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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…
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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?
I value my comments on HN at $5/view. I lose an estimated 50k/year to people not paying for the value they get from reading my comments.
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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.
- 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.
The whole problem is enormous "conglomerate" bills in the first place. It's absurd that everyone is forced to evaluate and have a single opinion/vote on all these completely separate issues as a unit. How much political BS is hiding in these massive bills, quid-pro-quo, back scratching, intentionally opaque text that nobody can understand the implications of until long after it's been jammed through... its disgusting…
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I read on a post somewhere that if you replace "the economy" with "rich people yatch money" a lot of headlines make more sense. "Last year, one study reported that digital video piracy costs the U.S. rich people yatch money $29.2 billion a year."
But think of the trickle down effect. If rich people can't buy yachts, a rich yacht manufacturer can't reap profits while paying minimum wage to it's workers.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying every purchase needs to pass some utilitarian moral litmus test; and sometimes luxury spending can have positive externalities, particularly when it incentivizes innovation. But we shouldn't pretend that gold-plated helicopters are inherently a win/win/win just because some subsistence wages got paid along the way, when we could have collected the same revenue as taxes and paid those wages for building infrastructure instead.
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that's because many people don't vote or take part in political advocacy. it doesn't make society in "oligarchy". our democracy actually works really well, even with gerrymandering and some voter disenfranchisement. if all those people actually voted frequently, the policy outcomes would be a lot different. compare this to actual oligarchies where opposition parties actually can't accomplish anything because they're…
> that's because many people don't vote or take part in political advocacy That does not seem correct based on the study. 100% popular support increases chances of a measure passing by 0%. If even a small percentage remains politically active, 100% population support should make some difference, and it doesn't. Secondly, I believe it confuses cause and effect. At some level, people have cognizance that their efforts…
People say a lot of things. People mostly agree with universal background checks for guns. It isn't the Evil Rich People preventing this from happening, and the NRA isn't particularly rich itself even though it's a popular bogeyman.
People talk a lot about climate change until it's time to shape policy on it. Someone answering a poll question doesn't matter, what people vote for matters.
Your argument comes from a fantasy where most people actually agree with you, but the lobbyists just prevent things from changing. In reality, many people are very poorly informed. People don't understand just how powerful political mobilization and voting is. I agree that they think voting won't do anything, but they'd be wrong about that.
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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.
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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
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Looking at the text of the law, I disagree. It doesn’t require that the service be commercial. The criteria are loose and broad enough that while they may appear to target platforms, they could certainly be abused by creative lawyers to target individuals. Do you really trust that the RIAA won’t pressure prosecutors into targeting individuals? Heck, if you run a home media server, a good team of lawyers could probabl…
I'm not a lawyer, of course, but how do you read this part: > It shall be unlawful to willfully, and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, offer or provide to the public a digital transmission service that...
We found Google’s ad tracking code in your server! (No need to tell the jury how ubiquitous Google Analytics is.) Something like that.
What is the fate of `dl-youtube` with respect to this legislation?? I don't see any discussion in the thread - and find that the recent dust up over this type of DRM gray area use is more than correlated with this type of new legislation. After the obligatory IANAL [1]: the fate of `dl-youtube` would be tied to your ability to construe `dl-youtube` as a digital transmission service based on §2319C.a.2. To me seems li…