Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Technically Responsible
The shut down of Megaupload raises tough questions that have gone unanswered for years. Should a content delivery system be held responsible for illegal content being uploaded by their users? Now in this case its obvious that Megaupload participated in the spreading of illegal content. But what about a site like YouTube? What if Megaupload was paying another company to host their servers? Should the hosting company be held responsible too? The tech community dreams of a world where you cannot be held directly responsible for content posted to your site or for misuse of your services (one of the many points of opposition to SOPA and PIPA). But that philosophy of turning a blind eye leads to chaos, just like it did in the housing market. As the world continues to become more connected, we should not become less aware. No, we should become more aware, just as we did with the onslaught of spam and phishing scandals.
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Like you mentioned phishing scandals, people are (in general) much more aware about how to identify and handle these threats today than they were 15 years ago, when perfectly reasonable people would give up credit card information to imaginary Nigerian princes.
ReplyDeleteAs time passes, people will also become more aware about illegal media sharing, and better understand how it works/the best ways to fight it. But this is harder to eliminate than phishing.
Fortunately, the first step to reducing piracy is currently underway: the debate about SOPA has sparked interest, and people will continue to deliberate and think of better options.