S.978 Bill Could Make Streaming Media Illegal

[DarkBlade325]

Here they go again: Big business's lobbyists are launching another attack on Internet freedom. Senators are considering a "Ten Strikes" bill to make it a felony to stream copyrighted content -- like music in the background of a Youtube video -- more than ten times.

As the writers at TechDirt point out, under this bill you could go to jail for posting video of your friends singing karaoke:

The entertainment industry is freaking out about sites that embed and stream infringing content, and want law enforcement to put people in jail over it, rather than filing civil lawsuits.... We already pointed to one possibility: that people embedding YouTube videos could face five years in jail. Now, others are pointing out that it could also put kids who lip sync to popular songs, and post the resulting videos on YouTube, in jail as well."

More of this shit, huh? Well if for some reason you didn't understand that or just want a short version: If this bill passes, then you will not be able to upload video content of music, video game playthroughs, game reviews, movie reviews, that sort of thing without it being illegal.

Main reason I posted this in the Video Game section is because I think this shit would affect Video Games the most. What this means is that if this passes, ALL videos of games, videos with copyright music in the background, video game music, ect ect, will be taken down and marked as illegal. Know those favorite Lets Play makers? Know those huge video game reviewers? They'll be shut down. All the game videos on Youtube? Taken down. Game review sites like ScrewAttack? Taken down.

This is retarded enough as it is, and it amazes me that these nuts can't see that freedom of information on media HELPS promote it. I could go into MAJOR detail as to why this is going to fail catastrophically if this passes, but you guys know just as much as I do. So I'll just leave you with these links.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hytigOSjJxc&feature=fe%AD%AD%AD%C2%AD%C2%AD%C2%ADedu

http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/ten_strikes?akid=700.450896.5hVZPC&rd=1&t=1

[RayRay]

Saw this, sent an email. I can't believe this. Most of my life is based on interactive media, and if that's taken away, what would I do...? I could still talk to 11clock and find my own games, but game production could go down dramatically.

At least Facebook will stay up... Many other websites will still be up but they won't be as popular since over a million people would be arrested.

If this passes, the government will never be forgiven.

[Celson]

Would this only apply to the US?

[sayers6]

Are prisons are already to full. People will just get the fines from it. Plus, no real good way of enforcing it.

[11clock]

If this passes, I'll hate the government for life.

[T-Rok]

Actually, you are probably wrong Darkblade. They would not be shutdown. The more likely route would be that any IP Address residing in the USA would be banned from viewing them as is the way with Canada when you go to Netflix and try to watch something that isn't allowed to be watched in Canada yet.

@Celson: As always, the stupid bill does only apply to the USA.

[11clock]

After speaking with my family, we all agreed on one thing:

It won't happen. If it did, the law wouldn't last even a week.

[Jake]

Bug business stamping out the freedoms of the public to earn an extra dollar? What's new...

[Lingus]

This doesn't make any sense. To be honest though I think it's mainly targetted at music. It seems like the music industry is the one that always does this kind of thing. As far as video game reviews, that's just free marketing usually. The video game industry is built around reviews. I certainly don't think any video game company is going to go after anyone that puts a small clip of their game up in order to show something off about the game.

[DarkBlade325]

After speaking with my family, we all agreed on one thing:

It won't happen. If it did, the law wouldn't last even a week.

Well even if it did happen, the law would be overturned, but it would take ages for that to happen once they realized it failed. And getting everything that was taken down back would be impossible.

It wouldn't last, but if it did happen there would be serious, if not temporary, consequences.

Actually, you are probably wrong Darkblade. They would not be shutdown. The more likely route would be that any IP Address residing in the USA would be banned from viewing them as is the way with Canada when you go to Netflix and try to watch something that isn't allowed to be watched in Canada yet.

Yeah I was partly wrong, but keep in mind people find ways around everything on the internet now days. People would find a way to bypass whatever 'filter' they put on videos, and if they tried to stop that, it would just happen again in some other form. I'm sure it wouldn't be this simple, but if it was IP blocks, they could just change IPs. Sounds pretty simple so I'm sure if they did something like that it would be enforced so it wouldn't be that easy, but it would still happen some way or another.

If they were serious about this bill, they would have to take some videos down. Not just from YouTube, but from other sites as well. Plus, anyone who is making a living off of video-game reviews or that sort of thing would go bust too, because their videos wouldn't be able to be viewed, taken down or blocked.

This doesn't make any sense. To be honest though I think it's mainly targetted at music. It seems like the music industry is the one that always does this kind of thing. As far as video game reviews, that's just free marketing usually. The video game industry is built around reviews. I certainly don't think any video game company is going to go after anyone that puts a small clip of their game up in order to show something off about the game.

From what I understand, if the law was enforced then you'd have to ask game developer's permission to put up footage of a game. I'm not sure on that however, I'm simply going off the word of the guy in the video, but if this is the case, then you'd have to e-mail the devs, wait 6 months for them to answer, then do the review or whatever. That or the developers would have to state through some form of announcement that they allow their content to have footage uploaded, which is what most would probably do.

But there's always going to be SOME dumb ass developer that doesn't play ball. Always one big hit developer that would screw it up for anyone trying to look at some footage of a new game. Point is, we shouldn't have to ask permission to upload video footage of a game. I understand it's completely up to the developers wither they want their content uploaded, Rockstar didn't want GTA4 up for a while, but the thing is this bill would be a complete waste of a developer's time, and a waste of their customers time. Most developers want their stuff to be uploaded and looked at, so this bill is just pissing everyone off for that reason. If a dev really doesn't want their game shown, they can just bring that up themselves, shouldn't have to make all the others suffer.

[venuse]

figures they would try to pass something like this. ive known that they would try to take some type of freedom from us. one freedom at a time until we have no freedoms left, its simply the government doesnt like feeling like it isnt in control, so it tries to implement ways to gain control, even if it makes the innocent the guilty. this way when everyone is guilty no one will be free and the government can do and or dictate all that we do, say and or think.

[Bread]

If this passes, I'll hate the government for life.

The government will always hate you more, my friend.

This is bull shit.

[Jake]

This doesn't make any sense. To be honest though I think it's mainly targetted at music. It seems like the music industry is the one that always does this kind of thing. As far as video game reviews, that's just free marketing usually. The video game industry is built around reviews. I certainly don't think any video game company is going to go after anyone that puts a small clip of their game up in order to show something off about the game.

I'm not so sure about that. I can quite honestly see video game publishers specifically targeting people who post negative video game reviews. Hell, they've already been known to attack reviewers in different ways (usually in passive aggressive ways, like not letting certain reviewers pre-screen their video games if they were too harsh, for example... http://mashable.com/2011/06/21/duke-nukem-forever-fired/), but now we're permitting them to do this under the premise that these negative reviewers are breaking the law if they post footage with the review without authorization. Imagine honest review sites afraid to give out reviews because they might get blacklisted by said developer, and not able to show screens or video footage. Sounds fricken scary to me, even if it is unlikely.

[Chaos]

*facepalm*

Could these politicians please just !@#$ off and die already?

[Seifer]

Moved to Off-Topic.