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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

If the law requires it, yes. The uploader should be the liable party if the subject or subjects didn't consent.

Why is this a strange concept? Why should someone be able to upload whatever they want to platforms with no responsibility for what they’re uploading?

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I’m not comfortable being liable to being sued because my cousin decided to let us know after the fact he didn’t want to be in any of the pictures uploaded to Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/tumblr/Flickr/etc.

I admittedly didn’t read the article, so maybe your comment’s sentiment isn’t meant to include these scenarios.

What if your cousin is doing something frowned upon by society (wearing blackface, spouting racial epithets, etc)? What if it's not frowned upon now, but is at a later date? What if you don't find anything objectionable, but they wouldn't want it shown, and their concerns are borne out later? What if it's completely benign but out of context appears problematic (goofing around with a good friend of a different race and it comes across as something different when only a portion of it is represented)? What if they just have a personal objection to having heir picture posted?

There are many reasons why it's a good idea to at least check that the person is comfortable with it. You shouldn't be liable if they've said it's okay.

Absolutely. Good UX would be the subject receiving a notification that a photo of them has been uploaded, requesting whether they should be scrubbed/blurred from the photo or not before it’s made public. It’s about consent and agency.

I’d argue the tech to support this would require much more to be known about me by another entity and system than likely any picture taken by someone would share. No thanks.

And all those tourists in the background of your selfie at the Statue of Liberty. Need their permission, too?

If it’s out in public and non commercial, no. If commercial, a release form is required. Assumes US law as-is today.

https://www.format.com/magazine/resources/photography/photo-...

Your link says:

"If someone is in a public space, like a park, beach, or sidewalk, it is legal to photograph them. They shouldn’t expect privacy laws to prevent them from being photographed. That means a street photographer can publish candids taken in public spaces, as long as those images are only being used for editorial purposes."

It'd be impossible to photograph a protest, rally, sporting event, or basically any long shot of a public area if you had to get individual consent from every person in the frame.

I suspect there's a bit of nuance there which hasn't been identified here yet. Perhaps to do with whether people are background or immediately identifiable, or and active part of of what's going on. I know consent forms are a part of television recording when talking to people on the street (otherwise they blur faces), but I don't think they bother to get everyone in the background to sign.

I agree with this stance, but I also think it's beneficial to explore whether "there's a significant difference between 'uploading any data' and 'uploading porn'" is true in part or whole, and whether the "porn" part of it is a red-herring.

What about videos of police brutality, etc? How would you go about getting consent from cops to upload it?

If it's public and it's in the public interest (non commercial), I would expect statute to not require approval (see my sibling comment about US photograph release requirements). One would also hope that policy governance agencies would release the video publicly when necessary (as is happening with Chicago's Civilian Office of Police Accountability with the body cam footage from the shooting of an allegedly armed 13 year old in Chicago recently [1]). Chicago requires such materials be made public within 60 days of an incident, although a minor's involvement delayed release of the video in my example.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/04/05/adam-t...

The whole question here is whether the law should require it. The reason why it's a strange concept is that it would severely limit the spread of information. The same avenues that a regular person can get content about them deleted can be used by politicians or criminals to do the same. Not only that, these levers can also be abused to simply target somebody with false claims. Furthermore, it also places trust onto the video hosting website to keep all of that information safe. If they get hacked, then all of that documentation and images of IDs get leaked.

>Why should someone be able to upload whatever they want to platforms with no responsibility for what they’re uploading?

This isn't in question though. The question is whether sites need to be preemptive or reactive. Illegal content is illegal even right now and these websites will delete it. If they don't then you can take them to court and the content will get deleted. However, the thread suggests that these websites should be forced to be preemptive - to demand documentation upfront. That's a whole different situation.

All systems are open to abuse, which is why it's important to build systems with robust measures to counter abuse. The spread of some information should be limited. Takedowns should be logged and reported on to regulatory bodies to ensure everyone involved is acting in good faith.

With regards to video hosting websites maintaining identification information, it's possible to provide this functionality without they themselves storing sensitive user identification data. Third party providers (ID.me comes to mind) could be utilized to do so, with adult content hosting providers treating this data similar to payment data and the PCI requirements that go along with it (store the verification/attestation token and timestamps, not the data itself). I would agree that I wouldn't want Pornhub storing my passport photo and metadata.

Finally, to your point about preemptive vs reactive, in the case of adult content platforms, it seems reasonable to require preemptive documentation considering the record keeping requirements for producing adult content. Refer to 18 U.S. Code § 2257 for specifics [1] [2].

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2257

[2] https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/adult (Control-F "Who is required to keep records about adult images under federal law?")

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