On June 1, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the illegal streaming of copyrighted material, with testimony from Maria Pallante (Acting U.S. Register of Copyrights), Sandra Aistars (Executive Director, Copyright Alliance), and Michael O’Leary (Executive Vice President, Motion Picture Association of America). Under current law, streaming may be considered a public performance, and therefore ineligible for felony penalties.
In March, IP Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel recommended legislation to allow for felony penalties for streaming, and Sens. Klobuchar, Cornyn, and Coons introduced a Senate bill to do this (S. 978) in May.
The witnesses at House Judiciary Committee hearing indicated that they would support House legislation to make unauthorized streaming a felony. Reps. Watt and Lofgren noted that the scope of the legislation in the Senate has been criticized as being too broad.
Click here for the prepared witness testimony, and a webcast of the hearing.
Excerpts from the prepared testimony:
Maria Pallente, U.S. Register of Copyrights:
As a matter of public policy, the public performance right should enjoy the same measure of protection from criminals as the reproduction and distribution rights; prosecutors should have the option of seeking felony penalties for such activity, when appropriate.
Sandra Aistars, Copyright Alliance
At a narrow level, the issue of making illegal streaming a felony crime is simply a technical clarification. Illegally disseminating other people’s works without their permission should be punished the same way under law regardless of the technology used to accomplish such dissemination.
Michael O’Leary, Motion Picture Association of America
Legislation is necessary to make it clear that criminal streaming is eligible for felony treatment under U.S. law… The failure to address this problem legislatively, in addition to leaving a sizeable gap in the U.S. law, will: 1)Promote additional theft of America’s creative works by allowing an emerging means of illegal distribution to persist without adequate remedies; 2) Permit an unjustified, technology specific, disparity between forms of infringement that have increasingly similar commercially-destructive impacts; 3) Result in very few, if any, federal prosecutions, even for the most blatant and notorious global intellectual property criminals, as federal prosecutors and investigative agents will be unlikely to devote scarce resources to cases that will net, at most, misdemeanor penalties; 4) Harm America’s long-held role as a world leader in the protection and promotion of creativity by signaling the rest of the world that our products are not protected in the online world in the same manner as they are in the physical world. The failure of the United States to move against criminals engaged in streaming will undoubtedly result in less enforcement around the world – particularly in cases where the victim is an American creator; 5) Stifle innovation and creativity by allowing thieves that utilize streaming to continue to have an advantage in the online marketplace. We must favor legitimate business models over theft.
