SaysWho? Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 Proposed U.S. Law Could Slap Twitch Streamers With Felonies For Broadcasting Copyrighted Material KOTAKU.COM The United States government is, as we all know, extremely functional. It’s so functional, in fact, that it regularly struggles to pass spending bills in order to prevent itself from shutting down. The latest “must-pass” bill, like many of its predecessors, includes controversial measures that wouldn’t be able to pass on their own, negotiated with the high stakes of this particular bill in mind. One of them would turn unauthorized streaming of copyrighted... Quote According to Politico offshoot Protocol, the felony streaming proposal is the work of Republican senator Thom Tillis, who has backed similar proposals previously. It is more or less exactly what it sounds like: A proposal to turn unauthorized commercial streaming of copyrighted material—progressive policy publication The American Prospect specifically points to examples like “an album on YouTube, a video clip on Twitch, or a song in an Instagram story”—into a felony offense with a possible prison sentence. Currently, such violations, no matter how severe, are considered misdemeanors rather than felonies, because the law regards streaming as a public performance. With Twitch currently in the crosshairs of the music industry, such a change would turn up the heat on streamers and Twitch even higher—perhaps to an untenable degree. Other platforms, like YouTube, would almost certainly suffer as well. “A felony streaming bill would likely be a chill on expression,” Katharine Trendacosta, associate director of policy and activism with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The American Prospect. “We already see that it’s hard enough in just civil copyright and the DMCA for people to feel comfortable asserting their rights. The chance of a felony would impact both expression and innovation.” According to Protocol, House and Senate Judiciary Committees have agreed to package the streaming felony proposal with other controversial provisions that include the CASE act, which would establish a new court-like entity within the U.S. Copyright Office to resolve copyright disputes, and the Trademark Modernization Act, which would give the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office more flexibility to crack down on illegitimate claims from foreign countries. Alongside the felony streaming proposal, these provisions have drawn ire from civil rights groups, digital rights nonprofits, and companies including the aforementioned Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive, the American Library Association, and the Center for Democracy & Technology. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 Have Amazon and Google not been throwing money at fighting this? You'd think they would given how this is likely to kill Twitch and severely hurt YouTube. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyser_Soze Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 Just now, Jason said: Have Amazon and Google not been throwing money at fighting this? You'd think they would given how this is likely to kill Twitch and severely hurt YouTube. Well, in regards to Twitch, recently any copyrighted songs that were being streamed would get DMCA'd and Amazon did not fight that, they just removed everyone's archived videos, and if you stream with copyrighted songs they mute your audio during the stream or something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 Just now, Keyser_Soze said: Well, in regards to Twitch, recently any copyrighted songs that were being streamed would get DMCA'd and Amazon did not fight that, they just removed everyone's archived videos, and if you stream with copyrighted songs they mute your audio during the stream or something. How they handled songs is one thing, but not being able to stream videogames because they're copyrighted renders the service pointless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XxEvil AshxX Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 Nintendo has a huge boner right now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xbob42 Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 The music industry needs to be incinerated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paperclyp Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 Nobody understands the nuance of streaming better than a republican senator. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyser_Soze Posted December 11, 2020 Share Posted December 11, 2020 5 hours ago, Jason said: How they handled songs is one thing, but not being able to stream videogames because they're copyrighted renders the service pointless. I'm mostly pointing out how they most likely won't do anything to protect anyone based on the DMCA thing and the DMCA thing almost being an unintentional protection after the fact. The bill doesn't say you can't stream video games, it just makes it a felony to stream pirated material Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thedarkstark Posted December 11, 2020 Share Posted December 11, 2020 The People's Reuplic of China USA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dre801 Posted December 11, 2020 Share Posted December 11, 2020 Entertainment industry lobbyists ass kissing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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