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See Bakos, Brynjolfsson and Lichtman (1998) http://digital.mit.edu/erik/sig.pdf and Varian (1994) http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/sharing.pdf
If what this bill criminalizes was already "illegal" sharing, then there was no need for an additional law.
I used to have a rosy glass over democracy as I came from China. However, news like this really pissed me off. A lot of those representatives are not working for the people who voted them, but rather the big corporates or whichever lobby groups. How come lobbying is even legal in the first place? It's actually glorified bribery. Please forgive me if I'm being a bit cynical here.
However, if you hold a democracy as true to its ideals as possible, than the opinions of the ignorant are as prominent as the knowledgeable. (The media already promotes the ignorant heavily, but that's another issue...) Clearly this is not ideal if you don't have time to listen to everybody.
Where do you draw the line? Obviously US-style lobbying is too much, but you don't want to go too far. And various forces will work against you if you try to iterate on this legislation until it works.
How on earth would people legally sell netflix passwords in bulk anyway? This was something that needed to be addressed on the state level because no other laws were being broken in the process? But spam is okay? The lobbyist force these industries have must be insanely powerful and expensive. Well, one more law that the people arresting and judging you are probably breaking themselves or their kids are. I'm pretty s…
That's not what the law is meant to prevent. It's meant to prevent me from sharing my online service (Netflix) account with my mother. It's meant to persuade me to tell my mother to get her own account. Clearly these people don't love their mothers.
How on earth would people legally sell netflix passwords in bulk anyway? This was something that needed to be addressed on the state level because no other laws were being broken in the process? But spam is okay? The lobbyist force these industries have must be insanely powerful and expensive. Well, one more law that the people arresting and judging you are probably breaking themselves or their kids are. I'm pretty s…
Is Tennessee really the most expensive legislature to buy?
I feel it like we are one step closer to RMS short story : http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Edit: i sent the comment too fast, needed rewrite.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using criminal law to deal with it seems like a fairly over-the-top, dramatic step to take. It's not necessarily unreasonable for a company to want each person to have a separate subscription, and they can even mandate it in their terms of service, and take action to terminate the accounts of people violating it. But criminal prosecutions for sharing accounts?
The article does say that it is mostly to combat people harvesting and selling large number of accounts/passwords which seems reasonable to me. It is scary that they could go after people sharing with a friend with up to a year in jail though.
Additionally, if I share my password with my wife, and her sister 'borrows' it from my wife, and she gives it to three friends, and they each give it to three friends, who is responsible under this law? How do you prove it?
Also, it is just really poor business to solve a problem using legislation which could easily be solved using software.
This law may even be in conflict with the licensing agreements between Netflix and the studios. If Netflix and a studio had worked out an arrangement where up to 4 simultaneous users can stream from a single account, who is the Tennessee legislature to declare otherwise.
This could be an interstate commerce issue, too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a bit over dramatic. Just because the RIAA sponsored or endorsed a bill doesn't mean its necessarily a bad thing. Can you provide a reason why it's unreasonable for a company to want each person (or even household) who uses their service to have a separate subscription? That being said, I haven't read the bill, and only know what the article says about it.
While this doesn't necessarily make the bill unreasonable, I'd say there are much better market approaches. For example, Netflix limits the number of devices you can connect, logs what you watched, and uses your watching habits for recommendations. So, if I were to share my account with others, they'd see everything I watched and anything they watch would alter my recommendations. For those reasons alone, I keep my N…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not what the law is meant to prevent. It's meant to prevent me from sharing my online service (Netflix) account with my mother. It's meant to persuade me to tell my mother to get her own account. Clearly these people don't love their mothers.
Doesn't NetFlix specifically allow you to have mutliple users on an account? I'd be curious if NetFlix was actually involved in the lobbying that became this law.
http://www.netflix.com/TermsOfUse#instant specifies that this is "within your household".
I used to have a rosy glass over democracy as I came from China. However, news like this really pissed me off. A lot of those representatives are not working for the people who voted them, but rather the big corporates or whichever lobby groups. How come lobbying is even legal in the first place? It's actually glorified bribery. Please forgive me if I'm being a bit cynical here.
It is pretty easy to undo this type of legislation. All you have to do is send a direct mail campaign against a few state senators with the title "Joe Sentator is turning your child into a criminal... Have you ever shared an online password? Joe thinks you deserve 1 year in jail." It would probably cost around $10k to roast a few state senators, and neutralize the music industry lobby. It's just that nobody really cares enough to spend the $10k.