Penalties for Unauthorized Streaming Will Be Increased

Maria Pallante, Register of Copyrights, claims that the legislation needs to be updated in order to make sure the instruments for prosecution of people infringing the exclusive right of public performance are similar to those currently existing for protecting the reproduction and distribution rights.

The Honorable Maria Pallante testified before the House Subcommittee on IP, Competition and the Internet a few days ago about the necessity for increasing penalties for unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content. The hearing was titled “Promoting Investment and Protecting Commerce Online”, and the Register of Copyrights said there that unauthorized streamers simply seize the economic value that rights owners depend upon in order to create the new material. She revealed the result of their analysis, saying that the current criminal provisions of the Copyright Act are actually insufficient for such prosecutions if the cause of action was violation of the exclusive rights of public performance.

Maria Pallante pointed out that up until now copyright legislation has mostly focused on infringements of the reproduction and distribution rights. In the meantime, unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content has become much easier and therefore more attractive to infringers. This means that copyright legislation needs to be updated.

However, she admitted that unauthorized streaming posed different challenges. First of all, not all of them are considered to act for commercial purposes: there are many people out there who have no profit motive at all, but they still cause great damage. Secondly, Maria Pallante admitted that her office was unaware of any researches focused only on the overall impact of unauthorized streaming on the web ecosystem. She believes that this significant trouble would only increase if technology outpaces legislation.

Since the law currently states that criminal infringement of the public performance right is just a misdemeanor, prosecutors don’t want to expend time and resources on the issue. But is the crime will turn into a felony, this might increase the incentive for prosecution. The main problem here is that major part of the streaming websites is hosted overseas, so it is unclear how US prosecutors are going to convict foreign nationals for felony copyright violations?