December 4, 2018

4:16 pm

Today, as promised, has been a super busy day! After our meeting with key staff members from Collins' and Jeffries' offices, we moved over to the Senate side. 

Our first meeting was with Senator Whitehouse's and Senator Sullivan's offices. Since we had two meetings at the same time the group split up to make sure we were able to meet with both. We have met with both offices multiple times and wanted to give them an update. We shared why this bill is so important to photographers and the large beneficial impact the bill can have for the professional! Both meetings went well and ended on great notes and we hope that both Senator Whitehouse and Senator Sullivan will be supporters of the CASE act. 

Next, the entire group met with Senator Durbin. Our group has met with this office before and have a great working relationship with them. This was a great conversation and they look forward to working on copyright issues in the upcoming Congress. 

Once we left this office the group split up once again. Half of us met with Senator Cotton's office and the other half met with Senator Inhofe's office. This was our first time meeting with these offices as well. Neither Senator is on the Senate Judiciary where our bill would reside but both offices are heavily invested in property rights! This is important because copyright is a property right since it can be passed down from person to person like a physical item. These meetings went well and we were able to discuss many of the details of the CASE act. Even though our bill won’t be introduced on the Senate side until next year both offices showed great interest and we hope we continue to work with them as time goes on. 

We are now heading into Senator Leahy’s office to give him updates on the CASE act and to have the opportunity to have a conversation with many of our photographers and creative artists who are a part of the group. This is a great time for his office to hear from the people the bill will directly impact and why they support it! 

Like promised this has been a busy trip in DC! 

9:28 am

Good Morning PPA! Your advocacy team is back on the Hill and have a lot of important meetings lined up! This is only possible since we have all the members of the Visual Artist Coalition with us. As a reminder, the Visual Artist Coalition is a group of 8 associations that work with PPA on Copyright Small Claims and fighting for your rights!

We'll start the day by meeting with key staff members from Rep Jeffries and Rep Collins. This meeting is to review the bill as a whole and help see what the best course of action will be for the upcoming congressional year. This is especially important because Collins will be the Ranking Member for the Judiciary Committee and Jeffries will be the Caucus Chair for the new Congressional year.

Like we said we have plenty of meetings today so stay tuned and we will keep you updated!

December 3, 2018

10:00 am

Your PPA Advocacy Team is once again off to D.C! This will be the last trip for this year and the last trip before this congressional session comes to an end on December 31^st. This means a few things:

1. This end-of-the-year meeting is important to ensure that we will have the continued support of our current co-sponsors going into next year, and also allows us to prepare for the upcoming congressional session.
    
2. Since the congressional term is ending, that means our small-claims bill will need to be reintroduced next year because congressional sessions last 2 years. If a bill is not passed by both the House and the Senate in that 2-year period, the bill has to be reintroduced at the start of the next congressional session and go through the process again. We know this is frustrating, but we have come a long way and are sure that we will get even further during the next congressional session.
    
3. Since this is the last trip of the year, that also means it’s time for our Annual Summit with our Visual Artists Coalition members. The Visual Artists Coalition is comprised of about 9 creative associations that are all working on getting small claims passed. We hold these end-of-the-year meetings to help lay out a game plan for the upcoming year and make sure we are the most effective we can be!

We have a lot going on with this trip and there will be plenty of updates, so make sure you stay tuned!