RIAA Wants To Put People In Jail For Sharing Their Music Subscription Login With Friends
from the criminalizing-sharing dept
Ah, the RIAA. Just as you're paying attention to some ridiculously bad law with awful unintended consequences they're pushing in one place, they pop up with a different law they've already (quietly) convinced politicians to pass somewhere else. Today's entry is a new law that has been approved by the legislature in Tennessee at the urging of the RIAA, which will make it a criminal offense to share your "entertainment subscription" login info with anyone else. You're a college student, and you decide to go halfsies on a Netflix or Rhapsody subscription with a friend? Watch out, you may face a year in jail and thousands of dollars in fines. If law enforcement decides that the "value" of the content you watched is high enough, you could be charged with felony charges, and face much larger fines and longer jail sentences.The way the law works is to add the "entertainment subscription" phrase to an existing law concerning unauthorized access to cable or satellite TV services. Not surprisingly, Mitch Glazier (a man famous for selling out all musicians by allegedly sneaking a clause into a bill in the middle of the night that took away the rights of musicians to reclaim their copyrights... just months before taking a high paying RIAA job which he still holds today) is insisting this law is necessary to protect the music industry:
Mitch Glazier, executive vice president of public policy for the RIAA, said the bill is a necessary protective measure as digital technology evolves. The music industry has seen its domestic revenue plunge by more than half in 10 years, from $15 billion to $7 billion, he said.Either Glazier is lying here or the reporter is quoting him way out of context. It may be true that revenue for the record labels that Glazier represents has declined. But the revenue of the music industry -- which includes things like concerts, merchandise, publishing and other areas has actually done pretty well. Besides, the idea that Glazier has any interest in protecting "music" is pretty laughable. His job is to protect labels, often at the expense of musicians.
And this particular piece of legislation is particularly stupid and shortsighted on the part of the RIAA. For the most part, if people are buying one of these subscriptions with the intent to share, at least they're still buying a subscription and paying money to the industry. In the absence of that, it seems quite likely that they'll just go straight to full on infringement. Furthermore, the ability to share a single login with a few family members or friends is often seen as a part of the value. That is, a family may decide that it's worth it to buy such a subscription, because they can split it among a few different people. But, make that a crime and you've just massively decreased the incentive for people to buy such subscriptions.
The bill still needs to be signed by the governor, but it sounds like he's buying the bogus claims of Glazier and the RIAA on this one, saying that "I don’t know enough about that legislation, but if it's combating that issue [infringement], I would be in favor of it." Update: Annnnnnnd... signed. Of course.
And, of course, this is just a foot in the door sort of move. Once the RIAA has this in Tennessee, expect to see similar, if not identical legislation popping up in lots of other states as well.
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Filed Under: copyright, crime, felony, subscriptions, tennessee
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How about if I have dental insurance and my friend has a cavity that needs attention. Is it OK for him to take my insurance card and obtain a service for himself and let my insurer pay for it?
This is pretty fucking weak even for you Masnick.
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Say, for example, a record label (a small one since the RIAA boys would never do this) agreed to supply material to a service that DID allow multiple users on a single account, and all parties involved were happy with this arrangement. Their users would be breaking the law. How does that make any sense?
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From what I understand, Netflix TOS allows up to 4 streams at one time so I guess Netflix users will in TN will now be criminals even though Netflix allows them to do it.
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"Device Limitations and System Requirements. You may instantly watch on up to six unique authorized Netflix ready devices. For certain membership plans, you will be allowed to instantly watch simultaneously on more than one Netflix ready device within your household, up to total of four devices at a given time. "
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Or at least it didn't use to.
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Just thinking about the beat, you're a criminal.
Hang with the wrong crowd, you're a criminal.
For listening to music aloud, you're a criminal.
Want to hear what's new, you're a criminal.
For this I'm arrested, it's true, you're a criminal.
Trying to take the train, you're a criminal.
