Obama Issues Crackdown on Illegal Streaming: Is it the End of Internet Piracy?
What Really Happens if the Fed Makes Peer-to-Peer a Crime?
It seems like the Fed is ready to level the playing field between America’s newest major industry—Internet technology and one of its oldest—intellectual property, as Obama sets to put an end to piracy and torrent “streaming” of music.
Moses Avalon
Here’s one story you won’t see going viral on a geek blog near you: the Obama administration is going to make torrent streaming, also known as P2P (peer to peer) sharing of music, a felony. A felony. This means, according to the Administration’s White Paper, recommending an upgrade to the act of illegal streaming of music to one of “financial espionage,” carrying prison time of up to 20 years.
This would apply to sites and people using, promoting (carrying ad-links) and hosting services like, the Pirate Bay, Utorrent, Bittorrent and Limewire derivatives. But what about the sites that just side with P2P and its lifestyle, like, Pirate Party, Zeropaid, TechDirt and Boycott-RIAA? Are they in danger too?
The White Paper, which makes the recommendations to Congress, includes as part of its focus, websites that “provide access to infringing products,” and would give local authorities “wiretap rights” in order to gather evidence. In other words, sites promoting the P2P lifestyle, would be investigated the in same way as street gangs, terrorists and the Mafia.
WHAT’S NEW
In theory, copyright laws have always provided that infringement is a Federal crime for which you could go to jail, but so far, no one has, at least not unless they were running a factory that made 1000s of bootleg CDs. As for the casual infringement by students or grandmothers, or even semi-pro infringements, our government has always given the taxpayer a rest allowing copyright laws to be sorted out in Civil court.
But, thanks to the Obama administration we are seeing “change you can believe in” in spades. In a review of the current state of intellectual property the Administration is recommending that Congress upgrade existing laws to make illegal streaming of content and providing access to “infringing products,” a felony.
Tech and torrent sites have remained silent on this major development for obvious reasons but most in the legal community are already seeing the ramifications. The law firm of Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth wrote in their blog, “its real target is something along the lines of the illegal file sharing…”
This move is no shock to anyone who has been watching this space since the beginning of the ISP/content wars. Intellectual property is the nation’s number four export, responsible for almost a quarter of US’s eroding GNP. At the turn of the 1900s it was steel that made America “great,” then automobiles, then computers, and in the past ten years it’s been Internet technology.
During the internet’s formative years (1997-present) the Fed had been lazily semi-enforcing the DMCA to allow America’s newest industry to flourish unfettered. But Internet Service Providing has grown to a space worth in the 100s of Billions a year, dwarfing the music trade and the Fed is now leveling the playing field between America’s newest industry (IT) and one of its oldest— Copyrights.
As for the “community” and all who promote illegal streaming through blogs, are they also guilty of a crime covered under this policy? Let’s see.
FIRST AMENDMENT, MEH, WHO NEEDS IT?
Twenty-somethings being hauled away in handcuffs, destruction of computers? Yeah, we’ll see some of that. But frankly, that kinda bores and saddens me, since many of the P2P users are themselves victims of the web-propaganda-machine that encourages them to “share music” in the first place.
These lifestyle sites are the real culprits; everyone from websites issuing disinformation about the music space to the servers that host services related to the torrent-sharing of music files. But, unless you’re a criminal lawyer you probably did not know that coaxing someone to commit a crime is a crime itself. This is why major magazines and newspapers stopped carrying the lucrative advertising for cigarettes: fear of being caught in the web of lawsuits and indictments levied at tobacco companies.
Freedom of the press is not absolute because illegal activity is not, “protected free speech.” You can not yell “fire” in a theater if there is none and you can not tell, coax or imply to people that it’s OK to steal/share music either, if it’s a crime. In the past there has been some ambiguity about the illegality of streaming and this allowed for “open debate.” No more. Now it will clearly be a crime and no different, legally, than a site that hosts “open debate” about the moral ambiguity of pedophilia.
Now, think of all the blogs that rally against the RIAA and the MPAA for “stretching the limits of copyright.” These sites promote an incorrect interpretation of copyright law, thus fostering a lifestyle where readers commit an ongoing crime. Not only do you start to get the picture of how widely Federal authorities can stretch, but also of the litany of civil lawsuits by parents against these sites for inciting their child to break the law.
WHAT TO EXPECT
My guess is that no one is really going to jail for 20 years, but you’ll start seeing less and less positive spin on P2P almost immediately. Blogs who play fast and loose with copyright “facts” and assert that P2P is OK because soon the music biz will be dead anyway, are going to get strangely quiet on the subject. (See list here)
What will they write about next? Who knows and frankly who cares. These guys are no different in my view than racist blogs inciting gay-bashing, and Antisemitism or “Freedom” blogs that are vestibules for home-grown terrorism.
