RE: 🚩Steemcleaners ABUSE or MALFUNCTION? Honest People are getting Flagged Unfairly - CENSORSHIP under the guise of anti-spam? - Are YOU supporting Steemcleaners by upvoting? Perhaps you should reconsider. Proof inside. WHALES PLEASE HELP!! 🚩
I think largely the problem lies in people's lack of understanding of what is legal and what is not.
You may very well credit the artist or whatever, and claim it isn't your work, but unless it's under the creative commons license that specifically allows for distribution manipulation and such commercially, then it's illegal. Anything put on steemit is considered commercial because there is a monetary potential behind it, which makes it very different from simply sharing on your Facebook feed.
This is the problem we are battling with in Steemit and could very well be its downfall when business minded lawyers catch on to it (as they are already doing in many corners of the web), hunting down copyright, quickly running to the original owner showing them how they can provide a service, and then sue the crap out of the site.
We have to be very careful and vigilant, and sure some might be flagged by mistake, Cheetah itself isn't a perfect bot, but I'd rather some mistakes than just letting things go free reign until the website falls apart.
For anybody reading, there is an easy way to ensure your images and/or texts are free to copy around commercially by using Google
Just go to the 'advanced search' and go to the bottom
https://www.google.com/advanced_image_search
Where you can see 'usage rights'
This gives you much more results than, say, Pixabay. Alternatively, ask the original author/artist etc, as I have done a few times. They're usually happy to be asked.
Thanks for the thorough reply and tips!
I can't say I agree with everything though. Yes, you are right that there are laws against plagiarism and for copyright, however the Steemit website is not responsible for any of the content, as it is all stored on the public STEEM blockchain. Steemit is merely a transmitter, in the same way that your e-mail client is not responsible for the contents of your e-mails, and like how your ISP is not responsible for the content on the WWW.
If there are any copyright claims and lawsuits, these ought to be filed against those people who violated the copyright to begin with on a peer-to-peer basis?
Secondly, many of the above mentioned cases do not involve any copy/pasting at all. A fair deal of flags have been handed out to people for posting referral links, ranging from Genesis mining to Bitconnect, under the guise of fighting scams. Ironically, Steemit too offers money for signing up, and is often called a scam or ponzi scheme, so it's rather hypocritical to censor other projects without proof. Pointing out that somebody can pick up free tokens somewhere should be allowed - I personally searched on Steemit at one point for new places where I could get some more free crypto, I even compiled it all into a list and posted it on my feed and a bunch of people found it really handy. There are many people like me. Why are we being disallowed to even talk about these projects, or share links with eachother?
Another group of people are targetted because they make the move from other social media platforms. They are now sometimes forced to do a sort of digital Know-Your-Customer procedure, often being required to post a photograph (or even a video, I saw people call out for !!) and sacrificing RL privacy in the process. Personally I am of the belief that one is innocent until proven guilty, and the burden of proof lies with the accuser and not the accused.