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White House Swings the Patriot Act at 'Illegal Streaming'

Proving once again that terrorism is often a red herring, the White House is "rewriting copyright law" so they can tackle streamers as if they were criminals.

Proving once again that terrorism is often a red herring, the White House is rewriting copyright law so they can tackle streamers as if they were committing treason.

Under federal law, wiretaps may only be conducted in investigations of serious crimes, a list that was expanded by the 2001 Patriot Act to include offenses such as material support of terrorism and use of weapons of mass destruction. The administration is proposing to add copyright and trademark infringement, arguing that move “would assist U.S. law enforcement agencies to effectively investigate those offenses.”

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This comes just days after the Social Science Research Council released an independent study concluding that most people don’t consider piracy a criminal activity.

The report further suggests that the millions of dollars that have been spent on anti-piracy education have not resulted in much change in public opinion. “The authors find no significant stigma attached to piracy in any of the countries examined. Rather, piracy is part of the daily media practices of large and growing portions of the population.”

This perspective will no doubt be lost in the noise of industry-sponsored research. The researchers were right on point.

“As recent MPAA and RIAA comments on enforcement submitted to the US government make clear, however, three-strikes is not the end of the digital enforcement fight but the beginning. The next steps down the path include preemptive content-filtering by ISPs, the inclusion of home-based monitoring software in ISP contracts,” it reads.

via CNET