I stream, you stream; we all stream because we can.
It's a leap, alright. A mighty big one in fact.
But since I'm probably not going to leave Canada ever again, let's pretend that this CFAA ruling took place on Canadian soil and was part of Canadian law.
What are they going to do?
Uh, yeah, Mr. Teksavvy, we want to go through your records to see if any of your customers have been streaming Grey's Anatomy from the ABC.com website. CTV owns the Canadian streaming rights, so all Canadians are expected to stream that content from ctv.ca. Failure to do so, violates the abc.com terms of service and CTV potentially loses tens of cents in online advertising dollars. It's a copyright violation that only the dumbest Canadians can't get around. That's why we are hoping to get $155.69 in fines, from a guy going by the username of GeoCracker.
Wow. The settlements and court cases would hopefully deter other Canadians from streaming foreign content that is also available on Canadian websites, but that would be one of the silliest uses of our court system.
We're getting closer and closer to the grey market satellite dish area as far as the popularity of online streaming/downloading goes.
But you can tell we're still at the early stages of this streaming bonanza because there are still many companies in Canada and around the world that don't require cable/satellite subscriptions to access the copyrighted content on their websites.
Shaw leaves its online streaming content open to all Canadians, but Bell has a stricter approach with its limited content and limited freebies for cord-cutters or cord-shavers.
Once we get to the point where cord-cutters/shavers become greater threats to the current business model, that's when Shaw will probably become more like Bell and limit the free content.
Some copyrighted content has been purposely uploaded to torrent sites by the very companies hired to crack down on piracy, as a means to an easier payday for that content, through entrapment and intimidation; content that illegal downloaders would never have bothered to download or watch in the first place, had it not been free.
If millions of Americans were believed to be streaming Comedy Central content from Bell's Comedy Channel website, simply change the policy so that a Canadian cable/satellite subscription key is required for streaming access. Problem solved, except I don't think enough Americans would even bother visiting the Comedy Channel website in the first place, simply because it's just as easy to stream the content elsewhere from file lockers.
If the powers that be want to make VPNs illegal, fine, then institute a VPN/DNS registry, punish the companies selling VPN/DNS-type services to unregistered Canadians, and then prosecute any unregistered Canadian VPN user.
DNS-type companies and browser extensions could also be outlawed, but enforcement would also be difficult, if not impossible.
It's not enough to simply tell Canadians that they shouldn't watch or subscribe to American satellite services, thus, it's now illegal, or at least that's what I'm led to believe.
We're going to sue you for watching our free streaming content! Really? Well, if you're successful in court, that content wouldn't be free, so we'll gladly ignore it, and also say goodbye to Internet streaming.
The Entertainment Industry should get its house in order, and simply accept the fact that child-proof geo-locks are not going to be enough to curb an adult's enthusiasm for sampling free content from all over the world.
Empty threats are a waste of breath. Simply install better locks if you want to greatly reduce the unethical foreigners from streaming your precious content.
The ball should be in your court, NOT MINE!
I'm out of order? No, you're out of order!!!