freebieber.org:
A new bill in Congress makes posting a video containing any copyrighted work a felony — with up to 5 years in prison.
But wait… didn’t Justin Bieber get famous by posting YouTube videos of himself singing copyrighted R&B songs? Yep. If this bill passes, he could get 5 years in jail.
Um…
Can’t wait for that day to come!!!
Great! this should shut him up for a while!!
Makes me wonder how he would cover Johnny Cash songs. 🙂
I’m sure he’ll make lots of “friends”
So which one of you is in charge of keeping track of the Justin Bieber websites?
They both do it. Just try keeping these guys away from their Bieber sites. You’ll get such a pinch!
I’ll testify for the prosecution.
I think he might fall under the “too big to fail” and the government will protect him.
You can’t get convicted for something legal at a time you did it.
This is the same bill that people were getting worked up about a few months back, since they were saying it would make Let’s Play videos (people recording the screen as they play a video, then commentating over it) illegal to post on YouTube. This Is My Next had a great writeup on it at the time.
http://thisismynext.com/2011/07/06/senate-bill-978-youtube-video-game-lets-play-videos-illegal/
Even if it passes it will likely be altered to specify the posting of entire movies, music videos, songs with either the cover art or lyrics etc so as to not take a major dump on fair use. All these performance videos could end up being exempt from the felony level.
And as has been noted you can’t be convicted for something that was legal and now isn’t. So all that is likely to happen is that Youtube would pull the videos and it would be a non issue so long as you didn’t repost them. Unless of course you got permission from the copyright owner, which would be easy for Bieber but not so for all those Apple store performance videos
This is a stupid article because whoever wrote it did absolutely no research or even tried listening in High School Civics class. YOU CAN’T BE TRIED FOR A CRIME IF IT WAS COMMITTED BEFORE THE LAW TOOK EFFECT!
Not to mention that even if there were some grounds to charge him, his lawyers would settle out of court for a large sum of money or a percentage of future royalties on his music. The reality is that Justin Bieber is a large part (right now) of the music industry. This bill was written to protect the industry (and him) and they would cause more harm and hemorrhaging in the industry by putting him in jail then just ignoring it.There are just so many reasons why this is such a pointless claim. But we have no reason to worry because he is protected by constitutional rights that prevent him from being charged with a crime that was committed before this bill took effect. Sorry everyone, he isn’t going to jail.
Sorry, I know that everyone wants to see Bieber go to jail because old cynical bastards think that’s hilarious, but you can’t get charged for breaking a law that didn’t exist when you committed the act.
Obviously the bill will have to be ammended to make being Justin Bieber a crime under international law. Then when he wakes up the day the law goes into effect, he’ll be subject to arrest and deported off planet.
:p
Oh, they’ll make him sing in prison…
Regardless of what everyone thinks of this, Lil Beibz isn’t going anywhere. plain and simple, although I actually heard it on the Edmonton morning radio:P
Hes canadian can’t get jail time for it if he runs to canada but I’ll have a shotgun at border patrol so don’t worry