Friday, April 17, 2015

Grace Communion International Goes After Web Site Illegally Posting Herbert Armstrong Videos




When the Worldwide Church of God began to implode in the mid-1990's various people decided it was up to them to preserve all the writings and videos that Herbert Armstrong ever produced.  Most of these web sites illegally posted copyrighted material that belonged to the Worldwide Church of God.  Gerald Flurry was particularly guilty of this and eventually had to settle out of court and had to pay the WCG over $3,000,000.00 for copyright rights. No matter how much Stephen Flurry claims it was a victory for the PCG in securing these rights, they had to PAY for them after suffering one humiliation after another in court.

In spite of PCG's costly escapade, others started plagiarizing HWA's books and booklets and posting his videos as "fair use" and "educational" materials.  One of these  idolatry sites was the HWALibrary.com site.

On April 15, 2015 Grace Communion International went after the HWAlibrary site.  GCI filed copyright infringement accusations against them with YouTube.

As everyone knows by now Grace Communion is considered Satan's agent by most of the splinter groups.  Before long these sites will be belching out, "famine of the word!"

This afternoon around 2:00 PM on April 15, 2015 we noticed a few videos were missing. After checking, we found that "Grace Communion International" (formally the "Worldwide Church of God") had filed several copyright notices with YouTube concerning the Telecast section of HWALibrary.com. YouTube stated we were not to upload any more videos which we did not. The notice from YouTube also stated we needed to file a counter notification through a YouTube form they provided. After checking into the matter to make sure we could legally file a counter notification we did so around 5:30 PM just hours after receiving the first notice from YouTube. At around 7:00 PM after we did exactly what YouTube asked us, they (YouTube) deactivated our HWALibrary.com account.

We are not sure why YouTube gave us no time even though the counter notification we filed stated it would take 10 days, but they did and we are checking as to why.

HWALibrary.com spent years building the YouTube channel, we want everyone to know we have all material archived and are looking at all our options of getting all audio/video files back up as soon as possible.

HWALibrary.com used YouTube because of the cost savings, but we have always known the risk of allowing a third party to handle the material, but the cost savings was the only way at the time

HWALibrary.com was able to handle the large volume of bandwidth required to handle the 1.6 million hits a month.


HWALibrary.com believes the use of the material is legally protected because it falls within the "fair use" provision of the copyrightregulations, as defined in 17 USC 107. Herbert W Armstrong Library (HWALibrary.com) is also a non-profit educational library.

At very least YouTube should have given us the time stated (10 days) or simply let us know before deactivating all 1,335 Videos, there were only 143 Telecasts in question, we did everything they asked.

We are sorry and please pray that everything works out for us all! We will keep everyone updated on this page as to what is happening or what fixes we come up with; cost is a factor on all this.

Regards,
HWALibrary.com
HWAlibrary updates:

Update: April 16, 2015
Today we called YouTube and was told we had to send an email to their "Copyright" email address, which we sent.
Also today we uploaded 111 Sermons back to HWALibrary.com (hosted on HWALibrary.com servers)
We also was able to get 144 Broadcasts back online. They are in "mp3" format only, they can be accessed through this link.
We will be adding videos everyday until we get them all back online. We will try to give an update as often as we can on the progress of YouTube and videos back online.
Regards,

HWALibrary.com


Update: April 17, 2015
Today we were able to get around 800 audio and video files back online. We also got this week's Sabbath service up and running for everyone. We will keep you posted on our progress!
Regards,

HWALibrary.com

4 comments:

Byker Bob said...

Based on the numbers you have reported, this is a fairly flagrant violation! These guys at the HWA library haven't just documented the damaging evidence of a toxic cult from the past, they've been acting as the ION or ME TV of Armstrongism, apparently presenting it as nostalgia, and actually compounding the damage to the world caused by the original broadcast.

The irony is that most of the HWAcaca was plagiarized in the first place, and the tragedy is that nobody had the balls to go after the old man. Too bad ol' Vern didn't have surveillance equipment or a Nanny cam back in the day to document his suspicions! Just imagine all of the pain and suffering that could have been prevented if film footage had been available in the early '40s!

BB

Anonymous said...

So the famine is returning to be glut?

Anonymous said...


For anyone who is interested in knowing what HWA really taught, it would be best to hear his own words and read his own writings. The WCG splinter groups do not help. In fact, they only harm. You simply cannot trust them to represent accurately and honestly what HWA had taught.

Gerald Flurry and his PCG impostor cult bought the copyrights to just some of HWA's writings, but then edited and changed and garbled what HWA had actually written and taught. Gerald claimed that his PCG had been “FLOODED WITH NEW REVELATION.” Although Gerald claimed that all this new revelation was just building upon what HWA had taught, it actually totally changed it. From immediately discontinuing the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom of God (which HWA had taught was the very purpose of the church), to cutting off all contact between parents and their children to try to turn their hearts implacably against each other (in direct contrast to Malachi 4:5-6), Gerald seems to have been sent by Satan to try to undo everything that HWA had tried to do. Gerald came up with dozens of names, titles, offices, and positions for himself to try to raise his own stature, but the little old drunk still came up short in his elevator shoes. Claiming that he, Gerald, rather than Jesus, was “That Prophet” of Deuteronomy 18:17-20 was one of the great identity thefts of the ages.

David Pack and his RCG were many years late and many millions of dollars short on cash, so instead of buying copyrights to HWA's writings, they just rewrote everything that they wanted. This enabled David to put his own slant on the writings. Then began the usual doctrinal additions, which were, again, supposedly just building on what HWA had taught, such as David now being Joshua the High Priest. Next came the usual incredible doctrinal changes, such as David Pack being Elijah, rather than HWA being Elijah as HWA had taught. Most importantly to David--who is all about money and numbers and deceitful statistics--everyone's cash and property is to be “common” (that is, entirely David Pack's) in his RCG. Yes, Virginia, Satan can send more than just one impostor. David Pack had once claimed that Satan would not go to all the trouble of writing all the things that he had written just to deceive people and to go bad in the end. Someone immediately, and apparently correctly, responded that, yes, Satan would do that.

Roderick Meredith always had a problem with HWA and wanted to change HWA's teachings, perhaps to spite HWA for once exiling him to Hawaii for a number of months, and to put RCM's own doctrinal stamp on his own LCG church. RCM is always trying to slip in strange new ideas, while always criticizing the old timers in the church when they say that he is trying to change HWA's teachings. RCM always tries to make doctrinal changes, while always arguing that he is not making doctrinal changes, and at the same time saying that HWA would want him to grow in knowledge and make these doctrinal changes, and would be happy for him and his doctrinal changes, which he supposedly is not making. Roderick's prophetic guesses don't do so well either. About fifty years of saying that you will see these things begin to happen in the next three to five years gets tiring after a number of decades.

The UCG and its Council of Evildoers had previously helped the Tkaches to do away with HWA's teachings and to destroy the WCG. They still agree with and like many of the doctrinal changes that were made in the past, and seem to be planning to try to make some more of them again in the future. Being disunited in godlessness, they seem to be splitting and splintering rather than amounting to anything great.

In conclusion, it really would be best if people could go read and watch the original source material of HWA's if they want to know the facts.

Anonymous said...

Moving those audio and video files to their own website is only putting off the inevitable. The website host will get sent a DMCA request and if the HWa library doesn't take down those files, the host will pull down the entire site.