I always wonder how sites like these deal with stuff like potentially hosting child porn/other content that is illegal to possess. Does DCMA safe harbor stuff cover it? (don't see a DCMA notice on the site)
Which is a good thing, after all what is being uploaded is strictly speaking none of my business but it automatically makes you complicit in roughly the same way that running a TOR exit node will make you complicit and I don't want any part of that. I'm perfectly ok with setting up useful services at very little or no fees at all but I refuse to become an unwitting and unwilling partner in other peoples illegal dealings.
Which is a pity.
The internet, phones, email, regular mail, roads, electricity, software and on on have predominantly good and productive uses. File sharing websites attract percentage wise more bad than good, at least more bad than what I'm comfortable with.
So in the end that's a moral call and in this case my decision was to shut it down because of the types of crimes involved and the number of criminals on the service totally outnumbered the 'good guys' and our ability to deal with the assholes was limited.
I guess we should all stop using cash, then?
As for how it is possible for all of the available currency to be contaminated with traces of drugs and yet that this does not need to prove that all (or even a majority) of the cash transactions done are drug related, I'm sure you're smart enough to figure that one out for yourself, but evidence such as this will figure prominently in the kind of discussion that will visit us some years into the future.
There are free file upload services and there are ways to upload from command line(1).
Microsoft provides an API which identifies child expoilting images.
This is a general problem with banning things instead of simply regulating them somehow. How would one scientifically study methamphetamine, for example, in a country where it is illegal to even possess it?
Without arguing for or against CP, what if I wanted to look up evidence that use of CP leads to increase or decrease of actual child abuse, without setting off red flags everywhere? As a Psych major, that sort of thing would interest me, for example.
It's actually quite well designed and questions such as these were definitely taken into account during the design phase.
I came up with a similar scheme about 15 years ago (as a result of operating that file sharing service) and proposed to the local LE that we set up a service where a 'fingerprint' of an image could be tested against known bad images, and if an image tested positive it would be flagged for review (and on an exact match it would be automatically banned).
The local law enforcement officer thought it was a great idea but it would never fly because even the hashes of the images were considered off-limits for sharing with others and they'd have to share their database of hashes with me if I were to set this up (free of charge).
Eventually MS came up with PhotoDNA and they're too big to ignore.
sigh, that's still less than ideal.
Where it goes haywire is that they then have to trust all the employees of that larger party as well but that's logic rather than CYA.
[1]: http://wbintcvsstorage.blob.core.windows.net/matchedimages/S...