[Image Descriptions: A Twitter thread where Jason Scott tells you for the love of god please comment to the Copyright Office why mandated internet filtering would be a bad idea End I.D.]
Your pal Jason has a Friday Writing Assignment for you. I am sorry about that, but it’s about the future of the Internet, so I hope you understand what’s at stake here. It’s for what seems like a very boring committee, but this committee is about to make some very big decisions.
Sen. Tillis, who is owned by the content companies (he’s the newest “Senator From Disney”, if you want to google that) is pushing a range of legislation to change ownership rights. He is the legislative side of a push to completely change what you think of as “digital property”.
I don’t want to flood you with paragraphs about NOTICE AND STAYDOWN, Universal ContentID, and a bunch of massive killing blows to fair use, sharing, plus the corporate takeover of the public domain and culture, but, well, you can find plenty tracked here: https://techdirt.com
So, we’re getting to the assignment part. There’s a committee meeting and zoom call coming now, where the pros and cons of what we call Content ID will be discussed. It sounds boring, and I’m sure it is, but what it is, is taking the steps towards passing legislation.
But I want it clear what’s really going on here. There is a coordinated attempt to use laws, crappy AI, incredibly intense fines and threats of jailtime to ensure that a tiny minority of companies REALLY control what’s on the internet.
Here is the form for submitting your comments. Please read it carefully, and respond using their instructions. I will not guide you on the form of your response. It does not need to be long.
What a boring URL, right? That’s how this works. Bore them out, build up a case, say “Well, we asked The People, and they didn’t have much to say.” This is a nightmare landscape coming unless we speak up. Thanks. The deadline is February 8th, but please do it today.
