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I don't have any sympathy for Pornhub here. Their entire business is built on stolen content uploaded by anonymous users, and it wasn't until they hollowed out

I don't have any sympathy for Pornhub here. Their entire business is built on stolen content uploaded by anonymous users, and it wasn't until they hollowed out the rest of the industry through theft that they started looking beyond it. I would go so far as to say that the reason Pornhub and other tube sites haven't taken problems like child porn and revenge porn seriously is because doing so would undermine the foundation of their business: stolen content. On the other hand, this might ultimately work in their favor if it has the effect of raising the bridge they've just crossed. If it gets harder host stolen content, Pornhub has to worry less about someone else doing to them what they've done to others now that they are making a switch to paid content.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago
I always wondered why YouTube was required to be quite strict with policing such matters but many pornography websites somehow remain quite operational despite the vast amount of obviously infringing material.
- vmchale 6y ago
  Less sympathetic plaintiffs?
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    I would hope that the courts would not be præjudiced against the plaintiff simply for being pornography producers. I would, sadly, also not be entirely surprised to find out that the courts are.
    - JackFr 6y ago
      Well at issue is why, hypothetically, YT or PH might find themselves before the bar. YouTube would be afraid of being sued for copyright infringement. PornHub is legitimately afraid of being indicted in a criminal conspiracy to distribute child pornography. With respect to just the copyright claim, I don't think there would necessarily be any bias, as it would be pitting pornography producers vs. pornography distributers. Both pretty slimy if you feel that way.
    - hef19898 6y ago
      Considering how hard it is for sex workers to press rape charges, that wouldn't surprise me neither.
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      I would not be at all surprised if the American jury system would be fairly against plaintiffs if they're in any way connected to pornography considering the American moral values.
- wongarsu 6y ago
  YouTube is much stricter than what the law requires. I think the general consensus is that YouTube tries to stay on MPAA's and RIAA's good side to keep them from lobbying for stricter laws. As long as it's easier to talk to YouTube than to write a new law everyone profits (except the independent content creators). Paid porn doesn't have a strong lobby, so there is no similar pressure on PornHub/MindGeek.
- duxup 6y ago
  YouTube made their deals with the various industries pretty early on IIRC. Not sure there was a decision as to who did or didn't have to make these deals as much as visibility and their own willingness to make these deals just resulted in earlier deals.
- ffpip 6y ago
  Google has more money, and it doesn't come from porn
  - jlgaddis 6y ago
    Worse, it comes from advertising!
    - dkersten 6y ago
      Hah! This comment made me think about how I personally started to both really hate advertising/advertising companies, and I also find it more morally questionable than I find porn, to the point that if someone told me they worked for google or some other advertising network, I would silently be judging them for their life choices, but if someone told me that they worked for a porn company I'd probably be like "oh, what's that like?". Right or wrong, advertisement is leaving a very sour taste behind, to the point where for me personally it seems to have overtaken other things, like porn.
      - vacheron 6y ago
        Surely you must mean the targeted advertisements and data collection necessary for that. I don't see anything inherently wrong with an advertisement in and of itself, and it certainly isn't morally questionable. Companies need consumers to be aware of their products in order to sell them. > if someone told me they worked for google or some other advertising network, I would silently be judging them for their life choices Maybe try some introspection.
        dkersten 6y ago
        I strongly agree with Banksy's view on advertisement: People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs. – Banksy While I think there are some forms of advertisement that are acceptable or even desirable, what we see on the internet is not that, mostly due to the tracking and targeting, which almost every advertisement company is doing, but also because adverts are inherently trying to trick, pressure or encourage you to spend money on something even if you don't really want or need it. > Maybe try some introspection. I have. I've come to the conclusion that I judge people who work in industries I find morally questionable.
cjohansson 6y ago
Both Google and YouTube contain stolen and illegal content. There are lots of full length pirate movies on YT for instance. It doesn’t make it right but I just mean all companies should be equally judged by rules and regulations
- watwut 6y ago
  YouTube is actively taking that content down. Oftentimes overly zealously. The case with pornhub was exactly the opposite.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    Nope. YouTube just takes independent content down. On the other hand, YouTube allows original creators to monetize over those pirated content, by transferring all ads proceedings. On the other hand, there's naked yoga on YouTube so....
