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

Posted by msmash on Thursday February 15, 2018 @08:13AM from the steering-clear dept.

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.

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Look at YouTube DCMA takedowns by toejam13 · 2018-02-15 08:33 · Score: 5, Insightful

I assume that such filters will be computer generated with little to no human review. The article specially mentions ContentID. Given the number of bogus DCMA takedowns that Yahoo receives each day due to these substandard checks, I don't see this being much better.
This could cause a stifling effect upon fair use.