E-Parasite Bill Threatens to Make Streaming Content A Felony

[bss4life15]

Basically, an extension of the bill s.978 thing from a few months ago.  It took all of the things that made it bad and made it ten times worse.  It makes it a felony to stream copyrighted content and 5 years in jail is the penalty for it.  But, it also makes it so the corporations that distribute it can sure a website for allowing it to happen, and it also blocks a website from showing up in a search engine thast has been proved to have had any copyrighted content, as well as many other additions to the other bill.

The bill is big, and has a bunch of problems. First off, it massively expands the sites that will be covered by the law. The Senate version at least tried to limit the targets of the law (but not the impact of the law) on sites that were "dedicated to infringing activities" with no other significant purposes (already ridiculously broad), the new one just targets "foreign infringing sites" and "has only limited purpose or use other than" infringement. They're also including an "inducement" claim not found elsewhere in US regulations -- and which greatly expands what is meant by inducement. The bill effectively takes what the entertainment industry wanted the Supreme Court to say in Grokster (which it did not say) and puts it into US law. In other words, any foreign site declared by the Attorney General to be "inducing" infringement, with a very broad definition of inducing, can now be censored by the US. With no adversarial hearing. Hello, Great Firewall of America.

And while defenders of this bill will insist it's only designed to target truly infringing sites, let's just recall a small list of sites and technologies the industry has insisted were all about infringement in the past: the player piano, the radio, the television, the photocopier, the phonograph, cable tv, the vcr, the mp3 player, the DVR, online video hosting sites like YouTube and more. All of these things turned out to be huge boons for the industry. And yet, with a law like this in place, the old industry gets to kill off technologies they don't understand. Scary stuff.

And it's not just foreign sites impacted by this law (despite what supporters would have you believe). It appears to expand who would have to take on the entire burdens of enforcing this blacklist -- broadly naming "service providers" as defined in the DMCA. That's significant, because a big part of this bill is to undermine and strip away the safe harbors of the DMCA. The DMCA set up an important balance that gave online service providers freedom from liability if they pulled down content upon notification. This new bill provides a massive and ridiculous burden: allowing the Attorney General to create an internet blacklist that all service providers will need to block access to:

A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address. Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.
On top of that, the bill says any attempt to get around such blocks can lead to liability. Would this put liability on things like MAFIAAfire? It sure sounds like it:
To ensure compliance with orders issued pursuant to this section, the Attorney General may bring an action for injunctive relief....

against any entity that knowingly and willfully provides or offers to provide a product or service designed or marketed for the circumvention or bypassing of measures described in paragraph (2) and taken in response to a court order issued pursuant to this subsection, to enjoin such entity from interfering with the order by continuing to provide or offer to provide such product or service.
While the text of the bill insists that nothing in it takes away the DMCA's safe harbors, once again this is a claim without the facts to back it up. A large part of the bill is an effective attempt to strip away the DMCA's safe harbors.

The only extraordinarily minor change against the interests of the entertainment industry is that the bill ever so slightly changes the "private right to action," which allows individual copyright holders to take action under this bill. This was a big problem in the old bill, and the only requirement here is that prior to making use of this private right to action, copyright holders have to provide "notice" to payment processors and ad providers. But then those service providers are expected to take action anyway, or face liability. So all this really does is take the court out of the process, and make it even easier for copyright holders to effectively kill off sites they don't like.

Think about this for a second: think how many bogus DMCA takedown notices are sent by copyright holders to take down content they don't like. With this new bill, should it become law, those same copyright holders will be able to cut off advertising and payment processing to such sites. Without court review.

And... because this bill wasn't already ridiculously bad enough, it also lumps in a House version of the felony streaming bill that will make huge swaths of Americans felons for streaming content online.

https://activepolitic.com:82/Outside_News/10806.html

There's a petition to stop it on this site-
https://act.demandprogress.org/sign/pipa_house/

[Jamesman42]

I thought "E-Parasite Bill" was some nickname of somebody who is notorious for passing ridiculous laws regarding online activity.

[Dark Castle]

This is getting out of hand.

[MasterShakezula]

Sounds inconvenient, though if it is passed into law, I imagine it could make for some great white whine. 

[Rathma]

What's the likelihood that this will pass?

[bss4life15]

What's the likelihood that this will pass?

