The Chat with Ned
A few days ago I tried to contact @ned concerning the two cases of abuse that sparked some attention: the copyrighted blockbuster movies posts and the child pornography issue.
For those who don't know who @ned is, Ned Scott is the CEO of Steemit Inc. Yesterday we had a private chat. Thanks @ned for taking some time to answer my (our) concerns.
Artwork by @steemitadventure, with permission of course.
First, concerning the copyright problem, @chainflix for example. Ned asked me if I was familiar with DMCA and safe harbors, then he refered me to the Wikipedia page about DMCA. I knew DMCA of course (disclaimers are common on many websites), but wasn't familiar with the safe harbors notion. He explained that safe harbors are a part of DMCA and that Steemit is protected, while the user uploading content is not. Later I looked up the safe harbors on Wikipedia, here's the excerpt:
DMCA Title II, the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act ("OCILLA"), creates a safe harbor for online service providers (OSPs, including ISPs) against copyright infringement liability, provided they meet specific requirements.OSPs must adhere to and qualify for certain prescribed safe harbor guidelines and promptly block access to alleged infringing material (or remove such material from their systems) when they receive notification of an infringement claim from a copyright holder or the copyright holder's agent.
Additionally, he underlined that Steemit isn't hosting those videos, but DTube is. I asked him if he would write a post about this so we can all learn about Steemit's position on the matter. He's CEO after all, so he's representing Steemit Inc's interests. He said we would consider it.
Second, concerning the child pornography issue, Ned said that they will not allow or host any illegal content (by US law) on Steemit.com, which means not allowing illegal content to be used by their image host and making sure it is not on their servers.
I wondered if Steemit was going to clean up the illegal images, but he seemed to be unaware of their existence in the first place! So I pasted him a link to one of the abusive posts, and he stated that their team is responding to this with the necessary due diligence and they will take action to stop any illegal content from running on their servers.
I felt that the community should know about Steemit's position on those matters. Given that Ned is very busy, I asked him if I could write about our conversation to bring some clarity to the Steemians. He agreed.
My Thoughts
To sum it up, Steemit Inc. is not responsible or liable to the content being posted, as long as it's not directly hosted by steemit.com or their servers (image host or other). So technically, it's OK to let accounts like @chainflix post whatever copyrighted content they want, since their videos are hosted externally on DTube, and therefore it's DTube's problem to deal with that. However, to me this remains a grey area, because such accounts reap rewards with monetary value for content they did not create. If the account posting copyrighted material and the service hosting it are liable, what about the users who upvote those posts? Are they liable too? Because when they upvote, users give them rewards (money) while knowingly (or unknowingly) participate in an illegal activity. When the police busts a brothel, they arrest the prostitutes and the customers, don't they?
I wasn't surprised that Ned was unaware of the child pornography posts. After all, it was a needle in a haystack (good thing it was). There's a ton of new posts every day, it's not obvious to pinpoint abusive posts. I was unaware of it myself until someone brought it up.
Good News
After I notified Ned about the abusing account, I rechecked that account later at night, I wanted to see if there's been any update on the situation. I'm thrilled to tell you that all the images from all the posts have been removed. Thank you Ned for acting swiftly and decisively. Also, that account is now at -8 reputation, thanks to all the downvotes from the community, therefore any future posts will be automatically invisible. Also, I hope Steemit has some mechanism to monitor and automatically delete any future images posted by that account.
That kind of cooperation makes Steemit great for us all.
There will always be a risk that child pornography (or other extreme things) may re-surface on Steemit with files (images/videos) being hosted outside of Steemit's servers. The big question is, will Steemit maintain their position of not taking action if the files are not hosted on their servers? If they don't intend to take action against copyrighted movie posts, child porn abusers would use the same loophole in the future. It's a worrying thought, but I think Steemit would do everything in their power to protect us from such abuse, as they have demonstrated.
