Author

Topic: What if someone set copyrighted data as a Bitcoin message? (Read 1556 times)

legendary
Activity: 1288
Merit: 1087
i think there's already child porn somewhere in the blockchain. i haven't heard of any action against anyone because of it.
full member
Activity: 189
Merit: 100
Legally-Binding Smart Contracts for all
You question addresses an issue that has come up a lot of times. This would be similar to having a decentralised exchange, decentralised AirBnB or in this case a decentralised platform hosting videos, games etc.

In such a case, due to not having a central control or "specific party" as mentioned by the last post, they cannot direct it at someone. It is like saying the internet contains many copyright infringement mediums/images etc. In the case of the internet, you cannot blame the network, only the specific party that hosted the files, such as MegaUpload by Kim Dot Com or Napster. In the case of the Bitcoin or other blockchains, you dont have such a end point. So you cannot do anything about it but figure out through IP addresses or something similar - if they even expose that - who sent the file. You will need to find people one by one as they do with torrent files and for example Germany literally having people go to homes and warn/fine them.
legendary
Activity: 1148
Merit: 1048
This may be a dumb question, but if someone took a piece of copyrighted data which is illegal to own without paying for it (let's say a ROM of Super Mario Bros.) and inserted it into a transaction with a high enough fee for miners to bother, what would happen? Would having a copy of the whole blockchain on your hard drive become illegal?

The claim of injury from a copyright violation must be directed at a specific party. They might be able to sue the person that put it there, but no one else would really profit from the existence of this, and they would be hard pressed to show how this was damaging. Also, I think the court would appreciate the amount of technical expertise it would take to store/remove any meaningful amount if data from the chain (that is, you must be adept to convert block chain data into other media formats). That is, if the data were posted, most users would be unable to actually access it.
full member
Activity: 140
Merit: 100
That is an act of plagiarism so better ask for help to lawyers.
newbie
Activity: 6
Merit: 0
Okay, thanks!
legendary
Activity: 2053
Merit: 1356
aka tonikt
newbie
Activity: 6
Merit: 0
This may be a dumb question, but if someone took a piece of copyrighted data which is illegal to own without paying for it (let's say a ROM of Super Mario Bros.) and inserted it into a transaction with a high enough fee for miners to bother, what would happen? Would having a copy of the whole blockchain on your hard drive become illegal?
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