The latest pandemic relief bill from Congress does more than help boost a declining economy, and we have the details.
The United States Congress has finally agreed on a second pandemic relief bill that will pump billions of dollars into the nation’s economy. These stimulus efforts include $600 checks to every citizen and billions to help independent venues. The package also includes a bevy of new laws and acts, including one plan to make illegal streaming a felony in the US.
Among the various proposal included in the latest relief deal is a proposal from Senator Thom Tillis (a Republican from North Carolina) that would make illegal streaming a felony, with penalties of up to 10 years of imprisonment.
When Tillis released a draft of his proposal earlier this month, the open internet/intellectual property nonprofit Public Knowledge released a statement arguing that there’s no need “for further criminal penalties for copyright infringement,” but also saying that the bill is “narrowly tailored and avoids criminalizing users” and “does not criminalize streamers who may include unlicensed works as part of their streams” — instead, it focuses on those who pirate for commercial gain.
In short, the bill proposes to amend US copyright law by adding a section that allows streaming piracy services to be targeted. It is tailored towards services that exploit streaming piracy for commercial gain, leaving individual streamers out of the crosshairs.
Commenting on the bill, Senator Tillis notes that pirate streaming services are costing the US economy billions of dollars every year. The new legislation should help to change this without criminalizing regular streamers.
“This commonsense legislation was drafted with the input of creators, user groups, and technology companies and is narrowly targeted so that only criminal organizations are punished and that no individual streamer has to worry about the fear of prosecution,” Tillis said.
Lawmakers received input from rightsholders as well as the CCIA, which includes prominent members such as Amazon, Cloudflare, Facebook, and Google. The CCIA has previously been critical of streaming felony bills, but it will now remain neutral.
The same applies to the civil rights group Public Knowledge, which also helped in shaping the new bill. While Public Knowledge isn’t in favor of adding criminal penalties for copyright infringement, it sees the new proposal as a reasonable solution.
“[T]his bill is narrowly tailored and avoids criminalizing users, who may do nothing more than click on a link, or upload a file. It also does not criminalize streamers who may include unlicensed works as part of their streams,” says Meredith Rose, Public Knowledge’s Senior Policy Counsel.
Senator Tillis’ bill will likely be a hot topic of conversation in the months ahead. Stay tuned for more.
