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In even more terrifying internet news, long story short, there’s a big committee happening in the US Copyright Office to try and talk about whether they should expand Content ID to the entire internet, and they’re asking for public input.

So, tell them how much automated Content-ID-type systems suck and how Copyright enforcement needs to be relaxed not tightened.

Here’s the EFF Overview on this and why it’s so important, here’s the rules/guidelines for submitting your form (Pay special attention to the Statement of Interest Questions, because it’s those they’re asking about), and here is the form itself.

Transcription of Thread:

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.

Once again, here is an overview in an article explaining why this matters.

Here is an excerpt of that article below:

We want to make sure that the Copyright Office hears the real problems with technical approaches to infringement, especially automated filters, so that it understands the dangers of allowing robots to shape online expression. Automated filters are expensive, don’t work very well in many instances, and routinely suppress lawful expression. Facebook routinely removes classical musicians because of its filter. YouTube’s filter takes money from independent creators and gives them to giant corporations. Experts in copyright law talking about what counts as infringement find that video removed and can’t figure out how to respond. Twitch removes a channel owned by its parent company. And on and on.

Anyone can send the Copyright Office a comment through this form. The Copyright Office asks for the negative results of widespread use of filters, which are obvious: Filters can’t factor in context, so they routinely remove legal speech. They make it harder for independent creators who want to share their work without the aid of a multi-billion dollar corporation. They are expensive, so any service trying to compete with Facebook and YouTube is at an immediate disadvantage. It also asks if there are, in general, pertinent issues the Copyright Office should consider. It should instead consider that the interests of a few giant corporations should not outweigh the public’s interest in fostering creativity and competition. Having more money does not mean they are actually more important or even more affected by the use of filters.

Have you or a friend of yours ever had a YouTube or Twitter video taken down because a song was playing even in the background and a copyright bot caught it? Yeah. We don’t need more of that.

My advice is to pay attention to the parts I bolded above, and paraphrase them into a handful of sentences of your own for your comment. You know how when we wrote academic papers we all had to say the same shit our sources were saying, but in a way where it’s different enough to not flag? Put those skills to use here. Same thing, in different words. It only takes a few minutes.

Here is the comment form. You don’t have to be in the U.S.

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