New Bill Makes Illegal Streaming A Felony
- Thread starter Earnest Cavalli
- Start date
This bill is nothing more than some rewording to an exhisting law. A few clarifications.
One thing in the bill everyone is completly missing and is even more important:
One thing in the bill everyone is completly missing and is even more important:
Notice what is being inserted?
This can be taken as you cannot publicly act out parts of the copyrighted material. as in school/public plays based on the latest blockbuster movies... or lets say a star wars based highschool skit.
To the above, I noticed they say 'in electronic form' and I think that's an effort to close that loophole, tho I imagine you could claim that there was electricity being used in the theatre, I don't think that's what is intended 
I think the movie and TV industry do need to look hard at the whole 'regional' thing, the UK is one of the biggest piraters of US TV, why? because we know it's there ready to be watched, but we don't want to have to six months for someone to decide we might be allowed to watch it.
Then all the online providers you can go try, and then you just 'Sorry, this (and anything else you might like) is not available in your country/outside the US'.
I understand most TV is supported by advertising, but damn, most of us would happily PAY a couple of bucks an episode, if we could watch it, clearly, with no ads, no restrictions, full screen, without needing to fill our PC with spyware.
It's yet another case that they'd far rather criminalise regular people than bother looking for a solution, and I KNOW making things available worldwide is a legal minefield, but if you can buy entire governments to extradite a pirate from the UK to the US, maybe you could use that power to install a useful, legal system which would counteract piracy.
I do wonder how much of the 'cannot view this outside the US' is legal problems and how much is just a case that they can't target ads properly. If it's the latter, charge us money!
I'd be happy to pay a buck a day for the Daily Show, and there's many more I'd consider paying to see, too.
I think the movie and TV industry do need to look hard at the whole 'regional' thing, the UK is one of the biggest piraters of US TV, why? because we know it's there ready to be watched, but we don't want to have to six months for someone to decide we might be allowed to watch it.
Then all the online providers you can go try, and then you just 'Sorry, this (and anything else you might like) is not available in your country/outside the US'.
I understand most TV is supported by advertising, but damn, most of us would happily PAY a couple of bucks an episode, if we could watch it, clearly, with no ads, no restrictions, full screen, without needing to fill our PC with spyware.
It's yet another case that they'd far rather criminalise regular people than bother looking for a solution, and I KNOW making things available worldwide is a legal minefield, but if you can buy entire governments to extradite a pirate from the UK to the US, maybe you could use that power to install a useful, legal system which would counteract piracy.
I do wonder how much of the 'cannot view this outside the US' is legal problems and how much is just a case that they can't target ads properly. If it's the latter, charge us money!
I'd be happy to pay a buck a day for the Daily Show, and there's many more I'd consider paying to see, too.
Just a point I keep bringing up, but why is piracy constantly being treated as about 173 times worse than outright theft?
I used to work in a music/dvd store, and we'd regularly get hit by shoplifting, either people sneaking a couple of dvds out under their coat, or the blatant ones who'd pile up about 20 then just run like hell.
Police would get called, them and us would do an hour's paperwork, send off the CCTV videos, etc. Then nothing would happen, and we'd put in an insurance claim. Then we'd wait for the next time to happen. 99% of the time, nothing happened, no-one got caught, no criminal proceedings.
When it did make it to court, small fines and community service.
Yet if I download an episode of 'The Wire' suddenly I'm up for court judgements of hundreds of thousands against me, or jail time.
I used to work in a music/dvd store, and we'd regularly get hit by shoplifting, either people sneaking a couple of dvds out under their coat, or the blatant ones who'd pile up about 20 then just run like hell.
Police would get called, them and us would do an hour's paperwork, send off the CCTV videos, etc. Then nothing would happen, and we'd put in an insurance claim. Then we'd wait for the next time to happen. 99% of the time, nothing happened, no-one got caught, no criminal proceedings.
