Nintendo Hates You: More DMCA Takedowns Of YouTube Videos Of Game Music Despite No Legit Alternative

from the mine-mine-mine dept

I guess this is nearly an annual thing now. In 2019, we talked about how one YouTuber, GilvaSunner, had over one hundred YouTube videos blocked by Nintendo over copyright claims. GilvaSunner's channel is dedicated to video game music, mostly from Nintendo games. Those videos consist of nothing but that music, as in no footage of video game gameplay. Nintendo, which certainly can take this sort of action from an IP standpoint, also doesn't offer any legit alternative for fans to enjoy this music on any streaming service or the like. Then, in 2020, GilvaSunner had another whole swath of videos consisting of game music blocked by Nintendo over copyright claims. Still no legit alternative for those looking to enjoy music from Nintendo's celebrated catalogue of games.

Well, if Nintendo decided to take 2021 off from this annual project, it certainly has more than made up for it by sending copyright strikes to GilvaSunner's channel at a volume of over 1,300 in one day.

Yesterday morning, YouTuber GilvaSunner posted a tweet explaining that Nintendo had sent them and their channel over 1300 “copyright blocks.” The channel, which is extremely popular, uploads full video game soundtracks, letting fans easily listen to their favorite Kirby or Mario track via YouTube.

After all the copyright blocks went through and the dust settled, GilvaSunner shared a list of all the soundtracks that Nintendo had targeted and blocked from the site. It’s a long list.

A very long list, as you might expect. Now, a couple of items of note here. First, GilvaSunner has insisted that he is not shocked that Nintendo continues to take these actions, nor does he claim that it isn't within its rights to take them. But he's also not going to stop voluntarily.

“I’m also not angry or surprised that Nintendo is doing this, but I do think it’s a bit disappointing there is hardly an alternative,” explained GilvaSunner in a tweet thread from 2020. “If Nintendo thinks this is what needs to be done (to set an example), I will let them take down the channel. It is their content after all.”

Do as you please, in other words, Nintendo. That being said, let's also note that the channel doesn't monetize any of these videos. GilvaSunner doesn't make money off of Nintendo's music.

And neither does Nintendo because, frustratingly, the company still hasn't made this music available on any of the music streaming services we all know and love. Nor has the company announced any plans to. In other words, Nintendo isn't going to provide you with a way to enjoy this music and it is going to shut down anyone who does.

In that scenario, this isn't Nintendo protecting its monetary interests. It's simply the company deciding to take its musical ball and go home. Why? Because Nintendo hates you, that's why.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, music
Companies: nintendo, youtube

Virginia Police Used Fake Forensic Documents To Secure Confessions From Criminal Suspects

from the pretty-fucking-evil dept

Cops lie. It's just something they do.

It's something all people do. We just expect cops to do less of it because they're entrusted with enforcing laws, which suggests their level of integrity should be higher than that of the policed. Unfortunately, the opposite often tends to be the case.

There are many reasons cops lie. All of them are self-centered. They lie to cover up misconduct, salvage illegal searches, deny deployment of excessive force, and ensure narratives are preserved when challenged in court.

They also lie to obtain confessions from criminal suspects. There is nothing illegal about this act. Whether or not it crosses constitutional lines tends to come down to the judgment of the judges handling civil rights lawsuits. There's no hard and fast rule as to which lies are unconstitutional so cops do a lot of lying when trying to fit someone for a criminal charge.

Up until recently, it was okay for the Virginia Beach Police Department to use a particularly nefarious form of lying when trying to coax confessions from criminal suspects. While cops will routinely claim evidence and statements point to the person as the prime suspect, very rarely do they actually show this fake evidence to people being interrogated. Not so in Virginia Beach, where fake documents were just part of investigators' toolkits.

Police in Virginia Beach repeatedly used forged documents purporting to be from the state Department of Forensic Science during interrogations, falsely allowing suspects to believe DNA or other forensic evidence had tied them to a crime, the state attorney general revealed Wednesday in announcing an agreement to ban the practice.

This practice was inadvertently exposed by a prosecutor who asked for a certified copy of a report faked up by police investigators. The state's Department of Forensic Science told the commonwealth's attorney no such report existed, leading to an internal investigation by the PD. That happened last April. The following month (May 2021), the Virginia Beach police chief issued an order forbidding the use of this tactic. Since then, the PD has uncovered five times fake forensic documents were used during investigations.

