3 ms·

Of course they'd err on the side of caution in this case. I think this is symptomatic of an underlying problem with the increasingly centralised Internet. It

Of course they'd err on the side of caution in this case. I think this is symptomatic of an underlying problem with the increasingly centralised Internet. It used to be that if you wanted to share content online, you put it on your web site and others could visit. If it was infringing someone else's copyright and they objected, they would send a friendly message and/or legal C&D notice to you, and you'd probably all be sensible about things. Today, ISPs don't tend to provide everyone with some basic web hosting allowance any more, while a tiny number of huge third party content hosts are making staggering amounts of money from redistributing others' content as a middleman. However, those hosts typically have no obligation to anyone to provide this service. So all the small creators are making themselves beholden to businesses that see them as the tree that money grows on but are quite happy to cut off a whole branch if there's any fruit that might be rotten rather than risk spoiling the lot. On top of that, a significant proportion of people are also uploading other people's content to the hosting services, but for some reason the hosting services get to have magic legal shields that mean they can be running extremely lucrative business models based in no small part on turning a blind eye to being accessories to infringement, all while offering debatable social benefits over what we used to have instead. So I think "erring on the side of caution" is probably understating things. The hosting services would do almost anything to defend that legal shield and their business model, because as things stand the hosts are basically laughing all the way to the bank while mysteriously immune to the normal laws that apply to you and me and while having no real obligation to the people who provide the very content on which the hosting service depends.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
Defintermediate all the things, so someone else can reintermediate them. The Internet has been handed over to de facto monopolies operating under a thin pretext of competitive legitimacy. We'll probably see antitrust action to split them up in twenty years or so, by which time it will be too late to make a difference. The only thing that can change this is physical server decentralisation, which is going to rely on massive bandwidth improvements and nation-state grade security protocols. When I can run a personal server on a personal device and serve content to thousands - some of whom may want to peer it, if it's interesting enough - then we may see a genuinely free Internet. As it is, instead of "seeing censorship as damage and routing around it", the Internet has been seen as political damage itself, and the political system has effectively neutered it by reducing it to yet another financialised cultural channel.
- SpelingBeeChamp 8y ago
  > When I can run a personal server on a personal device and serve content to thousands - some of whom may want to peer it, if it's interesting enough - then we may see a genuinely free Internet. Uhh... you can do this right now. Like most people you may not have the skills or equipment necessary to do so, but 100% anyone can do this today, down to hosting their own DNS server. (And then they can discover that it is much cheaper to pay someone else to do it for them.)
  - anoncake 8y ago
    If you don't have the skills or equipment to do something, you literally cannot do it.
    - samontar 8y ago
      The skill barrier is low. It’s all turnkey now with cloud platforms. Literally just a web tutorial away. The hard part is the audience and the fact that video hosting is expensive for individuals.
      - Silhouette 8y ago
        But depending on which "cloud platform" you're using, you're drifting back towards centralisation again. Possibly the most important change that my previous post alluded to was that everyone's ISP used to bundle some basic web space in the same way that they bundled a basic email account and ran their own Usenet server. You automatically had a web site if you just ticked the "on" box, and you could upload your content with a simple FTP transfer. Many ISPs provided some "my first web site" level instructions to get you started on building things yourself, even with the inevitable "under construction" graphic. Sadly, those days are mostly gone. With the rise of centralised hosting (sorry, "cloud") services, ISPs seem to have backed away from including those kinds of secondary facilities in their typical plans, except for maybe email addresses. And so now, it is mostly only larger organisations and the geeks and enthusiasts who self-host in any meaningful sense, and everyone else is hosting their basic business site on Facebook, their blog on Medium or WP, their geek-friendly site on GitHub, their vlog on YouTube, etc.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago

Defintermediate all the things, so someone else can reintermediate them. The Internet has been handed over to de facto monopolies operating under a thin pretext of competitive legitimacy. We'll probably see antitrust action to split them up in twenty years or so, by which time it will be too late to make a difference. The only thing that can change this is physical server decentralisation, which is going to rely on massive bandwidth improvements and nation-state grade security protocols. When I can run a personal server on a personal device and serve content to thousands - some of whom may want to peer it, if it's interesting enough - then we may see a genuinely free Internet. As it is, instead of "seeing censorship as damage and routing around it", the Internet has been seen as political damage itself, and the political system has effectively neutered it by reducing it to yet another financialised cultural channel.

SpelingBeeChamp 8y ago
> When I can run a personal server on a personal device and serve content to thousands - some of whom may want to peer it, if it's interesting enough - then we may see a genuinely free Internet. Uhh... you can do this right now. Like most people you may not have the skills or equipment necessary to do so, but 100% anyone can do this today, down to hosting their own DNS server. (And then they can discover that it is much cheaper to pay someone else to do it for them.)
- anoncake 8y ago
  If you don't have the skills or equipment to do something, you literally cannot do it.
  - samontar 8y ago
    The skill barrier is low. It’s all turnkey now with cloud platforms. Literally just a web tutorial away. The hard part is the audience and the fact that video hosting is expensive for individuals.
    - Silhouette 8y ago
      But depending on which "cloud platform" you're using, you're drifting back towards centralisation again. Possibly the most important change that my previous post alluded to was that everyone's ISP used to bundle some basic web space in the same way that they bundled a basic email account and ran their own Usenet server. You automatically had a web site if you just ticked the "on" box, and you could upload your content with a simple FTP transfer. Many ISPs provided some "my first web site" level instructions to get you started on building things yourself, even with the inevitable "under construction" graphic. Sadly, those days are mostly gone. With the rise of centralised hosting (sorry, "cloud") services, ISPs seem to have backed away from including those kinds of secondary facilities in their typical plans, except for maybe email addresses. And so now, it is mostly only larger organisations and the geeks and enthusiasts who self-host in any meaningful sense, and everyone else is hosting their basic business site on Facebook, their blog on Medium or WP, their geek-friendly site on GitHub, their vlog on YouTube, etc.