RE: Why I removed all my posts!
Steemit should look to how YouTube and other hosting companies deal with copyright infringement. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here I think.
The copyright owner should make a complaint (for all we know @masteryoda may have obtained the requisite clearance) and then the material can be blocked until the matter is resolved (@masteryoda should be given the opportunity to refute breach of copyright claims).
Persistent offenders who receive numerous complaints from copyright owners should be put on a banned list.
Steemit Inc. has clearly attempted to provide for this in the Terms of Service:
20.Copyright Complaints
Steemit respects the intellectual property of others by not reading infringed content from the Steem blockchain. If you believe that your work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, you may notify Steemit’ s Designated Agent by contacting:
Please see 17 U.S.C. §512(c)(3) for the requirements of a proper notification. You should note that if you knowingly misrepresent in your notification that the material or activity is infringing, you may be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by Steemit or the alleged infringer, as the result of Steemit’s relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing.
I would hope (as a quasi stakeholder myself) that Steemit have sought the best legal advice available. Copyright infringement can become a major headache for a platform like this (I've worked in this field for over a decade). It shouldn't require community policing beyond blatant false attribution.
If we are reliant on the community to police copyright infringement we are pretty much screwed as that approach is not scalable.
How do you remove copyrighted material from a blockchain?
Is that even possible?
You don't. But you can remove it/ stop it from showing on the Steemit site (which is a view of the blockchain data).
You can actually post things like youtube videos and such. They encourage linking and embedding because they still get to run their ads and get ad revenue, and that is passed onto those artists who monetize. That does not apply to static photography though.
Sure, you could do that if you wished. But this is a different kettle of fish. There are people with videos online that would be livid if they found out someone was linking to their video in order to profit from it. When someone copies someone's video on YouTube, the original owner can file a complaint. If someone here embeds a YouTube video it might only result in 20 views, for example, and amount to nothing for the YouTube channel owner, but 20 upvotes from whales here could net that reposter thousands.
Why can't we simply face the fact that we are trying to make money off of others work because we think we can get away with it?
At the very least when embedding a video it would be nice to put a link to the channel, mention the channel's name or something. Very often people won't even do that and end up giving the impression that the video was created by the Steemit.com poster.
This is why we need to have some sort of best practices mentioned for people so that this site will be better than any social media site out there.
If the political will is there we can do both. Be HUGE and make a ton of money and disrupt the heck out of the internet AND do it in an ethical way that will put other troll-riddled sites to shame.
Nah, never mind, I'm too idealistic. Keep stealing others content, who am I kidding?
@doctorstrange - We hit the nesting limit I think. I have added extra info besides just linking the video. I have only shown one video per artist I have shown in most cases, and actually the one I MADE money on was the first one. I actually sent a message via youtube to that author telling him about this site and stating I wouldn't do anymore for awhile as I'd like to see him here doing it himself. Yet that was my single most profitable post and he has a lot of material. I didn't post any of it beyond the initial to mostly raise awareness. I am doing a HIDDEN GEMS music covers and such series (only one post so far) where I'd like to occasionally point out cool videos of musicians that have low viewers. I'm still trying to find a balance which I believe all of us are. I'm pretty familiar with youtube monetization since I have actually gone through the process before.
EDIT: I also stopped posting and worrying about money. If I make money cool. Usually I don't.
We DO know that he didn't get clearances. He already responded that he never contacted any of the original websites, YouTube channels or photographers.
I agree. Which is why we need to establish best practices ASAP as to what is going to be acceptable before everyone feels that "sharing" others content in order to make profit on it is the way things are done here. It's obviously going to be a huge problem going forward if there are a million users "creating" content to profit from by merely copy and pasting it.
Seriously, these sorts of issues need to be hammered out now so that the platform doesn't hit a wall it can't climb.
You can define it as a problem or you can be realistic about it, but not both. There will be a million users (if we're lucky) sharing content, just as there have been on every single social media site in the the history of the Internet. That's what people do. It will need to be addressed by copyright holders making takedown requests when they object (which isn't always), just as it is on every other web property.