Want to get on the plane, you're a criminal.
No freedom and no rights, you're a criminal.
Can't even start to fight, you're a criminal.
Just a bit absurd, you're a criminal.
For giving away your password, you're a criminal.
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And it's a useless law because it's completely unenforceable. You don't have to share your password to share a Netflix account. Your roommate or your wife or your kids can just tell you what movies to add to your queue and then you can let them watch the discs as they come in.
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As a member of a music service I'm entitled to stream constantly, if someone else hears my music while I'm not present, it costs the streaming company nothing.
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Sharing of a finite resource, i.e. the bandwidth, is not acceptable though criminalizing it is ridiculous.
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What kind of music and movies do you watch?
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Re: Re: Fixed it for ya
Right: what kind of music and movies do you produce?
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The bandwidth is a finite 'good' here so the infinite argument doesn't apply.
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listening to music or watching a movie is having a cavity or needing car tow service
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I've shared my AAA membership with other people. But then again, I was in the vehicle at the times they needed the service. AAA doesn't care if it's your car or even if you were driving. Only that you are present when the tow truck arrives.
"How about if I have dental insurance and my friend has a cavity that needs attention. Is it OK for him to take my insurance card and obtain a service for himself and let my insurer pay for it? "
That's outright fraud and there are laws on the books already for this. Yet people still do it. The sharing login law is idiotic in the extreme.
How much of a problem do you think this is in Tennessee that the RIAA lobbied to get this done?
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My towing service is explicit in its terms that the towing will be taken care of if I'm present whether I'm driving or not. The auto insurance industry is 30 years ahead of the content industry in knowing how and what people want and need. They also had no problem supplying this on the terms the customer desired at a somewhat reasonable price with several options.
The dentist scenario is fraud - we have those laws already on the books.
That's pretty effing weak, even for a troll.
FTFY - now back under the bridge, the sun is out!
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Your examples are fallacious.
1) AAA would check your car license number, or you must be present, they check your license.
2) Insurance company will check your ID before giving you services, no matter if you have an insurance card.
3) These companies have controls in place that restricts simultanious logins. Netflix, for example, gives me 3 logins. If I was not supposed to share the login, why offer that as a product?
So, where is the need for this law? Is the need to restrict usage to improve on profitability for the public good? Since all online entertainment companies restrict, or have the ability to restrict usage, what's the point?
I believe that this is one of many laws being passed right now that moves civil actions like this (if you are sharing your Netflix with 30 people and taking payments, they can sue you for loss of profits), into Criminal.
Once there is a criminal statute, now the plaintiff no longer needs to be the copyright holder - now the governement is the prosecution, and takes up the cost of going after these individuals. I don't think they want to send their customers to jail, or at least not very many of them - what they get out of this is the taxpayer funding of protecting a corporation's profits.
Pretty ingenious, if you ask me. They only have to "advise" the government lawyers, and now the US Govt. is invested in stopping copyright infringements.
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Wait, the bandwidth to carry a movie is practically free? Given that those services face this as a fact of life they have already baked those expenses into the service's pricing? Well I'll be damned...
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Depends on the terms of service of the organisation involved.
Some cover the car, others the driver and some any occupant of the car (as in the British AA). In the latter case it is of course OK. Most organisations have sufficient checks in place to make sure that your hypothetical scenario is not actually possible. That is the right way to solve the problem. Making stupid catch all laws that unnecessarily criminalise people is the wrong way.
As you say - your comment is pretty weak ...
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First, how on earth can you compare a physical object to an online subscription - that's like trying to mix oil and water.
To use your logic, one could also then say when a man and woman marry they become one, therefore both should be able to use the same "entertainment subscription".
Or that no one should ever invite anyone over to watch a copy of a DVD. Instead everyone who joins a get together should bring their own copy even though only one will be played. That's dumb. Are we all supposed to police our company now and make sure they OWN a copy of every song, every movie, every book etc., that we do simply because they may be on the same premises where a copy is? Good grief!!!
