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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