As the copyright small claims provision, the CASE Act, continues to acquire congressional sponsors—96 House Members and 14 Senators to date—the EFF is amping up the scare-tactics with blunt messages asking the average internet user if they could afford a $30,000 fine for copyright infringement. Clearly, the EFF expects this strategy to work because they think people are not smart enough ...
“We are all authors now.” This has long been a talking point of anti-copyright organizations. I have credited it to Gigi Sohn, co-founder and former director of Public Knowledge because she kept tweeting it during House Judiciary Committee hearings on building copyright consensus in May 2013; but I don’t really know who said it first. I only know that it’s ...
After the CASE Act passed the Senate Judiciary Committee* on Thursday last week, the critics hit “Publish” on the blogs they had written with the intent to scare users—doubling down on the narrative that the Copyright Claims Board (CCB) for small claims will lead to a whirlwind of infringement judgments against ordinary and innocent users. I and others have explained ...
Now that the bill creating a small claim provision for independent authors of works is making progress in Congress, EFF has pivoted to its standard late-stage strategy whenever they try to kill legislation: the dissemination of scare-mongering bullshit. I do not mean that I disagree with them. There are not two sides to the story they are telling or considerations ...
From the Techdirt Sycophants Department In his post of May 28, Mike Masnick dutifully opened his hymnal and joined the chorus in a rendition of “How to Criticize the CASE Act,” lending his bel canto to the refrain that the new law would create a “copyright trolling court.” As explained here and here, this is an inscrutable criticism because the ...
