Republican Senator Tillis Pushes Prison Time for Online Streamers
Congress has once again put itself in a situation of having to pass a last-minute omnibus bill to fund the government and prevent a shutdown. These truly are must-pass bills since much of the government grinds to a halt without them, so they often get used as vehicles for controversial bills that can’t pass on their own. Senators and representatives work out backroom deals to attach their pet measures to funding for things like food inspections and airport safety and then dare their colleagues to object.
This time around, one of the measures being crammed into the omnibus is a proposal from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) to turn unauthorized commercial streaming of copyrighted material like an album on YouTube, a video clip on Twitch, or a song in an Instagram story into a felony offense with a possible prison sentence rather than a misdemeanor, according to Protocol. The text of the measure has not been publicly released yet, but it is expected to be broadly similar to past entertainment industry-backed attempts to criminalize unauthorized streaming, such as the provisions of the SOPA/PIPA bills in 2012 that sparked an unprecedented internet “blackout” protest or the Commercial Felony Streaming Act, which prompted Justin Bieber to say that its sponsor, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), should be “locked up.”
“A felony streaming bill would likely be a chill on expression,” said Katharine Trendacosta, associate director of policy and activism with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “We already see that it’s hard enough in just civil copyright and the DMCA for people to feel comfortable asserting their rights. The chance of a felony would impact both expression and innovation.”
Tillis, the chairman of the Intellectual Property Subcommittee, was recently re-elected for another six-year term by a margin of less than 2% over his Democratic opponent. In the final stretch of his campaign, Tillis received a surge of campaign contributions from PACs affiliated with entertainment companies and trade groups that lobby Congress for aggressive copyright enforcement against internet users, including prison time for unauthorized streaming.
Read more: https://prospect.org/power/senator-thom-tillis-pushes-prison-time-for-online-streamers/
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