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Tillis Releases Text of Bipartisan Legislation to Fight Illegal Streaming

tillis.senate.gov

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

#371

Post by 300bps »

chadash wrote: post #9

This title is misleading: > The Protecting Lawful Streaming Act would apply only to commercial, for-profit streaming piracy services. The law will not sweep in normal practices by online service providers, good faith business disputes, noncommercial activities, or in any way impact individuals who access pirated streams or unwittingly stream unauthorized copies of copyrighted works. Individuals who might use pirate s…

If the law is passed it will be used as a sledgehammer to stop anyone from doing something they don’t like. It opens up the possibility of being interpreted as a for-profit platform.

Locast is a non-profit platform that streams local channels. It’s been sued left and right by broadcasters. So far unsuccessfully. Is this law the next step in putting pressure on them and others?

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

#372

Post by triceratops »

infogulch wrote: post #357
triceratops wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> constituents are pissed at their greedy selfish representatives

And what I'm saying is this never happens in America. Politics is a team sport and voters just blame the other team. We've just had the worst pandemic in living memory and the worst economic contraction in a generation and nearly every Senator won re-election despite months of inaction.

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

#373

Post by grogenaut »

sleavey wrote: post #281
chadlavi wrote: post #27

Finally someone stands up for the little guys, like major league sports, film production companies, and cable networks

Exactly. I was happy to pay €10/month to DAZN when they had the streaming rights for a football league I was interested in, but then after two years they lost the rights to Sky via whom the minimum payment to get access to the same content was €30+ month. The content did not suddenly get 3x more valuable between seasons, this is just a big company being greedy. You reap what you sow and all that.

You could, you know, just stop paying attention to sports you don't find it worth paying for. I did that with nfl when they upped rates. Just watch the recaps, so you can chat about it.

Baseball, which I like, seems to be a pretty good deal to me, ends up being about .97$ a game for 3 hours of content. So I choose to pay for it. My only real complaint is I can't watch it offline.

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

#374

Post by rhino369 »

mminer237 wrote: post #25
Bancakes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a common misconception that piracy is a loss of business. It's nothing more than an overestimation in profits. How can companies say they lose profit when the only realistic way I see for that is someone getting a refund and spending it on a competitor?

It may not be everyone, but there are a number of pirates who would buy a subscription to a legal streaming service if illegal streaming was not as easily available.

Right. Obviously, you can't value every stream as a loss of of face value price.

But its not 0% of face value either.

And a lot of piracy battle is to ensure the movie/tv industry does get "Napstered." Napster annihilated the public's perception of the value of songs because even my tech illiterate mother could pirate.

Right now my mom pays for netflix and cable. But if a pirate streaming service was as easy to find and use as netflix is, she'd start using it. So the current laws and enforcement do protect a lot of value now.

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

#376

Post by BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 »

I remember long ago there was a service called Napster, that could distribute pirated songs "peer-to-peer". I wonder if it could be used again instead of the "platforms", because Napster network wasn't owned by anyone and nobody profited from it, so there is nobody to sue here.

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

#377

Post by nepthar »

hexo wrote: post #8

"Last year, one study reported that digital video piracy costs the U.S. economy $29.2 billion a year." Well, I'd say that it in fact saves $30 billion a year. People can use it to buy more important stuff - such as food.

Using studies like this irks me. Science doesn't just stop there.

When citing a study like this, it would be wonderful to see something like "Based on this research, we expect to the economy grow by X additional dollars in this area, using methods XYZ" If the legislation fails to achieve the actual result with a proposed amount of time, then it gets scrapped.

Our legal system is missing a feedback loop - adding complexity is cheap (and profitable if you're a politician) but removing it expensive and there's generally not any reason to without SIGNIFICANT public outcry (marijuana legalization, for instance).

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

#378

Post by jpindar »

seanc wrote: post #179

- Everyone discussing this law should really read the text The difficulty in doing so is a big part of the problem. As per AOC's comments on twitter yesterday, at 2PM Members of Congress got 5000 pages of bill dropped on their desk with a vote call at 4PM. The whole thing needs to be much more transparent.

"We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it" - Nancy Pelosi (referring to the Affordable Care Act)

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

#379

Post by t-writescode »

Bud wrote: post #191
PointyFluff wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either way, this is bullshit forced through into "must pass" legislation because they know this shit wouldn't pass otherwise. This is fundamentally evil. Our senators are a pile of shit-enabling shit.

Not a big shock to see both of Georgia's sub-human Senators, Loeffler, and Perdue, on the list of sponsors of this. Loeffler is a white supremacist. Perdue very actively traded on secret insider pandemic information to enrich himself during the period in which he, and basically all Republicans, were still lying about the pandemic to the American people.

Calling them subhuman makes the implication that a human would be above such acts - and by implication that the person making those claims would be above such acts and protects the person from self-reflection.

It is dangerous to ever consider another person less than human.

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

#380

Post by bww »

It certainly makes sense for the U.S. government to act against large-scale, commercial, copyright-infrigning streaming services. These estimations of the impact to the U.S. economy that online piracy represents have always struck me as highly dubious, however.

$30 billion per year? For context, that’s roughly equivalent to the combined revenues of Netflix and YouTube for 2019.

Is there really another Netflix + YouTube sized subscriber base out there that would be willing to pay for these services if only some of the same content weren't available for free? Seems unlikely.

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