Quick point of clarification. This proposal won’t be decided by liquid democracy. DF (for sure) and ICA (I’m not sure) are not going to vote as per Alexa’s original proposal message. I don’t think cycle_dao, ICDevs, or anyone else has enough followers to execute what we commonly refer to as liquid democracy. Most neurons will not vote automatically on this proposal. It will need to be manual voting of at least 9.3M votes that are a majority of total votes cast in order to pass. This seems like it will play out as a decentralized governance decision to me.
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To be honest this will get wild before it gets any better. It is the beginning of people uploading movies, music and all kinds of things. Dfinity prob knows the identity of the person because they had to fund the canister. They prob went through KYC I imagine since no other exchanges exist. However there will be anon exchanges and then what. There will be anon actors uploading all kinds of illegal things.
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As much as I’d like to believe we have enough geographical distribution to really take a strong stance against censorship, I don’t think that’s the case.
I will be voting to adopt this proposal but I definitely understand why others will choose to reject it.
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I don’t fully understand the details of this case…
- Who is this node provider and which jurisdiction are they in? I don’t know why Nintendo picked this node provider to contact. They probably don’t know that a single node can’t actually take down a canister.
- If we vote to remove this canister, can’t the developer just upload another identical canister…?
So if this proposal fails, what happens next? Nintendo will sue… whom? I guess they could contact the principal controller… if they can figure out how to contact them. They could choose to sue DFINITY, which could work if DFINITY collectively owns >50% of the vote, which they do with liquid democracy and don’t without (I think). But if that does happen, people could choose to vote independently so enforcement isn’t guaranteed.
In any case, I think any publicity with a lawsuit like this could actually be great for the IC from a marketing POV. It’ll at least counter the “ICP not decentralized” narrative. Would be fun to see where that goes.
Voting no.
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We should politely request that Nintendo submit the proposal themselves because we have time and we don’t actually have proof Nintendo sent any notice at all.
As far as Bob B’s research yielded, DMCA notices have a 7-day response period. It’s been 1 day so far. Let’s use this time productively:
- Let’s verify exactly how much time we have to respond (@alexa.smith?)
- Let’s immediately vote no on this proposal to make sure this doesn’t get executed right now
- Let’s get a response back to Nintendo that the community will be happy to vote “yes” to remove the canister as long as they’re the ones to submit the proposal (complete with well-written language on why this is the only solution to remove the canister anyway, and instructions on how to get their neuron set up) (@alexa.smith would you be able to route this message to the right node provider / Nintendo legal team?)
- Let’s help Dfinity see this as an opportunity to onboard a major corporate neuron submitting an NNS proposal, and ask for their support and cooperation with Nintendo’s legal team (@alexa.smith might Dfinity help?)
- Let’s plan on re-introducing this proposal in 3-4ish days if we don’t hear back in this time (this brings us right back to where we are right now, but we’d be 3-4 days smarter)
We can do all these things without making any rushed decisions about censorship / takedown / acceptable use policies, legal responsibilities, jurisdictions, node provider protections, etc and make a concerted effort taking a step in the decentralized internet direction.
This is what the NNS was built for, let’s use this as an opportunity to encourage adoption!
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Agree, sounds like a right thing to do so far.
I am voting no also.
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How did Nintendo even know what node provider was hosting the canister?
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Aren’t canister supposed to be hosted by subnets that are created from multiple different node providers in different regions?
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Just listened to 1 hr 16 mins of 
convo on Spaces hosted by Jordan and Bob… the level of thoughtfulness and caution was remarkable.
Important to remember. There’s a difference between policing [as a community] copyright infringement and illegal content verses censorship and freedom of speech.
FYI. Since DFINITY is abstaining from voting, I did not 
to speak… as many of us at DFINITY are mindful not to influence the discussion, and allow the community to govern.
Seeing people spend their personal time to discuss was 
… this is something we all hoped for as we incubated the Internet Computer, and this is just the beginning. Stoked!