But it wasn't just limited to investigators trying to convince suspects to admit their guilt. One of these fake documents made its way into court, used as evidence (!!) during a bail hearing.

Now, there's a statewide ban on using fake or forged forensic documents during interrogations, thanks to Virginia's Attorney General. There's been no statement made yet suggesting the prosecutions tied to use of fake documents will be examined further to determine whether their use was coercive, and the Attorney General's office has not said whether it will notify convicts who were subjected to this form of police lying.

The PD's apology is somewhat less than authentic:

The Virginia Beach Police Department said in a statement that the technique, “though legal, was not in the spirit of what the community expects.”

There are a lot of things that are technically legal but that most people would find to be an abuse of power. The key is to not engage in questionable practices just because no court has declared them unconstitutional. No doubt the investigators that used fake documents to secure confessions were aware the community at large would frown on such obviously devious behavior. But they did it anyway because winning at all costs is standard MO for most law enforcement agencies. While it's good this discovery led to swift action, the investigation should really be expanded to see what other unsavory techniques are being deployed to extract confessions.

Filed Under: confessions, dna evidence, evidence, fake evidence, virginia beach, virginia beach police

How Disney Got That 'Theme Park Exemption' In Ron DeSantis' Unconstitutional Social Media Bill

from the foia-for-the-win dept

It's been almost exactly a year since Florida Man Governor, Ron DeSantis announced plans to try to pass a law that would ban social media websites from taking down misinformation, abuse, and other types of speech. When the final bill came out, at the very last minute, Florida Rep. Blaise Ingoglia tried to sneak in an amendment that carved out Disney, by saying the law didn't apply to any company that owned a theme park. This took other legislators by surprise, as indicated in this somewhat incredible video of Florida Reps. Anna Eskamani and Andrew Learned confronting Ingoglia over this amendment and what it meant:

In that video, Ingoglia flat out admits that the goal was to try to carve Disney+ out of the definition of a "social media provider." He says they looked at other possible language changes and adding the "theme park" exemption was just the easiest way to exclude Disney. Of course, that never made any sense. In the video he says, repeatedly, that this is to protect "reviews" on Disney+, which is weird because Disney+ doesn't have reviews. He also tries to make weird distinctions between Disney and Netflix which suggests a really confused understanding of Section 230 and how it interacts with first party and third party content. Amusingly, Eskamani points out at one point that Disney owns other websites -- like ESPN.com -- and asks if they, too, would be exempted from the bill, and Ingoglia responds in the most inane way possible: "as long as they follow their policies, everything should be fine." Which... makes no sense and didn't answer the question.

Either way, the bill has since (rightly) been declared unconstitutional (though Florida is appealing), and the issue of the theme park exemption was mostly a sideshow in the ruling.

However, it still left many people scratching their heads as to how that came about -- including intrepid reporter Jason Garcia, who filed some freedom of information requests with the Governor's office to see if he could find out the backstory behind the Disney theme park exemption... and, let me tell you, he hit pay dirt. The emails reveal quite a lot. And, as Garcia notes:

Ron DeSantis’ willingness to give Disney an incoherent carveout from this bill raises real questions about whether the governor really cared about cracking down on Big Tech – or whether he just cared about making voters think he’d cracked down on Big Tech.

But more telling is the finding that the "amendment" appeared to come directly from Disney. The governor's legislative affairs director, Stephanie Kopelousos, emailed staffers in the Florida House to call her, and then 21 minutes later, emailed them the theme park amendment, with the subject line: "New Disney language." And, just to underline the fact that Kopelousos was corresponding with Disney folks, when some House staffers pushed back on some ideas this happened:

In one email to the other governor’s office and House staffers, Kopelousos sent a proposal under the subject line, “Latest from Disney.” A few hours later, after other staffers expressed concern that idea was too broad, she sent in another attempt, which she explained with the note, “Disney responded with this.”

At one point, Disney, through Kopelousos, suggested carving out "journalism" organizations (as if Disney is a journalism organization). That created something of a mess:

An hour later, Kopelousos emailed a third possibility. The subject line was “New Disney language,” and the language, she told the others, came “From Adam,” presumably a reference to a Disney lobbyist named Adam Babington.

[....]

“So Disney is a journalistic enterprise now?” Kurt Hamon, the staff director for the House Commerce Committee, wrote in response to of the company’s ideas. “I would say no to this one too...why would we [exempt] journalism enterprises? Would Google, Facebook and Twitter qualify as a journalistic enterprise?”

