Stealing "entertainment services" now a crime in Tennessee

Bill Haslam, the governor of Tennessee, has signed legislation that for the first time makes the theft of “subscription entertainment services” a crime. House Bill 1783 will amend the State law on theft and will be effective on July 1st. The State law on theft says it is illegal to steal a “service”. The term service is specified in the law with a long list of things like sattelite television, mail, gas, water etcetra. Amendment 1783 states that an “entertainment service” is now added to the list of “services” and is meant to make it illegal to use someone else’s subscription or account to access online entertainment services, such as movie and music streaming sites.

The scope of the new rule is unclear. It is said that using someone else’s account could even be prohibited if the user has the consent of the owner of the account. The law specifies that anyone who is "directly or indirectly harmed" by theft of service has standing to report the violation to the police. The penalties for violating this law are serious. For stealing services worth more than $500,- the “thief” risks serious jail time.

The new legislation in is remarkable, as it is the first time illegal access to entertainment content online is listed as a criminal offense as far as I know. For lawmakers around the world it is hard to capture new digital services in legal definitions. Rather open norms are often the result, which makes it difficult to predict which conduct will be declared illegal in court and what kind of behaviour is still allowed.

The fact that Tennessee is the first to have this law in place is remarkable too. The state capital Nashville is of course the hometown of country music in the United States. The legislation was strongly supported by the Recording Industry Association of America, because they want to promote protection of copyrights of the music producers. Jerry Brito of George Mason University supported this bid too. “Big content producers, are trying to adapt to the new economic environment of the Internet by giving consumers a legal, inexpensive way of buying their content, through subscriptions;" he said. "I don't see why it shouldn't be criminal for someone to hand out subscription passwords en masse."

Now the law is in place, some questions arise: how will this rule be applied? And what about enforcement? Republican MP Gerald McCormick, a sponsor of the bill, argues that “the legislation is aimed at stopping mass password sales, not mere sharing among family members. But it shouldn't be too difficult for Internet streaming services to monitor account usage and cancel accounts that are used by too many people.”

Sources: Government of Tennessee, Ars Technica