Republican Bob Goodlatte (VA) has recently filed H.R 1695 — Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act of 2017.

The new law would make the Copyright Office its own separate entity and therefore would not have to fall under the Library of Congress and its mission statement to serve the public. Not unlike other departments, it would take away yet another barrier between the public good and the absolute corporate control over the copyright system.

The Copyright Office has been under the umbrella of the Library of Congress since its creation in 1897. The reason we have a copyright office is to allow temporary ownership of ideas in order to incentivize innovation but to also allow those ideas to be given back to the public once a reasonable price has been paid for the innovation.

Everyone agrees that our Copyright Office must be updated to handle the changing technologies of our times, but this bill is a terrible idea that must be abandoned.

Sign the petition: Stop selling us out to big business. Keep the Copyright Office in the Library of Congress.