Ever thought about how messed up it is from a harm vs benefit perspective that copyright infringement is more heavily moderated/enforced than, say, hate speech and harassment? I was reminded of this by re-listening to this @ThisAmerLife episode. [Thread🧵] thisamericanlife.org/670/beware-the…
The second act is the story of Lenny Pozner, the father of a Sandy Hook victim, who was harassed, threatened, and stalked by Alex Jones fueled conspiracy theorists accusing him of being a "crisis actor." And one tactic was making cruel memes out of photographs of his son. 
And after trying to report content and get things taken down for lies and harassment, he finally realized that his best course of action was reporting copyright violations since he owned the photographs which were e.g. used in a YouTube video.
And copyright as a strategy works, too. Platforms take content down for copyright violations. But -
"There was a lot of stuff he couldn't invoke copyright law for, like the death threats and harassment. That was much harder to get taken down."
"There was a lot of stuff he couldn't invoke copyright law for, like the death threats and harassment. That was much harder to get taken down."
I've been thinking lately about how copyright can be weaponized (e.g., inappropriate takedown requests as a form of trolling), but it's also ridiculous how sometimes copyright is the ONLY available weapon when you really need one, but it shouldn't HAVE to be used this way.
Anyway, there's a lot of reasons why it's the case that copyright is so heavily enforced (e.g., The Law and also Money) but it sure is ridiculous that a grieving father has to pretend to have been harmed by COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT instead of soul-sucking, evil harassment.
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