Sharing a song on YouTube could soon become a felony: the United State Department of Commerce is asking Congress to increase the penalties for streaming copyrighted work, reviving a provision from the failed Stop Online Piracy Act.
Opposition from the likes of Google, Wikipedia and the American Civil Liberties Union helped stop SOPA from passing in early 2012, but part of that bill could soon be back from the dead. According to a recent Commerce Department report, the office’s Internet Policy Task Force is asking Congress to reconsider a section of SOPA that could heavily penalize people for uploading select content to streaming services.
The task force’s latest report, Copyright Policy, Creativity and Innovation in the Digital Economy, pressures Congress to consider felony convictions for people caught streaming copyrighted songs, music and movies, and some say such legislation would outlaw the practice of uploading homemade cover tunes to the World Wide Web.
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