Embed a Video, Go To Jail?

An anonymous reader writes "A few weeks ago, Slashdot had a post about the new bill in Congress to make streaming infringing videos a felony, punishable by up to 5 years in jail if just 10 people watch the video. As more details come out, the bill keeps looking worse and worse, as it appears that the definitions used in the bill would mean that merely embedding or linking to an infringing YouTube video could put you on the hook for jail time. Obviously, supporters of the bill insist that's not who will be targeted with this bill, but just the fact that they could be should be worrisome enough. We've seen other laws 'misused' in the past."

Good - arrest me

[commodore6502]

I'd be happy to appear on every radio and TV show discussing the out-of-control government which arrested me because I linked infringing "Sanctuary" episodes from youtube to my facebook page. It's time to Inform the public about what kind of tyranny they are living.

So go ahead and arrest me.
I'll be happy to fight back.

Re:five years for 10 viewings?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a Supreme Court case where they determined that a life sentence without parole for the crime of passing a bad check for $50 was, in fact, cruel and unusual. Don't recall the name of the case off the top of my head. But in general, yeah, sentence length doesn't usually fall under there.

So I've been thinking

[dyingtolive]

I've been thinking about these kinds of problems that plague civilization when corporations have a louder voice than humans, and are able to manhandle laws into doing everything they can to keep the plebs in their places. The problem to me appears to be that corporations are completely amoral, and dedicated toward doing absolutely whatever it takes to make as much money as possible. They do this due to their obligations to the shareholders. I'm going to pause along this train of thought to abuse the corollary: Somewhere along the line, "The customer is always right", transformed into, "the shareholder is always right."

Basically what I'm getting at here is that I now believe that in order to effect change, the only way to proceed is to play their same game against them. I propose creating a holdings company, getting it classified as a NPO, and then using donations generated by those interested in the lofty goals of the organization to purchase stock in the companies that are causing the problems. Any and all dividends made from the stock would go toward operational costs of the organization itself, and any surplus would go toward purchasing additional stock. The purpose of this is to be able to try to lobby within the stockholder's meetings with the stockholders themselves, and at worst case and assuming that the organization has enough stock to do so, threaten to tank the company by liquidating the stock for pennies. I'm no market analyst, but I'm pretty sure that it would play havoc with all the automated trading systems were a couple thousand shares of stock to be put out there for 1% of the current asking price.

Anyway, I thought I'd leave this here, figuring that if anyone was cynical enough to be able to shred this to pieces, it'd be Slashdot. Obviously, it has flaws. I'm no genius, and it was just something that came to me the other day, so I've hardly spent much time considering it.

Re:Good - arrest me

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting to watch a nation self implode by doing it to itself through bankruptcy and putting everyone in gaol. This is even more entertaining than the fading of the British Empire and the Soviet Union!

Pass the popcorn!