So my friends, I think we're still at square one concerning the copyright problem. Steemit's non-interference policy doesn't ring well with me. How about you? I understand they may be busy to police the network, while only a handful of volunteering users are doing their best to keep things clean from spams and scams. I still think that Steemit should play a greater role in helping us in this task, as I mentioned in my post On Steem and Abuse.
We must always remain alert and act when we have to.
P.S. Some of you may dislike Ned or had disagreements with him in the past. But please keep the comments constructive and not start a flaming skirmish. Thanks.
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wow , im curious how you got Neds attention?
ahahaha!!!! :D
@drakos infected @ned with the Yunk virus.
It's slowly spreading across the platform. Soon Steemit will be VIRAL.
Your concern for the Steemit comunity has to be apreciated, @drakos. We need more people like you. Good job, upvoted. - #Padre
Glad the community responded to these offenders quickly and according to the laws of the land as well as the laws of our conscience.
I know all about this since I am a content creator in photography on other platforms. Media are stolen all the time.
What you as the creator need to do is file a dmca takedown notice any and every time you see the trouble if you do.
The take down notice is done by incident, not by platform. It is very quick and simple and works fast. DMCA just checks upload dates on the internet - first guy wins. They go to the HOST not the thief and get it taken down. Done in hours or days at most.
Search DMCA takedown and it's well covered.
You cannot complain if you are not the creator as you will not have the first date.
If you are the creator you can be checking daily or not worrying about it. I'm in the don't care group for the most part but you never know. If I saw something I would link to it and call it out and consider myself a success since someone stole from me.
Great post, I was concerned about similar copyright issues.
BAN EVERYONE!!!
You said nothing wrong here , and what is wrong will always be wrong , it's just a matter of time that people become aware of these situations and react upon them . It should not be tolerated on this platform
I do agree STINC shall play a greater role in fighting abuse, with tools. I wrote a comment to their most recent post to the community her.
Wondering how they removed/deleted the images, the images are not stored on the blockchain, but by some image hosting party. Were just the links destroyed, or did STIN als work with the image hoster to remove the image itself?
The videos (and maybe images in the future) are on an IPFS based storage (steemitimages is that IPFS, or simple traditional way of storage?). When on IPFS based storage system, is it possible to delete content? When not, how will unwanted content then deleted?
Also, when content needs to be removed, and the content itself or links cannot be destroyed (links can be removed, but they can easily be re-established) by authorities, is hiding feature sufficient? Keep in mind, the hiding feature is part of the frontend, busy.org does not hide as far as I know. Shall such hiding feature not become part of the backend, the blockchain and its APIs?
As you read from my questions, I certainly think STINC as the designer and developer of the Steem blockchain and
The links in the posts weren't destroyed, they remain on the blockchain, but the images themselves were deleted from steemit's image host, so the links are dead and won't show up any pictures. The images host isn't IPFS, it's an Amazon AWS.
I haven't looked into how IPFS works exactly, you can check their website for details about their protocol.
If I understand correctly the legislation quoted, I think DTube (just like YouTube) aren't required to do any ''taking down'' action before any copyright holder('s agent)'s claim comes in. All they need to do is to have the system in place in order to respond to such claim when and if it comes in.
Yes, DMCA takedowns happen after receiving complaints. However, when the original authors see that people are making money publicly via Steemit, I think this would complicate things and cause some lawsuits. MPAA are very notorious. I'm no legal expert, but I wonder how all this would affect the users who upvoted those posts.
Furthermore, there are some new accounts posting movies as well. So just like spammers and scammers are flourishing, this type of content might become even more popular, and turn the Steemit platform into a BIG gateway for piracy.
I think that in order to be a target by the MPAA, you probably need to do something big enough to get noticed. At the moment on Steemit, and with the anti-plagiarism culture that is the very essence of the platform, I believe it's gotta be hard to operate a significantly lucrative movie sharing scheme.
