What happens when relay operators host copyrighted content and are forced with litigation to pay up or shut down + fines?
How will nostr deal with this? nostr:note1q6vjrhx2xyuum6ft0vpcvz8m5zx429vtenjph3zs48m92zp4ws3syw323x
Discussion
Get donations to battle lawsuits, or we can all just be respectful and not post that stuff
But anyone can post anything. How do you handle that?
Not really sure my friend, we could put out a warning about it so it would at least limit it?
Whoa, excellent question. Is it possible to decentralize a relay? In the sense of removing that identifiable personal responsibility link to a human? It’s unacceptable to have core community members at risk. Not familiar enough with the tech here, but if Bitcoin is the thing that is so far essentially immune to litigation (and therefor destruction) what’s the nostr version?
Relay should primarily store text; otherwise, it will just be one of the problems, and there may even be worse ones. Leave it to the CDN.
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Perhaps at some point as relays grow they may need a way to
- accept reports of alleged violations
- review for verification
- remove the referenced note.
The problems are obvious human cost to review, and adding the features to report, review, remove or reject, and prevent reposts of same note or content. It becomes a rising cost issue and is tantamount to censorship and subject to different laws by jurisdiction.
All systems go through this as they get more usage because there is always bad Apples
It would be super difficult to remove any violating notes as you’d easily rebroadcast to other relays? You’d need coordination of some sort?
I think it makes more sense to subscribe to some sort of intermediary services that filters for you (for illegal content). Not sure what that looks like technically, just thinking out loud.
That is a good question.
They might be able to use the same legal strategy than internet service providers: they are a dumb pipe and in this case, and please correct me if I’m wrong, they can’t even see the content since it’s encrypted.
You can’t sue them for not stopping something they can’t identify.
If I’m not mistaken, this article implies that Twitter caved in and started talks to negotiate a licensing deal to avoid paying fines and dealing with issues they could not deal with promptly.
If Twitter wasn’t willing to fight that battle, I wonder if relays will throw in the towel twice as fast 🤔
There are also torrents and P2P, I don't see much news about that.
That's a problem I am thinking quite a lot. Not only publishing copyrighted content but also other illegal stuff.
If this content is part of a public note, then it needs to be detected by human reports or somehow automatically by a system.
Both need some time, but the would prevent getting in touch with the law, as content can be deleted by request.
But how to handel illigal encrypted messages or illogal encrypted content which could be published as NIP-95 within a note?
Litigation has to address somebody, while them being unknown, who is on the file exactly?
This is a good question - unlikely to stop people. Plus they’ll need to locate relays to serve.
In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act gives online service providers (relays and sites like nostr.build in this case) “safe harbor” from copyright lawsuits, provided they take down infringing content when notified.