When it did make it to court, small fines and community service.
Yet if I download an episode of 'The Wire' suddenly I'm up for court judgements of hundreds of thousands against me, or jail time.
Public Performance of electronic media is already covered, under one of the warnings or cautions, at the beginning with the FBI thing.JET1971 said:
Thats why they specified "for profit/commercial" reasons, only those that are making money (aka the people that should be punished) are able to be hit for this. So someone uploading a music video using footage from their favoriate game etc isn't under this law as its not for profit.dogstile said:
But capitalism does not rely on the integrity of individuals. The only argument for capitalism is that humans can never learn to coexist without conflict. This is not only most likely wrong, but it also removes any capitalist's rights to speak out against crime or other counterproductive behaviour.bombadilillo said:
Great, another unenforceable law. Companies need to stop crying to the government to do their work for them. You have to earn the right to make a profit... you know, by actually making a profit i.e. convincing the customers to pick you over anyone else.
Stop sucking and start providing online streaming options to your customers or they'll find someone who will. If you're sore that other people are making money off 'your' work, 'your' IP... stop sucking and earn the money like a real company does. Netflix-like concepts is a move towards the right direction but all this law does is show that broadcasting companies are lazy, greedy dirtbags.
Sometimes (actually, often these days) I regret Intellectual Property rights. Clearly the industry has no problem making a profit even when it is unenforceable (like it is now), but the presence of it seems to encourage companies to sit on their behinds and wait for money to come flowing in. Nobody has the right to profit or success; you need to earn it, and making television and movies that people want to watch is only half the process in providing home entertainment: the other half is providing the content in a way that the customers desire.
In fact, a better idea would be to sell high-quality content to the existing streaming sites (since they have all kinds of infrastructure ready to go) before it's aired; these would be all-to-happy to pay a lot of money for exclusivity given that high DVD-quality uploads take a while to hit most of the major sharing sites, since exclusivity = concentrated traffic = advertising revenue. It's ideas like this that will never happen because the broadcasting companies are too lazy and greedy and have zero incentive to innovate or frankly to do much of anything useful at all thanks to their government-granted monopoly i.e. Intellectual Property right.
Stop sucking and start providing online streaming options to your customers or they'll find someone who will. If you're sore that other people are making money off 'your' work, 'your' IP... stop sucking and earn the money like a real company does. Netflix-like concepts is a move towards the right direction but all this law does is show that broadcasting companies are lazy, greedy dirtbags.
Sometimes (actually, often these days) I regret Intellectual Property rights. Clearly the industry has no problem making a profit even when it is unenforceable (like it is now), but the presence of it seems to encourage companies to sit on their behinds and wait for money to come flowing in. Nobody has the right to profit or success; you need to earn it, and making television and movies that people want to watch is only half the process in providing home entertainment: the other half is providing the content in a way that the customers desire.
In fact, a better idea would be to sell high-quality content to the existing streaming sites (since they have all kinds of infrastructure ready to go) before it's aired; these would be all-to-happy to pay a lot of money for exclusivity given that high DVD-quality uploads take a while to hit most of the major sharing sites, since exclusivity = concentrated traffic = advertising revenue. It's ideas like this that will never happen because the broadcasting companies are too lazy and greedy and have zero incentive to innovate or frankly to do much of anything useful at all thanks to their government-granted monopoly i.e. Intellectual Property right.
I am glad I don't live near the USA, we had something vaguely similar called the Digital Economy Act 2010 in the UK, which gave the authority to companies to get people banned from the internet. Thankfully this will be soon overturned when the internet is made a basic right in the UK, which I think it is.
Another example of the power of rethoric...
By writing their statement in such an obnoxious, pathetic manner, the directors and actors guild make me want to start uploading everything I can get my hands on and burn down a theater.
By writing their statement in such an obnoxious, pathetic manner, the directors and actors guild make me want to start uploading everything I can get my hands on and burn down a theater.