Congress wants to make streaming a felony!

The US and Congress especially never cease to amaze at the lengths they will go to to get their way.

This time, under the bill number S.978, they are trying to make it a felony to stream copyrighted content and yes the person who streams a youtube video for instance and not the person who uploaded it. There is an interesting twist that this bill is called the ‘Ten Strikes’ bill, which means that you are allowed to stream copyrighted material 9 times. More than that then you can end up in jail.

Does this sound absurd? Well this is what TechDirt had to say:

The entertainment industry is freaking out about sites that embed and stream infringing content, and want law enforcement to put people in jail over it, rather than filing civil lawsuits…. We already pointed to one possibility: that people embedding YouTube videos could face five years in jail. Now, others are pointing out that it could also put kids who lip sync to popular songs, and post the resulting videos on YouTube, in jail as well.

So yes, watching a YouTube video which has copyrighted music in the background could land you jail time.

If you think this is absurd please head to this page: Demand Progress