“If they have a problem with Kurt’s narrow suggestion, then they are probably doing or seeking to do more than they have indicated,” James Utheier, who was DeSantis’ general counsel and is now the governor’s chief of staff, wrote in response to another.

Basically, it appears that Disney kept trying to carve itself out and, as Ingoglia more or less admitted, with the clock ticking down on the Florida legislative session, most of Disney's own suggestions were ridiculous -- so the nonsense "theme park exemption" became the easiest to carve out Disney.

Some of these emails are hilarious.

I mean, this isn't a surprise, but it just confirms what was obvious all along. DeSantis proposed this dumb idea, and his minions in the legislature ran with it, without bothering to think through basically any of the consequences of the bill (let alone the constitutional problems with it). And then just as they were about to pass it, a Disney lobbyist realized "shit, we have websites too..." and demanded a carve out.

This is not how law-making is supposed to be done, but it sure is how law-making often is done. It sure shows the kind of soft corruption of the system, in which a large company in the state, like Disney, get to write themselves out of bills.

For what it's worth, Garcia also notes that the Senate companion to the House bill sailed through... basically because Florida state Senator Ray Rodriques flat out lied about it when questioned. He noted that the House had passed a similar bill to one they had passed, noting "the House placed some amendments on it." He then describes the other amendments the House added (which made the bill even dumber, but whatever) and then skips right over the Disney exemption. So then the Senate President asks the Senate to approve the Disney Amendment without anyone even saying what it was. Another state Senator, Perry Thurston, jumps in to ask what's in the amendment.

The Senate President, Wilton Simpson, says: "Senator Rodrigues explained the amendment. The amendment that he explained was this amendment."

Except, that's not true. At all. Rodrigues skipped right over the theme park amendment. And... then the Senate just voted to allow the amendment without ever actually saying what it did. In some ways, this is even more embarrassing than the Eskamani/Learned/Ingoglia discussion in the House. At least they were able to discuss the Disney exemption in the open and admit to what it did. Rodriguez just flat tried to ignore it to get it included...

And people wonder why the public doesn't trust politicians? Perhaps this cronyism and nonsense is why...

Filed Under: 1st amendment, blaise ingoglia, content moderation, corruption, florida, ray rodrigues, ron desantis, section 230, theme park
Companies: disney

Senator Wyden: EARN IT Will Make Children Less Safe

from the exactly-right dept

Earlier this week we wrote about the problematic reintroduction of the EARN IT Act and explained how it will make children a lot less safe -- exactly the opposite of what its backers claim. Senator Ron Wyden has now put out a statement that succinctly explains the problems of EARN IT, and exactly how it will do incredible harm to the very children it pretends to protect:

“This sadly misguided bill will not protect children. It will not stop the spread of vile child exploitation material or target the monsters that produce it. And it does not spend a single dollar to invest in prevention services for vulnerable children and youth or help victims and their families by providing evidence-based and trauma-informed resources. Instead, the EARN IT Act threatens the privacy and security of law-abiding Americans by targeting any form of private, secure devices and communication. As a result, the bill will make it easier for predators to track and spy on children and also harm the free speech and free expression of vulnerable groups,” Wyden said. “I have spent my career in the Senate fighting to protect kids and aid victims of abuse, and I will do everything in my power to ensure every single monster responsible for exploiting children or spreading horrific CSAM materials is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But this bill does nothing to turn around the Justice Department’s tragic failure to prioritize child welfare and abuse cases.”

As Wyden notes, he introduced a bill that would put $5 billion towards actually fighting child sexual abuse, but for whatever reason that bill is going nowhere, while EARN IT is on the fast track.

Only one of those bills (Wyden's) actually moves us towards really fighting against child sexual exploitation. The other one grandstands and makes children less safe because it fails to understand technology or the law. Yet which one is Congress gearing up to support?

