A Word on Steemit and DMCA 512 Takedowns --some food for thought.
I wanted to take a moment to post about DCMA takedowns and their potential effect on steem, steemit and those individuals hosting nodes. I've been doing a little research on this, as I was inspired by @piedpiper recently to look into creating a service for victims of copyright infringement and indentity theft to file DMCA takedowns.
As many of you are aware, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act provides a "takedown" procedure, whereby the owner of copyrighted material can serve an official notice on an ISP or other data host about copyright infringement. This was established in section 512 the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act.
What many of you might not be aware of is that this provision was not put in the law to protect copyright holders. As you can probably guess from the name, it was put in the law to protect data hosts and ISP's. In exchange for their expeditious compliance with s512 notices, they were given what amounts to qualified immunity from civil liability and criminal prosecution for copyrighted material that they reproduced or distributed without authorization.
Steem and steemit, however, is in a curious position with regards to this act. Because material is stored on the blockchain, it is not possible to them to fully comply with a s512 takedown.
This isn't a well-explored area of the law, but the net effect of this could not only be civil liability for steem itself, but also for anyone with a node that broadcasts the chain.
Incidentally, lest this be seen as piling on the recent arguments about copyright here on the site, I don't think anything comes even close to potentially provoking a lawsuit.
But what happens when people realize that this is a perfect venue for a torrent index.. even though nothing has yet come close, the format here is a dream come true for people looking to distribute copyrighted music and movies. Even flagging such material would accomplish nothing, as the info would remain on the chain, even if it was invisible here.
The Power of steemit.com:)
No rules to what the steemers post no laws stopping anything period!
i kinda feel like you missed the point
I did not. No point of fear mongering trying to have people afraid to use any material as they choose and I directly stated without sugar coating writing all this unnecessary words by simply saying no laws can stop anything on steemit period!
but yeah they can. thats kind of my point... being "immune" from 512 takedowns doesnt mean steem can't be hurt by the law, it just means that they don't get as much protection as other entities.
hey what about snuff films with kids etc, there has to be a limit no ?
MOVE OFFSHORE. IF YOU WANT TO DECENTRALIZE THEN DON'T BE IN THE USA!
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Also, to a limited extent, i agree about the USA being hostile to decentralization... that said, there are many many cases where the US has pursued people and organizations offshore... the 2011 online poker thing is a great example.
1..that if trump wins, you might want want to stay away for the next 4 years.
2..The DBZ vegeta vs 17, powderburn "now you know" video.
3..its a tie between " something of such a kind and such importance that it ought to be asserted and defended to the death, even if the whole world had not only to be thrown into strife and confusion, but actually to return to total chaos and be reduced to nothingness.” martin luther, the bondage of will and
"Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.” " HST
4..Never they never make any money
5..None. except i like to make myself seem deep by quoting the bondage of will
6.. adderall
7.. Not eat? also, adderall.
8.. tie between your mom and my dad
9.. Nazis invented fanta.
10.. tie between greenday and TMBG
Great insight. I agree that civil liability is a possibility for node operators, etc., though I can think of some defenses that might prevail. Even so, the system seems to be censorship resistant overall since I imagine it would be difficult for any single court to obtain jurisdiction over a sufficient number of witnesses to force a fork, and it one did, Steem holders could instantly elect new witnesses before the fork occurred.
It's a fascinating topic.
I actually think this issue is going to be the first big crisis for steem, if it makes it past the near future. Because this is an absolutely perfect platform to post and monetize torrent links. kickass just went down, and TPB nodes are getting pulled as fast as they can put them up.
There is no way to really keep torrent links off the chain (and even if there were, im not sure a lot of ppl would be cool with it here) and The people looking to kill these torrent sites are both well funded and relentless.
The first true test of blockchain censorship resistance. It will be fun to watch regardless of the outcome.
It's easy enough for those looking to kill torrent links to require Steemit to do so, and I'm sure that Steemit would readily comply by refusing to display the link on its site if ordered. But, this of course doesn't remove it from the blockchain.
Which raises an interesting issue. Even ignoring blockchains for a minute, can those who are looking to kill torrent links actually force you or me to delete the link from our personal computer even though we may not be using it and even though we may not be sharing it with others? Suppose that I had an ordinary database that includes links to torrent within it, I didn't display the content of that database on a website or otherwise make it public and I didn't make use of the content (link) myself. Could the industry force me to delete this information from my computer nonetheless?
I'm not so sure. They can certainly prevent me from advertising it or making it available to others or from using it myself, but I'm not sure that they can force me to destroy info on my personal computer's database provided that I'm not using it illegally. And I don't think its very existence makes it illegal. There would be First Amendment and other issues with taking that position.
With that background, consider that blockchains are simply PUBLIC databases that are censorship resistant. Can courts force nodes to remove info form the blockchain? Court's can require that which is effectively impossible, so that's unlikely. Can they then hold a node operator liable for something that he/she can't control? After all, he/she didn't add the link to the blockchain, the public did, and he/she had absolutely no way to prevent it. Again, I don't think courts can hold people liable for something they didn't do and can't control.
It seems to me that the only likely remedy available to a court is to order sites like Steemit not do display certain content from the blockchain. Thus, Steemit could and would comply with a takedown notice. But the data would remain in the database and...that may be legally okay for the same reason that it may be okay for such data to reside on my personal database unused.
Of course hackers will create websites or separate software (blockchain explorers) that can read all content on the database regardless of what Steemit or other public-facing UIs choose to display, but the remedy for the industry is then to pursue those hackers directly (just like they do now) rather than pursuing node operators who are powerless to prevent it.
Regardless, it's going to be interesting to see this play out.