- Andrex 6y ago
  What you may not realize is that if that "stolen" media is logged in ContentID, both Google and the proper rightsholders are making money by running ads off every view (if they decide not to block it outright.) That's mostly why YouTube still exists.
  - tbdenney 6y ago
    I believe many folks don't understand this and therefore wonder why random YT accounts can post clearly copyrighted material. Content owners can fairly easily capture the monetization of these videos even if its not under their account. Oftentimes it's best to just leave a video up especially if it has many views (and strong search visibility) and collect the $$ from the ads on it.
jchw 6y ago
This is, for better or mostly worse, how a lot of sites bootstrap. Crunchyroll is another example.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  Crunchyroll at least needed a team of translators to create subtitles for Naruto (and other anime circa the mid 00s). That is to say: Crunchyroll may have copyrihgt-infringed upon anime, but they added value. Naruto and Shippuden never would have found a subtitled audience without that team of translators. (And the English dub was relatively low quality back then, believe it) I'm not sure how Youtube or Pornhub adds value to the content.
  - jchw 6y ago
    I’m not saying it’s a direct comparison, just that bootstrapping off of content theft is pretty par for the course for the internet, be it individual creators or entire websites. I also don’t see it as a good thing, but at least with anime fansubbers it is kind of a begrudgingly accepted reality that this kind of activity helps create the market that allows the legitimate player to exist.
  - codetrotter 6y ago
    > I'm not sure how Youtube or Pornhub adds value to the content. By making it available. This is value added too.
  - stryan 6y ago
    During the illegal content days, Crunchyroll wasn't subbing the videos. Those were uploaded by dedicated fansub teams who did the actual work and CR was just another anime tube site.
  - tristor 6y ago
    > Crunchyroll at least needed a team of translators to create subtitles for Naruto (and other anime circa the mid 00s). That is to say: Crunchyroll may have copyrihgt-infringed upon anime, but they added value. Most of the content on Crunchyroll was fansubbed by various IRC and torrent groups and used without permissions of the original copyright holders or of the fansub groups and without credit to the fansubbers. So, actually, no, they didn't need a team of translators, and there's a lot of anime fans who refuse to do business with Crunchyroll because of their betrayal of the fansub community.
tmalsburg2 6y ago
> Their entire business is built on stolen content uploaded by anonymous users, Not disagreeing with you, but, to be fair, that was exactly Youtube's recipe for success, and still is to some extent. I never understood how Youtube could get away with that.
- soupson 6y ago
  Section 230 + lack of resources by the owners to sue, right?
  - koolba 6y ago
    Don’t forget giving a slice to the biggest copyright holders (who otherwise do have the $$$ to sue) to keep them on your team.
  - geofft 6y ago
    DMCA safe harbor (copyright) instead of section 230 (moderation for content), but yeah, that sounds right. Before Content ID existed, they could convincingly say they didn't have automatic means and they were taking all commercially reasonable efforts to respond to manual reports, and meanwhile their staff couldn't keep up with people uploading new infringing content.
  - pyrophane 6y ago
    That is basically it from what I understand. It is impractical for most entities to track down violators and issue takedowns, so the content stays up.
  - snowwrestler 6y ago
    The relevant law here is the DMCA, which gives safe harbor to anyone hosting 3rd party content if they respond to timely takedown requests, which YouTube does.
    - SkyPuncher 6y ago
      My understanding is YouTube technically doesn't deal with many DMCA take downs. Their reporting system is technically a voluntary system in front of DMCA. Large IP holders are happy to use it because it heavily favors them. Large IP holders also don't have to worry about repercussions for false or incorrect DMCA claims.
mrlala 6y ago
>Their entire business is built on stolen content uploaded by anonymous users I don't know, whenever the topic of Kim Dotcom/Megaupload comes up people on hackernews act like he has done nothing wrong and is a victim. Now the community is against a business being built on uploading stolen content by anonymous users? Ok.
- wffurr 6y ago
  You know there are a lot of people on HN with different opinions, right?
  - wittyreference 6y ago
    I don't think it's unreasonable that the stances that most regularly get highly upvoted to the top of the threads are taken as a gestalt 'HN opinion'.
    - stickfigure 6y ago
      It's not that consistent which stances get upvoted. Different stories attract different readers, and comment upvotes depend on the quality of the message as well as the content.
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      it's a reasonable mistake to make, but it's probably not correct. dang made a good post about this recently. I'm having a hard time finding it now (he posts a lot), so I'll just paraphrase. a lot of (sometimes vile) positions are strongly advocated for by a minority of users, but only weakly opposed by the majority. that vocal minority will upvote any friendly post, while the majority will just shake their heads but not necessarily downvote every single post. so it's actually quite common for the top comment to be against the aggregate opinion of the userbase.
