Anti-Piracy Proposal Panned By Pinterest, Vimeo And Others 04/01/2022 – MediaPost

by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, Yesterday Companies including Pinterest, Etsy and Vimeo are urging lawmakers to reject an anti-piracy proposal that would effectively require web companies to use as-yet-undeveloped filtering tools.The proposal “would inject uncertainty” into online copyright law, while also posing a risk to users’ privacy and their ability to access information, the companies and other opponents say in a letter sent this week to lawmakers.The letter comes in response to the proposed “Strengthening Measures to Advance Rights Technologies (SMART) Copyright Act of 2022,” introduced earlier this month by Senators Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont).The Tillis-Leahy bill would task the Copyright Office with developing “technical measures” aimed at combatting piracy, and then require interactive companies to either use those technical measures or face potential multimillion-dollar copyright infringement lawsuits over material uploaded by users.advertisementadvertisementThat framework would significantly revise the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which currently protects web companies from infringement lawsuits over material posted by users, provided the companies take down the material on request.Groups representing content owners — including the Recording Industry Association of America and American Association of Publishers — have said they support the Tillis-Leahy bill.But Pinterest, Vimeo and other critics tell lawmakers the bill would “put an…
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