The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was signed in 1998 to stop online
piracy and give websites a legal safe harbor. In 2026 it is still the
rulebook platforms use when they take speech down.

That rulebook is broken in a specific way.

A host that wants Safe Harbor protection has to move fast when a
copyright notice arrives. It does not have to prove the claim is true
first. Automated matching systems then sit on top of that law. On
YouTube, Content ID accounts for about 99.5 percent of copyright
actions — about 2.5 billion claims in 2025 — and more than 99 percent
of those claims are automated.

Most of those claims do not delete the video. They often take the
money. When the policy is a block, a mute, or a legal takedown, the
video is gone for the audience too. The speaker is hit. The viewers
are cut off. That is the full harm.

I am Anthony Packman. I broadcast as Real Time with Lawless. I am a
Florida archivist and independent creator. I have personally fought
more than 38 abusive copyright strikes and claims. I have lost
streams, archives, and years of work. This petition is bigger than my
channel. It is for every teacher, critic, journalist, musician, and
viewer who watched a copy vanish because a machine, or a bad-faith
notice, got there first.

The law already has a civil penalty for knowing false notices
(17 U.S.C. § 512(f)). In practice the bar is so high, and a lawsuit so
expensive, that a small creator almost never gets a remedy. Fair use
already exists (17 U.S.C. § 107). In practice it is a defense you
argue after the audience is gone. A counter-notice already exists.
In practice it requires your real name, home address, and a willingness
to be sued in federal court.

We are not asking Congress to legalize piracy. We are asking Congress
to stop treating accusation as proof.

We demand the DMCA Creator Protection Act of 2026:

1. Human review before a legal takedown or a channel strike.
   Automated fingerprinting may flag a match. It must not be allowed
   to delete speech or kill a channel with no human in the loop.
   A monetize-claim that leaves the video up is not the same event
   as a removal. The statute should treat them differently.

2. A real penalty for knowing false claims.
   Raise 17 U.S.C. § 512(f) so it is usable. A statutory floor of
   $1,000 per knowing material misrepresentation, plus costs, plus
   the right to cut off repeat abusers. Honest mistakes should not
   be treated the same as a notice filed to bury criticism.

3. Fair use on the form, not only in court.
   Before a removal of commentary, education, news, parody, or
   archival use, the uploader gets a window to raise fair use, and
   the claimant has to consider it. That is already Ninth Circuit
   case law (Lenz v. Universal, 2015). Make it national and make
   it run before the public copy disappears.

4. A public claims log.
   Platforms above a size threshold must publish, with personal
   addresses redacted: claimant identity or registered agent,
   date, outcome, time to restore, and whether the claim was
   disputed or withdrawn. Sunlight is how you find bounty-hunter
   patterns.

5. Restoration and lost-revenue repair when the claim fails.
   If a dispute or counter-notice succeeds, the copy goes back.
   Redirected ad money from the wrongful period goes back to the
   creator. The audience is not a rounding error.

Named cases, not composites:
  Lenz v. Universal (2015) — a toddler dancing to Prince.
  Online Policy Group v. Diebold (2004) — DMCA notices used to
  bury leaked emails about voting-machine security. Diebold lost
  under § 512(f).
  YouTube Copyright Transparency Report (2025) — about 8.7 million
  Content ID claims were successfully disputed in one year on one
  platform. Those claims did not survive a challenge. Each video
  had viewers.

Sign this petition. Share it. Tell Congress the 1998 bargain was
built for a smaller internet, and the people who live on this one
are done being the collateral.

#DMCAReform2026 #CreatorProtectionAct #DMCA #TakeDown