A “Theodore Kaczynski” from Lincoln Montana signs a Google-funded astroturf petition over and over again. 

Google-funded and affiliated astroturfs have mounted a spambot campaign targeting Senators to vote against the CASE Act.  The CASE Act (voluntary small claims copyright court) passed the house 410-6.  Google and their allies are worried because independent artists and creators might now have a decent shot at enforcing their copyright.   Corporate backed astroturfs first mounted a wild disinformation campaign against the CASE Act.  See this blog here.

When that didn’t work they launched a series of easily automated web forms designed to deluge Senators with emails, tweets, facebook posts, phone calls, and messages on the senator’s websites.  As we saw with the FCC Net Neutrality battle, these forms leave us with tons of fake comments.  According to Pew Research, 94% of the 22 million comments to FCC on Net Neutrality were identical to hundreds, thousands, even millions of other emails.  Spambots are screwing with our democracy.  How can our representatives hear what their constituents really think if they are deluged with spam?

As has always been the case,  best we can do is call our Senators (and don’t use a script.)

However, in the meantime anytime you find one of these forms below?  Maybe replace the canned message with a message that lets the Senator’s office know it’s simply a Spambot from one of these Astroturfs. You don’t have to lie about anything. Use your real name. Tell em it’s spam.  Make the Spambots the issue. Eventually, maybe these astroturf will stop using these forms if every Senator knows they are spam, and we can go back to our old only partially dysfunctional democracy.

Every web form I’ve found are curiously defective in the same way: you can usually refresh the page and sign, email, tweet, call with the same message over and over again.  At top of this blog, I take one of these bullshit petitions and have Ted Kaczynski sign it over and over again leaving the exact same comment each time.  Hope you enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

Scientists have concluded the Senator’s official photo likely violates the Myspace Rule: profile photos may not be older than (Current Age/10) – 1 year. 

We are reprinting this article because once again Wyden is siding with Silicon Valley rather than his own Oregon constituents. #PrimaryWyden2022

The longtime democratic Senator loves to boast about his progressive bona fides but when you look at his legislative record a different story is told. Sure he’s progressive on social issues but on everything else? He appears to be in the pocket of monied Silicon Valley interests, broadcasters and hedge funds. For our readers, the key issue is Wyden reliably supports legislation and policies that enrich anti-union right-wing billionaires and impoverishes union performers and songwriters.

Examples

IRFA or (the Orwellian named) Internet Radio Fairness Act. This was his bill. It would have slashed digital radio royalties to (largely union) performers as much as 70 percent. The beneficiaries? The Silicon Valley VCs backing all these digital broadcasters. Fortunately, the bill was withdrawn. What kind of “progressive” tries to pass a law that slashes wages to workers while enriching a cartel of mostly right-wing billionaires? Disgusting right?

Not convinced? How bout the recently passed Music Modernization Act? Parts of the bill were controversial, but not title II the so-called “Classics Act.” The Classics Act restored digital royalties to pre-1972 performers. Wyden was the lone senator who opposed the Classics Act.

A little background. In 2012 digital broadcasters in apparent coordination (Hello FTC? Is this thing on?) stopped paying royalties to performers who had the misfortune of recording before 1972. The justification the digital broadcasters used was a tortured interpretation of how the 1976 copyright act and a 1995 amendment interacted. In short an unintended highly questionable loophole.

However, the loophole provided a significant break to digital broadcasters. Some estimate the broadcasters got a 15% reduction in what they would have paid out to artists.

Why on earth would a “progressive” Senator support what is essentially a vast transfer of wealth from largely union performers to mostly right-wing billionaires?

(Update 10/30/2019): Now Wyden is opposing the CASE Act. A small claims copyright court that would allow small creators (i.e. Portland indie musicians, photographers and filmmakers) to do something about massive copyright infringement by major platforms.  Without the CASE Act, the only option for small creators is to go into federal court.  Not many of them have the $100,000 it takes to even mount a case.  This has made it so only the biggest media companies can successfully enforce copyrights.  The clear consequence is this is anti-competitive and has been driving the consolidation in the music business.  Maybe that’s why Wyden opposes the Case Act.  He never met a megacorp he didn’t like.

In this age of fake everything, Wyden is the fakest of all progressives.

Now consider Wyden represents the City of Portland and your head may begin to spin.

Portland has come to rival Nashville and Austin for its music economy. Portland produces groundbreaking new bands each year and is also home to many musical innovators from earlier generations. It’s also home to many labels and CD Baby the commercial heart of the DIY music industry. There are likely tens of thousands of folks employed by Portland’s music economic cluster.

On the other hand Silicon Valley has a cluster of Silicon Valley server farms out in the remote Eastern Oregon high desert. Oregon taxpayers subsidize these low employee operations (500 jobs statewide?) through tax subsidies and perhaps most importantly low-cost hydroelectric power from the Columbia River.

Every subsidized low-cost megawatt the Silicon Valley lampreys suck-up is a megawatt that Oregon taxpayers have to source from higher cost higher carbon sources. Does that sound like the kind of policy that benefits Wyden’s constituents or Silicon Valley billionaires?

Oregonians deserve better than the false progressive Senator Wyden.

It’s not too early to think about primarying the Silicon Valley apparatchik. 2022 is not far away. And who knows it could be even sooner…No one has ever really delved into the curious story that Wyden’s son started a “hedge fund” in his father’s Washington DC basement. Who gave junior the startup money? He started the fund immediately after leaving a financial firm owned by one of Wyden’s most prominent donors. Hmm. That smell like pay to play to you? It’s strange enough it deserves some real scrutiny.

