The measure, dubbed "A bill to amend the provision of criminal sanction for copyright infringement, and for other purposes," will now have to be debated in the plenary of the Upper House.
Under current law, "reproducing" and "distributing" copyrighted works are serious crimes, including file sharing between users (P2P) and downloads from the Internet, usually videos and music.
However, streaming was considered a "public projection", rather than an act of "distribution". Publicly screening a film or video without proper licensing is not a felony.
However, according to bill S.978 approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, public projection is added to the list of serious crimes, so that, if approved, violating this law could lead to financial sanctions and imprisonment.
Those responsible for websites that offer movies, series and other copyrighted content in an unauthorized manner could face up to five years in jail and fines if they put 10 or more of this "public" content on the Internet in a period of 180 days.
They would also be punished if the total content published exceeds $ 2,500 in the sales market or the licenses that should have paid for that material have a cost of more than $ 5,000.
The initiative was introduced by Democratic Senator (Minnesota) Amy Klobuchar, with the support of Democratic Senator (Delawer), Christopher Coons, and Republican John Cornyn, (Texas).
Source: El Mundo
