Filaha

@Filaha Never mind. I misread the bit in the article that said the guy was claiming it was ONLY affecting unreleased material. He was only half-right.

@Jetleo1 Except... UltraDavid is wrong.
He's combining two separate subsections.

s.2319 (b) is the ONLY thing that's getting affected by the first part of the bill. However, s.2319 (b) SPECIFICALLY states "Any person who commits an offense under section 506 (a)(1)(A) of title 17— "

The latter part of the bill is amending s.506 (a)(1)(C). C, not A.
And offenses covered under (a)(1)(C) are not covered under s.2319 (b). They're covered under s.2319 (d) "Any person who commits an offense under section 506 (a)(1)(C) of title 17— "

The former part of the bill affects people who make money off of their "performance". The latter part of the bill affects people who are using unreleased works. Neither part of the bill really affects the other.

UltraDavid, however, says "It’s just that he missed the entirety of S.978(a)."
But S.978(a) ONLY affects offenses under S.506 (a)(1)(A).
He didn't miss the entirety of it. It doesn't affect it.

Actually, I'm looking closer at the laws it's amending, and if my interpretation is correct, this won't affect, say, youtube LPers at all.

Here's my interpretation:

(a) of the bill is amending: Section 2319 of title 18, United States Code, subsection (b), which is "(b) Any person who commits an offense under section 506 (a)(1)(A) of title 17— " but (a)(1)(A) states "(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain; "

So (a) of the bill is falling under those who infringe for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain. Last I checked, Let's Players don't fall under that category.

Then there's (b) of the bill, which is amending Section 506(a) of title 17, United States Code, specifically subparagraph (1)(C), which states "(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution."

Now, the "being prepared for commercial distribution" is a key part, because in the definitions of that Section...
"“work being prepared for commercial distribution” means—
(A) a computer program, a musical work, a motion picture or other audiovisual work, or a sound recording, if, at the time of unauthorized distribution—
(i) the copyright owner has a reasonable expectation of commercial distribution; and
(ii) the copies or phonorecords of the work have not been commercially distributed;"

And the key word in the definition is AND.

Now, if I'm interpreting that correctly, and I don't see how I wouldn't be, it means that (a)(1)(C) only holds against copyrighted materials that have NOT been commercially distributed yet. So... as long as a Let's Player is using a game that has been commercially distributed, that won't affect them either.

So... (a) of the bill only affects those making money, and (b) of the bill only affects those sharing materials that have not been commercially distributed yet.
So assuming that Let's Players on Youtube are not, in fact, making any money off the material and are only using games that have been commercially distributed...

They won't be affected at all.

Make sense?

@ChillyWilly Haha. I'm actually kinda wrong. The 5 years jail-time part of the bill seems to only fall under the category of the offense being "for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;".

"(b) Any person who commits an offense under section 506 (a)(1)(A) of title 17— " is being changed.
but (a)(1)(A) says "(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain; "

So... that doesn't even affect Let's Players if they're not for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain.

@ChillyWilly And it will also make sure that you need to have been told to remove the infringement 10 times in a 180-day period before anything can even happen.
I'd hope most people would figure out around number 5 that they should probably stop trying to re-share the thing. Or at the very least wait half a year before trying again.

If anyone goes to jail over it, they'd deserve it.

Also, would you prefer the current "Sky's the limit" potential for suing you into financial oblivion, or a MAXIMUM potential of jail-time?

@Mr Khan End-users are already "targeted". Never followed an old link or old embedding to youtube and gotten the error saying that "the video's been removed due to a copyright claim by (insert copyright holder)"?

This bill will basically make it so that you'd be guaranteed, to use that as an example, 10 of those removals in a 180-day period before any criminal charges can be laid against you. As well as having a maximum punishment, as opposed to the current "Well, we could sue you for more money than you'll make in your life" maximum punishment.

Which means it still relies upon the copyright holder to request removal. So all those Let's Plays that have been up for ages? Yeah, they're pretty much not going anywhere still, unless the copyright holders suddenly get a fire lit under them and they go hog-wild.

@KingBroly And how, exactly, does this make the government any money?

So.... did anyone commenting really actually read the bill?
For that matter, did the article writer read it?

The bill modifies an existing law to put a set punishment on it and specifying a set number of offenses.
As in, this stuff is already illegal. Passing this bill will not make it more illegal.
What it will do is make sure that you cannot get sued for posting copyrighted materials unless you try to share it more than 10 times in a 180-day period while being asked to desist by the copyright holder. Without this bill, there is no set period and no set number of offenses, which means that if they felt like it, you could just be sued for your transgressions upon their copyrighted work. With it, you must be asked to stop doing it 10 times in 180 days, and even then it puts a MAXIMUM cap on your punishment. That's what "up to" means. It doesn't mean "First offense? FIVE YEARS IN PRISON."

In other words, this bill IS PROTECTING YOU.