Gamers' Advocacy Group to Fight Anti-Streaming Bill

[viranimus]

It astounds me how blatantly ignorant this legislation is.

Its basically useless, because it does absolutely nothing to give the copywrite holder anything.

And while we are at it.. Is it not funny how if you were to steal a copy of a game, film, album, book, in physical format it would be considered a misdemeanor, however if you stream or download the exact same thing your life is essentially ruined with a felony charge. (because once youve served your sentence for a felony, it basically destroys your ability to get a job, make a living, support yourself, basically be anything but a drain on society, etc.)

So the moral of the story is, If you steal something from someone or a store, its no where near as bad because either the owner or the store have already purchased it from the publisher. But if you infringe on the copywrite, your directly taking money out of that publishers pocket, so you must be made to pay to the point you wish you were dead.

Sounds an awful lot like the using litigation to protect corporate interests. But yeah, lets make sure we protect those poor poor publishing corporations even beyond what falls within the standing of "usual" punishment.

 

[etherlance]

Not to sound like a dick, but this is an american problem.

This law has no effect on other countries like Britain as we have our own laws and procedures,You have the bill of rights and use the first amendment etc. while we use another way entirely.


Now this would be more serious if the U.S government was telling us that The whole world had to follow this law but its not.

If it did go through, it wouldn't spell the end for "Let's play" videos as people from other parts of the world that U.S laws do not effect can and will still make them.


However I am hoping that this bill doesn't go through as I have seen quite a few good Let's play videos come out of the USA...........that and I'm against any government deciding to control what is and always has been a free rights service.

 

[Scars Unseen]

That's interesting, considering that Let's Play is considered a deviant work, which means that all you would need to technically acknowledge it properly as such is a fair use notice, unless of course they change the definition of Fair Use again.

I don't think that fair use has changed meaning. It's just that now you have to spend millions of dollars in court to prove you're in the right.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Not to sound like a dick, but this is an american problem.

This law has no effect on other countries like Britain as we have our own laws and procedures,You have the bill of rights and use the first amendment etc. while we use another way entirely.

And when the US tries to have you extradited for copyright infringement? [http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/368110/uk-student-vows-to-fight-copyright-extradition]

 

[Lightslei]

People really aren't waking the hell up.


It doesn't give more rights to copyright holders. It takes the rights of copyright holders and gives them TO THE GOVERNMENT. That is the problem. This bill needs to be burned, along with most of Congress. It should be illegal to make a bill which has obviously been created through either bribery or a lack of knowledge of a subject matter, it would take a lot of these politicians away from their ludicrous ideologies.

 

[Hashime]

I am not american, but attention should be brought to this since youtube is hosted in the states, and several of my videos would be taken down because of it.

 

[PrinceofPersia]

Sigh, we have a deep recession, outlandishly tax cuts for the rich people, corporations not paying their fair due in taxes, and a debt ceiling crisis and this is what congress focuses on? Yup George Carlin was dead on.

 

[MajorDolphin]

I love how they write up vague bills and then say "don't worry! It's just to target one specific action!" Well, why don't they write up a bill targeting that SPECIFIC action? Initially they'll use it to go after Joe the Pirate but eventually it WILL be used against anyone they wish.

It hasn't been that long since a guy was sent to prison for clicking on a fucking link on a webpage.

 

[notimeforlulz]

Not to sound like a dick, but this is an american problem.

This law has no effect on other countries like Britain as we have our own laws and procedures,You have the bill of rights and use the first amendment etc. while we use another way entirely.

And when the US tries to have you extradited for copyright infringement? [http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/368110/uk-student-vows-to-fight-copyright-extradition]

Reading that made me realize that you can't have sex, drink, smoke or gamble while under the age of 21 in the UK, regardless of UK legislation, because if you did you could be extradited to the United States and charged with the relevant state laws that exist there. And it doesn't matter that the US crime that isn't even a crime in the UK wasn't perpetrated in the US, you're still getting extradited.

 

[EHKOS]

Well being in the middle of a Crash Bandicoot LP I say SUPPORT THE HELL OUT OF IT!

 

[A-D.]

Sigh, we have a deep recession, outlandishly tax cuts for the rich people, corporations not paying their fair due in taxes, and a debt ceiling crisis and this is what congress focuses on? Yup George Carlin was dead on.

Im actually wondering if Mr. Carlin is actually rotating in his grave by now at how right he was, or if he is just laughing his ass off because of it. Look back a few Years, like 2 or 3..look at all the weird crap that happened, then recall what Mr. Carlin said, its quite scary how right that man was.

 

[ryo02]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViYoCHMaUak

Im worried but this guy has an interesting point.

