At various times, most social media platforms have received criticism for alleged failure to prevent distribution of copyright-infringing content. Few, however, have been threatened with widespread blocking more often than Telegram. In a row that seemed ready to boil over last year, Telegram was given an ultimatum by the Malaysian government; come to the negotiating table or face the consequences. A Malaysian minister now says that Telegram is ready to fight piracy.
IANAL and all the other anals, but my understanding is Signal wouldn’t be liable and wouldn’t have to do anything. They designed their service so they can’t know the content of the messages, so if a third party Maloyse (see what I’m doing there?) is reporting a message between Alice and Bob that Maloyse thinks to be illegal, Signal would be within legal grounds to bring into question how did M got that message, and it can’t be used as proof against Signal because there is no legal mechanism by which Signal could have acquired that message and act upon it - in fact, Signal has grounds to suspect Maloyse is crafting those messages, since neither Alice nor Bob have reported such message.
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Maloyse absolutely can:
- eavesdrop above Alice’s shoulder
- be an evil, militarily dressed maid on
BobAlice’s home - have remote administrative permissions on Bob’s phone
- (“accidentally”) get a full-workspace snapshot of Charlie’s desktop while he has the group open in Signal Desktop
- Sneak around and check the phone while Alice and Donny are having sex
- Hit Charlie with a $5 wrench
Yes, but we’re discussing group chats disseminating piracy links. Do you think it’s harder to join such a group chat and report it to signal than it is to do all the cloak and dagger nonsense?
