BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    �



                                                                  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