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 So the evil guys in team Ameribabwe is at it... 
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Post So the evil guys in team Ameribabwe is at it...
We've been working our way through a paper released last week by the Commerce Department, concerning copyright reform, and will have a much more detailed post about it soon (there's a lot in there), but over at the Washington Post, they're highlighting the silly recommendation to bring back the plan to make unauthorized streaming a felony. This was a part of SOPA and was widely discussed. It wasn't technically in PIPA, but there was something of a "companion" bill from Senator Amy Klobuchar that effectively had the same thing. This got a fair amount of attention when Justin Bieber was asked about the law, and said that Klobuchar should be locked up.

It's no surprise that this is coming back. It's one of the points that's been raised a few times since the death of SOPA. As we explained back during the original debate, there are different "rights" associated with copyright law, including distribution, reproduction, etc. For very good reasons, when the government put in sections on what could be considered criminal infringement, they left the "public performance" right off of the list of possible felonies. And that's because it's fairly absurd to consider a felonious public performance of a work. But, because of the rise of streaming sites, and the continued myopia of the entertainment industry, they're afraid that sites that embed works from elsewhere might not be seen as technically violating the distribution or reproduction rights (for good reason), and thus they want to elevate public performance as a felony to try to let the feds go after such sites.

This is misguided on a variety of levels. First of all, it's an attack on secondary liability. A site that is posting embeds of content hosted elsewhere shouldn't be held criminally liable for that content -- especially when that content may change over time and they have no direct control over it. If the original content is infringing, go after whoever uploaded/hosted the original content. Not the sites that merely have an embed. Furthermore, because the lines between reproducing, distributing and public performance can get blurry at times, it's very likely that any increased criminality for public performance will be stretched and abused to cover things that people think should be perfectly legal. As Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain explained in detail last year, the streaming provisions could clearly apply to something as simple as posting videos of yourself performing a cover of a popular song you don't have a license to.

Part of the issue is that current copyright law defines a public performance as follows (from 17 USC 101):

To perform or display a work "publicly" means (1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or (2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.

Note just how broad that is. If you "transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work" for the purpose of having it performed or displayed at a place open to the public, you may be involved in a public performance. It's not hard to see how that might be used to include people posting videos on YouTube.

And, really, this whole idea is misguided. It comes from the entertainment industry's ridiculous belief that if they just keep playing Whac-a-mole with whomever they've decided is the "enemy" this week, it will eventually bring back old business models. Sites that embed streams from elsewhere aren't the enemy. Trying their operators into felons is fraught with all sorts of dangerous unintended consequences. You'd think that, given what happened with SOPA that administration officials would shy away from pushing more such backwards-focused plans... but they just can't resist.

tl;dr (aka I am lazy) version: Accessing youtube is now a federal crime.

...

This would affect us too, ya know...

I always wanted to be a Capo di tutti capi. Time to build up my vast 'free artist Empire' headquartered in an artificial volcanic island (that's to evade taxes). Now where'd I put my fedora...

-

...Always wanted to be a Capo di tutti capi. Time to build up my vast 'free artist Empire' headquartered in an artificial volcanic island (that's to evade taxes).

But in all seriousness, this 'prohibition' thing seems like a good idea. This is just like the struggle the superior FM radio faced against the inferior AM radio in the late 1940s. Let 'crime' run rampant in Ameribabwe for a bit - and with all those gun nuts in the US, it'll be hard to arrest ALL of them. What'd they do? Mobilize the army to deal with a garage band playing a cover of Metallica?

Original article: Here

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Post Re: So the evil guys in team Ameribabwe is at it...
YomToxic wrote:
To perform or display a work "publicly" means (1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered


Well, at the very least, you can share it through a family.


Sun Aug 25, 2013 1:31 pm
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Post Re: So the evil guys in team Ameribabwe is at it...
bc_ wrote:
YomToxic wrote:
To perform or display a work "publicly" means (1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered


Well, at the very least, you can share it through a family.


My family is Forkheads. My family is those oppressed, poor and suffering people who escaped to the internet, seeking sanctuary from the evils of IRL.

... LOL.

-

The way I see things, we're headed into a new 'dark age', where improvement of science and technology is held back not by religious dogma, but by big companies unwilling to adapt?

