On The C.A.S.E.

This is a call to action for authors, and friends of authors.

The C.A.S.E. bill has been reintroduced in the new Congress. The EFF doesn't like that... so perhaps you should like it.

C.A.S.E. is the acronym for Copyright Alternative in Small-claims Enforcement (act). It is also known as HR 2426 and SR 1273 and it brings together Hakeem Jeffries and Doug Collins; John Kennedy, Thom Tillis and Mazie Hirono.

If C.A.S.E. receives enough Congressional support to become law, it will mean that copyright owners can enforce their copyrights in small claims courts.

As matters stand today, if a copyright owner sends a DMCA notice to stop illegal exploitation of their copyrighted work online, the illegal copy may or may not be taken down, but the uploader has the option to file a "counter-notice" disputing the take down.  If a counter notice is filed, the illegal copy or link will be reinstated... forever... unless the copyright owner has $60,000 or more available to pursue a federal lawsuit in federal court.

If you would like to urge your own Senators and Representative to support C.A.S.E., the copyrightalliance has made it easy, as long as you can spare ten to twenty minutes of your day.

Click this link.
https://copyrightalliance.org/get-involved/add-your-voice/


This will take you to a copyrightalliance web page, where you can choose whether to write to your own Senators, or your Representative (you can do both, but separately).  You click their link, enter your address and zip code (which automatically identifies your own congresspersons).

Next, you are taken to a pre-written letter imploring your Congresspersons to co-sponsor and vote for the C.A.S.E. act.  You can simply send it, but that would be "astroturf" (not much more convincing that signing a petition... which is still much better than doing nothing at all), but you can also EDIT the letter to insert personalization, deploy synonyms, leave out some of the "as you know, Bob" info dumps, perhaps add a real anecdote from your own experience of being ripped off by pirates.

Thank you for considering the importance of supporting the C.A.S.E.


All the best,
Rowena Cherry