[mikemike]

For just $86 Million your industry can criminalize people they dislike.

If approved, the bill promises up to 5 years of hard prison time for anyone who "willfully" infringes content via streaming for the purpose of "personal financial gain."

But the bill's ambiguous language could eventually be applied to send viewers to jail, as well. After all, the MPAA could easily argue in court that viewers were seeing "personal financial gain" by avoiding cable service fees, movie rental costs, etc.

Maplight claims that the groups supporting the bill have paid a total of $86M USD to active senators within the last six years.

So in total the winning Senators in the last three elections had to spend an estimated $892.5M USD to win their seats.

The $86M USD funneled by the anti-streaming lobbyists thus constitutes 9.7 percent of the total funds needed for U.S. Senators to obtain their jobs.

Dozens of Senators accepted contributions from these lobbies. But it's important to identify the bill's biggest supporters.

Leading the way is U.S. President Barack Obama. Obama pledged to look into copyright reform, but those promises were conveniently shelved when he stepped up to the plate pushing his campaign donors real agenda -- copyright enforcement. Together with fellow nations like France, Britain, and Germany, the Obama administration has worked to install a secret treaty called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) whose draft contains many Orwellian provisions, including the introduction of copyright infringement "thought crime", where simply searching for infringed content (thinking of infringing) can lead to charges.

And it was the President's advisors -- the White House Office of U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement -- who urged Congress two months ago to pass an anti-streaming bill. But some in the Senate were more than happy to comply; after all who would they be to deny the wishes of some of their biggest campaign donors?

The senators sponsoring the bill are Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), and Chris Coons (D-Dela.).

DailyTech - Report: Anti-Streaming Lobbyists Paid Off Senators Handsomely

[shooz]

You didn't really expect any bill to be passed under it's own merits, did you?
That's not how the "invisible hand" works.
Morals be damned! It's what you pay for.

[wacrider]

On the surface this proposed law is aimed at people who infringe copyrights. As a photographer I don't necessarily have a problem with that unless it gets to the point that it becomes reinterpreted as a means to limit freedom of speech.

Also of recent, there was even a proposed law to prevent people from photographing farms, which have come under scrutiny by animal rights groups and news agencies.

[mikemike]

On the surface this proposed law is aimed at people who infringe copyrights. As a photographer I don't necessarily have a problem with that unless it gets to the point that it becomes reinterpreted as a means to limit freedom of speech.

Also of recent, there was even a proposed law to prevent people from photographing farms, which have come under scrutiny by animal rights groups and news agencies.

The goal is to stiffen penalties since copyright infringement is already a civil crime this would make certain types criminal and to shift the burden of enforcement to the state since civil charges are brought to court by private attorneys and criminal charges are brought by DAs.