8 ms·
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
by jmull 6y ago
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 the current serious problem with streaming that this very strong law is needed to stamp it out?
To me it seems inevitable that it will be applied much more strongly than what you are thinking. “Purpose”, “intentionally”, “significant”, “primarily” can be, and therefore probably will be, argued to have wide meanings.
- whiddershins 6y ago> has no commercially significant purpose or use other than to publicly perform works protected under title 17
- pbourke 6y agoThat 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.
- dmurray 6y agoIt doesn't have to meet that criterion to fit the definition. It could meet clause 1 or (more likely on GP's examples) clause 3 instead).
- ummonk 6y agoWhat's weird is that the bill doesn't have an or conjunction between clause 1 and 2 lol.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoThat'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.
- ummonk 6y agoYeah, 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.
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- Kranar 6y agoYes, 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 been music without the need to play substantial portions of the song itself. You just can't be the one distributing songs as a commercial enterprise and then saying that because there's a video of you dancing that makes copyright infringement acceptable.
- mod 6y ago"Vocal coach reacts!" I, for one, will be glad if these go away. (Plus, get them out of my feed, youtube. I don't watch them.) Apparently they're so successful that other people are doing it now. I saw someone totally unrelated to music reacting to amateur music songs.
- Kranar 6y agoWell 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.
- btown 6y agoWhile that may indeed be the intent, an aggressive prosecutor could make a strong argument that individual streamers dancing or singing unlicensed karaoke are providing a digital service (the word "platform" never appears in the text) that "is intentionally marketed by or at the direction of that person to promote its use in publicly performing works." Which would now be a freaking felony.
- dllthomas 6y agoGoing by the quoted portion of the bill up thread, "platform" doesn't appear in the relevant portions text but neither does "digital service" - it says "digital transmission service". I am not certain whether that makes a difference.