On fair use, it's unfortunately a pretty complex thing. I used to work in the media, so I do know a bit of what I'm talking about here. The issue would be at first, when the coin is small, there wouldn't be any problems. Even if copyright / fair use was violated, it wouldn't be worth the time for a company to chase it down. This would likely lead to bad habits becoming ingrained as it pertains to copyright and fair use.
The risk is lets say I word-for-word copy a news article today. It becomes part of the block chain. Five years from now, the DAO is bringing in $250,000 a year. Some lawyer looks at our block chain, has the proof we violated copyright and sues the DAO (since they cannot identify the writer with ease, and ultimately, you sue who has the money). They would likely win. To avoid this, you'd have to have all the articles vetted. This becomes a logistical nightmare.
Worse, if something untrue was reported, and it was done in a malicious way, the DAO could get sued for liable. Since there would be no way to retract the article (immutable) the damages could be significant and ongoing.
The ultimate issue becomes, the block chain is immutable. If something gets posted to a website, it can be changed, or deleted. If the article itself is the block chain, there is no easy way to fix errors.
Well said. I'm not taking anyone's side, but this seems reasonable.
Yeah, I sort of agree with West's opinion on this now. I was researching DAO lawsuits earlier today, and it seemed that there is a 'potential' of a DAO being sued, if the jurisdiction could be proven. Id lean towards not providing a tool for someone to commit copyright infringement. However, it could be argued the DAO didnt submit the article but the user submitted the article. Maybe we need an attorney, a copyright or patent attorney to jump on and tell us how we could protect ourselves as a DAO from such a risk. Could it be a checkbox before an article is submitted releasing the DAO from liability?