Congratulations to Sen Ron Wyden: 2019 Artist Enemy #3

#AnybodyExceptWydenIn2022

We just learned this morning that Ron Wyden has put a hold on the CASE Act. It passed the house 410-6 but one Senator, a fairly sleazy one at that is gonna block a bill that would level playing field between silicon valley and small and independent musicians.  the Senator with all those Portland ratepayer-subsidized Google server farms out in the high desert is gonna screw over all those Portland musicians again.  Imagine that?  Essentially making musicians subsidize Google not once but twice. Maybe that’s the way the anti-worker “Nike progressive” rolls but Oregon deserves better.  Symbolic lip service to progressive causes but when it comes to the little guy? He’s firmly on the side of big business.   Wyden has voted 100% with Google on internet policy. He is so pro-Silicon Valley he was the only Senator to vote against the FOSTA the anti-internet sex trafficking bill.  Who the hell is doesn’t want to stop internet sex trafficking?  Wyden. The guy is a bum.  We are going re-run articles all this week detailing his sleazy corporate connections.  Let’s start with who would make a better senator to represent Oregon.

6 Oregon Musicians That Would Make a Better Senator than Ron Wyden (And never had hedge fund in the basement).

Reprint 7 22 2018

Senator Ron Wyden doesn’t seem to understand that he represents a state with a very dynamic music scene.  Over the last two decades Portland, the state’s largest city has become arguably the most dynamic music scene in the entire  country. Yet Wyden has twice now thrown songwriters and performers under the bus, in order to protect a few tech billionaires from California. Yes these billionaires happen to have server farms out in eastern Oregon but these server farms at most employ a few hundred folks. Portland OR alone has thousands of professional musicians.

But it’s not just that Wyden doesn’t understand this, or has forgotten about those musicians in his state. He is actively hostile to their interests.  Check it.

First in 2013 Wyden introduced the Orwellian “Internet Radio Fairness Act.”   This bill would have created “fairness” for internet radio by slashing performer and songwriter pay as much as 70%. It also placed extraordinary restraints on speech of songwriters and performers, threatening prosecution for any group of songwriters or performers that discussed digital licenses and rates with their colleagues. The language of the bill was so broad and regressive it would have punished members of a single band that collectively blogged negatively about bad digital licensing deals. We are not making this up. The congressional research office eventually stepped in because the bill was so bad. Under withering criticism Wyden abandoned the bill.

See our series on this bill:

https://thetrichordist.com/2012/11/08/irfa-section-5/

https://thetrichordist.com/2012/11/14/the-internet-radio-fairness-acts-attack-on-free-speech/

https://thetrichordist.com/2012/11/29/congressional-research-service-memo-on-constitutionality-of-irfa-section-5/

But now Wyden has taken it up a notch.  According to rules of the US Senate a single senator can put a hold on a bill.  Despite the fact the House of Representatives passed the Music Modernization Act 415-0 Wyden intends to put a hold on a consensus bill. What an egomaniac.  To put this into perspective the Dec 8th 1941 declaration of war on Japan and Germany was not unanimous.  The Music Modernization Act enjoys more consensus than WWII!  But Wyden intends to stand in the way.

But it’s even worse.  When you drill down into Wyden objects to what is perhaps the least controversial part of the bill. The part of the bill that extends digital royalties to performers that recorded before 1972.  This “pre-1972 loophole” in digital royalties is pretty much a copyright law typo.  Surely the authors of the 1995 act that formalized digital public performance royalties did not intend to exclude pre-1972 performers.  Indeed until 2013 most digital services paid royalties to pre-1972 performers. It wasn’t until Wyden’s first bill was shot down that Pandora, Sirius and other digital services began to aggressively exploit the loophole.  Coincidence?  Maybe.  But I think not.

This is skullduggery of the highest order. Now consider who is one of the biggest beneficiaries of this loophole: Google/YouTube.

As previously noted Google along with all the other Silicon Valley firms have large server farms out in Eastern Oregon.  And Wyden is eyeball deep in Silicon Valley politics.

As a recent commenter on this blog put it:

Ron Wyden, got his political start as a fairly conservative Democrat, which was necessary for his initial success because outside the Portland metropolitan area (and Eugene of course), the other two-thirds of Oregon’s population is very conservative.

Oregon has always had a boom or bust economy based on agriculture or dwindling natural resources, and pretty much every politician of every skunk stripe collectively bent over and grabbed ankles when the tech sector unbelted and began plowing the “Silicon Forest” with their plastic thingies and their ones and zeros. As you might expect, Google now owns Oregon. QED.

Pretty much all you need to know about Wyden is that he is on the Intelligence Committee. You don’t even approach that gig unless you have been drinking the Kool-Aid for donkey’s years. – Ron or Donna

And indeed our reader is spot on. Oregon politicians have been especially pliant when it comes to Google. The Oregonian estimates that Oregon politicians have given Google tax breaks for a single data center in The Dalles worth $100 million dollars.  The data center has less than 200 employees.  That works out to $500,000 a job.   On top of that the data centers suck down most of the cheap hydro power that should arguably go to rate payers in Oregon.  Seems pretty weird, right?  Oregon enriching a bunch of California based companies for a handful of jobs? Someone somewhere must be making a lot of money on the deal.

Also consider this.  Who do you think has oversight over those federal hydropower rates? The rates the operators of those data centers pay? If you guessed The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources you would be correct. And who might be on that committee?  Ron Wyden.

The presence of these large data centers is a net negative to the citizens of Oregon.  So why does Ron Wyden feel obliged to do the bidding of Google on a music bill?  Whether it’s ignorance or greed the result is the same.  Ron Wyden sucks at representing citizens of Oregon.  Sure he pleases many Oregon residents when he goes after the trump administration, but surely there are plenty of other progressive democratic politicians in Oregon that would do the same without icky pro-Google Silicon Valley shillery.

