White House Wants New Copyright Law Crackdown

An anonymous reader writes "The White House is concerned that 'illegal streaming of content' may not be covered by criminal law, saying 'questions have arisen about whether streaming constitutes the distribution of copyrighted works.' To resolve that ambiguity, it wants a new law to 'clarify that infringement by streaming, or by means of other similar new technology, is a felony in appropriate circumstances'""

Comments

So, this is what America has come to?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can no longer compete on the world stage in terms of products, don't innovate anything, and have more or less given up on educating your people.

But, the biggest priority of the White House is to ensure that streaming content is a fucking felony???

Enjoy your decline into irrelevance and the dark ages. I used to greatly admire what America stood for.

Re:Paying back those Hollywood donors

[InsertWittyNameHere]

It reminds me of that anti-piracy commercial from The IT Crowd.

Sigh.

[pushing-robot]

You know, I'd have some sympathy if pirates had a "cause" anymore.

Years ago, we said "we're pirating music because they won't let us download it!"
And they made download stores.

Then we said "we're pirating music because they won't sell individual tracks!"
And they let us buy single tracks.

Then we said "we're pirating music because they add DRM!"
And they stopped adding DRM.

Then we said "we're pirating music because 128kbps is crap!"
And they gave us 256kbps+ tracks.

Then we said "we're pirating music because the major labels have a monopoly!"
And now any indie artist can get on iTunes and other major music stores.

And we still pirate.
Because all along, we really just wanted stuff for free.

I'm all for copyright reform, but really: The latest music, movies, and games are not vital liberties, and they take a lot of time and money to make. If someone wanted to give their content away for free, they would have done so. So ask yourself: If a person who made something you want expects compensation, why do you deserve to have it for free?