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>There's a spectrum from "random home video" to "professional". Non-professionals are not just uploading home videos (which often contain copyrighted music by

>There's a spectrum from "random home video" to "professional". Non-professionals are not just uploading home videos (which often contain copyrighted music by the way), they are also uploading stuff they have downloaded elsewhere (music, TV shows, etc). That's the key issue. Your insurance idea sounds a lot like what Google is already doing and it brings back a lot of the downsides of centralisation. It's very onerous/expensive to run and therefore requires significant monetisation to cover the cost. It also carries the risk of false positives as everything would have to be automated. The insurance company would disproportionately "punish" hosts that carry the more controversial/risky content unless the platform as a whole is the insured party or all hosts are forced to pay everyone elses insurance premiums. This would create a disincentive for hosts carrying uncontroversial content to join the platform in the first place (not just for financial reasons but also political ones). They would create their own far more restrictive platform with much cheaper insurance premiums or simply upload to a centrialised provider like youtube. The incentive to subsidise controversial/risky content is to be the go-to place for video search and monitise the heck out of it. It's simply a centralised business model.

infogulch 8y ago
> "punish" hosts that carry the more controversial/risky content Free speech is a completely different topic. If you're conflating copyright infringement and free speech when you're thinking about insurance, I can agree there's no way it could work. Let me clarify: coverage would be limited to copyright infringement claims only. Covering free speech with insurance is completely a non-starter, they would be opening themselves up to a new universe of risk, even suits directed directly at themselves. That said, the insurance company would be highly incentivized to discourage the abuse of copyright infringement laws to quell speech: these are separate concerns (from their perspective), so reducing such abuse would be good for them (and us!). Think about what happens to controversial speech on centralized platforms now: some faceless moderator unilaterally decides -- without option to appeal -- whether to take your speech down from their platform permanently (it's their platform after all) and possibly ban you. In a decentralized platform you have the option to defend it with whatever resources you decide. > Non-professionals are not just uploading home videos (which often contain copyrighted music by the way), they are also uploading stuff they have downloaded elsewhere (music, TV shows, etc). That's the key issue. With a decentralized model like PeerTube you have to change your conception of who accepts and hosts uploads. You can't just upload to "The PeerTube" like you can YouTube, you have to upload to a federated instance. PeerTube makes hosting your own instance much easier and cheaper. Many will create their own, some might use one hosted by a family member, others might sign up for a more public instance. In each case, the instance will be more and more like the centralized model. But that's ok, because now there's a gradient. You have the choice to manage your own instance (or any available middle ground), with all the benefits and downsides that come with publishing your own content (except hosting costs of course, that's the point). My point is that with this model, you have the choice to moderate it and defend it manually yourself (professionals, activists), or defer it entirely to a third party (basically the current centralized model). But there's a large gap between these, where some kind of insurance-like service could help bridge.

infogulch 8y ago

> "punish" hosts that carry the more controversial/risky content Free speech is a completely different topic. If you're conflating copyright infringement and free speech when you're thinking about insurance, I can agree there's no way it could work. Let me clarify: coverage would be limited to copyright infringement claims only. Covering free speech with insurance is completely a non-starter, they would be opening themselves up to a new universe of risk, even suits directed directly at themselves. That said, the insurance company would be highly incentivized to discourage the abuse of copyright infringement laws to quell speech: these are separate concerns (from their perspective), so reducing such abuse would be good for them (and us!). Think about what happens to controversial speech on centralized platforms now: some faceless moderator unilaterally decides -- without option to appeal -- whether to take your speech down from their platform permanently (it's their platform after all) and possibly ban you. In a decentralized platform you have the option to defend it with whatever resources you decide. > Non-professionals are not just uploading home videos (which often contain copyrighted music by the way), they are also uploading stuff they have downloaded elsewhere (music, TV shows, etc). That's the key issue. With a decentralized model like PeerTube you have to change your conception of who accepts and hosts uploads. You can't just upload to "The PeerTube" like you can YouTube, you have to upload to a federated instance. PeerTube makes hosting your own instance much easier and cheaper. Many will create their own, some might use one hosted by a family member, others might sign up for a more public instance. In each case, the instance will be more and more like the centralized model. But that's ok, because now there's a gradient. You have the choice to manage your own instance (or any available middle ground), with all the benefits and downsides that come with publishing your own content (except hosting costs of course, that's the point). My point is that with this model, you have the choice to moderate it and defend it manually yourself (professionals, activists), or defer it entirely to a third party (basically the current centralized model). But there's a large gap between these, where some kind of insurance-like service could help bridge.