Then there is also the matter of the senators adult son, Andrew Wyden, and his “hedge fund” ADW Capital. The one man hedge fund was started it in the Senators Washington DC townhouse in 2011. Andrew Wyden had just graduated from college and someone gave him 3 million dollars to start a basement hedge fund. If the initial 3 million in funds came from campaign donors (specifically longtime Wyden supporter D. E. Shaw) or other investors with business before the senate you could be looking at an FBI investigation.

Even if the senator is clean,  the optics are horrible. And it’s extremely poor judgement on the part of the senator.  If there turns out to be anything to this story it’s entirely possible that Oregon may be looking for a new Senator before his term is up.

So it’s not a joke to start considering who might replace Wyden in the Senate. Given the growing importance of music to the Oregon economy (surely music is responsible for 100 times the number of jobs that Google data centers created) I humbly suggest Oregon voters look at some smart entrepreneurial musicians to replace Wyden. I believe there are probably a number of Oregon musicians that would do a much better job of representing Oregon in the US Senate.

I asked this question on twitter and here are some of the suggestions:

Well the entire band can’t be Senator, but I suppose Chris like most people is thinking of Carrie Brownstein for her role in Portlandia.  Face and name recognition. We have to assume the campaign videos would be funny. Does she still live in Portland?  Well regardless state residency didn’t stop Cheney from running for Vice President. Regardless I wouldn’t discount Drummer Janet Weiss (also of Quasi). Secret weapon. Corin Tucker also a solid choice.

Again not sure he’s in Portland proper. I believe he still lives just across the state line in Washington. I always see him in shows in Portland so he’s certainly close. Again Cheney demonstrated it’s easy enough to move. And Krist does have a keen interest in politics.  In 2004 considered a run for Lt Governor of Washington.  He is also the author of  Of Grunge and Government: Let’s Fix This Broken Democracy.

 

Larry Crane, musician, engineer, producer, music entrepreneur and Tape Op magazine editor. This is my personal vote. Anyone that has had any experience in the studio knows that producing and engineering requires great diplomatic skills. Producing and engineering of a record requires forging grand compromises between many strong personalities and interest groups: labels, managers, and the performers themselves who are often internally conflicted. It’s a tough job Larry but your state needs you!

I always forget Patterson Hood lives in Portland now. Hood hails from the deep red state of Alabama. Yet he is a strong democrat. Patterson and his band Drive-by Truckers have deftly managed to embrace progressive causes (r.g. Black Lives Matter) w/o alienating the portion of their audience that identifies with conservatives. Who else to better bridge the divide between Portland’s urban population and deep red rural parts of the state. Also he is an extremely humble guy and would never even consider a senate run. All the more reason to send Mr. Hood to Washington.

Other suggestions

We love scott.  He already is Portland’s unofficial music ambassador.

Yes indeed. If Mr Matthews simply remained in his cabin in the woods making recordings and never went to DC for a single day, Oregon residents would surely be better off than sending Wyden back to DC.

Please suggest more Oregon Musicians in comments and we will add them to the poll.

 

 

We’ve been covering all week two Google-funded astroturfs, Public Knowledge and EFF, and their efforts to spam The Senate with automated tweets, emails, comments, and phone calls in hopes of blocking the CASE Act (voluntary small claims court for copyright).

To catch up you should start here:

https://thetrichordist.com/2019/10/24/deja-vu-google-funded-astroturf-groups-use-spambots-robocalls-in-senate-to-block-case-act/

As we dug into this, we started focusing on Public Knowledge and their tweetbot. While experimenting with the tweetbot, I discovered it took total control of my twitter account. Like completely. It basically makes your twitter account part of a botnet that is controlled by Public Knowledge or their agent Phone2Action. Look at the permissions it asks for:

But even stranger (or maybe not), shortly after authorizing permissions, I noticed unfamiliar devices logging into my account.

See screengrab above. I was nowhere near Scaggsville MD.  I don’t know that it was Phone2Action, but I’ve never seen this sort of activity on my accounts. I’m pretty security conscious.

Particularly funny (or outrageous) since besides being copyright skeptics Public Knowledge claim to be privacy advocates. That is obviously bullshit.

You can read the full article here:

https://thetrichordist.com/2019/10/25/stunning-privacy-violations-by-privacy-advocate-publicknowledge-and-other-outrages/

Who is Phone2Action?

Phone2Action is the maker of the above tweetbot.  Phone2Action website says:

“In the United States, everyone’s voice counts. The opportunity for civil discourse is what makes our country a model for democracies everywhere. When we have problems, we don’t look the other way—we try to solve them. We built Phone2Action to empower the problem-solver and advocate that lives in everyone. Our tools amplify the voices of movements through technology in order to effect change.” (emphasis added)

Alright, that sounds neat. I mean amplify sounds like a little more than one vote per person, but otherwise it seems cool.  Phone2 Action was founded by two democrats. One married to a former Obama administration official. The third founder seems to be independent but was in the US Digital Service an Obama initiative. So Phone2Action seems generally progressive outfit. And if you look at their webpage front and center they have some non-profits, corporate responsibility efforts, and commercial campaigns by vaguely virtuous companies like Patagonia and Ben and Jerry’s.

But if you dig a little deeper, into the case studies, it’s not long before you find Satan’s cobbler-er, oops I mean the Internet Association. There is also mention of a Net Neutrality campaign, although that seems to be downplayed. Probably because the net neutrality campaign devolved into the mother of all bot-fueled fake public comment disasters. 22 million comments, with reports of half of them being fake.  From an NPR article:

The Pew Research Center took a close look at the comments. Associate Director Aaron Smith said several things popped out. Maybe the biggest, 94 percent of the comments “were submitted multiple times, and in some cases those comments were submitted many hundreds of thousands of times.”

