Internet Censorship To Happen In The U.S., Business Model Revealed

Recently GEMA (Germany’s RIAA/MPAA) put a deal on the table that said YouTube would have to pay to have their artists content on the website.  Due to this not happening, Germany has been blocked by YouTube in order to evade paying what was demanded of them.

Berlin (Germany) – A body representing 60,000 German artists, called GEMA, has stated that fee licensing negotiation talks between it and YouTube have “collapsed for the time being.” As a result, “YouTube has announced that it is blocking videos from recording firms on the German YouTube platform — similar to what happened in Britain two weeks ago.”

The shutdown follows several others recently where the Google-owned YouTube video viewing website has leveraged its significant popularity and viewer base against interests seeking to profit from its video viewing. Whether or not this is a move to protect YouTube’s rightful income, or to limit the amount of money greedy artist group interests are trying to “steal” away from YouTube is anyone’s guess.

The GEMA statement indicated “In the interest of its members, GEMA would like an appropriate share in YouTube’s income and value.” And whereas this may be a legitimate attempt to collect fair royalties, the terms of the request are not disclosed and the matter is up for debate.

http://www.tgdaily.com/busines…

This “pay for play” business model is not spared in the recent Google-Verizon pact being put forth under the disguise of an “open internet” preservation policy:

Net neutrality advocates claim Google and Verizon’s joint policy proposal for an “open Internet” will do more harm than good when it comes to keeping networks as open to all data. Critics claim the proposal is “worse than feared” and if adopted will result in users paying premium rates to access content such as critical health care services and access to online gaming platfoms.

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Free Press, a nonprofit organization working to reform the media, issued a statement calling the proposal “worse than feared”  and urging policy makers to reject what they call “fake net neutrality.” The Free Press says that the framework of the proposal “opens the door wide open for ISPs and deep-pocketed content companies to engage in practices that will turn the Internet platform into something that more closely resembles the closed cable TV model.”

While Free Press say the proposal is disguised “as a reasonable path forward” it feels that if adopted the path will instead “lead to toll booths on the information superhighway” where users have to pay to get to get to “premium” content they want to see. “The Google-Verizon pact isn’t just as bad as we feared – it’s much worse. They are attacking the Internet while claiming to preserve it. Google users won’t be fooled.”

http://www.pcworld.com/article…

With government nowhere to be found on this issue, it seems as if they consider this a “private enterprise” affair and have backed away from a fight for net neutrality when

talks on negotiations failed leaving it to be anyone’s guess as to how the internet would be shaped from that day forward.

Now we know.

The internet will be made into a “toll booth” operation where access to sites depends on what you’re willing to pay to gain access to them.  Content on the sites that is copyrighted will most likely team together to charge collectively for a specific service.  This will be similar to how some bands don’t have their albums on iTunes because they signed a contract with another music downloading company.  Except it’s the entire internet and you have no choice.

Many of those I talked to in Germany are livid at this recent censorship. They have been using proxies to get around this censorship. Proxies are normally used by people trying to get around geographical restrictions on websites. Proxies can keep a personal computer’s IP address secure by sending the search request from the proxy. This makes it look like the person is located in another location, allowing them to bypass the restrictions. Perhaps some of these people should consider using the fastest free proxy they can find. Regular citizens are even now flocking to the German Pirate Party (Piraten Partei) in order to find out how to fight this censorship.

Price fixing, sweetheart deals, all the shit that corrupts our government is now making its way onto the internet with nobody really covering it or noticing it.

Here’s a good resource to see what’s goin down:

http://chillingeffects.org/