Filed Under: csam, earn it, ron wyden

Daily Deal: GoSafe S780 Dash Cam with Sony Image Sensor

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

Looking for a great dash cam that records well in low light? Check out the GoSafe S780. With its revolutionary Sony Starvis sensor, the S780 delivers remarkable performance in those tricky dusk driving situations. Plus, thanks to its dual-channel system, you can record both the front and rear of your vehicle at the same time. It's on sale for $200.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Can You Solve The Miserable Being Miserable Online By Regulating Tech?

from the questions-worth-researching dept

Over the last few months, I've been asking a general question which I don't know the answer to, but which I think needs a lot more research. It gets back to the issue of how much of the "bad" that many people seem to insist is caused by social media (and Facebook in particular) is caused by social media, and how much of it is just shining a light on what was always there. I've suggested that it would be useful to have a more nuanced account of this, because it's become all too common for people to insist that anything bad they see talked about on social media was magically caused by social media (oddly, traditional media, including cable news, rarely gets this kind of treatment). The reality, of course, is likely that there are a mix of things happening, and they're not easily teased apart, unfortunately. So, what I'd like to see is some more nuanced accounting of how much of the "bad stuff" we see online is (1) just social media reflecting back things bad things that have always been there, but which we were less aware of as opposed to (2) enabled by social media connecting and amplifying people spreading the bad stuff. On top of that, I think we should similarly be comparing how social media also has connected tons of people for good purposes as well -- and see how much of that happens as compared to the bad.

I'm not holding my breath for anyone to actually produce this research, but I did find a recent Charlie Warzel piece very interesting, and worth reading, in which he suggests (with some interesting citations), that social media disproportionately encourages the miserable to connect with each other and egg each other on. It's a very nuanced piece that does a good job highlighting the very competing incentives happening, and notes that part of the reason there's so much garbage online is that there's tremendous demand for it:

But online garbage (whether political and scientific misinformation or racist memes) is also created because there’s an audience for it. The internet, after all, is populated by people—billions of them. Their thoughts and impulses and diatribes are grist for the algorithmic content mills. When we talk about engagement, we are talking about them. They—or rather, we—are the ones clicking. We are often the ones telling the platforms, “More of this, please.”

This is a disquieting realization. As the author Richard Seymour writes in his book The Twittering Machine, if social media “confronts us with a string of calamities—addiction, depression, ‘fake news,’ trolls, online mobs, alt-right subcultures—it is only exploiting and magnifying problems that are already socially pervasive.” He goes on, “If we’ve found ourselves addicted to social media, in spite or because of its frequent nastiness … then there is something in us that’s waiting to be addicted.”

In other words, at least some of this shouldn't be laid at the feet of the technology, but rather us, as humanity, in what we want out of the technology. It's potentially a sad statement on human psychology that we'd rather seek out the garbage than the other stuff, but it also kind of suggests that the "solution" is not so much in attacking the technology, but maybe figuring out solutions that have more to do with our own societal and psychological outlook on the world.

However, as Warzel notes, if social media is preternaturally good at linking up the miserable, and encouraging them to be more miserable together, then you could argue that it does deserve some of the blame.

Misery is a powerful grouping force. In a famous 1950s study, the social psychologist Stanley Schachter found that when research subjects were told that an upcoming electrical-shock test would be painful, most wished to wait for their test in groups, but most of those who thought the shock would be painless wanted to wait alone. “Misery doesn’t just love any kind of company,” Schachter memorably argued. “It loves only miserable company.”

The internet gives groups the ability not just to express and bond over misery but to inflict it on others—in effect, to transfer their own misery onto those they resent. The most extreme examples come in the form of racist or misogynist harassment campaigns—many led by young white men—such as Gamergate or the hashtag campaigns against Black feminists.

Misery trickles down in subtler ways too. Though the field is still young, studies on social media suggest that emotions are highly contagious on the web. In a review of the science, Harvard’s Amit Goldenberg and Stanford’s James J. Gross note that people “share their personal emotions online in a way that affects not only their own well-being, but also the well-being of others who are connected to them.” Some studies found that positive posts could drive engagement as much as, if not more than, negative ones, but of all the emotions expressed, anger seems to spread furthest and fastest. It tends to “cascade to more users by shares and retweets, enabling quicker distribution to a larger audience.”

This part is fascinating to me in that it actually does try to tease out some of the differences between what anger does to us at an emotional level as compared to happiness. It also reminds me of the (misleadingly reported) Washington Post story regarding how Facebook kept adjusting the "weighting" of the various emoji responses it added, especially focused on how to weight the "anger" emoji.

Anger certainly feels like the kind of emotion that will lead something to spread quickly -- we've all had that moment of anger over something, and spreading the news feels like at least some kind of outlet when you feel powerless over something awful that has happened. But I'm still not clear on how to break down the different aspects of how all of this interacts with social media, as compared to how much it's shining a light on deeper, more underlying societal problems that need solving at their core.

