New Bill Makes Illegal Streaming A Felony

[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...

 

[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.

 

[Jman1236]

They added the "only if it's for profit" crap since they knew they would have to arrest everyone.

 

[JET1971]

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:

(b) AMENDMENT TO SECTION 506 OF TITLE 17.?
2 Section 506(a) of title 17, United States Code, is amend3
ed?
4 (1) in paragraph (1)(C), by inserting ??or public
5 performance?? after ??distribution?? the first place it
6 appears; and
7 (2) in paragraph (3)?
8 (A) in subparagraph (A), by inserting ??or
9 public performance?? after ??unauthorized dis10
tribution??; and
11 (B) in subparagraph (B), by inserting ??or
12 public performance?? after ??distribution??.

Notice what is being inserted?

or public performance

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.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

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.

 

[Xannieros]

There goes half of youtube...
Good thing I don't go there.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

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.

 

[vxicepickxv]

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:

(b) AMENDMENT TO SECTION 506 OF TITLE 17.?
2 Section 506(a) of title 17, United States Code, is amend3
ed?
4 (1) in paragraph (1)(C), by inserting ??or public
5 performance?? after ??distribution?? the first place it
6 appears; and
7 (2) in paragraph (3)?
8 (A) in subparagraph (A), by inserting ??or
9 public performance?? after ??unauthorized dis10
tribution??; and
11 (B) in subparagraph (B), by inserting ??or
12 public performance?? after ??distribution??.

Notice what is being inserted?

or public performance

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.

Public Performance of electronic media is already covered, under one of the warnings or cautions, at the beginning with the FBI thing.

 

[GrimHeaper]

God bless america, where everything is jailtime.

What do you expect out of the jailbird nation?

 

[RicoADF]

And again, unless they intend to put 10x more people than you urrently have space in jail for, in jail, then this law is useless.

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.

 

[Firehound]

And again, unless they intend to put 10x more people than you urrently have space in jail for, in jail, then this law is useless.

This.

Just about everything I wanted to say, but already said.

 

[Plurralbles]

so no more music in my starcraft 2 streams? Makes it much less fun to watch.

 

[Kair]

Look at all the government intervention needed to keep the unwieldy capitalist economy running. The free-market advocates speak against intervention but cling to it themselves. The hypocrisy can be explained: They only shun intervention when the intervention is directed at them.

Does show that capitalism only works when fair rules are in play. I love how people can be such social darwinists until they are getting taken for a ride. If only we had dropped the wallstreet assholes when we had the chance.

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.