      - pc86 6y ago
        Edit: Surprised it took almost twenty minutes for the downvotes to start. It also proves my point perfectly. For what it's worth I'm not saying bicycle licenses are good or should be implemented. But it's the most well-understood example of this phenomenon. This is the argument about why "bicycle licenses" aren't a thing. The number of drivers who aren't cyclists dwarfs the number of cyclists by many orders of magnitude in most US states. In many municipalities, some cyclists regularly break traffic laws and cause (at best) frustration or (at worst) deadly accidents. This leads to drivers-who-aren't-cyclists making the seems-reasonable comment that you should need a license to drive a bike the same way you do for a vehicle. So let's say a politician supports bicycle license. This isn't enough to get anyone who supports a bike license to vote for them, because it's not a Top Ten issue for anyone on that side. But not only will every cyclist in their district vote against them, they'll campaign and donate to any opponent of that bill. If they even think you support the legislation they're writing checks to your opponent. I'm not making an argument on bike licenses in particular but I can see a similar effect where a minority percentage of HN feels strongly enough about a given topic that they upvote the articles based on title alone. When an issue is particularly divisive, the odds increase that people feel strongly on both sides so you end up with the #1 posts on two different days expressing diametrically opposed positions, but both very heavily upvoted.
CoolGuySteve 6y ago
With all this talk about various corporations policing copyright, censoring political content, and whatnot, I think it's only a matter of time until someone makes an anonymous blockchain content aggregator that's impossible to censor. Then when it becomes the modern equivalent of Usenet/IRC/Napster/PirateBay, people will just shrug and say "don't blame the protocol". The demand exists and the technology exists, but nobody has put them together yet.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  There's no such thing as 'impossible to censor'. It may eb 'hard to censor', perhaps even 'impractical to censor', but a powerful enough government will be able to censor anything it wants. Do your think that, if people started somehow publishing 'bad' stories about the CCP in the bit coin block chain, the CCP wouldn't act to remove that content or censor any acces to the block chain itself?
  - tomjen3 6y ago
    CPP might be able to ban access to the block chain, or some part of it, but they wouldn't be able to replace it with their own version that was accepted outside China.
    - pc86 6y ago
      Would they need to? If they're controlling what their populace can and cannot see that's at least 51% of their goal, isn't it?
- ebiester 6y ago
  Why bother with blockchain? This is a torrent use case because nobody wants to share their record of porn ownership.
  - CoolGuySteve 6y ago
    Torrent aggregator sites/discords have small groups of people behind them to arrest or sue. A blockchain would have a large impractical group of people to arrest or sue, it would be like when the RIAA tried to sue Kazaa users.
amelius 6y ago
Stealing is the #1 growth-hack.
- solumos 6y ago
  It seems somewhat arbitrary where the line is drawn between "growth hack" and "clearly undermining copyrighted content" Thinking specifically about Napster and MegaUpload. Is it because there was no value beyond simply sharing files? If there was a presentation layer + user accounts on top, would they have been spared?
  - daniel-cussen 6y ago
    There was value beyond sharing files, music sharing services had decent search and music previewing. I think a music sharing site I used let you see the other music files a user was sharing, so if you thought they had good taste you could check out other things too.
  - wolco2 6y ago
    Napster added too much value it woke the bear. Megaupload poked a bigger bear.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  Worked out well for Crunchyroll.
  - m-p-3 6y ago
    And Spotify.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  True. It has worked amazingly well for China. 250 million brought out of poverty along the way...
  - vacheron 6y ago
    Not that I'm defending the theft or IP or technology, but it is interesting how some things we consider stealing, others homage and some that we simply ignore. No one would complain if spies from your own country stole from a rival nation during a war (hot or cold). The US used to steal technology from Britain and the rest of Europe.[0] The more you magnify on any country's history, the more prevalent shady dealings comes up. This goes doubly so for superpowers. It seems that at some point in time, everyone has done unscrupulous things to get ahead and we often forget to be introspective. On a personal anecdote, I dabble in fashion design and it continually baffles me as to what is considered "homage" when large, established companies blatantly rip off designs. Large companies like H&M or Zara can literally steal pieces from famous designers, make it worse and cheaper and sell it in malls worldwide. Obviously, when an Asian brand does the same thing, it's a knockoff. Peeves me to no end. [0] - https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-europe https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur...
