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Administration Seeks To Make Unauthorized Streaming A Felony
wabrandsma writes "From the Washington Post: 'You probably remember the online outrage over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) copyright enforcement proposal. Last week, the Department of Commerce's Internet Policy Task Force released a report on digital copyright policy that endorsed one piece of the controversial proposal: making the streaming of copyrighted works a felony. As it stands now, streaming a copyrighted work over the Internet is considered a violation of the public performance right. The violation is only punishable as a misdemeanor, rather than the felony charges that accompany the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material.'"
We are all criminals.
Trying?
Why not? Everything else is a felony. Heck, let's go the next step and just toss the entire population in jail.
What was the title of that book? Three Felonies a Day? By now, it's surely four or five...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I would like to know how streaming content to watch it is any different then actually downloading the content. From the way the summary is worded, it seems like if you stream the content to the client, it's only a misdemeanor, however, if the client downloads the content, you are committing a felony. But the server really has no control what happens with the data that is sent to the client. It may be set up in such a way as to "stream" the content to the client, but the client can save the stream if they want, and watch it later. It could be argued that all copyright data going over the internet is being streamed. I'm not saying we need harsher sentencing, for any of this stuff, but it doesn't make sense to have different penalties for serving a file for streaming, and serving a file for download, when it's really up to the receiving end what happens to that data in the end.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The horrible transparency of the administration's agenda is staggering: fuck civil liberties; to hell with consumer rights; let's make civil infractions criminal offenses; let's use jackboot tactics to go after marijuana users; let's viciously and vindictively persecute those who try to expose government and corporate indiscretions by siccing our most petty, pea-brained people on them; let's lie, cheat, steal, bully, badger, and spy on everyone who could possibly be a threat. Essentially, the absolute primacy of government and corporate interests over individual rights. The only ones shittier are the Republicans, but not by much.
I honestly thought Obama would be different. Fuck me, right?!
Those private corporation using prison labour is basically the US reintroducing slavery by the back door, mostly same color as last time too
it is illegal to import goods made by slave or prison labour....
My emails are my works, I never authorised the NSA to stream them anywhere, let's throw them all into jail.
Administration Seeks To Make Unauthorized Streaming A Felony
Which administration would that be?
For the sense-of-humour impaired, I'm being facetious.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Tell that to the people in Gitmo.
"rather than the felony charges that accompany the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material"
Such a thing should always have remained a civil matter between the copyright owners and the infringers, and for the state to get involved and come down more heavily than on even parking infringements is IMHO a perversion of justice.
This means that streaming a movie from an unauthorised source will be considered a more serious offense than vandalism, trespassing, simple assault and prostitution.
Well in the last case, good, since it shouldn't be a crime. For the rest, yeah it's fucked up.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Bieber spoke out against Klobucharâ(TM)s bill,
Well, that's actually quite remarkable.
For all the complaining about how "the masses" don't care, this person actually is relevant to a substantial demographic who generally neither know nor care about such things. The fact that he is speaking out is a good thing and should not be mocked.
I now have considerably more respect for the guy.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Thought: could the primary target of this new law be cable sharers re-distributing live pay-per-view sports events?
More corruption, from the world's most corrupt regime.
This is clearly no in the interest of the people. Passing this legistlation, shows clearly who the ruling junta actually represents.
The Republican/Democrat Party is totally corrupt.
Are you honestly that naive? Do you really think the Brits would have 6 people watching him 24/7 for over a year because of some odd misdemeanor rape charges for a broken condom that don't exist in any other country? Think about it. What you are being told is not the truth in this case because it clearly doesn't make sense at face value.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Mandatory minimum sentencing. Just another word for REVENGE! There is no justice.
Easy to make streaming a felony simple requires that the person who did not copy the copyrighted work is now legally liable for the person who did copy the copyrighted work. The analogy is if you saw someone rob a bank, you are now the person who robbed the bank and are required to prove you are not. To stream is to watch a copy being produced upon someone else's computer and they have expressly given you permission to do so, nothing more nor nothing less. You do not take legal liability for their actions except in the delusion of the currently totally corrupt US government. Basically they are now stating you are guilty of any crime you witness, regardless of what you do, until you can prove your innocence.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Making streaming a felony makes sense for the 0.1%. For everything else there are salaries.
Captcha: salaries
The Swedes don't want to question him, they want to charge him and that can only happen on Swedish soil. In order to charge someone they need to do that as part of a formal interview. So by volunteering to be interviewed in a place where he cannot be charged and wouldn't agree to leave with them if he could be, Assange is playing to the crowd by offering terms he knows cannot be accepted.
Try as you may you will always be in violation of some law or provision.
Maybe, but the real question should always come down to whether a jury will convict you.
You mention the UK, that make me think you are actually a UK citizen like me (sorry if I am wrong). In our case we are pretty lucky in terms of still having some semblance of a legal aid system that allows us to actually go to court if we think we broke the law but they jury would agree with our reasons for doing so and getting the state to pay for our defence. The problem with copyright law though is that most of the population eligible for jury duty (that includes me) actually supports it. Without copyright law you would be able to take other peoples digital works and then sell them as your own, that is simply not right.
There are a million problems with copyright law as it stands but throwing it all in the bin and having nothing in its place would be no better apart from for people who just want free access to everything and have no money to pay for it. The only time I think we can get rid of copyright law completely is when we also do away with the concept of money.
See, this is where I think you are wrong. For copyright to exist you only need a law that defines the concept and limits its duration and point out that companies can transfer licenses. The rest is best left to civil law. Criminal law is for clear-cut crimes. You leave the grey areas to civil law. And copyright is at the moment not only grey but also very very muddy.
Copyright was introduced to have a framework how a creator can benefit from his works and to control its distribution. Afterwards it was supposed to be transferred into the public domain because that's what defines culture. Cultural heritage was always produced by somebody. Now they turn this into a rent-seeking scheme and by my definition of culture which belongs to everybody we now have corporate ownership of everything that was produced during the last 50 years. Or to put it bluntly: our culture hasn't progressed any during the last 50 years. Now we pile criminal law on top of that.
In my book furthering of our culture is much more important in the long term than the revenue of BMG/Universal/Sony/whoever in the next financial quarter. This overstatement of the copyright holder's rights have resulted in quite a lot works that simply have been lost either by destruction or by not being released anymore. If such a long copyright(which is a granted priviledge, an exception of the default which is public domain) is to be upheld then there should be strings attached. Like the copyright holder demonstrating that he is preserving the work for the time when it enters the public domain.
I repeat: copyright is a priviledge and should be treated as such.
20 minutes into the future
Thin the herd is a concept the veyr wealthy consider often in private. I have wealthy relatives. They would love to see the entire population of various ethnicities vanish from the earth for no other reason that they have no empathy.
Do not expect rich and powerful lawmakers to think any differently, even though they are very good at hiding their intentions in public. It's when they act on the prejudices that problems for others, including wars, occur.
Exactly. I hate the "oh mah gerd, why are you so surprised about spying|reps|dems|corps?" quips. The response should be "GRATS on waking up. Welcome to the club. Tell your friends."
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.