Big Mac

I am a advocate for all sorts of rights for individuals, including rights for consumers. I live in the UK, but we now live in a world of global corporations, so when foreign corporations push their way into every country and take over the marketplace, we quite often all end up getting the exact same products as those sold in the USA. So in most cases I think we are all fighting the same sort of fight.

I have previous experience of editing on Wikipedia and several other Media Wiki wikis, but am by no means an expert. I do not claim to be an expert in consumer protection laws. I'm certainly not an expert in US laws. But there are a number of things on the wiki that are going to need simple clean-up jobs and someone is going to have to do that stuff. So if I do some of that stuff, it frees up someone with more knowledge to do something more useful.

What Am I Interested In?

Issues of corporations abusing their powers, that I am not happy with include:

Agreements on Publishing Content Compatible with Commercial Roleplaying Games

Wizards of the Coast (owned by Hasbro) attempting to revoke their non-revokable Open Game Licence 1.0a, so that they could create a new version of the licence that would allow them to skim royalties off of the top of any Kickstarter campaigns that hit a $1 million dollars funding target.

This was an example of "changing the deal after it is made" on a free licence that encouraged other companies and one-man-band self-publishers to create content that was compatible with Dungeons & Dragons 3.0, D&D 3.5 and D&D 5.0. After a lot of pushback from consumers, WotC dropped their legal threats to block people from using OGL 1.0a, but then went on to release the new version of their System Reference Document under the Creative Commons Licence. (Creative Commons is a more open licence than the Open Game Licence was, but there are publishers that have gone out of business and designers who have since died who released "Open Game Content" under OGL 1.0a and the break in the chain of continuity has made it legally impossible to mix and match the content shared under the two different licences.)

In between 3rd Edition D&D and 5th Edition D&D, Wizards of the Coast also used another licence, called the Game System Licence to control the distrubution of content that was compatible with 4th Edition D&D. (This means there are three different pools of sharable content that are shared in three different safe harbour agreements and that which can not be mixed and matched.)

Corporate Think Tanks

Think tanks are organisations that do political research and suggest laws to politicians. Many think tanks are funded by corporations, by billionaires or by trust funds set up by rich people.

The issue I have with think tanks is that they get in between voters and politicians and the tell politicians what is good for voters. They quite often get funded by mystery money and they will offer perks to politicians. I view all think tanks with suspicion and believe that they should either be banned or at the very least, heavily scrutinised to ensure that there are not rich people in one country who are trying to secretly influence laws in another country, that will cause them to benefit financially.

Corporate Lobbying Against Renewable Energy and Electrified Railways

I believe the scientists who say that Climate Change actually exists and think that the best things we can do to reduce the carbon emissions our countries create is to force businesses to migrate away from fossil fuel to renewable energy as fast as the renewable energy can be made to be reliable.

Wind farms are an easy win, as are solar panels. Unlike with the harvesting of coal or oil, you do not have to burn and destroy what you harvest to get the energy. There are installation costs, there are maintenance costs and replacement costs, but if this was done in a responsible way, the cost to consumers could be reduced down to just the cost of maintaining the electricity grid and paying for teams of people who repair broken power lines. It wouldn't be totally free energy, but it could be a lot lot cheaper.

Another easy win is to build or upgrade passenger railways in cities and other areas that have a high number of commuters, so that some people who drive to work are able to choose to take a train to work instead. Every person who rides an electric train to work is one person less burning petrol / gasoline to commute, so that is a carbon emissions win and them not needing to drive also cleans up the air quality. And for the other motorists, if you can get some of the cars sharing the road with them to stay in the driveway of their owners, they are going to have less traffic on the way to and from work. So everyone can win, even if they need to drive into the city, because they have a van full of tools and work in different places.

However, there has been a lot of dark money used to campaign politically against green energy and railways. Elon Musk has been caught out telling someone that his Hyperloop White Paper was released to slow down the adoption of high-speed rail in the USA and the tactic worked.

I believe that the role of companies is to provide goods and services and that, when it comes to laws, a billionaire only gets one vote - the same as the rest of us - and should not be allowed to have more political influence than anyone else. Some of the things I'd push back on are likely to be beyond the scope of what Consumer Rights Wiki is here for and any opinions on this user page are mine only and do not represent Consumer Rights Wiki.

