Thoughts and Reactions on Bill S.978?

[Acky]

Recently after getting back from camp I've stumbled across a slew of youtube videos and blog sites about "Bill S.978". Now from what I understand, this bill will make it a felony to upload any footage of media to online video sharing sites (ie: youtube) without the explicit permission of the publisher of said material. It's actually a pretty reasonable bill; companies definitely loose plenty of revenue to streaming sites where people air, say, the latest episode of Family Guy right onto the internet, so people can bypass actually watching the show on the television (thus not watching commercials and bringing the ratings of the show down). The same goes for movies and music. Under the bill, people will now be fined and can even be sent to jail for up to 5 years if caught streaming or uploading a movie to be accessed without paying the creator.

 

For TV and movies, this bill would definitely be a benefit, as it could prevent if at least cut down on the availableness of the latest media on the internet. The problem however lies in the vibrant LPing community thats grown on youtube. If you aren't aware of what an "LPer" is, I'll try to sum it up. A commentator records himself playing a video game and, obviously, offers opinions and comments in the form of live or post-recorded audio. Given the interactive nature of games, this is not to be considered the same as a live stream of a TV show; each persons experience in a game is fundamentally unique, so even though you are being shown the game, you are definitely not getting the same experience as playing it.

 

Back on point. This youtube community is responsible for many games getting large amounts of exposure to the general public. Indeed, if Seananners had not recorded himself playing Minecraft and given the game a huge amount of exposure (he has hundreds of thousands of subscribers), the game would surely not have the same amount of publicity and attention that it has now. This is just one of many different examples of this community's amazing benefit's to the gaming community, which is the chief reason why gaming companies rarely interfere with people putting gameplay online.

 

In the last few weeks there has been a major push from gaming communities all over the world to have this Bill stopped or at least amended. If passed, most material on youtube will now be considered a felony by the federal government.

 

Here's some other videos and sites I found that can help explain this bill:

 

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s112-978

 

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s978/show

 

You can definitely google this up and get some information yourself. If I made an error somewhere above, please point it out so I can amend the post.

 

Did anyone know that this was going on? If so, do you have any opinions to share? I'm of the opinion that this bill is too vague and loosely worded to be passed as it is. I'm not opposed to a bill that affects just TV, Movies and Music however. In the case of video games though, this bill could hurt the industry, and nobody wants that.

[Randomizer]

There will always be court challenges since the example of a player commenting while playing a video game falls under the fair use exemption to copyright violations. Lawyers just love poorly written bills.

[Aoslare]

When I went to look at the bill text as well as the text of existing USC that it modifies, I couldn't find anything that would change how videos of video games relate to copyright law. What am I missing?

[Dantius]

I'm more concerned about the music- are musical compositions public domain if the music itself is? Or is there a separate and independent copyright for every recording made?

 

I'd hate to have to o out and buy a CD every time I wanted to listed to a specific recording of, say, Rachmaninoff- some of the more specific ones can't be found anywhere else but YouTube!

[Alorael at Large]

Each performance, if recorded and sold, has its own copyright.

 

—Alorael, who thinks that the ones that aren't for sale probably wouldn't get prosecuted. And, in fact, many live performances aren't copyrighted because they aren't recorded for distribution.

[Soul of Wit]

Making copyright infringement a felony is a bad idea. Period. Torts are not crimes.