The Net Neutrality fake comment scandal has even become the focus of a US Senate investigations. See here.

Is this starting sound like the massive spamming of the EU Parliament that happened with the EU Copyright Directive (N-Square, SaveYourInternet.eu, EDRi, Open Media and New/Mode)?  Yes, and we will come back to that probably later this week.  Something else caught my eye. This article by the Consumer Technology Association (aka CEA) Chairman Gary Shapiro.

Phone2Action Grassroots Effect: West Coast Ports

Whoa. Shapiro is basically bragging about the CEA and Phone2Action together breaking a union work slowdown by the longshoremen.  Have you ever met a longshoreman?   While the CEA is your usual anti-worker corporate trade group, it seems pretty weird that Phone2Action with its progressive Obama credentials would get involved in strikebreaking.

Now check this out:

“CEA, with support from over 200,000 Innovation Movement members who help us advocate for smart tech policies and several key industry stakeholders, effectively shared the urgency of the West Coast ports crisis via social media, asking Congress and the White House to help keep our ports open for business,” CEA CEO and President, Gary Shapiro, said.

This is a picture of Gary Shapiro. You think this dude leads an auxiliary of a boring-ass trade group that has 200,000 active members? This guy is clearly not a whirling dervish of raw charisma. 200,000 members?  Yeah right.  And the Innovation Movement? I didn’t believe it so I looked it up.  Well there once was a website for the Innovation movement.

But as far as I can tell by 2015, at the time of the longshoreman slowdown, the website hadn’t been active for two years. By 2017 the site redirected to a domain reseller.   I know a thing or two about grassroots organizing, and if you have 200,000 active members helping you lobby Congress you don’t let the website domain around which you organize expire.  That is seriously valuable real estate. Keep your members. Keep them engaged.

So clearly I don’t think they ever had 200,000 members.  My hunch is that they had a few thousand members and then a bunch of fake email addresses and sock puppet social media accounts.  I could be wrong.  I’m not saying CEA or Shapiro had any idea they were fake… well maybe I am saying that, otherwise, why would he let the domain expire? Aw shit, I don’t know.  Politics plus the internet is such a shitshow. Anything seems possible now. But there is no way there were 200,000 real members.

Just let me say this.  I hope I’m wrong.  Cause otherwise Shapiro and Phone2Action ran a spam op and tricked The President of The United States into intervening in a labor dispute.  I hope I’m wrong. I don’t want to believe the worst about our democracy.  Cause if I’m right we are screwed.

 

 

Public Knowledge’s canned message Tweetbot completely takes over your twitter account. How is this any different than a botnet? 

Many of you are familiar with Public Knowledge for their general hostility towards copyright and the rights of authors. In particular, they are currently opposing the CASE Act which would finally give artists a small claims alternative to federal court.  Most independent artists do not have the $100,000+ it takes to pursue a case in federal court.  The court is voluntary, both parties have to agree to use the small claims copyright court. No one is forced into this system.  It’s good for the claimant and the party accused of infringement. By all measures, this is a simple commonsense solution. And an overwhelming bipartisan consensus agrees in congress agrees. The Case Act recently passed in the house 410-6.  Stunning!

The bill now goes to the Senate for consideration.  Of course, Public Knowledge (Google-funded) doesn’t want the CASE Act to pass. So they have attempted to mount a “cyberturf” campaign directed at Senators using some sketchy social media and phone bots. This tweet bot distributes canned messages that are factually incorrect. Hostile foreign governments need not mount disinformation campaigns against our democratic institutions as we’ve already got Google astroturfs on the job!

 

In particular, Public Knowledge is distributing a tool that combines a “tweetbot” and “patch through calling.” The tweetbot is easy to understand.  The patch through calling requires a little digging to understand how it could be (is intended to be?) abused. It doesn’t really provide any extra convenience to an individual activist. Any activist can look up their Senator’s office on iPhone and click on the telephone number.  Whereas, for instance, if you have a boiler room full of paid activists, a third party could easily direct a firehose of phone calls at a wavering Senator, and the calls would be untraceable, the Senatorial staff would not realize it was the same group of paid activists calling over and over. It is my strong suspicion this is the point of these “patch through” phone bots.  This is not far-fetched as something similar seems to have played out last summer in the EU parliament.

So I spent the last few days playing around with the “tools” provided by Public Knowledge (and EFF tools).  The Public Knowledge tools were the most interesting. Perhaps horrifying is a better description. I   came to three extraordinary conclusions:

First. In order to use Public Knowledges tweetbot, you have give total control of your twitter account to Public Knowledge’s contracted agent a company called Phone2Action.  The permissions literally let the Public Knowledge and Phone2Action do anything with your account.  It is as if you have joined a botnet. (See screenshot at top of article)

Second. Public Knowledge Tweetbot allows you to customize your message to Senators (above). But it also will tweet their canned message back to your followers (Below) WTF? This has got to be illegal.  It’s forcing me to make speech that I would never make.  It’s an unauthorized appropriation of my pubic persona to involuntarily endorse something I don’t want to endorse.  What else is this bot doing in my name? 

Third.  After observing the tweetbot in action for a while,  I went to revoke the Twitter permissions I had granted to Public Knowledge (Phone2Action).  I noticed something unusual. Under twitter’s “apps and permissions” I saw an iPhone I did not recognize using my twitter account.  See screenshot below.

Twitter was identifying this phone as being in Cedar Rapids IA.  This seemed very strange.  It was not my iPhone. Was not on airport Wifi and my phone IP address indicated my true location. (Not Cedar Rapids). I was not using a VPN.  Bizarre.  I logged this iPhone out of my twitter account as well as every other device using omy twitter account.* In the confusion, I forgot to disable the PublicKnowlege/Phone2Action permissions.