 

[Blind Sight]

Wow, a lot of people on this thread don't even have a basic idea of what this bill entails or have completely misinterpreted it. Anyway, I'll throw my two cents in here.

The major issue I have is that the bill is specifically quite vague when it comes to the notion of what constitutes infringement. Technically, if this were made into law, embing a video of a let's play could be equal to that of simply recording one and could be seen as a criminal action due to how vague the bill's definition is. The biggest issue here is that you have old men and women in Congress who don't know a damn thing about both the internet and the culture surrounding it attempting to make a decision without the knowledge required.

However, I severely doubt that there will be massive legal issues for most due to the fact that this vagueness is indeed too broad for the American justice system to handle. Clearly a country with a massive prison overpopulation problem isn't going to be trying to prosecute hundreds of people daily for infringement.

UltraDavid provides a legal account of Bill S. 978: http://shoryuken.com/2011/06/29/trolling-the-stream-by-ultradavid/

 

[Arkitext]

FINALLY. Something to stem the tide of pointless let's play videos.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

The people with the copyright should have the power.

This will give them the power.

If a company wants to let you stream their product, it is their right to say yay nor nay, not yours.

You don't understand what the law actually does. Up till now, it is has been in the hands of the copyright holders to put a stop to this. Any video game company could of sent mass cease and desists or mass requests to Youtube to remove the Let's Plays, but they didn't. To them, Let's Plays and other game commentary (which is quite arguable if it falls under "fair use" or not) is free advertisement, since while watching a film or listening to a song isn't much different if it is watched on a TV or on Youtube, a video game can't be experienced the same way it is watched.

Now, this law would allow the Feds to take control of the situation. They could charge anyone posts this stuff, and any fighting of fair use will be in court. While if a copyright holder gives direct permission to a person they may continue, since most video game companies have only a handful of people to shift through the massive amounts of emails they got, many will just get no reply at all.

The ECA fighting the bill means the entire American video game industry is against this law, since they represent about everybody besides Activision (who owes a third of their CoD sales to Machinmarespawn).

 

[dsawyers9]

This is another bill that one wont be passed because it's unable to reach a clear enough reason within a doubt of rational conflict to provide a proper punishment for said crimes.

This also is the continuing battle which shouldn't even be considered a battle and that is:
Once the consumer buys the product, is the product truly the consumers rightfully bought product?

We saw this with the issue of PS3 battle with that hacker guy.

IMO, if you bought an item, you're the new owner. You should be able to do what ever you want with the item which you have paid taxes on.
On a side note, I believe in the idea of copyright laws protecting the item(s) as long as the item isn't used to make another business/corporation money by either show or selling the item(s).

What needs to be done is to make a new bill to replace the current bill of Copyrights which clarifies Copyrights in our country instead of giving multiple bills a leverage for the companies to sue or punish the consumer.

 

[Aprilgold]

I'm almost getting tired of chastising people on the internet over this, this bill is not making illegal something that's currently legal, it's just adding additional punishment to already illegal activities.

Like it or not, posting a let's play on Youtube is already in violation of the game's copyright. All this bill would do is add more fines and jail time to the crime.

That's interesting, considering that Let's Play is considered a deviant work, which means that all you would need to technically acknowledge it properly as such is a fair use notice, unless of course they change the definition of Fair Use again.

I'm pretty sure posting a thorough playthrough of a video game falls outside of fair use, even if you're making "witty" commentary overtop of it.

Are you playing the game? Are you, if your watching it, its not doing anything besides showing off certain things in story, sets or places, the main mechanic in all games is the ability TO PLAY THE GAME! I chose you for this example because this is true, companies don't take down Lets Plays unless its on story driven games, and most Lets Players don't touch them because their not fun to make FUN of. I'm currently making a Lets Play of Saints Row 2, and I'll play it MY way, infact, I have a set opening script on the lines of "Buy this game, Enjoy it, PLAY IT YOUR WAY!" If your not playing the game, then your not eligible to get sued by the producer, its like recording only sound from a movie, its so out of context that you probably won't get arrested for doing so. Pirating =/= Lets Plays / Reviews / Game Videos, Games have an advantage over film, everyone experiences every game differently, and our government doesn't understand that in a game, you have to PLAY THE GAME! If this bill passes, our government is a complete hipocrit.

 

[aidutcher]

There's a lot of focus on YouTube here, but the bill is so vague that it could reach well beyond YouTube. Restaurants wouldn't be able to play music without getting radio licenses. Airplanes wouldn't be able to show movies on long flights. Playing music at your parties could land you in jail. If you want to go to Wal-Mart to buy a shiny new tv the only thing they'll be playing to show the picture quality is public domain stuff like To Kill A Mockingbird or stuff produced by Wal-Mart itself.