Slashdot Mirror
Tennessee Makes it Illegal To Share Your Netflix Password
An anonymous reader writes "State lawmakers in Tennessee have passed a groundbreaking measure that would make it a crime to use a friend's login — even with permission — to listen to songs or watch movies from services such as Netflix or Rhapsody. The bill, which has been signed by the governor, was pushed by recording industry officials to try to stop the loss of billions of dollars to illegal music sharing. They hope other states will follow."
If this was of concern to Netflix (which, I presume, faces pressure from the studios which license their content to Netflix), I wonder why Netflix would not place a limit on the number of simultaneous connections / streams delivered to any given account, or else the number of simultaneous IP addresses to which a stream is delivered for any given account?
I'm seriously wondering whether the goal of recording industry is to make money, or if they just want to see how much they can piss their paying customers off.
Niiice. Civil agreements are not enough any more. Now we need the rule of law to make things into a crime! It's clearly not enough to sue your customers. Now we have to fine and imprison them.
But look on the bright side -- they aren't claiming "it's for the poor starving artists" this go around.
As a non-subscriber of anything, this is how I get entertained. It's like watching one of those reality shows unfold. Sure it's a bit slow, but just when you think the industry has gone too far, people just suck it up and let it happen. How much is too much? How far is too far? I may never see the limit in my life time it seems.
Freedom has had nothing to do with how America is governed for a while now. The big players are lobbying congress and other parties with truckloads of money. The people - you know, the guys the government is supposed to work for - are lost in the background noise.
But be reassured, America is not the only country acting this way. Most western industrialized countries are at a similar level.
Something is going to go wrong with this, there's no question about it. Exactly how and when is the question.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
How about making it illegal to lend your car to your friends? That will boost car sales which is good for the economy. You don't want to be a terrorist, do you?
Besides isn't there already a law against this ? I know in Europe at least on rentals there is always a disclaimer to the effect that only you are allowed to watch it (with your family) but can't use it to share with friends or show in a public setting.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Damn... posting twice... oh well... new comment.
This is simply precious. He is not hiding anything in this case. He doesn't know what he signed. He only knows who is backing it and therefore pushes it right through. To hell with the consequences.
And the music industry? I thought this was for netflix? You know what I would like to see? I'd like to see how much tax the entertainment industry pays in Tennessee. Anyone know how to get that information? Also, is there access to information about that states collection of taxes of online services like these and finally the political contributions in that state?
Getting a picture of the money motivation might show what this is really all about.
But we get it -- Tennessee has whiskey and music... and little else?
I know in Europe at least on rentals there is always a disclaimer to the effect that only you are allowed to watch it (with your family) but can't use it to share with friends or show in a public setting.
In this situation, if a user were to show it to friends, and the contract prohibited it, then the user might be subject to action for breach of contract, or else infringement of copyright. Here, the summary indicates that sharing a password would be a crime, rather than an act giving rise to a civil (contractual or tortious) liability.
Whilst copyright infringement is, in some circumstances, a crime, this legislation would increase those circumstances to an act which is not, in itself, an infringement, but which enables an infringement.
The Houseowners Association of America today announced today their support for a bill that would make it punishable to share your rented home with non-family members.
"This will put a stop to the losses incurred to property owners by people crowding their homes with strangers", a spokesman for the HAA said.
It is widely believed the bill will also boost the property market, thus allowing the mortgage financial markets to recover.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
No one should be surprised by this, it was predicted quite a while back:
"Dan resolved the dilemma by doing something even more unthinkable—he lent her the computer, and **told her his password**. This way, if Lissa read his books, Central Licensing would think he was reading them. It was still a **crime**, but the SPA would not automatically find out about it. They would only find out if Lissa reported him."
The Right to Read
Richard Stallman
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Now that the precedent is set, its a matter of the government slowly upping the punishments until no one shares any kind of information without first paying for it.
Gotta love Sony's customer service.
For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in collegeâ"when Lissa Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one she dared ask, except Dan.
This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help herâ"but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrongâ"something that only pirates would do.
And there wasn't much chance that the SPAâ"the Software Protection Authorityâ"would fail to catch him. In his software class, Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing. (They used this information to catch reading pirates, but also to sell personal interest profiles to retailers.) The next time his computer was networked, Central Licensing would find out. He, as computer owner, would receive the harshest punishmentâ"for not taking pains to prevent the crime.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Why must stalman be right so much the cynical old sod?
america, land of the free. as much as they have money that is. more money, more freedom. less, less freedom. hilarious irony of the land of the free in which freedom is tied to money, and those with the most money can decide how much others can be free.
This is a problem of human nature, not political ideology or system of government. It has and will occur in any and every government, no matter the society, ideology, or political system. Wealth, in whatever form it may take depending on the type of society/government/political ideology, has always and will always be able to buy privilege and favor.
Private wealth in and of itself is not to be despised, as it is not the problem. The rich vs poor class warfare is simply a propaganda tool to distract and deflect attention from a too large, powerful, and corrupt government and therefor maintain the status quo by keeping people divided and angry.
Humans are corruptible, weak, greedy, and fallible creatures. You can attempt to put in all the government restriction and oversight you want, but corruption will still occur. The larger and more powerful the government, the worse the corruption and the results of that corruption over time. All anyone can really do is keep it to a minimum at best.
As I've stated in previous posts under past topics, the only way to keep government corruption to a reasonable minimum is to make the central government as weak as possible while still fulfilling essential functions. Keep as much governing local as possible/practical so as to distribute power and thus make influencing enough politicians to make a national impact impractical.
As a bonus, and contrary to what many would say would happen with a smaller central government (that corporate/monied interests would more-easily influence/control government), with a less-corrupt government and justice system, corporations/businesses/unions and other wealthy/powerful interests that engage in bad/illegal behavior will actually have a decent chance of having meaningful consequences and penalties applied for their misdeeds.
You certainly can't remedy a corrupt government by giving it more power and wealth. That's how governments become corrupt to begin with. You also can't remedy a corrupt government by removing/redistributing private wealth. That just puts *all* the wealth and *all* the power in the same small set of corrupt government hands that were the problem to begin with. The citizens would then find themselves even more helpless against government/political injustices while living in poverty and having little incentive to be productive.
Many mistake the US Constitution as a purely political/ideological document. It's more than that. It's a distributed-network design. It's designed to distribute and regulate power just as the internet does with data. As with the original internet designs, it was designed to route around "damage" (corruption, etc) and report it to the rest of the network.
Let me take the networking analogy a bit further to describe current conditions/trends in the US.
What has happened in/to the US is management (We the People) have been off on the golf course instead of paying attention, listening to glowing reports from corrupt lackeys, meanwhile groups of rogue BOFHs have been running wild in the data centers and server rooms, doing everything from ripping out entire server racks and selling them from the back door, to installing their own hardware and software, selling company/customer data, running spam servers, etc etc.
They've radically altered the network's design while we were apathetic & distracted for a decade or six. It needs to be returned to a state more closely resembling the original network.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Promoting artificial scarcity in lieu of the scarcity inherent in manufacturing physical goods.
Unfortunately this is only going to get worse: http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html
The reason the industry lobbies want to criminalize this stuff is to shift the burden of enforcement to the tax payer. If its a civil agreement it then its mostly their own responsibility to spot where their rights are being infringed and do something about it, send a take down notice, file a suit, whatever.
If they can criminalize it suddenly state enforcement agencies are burdened with detecting the crime, and state legal agencies are burdened with prosecuting it.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html