When you stop getting paid at your job you quit working. When someone can steal your stuff and continue stealing it with no consequences, then you are not going to keep making more stuff. And when your work is stolen it’s hard to get paid for it. Everyone can understand these simple principles. Senate Bill 3804 – “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” makes it more difficult for someone to steal the work created by writers, filmmakers, and visual artists. Better protection will help the proliferation of more work.
There is little doubt that the internet has made copyright infringement very easy. People can easily copy text, music, video, and images that are the products of other people’s labor. But just because it is easy to take something does not make it legal.
People need to respect the ownership rights of the writers, musicians, filmmakers, and visual artists. One way is to have better copyright enforcement. Senate Bill 3804 helps the Attorney General protect those rights by giving him tools take action against websites that are “dedicated to infringing activities.” This will require people to think about whether or not they own the rights to what they post on their websites.
I’d like to encourage you to contact your Senators and Congressperson and ask them to support this critical law.