Think I’m stretching it a bit? We’ll see. Even Google is adapting their policies. Now that they have been identified as the largest torrent site on the planet, in the Isohunt torrent lawsuit, Google will begin ranking pro P2P lifestyle sites lower and lower, until they just flat out refuse to list them at all.
But what do they know?
To everything turn, turn, turn.
Mo out
Funny you should paint Mike Masnick as clueless when it comes to the music business. Just look at how royally you guys ‘with a clue’ f—ed it up when all you needed was an economist like Mike who would explain the incentives to you.
And keep mentioning that 100,000 readers of yours it’s always fun to see someone make a fool out of himself with a proper audience. Even more will come back to taunt you when
a) none of what you predicted will come true
b) none of it will make the slightest dent in piracy
Oh yeah, and don’t forget to shut down Blizzard too, they also use P2P to spread their software. LOL!
This story seems to be similar to the industry wanting to forbid video recorders (Sony) or MP3 players (Rio).
Didn’t happen.
Same here: P2P will live on as it has substantial non-infringing use.
@fuzzbucket
Yea i know it was bush and co who inflicted such a oppresive law upon the citizens of this coumtry but ive seen no sign that mr obama wants to repeal them infact i see the opposite and he is carrying on from where bush left off!
They are all the same regardless of what party they belong too ..money talks and democracy suffers as a result.
So here’s what happens….Lets say this happens like you think it will….the people will find another distribution method that avoids the law. Then it will take a literal “Act of Congress” which will take at least 10 years to address that new method. Meantime life goes on.
You must be getting paid off of some music royalties.
[...] music producer goes on to compare what such blogs/sites do with hate-mongering: “These guys are no different in my view than [...]
[...] “Blogs who play fast and loose with copyright ‘facts’ and assert that P2P is OK because soon the music biz will be dead anyway, are going to get strangely quiet on the subject,” he writes. [...]
[...] Obama wants to make sharing files a felony with prison up to 20 years [...]
You know, something tells me that this has absolutely zero to do with music, copyrights, and the like. Instead, it has more to do with the President trying to shield and insulate the elites from embarrassment, and he’s just shellacking it all with a very wide brush to foster and facilitate false hope and false change. You know, much like “the public option” and closing Gitmo. Hey, why close Gitmo when you’ve got Quantico …
Groups like Anonymous and Wikileaks — the latter being what Jay Rosen accurately called “the world’s first stateless news organization” — is a much bigger threat to politicians and corporate interests right now. They have global power to “afflict the comfortable” as admirably demonstrated in Egypt, and more recently in a post-earthquake Japan when it revealed that the Fukushima nuclear plant was a 2 year long accident waiting to happen. They have far more control over the narrative than the euphemistically labeled “establishment press” and Julian Assange has already made it clear that Wikileaks is built like any common torrent site.
Everybody knows Bittorrent sites are like cockroaches: take one down, ten thousand show up for the funeral. That means if Wikileaks goes down, groups like Anonymous and The Pirate Bay will ensure it comes back within hours or days, and much more secure and resilient. Assange himself is already on record saying that there’s is no other protocol and transfer mechanism to backup and archive Wikileaks’s vast data than P2P and that’s where the pirates, hackers, and script kiddies come into the fray in the event Wikileaks goes dark.
Of course, it goes without saying that Wilileaks (or bloggers/citizen media) wouldn’t exist today if it weren’t for the fact that the establishment press abandoned their jobs along time ago; they insulate, shield, and protect the comfortable more than they ever did. Ever since free unfettered and unfiltered access to information exploded with the internet, America’s corporate establishment press hasn’t been able to do its job for fear of losing its job, resulting in a clap-happy press that can no longer tell the friggin’ difference between a FREE press and a STATE press. And like the parakeets they are, they been spewing no shortage of froth, foam, and fatwahs on Assange and Wikileaks right along with this Administration and the DOD …
And yes, Mo is right: had this legislation came from a rightwing President, heads would certainly roll. Most likely from a hatchet as dull as Glen Beck’s wits. But if this President really wanted to be clear and transparent, he should’ve named this “The Let’s Play Whack-A-Mole With Wikileaks’ Enablers Act In Order To Placate The RIAA/MPAA” because that’s about all I’d expect out of it in the grand scheme of things. And if a few small fry torrent sites end up getting caught up in that wide net, well it’s not the first time President Obama and the Democrats played the dozens like fiddles in a GEICO commercial to keep up appearances. If anything, the DNC is the BASF of Politics: “We Didn’t Invent The GOPs Policies — We’re Only Making Them Better!”
What about Google? The parent directory is source for a large portion of pirated media.
life has to continue, as many wait the same to yield fruits, the act of congress maybe in Obama’s mind, is just a view and not something yet to amend or amended.