jennyyang 6y ago
From the article, Pornhub only had 118 incidences of child porn over the last 3 years whereas Facebook had 84 million incidents of child porn during the same time. So it sounds like Pornhub is taking child porn seriously, and Facebook isn't.
- weeksie 6y ago
  No, it sounds like a big red flag. Far more likely CP wasn't being logged.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    The PornHub count was an external study, the Facebook count was internal. So if either is effected by internal standards not counting things, its the Facebook number.
    - simias 6y ago
      Isn't Pornhub's content always public, whereas Facebook's can be segregated to smaller groups of people? If that's the case it seems that illegal content could remain undetected for far longer on FB rather than Pornhub.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Isn’t Pornhub’s content always public I don’t think so. I’m not an expert on PH, but from what I understand from other sources they have a mix of public content, open-to-all-paid-customers content, and private content that is available only to subscribers to particular channels. I don’t know if they have any content owner (well, submitter, given the level of piracy) controls on who can see content at the specific user level (whether by restricting allowed subscriptions to channels with an owner-approval process or by having content restricted by something other than subscription status.)
        nailer 6y ago
tempsy 6y ago
you can say this same thing about Airbnb. how many listings are illegal? and yet they don’t proactively purge illegal listings unless some city aggressively goes after them in court.
- zaroth 6y ago
  None of AirBnb listings were likely illegal in the early days, because what they were doing was not regulated. Also, I’d say there’s a big difference between the homeowner choosing to list their home against a city regulation that the homeowner is choosing to violate, versus users uploading content that they don’t own in the first place. Even a tenant who is AirBnb’ing their unit against their lease terms is at least listing their own unit / choosing to violate an agreement that they themselves have signed. AirBnb to me is unique in that their regulations came afterward to combat the monumental rise of short term rentals, whereas Section 230 / DMCA regulations are what enabled the other sites to ultimately growth hack on the back of infringement.
  - tempsy 6y ago
    it’s not a big difference. both platforms are looking the other way when it comes to policing illegal content on their platforms because they make money off it whether it’s legal or not. they are choosing to offload the responsibility to the users as much as possible.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    I mean, it depends where you were, I suppose. In many places, Airbnbs were illegal from the start (at least for the whole-home rental type; the rent a room type are much fuzzier), as they breached planning rules that only allowed residential use for particular buildings etc. The problem is that enforcement was very poor.
mlang23 6y ago
What you describe sounds alot like YouTube. 12 years ago, some friends of mine were doing their entire home music playback with a playlist of stolen music uploads. I'd even go as far and claim that YT Music wouldn't exist if people were not trained that YouTube has all the music content they are looking for. And then there are channels like "Netzkino" who have around a million subscribers and a few thousand full movies online. The claim is all that content is supposedly legal. Well, maybe. But it doesn't look like it...
Mountain_Skies 6y ago
A former co-worker was telling me about a porn streaming company she worked for in Spain. They stole content from other sites, the other sites stole from them and their competitors. No one wanted to go to courts because no one had clean hands so they started breaking into each other's buildings (self hosting on-site was the norm at the time) and smashing up servers. Eventually they all hired security made up of less than reputable guards who probably were the same guys who had been breaking in to beat up servers. She left around that time to work for more mainstream employers but it does point to the shady beginnings of many of these companies.
dzonga 6y ago
don't think majority was stolen content. but a lot of amateur content was on there. were people uploaded their videos etc without risk of getting identified. it's a hobby to some people. like the article states, majority of the content wasn't even porn. But yeah, open upload platforms will end up being abused e.g look at how unlimited amazon cloud storage got abused.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
conradfr 6y ago
I'm not sure that's the case nowadays, there's a lot of pro and "verified amateur" content that seems totally legal. So much so that all videos start to look the same. Or so I've been told.
buisi 6y ago
To some extent, education in schools in regards to consent, relationships, and how issues like this effect people could help to reduce the number of incidences of revenge porn. It isn't just harmless fun, it has very serious consequences. Sadly, it'll be impossible to stop it entirely with the unverified upload model.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

