[kauffj]

CEO of LBRY here. These videos are welcome on LBRY.

We'll have to get a real (i.e. not me commenting on HN) legal opinion should we get a take down request, but prima facie I don't see why these would be illegal.

(If they are illegal and we are notified, we would put them on the company maintained blacklist, as we cannot remove anything from the network itself.)

Edit: I wrote a rap on our perspective.

If you're having deep fake problems / I feel bad for you son

We got 99 deep fakes / And Jay-Z ain't taking down one

https://twitter.com/LBRYio/status/1255273319739293703

[areoform]

While I appreciate your hustle here, it might not be such a good idea to become the hub for deepfakes and the endless lawsuits they will invite. The deep ethical issues involved should make anyone pause, but taking on record companies and artists should make you pause further.

Everyone loves Napster as a history lesson. But it is doubtful that anyone would want to live it.

Your position seems to be inviting all of the controversy and lawsuits for little-to-no payoff.

[pc86]

There are no ethical issues in deepfake videos that weren't existent during the same infantile stages of faked and Photoshopped images on the internet. Some people could pick them out immediately. Some people are fooled even by obvious fakes. That will never change.

[ineedasername]

>There are no ethical issues in deepfake videos that weren't existent during the same infantile stages of faked and Photoshopped images on the internet

That is not the same thing as "there are no ethical issues". I'm sure some people, especially the celebrities portrayed, would feel there are the same ethical issues in all cases, and any difference is merely one of degree, not kind.

[pc86]

We are saying the same thing. Literally in the sentence you quoted, I said the same ethical issues exist in deepfakes that exist in altered still images.

[ineedasername]

Yes, but your comment has the potential to be read as dismissive of the ethical concern. I don't know if that was your intention, but I thought it relevant to make the distinction clearer.

[kauffj]

I agree with pc86 on the ethical issues.

On the pragmatic ones:

- If the lawsuits ever become unbearable we can always choose to simply stop existing. One beautiful part of LBRY is that it does not depend on the company to work.

- It's not so much that we want to be thought of as the deep fake place, so much as we want to be thought of as a place for people who want to make their own choices. I think supporting this supports that goal.

[stefan_]

If there is a lesson to be learned from Napster, it's that you should charge customers, still ignore copyright and pirate music to "bootstrap" your service. That's basically Spotify right there.

[mellow2020]

We need discussions in society about this stuff -- yes, even with people who might be too stupid for you to want to talk to them -- not just facts on the ground created by techies in ivory towers.

It used to be that jocks beating up nerds was an universally applauded activity, it's now rightfully seen as stupid and evil. The same will have to happen with people abusing their digital prowess against others, or the former will become untenable.

you can rap in tweets / but you don't want street / clown on us all / get your feet in concrete

[r00t_]

Absolutely in love with lbry.tv! Had the desktop app for awhile, didn't know the website existed. Thanks! :)

[sergiotapia]

I see no about page or anything on that website. Curious, is this like a P2P youtube? Decentralized somehow?

I hope something rises up and kills youtube with it's censorship. There was metacafe, then youtube, next: ???

Found this: https://lbry.tech/overview

>To create a market for accessing and publishing information1 that is global2, decentralized3, robust4, optimal5 and complete6.

Hell yes, do it!

Edit: Found the subreddit for this project, and they say youtube banned these videos? https://lbry.tv/Dr.-Erickson-COVID-19-Briefing:e1 - good job guys, the gatekeeping period of the internet 2007 to 2021 will be looked back on as dark ages.

[kauffj]

Thank you sergio! lbry.tech is the best resource to learn about what LBRY is from a technical perspective.

[jskek9]

So your business model is built on the presumption of possessing an inviolable license to simulate the likeness of others?

I’m not so sure that’s a stable basis given a lot of laws celebrities have gotten passed protecting control of their likeness.

This is a bit of a “I’m doing it on a computer so it’s different!” kind of thing that won’t necessarily legally fly.

Challenging the idea that someone can’t control the reproduction of their likeness full stop is settled in the general sense in law. Context shifting how the reproduction happens isn’t really much a difference maker.

[kauffj]

> So your business model is built on the presumption of possessing an inviolable license to simulate the likeness of others?

No. It's based on people desiring a publishing platform that does not allow interference from intermediaries ala YouTube, Facebook, or Amazon.

> Challenging the idea that someone can’t control the reproduction of their likeness full stop is settled in the general sense in law.

You're commenting on an article that says this content is probably legal. If you think it's not, it'd probably make more sense to comment on the top-level thread.