This is crazy. Unless I'm misunderstanding something here (never had an "entertainment subscription - trolls like Darryl entertain me for free) couldn't several college "roomies" just subscribe and all be sure to use one computer and one log in?
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And yeah, if you give your buddy the card, they'll probably help him too.
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LOL AAA specifically allows you to tow your frieds car
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I would also like to add that I have no intention of getting a second Netflix account and logging out of my roommate's and into mine every single damn time I want to use the Google TV.
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I fail to see how this "problem" (if I actually believed it were a problem) requires new legislation, or how legislation will even be helpful. Ridiculous.
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I think that the RIAA are right on this one: Sharing of login information is violation of copyright directly, and should be considered a criminal act because it is a full on give away of the content.
Music locker services need regulation, this is a good step in the right direction.
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Using someone else's password to access and server with the intent of obtaining or download information from that server would be a criminal trespass. What the RIAA is looking to do is to make sure that the providing of that password is treated in an equal manner.
Making it a criminal matter would not diminish civil liability. It would however certainly raise the price of poker, making it significantly more risky to engage in this illegal activity.
When civil actions are no longer enough to control widespread illegal activities, it isn't very surprising to see a move to criminalize them.
The number of people in the prison system doesn't give pirates a walk, sorry.
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No, it's criminal only if you don't have permission - which in the case of 'sharing' an account, you do have permission from the account holder.
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Criminal trespass is an almost non-existent concept - even in the real world - trespass is almost always a civil matter.
When civil actions are no longer enough to control widespread illegal activities, it isn't very surprising to see a move to criminalize them.
What you are asking here is for the taxpayer to pick up the cost of defending your indefensible business model. Sorry - that shouldn't happen. Just like the people who bought houses near the sea on the English east coast are finding out you can't always expect the state to pay whatever it costs to defend your property. Sometimes the smart thing to do is to move on.
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They are wrong, the civil process is adequate and appropriate.
"does not give enough relief"
There is plenty of relief.
"nor does it encourage the results intended by the law"
... according to their interpretation.
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> civil liability. It would however certainly
> raise the price of poker, making it significantly
> more risky to engage in this illegal activity.
No, it wouldn't, because it's virtually unenforceable.
If my college roommate and I decide to share a Netflix account, how the hell is anyone going to prove who was doing the logging in and use of the computer at any given time behind closed doors in our own home?
All you have to do is set your browser to always remember you and there isn't even *any* logging in and out. You just go to the Netflix bookmark and up comes the queue-- the computer itself remains logged on forever.
So now the cops have to somehow prove that the individual movies listed in the queue were put there by my roommate rather than me and that the discs that arrived in the mail were viewed by my roommate rather than me-- all of which takes place completely behind the cloak of privacy in our home, which can't be pierced or spied on by the government without a warrant supported by probable cause.
So why would I suddenly feel like the price of poker has gone up, again?
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But copyright violation, for the most part, is a civil matter not criminal. Criminalizing it will only put many hard working citizens into jail or financial hardship. How easy is it going to be to get a job with a felony conviction on your record? We already support enough deadbeats in this country, do you want to turn many hard working citizens into deadbeats because they can't get a job because they shared a Netflix account?
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And damnit, the RIAA shouldn't have to conclusively prove infringement and demonstrate damages in a court of law! Those song-thieving bastards should pay thousands of dollars and go directly to jail for the mere act of sharing a password! We can't have password sharers freely roaming the streets!
Sharing of login information is violation of copyright directly
No it's not. That's a silly statement. I could share my login with you, and you could refuse to use it. Or you could only listen to songs I've made and own the copyright on and am giving you permission to listen to. There is nothing in the act of sharing a login that has anything to do with copyright.
should be considered a criminal act because it is a full on give away of the content.