I always wondered why YouTube was required to be quite strict with policing such matters but many pornography websites somehow remain quite operational despite the vast amount of obviously infringing material.

vmchale 6y ago
Less sympathetic plaintiffs?
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  I would hope that the courts would not be præjudiced against the plaintiff simply for being pornography producers. I would, sadly, also not be entirely surprised to find out that the courts are.
  - JackFr 6y ago
    Well at issue is why, hypothetically, YT or PH might find themselves before the bar. YouTube would be afraid of being sued for copyright infringement. PornHub is legitimately afraid of being indicted in a criminal conspiracy to distribute child pornography. With respect to just the copyright claim, I don't think there would necessarily be any bias, as it would be pitting pornography producers vs. pornography distributers. Both pretty slimy if you feel that way.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    Considering how hard it is for sex workers to press rape charges, that wouldn't surprise me neither.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    I would not be at all surprised if the American jury system would be fairly against plaintiffs if they're in any way connected to pornography considering the American moral values.
wongarsu 6y ago
YouTube is much stricter than what the law requires. I think the general consensus is that YouTube tries to stay on MPAA's and RIAA's good side to keep them from lobbying for stricter laws. As long as it's easier to talk to YouTube than to write a new law everyone profits (except the independent content creators). Paid porn doesn't have a strong lobby, so there is no similar pressure on PornHub/MindGeek.
duxup 6y ago
YouTube made their deals with the various industries pretty early on IIRC. Not sure there was a decision as to who did or didn't have to make these deals as much as visibility and their own willingness to make these deals just resulted in earlier deals.
ffpip 6y ago
Google has more money, and it doesn't come from porn
- jlgaddis 6y ago
  Worse, it comes from advertising!
  - dkersten 6y ago
    Hah! This comment made me think about how I personally started to both really hate advertising/advertising companies, and I also find it more morally questionable than I find porn, to the point that if someone told me they worked for google or some other advertising network, I would silently be judging them for their life choices, but if someone told me that they worked for a porn company I'd probably be like "oh, what's that like?". Right or wrong, advertisement is leaving a very sour taste behind, to the point where for me personally it seems to have overtaken other things, like porn.
    - vacheron 6y ago
      Surely you must mean the targeted advertisements and data collection necessary for that. I don't see anything inherently wrong with an advertisement in and of itself, and it certainly isn't morally questionable. Companies need consumers to be aware of their products in order to sell them. > if someone told me they worked for google or some other advertising network, I would silently be judging them for their life choices Maybe try some introspection.
      - dkersten 6y ago
        I strongly agree with Banksy's view on advertisement: People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs. – Banksy While I think there are some forms of advertisement that are acceptable or even desirable, what we see on the internet is not that, mostly due to the tracking and targeting, which almost every advertisement company is doing, but also because adverts are inherently trying to trick, pressure or encourage you to spend money on something even if you don't really want or need it. > Maybe try some introspection. I have. I've come to the conclusion that I judge people who work in industries I find morally questionable.

