Clever Campaign Against An Anti-Streaming Bill of the Day: The campaign against s.978, a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate that would make streaming unlicensed content a felony, has found a clever way to show how bad an idea this is: point out that it would make Justin Bieber a felon.
The campaign’s Free Bieber site describes how Bieber — and pretty much anyone else who’s covered a song on YouTube — could get five years in prison under s.978.
Bieber’s career-launching covers of copyrighted songs by artists like Chris Brown would likely count as “willful infringement.” Even if he had never made a dime from them, the law says a defendant doesn’t have to make a profit to be guilty. As long as the video is “publicly performed” — aka streamed — more than 10 times in 180 days, it’s case closed.
While the overlap between Beliebers and Internet rights activists might not be huge, co-opting the Bieb as a mascot is a good way to get the word out to people who wouldn’t otherwise realized that s.978 could affect them.
[techdirt]
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