Warzel argues that the connecting of the miserable is something different, and perhaps leads to a more combustible world:

But it also means that miserable people, who were previously alienated and isolated, can find one another, says Kevin Munger, an assistant professor at Penn State who studies how platforms shape political and cultural opinions. This may offer them some short-term succor, but it’s not at all clear that weak online connections provide much meaningful emotional support. At the same time, those miserable people can reach the rest of us too. As a result, the average internet user, Munger told me in a recent interview, has more exposure than previous generations to people who, for any number of reasons, are hurting. Are they bringing all of us down?

Some of the other research he highlights suggests something similar:

“Our data show that social-media platforms do not merely reflect what is happening in society,” Molly Crockett said recently. She is one of the authors of a Yale study of almost 13 million tweets that found that users who expressed outrage were rewarded with engagement, which made them express yet more outrage. Surprisingly, the study found that politically moderate users were the most susceptible to this feedback loop. “Platforms create incentives that change how users react to political events over time,” Crockett said.

But in the end, he notes that, well, this is all interconnected and way more complicated than most people proposing solutions would like to admit. Destroying Facebook doesn't solve this. Removing Section 230 doesn't solve this (and, would almost certainly make this much, much worse).

But the technology is only part of the battle. Think of it in terms of supply and demand. The platforms provide the supply (of fighting, trolling, conspiracies, and junk news), but the people—the lost and the miserable and the left-behind—provide the demand. We can reform Facebook and Twitter while also reckoning with what they reveal about the nation’s mental health. We should examine more urgently the deeper forces—inequality, a weak social safety net, a lack of accountability for unchecked corporate power—that have led us here. And we should interrogate how our broken politics drive people to seek out easy, conspiratorial answers. This is a bigger ask than merely regulating technology platforms, because it implicates our entire country.

I think his suggestion is correct. We need to be looking across the board at how we build a better society -- and in doing so, we're doing everyone a disservice if we just think that "regulating tech" somehow will solve any of the underlying societal problems. But, as the article makes clear, there are so many different factors at play that's it not easy to tease them a part.

Filed Under: content moderation, disinformation, miserable, misery loves company, misinformation, section 230, tech

New FCC Broadband 'Nutrition Label' Will More Clearly Inform You You're Being Ripped Off

from the transparently-terrible dept

For years we've noted how broadband providers impose all manner of bullshit fees on your bill to drive up the cost of service post sale. They've also historically had a hard time being transparent about what kind of broadband connection you're buying. As was evident back when Comcast thought it would be a good idea to throttle all upstream BitTorrent traffic (without telling anybody), or AT&T decided to cap and throttle the usage of its "unlimited" wireless users (without telling anybody), or Verizon decided to modify user packets to track its customers around the internet (without telling anybody).

Maybe you see where I'm going with this.

Back in 2016 the FCC eyed the voluntary requirement that broadband providers be required to provide a sort of "nutrition label" for broadband. The idea was that this label would clearly disclose speeds, throttling, limitation, sneaky fees, and all the stuff big predatory ISPs like to bury in their fine print (if they disclose it at all). This was the example image the FCC circulated at the time:

While the idea was scuttled by the Trump administration, Congress demanded the FCC revisit it as part of the recent infrastructure bill. So the Rosenworcel FCC last week, as instructed by Congress, voted 4-0 to begin exploring new rules:

A final vote on approved rules will come after the Biden FCC finally has a voting majority, likely this summer. And unlike the first effort, this time the requirements will be mandatory, so ISPs will have to comply.

This is all well intentioned, and to be clear it's a good thing Comcast and AT&T will now need to be more transparent in the ways they're ripping you off. In fact, when AT&T recently announced it would be providing faster 2 and 5 Gbps fiber to some users, it stated it would be getting rid of hidden fees and caps entirely on those tiers. AT&T announced this as if they'd come up with the idea, when in reality they were just getting out ahead of the requirement they knew was looming anyway. So stuff like this does matter.

The problem of course is that forcing ISPs to be transparent about how they're ripping you off doesn't stop them from ripping you off. Big broadband providers are able to nickel-and-dime the hell out of users thanks to two things: regional monopolization causing limited competition, and the state and federal corruption that protects it. U.S. policymakers and lawmakers can't (and often won't) tackle that real problem, so instead we get these layers of band aids that only treat the symptom of a broken U.S. telecom market, not the underlying disease.

Filed Under: broadband, fcc, nutrition labels