Republican legislators keep claiming that they can’t do anything about internet platforms censoring conservative speech, but they’re more than willing to help Hollywood take on those same platforms over copyright. Disney, a sworn foe of Section 230, always get a hearing in its jihad against tech companies. Worse still, the radical lefty company’s lobbyists, along with those of other major industry companies have repeatedly written legislation to favor their own interests and agendas.
One of the obscene items in the orgy of congressional garbage that is the omnibus is the CASE Act which would allow companies to terrorize internet users over copyright issues by shoving them into arbitration and hitting them with $30,000 penalties.
Meanwhile the same industry that keeps lobbying to free muggers and killers is also lobbying to send people who stream their content to prison for 10 years.
If the package passes, as expected, it will mark the first significant legislative win for Hollywood studios and other content companies in years.
Felony streaming. Establishes criminal penalties, including prison time, for those who “willfully, and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, offer or provide to the public a digital transmission service” that offers unauthorized movies and TV shows. Penalties include fines and sentences of up to three years, or five years if the offense involved one or more titles, and “the person knew or should have 7 known that the work was being prepared for 8 commercial public performance.” The punishment rises to up to 10 years for multiple offenses.
The Motion Picture Association and other content trade groups have long sought felony streaming penalties, arguing that it brings the technology in line with other forms of unauthorized public performance.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) added the streaming provision to the latest bill, but lawmakers in both parties have been supportive.
If Republicans can do this for Hollywood, a sworn enemy of the GOP, why can’t they do a damn thing for their own base? Whom does this serve?
Sen. Thom Tillis on Tuesday unveiled an overhaul of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which is intended to make it easier to stamp out pirated content online.
The bill seeks to revamp the current “notice and takedown” system — whereby copyright owners submit infringement notices to online service providers — with a “notice and stay down” provision. Copyright owners — including the major studios and record labels — have long complained that the same pirated material reappears online over and over again, and that they often must file thousands of takedown notices.
The Motion Picture Association also commended Tillis and called his proposal a “first effort to find harmony” on the issue. Ruth Vitale, CEO of CreativeFuture, said the proposal should “trigger a serious and long-overdue dialogue” on the failings of the DMCA.
Do conservatives at some point get their day in the sun after Hollywood gets a dozen pieces of legislation that allow it to send people to prison for impinging on any of its claimed rights? (This is the same industry where Disney is now claiming that it doesn’t have to pay authors royalties.)
I’m not even complaining that GOP officials are passing abusive legislation on behalf of our worst cultural enemies. All I’m saying is that if they can do this for Hollywood, they can do it for conservative speech.
If they can take on Google and Facebook for Disney, legislatively, they can take them on legislatively for conservative free speech. There are no excuses. Period.
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