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Comment by ncr100 | Hacker News Reader

Is the DMCA worth keeping? There have been many anti-consumer news stories citing the DMCA as the linch pin.

Most websites with user submitted content would not be able to exist without DMCA safe harbor provisions. The status quo before the whole "DMCA takedown request" process became a thing was that websites were liable for any user submitted content that was in violation. If the DMCA was repealed today, and tomorrow someone posted copyright content here on HN, then HN would be liable for copyright infringement. A repeal of the DMCA would essentially be a death sentence for social media.

>> A repeal of the DMCA would essentially be a death sentence for social media.

How is this a bad thing? If we leave an exemption for search I would consider this a positive.

Did you like posting that comment? Would you like to continue posting comments on the internet? You probably wouldn't be doing so without Safe Harbor.

Do you like that you dont own your content any more? Do you like that it gets sold to open AI to make the next ML power draw?

We have the compute power and the networking to decentralize all of it. That means ownership and with that comes personal responsibility. It's not a trivial problem but it's a solvable one today.

> Do you like that you dont own your content any more?

I don't know what you're talking about, I hold a copyright to all of my content, (except the content I produce at work) even if I decide to license a bunch of it.

> Do you like that it gets sold to open AI to make the next ML power draw?

What about the DMCA enabled that?

> We have the compute power and the networking to decentralize all of it. That means ownership and with that comes personal responsibility. It's not a trivial problem but it's a solvable one today.

I think people still want to have conversations using services on the internet. Even email isn't decentralized enough that it would alleviate concerns about third party content. To decentralize enough so that third-party content isn't a legal concern without DMCA, you'd essentially be asking everyone in the world to run federated services with a maximum server size of one user. I don't think we have the technology to make that actually work for the average user.

>> What about the DMCA enabled that?

NO safe harbor means... no reddit, no Facebook, no YouTube... content aggregation in gated monoliths goes away. Data aggregation, data brokering gets a lot harder. And where are you going to mass license content at that point?

> run federated services with a maximum server size of one user.

Family exist, friends exist. Killing the DMCA, then the sea of copyright law suits is a path to copyright reform.

I guess? I personally still like the idea of a public internet.

As do I, but the corporate internet is sort of gross...

We had usenet for 2 decades before the dmca

...because the internet was still tiny and wasn't getting any legal attention. The passage of the DMCA was a response to the situation that was going on once it started to get industry attention.

There have been initiatives and proposals from various legislators and interested parties to revamp the DMCA. Without fail, they all seem to universally make things worse for the rights of the consumer and small creators while vastly increasing corporate power. A few token concessions to normal people that inevitably have large loopholes or wording that make them actually meaningless.

So it may be the case that, while it is really shitty in a lot of ways, there is currently no way to open up that Pandora's box and change the DMCA without things getting much worse. The incentives and influences in place for legislators today are simply too perverse.

Parts of the DMCA are alright, but I think section 1201 should be outright repealed. Everything it intends to cover, can already be covered under either "copyright infringement" or "theft of service."

On top of that, I'd like to see certain forms copyright infringement for the sake of repairing/maintaining equipment, be made legal (so you can legally hack a tractor to get it to run, without relying on a fair use defense). Of course this is a much more complex discussion than just repealing 1201.

It could definitely use a strong revision / overhaul. But it is also the reason many sites can exist without being sued in to the ground over hosting copyright infringing material.

DRM itself seems like the most pointed issue with the DMCA, but any change that reduces the efficacy or DRM is going to be fought by every large company in America

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