S.978 - Commercial Felony Streaming Act
 

So...yeah. What are your thoughts? According to this site the bill "Makes unauthorized web streaming of copyrighted content a felony with a possible penalty of up to 5 years in prison. Illegal streaming of copyrighted content is defined in the bill as an offense that "consists of 10 or more public performances by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copyrighted works" and has a total economic value, either to the copyright holder or the infringer, of at least $2,500."

What's so horrible about it? Looks to me like it's something similar to those warnings on the front of DVD's. This is saying it is a felony offense to profit (charging admission or whatever to a public viewing) from someone else's work (internet streaming) without their consent (paid royalties or whatever). Kinda closing a loophole and working on the pirating thing.

Shouldn't affect anyone unless you are in the habit of charging people money to watch somthing like a movie that you've illegally downloaded.)

That's what I was wondering too. It's not gonna stop people from doing online movie reviews and the like, is it? Or does that constitute the "in whole or in part" bit on the copyright info. Sounds like it only really applies to people who use the internet to stream videos that are just copyrighted material.

No this is more about profiting off showing copyrighted material that you don't have permission to use.

Think.......streaming a wrestling PPV to a paying audience without WWE's permission. Or streaming a football game to a paying audience without the NFL's permission. Or streaming a pirated movie without the studio's permission.

That's what this is about. Refining the existing law to take the new technology into consideration.

I agree with that sentiment, but where does it say anything about profit being made? They're revoking the right to share copyrighted works, in whole (reasonable) or in part (unreasonable). I'm sure this is the intention, to crack down on the disrespectful pricks who upload full eps/movies to YouTube and the like, but it gets out of hand as even foreign dubs of opening sequences are banned. What happened to 'fair use'?? :evil:

This could even be a way to stop the videos on Youtube of slideshows that have family photos, etc, that have some song playing during the slideshow... To me there is a difference between blatantly infringing on a copyright verses putting together a slideshow video on youtube...

-ms

Oh boy. The problem with all attempts at this and similar regulations is that they are written by people who don't understand the technology at play.

Without reading the whole proposal, because I'm not wasting my time on that, I would question what is being considered as streaming. Based on previous laws only being able to charge people who upload (distribute) copyrighted content and not those who just download it (a lot of people do both without realizing it), I would guess the chargeable offense to be the person/entity hosting the video stream, not the people who watch it. If you dig through the depths of the Internet hard enough, you'll find live streams of virtually every channel available. I *think* those are the people a bill like this would go after, but most of that stuff is hosted on overseas websites/servers, so you wouldn't even be able to enforce it.

I don't think this would have any affect on YouTube. But it's still a stupid bill.

It's a bill, not a law. Thousands of bills are proposed every year.

Correct, but if you do not familiarize yourself with some bills they may just slip pass the public and made into law.

-ms