Twitch Manages To Get Out Some 'Disappointment' With Music Industry Over Latest Round Of DMCA Claims
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The saga that has been Twitch's last six or so months is long and somewhat varied, so you should go read up on our historical coverage if you're not familiar with it, but we need to at least preface this post with the origins of how Twitch's bad time began. What has been a tumultuous several months began when it absolutely freaked out over a flood of DMCA takedown notices it received, mostly from the music industry. In response to that, and without warning to its creative community, Twitch nuked a bunch of content from the platform, mostly ignored the outcry from its creators, and did very little to put anything in place that would keep such a disastrous situation from happening again.So of course it happened again. Twitch recently sent out an email that it had received roughly 1,000 additional DMCA takedown notices, almost all of them again over music playing in the background of recorded Twitch videos.Said Twitch in its email on Friday: “We are committed to being more transparent with you about DMCA. We recently received a batch of DMCA take down notifications with about 1,000 individual claims from music publishers.“All of the claims are for the VODs and the vast majority target streamers listening to background music while playing video games or IRL streaming. Based on the number of claims we believe these rights holders used automated tools to scan and identify copyrighted music in creators VODs and clips, which means that they will likely send further notices." Of course they will. Twitch invited them to when it showed itself to be a willing partner in treating Twitch creators like a testing ground for DMCA cluster bombs. There are platforms out there that manage to both treat DMCA requests seriously and also provide some protection, or at least communication, to its users. A few tools for creators aside, Twitch's inaction on behalf of its creative community amounted essentially to greenlighting ever more DMCA takedowns from the music industry. Any surprise at that by the Amazon-owned company is laughable.But this neutered, throwaway line from that same email is simply maddening.“This is our first such contact from the music publishing industry (there can be several owners for a single piece of music) and we are disappointed that they decided to send takedowns when we were willing and ready to speak to them about solutions.” As the old saying goes, be disappointed at the music industry's aggressive copyright enforcement in one hand and spit in the other and see which fills up faster. There is no substance to this disappointment. Of course the music industry has gone kazoo filing DMCA notices at Twitch. Twitch has made it clear its on their side, even making it easier than before to file these notices.The real disappointment here is that Twitch, and by extension Amazon, has so wildly left its creative community out to dry when it comes to copyright enforcement and DMCA takedowns. It's simply not doing enough.
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posted at: 12:00am on 04-Jun-2021
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Man Sues After Field Drug Test Says His Daughter's Ashes Are Meth And Ecstasy
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Cops like cheap field drug tests. They don't like them because they're accurate. They like them because they're cheap. And since you get what you pay for, they're way cheaper (in the long run) then sending for a drug dog.Field drug tests are probable cause at $2 a pop. They're even more unreliable than drug dogs when it comes to correctly identifying drugs. That's why some prosecutors -- the nominal best friends of law enforcement -- are refusing to accept plea deals for drug charges stemming solely from field drug tests.Field drug tests have said donut crumbs, cotton candy, and honey are methamphetamines. They've said bird poop on a car's hood (!!) and bog standard aspirin are cocaine. Whatever a cop imagines to be drugs can usually be "confirmed" by the test kits they carry with them. Once the vial says it's drugs, the cops are free to search, seize, and arrest.Cops don't need to be this wrong about drugs. But there's no penalty for being this wrong. So, it continues. Prosecutors may have to drop a few cases when the drug lab says the supposed drugs aren't actual drugs, but plea deals tend to go into place before labs get around to testing the evidence. And that's if the evidence even makes its way to a lab. Cops aren't the best at paperwork, which is convenient when it's their word against yours. Even if a cop gets sued for turning non-contraband into contraband and drug charges, they're usually indemnified by the city they work for or granted qualified immunity for relying on what they thought was actual science.And, because no one seems too interested in ending the reliance on unreliable drug tests, this is the sort of travesty we've come to expect.Newschannel 20 and FOX Illinois obtained new body camera video of the incident sparking Dartavius Barnes to sue the City of Springfield.In the suit, Barnes claims his vehicle was unlawfully searched on April 6, 2020 when he was pulled over near Laurel and 16th Streets in Springfield.He says officers placed him in handcuffs while they searched his vehicle without consent, valid warrant, or probable cause.During the search, Barnes says officers took a sealed urn of his daughter's ashes, unsealed it, opened it without consent, and spilled out the ashes. If you think that's terrible, just wait for the backstory. Barnes' daughter Ta'Naja Jones was only two when she died. And she may have been killed. The girl's mother and her current boyfriend were both arrested on murder charges.The ultimate insult to Ta'Naja Jones and her father happened here. Ta'Naja Jones' final resting place wasn't in the urn Barnes kept in his car. It was in a field drug test that officers performed because they just couldn't bring themselves to believe it might be the last remains of a loved one.According to law enforcement's favorite faulty test equipment, the ashes of Ta'Naja Jones were possibly ecstasy. And that conclusion was reached after the ashes failed to test positive for cocaine.An officer presented the officer whose body camera was rolling with a narcotics test kit."I checked for cocaine, but it looks like it's probably molly," the officer said."X pills," the other added, citing the street name for ecstasy. In the end, the cops decided the ashes were a combination of meth and ecstasy because that's how drug users carry their drugs: all mixed together in a single container. What even the fuck.Field drug tests allow cops to work backwards from their conclusions. If it doesn't test positive for one drug, it's probably some other drug. And if it doesn't test positive for anything, it might still be drugs because sometimes drugs are carried in containers. "Based on training and experience" and all of that horseshit. The stuff that says criminals sometimes act like normal non-criminals. And if criminals act like non-criminals on a regular basis, every non-criminal is guilty until proven otherwise.Barnes has sued [PDF]. It's a short lawsuit and it looks like it will be an uphill battle to win. Barnes admitted to having marijuana in the car and apparently consented to a search. The end result was this horrendous violation of his daughter's remains, but everything up to that point was "reasonable" enough (utilizing the courts' definition of this word rather than the definition citizens use) that it will be hard to prove the officers crossed Constitutional boundaries.The problem here is the field drug tests and the officers believing they can actually positively identify drugs with them. They were "reasonable" to rely on the drug test results because everyone who benefits from the use of faulty tests told them the tests were reliable, even when they're obviously not. If a child's ashes are not just one, but two different illegal substances, anything can be anything whenever a cop wants it to be something.
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posted at: 12:00am on 04-Jun-2021
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