They are trying to rush it through pretty quick, they plan on talking about it in the House of Representatives in mid-November.  It's pretty likely to pass i think, unless people find out about it early.
I don't normally like this guy's videos, but this was a pretty good video about it.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAtSfNh9B0c&feature=feedu

[Nigerius Rex]

Too vague and too much power for them to have when it comes to deciding who and when a website can be added to a blacklist.

[zxlkho]

There's absolutely no way this bill will be passed.

[Scheavo]

There's absolutely no way this bill will be passed.

I'm afraid too many congressmen aren't really... adept... with the internet. Remember Ted Stevens? He was the head chairman, residing over the internet, and he called it a series of tubes. These people don't understand the internet.

[Super Dude]

How many bills like this one have passed in Congress before? That was a legit question, I'm not trying to form a strawman or anything here.

[jsem]

It's time for the true defenders for civil liberties show themselves to fight this the hard way.

[rumborak]

It makes it a felony to stream copyrighted content and 5 years in jail is the penalty for it.  But, it also makes it so the corporations that distribute it can sure a website for allowing it to happen

Isn't this the status quo right now? Copyright infringement has always been illegal, and the Warners and Paramounts could sue you for it.

rumborak

[El Barto]

Not sure how it will play out in Congress.  I suspect it'll come down to how much Comcast and Time Warner feel threatened.  Nobody gives a shit about Joe Consumer or music streaming services.  But TWC starts squawking about it and Congress will back down very quickly.  Cell providers will also scream pretty loudly about it.

It's actually a fascinating conflict of interest brewing.  TW creates a great deal of content, so they have a keen interest in deterring piracy.  Yet they're also a major broadband provider,  so they damn sure don't want to face liability for what happens with their tubes.  I suspect the vagueness of it will frighten them enough. 

I do know that Obama staffed his entire DoJ with entertainment industry lawyers,  so this is really something I thought more likely from him than from Congress.  I actually saw this happening years ago,  just coming from a different direction.  Needless to say,  he certainly won't be vetoing it if it passes. 

I'd say that the real test with be with the Supreme Court,  and in this climate I don't see them intervening.  That something has the potential for great abuse doesn't concern them in the slightest.  If The Man says that he'll play nice with it,  that's good enough for five of them. 

[Nigerius Rex]

https://vimeo.com/31100268

[antigoon]

https://vimeo.com/31100268

Horrifying.

[Rathma]

You know, when I click on a link from a google search result I notice that before going to the url to goes to "google.com/url..." or something. Has it always been like that and does anybody know exactly what this process is a part of?

[zxlkho]

I signed their petition and now they won't stop sending me emails. God damnit.

[MasterShakezula]

I fail to see how this bill would be the worst thing to happen to the US.

It'd be inconvenient, yes, but I doubt it'd be anything more than that in terms of negativity.

[Sigz]

You know, when I click on a link from a google search result I notice that before going to the url to goes to "google.com/url..." or something. Has it always been like that and does anybody know exactly what this process is a part of?

My knowledge of internet infrastructure is pretty poor, but I believe it's google redirecting you to the site you clicked, which allows that site to know that you came from google. Other sites do the same thing.

[bss4life15]

I signed their petition and now they won't stop sending me emails. God damnit.

Sorry, I'm quite pissed off about it too.

I fail to see how this bill would be the worst thing to happen to the US.

It'd be inconvenient, yes, but I doubt it'd be anything more than that in terms of negativity.

It means that if you upload something like a video game playthrough, you are a felon and you spend five years in jail.  Also it means that websites like youtube will be shut down because of people uploading a movie r a game, because with the amount of users youtube has, there is no way they would be able to stop it.

[zxlkho]

I fail to see how this bill would be the worst thing to happen to the US.

It'd be inconvenient, yes, but I doubt it'd be anything more than that in terms of negativity.

It basically means that everytime you see one of those "This video has been removed due to a copyright claim by xyz," someone goes to jail for 5 years. I'd say it's a pretty big deal.

[El Barto]

You know,  I agree that this thing is spooky and generally screwed up.  But people here are talking in absolutes. 

"you are a felon and you spend five years in jail."
"someone goes to jail for 5 years"

I'm certainly opposed to giving The Man more power to bust people for harmless stuff,  but this is assuming worst case scenarios every time.  Keep in mind that every time you see one of those "this video has been removed" messages now,  the poster was subject to hundreds of thousands of dollars of civil damages from scumbag lawyers out to make quick bucks.