OP/ED by Randell Cavin
If you have a subscription to Netflix, Rhapsody, Pandora, Hulu-Plus or any other paid subscription to a movie or music service you better not share your password or any login information if you live or plan to visit the State of Tennessee after July 1. If you do you will be breaking the law.
Tennessee has become to first state to make a crime to share your login information to such said sites. The maximum penalty for sharing your password is a misdemeanor with up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine if less than $500 in entertainment is stolen. That is right, if you share your password you can be charged for stealing. If the entertainment is valued at more than $500 it is a felony.
There might be one exception to the law; if you share your password with your spouse or any other family member then you would not have anything to worry about.
This law is intended for those who share their passwords to numerous people, such as college students sharing their passwords to other students in a dorm.
“What becomes not legal is if you send your username and password to all your friends so they can get free subscriptions,” said the bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Gerald McCormick.
If Netflix for example, suspects you are giving out or selling your password they can contact law enforcement and press charges against you.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam says he supports the new law and “anything we can do to cut back” on music piracy.
This new law is actually added on to an existing law about stealing cable TV service and leaving a restaurant without paying the bill. It is a theft of service.
This law is intended to put a dent in Internet piracy, especially in the music industry. Let face it for what it is; Nashville is the Capitol of Tennessee and it is the Home of Country Music. This bill was put in place to protect the music industry in Nashville.
Not all are going to be happy with this new law of course.
“I think it’s stupid,” college student Josh Merbitz said of the law. The 20-year-old music education major at Middle Tennessee State University said he watches Netflix movies online using the password of his friend’s father, with the father’s permission.
Kelly Kruger, an aerospace major at MTSU, said she likes to watch Netflix movies online in her dorm by logging in with her mother’s account information. Kruger said she hands out the login information to friends.
Even with a law against it, “I think people will keep doing it, like illegal downloading,” Kruger said.
Bill Ramsey, a Nashville lawyer who practices entertainment law and criminal defense, said that he doubts the law would be used to ban people in the same household from sharing subscriptions and that small-scale violations involving a few people would, in any case, be difficult to detect. But “when you start going north of 10 people, a prosecutor might look and say, ‘Hey, you knew it was stealing,’ ” Ramsey said.
There are other download subscription sites that are not part of the mainstream media. Of course these are the numerous adult entertainment sites. What about their protection? Does this bill address them? Is it not considered stealing if you sell or share your password and login name from an adult site? This new bill does not address that issue. An e-mail was sent to the bill’s sponsor requesting clarification on this. After a week there has been no reply.
However the law is written it still should protect the adult subscription sites just like it does with the mainstream sites. If the adult subscription sites use the same technology that Netflix uses they can catch those who are sharing their login information and have them prosecuted in the State of Tennessee.
Netflix and other entertainment services know exactly when you log into their Internet service, what you watch and listen to, who your ISP is, and when you log off, among other things. They know what device you’re logged into and they know when you log in from two or more accounts simultaneously. In the case of Netflix specifically, it allows users to log in and watch from a myriad of devices, many of which are mobile. However, it also limits usage where it deems necessary.
If you were to login to Netflix on your Xbox and then try to login to Netflix on your laptop you would get booted off the Xbox.
As person who has been a subscriber to a few adult sites in the past I was able to login to one site on my laptop and login to the same site on another device such as my desktop. I did not get booted off. The detection tool that Netflix uses is a powerful weapon in stopping the sharing of login information. The many, many adult subscription sites should take advantage of such detection technology to keep those who would blatantly share (which is stealing) passwords and login names from stealing their content.
Tennessee has taken the first step in trying to combat internet piracy. It will help the powerful music industry in Nashville and other mainstream download sites. Whether or not it will help the adult industry remains to be seen. It is up to the adult industry to make the next move. If they suspect that passwords and login names are being shared by an individual to numerous people then it is up to them to press charges against that person. It will be interesting to see who makes the first move and if the Tennessee courts will uphold the law for the sake of the adult industry.
Country music sucks ass anyways. They are just trying to keep the 10 fans from sharing the music for free.