New Bill Makes Illegal Streaming A Felony

[droid]

efforts to stem the rising tide of Internet theft that threatens our members' very livelihoods.

Sorry actors and actresses, but maybe if you weren't paid hundreds of thousands to millions per movie I might buy that statement, but seeing as how a lot of you are I don't.

Additionally, the Motion Picture Association of America states that those who "stream videos without intending to profit" will not be prosecuted under the newly amended law.

I was originally going to rage at this decision, but this sentence here actually makes it better. The people who need punishing are the people doing it for their own gain.

It bothers me because that isn't part of the law, that's just part of the MPAA's promises of good intentions. Promises last as long as you want them to, and I don't trust their intentions. They want to push copyright law toward more control to the copyright holders, rather than to limited control to promote creative works.

[rant]

We the people are not getting the full benefit of those creative works. Right now the technology exists to build a searchable digital library of all the books published in the US till say 1950. But it is a legal impossibility since many of those are still under copyright. In most cases we don't know who owns it so we can't ask for permission, but we can't publish anyway since any overlooked copyright holder could sue for *all* profits or $250000 (their choice).

Disney's interests (and those of other owners of the 1% still commercially valuable works) will ensure that works now under copyright never fall into the public domain. Which is ironic since Disney got his start by adapting public domain works.

Past a term of say 50 years, I don't see copyright doing much to encourage innovation. You want to see what happens to innovators, look at Edwin Howard Armstong [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong#FM_radio]

There used to be a lot more fair use possible, but there isn't anymore.

[/rant]

To be clear I have no objection to this particular bill, but I see it as a sign of things to come.

 

[Ickorus]

This is gonna make it a hell of a lot harder to watch the TV shows I love, most of them are either shown a week later in England or simply not shown at all here. Very annoying and if the fuckwit movie and TV execs made releases global instead of postponing them for different territories they might find the amount of people streaming online drop one metric fucktonne.

 

[Magicman10893]

I'm not quite sure what streaming is defined as, therefore I'm not sure if I'm breaking the law.
Is watching something on... Youtube, as an example, streaming?
It's not quite clear to me.

Yes, it is. Anything youtube lookalike where you don't actively download anything but still are watching it is streaming.

Well, damn, guess I won't be watching Youtube vids anymore.

I'm pretty sure the bill only punishes the people that put the videos on the internet, not the ones who watch it, since it is to prevent people from profiting off copyrighted material and you can't make a profit from watching a Youtube video.

 

[thiosk]

God bless america, where everything is jailtime.

 

[Reaganomics]

I doubt this will have much of an effect on anything. I doubt most websites streaming copyrighted material are based in the United States.

 

[Westerschwelle]

I'm really glad US Laws don't apply to me

 

[Buizel91]

*is still shocked it wasn't before*

Well, I'm glad all the anime I watch is from 100% legal sources.

Pokemonepisodes.org is legal...

Right

Please to god say it is!

 

[Jubbert]

For some reason I keep reading the title as "makes illegal SCREAMING a felony."

 

[RJ Dalton]

Fuck no, this should not be a felony. Streaming video amounts to petty larceny and it should be treated as such. It should be a misdemeanor at most, invoking a felony only for repeated offenses. Felonies follow you around for a long damn time and we shouldn't be handing them out left and right for something so small.
On the whole, the way it's being described doesn't otherwise sound unreasonable, but I'd have to see the actual legal wording to be sure there aren't loopholes or fine print that make it much worse than it actually sounds.
And even if it's not that serious, just wait a while. The distributors will try to push something bigger through. They are a dying breed and they know it. They'll kick and scream a lot before they finally breath their last.

 

[MajorDolphin]

From what I've heard, most piracy sites have smooth as silk download and stream rates. Meanwhile, services like HULU that makes gobs of money through advertising can't seem to stream a video without needing to buffer every other minute. Then if you pause a HULU video you'll likely get smacked in the face with another advertisement once the amount of time between ads has passed, forcing you to miss part of the show since the terrible code that runs the page can't figure out whats going on.

When the pirates get it right and the multi-billion dollar corporations can't, there's something extremely wrong.

 

[BrailleOperatic]

Well my question is this: does the liability lie with the party providing the material, the party viewing material, or both parties in whatever ratio it may or may not be in? I personally see no fault with viewing most streamed material (i.e. television programs and the like). I see no reason why viewing content for free via the internet is any more objectionable than watching a program free via my television set (disregarding what I pay to my cable providers). I turn my TV on, switch to the BBC and watch Doctor Who, or alternately I go to my computer, connect to the internet, and stream it a day later because I missed the initial air date. It costs me the same thing: nothing.
This is of course limiting my argument to free streaming services, who make a profit off advertising revenue rather than the video itself. And from what I could tell, it seemed like free streams would be exempt, but then I have to wonder how is 'free' being quantified. Free like Youtube, where I never pay anything ever, or free like Megavideo, where I don't pay for anything, but it'll whine like the dickens to try to get me to pay for it?

Personally, I don't like the law. I stream things quite regularly. It's convenient for me, and I don't own any sort of DVR devices. Banning streaming videos means less things for me to do with my freedom. And I like choices...

 

[Infernai]

Hehehe....and suddenly I'm glad I actually live in Australia.

 

[moviedork]

I wonder if this will harm people streaming their screen as they play videogames?

Does anyone watch streams of stuff anyway?
I surely don't.

I believe the Let's Players will be okay actually. Like video reviewers, as long as they provide commentary, it is considered under this one law that states as long as you provide new material (commentary, footage you shot of other things and such) you can post the videos with out breaking copy right. So they will be fine though video game companies are allowed to complain and have a LP removed if they feel it goes against copyright.

Under the copyright act of 1976, copyrighted material used without the permission of the author can only be used in the cases of commentary, parody, news reporting, research, or education.

 

[kasperbbs]

Well it's still legal where i'm from, at least i think it is.. Who streams stuff anyway? Not sure how they are going to enforce it, if they only lock up people that create websites where you can pay for streaming stuff that they have no right to sell then it might work if only they can find the people that owns them, they seem to have some trouble catching these annoying hackers so if they take necessary precautions their only problem would be a disabled website.

 

[OaKleIgHy]

This feels like the beginning of something ugly...

 

[Ldude893]

And this is the part where Anonymous goes on a firestorm.
People are definitely not going to be silent on this issue.

 

[LT Cannibal 68]

i'm cautious where i download my stuff and i have a couple of programs that protect me from getting caught. I'm not ashamed to admit i am a pirate.

 

[Comando96]

I live in the UK... so yeah... copyright laws belonging to the US are incredibly hard to abuse over here and are even harder to get prosecuted for due to the effort needed to mount the legal case.

To get the attention of authorities you really need to be asking for it. One of my teachers old pupils pirated over 1000 songs and over 75 films and was prosecuted... and he bloody asked for it!

The thought that someone who streamed 75 films instead of stealing(downloading) them... seems to be a bit of a legal oddity. This bill is addressing a technical loophole which will have arisen and probably faced a previous court precedent in favour of infringement via streaming and therefore a law is required to patch the hole in the net of intended copyright laws (just to add, judges don't always act the way that politicians intended when writing laws due to small details or lack of clarity, see the UK Human Rights act).

 

[JET1971]

On the whole, the way it's being described doesn't otherwise sound unreasonable, but I'd have to see the actual legal wording to be sure there aren't loopholes or fine print that make it much worse than it actually sounds.

I already posted a link to the bill in .pdf form. read the thread.