US Senators ignore unintended consequences of criminalizing embedding videos
techdirt.com
techdirt.com
What it looks like is that we've reached the point with the legal system that the trick is to make huge swaths of behavior illegal, then selectively enforce the law. This is basically like having no law at all, only instead of a central ruler we distribute it out to thousands of various prosecutors (and their associated political parties.)
I don't want to be all "the sky is falling" but heck if I can see where we can continue like this for a lot longer.
It may cost you something to protect your freedom from
those who would take it, but the freedom itself does not
have any inherent cost.
Secondly, I hear that phrase being used
It's a great topic from the media point of view, because most people don't understand computer security or legislative process, and the people who understand one of those things often don't understand the other, so everyone is unhappy with everyone else. Conflict is an essential element of a dramatic story, and dramatic stories attract readers and sell advertising.
Isn't that the central basis for the Prison-Industrial-Judicial Complex?
ie, law enforcement, judges, lawmakers, and all the companies and servicers who profit from increased incarceration rates?
As an example, when your graph started, people went to jail for sodomy. Now they don't. So if it's possible for society to reconsider something that was evil and decide it's not evil, surely the opposite must also be possible?
Like these ones? https://www.eff.org/ http://lqdn.fr
He explained a few details of the bill to me like how it only applies when the economic value of the public video streaming is above $2500. I asked if this would include a blogger who makes more than $2500 from ads on his blog and he said yes. Then I gave an example of a blogger embedding a YouTube video which is copyrighted in a blog post, even if the blogger removes the video after finding out it is copyrighted, to which he just said "OK, I will notify John Cornyn".
I tried my best to express my concern that millions of people including myself could be charged with a felony if this bill gets passed, but I don't think my effort will work. I don't think the people passing this bill, like my Texas senator John Cornyn, can see the dangers in making it illegal to embed videos. Maybe they just don't care because they don't use the internet the same way younger / technology efficient people use it?
Moreover, many senators and congressmen, especially Cornyn, have determined that "capitalism" means "support entrenched business interests through favorable legislation" rather than all that hooplah about competition we learned in school.
It is not clear, if those damage requirements are met, that there is any requirement -- other than non-zero economic advantage from the infringement, as required by 506 (a)(1)(A) -- that the infringer actually made lots of money as a result of the instance of copyright infringement.
It is also unclear what "total retail value", "total economic value", and "fair market value" (all of which are used in the bill) mean in the context of a form of property that is given artificial monopoly status. If someone uploads an unreleased Justin Bieber video to youtube and it gets 1 hit, then Bieber releases that video in a limited collector's edition at $2600 USD, is that youtube uploader a felon?
The text of the bill is very short: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:S.978: (include the last ':') And 18 USC 2319 which it affects is also very short: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/2319.html
He's getting voted way down.
Stop doing that, please. The end result of that kind of down voting is to discourage people from putting research into the comments, and the overall quality of discussion goes down.
This is yet another reason we need term limits. Career politicians and bureaucrats are massive facilitators of regulatory capture.
Not only are they career politicians, but they can't do anything else but lobby to take taxpayer dollars? Are you kidding me?!!
Besides, after a career in Congress reading bills that were written by lobbyists, a lot of the new lobbyists are probably looking forward to get a chance to actually write some bills.
Maybe what really needs to be done is that the politicians need to be told that we don't need any more laws (except for the law that says no more laws.)
Then they'll have nothing to do and therefore no incentive to be elected.
I think some setup that turns politician into a job that you do in between real jobs instead of a career in itself would be ideal, I just don't have any ideas that would necessarily work. Term limits do work with Presidents and seem to help with Mayors in a lot of cities (if you think city machines are bad now, non-term-limited mayors would make them worse).
It would also change the entire dynamic of Congress, to be less of a club and more of a transitional job, people coming from some other job -- some of them perhaps even hoping to do the right thing regardless of political fallout -- and then disappearing from the public stage and moving on to another stage their lives, rather than turning elected service into their lives.
A seminal paper on this subject from 1968, The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives, by Nelson Polsby: http://crespin.myweb.uga.edu/polsby.pdf
This law basically kills youtube and ad-supported blogging.
