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Tillis Releases Text of Bipartisan Legislation to Fight Illegal Streaming

tillis.senate.gov

351–360 of 509 posts

Re: Tillis Releases Text of Bipartisan Legislation to Fight Illegal Streaming

#351
post #174

Simple -- people who cannot afford films will stop watching or streaming sports. Companies will lose free marketing and word of mouth. Companies will have to work harder to persuade the populace to acquire commercial flicks/sports. Youtube and cheap magnate streaming services win. Small studios or independent film makers, lose their free marketing distribution channels (personal opinion)

Eh, silver lining, this could be good for society in general. No one actually needs all the trash media companies put out these days.

Felony though, wow, that's just evil.

Re: Tillis Releases Text of Bipartisan Legislation to Fight Illegal Streaming

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mutually tolerable compromise This is just politispeak for quid-pro-quo. If conglomerate bills are outlawed then maybe we can vote on issues instead of on whether everyone's back is sufficiently scratched.

There are enough politicians willing to hold up important stuff until their backs are scratched, that nothing useful would ever get done. And there are enough voters who are uninformed or unwilling to hold those politicians to account at the polls that there are no negative consequences for this behavior.

Even with this in mind, conglomerate bills are only an enabler of this bad behavior. The underlying problem is the back scratching in the first place, I'd rather bring it to a head and force the politicians and their constituents to resolve the underlying problem than to just let it continue unabated forever.

Re: Tillis Releases Text of Bipartisan Legislation to Fight Illegal Streaming

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree though it's one of the most genuinely unpopular opinions on the internet. People will contort themselves into knots explaining why it's perfectly OK to consume a product without paying for it - in fact, they assure us, they are doing the producers a favor. I find it pretty disheartening. Pirating is a minor vice in the grand scheme of things but something about the self-righteous defense of it suggests how ea…

People pirate because organizations like the RIAA/MPAA have perverted the democratic process to ensure draconian consequences for downloading a couple megabytes of information. They don't care about paying artists more, they don't care about working to provide a platform to curb piracy, they only want to enrich their bottom lines. Fuck them, and fuck anyone else defending them.

> They don't care about paying artists more

They are like any other corporation in not wanting to pay more. My employer doesn't want to pay me more. No one has yet used that as a justification for taking our product off the shelves and sticking it into their backpack.

> they don't care about working to provide a platform to curb piracy

That's usually where the 'tying in knots' comes in.

"Why should I pay for a huge package when I only use a few channels?"

"Why should I spend all this money for individual channels, they should put it all in a single package"?

"They don't pay the artists enough so I'm helping the artists by taking a stand."

It's no longer plausible that these entities do not provide the right platform. Every platform provided just produces a new set of justifications.

Re: Tillis Releases Text of Bipartisan Legislation to Fight Illegal Streaming

#354
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That suppositions might carry some weight if Hollywood Accounting didn't deny every penny possible to those same people. ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

The people we're talking about are paid in normal ways, and not via "percentage of the profits, which there will never be" etc

So this doesn't really impact them much after all.

Until we see publishers closing doors due to lack of profits this argument doesn't really work.

Re: Tillis Releases Text of Bipartisan Legislation to Fight Illegal Streaming

#356
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, offer or provide to the public a digital transmission service that If it's a peer-to-peer streaming service where media consumers also serve media to other users, then the argument could be made that users themselves are providing the "digital transmission service". There may not even be an identifiable, centralized "platform".

> has no commercially significant purpose or use other than to publicly perform works protected This seems tailored to kill PopcornTime.

Isn't PopcornTime free software, which means it has no commercially significant anything? Or is it meant to be read has no (commercially significant purpose) or (use)?

Re: Tillis Releases Text of Bipartisan Legislation to Fight Illegal Streaming

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mutually tolerable compromise This is just politispeak for quid-pro-quo. If conglomerate bills are outlawed then maybe we can vote on issues instead of on whether everyone's back is sufficiently scratched.

There are enough politicians willing to hold up important stuff until their backs are scratched, that nothing useful would ever get done. And there are enough voters who are uninformed or unwilling to hold those politicians to account at the polls that there are no negative consequences for this behavior.

Stated another way, I'd rather a world where nothing gets done for a term and constituents are pissed at their greedy selfish representatives and they're forced to start playing the game straight, than the world where we just let this continue forever.

Re: Tillis Releases Text of Bipartisan Legislation to Fight Illegal Streaming

#358
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like if I, e.g. have a podcast where I play and review songs (without permission), I can be charged with a felony if I, say, take paid ads on the podcast. Perhaps simply a monetized streaming channel where I dance to the current hits is enough to put me in jail... it’s certainly seems enough to at least put me on trial. I think you have to wonder: what’s insufficient about the civil and criminal laws? What is…

> has no commercially significant purpose or use other than to publicly perform works protected under title 17

That seems like a thing that will be litigated. Who knows what it will mean after it’s been through the ringer of the US court system.

Re: Tillis Releases Text of Bipartisan Legislation to Fight Illegal Streaming

#359
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people are not making less if I don't pay for a movie. The marginal revenue is all yacht money profits.

"Those people are not making less if I don't pay for a movie. The marginal revenue is all yacht money profits" The byzantine logic here on a supposedly 'smart site' really goes sideways on ideological issues were people have a) some ideology and b) they want it for free . The failure of your comment is really quite evident: basically 'every purchaser' could make the same statement about 'marginal revenue' in which ca…

And if everyone sold their stocks the economy would crumble and millions of people would be out in the streets and lose their retirement money, should we make selling stocks a crime?

Re: Tillis Releases Text of Bipartisan Legislation to Fight Illegal Streaming

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money/goods that I rob from a store cost a lot to reproduce, unlike movies. And I would scare people. This is more like me buying from store A than from store B. Am I robbing store B? Surely not giving to charity is worse than any other economic reallocation?

If store B is actually the black market then you actually did steal from the one producing whatever you bought or possibly from store A. What do you mean by your first sentence? I am fairly sure that movies do actually cost quite a lot to produce.

On your second point I mean that there is zero marginal cost to produce a movie. To me, that makes that it cannot be compared to stealing e.g. a bag of M&M's.
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