SOPA 2013.

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**Iur_tae_mont**

It's back and better than ever,

The Internet Policy Task Force is proposing to make illegal streaming of copyrighted content a felony.

This includes, but is not limited to:

Covers of songs on Youtube

Let's Play! Videos

Fan art

Fanfics

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/unauthorized-streaming-felony_n_3720479.html

We might never see Sophia Grace Brownlee's fantastic Nicki Minaj impression, or this adorable ukulele cover of Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours," or even a young Justin Beiber performance again if the Department of Commerce gets its way.

The department's Internet Policy Task Force last week proposed making it a felony to stream copyrighted works. According to Techdirt, such a provision, if interpreted broadly, could apply to people who upload covers of themselves performing songs to YouTube without permission.

That could be bad news for people like Bieber, who first won fame in part through YouTube videos of his performances of popular R&B covers.

An earlier bill to criminalize streaming died in the Senate in 2011. At the time, activists opposing it began a "Free Bieber" campaign, which emphasized how the bill would put popular YouTube artists in jeopardy.

Criminalizing streaming was then made a key component of the much-maligned Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which sought to stem the spread of copyrighted material on the Web. Opponents, with the support of Google, Reddit and other large websites, said the bill threatened free speech online and mounted a protest campaign that culminated with President Barack Obama announcing that he would not support the legislation.

Streaming copyrighted works without permission is currently a misdemeanor -- technically punishable by a fine or, rarely, a short stint in jail.

More often, it leads to civil suits. In the latest example, a group of music publishers on Tuesday sued Fullscreen, a multi-channel network on YouTube, for posting unauthorized videos of lesser-known artists covering popular songs.

The Internet Policy Task Force report notes that as streaming has become an increasingly popular means of viewing copyrighted content, "the lack of potential felony penalties for criminal acts of streaming disincentivizes prosecution and undermines deterrence."

Their solution is to make streaming -- including material that would fall under the "public performance" category -- the kind of crime that courts can punish with years of prison time.

Perhaps we should expect a Free Bieber revival, too.

Here's a petition to sign, and see y'all next year when SOPA rears it's ugly head once again.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-sopa-2013/LMzMVrQF

**motyak**

I wonder just how that would affect, for example, an English citizen covering an American citizen's band's song (so Joe Bloggs from Liverpool playing "We're an American Band" (GFR are a US band of US citizens I'm assuming, unless the song was meant as a joke) on his guitar in his room as a cover.

It is probably very obvious, but I'm terrible with this sort of stuff.

**Grey Templar**

Good luck enforcing ANY sort of rules on the internet. Unless you go the route of North Korea and have the only internet be on government run sites.

**Aerethan**

Wouldn't Youtube be liable for the infringement of streaming content? Also like 99% of that site and it's traffic(and therefore ad revenue) would disappear overnight.

Bills like this are actually good for the US. It gives the younger demographic a reason to actually go out and vote.

It won't pass. These things always have ridiculously vague language that could be construed as applying to a feth ton of stuff that probably wasn't intended.

I'll refer you to the recent bit where Florida accidentally banned the internet(more specifically EVERY item that can connect to it).

Congress as no clue what they are doing, and so often neither do state legislatures.

I often think they have absolutely no clue who they work for and what those people want.

**Grey Templar**

Youtube shouldn't be liable. They after all have no direct control of what gets uploaded. they can only react to violations that get reported, much like any site where user input is received.

But thats not how things work IRL.

**Aerethan**

Grey Templar wrote:
Youtube shouldn't be liable. They after all have no direct control of what gets uploaded. they can only react to violations that get reported, much like any site where user input is received.

But thats not how things work IRL.

And again, Youtube would see their traffic fall dramatically when everyone's account gets suspended. Google is "too big to fail" as it were. If anyone could make a bill disappear it would be them.

Let's look at it this way:

Microsoft announced always on DRM, a spycam that MUST be plugged in, and no second hand market. Their key demo went apeshit enough that MICROSOFT removed ALL of those aspects within about 3 weeks of announcing them.

Now imagine telling all of those same people x10 that their youtube videos are felonies.

Who will pay the taxes to run the country when ALL of us are in prison?

Years ago the FBI released some stats when they tried to have Sweden destroy ThePirateBay(which failed spectacularly and that site is currently stronger than ever).

They estimated that in the US, 71% of males aged 17-49(or thereabouts) downloaded content illegally. For women it was much lower, but still something in the 30% range iirc.

How on earth could the government afford to prosecute and then send to prison the a significant portion of it's workforce?

Even if we went with 2012 census numbers, we get over 63 million US males ages 15-44. So 44 million men and 18 million women in the country pirate content. Nearly 1/5 living persons in our country. So 20% of us in prison, then 32% of us are either under 18 or over 65 and therefore NOT contributing heavily towards taxes or the economy.

If we assume that those aged 18-64 are the "workforce" then SOPA would see roughly 37% of them (62 million out of the 194 million) with felony convictions.

These bills are laughable.

**Grey Templar**

That's also assuming you could track everybody down.