BILL ANALYSIS Ó AB 2122 Page 1 Date of Hearing: April 9, 2014 ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS Mike Gatto, Chair AB 2122 (Bocanegra) - As Introduced: February 20, 2014 Policy Committee: Public SafetyVote: 7-0 Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: Yes Reimbursable: No SUMMARY This bill expands the offense of failing to disclose the origin of a recording or audiovisual work when utilizing the material for financial gain, and when at least 100 articles of audio recordings or audiovisual work are involved, to include "the commercial equivalent thereof." The offense is punishable as an alternate felony/misdemeanor. FISCAL EFFECT Unknown potential increase in nonreimbursable local costs for prosecution, probation and incarceration. For order of magnitude purposes, in the four years prior to realignment, 96 persons were committed to state prison for so-called media piracy. If there were three times as many misdemeanor convictions, and if convictions increased by 20% as a result of this bill, local probation and incarceration costs could be in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars. COMMENTS 1)Rationale . The author's intent is to update the media piracy statute to account for technological advances that allow thousands of songs and dozens of movies to be stored on individual hard drives and memory sticks. 2)Support. The Recording Industry Association of America states that flea market vendors sell memory chips and thumb drives stocked with 1,200 songs or more (the equivalent of 100 legitimate records) for as low as $30 each. "The unauthorized AB 2122 Page 2 sale of such items displaces multiple legitimate sales, thereby damaging the businesses of the many artists, song writers, record labels, retailers, and legal music distributors that call California home." 3)Prior Legislation . a) SB 830 (Wright), Statutes of 2010, expanded the definition of a recording to include memory cards, flash drives, hard-drives, or data storage devices. b) AB 64 (Cohn), Statutes of 2006, made possession or sale of at least 100, rather than 1,000, articles of audio recordings punishable as an alternate felony/misdemeanor. Analysis Prepared by : Geoff Long / APPR. / (916) 319-2081