We are on a blockchain.
Things posted on Steem are basically permanent. Things can be hidden behind a smokescreen or made difficult to access.
But if you post anything, whether it be some racy, taboo subject, or threats, or you plagiarize something, it will be on the Steem blockchain. It's public. And permanent.
This means that Steem is not YouTube.
Source: Fair use logos and Pixbay.com Public domain.
If you do something on YouTube that violates their terms of use, your video will be removed. If your audio is violating a copyright, then the audio will be muted.
The same thing happens with Google's search engines. Pirated and illegal content is often removed from search results.
This is due to takedown notices
Major media publishers and music studios have the resources to police the web. We joked 20 or more years ago about the Internet police on the Information Superhighway.
The police are here! They police content "sharing" in which people upload exact copies of copyrighted material.
So, too, on Steem. If there are unlicensed pictures and plagiarized stories on Steem, the police will come knock on our door. The content owners will start to sit up and pay attention to Steem in a negative way if they see their intellectual property here.
But Takedown notices cannot work on Steem. Yay! Right?
The blockchain cannot lie. Once posted, the content will stay in the database, in the cloud, on the blockchain. So in effect, any illegal content that is posted to Steem will never be able to be removed.
That means we could be in trouble.
If a takedown notice cannot be served to any of the operators, and there is no "[email protected]" to write to, how will the publishers treat it? Will they:
- Get an account on Steem to downvote/flag the content they don't like?
- Sue Steemit, Inc. and its founders?
- Sue the anonymous Steemian who posted the offending content?
- Sue our upstream providers and server hosting companies?
- Sue all witnesses?
We definitely need some kind of liaison for the media to contact. Do we have a media or legal point of contact for copyright and licensing problems?
I found out that Steemit, Inc. does have such a contact. It's on the Terms of Service (TOS) for steemit.com:
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.
Furthermore, the TOS also says that users "will not"
17.1.2. Use our Services to pay for, support or otherwise engage in any illegal activities, including, but not limited to illegal gambling, fraud, money- laundering, or terrorist activities.
(I would say that copyright infringement should be added to 17.1.2, as it is a common illegal activity that @cheetah and @steemcleaners see everyday.)
However, this TOS only helps out Steemit, Inc. The information that can be operationally hidden on steemit.com is viewable using other technical means.
A court may not find that this is sufficient. In fact, just hiding the content on Steemit.com may not be sufficient for certain types of legal issues. I am thinking about certain decency laws, hate speech laws, religious freedom laws, domestic abuse laws, espionage laws, and prohibited speech laws that are found in numerous countries around the world.
But the designers of the Steem blockchain knew of this
The people who developed Steem knew or should have known the potential for abusing a blockchain. Anyone with a sufficiently anonymous account and criminal mischief in mind can publish things that cannot be unpublished.
For now, the blockchain is not really able to hold images and videos. This means that all potentially disgusting or illegal photos and videos are being stored on external hosts. In other words, the text is in the blockchain, while the images are separate. A takedown notice for media content can be carried out.
Whew!
So what we need to consider is any offending text that is in the blockchain. Right now, @cheetah bot is doing a pretty good job at finding offending web-accessible textual plagiarism. It doesn't cover other types of offending content.
This post of mine is just a bit of an explainer. Steemians are putting in place ideas to keep the junk off the system. I'd like to help in a particular way.
Last week, I began a plan to offer fellow Steemians a way to post stock images on Steem, legally, and with a bonus:
I would like to help out the Steem Photographers and Artists. These men and women have got some great and wonderful original content. So I want to see if Steem Photographers would be interested in making more Steem with Stock Photos and Images? There is a sign-up bonus for artists!
The plan is to have a Stock Photos website and a bot to find non-free images. Bloggers and photographers, please check it out!