Gregory's ServerReally useful legal guide from the folks at the EFF for people running fediverse servers:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/user-generated-content-and-fediverse-legal-primer
(disclosure: I advised them on this work a bit)
 36 comments
@robin my extremely I-am-not-a-lawyer understanding is that the web host is not ultimately liable for this stuff. it is the recognized operator of the site. this is what makes running a web host legally even possible  @darius Hey, a question. I don't want all my personal info publicly available on the DMCA agent site -- do you have a recommendation for (or a way to vet) third party DMCA Agent services? I'd be down for spending the money but I am always leery of just paying someone I found on google. @darius Whenever I see these articles about the importance of registering a DMCA agent, they always call out "it's a cheap fee!" ignoring that you also need to pay for a PO Box or similar service, which balloons the cost significantly for small instance owners. @tabacco yes, I mentioned that to EFF folks and they said this could be a good area to focus on pushing for policy changes since the rules clearly assume operators are companies and not people
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Since several people have brought it up: this information is useful in a US context, and it might also be useful in an international context if people are concerned that their jurisdictions interact with DMCA. Do with that what you will. I very specifically did not put a "US only" claim on my post because I do not know. I am now muting notifications on this thread. Please take up your legal questions and concerns with the EFF and not me. @darius βMany of us at EFF are lawyers, but we are not YOUR lawyers.β  @darius I do have a question on this: Given that my instance is on masto.host, do I count as the "host" of the instance or merely the admin? @BrianTransplant @darius since Darius has this muted Iβm going to answer that this is unclear, thatβs probably a lawyer question, but unless masto.host is explicitly stating that theyβre providing this service youβre at least potentially on the hook! This is for the US right?  @darius Iβve been an #EEF supporter since I first learned of the org- around 2001? #FightForCodersRights! @darius @ultrasaurus I found this very helpful thread: https://nitter.net/rahaeli/status/1593819064161665024 Which led me to this CC-licensed DMCA Policy: https://www.dreamwidth.org/legal/dmca Which I then adapted for my Mastodon instance quakers.social. I made a subdomain for meta stuff like this, and hosted my policy at https://meta.quakers.social/dmca-policy. (And I signed up as a DMCA Registered Agent.) |
@darius I wonder where the liability lies for most instance admins who technically aren't the service providers, just the "facilitators" β the service is provided by the server and maybe object storage companies, right?