Embedding YouTube Videos May Soon Be a Felony

Embedding YouTube Videos May Soon Be a Felony

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
June 2, 2011

Techdirt reports that Senate bill 978 – a bill to amend the criminal penalty provision for criminal infringement of a copyright, and for other purposes – may be used to prosecute people for embedding YouTube videos.

According to Mark Masnick, if a website embeds a YouTube video that is determined to have infringed on copyright and more than 10 people view it on that website, the owner or others associated with the website could face up to five years in prison.

Read Masnick’s article here. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201106 ... deos.shtml

He explains how the new law would expand copyright violations from reproducing and distributing to performing – including streaming video over the internet.

As readers of Infowars.com know, many videos are removed from YouTube after copyright owners complain about infringement. This happens with thousands of news clips every year. Most people are familiar with the now common black box replacing a video that says the video has been removed for copyright reasons.

If enacted, this law will go one step further and turn people who embed a copyrighted video into criminals. It will also set the stage to criminalize linking to copyrighted information — like corporate media news sources — and shut down the alternative media.

It will also make people think twice about putting up all kinds of videos, from news reports to clips from documentaries and other educational material.

It does not take a vivid imagination to realize the political implications of this legislation.

Here is the full text of the bill. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtex ... l=s112-978


http://www.infowars.com/embedding-youtu ... -a-felony/

[quote]If enacted, this law will go one step further and turn people who embed a copyrighted video into criminals. It will also set the stage to criminalize linking to copyrighted information — like corporate media news sources — and shut down the alternative media.[quote]

Senators Want To Put People In Jail For Embedding YouTube Videos

from the not-understanding-the-technology dept
202 Comments

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous. A few weeks back, we noted that Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201105 ... lony.shtml had proposed a new bill that was designed to make "streaming" infringing material a felony. At the time, the actual text of the bill wasn't available, but we assumed, naturally, that it would just extend "public performance" rights to section 506a of the Copyright Act. http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506

Supporters of this bill claim that all it's really doing is harmonizing US copyright law's civil and criminal sections. After all, the rights afforded under copyright law in civil cases cover a list http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106 of rights: reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works or perform the work. The rules for criminal infringement only cover reproducing and distributing -- but not performing. So, supporters claim, all this does is "harmonize" copyright law and bring the criminal side into line with the civil side by adding "performance rights" to the list of things.

If only it were that simple. But, of course, it's not. First of all, despite claims to the contrary, there's a damn good reason why Congress did not include performance rights as a criminal/felony issue: because who would have thought that it would be a criminal act to perform a work without permission? It could be infringing, but that can be covered by a fine. When we suddenly criminalize a performance, that raises all sorts of questionable issues.

Furthermore, as we suspected, in the full text of the bill, http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtex ... l=s112-978 "performance" is not clearly defined. This is the really troubling part. Everyone keeps insisting that this is targeted towards "streaming" websites, but is streaming a "performance"? If so, how does embedding play into this? Is the site that hosts the content guilty of performing? What about the site that merely linked to and/or embedded the video (linking and embedding are technically effectively the same thing). Without clear definitions, we run into problems pretty quickly.

And it gets worse. Because rather than just (pointlessly) adding "performance" to the list, the bill tries to also define what constitutes a potential felony crime in these circumstances:

the offense consists of 10 or more public performances by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copyrighted works
So yeah. If you embed a YouTube video that turns out to be infringing, and more than 10 people view it because of your link... you could be facing five years in jail. This is, of course, ridiculous, and suggests (yet again) politicians who are regulating a technology they simply do not understand. Should it really be a criminal act to embed a YouTube video, even if you don't know it was infringing...? This could create a massive chilling effect to the very useful service YouTube provides in letting people embed videos.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201106 ... deos.shtml