cjohansson 6y ago

Both Google and YouTube contain stolen and illegal content. There are lots of full length pirate movies on YT for instance. It doesn’t make it right but I just mean all companies should be equally judged by rules and regulations

watwut 6y ago
YouTube is actively taking that content down. Oftentimes overly zealously. The case with pornhub was exactly the opposite.
- fakedang 6y ago
  Nope. YouTube just takes independent content down. On the other hand, YouTube allows original creators to monetize over those pirated content, by transferring all ads proceedings. On the other hand, there's naked yoga on YouTube so....
Andrex 6y ago
What you may not realize is that if that "stolen" media is logged in ContentID, both Google and the proper rightsholders are making money by running ads off every view (if they decide not to block it outright.) That's mostly why YouTube still exists.
- tbdenney 6y ago
  I believe many folks don't understand this and therefore wonder why random YT accounts can post clearly copyrighted material. Content owners can fairly easily capture the monetization of these videos even if its not under their account. Oftentimes it's best to just leave a video up especially if it has many views (and strong search visibility) and collect the $$ from the ads on it.

jchw 6y ago

This is, for better or mostly worse, how a lot of sites bootstrap. Crunchyroll is another example.

dragontamer 6y ago
Crunchyroll at least needed a team of translators to create subtitles for Naruto (and other anime circa the mid 00s). That is to say: Crunchyroll may have copyrihgt-infringed upon anime, but they added value. Naruto and Shippuden never would have found a subtitled audience without that team of translators. (And the English dub was relatively low quality back then, believe it) I'm not sure how Youtube or Pornhub adds value to the content.
- jchw 6y ago
  I’m not saying it’s a direct comparison, just that bootstrapping off of content theft is pretty par for the course for the internet, be it individual creators or entire websites. I also don’t see it as a good thing, but at least with anime fansubbers it is kind of a begrudgingly accepted reality that this kind of activity helps create the market that allows the legitimate player to exist.
- codetrotter 6y ago
  > I'm not sure how Youtube or Pornhub adds value to the content. By making it available. This is value added too.
- stryan 6y ago
  During the illegal content days, Crunchyroll wasn't subbing the videos. Those were uploaded by dedicated fansub teams who did the actual work and CR was just another anime tube site.
- tristor 6y ago
  > Crunchyroll at least needed a team of translators to create subtitles for Naruto (and other anime circa the mid 00s). That is to say: Crunchyroll may have copyrihgt-infringed upon anime, but they added value. Most of the content on Crunchyroll was fansubbed by various IRC and torrent groups and used without permissions of the original copyright holders or of the fansub groups and without credit to the fansubbers. So, actually, no, they didn't need a team of translators, and there's a lot of anime fans who refuse to do business with Crunchyroll because of their betrayal of the fansub community.

tmalsburg2 6y ago

> Their entire business is built on stolen content uploaded by anonymous users, Not disagreeing with you, but, to be fair, that was exactly Youtube's recipe for success, and still is to some extent. I never understood how Youtube could get away with that.

soupson 6y ago
Section 230 + lack of resources by the owners to sue, right?
- koolba 6y ago
  Don’t forget giving a slice to the biggest copyright holders (who otherwise do have the $$$ to sue) to keep them on your team.
- geofft 6y ago
  DMCA safe harbor (copyright) instead of section 230 (moderation for content), but yeah, that sounds right. Before Content ID existed, they could convincingly say they didn't have automatic means and they were taking all commercially reasonable efforts to respond to manual reports, and meanwhile their staff couldn't keep up with people uploading new infringing content.
- pyrophane 6y ago
  That is basically it from what I understand. It is impractical for most entities to track down violators and issue takedowns, so the content stays up.
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  The relevant law here is the DMCA, which gives safe harbor to anyone hosting 3rd party content if they respond to timely takedown requests, which YouTube does.
  - SkyPuncher 6y ago
    My understanding is YouTube technically doesn't deal with many DMCA take downs. Their reporting system is technically a voluntary system in front of DMCA. Large IP holders are happy to use it because it heavily favors them. Large IP holders also don't have to worry about repercussions for false or incorrect DMCA claims.

mrlala 6y ago

>Their entire business is built on stolen content uploaded by anonymous users I don't know, whenever the topic of Kim Dotcom/Megaupload comes up people on hackernews act like he has done nothing wrong and is a victim. Now the community is against a business being built on uploading stolen content by anonymous users? Ok.