Consumer Rights Issues I am Interested In

Issues that I think are more likely to be aligned with Consumer Rights Wiki include:

Stop Killing Games

A friend of mine pointed me at that campaign. I've not played a lot of video games and don't own any of the games affected by that, but I am a gamer and I value preservation of old games that come to the end of their supported life.

I am especially interested in the various different attempts that Ross Scott made to engage with different consumer protection organisations in different countries around the world. I think think that deconstructing Stop Killing Games and documenting the various consumer protection agencies, how they work and how large-scale consumer complaints can be put to those organisations would be valuable to Consumer Rights Wiki. (If, for example, a specific consumer issue, such as EULAs that prevent use of purchased goods, without the user agreeing to forced arbitration, could be fully documented on Consumer Rights Wiki, enough evidence could be gathered to copy things like the European Citizens' Initiative that Stop Killing Games supporters in the EU created.)

I don't think that Consumer Rights Wiki needs to go into too much detail, but if basic instructions for identifying who deals with stuff and how to complain to them in an effective way is on here somewhere, that might be useful for organising groups of people, within the Consumer Rights Wiki userbase, who wish to actually go beyond documenting abuse and move into campaign against the abuse. (I think this would be an extension of the parts of the wiki that deal with lawsuits that involve consumer rights. And it should be something that only covers the subject to a similar amount. For example, when an organisation that represents video game manufacturers in the European Union made a statement suggesting that Stop Killing Games was not a good thing, that could be used as evidence that the organisation attempts to gaslight consumer activists.)

Lock Manufacturing Companies Who Mislead Consumers Into Purchasing Insecure Locks

As well as watching videos from Louis Rossman, I also watch videos from a YouTuber called LockPickingLawyer. LockPickingLawyers videos are quite short, many of them feature lockpicking. Some of them feature historic locks. But some of his videos show modern locks, on sale today, where the locking mechanisms are critically flawed and criminals can easily defeat the lock. Some of these vulnerabilities include:

• Locks vulnerable to overlift attacks from comb picks: Lock cylinders usually have pairs of pins, with a matching key that lifts up the pins enough to line up the gap between them with the sheer-line. Without the key, a person trying to defeat the lock would normally have to pick each individual pin to line all of them up with the sheer-line. Comb picks were invented nearly 100 years ago and are used to lift both pairs of pins above the sheer-line, so that the comb pick can quickly be inserted and turned in the same time it takes to insert the correct key. Balanced pin stacks are used to prevent this attack.
• Locks vulnerable to bypass attacks: Most locks work (after the key is inserted) by the cylinder being turned and that turning motion pulling something that opens the lock. Some lock manufactures still make, import and sell locks that have a "hole" in the back of the keyway, that allows a would-be-criminal to push a tool through the keyway and turn it to open the lock. As with a comb pick overlift attack, this is very quick and can look very similar to an authorised person using the key, from a distance.
• Locks vulnerable to shim attacks: A lot of locks have a slope on them that allows people to close a padlock or a door, while the locking mechanism is in a closed position. A shimming attack is one that involves inserting a thin device into a lock that is already closed, to use this same slope to push back a spring-loaded lock so that it opens without the use of a key. It is possible to design padlocks in a way that prevents shim attacks, or to sell a door lock with door furniture that can be installed to cover over the gap in the door that allows tools to get behind the lock and shim it open.
• Locks vulnerable to rake attacks: A rake attack uses a device with a number of bumps that bounce the keypins in the lock up and down. The rake is pushed in and out of the lock quickly, while another device is used to put tension on the lock cylinder. Key pins in poorly designed locks can be knocked into the sheer line, with this sort of attack, allowing unskilled thieves who are not able to actually pick locks to break into homes.
• Locks vulnerable to bump attacks: A bump attack is an attack using a modified key blank, a special rubber band and a hammer. The key is hit with the hammer, while a tool is used to turn the key. The effect is similar to the effect of a rake attack, although it works slightly differently.

