[duskwuff]

So, a lot of users in this thread seem to be misunderstanding what Mux is, and how the "soccer pirates" interact with their service. Let me clarify:

Mux is a streaming infrastructure provider. They provide services for companies who want to stream video to their users -- news web sites, video chat services, etc. Kind of like web hosting, but specifically for video. They are not a video content provider; they do not sell subscriptions to end users.

Mux's problem is that pirates will sign up for their service to restream pirated video content, like live sports streams:

Official stream --> pirate --> Mux --> viewers

When this happens, Mux usually gets stiffed on the bill, and if the stream stays up, Mux gets legal nastygrams from the content owners. So it's in Mux's interest that they detect these pirates quickly and terminate service before they run up too much of a bill. The blog post explains how they do that.

[TechBro8615]

Regardless, the tone of the post made me dislike Mux, whereas before I had a neutral opinion of them.

I'm left wondering if they also forward these details to the copyright holders or the FBI.

[quelltext]

It would have been better for the post to put the motivation up front, and then explain how they deal with the problem, instead of the other way round but I'm not sure what issues you have with the tone.

What they do here (preventing "piracy" and reducing cost) is no different from what other hosting platforms do.

FWIW, I didn't get a bad impression and learned about MUX in the first place (good).

[rtpg]

There's probably a point here that they offer free credits and other ways for people to get "free bandwidth". So this is a way to avoid less friendly strategies to get pre-payments on this stuff, at least without going through a sales team.

I enjoy being able to sign up and just try a thing without interacting with a sales team, but... I mean. This is a video CDN, not a newspaper subscription. I definitely know what I would do (but I am not a successful business)

[RobotToaster]

>Mux gets legal nastygrams from the content owners.

Doesn't the DMCA give several days to remove the content? At which point any stream will be long gone anyway?

[bobdvb]

That's not correct, there's no time allowance to remove. What there is, from the person issuing the DMCA, is two weeks before you can start legal proceedings.

You could argue that this means that you don't have to act for two weeks, but in practice this is where if you got into legal proceedings you'd be looking at damages claims for the period.

You get two types of hosting providers: those who act promptly and those that don't. Those that don't, mostly fall into one of two camps: conscious safe spaces for piracy (and potentially other dubious content) and providers who don't have the facility to do anything promptly (e.g. no 24/7 NOC looking at email notices).

[duskwuff]

> That's not correct, there's no time allowance to remove.

Letter of the law (17 USC §512) is that the service provider is required to "act expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material" upon discovering that it infringes upon copyright. The law doesn't define precisely what "expeditiously" means, but it's understood that it should, at a minimum, be handled at a similar priority as other urgent business requests. You don't need to wake someone up from a dead sleep to do it, but you can't sit on the request either.

[rchaud]

DMCA only applies if the pirate stream is showing a signal from a US broadcaster (for soccer, NBC or Fox Sports). As soccer is a global sport, live games will usually have pirate streams from many different countries' broadcasters, not just the US.

[komali2]

In that case, isn't this a similar situation platforms like Twitter or Youtube find themselves in, where they don't want to take full responsibility for moderation or suddenly they're liable for all the harmful content on their platforms, but on the other hand they're forced to moderate just enough to avoid governments forcing them to be on the hook?

It seems like such a weird place to be in.

[toast0]

Section 230 seems to say they can moderate if they want, and have no obligation to do so, or to not do so.

Seems like they're motivated to moderate in this case, because this usage costs them money and the users that sign up for this type of usage tend not to pay their bills.

IMHO, it might make more sense to work on usage tiers, sales calls, and collecting good payment before incurring large costs, more than a pipeline to inspect user content, including sending it to an uninvolved third party (Google Vision), but maybe that's just me.

[jaimex2]

Agreed. Why you would accept stopping the buck and not work with your legal team to proxy litigation the same way all big tech does is beyond me.

[duskwuff]

1) You can't effectively proxy litigation to J. Random Pirate with fake contact information and a stolen credit card.

2) Even if you did, you're still out the cost of the services they used, which can be considerable (especially if you let their service keep running until the DMCA notices show up).

[post_break]

Yeah I was one of the confused at first. Throwing my hands up saying who cares pirates going to pirate. But this is different. They are abusing this service to stream illegal content, vs tapping directly from the akamai stream which I've seen in the past.