Electronic Frontier Foundation: Imagine every post online came with a bounty of up to $150,000 paid to anyone who finds it violates opaque government rules—all out of the pocket of the platform. Smaller sites could be snuffed out, and big platforms would avoid crippling liability by aggressively blocking, taking down, and penalizing speech that even possibly violates these rules. In turn, users would self-censor, and opportunists would turn accusations into a profitable business.
2 comments:
My first reaction was just surprise. I had no idea that the laws surrounding copyright were so vague yet simultaneously so punishing. No matter the intention of the laws, it is clear that in practice they are supporting big businesses and industries while hurting the smaller individuals. This is not to say that I do not believe in copyright laws, just that I believe revisions are necessary, especially after having read this article. I think one of the biggest problems about this is how it is the smaller, newer artists who are in the greatest danger. With stakes this high, I would not be surprised if they felt seriously discouraged from producing new art. After all, products are bound to look or sound slightly similar from time to time, especially considering the great amount of media that already exists, but that does not mean it is intentional. By changing laws to limit statutory damages, people are encouraged to simply create without always having to look over their shoulder.
Censorship is often an interesting topic to read about. While I think that copyrights can protect people from their work being stolen, I know that they can also limit the ability for other creatives to take inspiration from each other. It’s hard to put anything out in the world with the chance of action being taken against you for unintentional similarities in work. While it’s important to have consequences for the infringement of copyrights, I agree that the current legislation enforces the rules with disproportionate punishments. We shouldn’t use copyright laws as a way to take down any works that reference others. Some of these works that are copyright claimed are using the source material to make a point or a commentary on the material. In the music industry it has been proven that there are only so many variations of the same tones that make up a song and to persecute all of the similar songs we would be left with very little to listen to.
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