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With day 1 digital distribution of films becoming more prevalent, and movie theater chains going out of business, Hollywood and the MPAA are going to do everything they possibly can to kill or cobble illicit streaming. This could include increasing potential criminal penalties for individuals who operate "streaming piracy" services:
Movie Company Boss Urges US Senators to Make Streaming Piracy a Felony
In the United States, criminal copyright infringers can be sentenced to five years in prison. However, this is not the case for streaming piracy, which is seen as a misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum jail sentence of one year. Millennium Films boss Jonathan Yunger is callling on senators to change this, so the Department of Justice can effectively shut down and prosecute streaming piracy operations.
The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property is actively looking for options through which the US can better address online piracy. During a hearing last month, various experts voiced their opinions. They specifically addressed measures taken by other countries and whether these could work in the US, or not. Pirate site blocking and upload filtering emerged as the main topics during this hearing. While pros and cons were discussed, movie industry insiders including Millennium Media co-president Jonathan Yunger framed these measures as attainable and effective.
After the hearing, senators asked various follow-up questions on paper. Last week we reported how former MEP Julia Reda answered these by stressing the importance of affordable legal options. Yunger, however, takes another approach.
In his answers, which were published before the weekend, he reiterates the power of website blocking. In addition, Yunger also brings a second, previously unmentioned issue to the forefront: criminal penalties for streaming piracy. "The second thing that we could easily do in the United States is close the legal loophole that currently allows streaming – which accounts for the vast majority of piracy today – to be treated as a misdemeanor rather than a felony," Yunger writes.
See also: Movie & TV Giants Sue 'Pirate' Nitro IPTV For 'Massive' Copyright Infringement
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday April 07 2020, @11:21PM (2 children)
The criminalization is almost certainly for people transmitting the content to others, not the people watching. Possession shouldn't have anything to do with it, because you could take a legally owned Blu-ray disc, play it on your computer, and stream what you see on your screen to thousands of others. Or host the legally ripped content on your illicit streaming website/service.
It is easier than ever for ordinary people to stream copyrighted content. YouTube can detect infringement on streams in real time and end them within about a few minutes.
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(Score: 5, Touché) by Hartree on Wednesday April 08 2020, @05:24AM (1 child)
"The criminalization is almost certainly for people transmitting the content to others, not the people watching."
Uh huh. Sure.
Two words: Prenda Law.
Make it a felony, and there will be shysters who will try to use it to threaten some old lady whose grandson streamed an illegal movie if they don't pay up n thousand dollars.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday April 08 2020, @02:18PM
BitTorrent users are potentially committing a crime, while "stream watchers" are probably not. There was also an easy way for Prenda Law to obtain lots of IP addresses from the swarm, but it would be difficult to replicate that with streaming unless the copyright troll ran their own streaming site, which could sink their cases.
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