Sure, hosting your own platform or using a decentralized solution would prevent this bullshit, but the whole situation is worse than just them deleting it.
The whole issue is that no Discord terms of service were violated here. So they went against their own terms with this move, which means anyone is subject to the same actions even if they are complying with the terms of service.
The whole issue is that no Discord terms of service were violated here.
Really? I’m not a lawyer, but…
TOS:
We reserve the right to block, remove, and/or permanently delete your content if it is in breach of these terms, our Community Guidelines, our other policies, or any applicable law or regulation, or if it creates risk for Discord or negatively impacts the experience or interests of other Discord users to continue to make it available.
Community guidelines:
24. Do not share content that violates anyone’s intellectual property or other rights. This includes sharing or selling game cheats or hacks. (See our Unauthorized Copyright Access Policy for more.)
Given that there’s a court order stating these tools violated Nintendo’s intellectual property rights, not sure how you can draw the conclusion that this is somehow not a violation of the TOS
They didn’t share the content in Discord. It’s a huge distinction.
If we were to interpret this the way it was applied in this case, pretty much all servers would have to be removed. You shared an image you don’t own the copyright to, server nuked. You shared the video you don’t own the copyright to, server nuked. You shared the link to some tool that allows you to download a video you down have a copyright to, server nuked.
And there isn’t a court order “stating these tools violated Nintendo’s intellectual property rights” since the case was settled outside of court.
They could threaten to sue discord for hosting copyrighted content, even if they expect to lose it doesn’t matter, the goal is to make discord close the channel and it worked.
Cost/benefit analysis, you’ll probably win the lawsuit, it will still cost you a shit load of money in the meantime and you’re fighting against a company that has enough money to stop all its activities for a decade and still come out with enough funds to resume activities as if nothing happened. Or you can just ban one community from your platform.
Right, if they host it, but they don’t. That’s the difference between what happened with GitHub/GitLab.
And they can’t sue without the case having any merits. Meritless lawsuits also legally known as frivolous lawsuits are thrown out before even discovery phase with attorney fees awarded and the moron lawyers getting sanctioned.
Well yeah. Terms of service don’t exist for the benefit of the users. If the company doesn’t like what you are doing, nothing stops them from banning you, there’s no reason to expect them to try to be fair about it. This is why these sites/apps having a dominant position is such a problem.
Terms of service is actually a two party agreement. It’s very weak on the consumer side due to capitalism, but it’s technically enforceable. Hence, all the class action lawsuits happens when company side breaks that agreement. They need to show that you broke terms of service to justify a ban. Prior to both sides agreeing, they can refuse to allow you to use the service for any reason. People seems to conflate these two things.
If companies terms of service said “we can do whatever we want whenever we want, and we don’t have to promise any service, and you have no rights” nobody would sign those terms.
If companies terms of service said “we can do whatever we want whenever we want, and we don’t have to promise any service, and you have no rights” nobody would sign those terms.
Nobody who took the time to read the terms of service, and who felt that there was a real risk of those terrible terms being invoked, and who felt they had a viable alternative. But for the other 99.9% of people, they will just hit agree and move on.
Maybe until they got screwed once, and then they would. It would also be illegal in most countries, since there are laws (weak they might be) that guarantee some things.
I don’t buy it. If you have examples of someone successfully suing to be unbanned because the ban was beyond the terms of service I’ll be convinced but I don’t think that’s ever happened or would ever happen because I don’t think terms of service waive any rights to deny access to servers the company owns, especially when it’s free to begin with.
From the article:
At the end of the day, platforms like Discord have no obligation to host anything they don’t want to host, as we discussed back when GitLab did something similar by deplatforming Suyu’s code.
“Their first email was that my account has broken the TOS, with no additional information.” He claims Sudachi wasn’t doing anything infringing. Later, he was told it vaguely had something to do with intellectual property but says Discord still hasn’t given him any details.
The bans I’ve gotten myself are always like this when it’s a big company. No real explanation given, no recourse possible, I don’t expect a lawyer would tell me differently. IMO the only solution is to stop focusing on the “rules” they have written entirely for their own benefit and start using systems that are more decentralized in terms of who is actually in control.
So they went against their own terms with this move, which means anyone is subject to the same actions even if they are complying with the terms of service.
Sure, but if you were comfortable with Discord as a home for this work, people have been speaking up against discord as a resource for these kinds of things pretty much since the beginning of discord.
