Even calling it the "TikTok ban" is rather misleading.
Is that really on the table? If yes, then it's bat-s*it insane, it's maybe rude to call it that but there's no better word to describe it.
To put it in perspective, throughout the '80s people were not getting sent to 20 years in prison for listening to Radio Free Europe here in Eastern Europe. There were still some political prisoners left, put in prison under different pretexts, but they had not gotten in there only for listening to Radio Free Europe.
Not really. That might be the maximum sentence but the chance that a kid who's downloaded tiktok using a vpn of getting anywhere near that is near zero. See: https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...
2. I don't know what specific case you're referring to by "MPAA and RIAA [...] go after little old grandmas for their love savings", but the relevant laws likely predated mp3s and filesharing programs, so it's not clear how "we thought might otherwise go unpunished" would apply here. If anything it's the reverse. The laws existed, and people thought they wouldn't apply to them for whatever reason and ignored them.
1. When the comparison I'm trying to draw is "huge powerful entity using its power", what exactly is the difference?
2. I don't think there needs to be a specific case - it was in the news often enough for it to be a common thing. Here is an EFF article reviewing what happened years later:
https://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-five-years-later
"Five years later, the recording industry has filed, settled, or threatened legal actions against at least 30,000 individuals. These individuals have included children, grandparents, unemployed single mothers, college professors"
Floor tiles and apples can't be compared? They are both are shiny. You can walk on both of them. You can find them both in a kitchen. You can eat one, you can't eat the other. This is besides the point.
I've asked before upthread: Tell me the difference between the RIAA/MPAA and the US DOJ. Everyone keeps telling me they are different but then no one actually explains how.
I am trying to invoke this comparison: "powerful entity" "group of people with power" "The Powers That Be"
I don't care one is private or one is public. My entire point of making the comparison is "big guy fucks the little guy" - if you can't tell me how the RIAA/MPAA&DOJ are different in this regard - then you are completely off topic and don't understand my point.
Can you tell me, how comparing the MPAA/RIAA to the USDoJ does NOT have any relevance?
Who said I was bragging? It was a statement.
I have first hand experience that that is not true in all cases. Less than 200 songs & movies. The RIAA was asking for $7-$10 per song and the MPAA about $17 per movie.
The lawmakers behind the bill assure us it will only be used against "corporations and executives who conspire to evade a mitigation order or ban — not everyday Americans". However, there's nothing in the bill that excludes "everyday Americans" from the penalties.
It's slightly more complicated than that. As it stands right now it's unclear whether personal use of tiktok would violate the proposed law, because it only bans US companies from dealing with chinese companies. That said the bill also allow the commence department to enact "mitigation measures", which if you tried to bypass them could get you in trouble.
>This bill is not a “ban” on personal use, or even on a technology directly. The bill may result in a ban on TikTok because it grants the Commerce Department such broad authority. That ban may take the form of removing it from app stores or a forced sale, or other mitigation measures imposed against the owners of the technologies.
>[...]
>The bill authorizes the Department of Commerce to impose “mitigation measures” without any restrictions on what those measures might be. Couple that with a vague enforcement provision that grants the power to broadly punish any person who “evades” these undefined “mitigation measures,” and the result is a law that can be read as criminalizing common practices like using a VPN to get a prohibited app, side-loaded installations, or using an app that was lawfully downloaded somewhere else.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/broad-vague-restrict-a...
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...
I don't know what the base offense level of such a crime would be, but from looking around some of the other things that's similar, I suspect you would be looking at about a 10 or so--or a year or so in prison.