About an hour later I remembered I hadn’t revoked permissions. I checked my account and I saw that there were two new Ipads logged into my twitter account.  WTF?  One reported its location as Scaggsville MD, which is just outside the beltway in Maryland. I was hundreds of miles from that location.  I have since disabled the permissions I gave to Public Knowledge/Phone2Action.

There have since been no unusual logins on my twitter account.   I have no idea if this tweetbot had anything to do with these mysterious logins. But I have never seen anything like it before. On this third issue, I’m not placing the blame on Public Knowledge.  But I’m having a hard time coming up with an explanation here.

*21 twitter sessions? Yes, I have a lot of computers. And many of them are running programs that monitor twitter and other social media for certain patterns and keywords. It’s part of other research I hope to publish one day.

 

This EFF form allows anyone anywhere to repeatedly call Senators from this webform, no identification, no email, phone or geolocation verification.  Pure cyberturfing. BTW the “tens of thousands of dollars” is false.  Also not mentioned: CASE ACT is a voluntary small claims court for copyright claims. Explicit opt-in process. No one is “on the hook” for anything.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It’s deja vu all over again.  Looks like Google-funded astroturf groups EFF and Public Knowledge are using the same questionable tactics that Google affiliated astroturfs used in the EU to try to defeat the Copyright Directive. Spambots, Tweetbots, and automated calls.

If you’re not familiar with what happened in Europe here’s a very brief summary:

EU parliament proposed some copyright changes that required digital platforms like Facebook and Youtube to do a better job policing their platforms for copyright infringement.  Naturally, Google did what they always do and mounted what can only be described as a massive disinformation campaign against the proposed copyright changes.  Most of this took the form of angry emails, phone calls and tweets to EU parliamentarians.  And at first it worked.  In July 2018 cowed MEP (Members of European Parliament) voted against a sort of fast track approach to legislation.  This blog noted some very non-organic patterns in the emails, tweets and automated calls (example tweets to Spanish MEPs stayed at a constant frequency in the overnight hours). Further, this blog noted the financial connections between the groups running the campaign and Google.  Eventually, the Times of London and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung became aware of this and ran high profile stories detailing the entire fiasco.

See here:

Google Funds Website That Spams for its Causes

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/google-funds-activist-site-that-pushes-its-views-rg2g5cr6t

Anatomy of a Political Hacking

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/eu-and-copyright-anatomy-of-a-political-hacking-15771185.html

The good news is this, EU parliamentarians were so outraged when these tactics were exposed, support for the Copyright Directive dramatically increased and eventually passed.

Now Google-funded groups like EFF and Public Knowledge are using the same tactics in hopes of creating the appearance of a fake grassroots uprising.

Here Public Knowledge is pushing the same call spamming tool as above.  The difference here I was able to “repurpose” the spam tool to connect to the Public Knowlege office (Hey, it was research!).  When I tried it on my own number I was able to make about 3 calls a minute. It would be possible to harass the shit out of anyone with this tool.  It’s like leaving a loaded phone DDOS gun around for anyone to use. I do not believe that this is a bug or defect.  I think that this is the intention of putting these tools out there.  They hope the angry internet-paranoids will abuse these tools. Just like they did in the EU.  Otherwise, why not just provide a phone number to call?  Type in your address and your senator’s phone number appears.  Take out your phone and dial the number. Or Why make the call come from a webtool on the Actnow.io server?  I say it’s cause it is easily hackable and automatable.  Fuck these groups.  Both are objective dangers to our democracy.

There are also tools available for emailing and tweeting your Senator.  I was able to fire off tweets at about a dozen a minute. I changed the text to alert the Senators this was a demonstration.  Can you imagine what 20 sock puppet accounts could do?  Swamp all hundred Senators in a few minutes! Again no geolocation verification.  I could be in Tehran, Belarus, Davos or Mountain View.  No need to be in US!

They are even providing tools for leaving comments on official government websites of Senators. Pretty sure that I read somewhere that there are regulations that forbid the use of automation to leave comments on most federal govt websites. Maybe someone can point me to the text? In the meantime you can always repurpose the tools to spread the truth about these folks.

 

 

I still don’t have all the details on this.  But as the House prepares to vote on the CASE Act  (voluntary small claims copyright court option for creators and users) it appears that EFF, ACLU and others have started a Robocall and spambot campaign against the bill.

The webforms are here and I have confirmed they are easily automatable.  Even from a smartphone.

Use the forms against the tech monopolies.  Flip the script,  make pro Case Act calls.  Put your own pro Case act text in email forms.

Robo call tool  here

https://act.eff.org/action/call-congress-and-tell-them-not-to-let-a-quasi-court-bankrupt-internet-users

Spambot to leave message on Congressman’s website.

https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-don-t-let-a-quasi-court-bankrupt-internet-users

 

 

MRI (Music Reports Inc) is a company that collects and licenses royalties on behalf of songwriters and publishers.   They also act as a licensing agent for digital services.  That is, like HFA they work both sides of the digital music market.  Personally, I think these sorts of arrangements present some competition and conflict of interest problems. And eventually, those problems will emerge. As a frequent investor in startups, I don’t invest in companies like this.  But that’s just me. Other folks like to make money by seeking out and exploiting legal loopholes.

So MRI’s appearance on both sides of the streaming music marketplace raises eyebrows. But to be clear that is not illegal.  However, I’ve never seen anything quite like this:  MRI is the DMCA Agent for TikTok!  That means a company that is supposed to be licensing artists and rightsholders work is aiding and abetting a massive infringer (TikTok*) in a whac-a-mole DMCA scam.

