Tennessee Makes it Illegal To Share Your Netflix Password 495
An anonymous reader writes "State lawmakers in Tennessee have passed a groundbreaking measure that would make it a crime to use a friend's login — even with permission — to listen to songs or watch movies from services such as Netflix or Rhapsody. The bill, which has been signed by the governor, was pushed by recording industry officials to try to stop the loss of billions of dollars to illegal music sharing. They hope other states will follow."
Have they nothing better to legislate for (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh come on, this is just a waste of time in the legal process. Anyone already illegally downloading isn't going to stop anyway. There has to be a better way to involve the downloaders, spend time looking for that, rather than legislate against a lost cause.
What? Licenses and TOS agreements not enough? (Score:5, Interesting)
Niiice. Civil agreements are not enough any more. Now we need the rule of law to make things into a crime! It's clearly not enough to sue your customers. Now we have to fine and imprison them.
But look on the bright side -- they aren't claiming "it's for the poor starving artists" this go around.
As a non-subscriber of anything, this is how I get entertained. It's like watching one of those reality shows unfold. Sure it's a bit slow, but just when you think the industry has gone too far, people just suck it up and let it happen. How much is too much? How far is too far? I may never see the limit in my life time it seems.
Re:Have they nothing better to legislate for (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides isn't there already a law against this ? I know in Europe at least on rentals there is always a disclaimer to the effect that only you are allowed to watch it (with your family) but can't use it to share with friends or show in a public setting.
Re:Limited number of simultaneous connections? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anything with a power cable, networking, cd's, blu ray/dvd, computers, displays, lcd, plasma can be removed and sold to raise funds for local law enforcement.
Once again, a dying business paradigm (Score:4, Interesting)
Promoting artificial scarcity in lieu of the scarcity inherent in manufacturing physical goods.
Unfortunately this is only going to get worse: http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html [cracked.com]
Re:What? Licenses and TOS agreements not enough? (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason the industry lobbies want to criminalize this stuff is to shift the burden of enforcement to the tax payer. If its a civil agreement it then its mostly their own responsibility to spot where their rights are being infringed and do something about it, send a take down notice, file a suit, whatever.
If they can criminalize it suddenly state enforcement agencies are burdened with detecting the crime, and state legal agencies are burdened with prosecuting it.
Re:Predicted Long Ago (Score:4, Interesting)