"A full on give away" does not magically make infringement criminal.
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Hypothetical.
I have a physical locker with combination lock.
I keep my CD's in there, also my cassettes, 8-track, vinyl, recorded wax music cylinders, and player piano rolls.
I share the combination (eg, password) with my best friend.
Should this be illegal in Tennessee?
After all, it is "a full on give away of the content".
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Yes, of course it should. You know what they say, there aren't stupid questions just really stupid questions.
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already illegal
Now that Bin Laden is dead, let's get the FBI's priorities right and have them focus on subscription sharing.
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The service provider would have a contract issue with the password holder, but not you since you didn't sign any contract and used a valid logon 'with' permission to do so from the person assigned that logon.
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Re: already illegal
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Soon we will all be criminals
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Re: Soon we will all be criminals
Everyone will be a criminal to the point that non-violent criminals will be subject to house arrest instead of incarceration. They'll be allowed to leave their houses when they need to go to work to earn money or to go shopping to spend that money on stuff that the corporations are offering for sale. Sentences will be commuted in lieu of large fines which will take the form of debt, since no one will be able to afford the fines. Debt will only be dischargeable upon death, and maybe not even then. Corporations will buy the debt from the government. That way, we'll all live in debt to the company store.
Somebody has probably already written this. OMG, I'm probably infringing on their ideas! Oh, wait. Ideas are subject to IP protection... At least, not until this scenario becomes true.
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You already are
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Re: Soon we will all be criminals
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Wheeeee!
Wouldn't it just be easier for the RIAA/MPAA to require the providers to allow only one current log on ala Steam or pretty much every IM application out there?
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How do you fingerprint a device? Most service is going to involve a browser and that can be fingerprinted with information from the HTTP headers (user agent etc.). A separate application, plug-in for the browser, or script running within the browser may have access to further information from the computer account. Acceptable IP addresses or range of IP addresses can also added to this fingerprint. Software can flag a deviation much like that used in flagging credit card fraud.
Tech savvy people could always find a way to get around this. A company doesn't need a foolproof system and there is always going to be some sort of sharing allowed (e.g. within a single household).
In a court of law, LEO would have to locate and seize the devices involved and through forensic analysis and other evidence, prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person other than you was using the account on said device. This is no harder than proving a particular person actually downloaded child porn but sure is a lot of effort to go through for sharing subscriptions. If Tennessee needs to fill their jails they can take some from California's overflowing gulag.
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stallman warned us about this
and it slowly comes to fruition.
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who owns the account ?
What about our Lovefilm account, again it's paid for with my wife's credit card. So does that mean I'm not allowed to watch the film's we rent ?
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The more I read on here the more convinced I become that the citizens of a country have zero chance against it's Government. Short of a revolt there's nothing we can do. The Govt. is far too corrupt and in far too deep with private interests for anything to change.
It's only going to get worse, not better. So best prepare yourselves. Frankly, as someone in the tech field (music to be more precise), I'm already thinking of ways to get out of this decaying pathetic RIAA sponsored industry.
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You are half correct. The Government is controlled my corporate America... To anyone that didn't HEAR ME...the GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICAN is CONTROLLED my the BIG BUSINESSES! Revolt against uncle Sam will do nothing, you want to make a change, attack the heart, attach big corporations in any and every way possible till this shit stops.
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Boycotting...
AT&T
COMCAST
Sony ( Playstation, Music and Movies, Video Games that contain "SECUROM", Anything BlueRay as this is also Sony technology )
R.I.A.A./M.P.A.A.
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40% of government spending is on defense, which goes to high-tech weapons manufactures, most you've never heard of. How about boycotting war?
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It's crumbling. Slowly, systematically, step by step - and I literally pray every day we have the last laugh.
Sometimes I, too wonder if a total revolution would be the only way to fix all the horrible wrongs, IDK... .