And I do mean scam.  Like highly misleading. Bordering on fraudulent. Here’s why. As I detailed in my last blog, I don’t think TikTok qualifies for the DMCA safe harbor on much of the infringing activity that occurs on TikTok. Here is the quick summary:

After a couple of hours messing around with app it appears:

1. TikTok makes available my work and then provides the copy to the user before the user makes any content.
2. The copy would seem to be more than “ephemeral” (an important copyright act legal distinction) as at certain stages I can repeatedly access the content even when my device lacked internet connectivity.
3. TikTok app “marries” or “syncs” the music to audiovisual content provided by their service or uploaded by the user.  Note this is after the recording and composition have apparently been copied and distributed to the user’s device.  In other words, the infringement occurs before user publishes content.
4. Before the “marrying” or “syncing” of the music to audiovisual content I cut off internet connectivity.  The process of marrying video to music failed. This suggests TikTok service requires sync license, not the user.
5. Only after all sync has occurred does user have the option to “publish” the work.  This is long after many activities requiring licenses, and thus infringement has occurred.

DMCA safe harbor provides the digital service protection from its user’s copyright infringement.  Not infringement committed by the digital service.   Grooveshark made this mistake and was promptly put out of business.

I’m saying it appears something similar happens with the TikTok app.  So if in fact, I’m right, that would imply MRI by operating TikTok’s DMCA safe harbor operation they are helping to perpetrate a fraud.

Finally I would like MRI explain to its songwriters and publishers, why it is helping TikTok intimidate songwriters and publishers into NOT filing a DMCA notice.   It’s right on the TikTok website.  TikTok basically says they will doxx songwriters and publishers if you file a copyright complaint. And where will they get those complaints?  From MRI.

This is yet another example of why my focus of this blog has switched from investigating civil abuses of artists and rightsholder to investigating criminal abuse.  My hashtag for the year is: #PutADigitalMusicExecutiveInJail2020.  Why? it’s the only thing that will ever stop the abuse.

*TikTok is a massive infringer.  No public performance licenses.  Few if any “mechanical” licenses.  My work has been used and as far as I can tell, there are no licenses, nor have roylaties been paid. To pretend that TikTok is largely licensed service is objective fiction.

TikTok has recently been in the news for two reasons.

CENSORSHIP

The first is for censorship.  The Washington Post notes they appear to be censoring clips from users that are critical of the Chinese Government or videos in support of Hong Kong protestors.  The Guardian in the UK reports:

TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social network, instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong, according to leaked documents detailing the site’s moderation guidelines.

TikTok which has headquarters in Los Angeles may at first seem to be simply joining the ranks of the Nike and NBA as (faux progressive) corporate entities that kowtow to authoritarian governments.  But what most people don’t’ realize is that TikTok is a subsidiary of a 78 billion dollar Chinese “start-up” that is heavily staffed with Chinese Communist Party members and directly under control of a government ministry. It is not unreasonable to characterize this company as an influence tool of the authoritarian Chinese state.  Especially if you consider TikTok is not available in China only outside mainland China.  As BuzzFeed notes:

“Eschewing typical forms of Chinese soft power, TikTok could be the arrival of a subtler form of algorithmic influence, with sophisticated Chinese AI controlling what becomes viral content potentially shared among millions of young Americans”

(Editor note: Try this at home.  Look for any recordings from 1990s or 2000s concerts supporting Tibetan freedom on Spotify. I couldn’t find any. It should be noted Chinese social credit rating app maker Tencent owns a 10%+ stake in Spotify).

COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT BY TIKTOK

The Second reason is copyright infringement.  As Billboard reports the National Music Publishers Association has asked the Senate to look into copyright infringement by the social media giant.  President of NMPA David Israelite:

“The scale of TikTok’s copyright infringement in the U.S. is likely considerable and deserves scrutiny. We hope that if Congress looks further into matters relating to TikTok that copyright theft is included in the scope of its examination.”

APPARENT LACK OF LICENSES FOR MY WORK

Interesting.  So last night I looked into this by checking my own catalog against what TikTok makes available, copies and distributes from their app. Both recordings and compositions that I directly control were available on the service. As far as I know, these recordings and compositions have not been licensed. At least, so far I have found no record of licenses. It is always possible that some licenses transferred from Muisical.ly when TikTok purchased it.  But I can’t find any licenses for that service either.

It is important to remember that TikTok is making what are essentially video syncs. Under US copyright law these video sync licenses can not be obtained via ASCAP or BMI.  The federal compulsory license for “mechanical” reproductions can also be ruled out as this does not apply. US compulsory mechanical specifically excludes audiovisual content!

I live-tweeted a lot of this last night as I explored what work was available on their service. I also engaged some of this blog’s “irregulars” to verify what I was seeing.

Here is twitter thread.  Sorry for the typos.

Start here:

Screenshot showing TikTok making avaliable my recording I own, following the steps that 30 second snippet appears to be copied into my device. This is not “user-generated ” activity.  It appears TikTok is making available, copying and distributing my work.  This normally requires a direct license with the owner. 

TIKTOK HAS NO DMCA SAFE HARBOR?

Today a little more research was conducted.  Oh boy, now it gets really interesting.  In order to qualify for the DMCA copyright safe harbor, the infringement must be “User Generated Content.” It is my belief that like Grooveshark, TikTok is actually making infringing performances, distributions, and copies themselves not their users. If my observations can be verified then TikTok would lose its DMCA safe harbor for the same reasons Grooveshark did. I am not an IOS app expert and have just enough technical expertise to get me in trouble. So if anyone out there wishes to verify and correct me I am happy to reflect that in this blog.

