this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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The question of legality on Lemmy is something that has to evolve and be discussed because of federation. Stuff on one instance gets replicated on others in other parts of the world. What factors should be the determining ones? The place where the instance is hosted? All the places where the content is replicated? Who is liable? The owner of the originating instance or all the instances that replicate illegal content? If this wasn't free and open, but rather a huge corporation, the fediverse would have a legal team to decide already.
It's almost like our made-up borders and laws are somehow at odds with the fact that, in almost all cases, anyone can access any information from any place these days, and that information is replicated and stored across the globe!
We need to assign a good name for this global system of interconnected networks. I admit, I am baffled as to what a good name should be.
Toobz
ianal, but I think the precedent is that if you own and serve illegal content then you are liable. I don't think the law ever has or ever will entertain the idea that someone caught with cp on a hard drive and is serving it online shouldn't be held liable. And frankly, I don't think that's something we should entertain either. If there's an inherent legal/moral flaw in the system we should probably change the system before we ask the world to accommodate it. It sounds way too easy to spin up a scapegoat server, purchased anonymously on the other side of the planet, host very illegal content and pipe it through a 'laundering' server that you can openly own and operate with legal impunity. Sure, you'll be caught hosting illegal content, but because it didn't originate from your server you've done nothing wrong? I think the only way the legal questions will go away is if federated servers stop hosting the cached material from federated servers, or at least from the riskiest of servers. Right now the only way to do that is to de-federate but there should be another option.