Thom Tillis Wants Twitch Streamers’ DMCA Strikes To Have Felony Jail Time

[Anna Kushina (櫛名アンナ)]

Senators throughout time have slid or snuck extra bits into huge Omnibus Bills in order to get some sort of agenda over. These come through must-pass bills, that way whatever sneaky thing they are after will come to pass. NC Senator Thom Tillis is the latest offender here. He’s taking aim at people who use copyrighted material in Twitch/Youtube broadcasts. If Thom Tillis gets his way, streamers with repeated DMCA strikes could see felony jail time! If that’s not a terrifying thought, we don’t know what is.

Accidentally Have Music In a Stream? Go To Jail

Thom Tillis of North Carolina wants law enforcement to have the tools necessary to combat a real crime: unlawful copyright use. The idea here is that any unlawful copyright use (DMCA strike) would be faced with a felony offense, instead of a misdemeanor. This could lead to jail time!

They allege that because live streaming as a method of taking in content has risen, this has wildly increased the nature of digital piracy. Under this potential bill, Twitch streamers would face some serious jail time from repeated DMCA strikes:

“As we discuss in our attached responses, illegal streaming, while it may also implicate the rights of distribution and reproduction under the Copyright Act, primarily is an offense against the right of public performance. While criminal infringement of either the distribution or the reproduction rights can be prosecuted as a felony under current law, criminal infringement of public performance, even when done willfully and for a commercial advantage, is limited to a misdemeanor.”

If Thom Tillis has his way, a “legislative fix” would occur for this so-called “streaming loophole”. It sounds like, if Tillis’ bill passes if you are an IRL streamer, and sounds play in the background, you could very well go to jail for it. A bill like this could effectively kill many streaming outlets, out of fear if nothing else. Sure, many streamers can just not stream music or avoid IRL streaming in crowded places.

More than just live streamers are worried about this. Civil rights groups, digital rights nonprofits, and a variety of other sources came together to pen a letter to the Senate last week, which we found courtesy of Kotaku:

“As creators, innovators, small businesses, online service providers, libraries, educators, and civil society organizations, we are concerned with including controversial copyright or trademark bills in a must-pass piece of legislation,” the organizations wrote (via TorrentFreak). “We respect Congress’s intent to improve our intellectual property system and protect the rights of creators and entrepreneurs. However, certain aspects of this package of bills will have negative impacts on small- and medium-sized businesses, creators, libraries and their patrons, students, teachers, educational institutions, religious institutions, fan communities, internet users, and free expression…We ask that you decline to include this package of bills in the funding bill.”

Cracking Down on Content Creators

Considering that Thom Tillis’ major donors come from the Motion Picture Association, Sony Pictures, Universal Music Group, and similar major media outlets (well over 100,000 dollars), it’s not a shock that we’d see a bill something like this. You want to appease the masters that pay for you to try and stay in office, after all.

The government is supposed to protect regular people and see that they are safe. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, things like that. But a bill like this would ruin so many people’s ability to make money in a way that makes them happy. The thought of a slip-up, even if they didn’t actually play the music/digital content, could ruin their life with a felony? Content production as we know it would come to an end.

It’s terrifying to think about. We don’t want to use a Slippery Slope Fallacy here, but this could really crush a lot of people’s freedom and joy. This proposal, which does include the CASE Act and Trademark Modernization Act, should have judgment passed on it on December 11th. We do know congress has confirmed the bill must be passed before the government shutdown on that date.

Sadly, Twitch has yet to comment on the DMCA legislation or has the possibility of streamers facing jail time, nor has Amazon. We will do our best to keep appraised of this, because it’s a worrisome thing to consider.