[Construct]

Making this a felony is beyond harsh. For reference, here are a few other crimes classified as felonies:

Murder, criminal sexual conduct, manslaughter, criminal vehicular homicide, assault, robbery (simple or aggravated), kidnapping, neglect or endangerment of a child, solicitation of juveniles, prostitution, arson, and burglary.

And, if these senators (and their media industry supporters) are successful, unauthorized streaming of 10 or more copyrighted works in a 180-day period.

You can't really argue that unauthorized streaming doesn't impact the entertainment industry negatively, but it should be obvious to everyone that the impact is not significant enough to make it a felony.

[fauigerzigerk]

What really stands out here is prostitution. It's the only item on the list that punishes a consensual agreement between two adults. An agreement that doesn't affect anyone else in any meaningful way.

[beaumartinez]

Prostitution isn't always "wholly" consensual; some women are forced into the profession.

[fauigerzigerk]

When it's not consensual, it's a different crime and a wholly different matter in my view.

[radu_floricica]

I'm betting there's whole lot of people who don't consider their jobs entirely "consensual".

If you're referring to the use or threat of force, that's a completely different crime.

[larrik]

Clearly, marking those same women as felons is the solution.

[anigbrowl]

That's a meaningless argument. Any crime that draws a sentence of more than a year is a felony. It doesn't mean all felonies are considered equally serious, or that violence is an inherent characteristic of felonies.

[snsr]

I believe Construct was trying to convey a relevant and considerate position; punishing people with prison sentences for playing movies over the internet is unjust.

As you are apparently aware, being classified a 'felon' requires that one be convicted of a crime for which the punishment is either a year+ in prison or death. How can you justify that type of punishment, including the attending permanent consequences, as being meaningless in the context of this conversation?

[benologist]

I doubt they're targeting individual people watching movies. It's far more likely they're after movie streaming sites like surfthechannel / letmewatchthis / etc.

[guard-of-terra]

When introducing a law, it's not importand who you are "after". It's important how it can be used.

If it can be used against people watching movies, it would be, sooner or later. So the question is: can it be used that way?

[bluedanieru]

You can't really argue that unauthorized streaming doesn't impact the entertainment industry negatively.

Yes you can.

[danssig]

Sales have fallen off a cliff since the internet got popular. You can throw up charts, etc., but they are clearly affected. The actual argument here should be: should they be affected. I think they should. If horse ranchers would have had the power the entertainment industry has they might have forced us to keep using horses to get around. We've obviously benefited by letting their market die.

[jfoutz]

Writing a bad check for more than $20 dollars, being drunk in public, or disturbing others by making loud and unreasonable noises, are all felonies.

It's probably not a bad thing that this stuff would go to criminal court. I think criminal courts would be far less enthusiastic about claiming 1 song is worth thousands of dollars.

Really, the amount of effort to prove something like this is off the charts. It's not like searching a car and finding a bag of weed. How many prosecutors are going to put together the logs to show this actually happend and it was worth more than 5k?

[humbledrone]

In most states you need to bounce a significantly larger check to become a felon:

http://www.ckfraud.org/penalties.html

Being drunk in public is a misdemeanor:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_intoxication#State_publi...

As is disturbing the peace:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disturbing_the_peace

[jfoutz]

Hmm. I must have been mistaken about the check fraud - or things have changed in the last 20 years.

disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct have a felony versions when weapons or drugs are present.

The point is, stealing $5000 is a big deal. Streaming $5000 dollars worth of unlicensed music for public performance could be a big deal too. However, i have a hard time believing a criminal court would value a streamed song at much more than a few cents each. You'd literally be streaming thousands of songs a day.

This isn't (afaik) streaming your stuff to your family, it's cloning pandora and not paying license fees.

[tassl]

You can't compare stealing $5000 with streaming $5000 worth of music/video; they are completely different concepts. By streaming you are not stealing material from anybody nor it can be proven that it affects negatively on sales.

disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct have a felony versions when weapons or drugs are present.

I think that this is a big "if".

[guard-of-terra]

The killer here is "the cost of licensing such performances is greater than $5,000".

How it works: They claim the cost of licensing the song you've streamed is 5,001$, and you're jailed. And it's not obvious that they can't name an arbitrary sum as cost of licensing.

I don't know how much it applies to USA, but otherwise this scheme has already been used thru the world.