I'm surprised Google isn't all up in arms over this, two potential sources of revenue are greatly impacted by this legislation.
Any action we do can have unintended consequences (not to mention known tradeoffs), and we deal with them by using experience and fixing problems as they come up. But this case is far beyond that.
If I go to a friends' house and watch a movie and that movie happened to be pirated (and I was not aware) could the law logically be extended so the government could arrest me for viewing pirated content even if I didn't know it was pirated? Or what about the "viral" video defense where companies will release promos or "restricted" content under false names to drum up interest in a product. I could see a defense attorney arguing the uploading account could be used by someone in AA industries to create interest in a product and there was no way their client could have known.
The companies hiring the lobbyists know exactly what they're doing.
The lobbyists are too blinded by dreams of cocktail party cachet to care what they're doing (on this or anything).
And the legislators have only heard one side of the story. They're too busy dialing for dollars most of the time to actually read up on this stuff.
Sounds like FUD
If you read the amendment here http://thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:S.978:
It updates this http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/718/usc_sec_18_00002319---...
Which references this http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_0...
which then says the following
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180–day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.
Basically, if you don't profit from it, you're cool so YouTube is safe.
Now we only need an argument that you were doing it for private financial gain, to satisfy A). If you have adwords on the blog you're embedding the youtube video on? Sounds like a felony to me.
The word "felony" should really be reserved for crimes that hurt people.
Oh, I agree and don't agree with the law. Just stating that it's not as overreaching as stated by the linked article.
I do not know much about the law I believe this comes down to interpretation by a judge which I hope will use their best judgement. I know there are cases where judges have been ignorant but that's why we have an appeals process.
I'm certain that if court rooms are filled with bloggers embedding videos that these will either be thrown out in most cases or the law will be altered.
I'm more worried about letters from lawyers to bloggers and others trying to bully them around with this law. The lawyers may know they can't win but may be able to scare someone enough to cough up cash to not go to court.
Personally, I'd like an anti-bullying law to prevent companies from sending templated emails for profit.
If you posit that B or C are always true, you don't need A You only ever need one of the three.
The law just gives companies more ammunition in the event of a case where someone is actually stealing content. There are sites that do nothing but stream movies and music for profit without giving anything to the content owner. They are clearly criminals.
It's up to the court system to determine if the company has a case or not. I commented to note that the sky isn't falling and bloggers won't be thrown in jail by the thousands.
Common sense will prevail in the end although some battles will have to be fought out in courts to set precedents.
Nothing new here IMHO.
Even if someone is found innocent they will still have paid thousands of dollars to defend themselves!
I don't trust courts to be just. The time I had to deal with a judge in court I was not treated fairly and was presumed guilty. Therefore, please don't tell me the courts will determine a fair and just outcome.
Judges and the court system are just a bunch of disconnected old people who you hope to never have to deal with.
I once posted an AP photo on my website. Just a minor "fair use" thing for a few friends. Longer story short: within hours, DrudgeReport.com linked to it, AP lawyers threatened me, and traffic was so heavy I couldn't even access my own website to remove the pic. Had I adwords or some such to generate a few measly dollars to offset pocket-change costs, and rendered the image as a video instead (sensible for the content) the sudden attention could have easily generated a felony-inducing profit.
Unintended consequences indeed.
What was wrong with this being a civil matter? We have ways of providing redress that aren't "sticking someone in jail", which is just fantastically expensive in a number of ways.
"Common sense will prevail in the end"
Evidence?
seriously? first, there's certainly no evidence that common sense will prevail. second, why on earth would you want costly and lengthy legal battles (including very real consequences for whoever is at the center of them) to find common sense when you could write it into law in the first place??
Also from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NET_Act
The NET Act amended the definition of "commercial
advantage or private financial gain" to include the
"receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value,
including the receipt of other copyrighted works"
The bill's title "Commercial Felony Streaming Act" is a red herring. The intent (as was in the 1997 act linked above) is to prosecute any and all copyright infringement.
I guess we have the EFF, but what's the power structure look like? Are the odds stacked against us?
(NB: I use the term "us" loosely to refer to the common ideals found often on HN)