US Senator Wants To Send Streamers To Prison

The US Congress is putting together an omnibus bill to help in government funding. One of the measures being slipped in is from North Carolina Senator Thomas Tilis that would increase streamed copyright violations from a misdemeanor to a serious felony. This would result in Twitch streamers, YouTube content creators, and other influencers to be at risk of imprisonment if found to be using copyright music or video clips. Critics cite that if such a measure passes it would be a huge blow to US citizen’s rights and freedom of expression. Such bills have been proposed in the past, but resulted in protests from both average citizens and even famous artists. All previous bills have so far never passed through the entire legislative and judicial process.

 

Tilis himself has been backed and funded by generous donations from Sony Pictures, Universal Music, NBCUniversal, and other large corporations. While these companies are mostly trying to aggressively protect their music, if the bill passes without amendment it would also cover video game content. For some time, Nintendo, Sega, and other longtime industry giants have been actively issuing DMCA strikes across Twitch, YouTube, and Instagram. Fans innocently trying to share their enthusiasm for a game could find themselves in deep legal trouble in the future.        

Kurtis Seid, NoobFeed
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