
US Senators ignore unintended consequences of criminalizing embedding videos - RyanMcGreal
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110616/16480114722/senators-unconcerned-about-massive-unintended-consequences-criminalizing-people-embedding-youtube-videos.shtml
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DanielBMarkham
Is it just me, or are we reaching the point where every other day there's a
major news story about the security state and the continued criminalizing of
civil matters? You could almost devote a website to it. Lots of new material.

What it looks like is that we've reached the point with the legal system that
the trick is to make huge swaths of behavior illegal, then selectively enforce
the law. This is basically like having no law at all, only instead of a
central ruler we distribute it out to thousands of various prosecutors (and
their associated political parties.)

I don't want to be all "the sky is falling" but heck if I can see where we can
continue like this for a lot longer.

~~~
d0ne
No it's not just you. It just seems the majority of the people have lost sight
of the fact that Freedom is not free.

~~~
techdmn
Arg, I hate that phrase. It may cost you something to protect your freedom
from those who would take it, but the freedom itself does not have any
inherent cost. Secondly, I hear that phrase being used to justify all sorts of
things that I consider to be impinging on my freedom rather than increasing
it, such as using my tax dollars to wage wars against countries that are not
actually threatening my freedom at all.

~~~
d0ne
I believe everyone has taken my comment the wrong way. When I say Freedom
isn't free I absolutely do not mean we have to give up our rights to remain
free. I mean we have to fight for our right to remain free!

~~~
sukuriant
And that was, if I recall correctly, the original intent of that message when
it was said, far back in the day.

~~~
sesqu
I was just today thinking about how so many sayings, like _a few bad apples_ ,
reverse their meaning in a generation or few. References don't survive and
witticisms are taken out of context.

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ahamlett
I just called John Cornyn's Washington office at 202-224-2934 and talked to an
aide about S. 978 because I live in Texas.

He explained a few details of the bill to me like how it only applies when the
economic value of the public video streaming is above $2500. I asked if this
would include a blogger who makes more than $2500 from ads on his blog and he
said yes. Then I gave an example of a blogger embedding a YouTube video which
is copyrighted in a blog post, even if the blogger removes the video after
finding out it is copyrighted, to which he just said "OK, I will notify John
Cornyn".

I tried my best to express my concern that millions of people including myself
could be charged with a felony if this bill gets passed, but I don't think my
effort will work. I don't think the people passing this bill, like my Texas
senator John Cornyn, can see the dangers in making it illegal to embed videos.
Maybe they just don't care because they don't use the internet the same way
younger / technology efficient people use it?

~~~
jbooth
They don't care because they haven't heard the other side of the story,
nobody's employing lobbyists to defend medium-time bloggers.

Moreover, many senators and congressmen, especially Cornyn, have determined
that "capitalism" means "support entrenched business interests through
favorable legislation" rather than all that hooplah about competition we
learned in school.

~~~
lutorm
I liked how the Economist put it (that was about GW Bush): "Being business-
friendly is not the same as being market-friendly."

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tzs
I see only one commenter who has clearly read the bill, looked up the sections
of the USC that it modifies, and has tried based on that to start discussing
what the bill actually does and its actual contents, instead of the largely
made-up stuff based on third hand sources that most people want to discuss.

He's getting voted way down.

Stop doing that, please. The end result of that kind of down voting is to
discourage people from putting research into the comments, and the overall
quality of discussion goes down.

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jcromartie
US Senators ignore the unintended consequences of criminalizing _everything_.

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kwantam
John Cornyn is an unmitigated disaster. It's unfortunate that the TX
Democratic party has a tenth of a snowball's chance in hell of ousting him.

This is yet another reason we _need_ term limits. Career politicians and
bureaucrats are massive facilitators of regulatory capture.

~~~
hugh3
Do term limits help or hinder? After all, if we had term limits then the
average congressman would need to go off and find a new job once he's finished
in congress. And there's no shortage of folks (whether companies, unions,
NGOs, foreign governments, or any ol' well-funded group you like) who'd just
_love_ to give cushy well-paid jobs to former congressmen who had been
suitably sympathetic to their interests during their time in congress.

~~~
runningdogx
More churn in Congress would decrease the value of any one congressperson to
private industry, and would also reduce the tendency of members of Congress to
amass large numbers of markers that they call in later.

It would also change the entire dynamic of Congress, to be less of a club and
more of a transitional job, people coming from some other job -- some of them
perhaps even hoping to do the right thing regardless of political fallout --
and then disappearing from the public stage and moving on to another stage
their lives, rather than turning elected service into their lives.

A seminal paper on this subject from 1968, The Institutionalization of the
U.S. House of Representatives, by Nelson Polsby:
<http://crespin.myweb.uga.edu/polsby.pdf>

~~~
krakensden
1968 was a long time ago. Term limits have been implemented all over the
place. In reality, it means that politicians stop being responsible for their
actions, and you get white elephant projects and unusually brazen bribery.

