I am a fairly new member here on Steemit (I joined in September 2016) but I have been around a bit. Recently a friend of mine posted an article asking if some articles should be considered spam or not. I looked at the article then followed up with checking out the articles in question. These articles were posted one after the other (about 12 in an hour or two) and all of them were stolen content. The author had commented on that friend’s article stating the content (magazines in this case) was freely available, just click the downloads category for more proof.
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I engaged the conversation and brought up that these articles were probably not spam but they certainly linked to illegal downloads. This concerned me, quite a bit for a few reasons.
First, I am concerned as a content creator myself. I am working diligently to raise funds to relaunch my gaming magazine (Retro Gaming Magazine). Anyone that has attempted to do a magazine will be able to tell you it is not cheap. There is a lot of money involved and a lot of time invested in each issue. Seeing the hard work of others being made freely available like this is a concern for me on a personal and a professional level.
Second, the person that posted these articles also engaged the conversation and stated that these are “try before you buy” type downloads and they are not illegal – they are free. I simply stated that if they were legal, and free, then why is he not connecting directly to the website of each magazine where the downloads are placed? I have yet to receive an answer to that one. These are not legal downloads; the publishers are not giving this content away for free – they sell digital copies of these magazines. This is normal, they are trying to recoup some of the investment they have in each one.
Just check out the downloads category, it is full of articles linking to illegal content. Some of that includes Office Space (movie), Suicide Squad (movie), Steep Free (game), The Walking Dead (TV), Football Manager Mobile 2017 (game), Hustler (magazine), Time (magazine) and many many more.
Finally, the legal ramifications of allowing this type of content on Steemit could be bad for everyone. Just turning a blind eye and saying you did not know about it is not good enough as we have seen many torrent site owners shut down -they are in a similar situation to Steemit in this situation - they are not hosting the actual files, just basic information on how to obtain it (torrent). Who remembers MegaUpload? That service was shut down because of the hosting of files by their members (the owners attempted a "did not know" defense that failed horribly in court). I don't want to see Steemit shut down by a copyright holder with the courts on their side and everyone here lose their earnings, social interaction, etc just because there are a couple of people trying to make a buck sharing illegal content.
I know Steemit has a strict plagiarism concern about taking the content of others and passing it off as your own (which is great as I own a couple of websites myself - stealing is as easy as copy/paste). My question is, is posting content directing members to illegal content fair game here? That is a concern for us as a group and I would like to think that it is something that would not be tolerated.
Am I wrong in thinking that?