wffurr 6y ago
You know there are a lot of people on HN with different opinions, right?
- wittyreference 6y ago
  I don't think it's unreasonable that the stances that most regularly get highly upvoted to the top of the threads are taken as a gestalt 'HN opinion'.
  - stickfigure 6y ago
    It's not that consistent which stances get upvoted. Different stories attract different readers, and comment upvotes depend on the quality of the message as well as the content.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    it's a reasonable mistake to make, but it's probably not correct. dang made a good post about this recently. I'm having a hard time finding it now (he posts a lot), so I'll just paraphrase. a lot of (sometimes vile) positions are strongly advocated for by a minority of users, but only weakly opposed by the majority. that vocal minority will upvote any friendly post, while the majority will just shake their heads but not necessarily downvote every single post. so it's actually quite common for the top comment to be against the aggregate opinion of the userbase.
    - pc86 6y ago
      Edit: Surprised it took almost twenty minutes for the downvotes to start. It also proves my point perfectly. For what it's worth I'm not saying bicycle licenses are good or should be implemented. But it's the most well-understood example of this phenomenon. This is the argument about why "bicycle licenses" aren't a thing. The number of drivers who aren't cyclists dwarfs the number of cyclists by many orders of magnitude in most US states. In many municipalities, some cyclists regularly break traffic laws and cause (at best) frustration or (at worst) deadly accidents. This leads to drivers-who-aren't-cyclists making the seems-reasonable comment that you should need a license to drive a bike the same way you do for a vehicle. So let's say a politician supports bicycle license. This isn't enough to get anyone who supports a bike license to vote for them, because it's not a Top Ten issue for anyone on that side. But not only will every cyclist in their district vote against them, they'll campaign and donate to any opponent of that bill. If they even think you support the legislation they're writing checks to your opponent. I'm not making an argument on bike licenses in particular but I can see a similar effect where a minority percentage of HN feels strongly enough about a given topic that they upvote the articles based on title alone. When an issue is particularly divisive, the odds increase that people feel strongly on both sides so you end up with the #1 posts on two different days expressing diametrically opposed positions, but both very heavily upvoted.

CoolGuySteve 6y ago

With all this talk about various corporations policing copyright, censoring political content, and whatnot, I think it's only a matter of time until someone makes an anonymous blockchain content aggregator that's impossible to censor. Then when it becomes the modern equivalent of Usenet/IRC/Napster/PirateBay, people will just shrug and say "don't blame the protocol". The demand exists and the technology exists, but nobody has put them together yet.

tsimionescu 6y ago
There's no such thing as 'impossible to censor'. It may eb 'hard to censor', perhaps even 'impractical to censor', but a powerful enough government will be able to censor anything it wants. Do your think that, if people started somehow publishing 'bad' stories about the CCP in the bit coin block chain, the CCP wouldn't act to remove that content or censor any acces to the block chain itself?
- tomjen3 6y ago
  CPP might be able to ban access to the block chain, or some part of it, but they wouldn't be able to replace it with their own version that was accepted outside China.
  - pc86 6y ago
    Would they need to? If they're controlling what their populace can and cannot see that's at least 51% of their goal, isn't it?
ebiester 6y ago
Why bother with blockchain? This is a torrent use case because nobody wants to share their record of porn ownership.
- CoolGuySteve 6y ago
  Torrent aggregator sites/discords have small groups of people behind them to arrest or sue. A blockchain would have a large impractical group of people to arrest or sue, it would be like when the RIAA tried to sue Kazaa users.

amelius 6y ago

Stealing is the #1 growth-hack.

solumos 6y ago
It seems somewhat arbitrary where the line is drawn between "growth hack" and "clearly undermining copyrighted content" Thinking specifically about Napster and MegaUpload. Is it because there was no value beyond simply sharing files? If there was a presentation layer + user accounts on top, would they have been spared?
- daniel-cussen 6y ago
  There was value beyond sharing files, music sharing services had decent search and music previewing. I think a music sharing site I used let you see the other music files a user was sharing, so if you thought they had good taste you could check out other things too.
- wolco2 6y ago
  Napster added too much value it woke the bear. Megaupload poked a bigger bear.
Hamuko 6y ago
Worked out well for Crunchyroll.
- m-p-3 6y ago
  And Spotify.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
True. It has worked amazingly well for China. 250 million brought out of poverty along the way...
- vacheron 6y ago
  Not that I'm defending the theft or IP or technology, but it is interesting how some things we consider stealing, others homage and some that we simply ignore. No one would complain if spies from your own country stole from a rival nation during a war (hot or cold). The US used to steal technology from Britain and the rest of Europe.[0] The more you magnify on any country's history, the more prevalent shady dealings comes up. This goes doubly so for superpowers. It seems that at some point in time, everyone has done unscrupulous things to get ahead and we often forget to be introspective. On a personal anecdote, I dabble in fashion design and it continually baffles me as to what is considered "homage" when large, established companies blatantly rip off designs. Large companies like H&M or Zara can literally steal pieces from famous designers, make it worse and cheaper and sell it in malls worldwide. Obviously, when an Asian brand does the same thing, it's a knockoff. Peeves me to no end. [0] - https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-europe https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur...

