Creativity & Innovation
Keep Link Taxes Out of the Omnibus
In 2020, two copyright bills were added to the end-of-the-year spending package. That bill was what’s known as “must-pass” legislation—i.e. something that is considered vitally important and must become law in order to keep the country functioning. One was the unconstitutional CASE Act. The other was a felony streaming bill that had never had a public hearing. In fact, the text of that bill wasn’t public until it appeared buried in the middle nearly 6,000-page omnibus. Before that happens again, tell Congress not to let copyright creep into must-pass legislation.
Bills like the 2020 omnibus are only supposed to include proposals that are ready to become law. That is, proposed legislation that has had ample hearings, has had the kinks worked out, and is broadly accepted by everyone. We need Congress to know that changes to copyright do not meet that criteria.
We are determined to stop what happened in 2020 from happening in 2022. A bill which would create a link tax, impacting the ability of users to see and share information online, has no place in the end-of-year omnibus.
The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), sold as a way to give journalism more weapons against Big Tech, would create link taxes and devastate readers’ ability to trace back information to its source online and do fact-checking. It would also make journalism even more dependent on revenue from Google and Facebook than they already are, which is not what journalists want.
Tell Congress to keep the JCPA out of this year’s must-pass legislation.
We won!
The link tax is not in ANY year-end packages. Thank you for your support!