With that caveat, my observations after a couple of hours messing around with app:

1. TikTok makes available my work and then provides the copy to the user before the user makes any content.
2. The copy would seem to be more than “ephemeral” (an important copyright act legal distinction) as at certain stages I can repeatedly access the content even when my device lacked internet connectivity.
3. TikTok app “marries” or “syncs” the music to audiovisual content provided by their service or uploaded by the user.  Note this is after the recording and composition have been apparently copied and distributed to the user.  The infringement has already occurred.
4. Before the “marrying” or “syncing” of the music to audiovisual content, if I cut off internet connectivity, the syncing process video to music failed. This suggests TikTok service is doing the syncing, not the user.
5. Only after all this has occurred does the user “publish” the work.  This is long after many activities requiring licenses, and thus infringement has occurred.

WHEN IS CODING A KLUDGE AND WHEN IS IT A CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY?

There is something extraordinarily clunky and strange in the sequence of steps one takes to search for music tracks. Why not just list tracks available.  Log in and try to make a video (you can stop before publishing if you like).  You’ll see what I mean. Also, the choice of wording seems to suggest the peculiar vocabulary of a lawyer when a company is trying not to be sued.

For example, the clunky search results box seems to imply an algorithm (“4 matched sounds”) has provided you with a selection of songs that are just sort of mysteriously found in an unnamed digital domain. The wide-open internet?  TikTok owned/leased servers? What I’m getting at is they don’t use a term like “available” which might imply a license for works. Maybe this seems petty to you, but it seems a deliberate attempt at obfuscating where these “matched sounds” come from. In addition, shouldn’t there at least be some notice at this point that the TikTok user could be committing Copyright Infringement? I mean if I saw a song in a TikTok search result and used it I would like to know that I’m potentially gonna be sued for copyright infringement.

On more popular tracks there are videos already associated with these tracks and this phrasing would make your average user think, “oh these are already uploaded by someone else and I’m using their file.”  However, on my tracks, especially the most obscure tracks, there are no videos associated.  So where exactly is this “matched sound” coming from.  How did it end up in the TikTok search results?   Someone had to put it there.  This is too clever by half.  Also at some point, someone somewhere has edited these “matched sounds” down to 30-second clips.  They all seem to match digital distributors 30-second previews.  That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.  Where is TikTok getting 30-second previews on a mass scale? Which digital music distributor is providing these previews? Someone somewhere knows something.  If the pay scale at these digital distributors is as low as my former music business students claim it should be pretty easy to flip someone with a meager $5,000 reward.

TIKTOK ENCOURAGES THE EXPLOITATION OF “MISSING TRACKS”

Another rather curious feature of TikTok is that it rewards the creators of the first video that accompanies an unexploited “sound.” A fist TikTok music/video sync gets a special “Original” tag and a seemingly higher number of views. Sure at first this seems reasonable.  Tik tok has lots of catalog, so it’s good to have it exploited potentially generating views and thus advertising revenue.  But if TikTok isn’t really licensing the catalog, isn’t it more likely that this simply encourages users to put new unlicensed work online?  How is this any different than Share-Online.biz.  They were raided and shut down the past week by German Police.  Share-Online was known to reward users that illegally uploaded popular albums, films and video games. My suspicion Share-Online’s major vulnerability will be contributing to mass infringement.  Is it possible that TikTok shares the same vulnerability?

THE DOG THAT DIDN’T BARK

Another curious issue.  If TikTok’s search function were truly passive, why is it that the part of my catalog that is available on TikTok does not include the compositions that were listed in the Spotify class action lawsuit?   I didn’t use all my compositions in the Spotify lawsuit. Essentially the tracks used had the cleanest ownership records. The tracks missing are not just my compositions with copyright registrations. No this is a more subtle detail that would need to be gleaned from court documents. That extra bit of obscure information surfacing here is some kind of tell.  What it means I don’t quite know, but I find it extraordinarily curious that apparently someone somewhere knew to eliminate these compositions from the “matched sounds.”  If these songs were filtered out it was done by someone with some legal/litigation expertise. It strains credulity to think this was accidental.  To be clear, I’m not saying it was TikTok, it could have just as easily been someone further upstream, a third party retained for licensing and identifying tracks, for instance.

Also, suppose coders or lower-level employees at TikTok or third party were instructed to work around these tracks. That’s coming awful close to conspiracy. And you’ve already got mass copyright infringement going on, so can you all say “RICO?”

Now there are other ommissions of compositions and recordings from the matched sounds.  But these are all controlled by Universal Music Group and its subsidiaries. I would assume from this that UMG has not yet licensed TikTok, or is in some sort of dispute with the app.  But this does not fully explain the other missing tracks.  Again I could be wrong.  This is not a smoking gun, but it deserves investigation from someone other than me.  Law enforcement perhaps?

Put a Digital Executive in Jail in 2020

To be clear.  I have no plans to file any copyright lawsuit against TikTok.  I’ll let someone else do that.  I’ve graduated from that league. I’m much more interested in working with law enforcement. After 20 years of artists and rightsholders fighting these fucks we need law enforcement to step up and launch a criminal investigation. It’s a pattern. My experience is that these services make so much fucking money they have learned it’s cheaper to pay the fine or lump sum settlement.  Investment banks like Goldman Sachs will continue to downplay the criminality of these companies “business models” to potential investors and your fucking pension fund will end up holding the bag.  The C-suite will walk away having cashed in their stock and the cycle will repeat again. The only thing that will scare these pricks is Jail time. It would be so much more efficient for courts; artists would be so much better off, and this shit wouldn’t keep happening. Perp-walked a single digital music executive into an LA federal courthouse (Or New York or Nashville) and this shit will stop really fast.  #PutADigitalMusicExecutiveInJail2020.

