‘Unauthorized’ streaming ‘illegal’ – MPAA
p2pnet view Movies | P2P:- According to the MPAA‘s Bob Pisano, ‘unauthorized’ streaming is against the law.
Giving entertainment cartel — sorry, Obama government — IP czarina Victoria (seen here with US vice president Joe ‘Hollywood’ Biden) a hearty Attagirl, “We thank Victoria Espinel for recognizing the danger posed to our workforce by theft, both in the online and physical marketplace, and by making the protection of the creative workers and their craft a top priority”, says Pisano, going on:
“These legislative recommendations address the evolving marketplace and new ways that criminals are stealing, trafficking, and profiting off the creative work of the millions of men and women who work in our industry. Among the proposals is a recommendation to classify streaming, now a common method of illicitly distributing television and motion pictures, a felony under appropriate circumstances.”
Pisano adds >>>
Closing the legal gap between two methods of equally destructive illegal behavior – unauthorized downloading and streaming – adds more clarity to intellectual property law and, frankly, makes good common sense. Both the House and Senate are examining this issue and we look forward to working closely with them and the Administration to combat this escalating threat.
Translated, adding “more clarity to intellectual property law” means making it even more obscure than it is already, giving cartel lawyers even more ways to confuse the issues.
Nor does Pisano explain what constitutes ‘illegal streaming’, or who decides exactly what that is.
Meanwhile, “US president Barak Obama has ordered the set up of two interagency ‘advisory committees’ to theoretically oversee his government’s enforcement of intellectual property laws”, said p2pnet recently, going on:
“In fact, they represent further hijacking by the entertainment cartels of taxpayer funded resources meant to serve the public, not corporate entities which answer only to their shareholders and investors.
“ ‘A senior advisory committee composed of members of the president’s Cabinet will help update the government-wide strategy for IP enforcement as mandated by law’, says The Hill.
“This would more properly read ‘as mandated by Hollywood and the Big 4 record labels’.
“ ‘A second advisory committee will help coordinate enforcement efforts by the administration’, says the story, noting, ‘Both committees will be chaired by Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel’.”
Stay tuned as the corporate movie and music industries slowly but surely turn the Obama government in a cartel division.
p2pnet – Obama’s new copyright ‘advisory committees’, February 10, 2011
The Hill – White House establishes intellectual property advisory committees, February 11, 2011
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan
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March 18th, 2011 at 11:13 am
I see they bypassed the proof that copyright has indeed been violated by ‘creating a copy’ and went right to the ‘linking to copyrighted material is illegal’. That is equivalent to looking at a car, thinking about stealing it, and being arrested for grand theft auto. Their thinking is so religiously elitist about their content, it is inevitably bound to fail.
Pray we abolish copyright before we get to the body count the Crusades endured.
March 18th, 2011 at 5:18 pm
“Among the proposals is a recommendation to classify streaming… a felony under appropriate circumstances.”
A *felony*.
They’re not just “elitists”, they’re from another f’n planet!
The sooner those elite drugs they’re doing kills them, the better.
March 19th, 2011 at 6:27 am
Hopefully a tsunami will take out the entire copyright fucktard clan in one wave.
March 19th, 2011 at 6:39 pm
“They’re not just “elitists”, they’re from another f’n planet!”
The truth is out there…(ominous music plays)
But seriously, streaming should be called a felony? It’s as if they weren’t satisfied with completely ruining poor YouTube by enforcing their draconian rules on it when Google bought it, they want to completely kill the competition and to HELL with the little people who enjoy streaming and enjoy making CHOICES on what they want to watch or buy. No, what the MAFIAA is doing should be a felony. They want to become a monopoly underneath our government’s nose and that’s just disgraceful because what the hell were antitrust laws created for if they’re not being used to punish these vultures?
March 19th, 2011 at 11:36 pm
It is currently *not* covered by copyright and carries no criminal liability. Streaming is considered a live performance and only civil courts have jurisdiction. Additionally, the VIEWER of the stream has no liability. That would be like arresting a passerby for seeing an illegal performance on the street.
Additionally, the administration wants to give wiretap authority for this activity.
From what I can tell, they want to spy/arrest/fine you for happening across a video that someone else doesn’t want you to see. The administration has gone batshit crazy on this one. I may have to vote republican on the next go around. I know, they are just as corrupt, but the people who came up with the DMCA seem reasonable compared to these corrupt assholes.
March 20th, 2011 at 11:55 am
The whole concept of “streaming” over the internet is non sequitur anyway.
The term “streaming” is itself is a deliberate misnomer, designed to take advantage of people’s ignorance and mislead everyone into believing the internet can take on “broadcast” qualities. Until a time when/if personal computers start being equipped with analog receivers that intercept realtime broadcasts, movies cannot actually be *streamed* anymore than e-mail can be *broadcast*.
People need to remember, just because you can start opening a file before it’s fully downloaded, or just because that file *expires* after a predetermined time limit, doesn’t change the fact that you had to DOWNLOAD it and OPEN it (whether directly or automatically by software). It certainly doesn’t qualify the action as a broadcast or a stream.
There are very few true examples of actual streaming over the internet, and they all involve devices meant to capture analog actions.
A VoIP phonecall can classified as a stream, because realtime data is being broadcast and received. This is made possible by either a PHONE or MODEM+MIC on each end of the exchange. For the same reason chat, WHEN USING VOICE AND/OR CAM, comes close to being an actual stream, though the breaks in the video display would probably disqualify the cam feed as an *effective* broadcast.
What people seem to believe, thanks to years of conditioning by television, is not just that broadcasting was somehow an “inevitable” thing for the internet, but that it’s already happening. This is no accident. The corporate world has been doing their part to make sure you DO believe it, as they’ve had their sights fixed on the internet since its inception, and views it as their own personal tool to save a lot of expiring business models. But, many things they need you to believe, in order for them to ultimately seize the internet for themselves, are simply lies and distortions.
“Streaming” is definitely one of those distortions.
The less people that give credence to this kind of bullshit, the more likely we are not to lose a huge chunk of the internet to corporate speculation and interference.
March 21st, 2011 at 12:53 am
I have to disagree with you on this one DA. It is true that many “streaming” sites do store copies on the hard drive, however this is not a universal requirement for internet media. It is possible capture bits only in the RAM and send this info straight to the GPU.
In this situation, no copy was ever made on the hard drive and bits were held in the RAM just long enough to display the video. This is similar to how a TV or radio acts. Any information flowing across its circuitry is there just long enough to make and image/sound and is then gone, replaced by the next piece of information.
The legally important part of this technical distinction is that the sites COULD operate in this manner. If you don’t dig into how any particular site performs its streaming, you can ASSUME it is legal. If you believe what you are doing is legal and right, then you can argue no criminal intent if the feds do come knocking. Personally, I don’t know if any particular site is storing info on my hard drive, I know they CAN operate without doing so and have no reason to believe otherwise.
March 21st, 2011 at 5:25 pm
“This is similar to how a TV or radio acts.”
You’re still comparing devices that capture live transmissions (analog) to something that can’t (digital).
A television intercepts a live signal and uses it in realtime.
An internet “streaming” can only be a downloaded from a stored source, and is only experienced by the user(s) that download it at that time, and each of those users is downloading their own COPY. In any of your “streaming” scenarios, nobody’s capturing any kind of a BROADCAST, which is what would be absolutely necessary in order to make the argument.
March 21st, 2011 at 5:27 pm
I think the biggest impediment here is that people do not even begin to understand the terms “streaming” or “broadcast”, or what the two have to do with each other, and why all that’s important.