like students, researchers, and small business owners — into criminals.”
—Current congressional debates about the legality of unlocking cell phones are missing the larger point – Wired’s Kyle Wiens argues we should be allowed to unlock everything we own.
Pair with System Failure. – Kirby Ferguson’s provocative take on what’s wrong with intellectual property law.
STOP THE COPYRIGHT ALERT SYSTEM
petitions.whitehouse.govWill you lazy little buttholes please go sign the petition to stop the Copyright Alert System? No idea what it is? Let me give you the rundown.
- It’s also known as the “Copyright Alert Machine” or the “Six Strikes Policy.”
- It was masterminded by a firm of goodie-two-shoes stalkers called Mark Monitor, which monitors the IP traffic of torrent and social media sites to catch “transgressions.” They spot up to thirty million “infringements” a day.
- This congregation of privacy infringing creepers will basically generate a shit list of all the IP addresses that they’ve spied on and found a problem with.
- This list goes out to ISP companies, which will take “diciplinary action” against you. This comes in the form of harassing letters and choked internet speed for up to three days.
- Let me say that again: your internet speed can be severely choked for up to three days per “transgression”
“Twerking Christ in a tarp!” you may or may not say, “How can I stop this madness?”
All you need to do is make a whitehouse.gov account, and you can sign petitions like this one to help affect the future of the United States. It takes maybe, maybe five minutes to sign up. If you like not being charged with a crime because of your gif folder, you need to sign this.
Those of you that are not American, spread this around anyways. Urge your American followers to sign up.
You got someone a chicken, but you can’t stop our rights from being degraded?
You can do better than that, Tumblr.
Harper Lee wrote just one book, and now she's in a copyright fight over "To Kill a Mockingbird."
guardian.co.ukIn the lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, Lee says Samuel Pinkus, the son-in-law of Lee’s long-time agent, Eugene Winick, took advantage of her failing hearing and eyesight to transfer the rights on the book, which has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and became an Oscar-winning film.
The 87-year-old says she has no memory of agreeing to relinquish her rights or signing the agreement that cements the purported transfer.
Winick had represented Lee for more than 40 years. When he became ill in 2002, Pinkus diverted several of his father-in-law’s clients to his own company, the lawsuit said.
According to the lawsuit, in 2007 Pinkus “engaged in a scheme to dupe” Lee into assigning the novel’s copyright without any payment and had since failed to respond to licence requests.
Lee received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her book in 2007 from President George W. Bush, a fan of Lee’s work. She has rarely shown her face in public otherwise.
I'm going to write a book
And call it “Texts I Never Sent: A Journey to Not be ‘That Girl’”
It will be a compilation of texts I’ve typed out and never managed to click send on because despite the well-deserved sentiment (anger, sadness, fear, heartbreak) I refused to be “that girl.”
Chapters will include “come over,” “really? You’re not going to answer my text?,” “stop being an asshole,” “I miss you and think about you a lot” and more.
Coming to a bookstore near you.
Nintendo Content ID Stikes
Got my first content ID strike from Nintendo on PBGGameplay. I was working on a Top 10 Mario Games video, but after talking with someone from TGS, looks like I gotta hold off on it for a bit. WELP, I guess I won’t tell you guys which Mario games you should consider purchasing because Nintendo doesn’t want me to. Guess I’ll oblige.
5 Famous Online Copyright Crusaders Who Are Total Hypocrites
#5. The Man Who Sponsored SOPA Stole Pictures for His Website
Shortly after the Vice.com story broke, the congressman’s team had his website taken down, just like a dirty, copyright-infringing criminal would deserve, according to Smith’s own proposed legislation.
“Take my own picture? Of trees? You’re mad, sir.”