Nowadays, most 'legacy' companies are nearly wholly dependant government regulations and licensing to stay afloat. They're not financially stable by themselves and by setting up barriers to entry and enforced licensing and mandates; thats the only way they can compete.

It's not a free market.

Sadly this type of stuff will only grow in the US as more innovation comes out that makes it possible for new market revolutions that dethrone existing power structures. Just look at 3d Printing. I imagine there will be a SOPAFOR3Dprinting for that for licensing and copyright agreements if you want to print out a fork or a plate and you'll be reported and fined for not having access to the patent. Sure they'll let you have the printer. You just wont be able to legally use it.

The funny thing is that this will all kill innovation at least in the US- elsewhere they wont have these issues... for now.

PS: PIPA (Protect IP Act) is now E-PARASITES. It'd be funny if it wasn't true.

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Post Re: So the evil guys in team Ameribabwe is at it...
YomToxic wrote:
And, really, this whole idea is misguided. It comes from the entertainment industry's ridiculous belief that if they just keep playing Whac-a-mole with whomever they've decided is the "enemy" this week, it will eventually bring back old business models. Sites that embed streams from elsewhere aren't the enemy. Trying their operators into felons is fraught with all sorts of dangerous unintended consequences. You'd think that, given what happened with SOPA that administration officials would shy away from pushing more such backwards-focused plans... but they just can't resist.


Politics and big business have something in common here: they don't understand or accept change. They basically think, "This is what I grew up with, this is how I got rich, this is how it should work." They are establishments. Establishments are both necessary for most societies to function but are also perpetually caught in the past. They slowly accept innovations properly. Even advances in techniques, technology and other fields that have vastly improved how you can do something and what you can do that are 50+ years old may just be starting to be used in the big companies or accepted by politicians. With politics, it's changing a bit with the media/internet driven politics of today. More people get news quickly, at least in many first world countries, compared to two hundred years ago when you'd read about something 3 days after it happened IF you got a newspaper. Today, news travels immediately following, often during and sometimes before the fact, and that allows what's in the public's control to be more accessible and influenced more to change with the times. But it still struggles. This also has big business interests at heart, and they're harder to move with the times. Sure, maybe they'll start new digital campaigns and think, "Oh great, if we advertise on Facebook, we'll get so many more sales." But it's a grind. And they try to put the same old methods to these new concepts, even when it doesn't work. This isn't always a bad thing. Nuclear reactors often use outdated, but tried and true technology. They want to be sure that it works before they integrate it. This I understand. But business refuses to move with the times. How many years has it been since the RIAA started trying to find and sue people who were copying the songs off of CDs? Now we've moved on to digital rips, pirating, a whole social/economical movement that's come from that first time someone made a bootleg betamax or recorded an LP onto a cassette. It's become more refined, more widespread but their methods for fighting it are just as scattershot, inaccurate and hurting more people than they're helping. It's weird, but when most organizations turn into a corporation, it's like they freeze in place. They can't move anymore, and they don't care to when offered help. I'm not surprised, though I am disappointed, that something like this has risen, yet again. The only way they know how to deal with this is to make sure that anyone they want to prosecute, they can. That doesn't mean they will, but they want that option. They want to take away all freedoms they can so they can hold it over your head like the Sword of Damocles. I would pity them for not understanding if they weren't willing to hurt anyone in their way in the meantime. It's almost like a parent trying to bring their child closer by adding more and more rules, grounding them and taking away every freedom they can get. "It's for your own good," type of thing that drives us, the consumer, further and further away.


Also, about the printer thing, thankfully patent laws run out. Simple things like forks and plates as in your example, one would have no trouble with under current laws. (Note: That doesn't mean it's impossible given the wrong circumstances.) There are already movements to restrict things that are able to be made in 3D printers. Some of these are laws that were already around and ones that are coming anew in response. One of such is a law to make it illegal for someone to print weapons, specifically at the last time I heard firearms. This is understandable, as it would give even more free access to such things than there already is, but it could be the start of a very slipper slope of restrictions. Last I heard, it wasn't ready to be put up to vote or anything, but it's in the talks and it's getting ready to move. Should it ever make it to the floor, it will probably be a fight not about freedom of actual printing but yet another argument about gun control, which isn't the real issue at hand.

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