dslreports logo
 story category
Government Wants Unauthorized Streaming to be a Felony
While SOPA may be dead, the Obama administration is very interested in reanimating one part of the ill-fated proposal: making pirated streaming a felony (it's currently just a violation of the public performance right, punishable as a misdemeanor). As the freshly-sold Washington Post points out, many worry this shift could potentially threaten a lot of great creative expression, like new and intresting covers of songs posted to YouTube (Mike Masnick has a good read over at Techdirt on this). The problem is the tendency for such overly-broad legislation giving the entertainment industry (not exactly known for subtlety or sound judgement) way too much leeway in determining what constitutes infringing works.