There are other flaws with locks out there, but these are five of the ones that LockPickingLawyer regularly highlights in locks that are being sold today. The packaging of critically flawed locks that LockPickingLawyer reviews often has words like "maximum security" or "pick proof" on them. Or locks are given ratings like "8 out of 10" for security. Locks are also marketing to the public based on how beefy they look, rather than by how good they are at doing their job (keeping out unauthorised users who do not have the key).

Companies selling locks often try to silence people who criticise the quality of their locks (or the ethical standards of lock manufacturers in general). They claim that people who educate people about flaws in locks are "helping criminals" and there is a legal case on Consumer Rights Wiki called Proven Industries v. Trevor McNally, where a lock company used bogus copyright claims to get fair use videos debunking their locks removed from YouTube and two other platforms, before trying to use a lawsuit to ban the video creator from making future videos about their company.

Governments around the world should introduce laws making it illegal to manufacture, import or sell locks that have these critical flaws. Or at the very least, they should pass laws requiring labels that show if a lock is immune or vulnerable to these sort of attacks.

I would like to see an article similar to Louis Rossmann - Video Directory, but one called "LockPickingLawyer - Video Directory", and I would like to see Louis reach out to LockPickingLawyer to ask if he can help send over some of his supporters, so that the videos showing flawed locks can be identified and used as the basis for Consumer Rights Wiki showing shoddy products being sold to consumers as "high security products". It is one thing for consumers to buy something cheap knowing that it is low quality, but it is another thing for consumers to be sold expensive locks and tricked into thinking the locks are actually good.

Bogus Copyright Claims on YouTube (and Other Platforms)

As part of it's responsibilities under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act YouTube operates a system that allows the owners of copyrighted material to complain about YouTube content creators who steal their content. However Section 107 specifically requires anyone making a copyright claim to consider "fair use" before making a report to YouTube or another platform:

107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use⁴⁰

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Many owners of copyrighted material are wilfully misusing the DMCA law and ignoring their Section 107 responsibilities. The main two reasons for this are:

• A non-legal desire to get reviews or other fair use videos that feature their content removed from the Internet or
• An equally non-legal desire to hijack the YouTube royalties of someone making a fair use video.

An example of the first thing is included in the Proven Industries vs Trevor McNally legal case. I'm actually more concerned about the second thing.

YouTuber Rick Beato recently put out a video called This Record Label Is Trying To SILENCE Me in the video he talks about how Universal Music Group's is using bogus copyright strikes to prey on YouTubers. He has been making fair-use educational videos that explain how songs work and the record label was using YouTube's system to take away his video royalties. In the end he got fed up and started to fight the royalty grab requests on fair use grounds, fought back and won every single time. But the royalty grab claims kept coming. He had to hire a lawyer to deal with the claims. He says he has personally had thousands of claims. And now Universal Music Group has switched to using copyright stikes, with three strikes getting his YouTube channel defeated. Another YouTuber, called Top Music Attorney has a video about this up, called This Record Label Is Trying To SILENCE Me | Lawyer Reacts To Rick Beato. She is a music artist who went to law school to protect herself from being ripped off. She says she has lots of clients, who are musicians who have also been hit with bogus copyright claims.

The main thing that is wrong with how this system is this:

• If a YouTuber breaks the rules three times they can loose their YouTube channel but
• If a big company makes thousands of bogus copyright campaigns, there is no consequence.

After loosing so many bogus claims to take Rick Beato's royalties, Universal Music Group must understand that they are misusing YouTube's royalty transfer system. They have now switched from doing that to requesting copyright strikes on every single old video they have not yet made a claim from. Rick Beato's lawyer must now spend a ton of time overturning these claims quickly, so that Rick's channel is not deleted. This is malicious misuse of the system.

Louis recently said he wanted to campaign against the DMCA (although he was concerned about a different bit being abused). I think that if Louis could team up with Rick Beato (who has previously lobbied for rights for musicians with US government officials) and if Louis could also team up with Top Music Attorney, and if her clients are willing to publicly share details of bogus claims against them, a large number of instances of DMCA abuse could be added to Consumer Rights Wiki as evidence that the law does not function as intended and is being used to cause harm to people creating fair use videos.

If the DMCA is going to be reformed, rather than scrapped, companies who constantly make bogus claims against fair use videos should receive their own "DMCA misuse strikes" and be banned from making further copyright claims.