America's six-strikes copyright system is a nightmare

A post on Slashdot by Dangerous_Minds links to a parade of horrors with the new "Copyright Alert System" — the voluntary six-strikes-and-you're-out copyright enforcement system that America's major ISPs have chosen to enact on behalf of the MPAA and the RIAA. It's trivial to hijack, clobbers small business owners who let people use their Internet access.

Most immediately, it also requires its victims to complete an online copyright re-education camp designed by the major record labels and studios, and as EFF's Corynne McSherry points out, this is a total clusterpoop, a way of ramming inaccurate copyright information into the nation's eyeballs. Unsurprisingly, the gross errors in the mandatory copyright reeducation materials would all improve the profitability of the entertainment industry if they were taken to heart by the public.

"Whenever you create something like a poem, a story or a song, you own it – and no one else can use it without your permission." Not so: thanks to the fair use doctrine, others can in fact use the works you create in a variety of ways. That's how we help ensure copyright fosters, rather than hinders, new creativity and innovation. Equally worrisome: the CCI site directs users to the Copyright Alliance to learn more about the history of copyright. The Copyright Alliance is hardly a neutral "resource"—it was a leader in the battle to pass SOPA and remains a staunch advocate of copyright maximalism. Finally, CCI is promising to partner with iKeepSafe to develop a copyright curriculum for California public schools. It will be called: "Be a Creator: the Value of Copyright." Based on what we've seen so far, that curriculum will do little to help kids understand the copyright balance. Instead, it is going to teach kids that creative works are "stuff" that can be owned and that that you must always check before using that "stuff."

Even better: the same people who've developed these "educational" materials are cued up to become part of the curriculum in California public schools. Better they should use EFF's much more balanced material.

The Copyright Propaganda Machine Gets a New Agent: Your ISP | Electronic Frontier Foundation