jennyyang 6y ago

From the article, Pornhub only had 118 incidences of child porn over the last 3 years whereas Facebook had 84 million incidents of child porn during the same time. So it sounds like Pornhub is taking child porn seriously, and Facebook isn't.

weeksie 6y ago
No, it sounds like a big red flag. Far more likely CP wasn't being logged.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  The PornHub count was an external study, the Facebook count was internal. So if either is effected by internal standards not counting things, its the Facebook number.
  - simias 6y ago
    Isn't Pornhub's content always public, whereas Facebook's can be segregated to smaller groups of people? If that's the case it seems that illegal content could remain undetected for far longer on FB rather than Pornhub.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Isn’t Pornhub’s content always public I don’t think so. I’m not an expert on PH, but from what I understand from other sources they have a mix of public content, open-to-all-paid-customers content, and private content that is available only to subscribers to particular channels. I don’t know if they have any content owner (well, submitter, given the level of piracy) controls on who can see content at the specific user level (whether by restricting allowed subscriptions to channels with an owner-approval process or by having content restricted by something other than subscription status.)
      - nailer 6y ago

tempsy 6y ago

you can say this same thing about Airbnb. how many listings are illegal? and yet they don’t proactively purge illegal listings unless some city aggressively goes after them in court.

zaroth 6y ago
None of AirBnb listings were likely illegal in the early days, because what they were doing was not regulated. Also, I’d say there’s a big difference between the homeowner choosing to list their home against a city regulation that the homeowner is choosing to violate, versus users uploading content that they don’t own in the first place. Even a tenant who is AirBnb’ing their unit against their lease terms is at least listing their own unit / choosing to violate an agreement that they themselves have signed. AirBnb to me is unique in that their regulations came afterward to combat the monumental rise of short term rentals, whereas Section 230 / DMCA regulations are what enabled the other sites to ultimately growth hack on the back of infringement.
- tempsy 6y ago
  it’s not a big difference. both platforms are looking the other way when it comes to policing illegal content on their platforms because they make money off it whether it’s legal or not. they are choosing to offload the responsibility to the users as much as possible.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  I mean, it depends where you were, I suppose. In many places, Airbnbs were illegal from the start (at least for the whole-home rental type; the rent a room type are much fuzzier), as they breached planning rules that only allowed residential use for particular buildings etc. The problem is that enforcement was very poor.

mlang23 6y ago

What you describe sounds alot like YouTube. 12 years ago, some friends of mine were doing their entire home music playback with a playlist of stolen music uploads. I'd even go as far and claim that YT Music wouldn't exist if people were not trained that YouTube has all the music content they are looking for. And then there are channels like "Netzkino" who have around a million subscribers and a few thousand full movies online. The claim is all that content is supposedly legal. Well, maybe. But it doesn't look like it...

Mountain_Skies 6y ago

A former co-worker was telling me about a porn streaming company she worked for in Spain. They stole content from other sites, the other sites stole from them and their competitors. No one wanted to go to courts because no one had clean hands so they started breaking into each other's buildings (self hosting on-site was the norm at the time) and smashing up servers. Eventually they all hired security made up of less than reputable guards who probably were the same guys who had been breaking in to beat up servers. She left around that time to work for more mainstream employers but it does point to the shady beginnings of many of these companies.

dzonga 6y ago

don't think majority was stolen content. but a lot of amateur content was on there. were people uploaded their videos etc without risk of getting identified. it's a hobby to some people. like the article states, majority of the content wasn't even porn. But yeah, open upload platforms will end up being abused e.g look at how unlimited amazon cloud storage got abused.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

conradfr 6y ago

I'm not sure that's the case nowadays, there's a lot of pro and "verified amateur" content that seems totally legal. So much so that all videos start to look the same. Or so I've been told.

buisi 6y ago

To some extent, education in schools in regards to consent, relationships, and how issues like this effect people could help to reduce the number of incidences of revenge porn. It isn't just harmless fun, it has very serious consequences. Sadly, it'll be impossible to stop it entirely with the unverified upload model.