Its a lesson learned, but better off now that later. No corporation can be trusted. You have that knowledge now if you didn’t before. Make decisions accordingly.
People were not comfortable about it until 2021 when they relaxed their terms of service. Heck, Discord even approved them as community servers that have stricter rules.
It’s a clear move that they are done with Discord being a chat platform and ready for their IPO.
Sure, hosting your own platform or using a decentralized solution would prevent this bullshit, but the whole situation is worse than just them deleting it. The whole issue is that no Discord terms of service were violated here. So they went against their own terms with this move, which means anyone is subject to the same actions even if they are complying with the terms of service.
Really? I’m not a lawyer, but…
TOS:
Community guidelines:
Given that there’s a court order stating these tools violated Nintendo’s intellectual property rights, not sure how you can draw the conclusion that this is somehow not a violation of the TOS
They didn’t share the content in Discord. It’s a huge distinction.
If we were to interpret this the way it was applied in this case, pretty much all servers would have to be removed. You shared an image you don’t own the copyright to, server nuked. You shared the video you don’t own the copyright to, server nuked. You shared the link to some tool that allows you to download a video you down have a copyright to, server nuked.
And there isn’t a court order “stating these tools violated Nintendo’s intellectual property rights” since the case was settled outside of court.
The only one I can see that could be applied to the situation is “risk for discord” if Nintendo threatened them with a lawsuit.
Under which grounds? For a threat to work, it has to have some merits.
They could threaten to sue discord for hosting copyrighted content, even if they expect to lose it doesn’t matter, the goal is to make discord close the channel and it worked.
Cost/benefit analysis, you’ll probably win the lawsuit, it will still cost you a shit load of money in the meantime and you’re fighting against a company that has enough money to stop all its activities for a decade and still come out with enough funds to resume activities as if nothing happened. Or you can just ban one community from your platform.
Right, if they host it, but they don’t. That’s the difference between what happened with GitHub/GitLab.
And they can’t sue without the case having any merits. Meritless lawsuits also legally known as frivolous lawsuits are thrown out before even discovery phase with attorney fees awarded and the moron lawyers getting sanctioned.
Hosting isn’t necessary, providing access is enough, otherwise The Pirate Bay wouldn’t have had to change location again and again.
Hosting is required under DMCA.
Edit: Misread the part about The Pirate Bay.
Previous comment
And The Pirate Bay was banned and blocked hundreds of times, they have many proxy sites for that reason.
Well yeah. Terms of service don’t exist for the benefit of the users. If the company doesn’t like what you are doing, nothing stops them from banning you, there’s no reason to expect them to try to be fair about it. This is why these sites/apps having a dominant position is such a problem.
Terms of service is actually a two party agreement. It’s very weak on the consumer side due to capitalism, but it’s technically enforceable. Hence, all the class action lawsuits happens when company side breaks that agreement. They need to show that you broke terms of service to justify a ban. Prior to both sides agreeing, they can refuse to allow you to use the service for any reason. People seems to conflate these two things.
If companies terms of service said “we can do whatever we want whenever we want, and we don’t have to promise any service, and you have no rights” nobody would sign those terms.
Nobody who took the time to read the terms of service, and who felt that there was a real risk of those terrible terms being invoked, and who felt they had a viable alternative. But for the other 99.9% of people, they will just hit agree and move on.
Maybe until they got screwed once, and then they would. It would also be illegal in most countries, since there are laws (weak they might be) that guarantee some things.
I don’t buy it. If you have examples of someone successfully suing to be unbanned because the ban was beyond the terms of service I’ll be convinced but I don’t think that’s ever happened or would ever happen because I don’t think terms of service waive any rights to deny access to servers the company owns, especially when it’s free to begin with.
From the article:
The bans I’ve gotten myself are always like this when it’s a big company. No real explanation given, no recourse possible, I don’t expect a lawyer would tell me differently. IMO the only solution is to stop focusing on the “rules” they have written entirely for their own benefit and start using systems that are more decentralized in terms of who is actually in control.
Sure, but if you were comfortable with Discord as a home for this work, people have been speaking up against discord as a resource for these kinds of things pretty much since the beginning of discord.
Its a lesson learned, but better off now that later. No corporation can be trusted. You have that knowledge now if you didn’t before. Make decisions accordingly.
People were not comfortable about it until 2021 when they relaxed their terms of service. Heck, Discord even approved them as community servers that have stricter rules.
It’s a clear move that they are done with Discord being a chat platform and ready for their IPO.