If people are ready to go to war against irrelevant spammers and to unite in strength in downvoting scammers, I guess the same decentralized solidarity against those who infringed copyrights will kick in response to those new accounts. Thus with the payouts to the posters & voters reduce to zero, it will discourage those who were thinking about making money one way, the other, or both.
But there are always those who don't believe in intellectual property rights who might argue there is nothing wrong with the situation in the first place.
The child porn stuff is a no-brainer. As far as the copyright material on dtube, I think it's really not the issue of either dtube or steemit. Especially since all of the videos are not "hosted" on a physical server.
It seems the only thing that could be done is for the copyrighted material being down voted into oblivion.
DTube uses IPFS (https://ipfs.io/). The files are hosted on a distributed p2p network. People running the nodes are responsible for the files they host. The owner of DTube has been notified by many users about this issue, but so far there hasn't been any action or intent to take them down.
I did give them a warning about some non-sexual pirated stuff. It sucks that folks can't play by a few healthy rules.
I feel like there should be moderation efforts on DTube to catch and delete illegal activity. Although there is no server and it's peer to peer, DTube could definitely get in some serious trouble and I don't want to see a great creation go down because of some Pedophiles.
Thanks so much of your help @drakos. Upvoted and followed. And will vote the witness page also.
Thanks a lot :)
Great to hear and great to have leaders with altruistic and morally sound intentions at their core.
Good to have great leader, but does not mean all members should shrink from their duty, which we have not,flagging will work if we all do our part
Good things and glad to see there is a proactive approach to this and even all of us as a group have the ability to keep such filth out and make steemit and keep steemit amazing.
Oh so good news....yes people will be still making moneyz for shity work they do....but hey....they do so in rl too :)
Ty for clarifying a few things. :)
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STOPYou are a star to get this done . Drakos for witness !!!
awsome
That is very interesting
Thank God Steemit.com hasn't got anything to do with it
I hope Dtube won't get screwed too hard
Thanks for posting
Good job @drakos ! High five!!! :D I've noticed (and commented, and warned...) another account as well (about child pornography) - I'll DM you with it, 'cause it's seriously so disturbing ... but it's also on -8 now, so we're good ;)
highfives @drakos and @ned
Another good post. And, another thought.
I am not happy with the main video hosing site censoring accounts that in no way violate any terms demonetizing, and or completely eliminating accounts based on their opinions ( yes I mean the one that rhymes with TooYube). People get a canned response that is not specific with no appeal process. Then if enough subscribers complain, the account is restored, again, with no explanation.
That said, beheading videos and 'how to' posts related to bombs and other way more questionable material is left unchecked.
I am really happy about Steemit pulling any hosted images of inocent victims off their servers. I will make sure heavy flags fly on posts that host them elseware, but we have to let people speak.
Great post, thanks for your work.
I'd like to think that Steemit users would down vote all child porn and the offenders would be negative reputation and voted out of sight.
As for the copyright, it can be so hard to know sometimes what is original work and what is being copied. I've read posts and not been sure, so not voted for them even though I've enjoyed the post. I don't post that my posts are original work, maybe I should!
I know that this post is an old one and I wish I had seen it sooner! I have serious doubts about Steemit being a Safe Harbor under DMCA, though. There are certain things they must comply with. I'm sure they have all the internal things about how to handle a DMCA under control, but one thing that they must have visible and clear on their website is : They must write, adopt and post a repeat infringer policy! Can you please point to me where this policy is? LOL!
Grumpycat has just flagged my post from yesterday about US Senate, H.R. 3945 which if passed will make it easier for photographers and other creatives to go after infringers in Small claims court! Keep up the good work! I'm trying to do my bit! I'm glad that the community downvoted the porn. I just wish they would also downvote copyright infringement.
Too late to Upvote, but here's a tip! instead.
grumpycat is a jerk
I have gathered that! He needs to go after someone his own size. LOL!
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