Tell the Senate: A Filter Mandate Would Devastate Internet Creators

We, the undersigned, are internet creators. We make and share all sorts of work online: music, videos, livestreams, criticism, educational materials—everything you can imagine and some you cannot. For some of us, the Internet has allowed us to be independent artists in a way the traditional media landscape, with its homogenous gatekeepers, never would have.

We are writing to voice our concerns over the Strengthening Measures to Advance Rights Technologies Copyright Act.

This bill would cause us, and the creative ecosystem, a lot of harm. As it is, we are constantly fighting copyright enforcement mechanisms to get our legal expression online. And we fight constantly to keep it online. And we fight against major corporations for all of it.

This bill would make it extremely easy for filter mandates to be applied everywhere online, from the internet service providers that we rely on to access the web to the platforms that host our content.

That would be disastrous. It is already hard enough to navigate the world of voluntary filters used by the biggest tech companies—layering more and more filters on top of each other would restrict speech excessively.

Filters have proven terrible at telling the difference between lawful expression and infringement. Even beyond the context-heavy issue of fair use—which helps keep copyright law from violating the First Amendment—filters cannot tell the difference between wholesale legal uses.

For example, if a classical musician wants to upload a video of themselves playing a piece that is in the public domain, but someone else has already played that piece and claimed copyright in their own performance of it, a filter will prevent the new video from being uploaded. Because two people on the same instruments playing the same music can sound eerily similar.

This would apply to anyone doing commentary, remixing and transforming art, sharing memes, and so on. It would hurt people livestreaming, since they may not have control over what is in the background of their videos—as in cases where it appeared that a police department was using music to prevent video documentation from being shared online.

We often hear from members of Congress that they support small business owners and artists. We cannot have a robust creative culture if a censorship regime is built into the services small and independent creators rely on.

The pandemic has made being able to share art online even more critical to its survival. If the Strengthening Measures to Advance Rights Technologies Copyright Act had been law over the last few years, we would have been crippled in our ability to make and share our work. We urge you to put this bill aside and not propose similar ideas in the future.