We 've talked a lot about S.978 Senate's bill, by Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons, which would adapt the criminal copyright statutes, some forms of networking / integration of streaming / a crime, for the people could face five years to make in prison. As we 've said from the beginning, the really scary part is the ignorance of people support this law, ignore, as it could be liable to make tons of people. They insist that it 's no problem here, because (a) requires the calculation of the stream / embeds for commercial purposes and (b) because the "value" must be greater than $ 2,500. What to ignore them (though many people show it) is that it 's not hard to show people that something is not done for commercial purposes. If you have ads on your site, even if they make you pennies, you 're "make money." And "value" of the work can be easily estimated or inflated to over $ 2,500. Also, nobody here is claiming that the feds are suddenly going to go to your average YouTube embedder, but the problem with this amendment to the Act is that it could be used in this way . Federal prosecutors have ambiguous or questionable laws like this done in the past, such attempts, the CFAA account for those who break into computer systems, is designed for people like Lori abuse Drew, who was mean a teenager on MySpace .

We 've found that the bill is getting more attention lately, and it seems that the YouTube community has awakened to problems with him. Now when you search on YouTube s978, there is a rapidly growing number of results, with plenty of people who are against the law, partly on claims and some videos from YouTube related to concerns of video game players.

Tragically, going through a bunch of the videos... nearly all of them gets the facts wrong in some manner (sometimes getting nearly all the details wrong). I worry about that, because it allows politicians to brush aside the very real concerns about the unintended consequences of the bill. Also, some of the incorrect statements seem to lead to people saying that the bill won't pass because "something that stupid can't pass." And, indeed, no bill is going to pass that will force all these people to take their videos down or to fine them for old videos as some have suggested. The risk is in how the bill could be used by federal prosecutors to go after people embedding certain videos, and then using the letter of the law (though clearly not the spirit) to go after people.

To see it 's good, so many people have their say, but it would be better if they spoke objectively appear on the bill, instead of running with some of the wilder assumptions to make the man.

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