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Tillis Releases Text of Bipartisan Legislation to Fight Illegal Streaming

tillis.senate.gov

471–480 of 509 posts

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

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could live with that if you didn't try to impose their values on me. I want to be free to write whatever code I want in the privacy of my own bedroom. I want to be free to understand my democratic government institutions. I want to be able to reverse-engineer things I own. I want to understand the world around me fully, and completely, to within the limits of my intellect. I want to build school systems where kids…

Sorry if I'm missing something here, but how does my enjoyment of a big budget movie correlate with I want to build school systems where kids learn to understand their world . What harm am I causing these kids that I am apparently unaware of?

The world my child grows up in is increasingly controlled by technology. You can't really understand your toaster, your car, your printer, or your democracy without understanding the software which power them.

When my parents were growing up, they could take things apart, tinker, and understand them as deeply as their hearts desired and intellects allowed them to. They could modify books (with pencils), archive them (in their basements), and even quote exerts. Building radios or modifying cars were mainstream hobbies.

I'm okay if your IP laws restrict my right to distribute copies of your work. I'm not okay with a copyright regime that makes it illegal for me to reverse-engineer and understand the software which controls my life, to tweak my car, or to understand my phone.

There's a possible dystopia where elections are de facto controlled by secret algorithms at Facebook, where all my information comes from a Google phone with a locked-down infrastructure I can't peak at or understand, where I can't record a 30 second clip of a movie to discuss it in my classroom, and where my car shuts down if I do an after-market repair.

At the time the DMCA came in, the RIAA and MPAA became major enemies of my personal freedom and my child's ability to learn.

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

#472

I blame this on reaction-ism... We don't need a law for every little thing that happens. Non-violent offenders should _never_ face jail time.

Someone steals your identity, ruins your credit, drains you bank accounts, sells your crypto/stocks - leaves you with nothing. It wasn't violent so what happens to them?

We change the laws making it harder for it to happen again. We restrict the actions of the individual to make them less able to do it again. We attempt to understand the circumstances that led to them engaging in this behaviour and attempt to mitigate both directly in the case of the individual, and generally for the class of people that this particular criminal represents.

IOW: We try to mitigate and reduce. I am not one tiny bit interested in 'getting back' at the individual. Prison as 'punishment' is fundamentally stupid.

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

#473
post #396
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well those videos on Youtube won't be impacted by this. This law doesn't go after individuals who upload infringing content, rather it goes after the platform itself. It's unlikely Youtube will be affected by it.

> This law doesn't go after individuals who upload infringing content, rather it goes after the platform itself. Be careful. That's not what the law actually says. It doesn't mention "platform". The term used is "digital transmission service", which is defined in terms of the undefined term "service". Perhaps there is some established narrow legal definition of the term "service" that will keep this law from being ab…

I would read "digital transmission service" as a service offering digital transmission, but that's not what the bill says. It says "the term ‘digital transmission service’ means a service that has the primary purpose of publicly performing works by digital transmission;" which to my eyes does not clearly restrict it to platforms as opposed to, at, a YouTube channel. Unless, as you say, there is a restriction somewhere unspecified on what can be meant by "service".

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

#474
post #468
post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, anyone can start one. > Is it the high barrier of entry that limits these businesses? No. Entering isn't hard, it's surviving, particularly if you are good. It's the near impossibility to compete against the big players because of copyright and patent laws. Without abolishing these unfair laws, you cannot disrupt them. You cannot displace them. When I was at Microsoft I saw the advantages first hand. If I had th…

If information and copyright laws create an unfair advantage to the established large players, then removing them should create a more level playing field. Is that right? Wouldn't we still have a winner takes all outcome due to network effects, and users would eventually prefer one search engine or one internet portal? Even if new players could compete, they would still encounter existing large protected companies. P…

Imagine if a search engine couldn’t sue a competitor for crawling it’s results.

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

#475
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you are the one distributing the podcast directly on a platform you control and the platform is primarily to distribute music you don't own the copyright to, it doesn't matter if you happen to be dancing while the music is playing, that is copyright infringement and under this law would be criminal. You can always have a podcast that reviews songs, and people have been reviewing songs for as long as there has…

> that is copyright infringement and under this law would be criminal. Whoa. This is crazy. Laws are stupid in that they can't be custom tailored for the situation of the accusation at hand. If I come out with a 0-day that allows me to bypass encryption of say Netflix that allows me a pristine copy of a video source that I then later stream on a paid-for streaming platform, then yes, that would be stealing. Therefore…

> that would be stealing

No, that would be copyright infringement, which is not theft.

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

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This appears to be correct from reading the (very short) text[0]. Everyone discussing this law should really read the text instead of reading whatever nonsense the media is spinning. Here's the full text of what is being prohibited: > PROHIBITED ACT. > — 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…

> 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".

Could this be used to make torrenting a felony then? In the case that you're sharing a commercial work, obviously. You sharing a torrent is essentially you providing a service (being in the swarm, sending chunks), which exists entirely and only to infringe one or several copyrighted works (the files in the torrent).

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

#477
post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not weird. The bill says "a transmission service that (1); (2); or (3)". That's just how English conjunctions work when you're joining more than two things.

Yeah, fair enough. I'm just used to seeing most legal codes have a conjunction between each element of a list for clarity, or a description before the list whether each element needs to be satisfied or just one of them.

[deleted]

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

#479
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…

Yes because copyright law is never abused far far beyond the plain text reading of the law... never

/s

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

#480
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You could use PopcornTime for showing copyright-free videos, they exist

That's why it says commercially significant.
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