Millions of new felonies a day!

Here is a perfect example of what is wrong with this country:

The U.S. Department of Commerce wants to crack down on the unauthorized streaming of video and audio content by reviving a provision of the Stop Online Piracy Act.

In a report released last week, the Commerce Department’s Internet Policy Task Force called for the unauthorized streaming of copyrighted works to become a felony.

What sort of conduct might constitute the “crime” of “unauthorized streaming” that is soon to be put in the same moral and legal category as robbery, murder, and rape, and will put the violators in the very same prisons?

Utterly mundane conduct — what millions of Americans are doing on YouTube:

The department’s Internet Policy Task Force last week proposed making it a felony to stream copyrighted works. According to Techdirt, such a provision, if interpreted broadly, could apply to people who upload covers of themselves performing songs to YouTube without permission.

That could be bad news for people like Bieber, who first won fame in part through YouTube videos of his performances of popular R&B covers.

An earlier bill to criminalize streaming died in the Senate in 2011. At the time, activists opposing it began a “Free Bieber” campaign, which emphasized how the bill would put popular YouTube artists in jeopardy.

Got that?

So… if I am filmed dancing to a favorite song, or film a friend singing at a Karaoke club, and I post these videos to YouTube, I become a federal felon.

What a disgusting sham we have for a legal system.

(I’d ask what provision in the Constitution gives Congress the power to criminalize unauthorized streaming, to say nothing of violating the First Amendment, but the Constitution has become so irrelevant these days that invoking it is almost laughable.)