I am a huge fan of media critic/video essayist/YouTube creator Lindsay Ellis. If you want to know why, check out her YouTube channel or this really amazing speech she gave at the XOXO Festival about surviving bad faith internet attack mobs. I’ve always had this daydream that someday I could get her interested in something we work on at my employer Public Knowledge. That way I’d be able to meet her, we’d geek out about policy and geek culture stuff, and she would become this amazing spokesperson for one of our causes, like net neutrality.
Well, daydream still just a daydream, but turns out Lindsay Ellis is now front and center in a fight about mandatory copyright filtering, and how it actually impacts artists and creativity that highlights what we and others have warned about for years. It also flags the likely future problems for creators in Europe, since Article 17 of the 2019 EU Copyright Directive essentially requires copyright filters for compliance. It also illustrates the importance of fair use in encouraging the creation of new works and new businesses (Lindsay Ellis has grown her video essay business to where she employs 4 people).
To give the headline: copyright filters can’t identify fair use, and the refusal of platforms to include an actual appeal process capable of making fair use determinations. As a result, copyright filtering does not “protect artists.” It heavily favors one particular and narrow set of creators over a much larger, broader set of creators — because things like education are not recognized as “art” or “creation” by the major labors and lobbyists driving the debate.
I unpack all this below . . . .