The Senate is moving a bill forward that could impose fines of up to US$15,000 for people who share memes.
The Senate Judiciary Committee last week approved the “Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019,” which “creates a voluntary small claims board within the Copyright Office that will provide copyright owners with an alternative to the expensive process of bringing copyright claims, including infringement and misrepresentation …. in federal court,” according to the Copyright Alliance.
“This new board, called the Copyright Claims Board (CCB), would allow recovery in each case of up to $30,000 in damages total, with a cap of $15,000 in statutory damages per work infringed,” according to the alliance, an advocacy group for the copyright industry.
Check It Out: You Could be Fined up to $15,000 For Sharing Memes
And so everyone posts from outside the US and this law becomes moot. ?
This is one crazy law that will be going to court as soon as it is passed. There must be at least thousands of memes posted a day on the Internet from all over the world. Whole accounts are made up of just memes of every kind imaginable. Not just politics or controversial topics but everyday stuff and funny stuff. I agree with geoduck but am more concerned with companies then I am with politicians. I completely agree with Lee Dronick, there is no way they are putting this back in the bottle.
Otherwise, it will be like contraband: Hey, do you have some of those memes I could look at? or everyone hoards their memes on their computers like they are illegal. LOL
Crazy I tell you…
They are not going to put that genie back into the bottle.
It’s not just memes. Sharing a news article, sharing a photograph, either could get you in trouble. Suppose Politician X doesn’t like the picture you took and posted. He could claim that his image is his property, you get sued. This isn’t about memes. This is about restricting free speech. Restricting political speech.