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narrator
The unintended consequences are often the point of the law. By being
"unintended", the crafters of the law creates a small intellectual barrier to
understanding the ramifications of the law that perhaps half the population
fail to overcome. This is enough to get just about anything through without
considerable widespread public opposition.

~~~
r00fus
Bingo. The MAFIAA wants to criminalize any sharing of content unless they
stamp it with their blessing.

This law basically kills youtube and ad-supported blogging.

I'm surprised Google isn't all up in arms over this, two potential sources of
revenue are greatly impacted by this legislation.

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sixtofour
The thing about unintended consequences is that law enforcement will often use
them to get what they otherwise cannot get. If you're investigating a group of
people on Offense A but can't gather enough evidence to make an arrest and
charge, you can arrest them on anything else you can stick them with, and
suddenly they're in your control and potentially more pliable.

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floppydisk
Part of the solution to the problem is we need more tech savy people working
on capitol hill--party preferences regardless. The federal government usually
lags several years behind the industry standards for information technology
and the people writing or reviewing proposed policies for technology
regulation are much more likely to have a BA in Government or Poli Sci than a
BS in engineering or CS.

If I go to a friends' house and watch a movie and that movie happened to be
pirated (and I was not aware) could the law logically be extended so the
government could arrest me for viewing pirated content even if I didn't know
it was pirated? Or what about the "viral" video defense where companies will
release promos or "restricted" content under false names to drum up interest
in a product. I could see a defense attorney arguing the uploading account
could be used by someone in __AA industries to create interest in a product
and there was no way their client could have known.

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iwwr
One man's unintended consequence is another man's tool in the power-(ab)using
chest. What makes you think the effects are unintended?

~~~
jbooth
Depends on who's doing the intending.

The companies hiring the lobbyists know exactly what they're doing.

The lobbyists are too blinded by dreams of cocktail party cachet to care what
they're doing (on this or anything).

And the legislators have only heard one side of the story. They're too busy
dialing for dollars most of the time to actually read up on this stuff.

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migrantgeek
"potentially putting people in jail for embedding YouTube videos or just
putting up YouTube lip synching videos. "

Sounds like FUD

If you read the amendment here <http://thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:S.978>:

It updates this
[http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/718/usc_sec_18_00002319---...](http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/718/usc_sec_18_00002319
----000-.html)

Which references this
[http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_0...](http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000506
----000-.html#a_1_A)

which then says the following

(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;

(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during
any 180–day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more
copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or

(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution,
by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the
public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended
for commercial distribution.

Basically, if you don't profit from it, you're cool so YouTube is safe.

~~~
jbooth
B) and C) are basically "It's on the internet and a studio paid for its
production". So they're always true.

Now we only need an argument that you were doing it for private financial
gain, to satisfy A). If you have adwords on the blog you're embedding the
youtube video on? Sounds like a felony to me.

The word "felony" should really be reserved for crimes that hurt people.

~~~
migrantgeek
"The word "felony" should really be reserved for crimes that hurt people."

Oh, I agree and don't agree with the law. Just stating that it's not as
overreaching as stated by the linked article.

I do not know much about the law I believe this comes down to interpretation
by a judge which I hope will use their best judgement. I know there are cases
where judges have been ignorant but that's why we have an appeals process.

I'm certain that if court rooms are filled with bloggers embedding videos that
these will either be thrown out in most cases or the law will be altered.

I'm more worried about letters from lawyers to bloggers and others trying to
bully them around with this law. The lawyers may know they can't win but may
be able to scare someone enough to cough up cash to not go to court.

Personally, I'd like an anti-bullying law to prevent companies from sending
templated emails for profit.

~~~
lutorm
My trust in the courts to do the right thing went out with Eldred vs Ashcroft.
And there's no appealing that one.

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resdirector
This may be a silly (& uninformed) question, but are there any strong
lobbyists that are representing the interest of us hackers?

I guess we have the EFF, but what's the power structure look like? Are the
odds stacked against us?

(NB: I use the term "us" loosely to refer to the common ideals found often on
HN)

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lr
Just one more way the feds can go after a group of people they don't like. It
is like all of the mobsters getting charged with tax evasion instead of their
actual (if any...) crimes. The same will hold true in the future: XYZ leader
of ABC "radical" environmental group was put in jail because...he/she had a
parody video mocking Exxon on their website.

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OwlHuntr
This is getting ridiculous. So it looks like eventually the internet will be
colonized and taken over by the government soon enough. Where is our next
frontier for freedom of speech, open data, and endless cat videos? The
internet is supposed to be free and unhinged.

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gallerytungsten
Authoritarianism + Campaign Contributions make for a lousy cocktail.

