EFF Urges US Copyright Office To Reject Proactive 'Piracy' Filters (torrentfreak.com)

TorrentFreak: As entertainment companies and Internet services spar over the boundaries of copyright law, the EFF is urging the US Copyright Office to keep "copyright's safe harbors safe." In a petition just filed with the office, the EFF warns that innovation will be stymied if Congress goes ahead with a plan to introduce proactive 'piracy' filters at the expense of the DMCA's current safe harbor provisions. [...] "Major media and entertainment companies and their surrogates want Congress to replace today's DMCA with a new law that would require websites and Internet services to use automated filtering to enforce copyrights. "Systems like these, no matter how sophisticated, cannot accurately determine the copyright status of a work, nor whether a use is licensed, a fair use, or otherwise non-infringing. Simply put, automated filters censor lawful and important speech," the EFF warns.

Comments

Seems to me that this is a bit of overreach

[H3lldr0p]

And would be government censorship.

Now as much as the crowd here likes to shout that word at the drop of a hat, we're looking a the real deal this time. At the very least this easily fits into the idea of prior restraint. You are asking for the government to deny access to part of a communication system based on notion of what you think is going on in commercial terms. There's no overriding government secrets to enforce, no defense materials at stake. Purely commercial.

That right there is more than enough to drive a stake through its heart if the Copyright office had any sense at all.