Posted on 06/01/2011 3:31:13 PM PDT by don-o
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — State lawmakers in country music's capital have passed a groundbreaking measure that would make it a crime to use a friend's login — even with permission — to listen to songs or watch movies from services such as Netflix or Rhapsody.
The bill, now awaiting the governor's signature, was pushed by recording industry officials to try to stop the loss of billions of dollars to illegal music sharing. They hope other states will follow.
The legislation was aimed at hackers and thieves who sell passwords in bulk, but its sponsors acknowledge it could be employed against people who use a friend's or relative's subscription.
While those who share their subscriptions with a spouse or other family members under the same roof almost certainly have nothing to fear, blatant offenders — say, college students who give their logins to everyone on their dormitory floor — could get in trouble.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesnews.net ...
I sometimes wonder if there will ever be a time that enough laws have been passed. I’m not hopeful that day will ever come.
Well when you have 38+ logins on the same account at the same time...might be a problem. Just ban the account.
Whee, yet more efforts to bolster the unconstitutional lifetime plus of copyrights... If the founding fathers wanted multigenerational patents, they would have put them in the constitution.
One would think...
Meanwhile...manufacturing in the US is dead....no jobs...and those in State Union jobs demand more money from those of us just barely getting by on half of what the Union workers make. Let’s get government involved in what people do with their passwords.
Sounds like a litigation quagmire waiting to happen.
How do they intend to discern and determine who is using a password legally, who has borrowed it, and who has hacked it?
Oh, but, the law looked so good on paper.
I’m not seeing the connection to copyright law in this. How so?
We’re in favor of theft now? Do we all think it is fair to pay for one person to use a service and have him allow all of his friends to have access?
You don’t have to ban anything. For as long as anyone can remember online accounts of all kinds automatically allow only one connection at a time.
This is purely a law that makes you a lawbreaker for living and breathing.
Example: Your friend hands you his ipad (or your own ipad) while he starts the BBQ. He gives you the netflix account ID so you can fire up a movie while the food cooks. Guess what, you just committed a CRIME in Tennessee.
Insanity of epic proportions.
Just amazing...while Rome burns.
If I am running a business off my server, which, I think is how these things work, then I need to have some protocol in place to limit who is able to access the service I am providing.
Would that be so difficult to do?
For iTunes, you can register up to 5 machines to play music downloaded from it. Why can’t Netflix do something similar, limiting a user to registering no more than 2 computers per user.
Silly rules in upside-down times. Illegals aren't, they don't need to obey the laws. And citizens are tormented by their legislators. Legislators used to protect their citizens and community but they no longer care.
No, but it can get annoying for your user when they honestly get “locked out” of their own accounts. It’s something a company has to balance in their decision.
Point I am making is that this is theft, and FReepers should not be applauding it.
Hold on a moment here. Where do you get theft from? This is a company seeking to extend the terms of a contract outside of the business relationship and put enforcement clauses in that can be used to put someone in jail.
This is a private business dispute between their customers and the company. Since the company doesn’t want to tick off their users by putting in account restrictions, they’ve decided to convince legislators to enforce the contract with possible jail time.
Netflix could easily restrict by IP, distribute a key CD (like they have in the past) or put other restrictions in place. They don’t want to.
You hold on a moment here. I am assuming the company is looking for clear legal protection for their terms of service. You are assuming they have no terms of service.
Do you honestly think it is not theft for one person to allow his personal account to be used by, for example, everyone on a college dorm floor?
No, it's not theft. It MIGHT break the terms of service, but I don't think it says that, especially since you could be watching Netflix on your Wii, on a laptop, on a cell phone, and an iPad, all at the same time. Netflix calls this a feature. It is up to the company to make access restrictions, if that's what they want. They have every ability to do this. They USED to use key CDs in some cases to access the Netflix service, for example. Customers didn't like the system, and they dropped it.
This is not, in any manner, shape or form, a government matter. This is a matter between the customer and the company providing services. There's no way for the state to monitor this.. What type of prevention is the state supposed to engage in? State authenticated logins? How are they supposed to know when this law is broken? Wait for the company to report it?
This is bad lawmaking at it's best. There's no interest in the state being there, and more importantly, it's not because Netflix really wants to cut this behavior off, as they certainly could by using IP limiting, or limiting it to one connection at a time. It's so that Netflix can turn to Warner Brothers and the other media libraries and go, 'see, we did something, that'll stop that theft..'
As for this part - seriously? Jail for those who break the terms of service? Where does it end? Jail time for those who use a non-Apple approved iPhone charger? Put an unapproved memory card in your WII, go to jail? This isn't 'clear legal protection', it's massive overkill.
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