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Image Proxy - legal problems?

Started by ThomasMo, January 29, 2018, 04:17:40 AM

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ThomasMo

I want to switch my forum to https. Server is running with a Let's encrypt certificate on https since several months, only my forum is still on http. My biggest concern is now not the switch itself but some legal aspects with the image proxy. As most of you know, several of the big photo agancys have expensive lawyers. Due to that, I already disabled the upload function at my forum, so that the users have to put images on their own server. So I am not the hoster of the images users are posting. In most countries, I am relatively safe with images embedded into a forum but hosted on somebody elses server.

But what happens as soon as I activate the image proxy? As soon as I do so, all images will be provided by from my server. IMO this is a big problem regarding legal aspects. But without the image proxy, IMO switching to https will bring several problems. Are there any other solutions? E. g. that SMF does by default not load http resources and the user gets a hint and can load the unsecured resources manually? I think that is the way ebay wants to go.

Illori

which version of SMF are you using?

ThomasMo

2.0.15 - sorry, I think I posted at the wrong board. Can you please move the topic?

Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

Law differs in all countries, but I'd say most countries should be fine with caching like this as "fair use" - if they are fine with you hotlinking the images on your own site in the first place.
Slava
Ukraini!
"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

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ThomasMo

I think there are not really much countries with a "fair use" law. And as I understand some regulations, it makes a difference if the image is embedded but hosted on the original site or if it is delivered by your site - which is technically the case with the image proxy. IMO this is really a big issue for many forum admins that want to switch to https.

Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

Facebook. Does this in all countries it's available at. Haven't seen it in big trouble yet. Have you?
The actual "fair use" is a very US statement, but most western countries do have statutes that amount the same in a way.
You can use protected works for certain purposes, or as part of a new work etc. in many countries.

If the cache is illegal in your country and you know it though, then I'd advice not to use it of course.
Slava
Ukraini!
"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

How you can help SMF

drewactual

pass the buck...

add a line to your user agreement stating the user is responsible for having ownership or right of use for images or content shared with the community, and will provide links and credits to original sources while positing unoriginal material or images. 

ThomasMo

Sorry, but that's not a good hint at all. It is your server and you will be the one who gets the letter from the lawyer and the one who will have to pay. Of course, you can then try to recourse the user, but do you know him? Do you know if he has the money?

drewactual

as it happens, i live with someone who is an attorney specializing in estate and copyright- and this was the advice they offered when asked. 

if your users put you at risk, then you put them at risk.  if everyone follows the rules, there isn't a problem.  it's up to you to demonstrate effort to keep this from happening.  a disclaimer and proof of practice policing that policy is what is required on your end to 'pass the buck'.  If you need further guidance, I imagine you should hire legal council to provide it.  if you want i'll provide you with a number to call to get the same info i just stated.  she's expensive, though, so... stand by for that.

Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

#9
Fyi, EU "Fair use" includes this

Quote
Article 5

Exceptions and limitations

1. Temporary acts of reproduction referred to in Article 2, which are transient or incidental [and] an integral and essential part of a technological process and whose sole purpose is to enable:

(a) a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary, or

(b) a lawful use

of a work or other subject-matter to be made, and which have no independent economic significance, shall be exempted from the reproduction right provided for in Article 2.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32001L0029:EN:HTML

The 2001 EUCD, article, 5 specifies exceptions to copyright. However, only one of these exceptions is mandatory (the one that concerns caching). The others are optional, meaning that for each exception, each country is free to choose whether it adopts it and how it restricts it. Thus, one should not assume that one exception true in one EU country applies in another. Notably, each country is free to choose how to copyright objects permanently located in public places and "simple" photographs.
Slava
Ukraini!
"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

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LiroyvH

Quote from: ThomasMo on January 29, 2018, 12:41:27 PM
I think there are not really much countries with a "fair use" law. And as I understand some regulations, it makes a difference if the image is embedded but hosted on the original site or if it is delivered by your site - which is technically the case with the image proxy. IMO this is really a big issue for many forum admins that want to switch to https.

A normal proxy server does the same thing. It downloads everything to its cache/store, then uploads it to you. It may even retain some temporary caches.

That's legal in the US and EU. For the EU, see above.
For the US, see: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512

But as always, if you want to be sure or have doubts: get in touch with a lawyer for legal advise.
((U + C + I)x(10 − S)) / 20xAx1 / (1 − sin(F / 10))
President/CEO of Simple Machines - Server Manager
Please do not PM for support - anything else is usually OK.

a10

Opera has been offering their proxy service for years, anyone using 'Turbo' downloads content stored (temporarily?) on an Opera server, not from the original source. May be relevant to this topic.

http://help.opera.com/Mac/10.60/en/turbo.html
2.0.19, php 8.0.23, MariaDB 10.5.15. Mods: Contact Page, Like Posts, Responsive Curve, Search Focus Dropdown, Add Join Date to Post.

Tenebroso_MW

The subject is interesting, thank you. I think that everyone is free to read international laws and it is clear that you have to study a lot for any subject and also be lucky.


Is there any chance to censor http in images?

This issue solves this doubt for me.

Whoever wants to upload images that are https, otherwise, remains as a link without embedding the image.

[img ] httx://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [ /img]

I could use it very well.

ThomasMo

Quote from: Tenebroso_MW on January 29, 2018, 08:25:49 PM
Is there any chance to censor http in images?

This issue solves this doubt for me.

Whoever wants to upload images that are https, otherwise, remains as a link without embedding the image.

[img ] httx://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [ /img]

I could use it very well.
Even if so: This would only solve the problem for new postings. But I have a Forum running since more than 10 years with several hundered thousand postings and many with them with image links.

