Fair Use Advocacy Letter

Andrew Leahey Ocean County Constituent Service 247 Main Street Toms River, New Jersey 08753 I am a constituent in your district, writing to you to request your assistance in the cause of copyright reform. The recent case of Jammie Thomas, a single mother found guilty of sharing twenty-four copywritten songs, and made to pay $222,000 worth of damages has spurred me to write you. From startto-finish, the entire copyright system is in dire need of reformation. • •

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The existing policy of expiration seventy years after the authors death was written with a reallive human author in mind, not an immortal corporation. Under the existing laws, virtually nothing enters in to the public domain, and there is no abandoned-works clause which would allow for copy-written material that has been neglected or discarded by its initial author to be utilized or built upon. There is no clear way to seek out the copyright holder in most cases, and thus large quantities of intellectual property is left on the metaphorical shelf. Existing policy is all-but-written by large corporations, such as Disney, and they are the only ones profiting from it.

Abraham Lincoln once wrote that we as a nation must live for all time, or die by suicide. He urged us that the threat would not come from a foreign nation or power, but from within. I cannot see any truer threat to our democracy than the ability of a corporation to buy legislation that would excessively fine or imprison our citizens for merely possessing a piece of copy-written material. When information becomes illegal, we cease to be free in every definition of the word. The War on Terror has fit the nations voters with horse-blinders. We have become narrow minded and base our votes on one or two issues. This, however, does not remove the moral obligation from you, our representative, to represent us and keep our best interest in mind. So my request is two-fold, I ask that you, Mr. Saxton, personally take up the cause of copyright reform by supporting the H.R. 1201, Freedom And Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act (FAIR USE Act). Secondly, I ask that you do not support the practice of allowing information-technology policies to be "gimmes", purchasable by the highest bidder. Sincerely,