this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
295 points (99.7% liked)
Fuck AI
3543 readers
525 users here now
"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I would be in serious trouble if i let my brother run a meth lab out of my storage unit outside of town. If Spotify is allowing people to post that content, they should be held liable.
Slippery slope with this one. At least in the US. It's known as the safe harbor law, and without it indie sites like Lemmy instances, Peertube, other ActivityPub software and a whole slew of other sites just wouldnt be able to exist due to the sheer amount of corporate bullying that could happen.
I am NOT saying that Spotify should not see public backlash, nor am I saying that Spotify should be allowing this to happen. The analogy that you have provided though would imply that all websites should be responsible for their users actions. That would allow people to completely bankrupt any website by uploading a bunch of Disney movies.
There should be some sort of regulation or safeguard in place. I do agree with that.
Spotify is fairly tight about who they allow to upload music. Spotify doesn't act like an open forum, it is a controlled market where they act as a middleman between the listener and the rights holder of the media. A party you have a commercial contract with is using your resources for financial gain.
This is already true, though. Why do you think you can't just hop on YouTube and access pirated Disney movies right now? Because YouTube doesn't want to be bankrupted, so they actively disallow it and take them down.
YouTube is not responsible for their users actions. If the uploader decides to appeal the takedown, the uploader goes to court not YouTube.
In the analogy, what you've described would be the equivalent of the person finding out their brother was running a meth lab and kicking them out without consulting law enforcement.
If law enforcement found the methlab, the person and their brother would be held liable. If Disney found The Lion King on YouTube, the uploaded is held liable. Making YouTube (or any website) legally liable for their uploaders content would put a lot of websites in jeopardy. Safe harbor provisions are the entire reason YouTube still exists today, as Viacom tried to take them down back in 2009, but youtube was able to prove they had no action to know or stop the uploaders from uploading Viacom's content. Shortly after that case is when they introduced the ContentID system and Google gobbled them up.
You have thousands of people moving things in and out of your storage and you're prepared to audit all of it for drug paraphernalia?