[Natsu]

> Tools to automatically check whether or not submitted content was original would be trivial to make. Yet they don't exist because it's not in these sites' best interest to stop accepting stolen bullshit.

How is a tool supposed to know who has permission to do what? Yes, you can use heuristics to make guesses. But you're making guesses, you don't actually know anything.

[Zak]

He's talking about originality, not permission. An automated tool could fairly reliably determine how much content was already posted elsewhere.

[Natsu]

Permission is what's required. I get that he hates that, but that doesn't make him right.

He's using the number of other copies as a heuristic. But that heuristic fails when people want to spread their content, which is far less uncommon than he believes.

[Zak]

Permission is what's required to keep from getting sued, except that the DMCA keeps you from getting sued when it's user-submitted content. Permission isn't necessary at all. Maddox is promoting originality because it's a component of having a quality site. I'm sure he's aware that most of the people running those sites don't care about quality and is making an issue out of it because he wants other people to dislike the sites.