Katharine Trendacosta: The US DMCA, Upload Filters, SOPA-PIPA, Fanfiction, & Platform Competition

Katharine Trendacosta is Associate Director of Policy and Activism at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Her areas of expertise are competition, broadband access, intellectual property, net neutrality, fair use, free speech online, and intermediary liability. She is the former managing editor of science fiction and science website io9, and spent many years writing about technology policy and pop culture for various publications. Katharine notably talks about the good and the bad of the DMCA and the issues surrounding upload filters. She reflects on why the SOPA-PIPA debate mattered and how the underlying issues still linger. Katharine recalls how fanfiction sparked her interest in copyright and shares her hopes to see more smaller platforms pop-up as alternative avenues for creators and users.

📌Time Stamp
⏲️[00:00] Intro
⏲️[02:14] Revisiting the US DMCA after 20 years, looking at Sections 512 and 1201 on limited liability and anti-circumvention
⏲️[10:17] The detrimental impact of upload filters
⏲️[19:27] Upload filters’ anti-competitive nature
⏲️[23:39] Big Content & Big Tech
⏲️[28:45] Reminding politicians of the SOPA/PIPA debacle
⏲️[37:40] Hitting the ‘Wall’
⏲️[40:47] Final thoughts

📌 Relevant Links
☑️Unfiltered: How YouTube’s ‘Content ID’ Helps Shape What We See Online (https://www.eff.org/wp/unfiltered-how-youtubes-content-id-discourages-fair-use-and-dictates-what-we-see-online)
☑️Robots Have No Place Filtering Creative Content, EFF Tells U.S. Copyright Office (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/robots-have-no-place-filtering-creative-content-eff-tells-us-copyright-office)
☑️It’s Copyright Week 2022: Ten Years Later, How Has SOPA/PIPA Shaped Online Copyright Enforcement? (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/01/its-copyright-week-2022-ten-years-later-how-has-sopapipa-shaped-online-copyright)
☑️When It Comes to Antitrust, It’s All Connected (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/when-it-comes-antitrust-its-all-connected)

📌Guest of this Episode
🎙️Katharine Trendacosta
Associate Director of Policy and Activism at Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://twitter.com/k_trendacosta
https://www.eff.org