Sharing a song on YouTube could soon become a felony: the United State Department of Commerce is asking Congress to increase the penalties for streaming copyrighted work, reviving a provision from the failed Stop Online Piracy Act.
Opposition from the likes of Google, Wikipedia and the American
Civil Liberties Union helped stop SOPA from passing in early
2012, but part of that bill could soon be back from the dead.
According to a recent Commerce Department report, the office’s
Internet Policy Task Force is asking Congress to reconsider a
section of SOPA that could heavily penalize people for uploading
select content to streaming services.
The task force’s latest report, Copyright Policy, Creativity and
Innovation in the Digital Economy, pressures Congress to consider
felony convictions for people caught streaming copyrighted songs,
music and movies, and some say such legislation would outlaw the
practice of uploading homemade cover tunes to the World Wide Web.
Under current law, streaming a copyrighted song or show is only a
misdemeanor and not regularly enforced. Should the task force
have its way, though, reproducing or distributing such material
on streaming sites would open the possibility of felony charges.
In what the task force says would improve enforcement tools to
combat online infringement, a green paper released last week
“repeats the administration’s prior call for Congress to enact
legislation adopting the same range of penalties for criminal
streaming of copyrighted works to the public as now exists for
criminal reproduction and distribution.”
That call, as noted in the Washington Post this week, was last
seen as Section 201 of SOPA, a provision of the failed
cyber-sharing bill that was originally titled “Streaming of
copyrighted works in violation of criminal law.” But while SOPA
was shot-down thanks to a massive campaign across all corners of
the Web, Section 201 could soon resurface if the IPTF has their
way.
“In recent years a number of licensed online video streaming
services have launched, and many cable television providers offer
extensive on-demand catalogs to their subscribers. Other services
have launched without licenses, using technology developed to
transmit individual streams from individually-made copies, rather
than broadcasting to the public from a single source copy. These
services, which rely on recent case law in the context of a cable
operator with underlying content licenses,pose a challenge
to the traditional dividing lines between public and private
performance, and raise a host of questions,” the report
reads. “If any consumer can stream the content she wants
on-demand, is this act ‘public’ as defined by the Copyright Act
if the technology is structured so that the stream comes from a
copy made by a third party for each individual? Does it make a
difference if the consumer already has legal access in another
form to the content being streamed? Does it matter how the source
copies are made, and by whom? Such interpretive tensions in the
face of changing delivery models are the inevitable result of a
system based on a bundle of specific rights, each drafted in the
context of then-existing technologies.”
Allowing anyone to sign-on to a website and upload material to be
streamed around the world makes sharing remixes and home
recordings all too easy. The task force says streaming content
has cost the United States economy billions of dollars in losses,
though, and they’re once again attempting to find a way to ensure
anything with a copyright stamp can’t be shared without suffering
some serious repercussions.
“The lack of potential felony penalties for criminal acts of
streaming disincentivizes prosecution and undermines
deterrence.The administration and the Copyright Office
have both called on Congress to amend the Copyright Act to ensure
that illegal streaming to the public can be punished as a felony
in the same manner as other types of criminal
infringement.The Task Force now repeats that call,”
the group writes.
“While the willfully infringing reproduction and distribution
of copyrighted works can be punished as a felony, willful
violations of the public performance right are punishable only as
misdemeanors. This discrepancy is an increasingly significant
impediment to the effective deterrence and criminal prosecution
of unauthorized streaming. Since the most recent updates to the
criminal copyright provisions, streaming (both audio and video)
has become a significant if not dominant means for consumers to
enjoy content online. The Administration and the Copyright Office
have both called on Congress to amend the Copyright Act to ensure
that illegal streaming to the public can be punished as a felony
in the same manner as other types of criminal infringement,”
the task force continues.
Following widespread condemnation in and outside of the US, Rep.
Lamar Smith (R-Texas) pulled SOPA from Congress early last year
before it could go before a vote.
“I have heard from the critics, and I take seriously their
concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of
online piracy,” Smith said at the time. “It is clear that
we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the
problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American
inventions and products.”
Republished from: RT