So it happened. A new bill was passed that pretends to protect creators’ rights but actually serves just about anybody but the creators. Needless to say this kind of stuff makes me angry.
The people who peddled the bill seem to have learrned all they know about the internet between 1998 and 2003. They’ve heard of YouTube, but the way they talk about it, they don’t seem to be able to tell it from Napster. They want to make it sound as if it’s really just about the YouTubes of the world — but platforms that actually help creators get their stuff seen or heard, like Tapastic, Line Webtoons, Patreon or Bandcamp, will also probably have to deal with it. This will most likely make things pretty difficult for any artist who isn’t in the rare position that the traditional system actually worked for them, with its gatekeepers and publishing contracts and lots of uncreative people making money left and right.
My main hope lies in the fact that the people who made the bill are apparently very uncreative and unimaginative. They already said that automatted upload filters are the only way they can think of that can make this bill work. I’m hoping that the big content platforms will prove more creative than that and find better ways. And if they don’t, it’s up to us creators.
