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by jimbob45 1193 days ago
Is there a solution to being liable for distributing illegal/immoral content as a peer on PeerTube? That's what's keeping me away.
3 comments

> Is there a solution to being liable for distributing illegal/immoral content as a peer on PeerTube?

I believe you misunderstand the technology.

There are two components of Peertube.

The server you either self-host or you use someone else's. If you are hosting a server and you host other people's content, you register for liability protection under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and section 512 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

The client is where the "peer" in peertube comes in. If you want to be safe from liability, don't watch illegal/immoral content. You will be fine.

> If you want to be safe from liability, don't watch illegal/immoral content. You will be fine.

This is naive. I don't necessarily know that the content is illegal until I've started playing it. By that point I may have already shared it.

Same issue with any p2p, I guess. You could start downloading a file with a harmless name and later discover it was a fake name.

In either case, I don't see any intent and therefore not any crime.

I don't think that's naive, considering that after reporting adult sites with obvious CP, the sites are still up after several years.

> In either case, I don't see any intent and therefore not any crime.

Jurisdictions vary in how the justice system treats intent. You do not want to rely on lack of intent to get off the hook.

> I believe you misunderstand the technology. > > There are two components of Peertube.

No, the people who run Peertube misunderstand how to communicate. This comes up every time Peertube is discussed. People think Peertube is a replacement for YouTube and that they can upload their videos to peertube.com or something similar. Then they learn, that, no, it’s just the software to let you run your own YouTube-like site. Then they have questions like the one above and get replies telling them they don’t understand. Maybe Peertube should just find a better way to communicate what they offer?

Wouldn’t you only distribute illegal/immoral content if you were watching it? You only distribute things you yourself are streaming.
I think they might be talking about hosting a PeerTube server with open registration? And so random people might publish illegal content via their server?
If this is a concern: don't do open registration without approval.

See also: Running a public WiFi hotspot.

I like to watch, I just dont want the liability of providing it to other people.
i got hit hard by this, even w a low account quota a group hit my instance hard from many CIDRs and i was left w a huge bill. this was pretty much worst case scenario automated accounts uploding rips.

and i just looked and peertubes admin tools still leave a lot to be desired

Why are you overspending on SaaS hosting when Peertube can be run comfortably on a VPS due to P2P sharing the load?
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