ThomasMo

Quote from: a10 on January 29, 2018, 04:18:35 PM
Opera has been offering their proxy service for years, anyone using 'Turbo' downloads content stored (temporarily?) on an Opera server, not from the original source. May be relevant to this topic.

http://help.opera.com/Mac/10.60/en/turbo.html
That is true. The difference could be that most dubious agancys will know that Opera has the money to buy good lawyers  while they know that the owner of mylittleforum.de might not have and he might pay the money to avoid more cost.

Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

Could be a feature request to add an option alongside the proxy, that instead of proxying the image just turns it to a link. Perhaps. I'm not sure if that's viable or a good idea...
Slava
Ukraini!
"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

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Kindred

personally, I believe that would be overkill and is not at all necessary.


For example...   if your host runs a caching or proxy system, or you use cloudflare...  then stuff is going to get stored.

Although politicians are complete idiots when it comes to technology (just look at the idiotic laws in the EU), the use of proxies and caches is standard technology and would not count as "storing" the Intellectual property of others on your site.
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Tenebroso_MW

Yes, for a new forum, like mine, it does. For a veteran forum, you have to look for a system. It is evident that the large companies expand the time to infinity in terms of deadlines, until achieving the presquipción of the possible crime. The small, we put an administrative fine without an option to defense and we do not raise head in half life.

Viable? Good solution? The proxy is a tool that makes it easier for us not to enter UNSAFE mode. It is something very big. Signatures and external avatars. Linked images without problem for eternity. Perfect.

Do we want to be avant-garde?
Well, let's not go behind the millions of spam industries. Let's go ahead.

Next to the proxy defense, we open a menu with options to prohibited links.

- images http. This will be science fiction in a few months. Since it will be difficult to find images in http in a short time.

- Prohibited links of spam. Goodbye to the pages of viagras, that you grow your penis four centimeters in a month or how to be a millionaire from home without working. List of prohibited web links. And they run behind us trying to nail spam in smf forums. Being the first platform that eliminates the links that penalize and spam from a new perspective.

There will be no punishable links in smf, we will delete the post, and the spam will go for sheep to other forums. Over time, this system will be adapted to all webs. Spam, will have to use link shorteners, and we who know, we will read that link even if it is hidden.

- Moderate article that contains link. Option to moderate the post that contains a link. The spam will go away, if the forum is protected against their work, the spam will go to work on other platforms. There is a possibility that the smf forums system is on the blacklist of spam, places not to register because it only represents wasting time.

- Option to moderate posts that contain links, temporarily or to groups or new users.


We have forbidden words, nick forbidden to register and now, forbidden or moderate links.

We will clean without nerves. We'll calmly sweep the ******.

We do not have the option of complete justification in text, but we give the option to the administrator to moderate the links.


And let's go around the neuron to try to solve the issue of the images of veteran forums.

ThomasMo

Quote from: Kindred on January 30, 2018, 12:00:03 PMthe use of proxies and caches is standard technology and would not count as "storing" the Intellectual property of others on your site.
Can you give an example how the URL of a SMF cached image will look like? Is it easy to identify the original URL?

Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

Quote from: ThomasMo on January 30, 2018, 01:08:36 PM
Quote from: Kindred on January 30, 2018, 12:00:03 PMthe use of proxies and caches is standard technology and would not count as "storing" the Intellectual property of others on your site.
Can you give an example how the URL of a SMF cached image will look like? Is it easy to identify the original URL?

Using a previously posted example link:

Original link: http://i.imgur.com/5zMGjbH.png



Becomes:


<img src="https://www.simplemachines.org/community/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F5zMGjbH.png&amp;hash=f73c95b0a1243c573264b9445b6751f1" alt="" width="600" height="200" class="bbc_img resized">
Slava
Ukraini!
"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

How you can help SMF

Kindred

Sorry, Tenebroso_MW, but none of that made any sense at all.

Moderating messages for spam? There is a much more efficient way..   stop the spammers from even registering an account in the first place.
On my sites, I have not had an actual spammer get through registration in close to 2 years now.
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

ThomasMo

Quote from: Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen on January 30, 2018, 01:53:58 PM

Using a previously posted example link:

Original link: http://i.imgur.com/5zMGjbH.png

Becomes:


<img src="https://www.simplemachines.org/community/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F5zMGjbH.png&amp;hash=f73c95b0a1243c573264b9445b6751f1" alt="" width="600" height="200" class="bbc_img resized">


Thank you. So it is at least clearly visible at the URL where the image comes from.

ThomasMo

Quote from: Kindred on January 30, 2018, 02:08:38 PM
On my sites, I have not had an actual spammer get through registration in close to 2 years now.
Same for my forum. And BTW: IMO the best protection against spam accounts is to use the question-feature at the registration form. The captcha did not have any effect on my forum, but asking a simple question stops about 99% of the spam bots from getting an account created.

Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

Quote from: ThomasMo on January 30, 2018, 03:50:00 PM
Quote from: Kindred on January 30, 2018, 02:08:38 PM
On my sites, I have not had an actual spammer get through registration in close to 2 years now.
Same for my forum. And BTW: IMO the best protection against spam accounts is to use the question-feature at the registration form. The captcha did not have any effect on my forum, but asking a simple question stops about 99% of the spam bots from getting an account created.
I'd second (third?) that. I've had recaptcha and 2 (changing) questions as my verification for a long time, and no trouble with spammers to mention.
Slava
Ukraini!
"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

How you can help SMF

Tenebroso_MW

Do not be sorry. My head is often gone. I'm sorry. Thank you.


regards

Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

ThomasMo, I hope we've been able to answer your concerns somewhat.
I'll be marking this topic solved now, but if you wish to continue discussion over the proxy functionality, you are free to do so regardless :)
Slava
Ukraini!
"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

How you can help SMF

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