Also, just so I’m clear. I understand why it’s a bad idea to hold website owners legally liable for the content posters put on it. But I would think that separation ends when the owners actually start paying the criminals.
Very good point, and not one I had considered. However, doesn’t the asymmetry extend the other direction. If successful, a creator’s content (especially if they choose not to monetize via YouTube) can be posted by multiple scammers, requiring multiple and continuous takedown notices, each of which would require a substantial investment.
Again, I can’t see how we don’t hit the fundamental barrier that in a free system, we’re at the mercy of algorithms that are going to get it wrong some of the time.
Although now that I think about it, we have no idea of their current success rate. Maybe it’s already at 99.99%, we just fail to hear scammers complaining. Or maybe it’s 80% and this sort of thing isn’t common.
So as long as the website owner gets 100% of the revenue from the stolen content, it’s okay??
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If I post a copyrighted picture here for my amusement without compensation, holding Boing Boing liable for the infringement is a very bad idea. This is part of the madness the EU is trying to implement presently to the devastation of the open internet. Creators won’t benefit; massive corporations will, but they’re pretending it’s for the creators like they always do when trying to slime their way into furthering their oligopoly.
You can safely bet that if users are posting numerous pieces of uncredited stolen content from a creator - as in the case where the slimeballs at FunnyJunk ripped off Matthew Inman - they’re not actually independent users, they’re site employees using sock puppets.
[Edited for grammar.]
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I quite agree. The problem is like so much of the digital world, there’s no limits imposed by physical reality. If you allow “anything” (which you usually want), then someone will use it for “everything”, which is disastrous.
The “this is why we can’t have nice things” is multiplied 1,000 times in the digital world, and I honestly don’t see how we organize society around a reality in which any necessary flexibility (and flexibility is always necessary) will be weaponized against us.
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I don’t know either. I only know that giving oligopolies more arbitrary leverage is not the solution and will make things even worse. I do think part of the solution is resurrecting the idea of antitrust enforcement, because ultimately we can never solve these problems if we continue to slide unchecked into our corporate feudal future.
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