PS: I notice there is some unfounded speculation about my resignation from the MLC.  Simply put, I don’t have the bandwidth to do this kind of research and also sit on the unclaimed funds committee of the MLC.  I’m the bad cop.  This is my calling. I like to make the bad guys lives miserable. Every hour I spend on MLC work is one less hour I spend doing this. 

This article was written by my colleague Volker Rieck.  It has been translated from German. It originally appeared here.  While the failure of internet self governing bodies may seem far afield from my usual focus on artists’ rights, it is not.  Artist rights and royalties have been greatly diminished because of a market failure caused by lax enforcement of copyright protections on the internet. And the reason there is little enforcement of criminal activity on the internet is because the “self-government” of the internet, ICANN, and its regional affiliates are spectacularly inept or corrupt.  This article details how the RIPE (the European/Mideast arm of ICANN) has ignored its own internal reports and continues to provide services to criminal organizations. I am not an expert on US Treasury sanctions, but looking at RIPE’s own report it’s likely that RIPE is violating the US prohibitions against providing services to companies/individuals on the Office of Foreign Asset Control “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List.”

-Dr. David Lowery

PS.  RIPE client CyberBunker was just taken down today by German police.  See here.

and Republic of CyberBunker?  Clearly RIPE does not give a shit about its responsibilities and duties here. Time to make RIPE and ICANN accountable to the rule of law.  Just like the rest of us. 

Internet self-administration a la RIPE NCC: An oath of disclosure!

There are many examples of successful self-regulation in business. One of them is the age ratings for films and games. The rating processes are relatively quiet and, despite there being many films and games to rate, there are very few complaints.

The reason for this could be that film and game self-regulation assigns duties and responsibilities to all parties involved.

RIPE NCC: Epic Fail

The exact opposite of this successful self-regulation is the sort of self-regulation you find on the internet. RIPE NCC (Réseaux IP Européens) is responsible for assigning numbers and names on the Internet for Europe and parts of Asia. Other parts of the world are represented by 4 others organizations of ICANN, the worldwide Internet self-government organization. As early as spring 2018, this blog pointed out the failure of RIPE NCC to abide by it’s responsibilities as required. Crucially my article revealed that RIPE NCC provides services to criminal customers. Conversely these criminals pay for membership in RIPE NCC and hence help fund RIPE.

While I’m not surprised that the internet overlords pay no attention to this blog, I am quite surprised to find they seem to have ignored their own internal reports.  Recently I discovered on RIPE’s own website a presentation which describes the problem even more clearly and in depth: “Criminal Abuse in RIPE IP space.”

The presentation was given by Dhia Mahjoub, PhD, who is Head of Security R&D Cisco Umbrella, at the RIPE 77 Conference. According to Mahjoub’s CV, he seems to be a proven expert who has given presentations at several conferences. His presentation was held on 18 October, 2018 and can be downloaded here.

Undoubtedly the most interesting thing about this presentation is the fact that it was held at a meeting of RIPE NCC. In other words: those responsible at RIPE NCC have been aware of the illegal activities of their members since October 2018 at the latest.  Yet, RIPE NCC still allows these companies to use the Internet for criminal purposes.

In the 64-page presentation, Mahjoub describes how dubious data centers develop infrastructure for criminals with the help of RIPE NCC. He examined 30 suspicious data centers of which 11 are in the care of RIPE NCC.

The variety of criminal activities taking place is manifold: botnets, sending spam, distributing malware, fake shops, fake software, phishing, money laundering, illegal video streaming, Bitcoin mining, Trojans, etc.

Mahjoub names three countries that stand out for :

Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden.

He also gives examples of data centres whose business model is to support criminal activities in total or in part. Specifically: Private Layer PA/CH (which appeared in our 2018 blog post), Serverius NL, Worldstream NL, Altushost NL, Felicity NL, Portlane SE, etc.

Mahjoub gives a very detailed breakdown of how the participants are related to each other:

Illustration: Excerpt from the presentation – Private Layer network.

The German company Corebackbone is also involved:

Illustration: Excerpt from the presentation – Corebackbone, Germany.

The dubious players in this space have been well known for years and have been left to pursue their business undisturbed.

The presentation also shows how these companiescompanies are scattered across different countries which obviously hampers prosecution. And is it any surprise thatIt Mahjoub’s presentation references offshore letterbox companies that can be found in the Panama Papers?

Illustration: Excerpt from the presentation – How to make a business resilient on the Internet.

The presentation also describes how such businesses are rebuilt over and over again with low investments:

Illustration: Excerpt from the presentation – The recipe of a dedicated hoster.

RIPE NCC: Blind in both eyes – where is the self regulation?

Anyone who thinks that the findings from the presentation have changed anything at RIPE NCC will be sadly mistaken. Although many evil organizations and their criminal activities were clearly described in the October 2018 presentation, they are all still present and all this with the blessing of RIPE NCC. There is no better way to show that self-regulation of the Internet has failed completely.

RIPE’s refusal to take action against criminal members would only be understandable if RIPE itself were a part of organized crime. RIPE NCC’s Executive Board Treasurer, Remco van Mook, was country manager for Equinix in the Netherlands. Equinix provides a wide range of hosting services for Private Layer locations, Panama and Switzerland, as well as peering in over 5 data centers in Europe. (Editor note: It’s also a US Government contractor! Yikes!) Let’s hope for the executive board members of RIPE this is simply incompetence and arrogance, not criminal conspiracy.

Is it time for law enforcement and politicians to address this problem? What a crazy world we live in, where powerful tech elites make it so easy for criminals. Perhaps by regulating the RIPE’s self-regulation, we could make the Internet much safer for everyone involved?