I was wondering if you knew anything about
this deposit to Just-Dice, Mr. Solo Staker.
Which makes me wonder... what happens if people put illegal or copyrighted text into the blockchain's CLAMspeech? It's not like anyone can take it down to comply with a cease and desist order. I remember a few years ago someone put a bunch of links to very dubious sites in the Bitcoin blockchain, but I've not heard anything about that since. Here's an article, with a pretty inaccurate headline: "
If you own Bitcoin, you also own links to child porn". (Inaccurate since you can own Bitcoin simply by holding a private key on a piece of paper. You don't need a copy of the blockchain to own Bitcoin).
Obviously, CLAM is an open source project - we are not a legal team - and this shouldn't be construed as legal advice.
This is a legitimate concern and has been talked about extensively on the BTC Dev Mailing list and elsewhere.
As far as I am aware, there is no agreed upon solution - though I have read a couple proposals to limit culpability (such as storing the block data in encrypted form).
I think there are also additional concerns fundamental to a distributed system such as Bitcoin or CLAM.
For instance, theoretically one could be argued to assist in money laundering or financing of criminal activity simply by being involved in relaying, storing, and honoring a consensus which includes an offending transaction.
I take moral and idealistic issue with that interpretation, but I think it is a valid concern and attack.
Further, some of the legal precedent surrounding ISP's seems to suggest at least some protection in cases where the content is not in the control or feasibly removed by the intermediary.
As abhorrent and unacceptable as the content may be, I personally wonder about the implications of censoring content in a network such as Bitcoin or CLAM. Who decides what is "legal"/"acceptable" and "illegal"/"unacceptable", and by the standards of what jurisdiction?
I think there are a wealth of unanswered questions; even in cases of tort, ISP's, and vanilla copyright infringement - which have even been legislated in some jurisdictions, such as the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Some protections have been extended by these acts/laws, and yet there seems to be disagreement in my reading as to the exact interpretation of even this protection/liability.
Probably not helpful.
Likely more questions than answers.
It seems even concerning laws which were intended to clarify rights/responsibilities there is disagreement to the exact repercussions.
I think everyone would be interested to hear any thoughts or research anyone else (possibly more informed) has come across?
Edit:
Additional, possibly interesting reading material, concerning liability of ISP's in the U.S. -
Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act