These perps - RIAA/MPAA - they can't get enough and don't know how or where to stop the insanity. The people may just be bullied into stopping it themselves. Just sayin'.
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How is this enforced?
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What are they going to do spend millions of tax payer dollars to figure out if it's me streaming netflix at my friends or my friend streaming it?
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Thanks Techdirt!
*******
See?
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Re: Thanks Techdirt!
hunter2
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Re: Re: Thanks Techdirt!
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Why not disable the internet altogether? Surely that would "combat the issue" as well.
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Update it has been signed
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Sharing your "entertainment subscription"
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Re: Sharing your "entertainment subscription"
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Your revenue is shrinking because of responsible consumers like myself that would not give a penny to a corrupt, greedy corporation like the R.I.A.A.
Real Ignorant Asshats of America
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Opportunity, Not Threat
It would be nice to see folks bailing on the video and audio distraction and moving toward the creation and consumption of original content. The video and audio distraction (and to a lesser degree of litigiousness the written distraction) industries get most of their plots and lyrics from us, and are in business to sell them back to us.
Perhaps the industries could save money on their litigation and lobbying expenses and switch sending us on guilt trips by showing us "Save the Actor/Musician" commercials. "This young actor is forced to dumpster dive because of the movies you download illegally. And this famous singer/songwriter is now homeless because he couldn't afford his house payment because you found his album on Limewire." Heck, the commercials could go viral and end up bringing in more money than the movies and songs would have!
Yeah, right. Still, those of use that actually pay for the content are paying more for lawyers and lobbyists, than fresh new content. It's a good thing for them that bad PR is better than none at all!
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Obviously it will take a grassroots movement of 'play it yourself' and a refusal of buying by the rest to end this insanity. It's gotten completely out of hand. Special interests appear to rule the day. Like many other things, you pull the money out if it, it sets up a whole 'nother attitude. One that is overdue I might add.
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What a fucking joke, the whole point of this is it can be used however they want to use it. If they don't want 16 yr olds to be prosecuted for sharing it to their girlfriend then that should have been DEFINED in the law. So we're basically now saying that we "hope" the law isn't abused even though time and time again the authorities have proven they will abuse legislation at all costs, and even classify their own interpretation of laws.
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They want the law to be vague.
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It is a garden variety criminal statute that has been around for many years, so why the angst here escapes me.
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The Right to Read
From the classic The Right to Read.
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Music "Industry"?
However, I believe "the recording industry" is correct in calling themselves "the music industry" because most artists don't consider themselves an industrial commodity. They consider themselves musicians or singers or song writers. They are not an industry. The recording industry just likes to treat them like an industrial commodity. There is a difference.
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Re: Music "Industry"?
Recorded music is what people want. The shows and t-shirts? eh, they can take it or leave it.
Recorded music is where the money is. It's what is most valued by the consumer.
That will never change. Ever.
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Is this how it will be?
If my brother stops by my house and watches something on Netflix... he is suddenly a criminal?
Seriously... look down... notice that something is missing between your legs.... then GROW A SET and stand up for your rights!
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Re: Is this how it will be?
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Typical.
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Interesting hardware implication
In fact, more than one person watching cable TV violates this law.
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I'd tell you to elect a politician that thinks for himself and actually does his job, but I think Earth's fresh out of those.
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cable?
You have a house renting to 4 college students. They split rent and bills. One of them agrees to take the cable bill (the others take electric, phone/net and etc, a common arrangement). So the cable contract and bill is in one guy's name. He's the subscriber. He signed.
So, would this make it illegal for all 4 roommates to sit and watch cable programming? Would all 4 of them be criminals then (3 for "infringing" and one for "providing")?
No matter how I turn it around in my mind, it seems like a logical conclusion...
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This is what it's coming to....
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RIAA
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Re: RIAA
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Furthermore, given the restrictions placed on simultaneous streaming and activating devices, is bulk password selling really a big issue?
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