Internet Archive Expresses Concerns Over Sweeping Copyright Reform Proposal

You may have heard that, in the waning days of 2020, controversial new copyright provisions were slipped into the end-of-year, must-pass COVID relief bill. Many commenters were troubled by this departure from the ordinary legislative process. Unfortunately, there are more controversial copyright revisions waiting in the wings.

Recently, Senator Thom Tillis released draft legislation which would substantially change the copyright landscape for the worse. It’s called the “Digital Copyright Act,” and our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have described it as disastrous. The proposed Digital Copyright Act would change the rules that govern the Internet in a lot of ways, including requiring automated content filtering that would reduce access to knowledge. While the proposal nods towards making the rules better for Internet users, the draft legislation is still far better for Big Content and Big Tech than it is for libraries, non-profits and regular people.

Even small changes to copyright rules can have substantial consequences for the internet information ecosystem. That is why it is so important that sweeping proposals like this one not be passed in the dead of night, but instead be subject to rigorous study and open comment by everyone. We have drafted a short comment on this proposal which you can review here.

8 thoughts on “Internet Archive Expresses Concerns Over Sweeping Copyright Reform Proposal

  1. Franklin

    I understand the concern about the sweeping of copyright Reform Proposal

    But all I can say is that since DMCA will change rules that govern the internet, and this might have some consequences for the internet information ecosystem the only answer to this That important of sweeping proposals like this cannot be passed just like that.. it will most definitely will affect big tech and big content but although the rule help internet user. Let’s just wait and see how everything plays out in the future

  2. Adam

    I find it nonsense that the IIPA (global copyright industry, MPA(A), RIAA, ESA) experiencing that it is impossible to police against piracy, and expect something different if intermediary platforms were to do the same job.

    Why is it impossible? Well, how do you make it “stay down”? This video explains why policing the internet is not possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-dRZ4uB1Mo
    -Humans are too slow to moderate at scale
    -Automated systems can easily be bypassed by using techniques like steganography, encryption, or teaching the algorithm the wrong information (for heuristic machine-learning algorithms), not to mentionen that some things that should be banned or not may require context, so false positives can occur.
    -Top-down moderation (nuking the whole thing) tends to take down things it shouldn’t

    Lobbying to bolster it is absolutely going to do more harm than good, what this does is essentially make it impossible for platforms to operate in this ecosystem legally. According to this torrentfreak article: https://torrentfreak.com/tech-giants-warn-us-of-hostile-copyright-environment-in-eu-and-russia-210202/ tech giants even describes it as a “hostile environment” to operate. The copyright industry expecting platforms to do that impossible job or get sued is the most idiotic idea ever made towards the internet, next to SOPA and ACTA.

    A lot of the copyright industry supporting this poison is mostly old publishers — the middleman between the customer and the worker. I watched this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB92J70Bmv8 and what they are is being incredibly desperate, because of new technology (can release your songs to the world, thanks to internet), record labels are obsolete (which is why artists are increasingly going indie), but are trying to continue doing business, that no artists and consumer are interested in. Other videos suggested they are exploiting their artists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7OZLFGEDiI Record labels wanted its control over music back.

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