Legalized Theft and Vigilantism
This video below helps show why blockchain and decentralization is so very important. It is getting more clear every day that copyright law is being abused. Creators who have legitimately and legally used limited amounts of copyrighted works have lost money and somehow it is treated as the "new norm" and essentially been trivialized.
I can't help but think that DMCA censorship isn't just done by private companies. It could be so easy for a government to create a shell company with a black budget for the sole purpose to issue DMCA takedown notices and stifle free speech. That may be a little conspiratorial but who would ever know? A DMCA claim is not reviewed by any court to determine if it is legitimate. The amount of times legitimate material created by internet users has been taken off the internet should be viewed as a slow erosion of freedom by any rational person. The "fair use" doctrine depends on case law to help define the boundary between a copyright monopoly and acceptable limited use of copyrighted material. Ever since 1998 the DMCA has so many times taken away cases that should have been seen by courts only because the accused didn't have the resources to fight back. It costs almost nothing to make an accusation under the DMCA but a small fortune to defend against accusations.
Copyright law is important. It helps protect the expression of ideas. However, when copyright law gets weaponized it helps nobody. It leaves victims feeling slighted and breeds animosity toward what should be good law.
Youtube is getting more censorship as time goes by.. I think an alternative has to become mainstream
Dear @holovision
I'm failing to see how decentralization can help with censorship. I'm fully aware that all data stays forever on blockchain. But it's a bit like saying that it doesn't matter that you're banned from facebook, because your comments and content is still in their database and it's simply not being displayed (however it's still there and can be accessed if you're tech savvy with provided API).
All popular front-ends are centralized and as such, censorship will exist the way it has always been.
Very well said. Upvote on the way :)
Yours
Piotr
Let's say we have the archetypal book since ebooks can be just as easily removed as YouTube videos or mp3s. If I hypothetically write a book and publish it print-on-demand through a service such as lulu.com what can stop publishing of the book? A government can order lulu.com to stop publishing the book for whatever reason. If someone doesn't like the opinions expressed in the book publication can be stopped by filing a false DMCA. The only real deterrent built into DMCA law is the person making the false claim has to check a box affirming under penalty of perjury that the claims are made in good faith. Generally I believe anybody who doesn't respect another person's freedom of speech also doesn't respect the law enough to not commit perjury. Once one false DMCA is submitted it's academic how many more get filed so other DMCAs can be sent to search engines to remove links to the book ever existing so the evidence of the book being censored is also censored.
A torrent site might help a book survive censorship assuming copies were downloaded and seeded before the suppression of the book occured. Even then governments can seize torrent domains and the IP addresses of people sharing a book can be tracked down. If the United States government doesn't have a problem trying to order Apple to disclose a way to bypass the iPhone's security that it would care about the integrity of an API whose data can be edited?
For blockchain everybody running a blockchain downloads a copy of everything already on it and keeps adding copies when new data is submitted. If retroactively data is removed a fork occurs but it's obvious to everyone what data is being removed. If anybody disagrees with the censorship they can keep running the old chain. Just like ethereum and bitcoin split into ethereum classic and bitcoin cash a book and all the evidence that the book existed would still exist on a legacy blockchain.