
Tennessee passes Web entertainment theft bill - jessedhillon
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-login-law-20110601,0,5685350.story
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ggchappell
I do not think this is well explained. There is no point in going on about
whether password sharing is a bad thing. That is is already very clear in the
legal system. If it is a TOS violation, then a contract or license has been
breached; that is officially "bad".

However, that kind of "bad" is normally a _civil_ matter. This bill appears to
be moving it into the _criminal_ realm. Thus, the key paragraph in the article
is this one:

> Under the measure, download services that believe they are getting ripped
> off can go to law enforcement authorities and press charges.

But I would change "they are getting ripped off" to the more factual "their
terms of service are being violated" -- assuming that is what the bill
actually says (which seems likely).

Thus, the real point here seems to be that -- as is becoming more common of
late -- the police and the criminal courts are being pressed into service as
an enforcement arm of the entertainment industry (and possibly other
industries as well, depending on how broad the language of the bill is).

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arethuza
I think the "logic" goes something like this:

\- Breaking TOS means you are taking something without the owners approval

\- Taking something without the owners approval is theft

\- Theft is a criminal offence

Note: I am not agreeing with the bill, far from it. Just that I can see how it
is pretty simple to create an argument in this area that would probably sounds
fairly reasonable to a lot of people.

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ggchappell
I don't think there's any "logic" required. If we could argue that breaking
TOS were already a criminal offense, then we wouldn't need the bill.

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jessedhillon
TL;DR -- first paragraph: "State lawmakers in the capital of country music
have passed a groundbreaking measure that would make it a crime to use a
friend's log-in — even with permission — to listen to songs or watch movies
from services such as Netflix or Rhapsody."

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tocomment
This reminds me of the "right to read" short story by stallman. Who knew it
would be so prescient!

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mgkimsal
_"I don't know enough about that legislation, but if it's combating that
issue, I would be in favor of it," Haslam (the governor) said._

When is someone going to enact a law that makes it illegal to vote on laws (or
sign them in to power) when you don't understand the text of the law (or
indeed, haven't even read the bill in question)?

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bartl
>The bill, now awaiting the governor's signature, was pushed by recording
industry officials to try to stop the loss of billions of dollars to illegal
music sharing.

From using other people's login?? Yeah, right.

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mvalle
From the article: '"I don't know enough about that legislation, but if it's
combating that issue, I would be in favor of it," [Governor Bill] Haslam
said.'

Scary.

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mvalle
Next step: Make it illegal to share ebooks.