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Thanks for the high-level summary of the issue at hand @alexa.smith which has certainly generated a fair amount of comments.
Based purely on the summary, I am unable to make an informed decision as to which way to vote (notwithstanding that a casual onlooker will most likely say that this is a blatant misuse of Nintendo intellectual property and vote to remove the canister without further thought).
If there was an option to vote ‘Abstain’ and receive voting rewards at the same time, I would most certainly do so. However, given this is not an available option, I have voted ‘No’ purely on the basis of insufficient information and/or supporting documentation to make an informed decision.
I would assume the node provider may consider taking further steps (in addition to informing DF) in dealing with the take down notice including seeking legal advice based on the node providers’ legal jurisdiction.
With regards to the lack of information and/or supporting documentation, it would be useful if the community has access to some or all of the following information:
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A high level summary of preliminary legal advice (even if it is a simple legal opinion ~ better than nothing) received (if any) regarding the take-down notice (assuming that the node provider has taken this action in addition to notifying Dfinity Foundation). This could prove useful in the future regarding take down notices which may be less clear-cut.
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Copy of actual ‘take down notice’ made against node provider (information could be redacted if required) (we are currently making a decision based on the ‘take down notice’ but has anyone (apart from Dfinity Foundation and the node provider) actually seen the notice?)
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Who is the owner of the canister and does the node provider have the right / authority to remove the canister? (does the node provider simply provide a platform for the canister to be hosted with the canister ultimately being owned by the canister developer?)
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Was the node provider the correct entity being served the notice and does the node provider have any legal obligation to comply based on its jurisdiction?
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If the node provider refuses to comply and is eventually sued, does the node provider have any recourse against Dfinity Foundation?
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How did Nintendo know which Node Provider to target and is there any recourse (in terms of say privacy) against anyone for such information being provided to Nintendo?
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Was the the Nintendo canister uploaded for private use and not meant to be shared? This is on the assumption that we do not currently know the identity of the developer who created the canister given that he/she did not appear to personally share the canister ID on social media (but instead it was found by members of the community and distributed that way).
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Sometimes, there could be procedural defects in notices and/or service of such notices which if put to a Court will render such notices null and void. Has this been considered?
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What fiduciary duties (if any) and/or legal obligation(s) does the node provider have to the canister owner and vice versa?
Either way, we do not have sufficient information to make an informed decision.
With the lack of further and better information, perhaps the NNS proposal could be framed in a way to provide time (say in line with the notice period given by the takedown notice) for the node provider to receive preliminary legal advice on the matter and/or for the developer of the Nintendo canister to either comply with the request made by Nintendo to the node provider and/or provide a reason(s) as to why he/she believes that there is no reason to comply with Nintendo’s request in removing the canister.
I believe we should not set a precedent on voting on issues based on gut instinct, lack of information and lack of time more so when it is dealing with legal issues that we may not fully understand.
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If this canister is deleted, it could create a “Streisand Effect” where people upload many copies.
Imagine how many copyright claims AWS or YouTube gets. They employ huge teams to handle the requests. And trolls often send fake DMCA notices to take down stuff they don’t like. Verification of copyright claims can be complex, involving legal expertise across multiple countries.
This censorship will make headlines and damage ICP’s reputation in the broader crypto community, even if it is the right thing to do.
With all that said, the network must protect its node providers. The time to act, IMO, is when there is credible legal threat to node providers. The alternative would be to effectively lose all nodes in certain countries, which harms the performance characteristics of the network.
So is there a credible legal threat? Could Nintendo sue an Ethereum node operator if someone painstakingly uploaded a game to the Eth blockchain? If no, is the IC substantially different from Ethereum in the nature of data hosting?
Lastly, this won’t be the last controversial censorship vote. If the IC is to grow to a large network of thousands of apps, it will need a dedicated team of people handling the onslaught of requests.
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Should some canister be shut down because it is violating US law? What would happen to those BTC wallet canisters running in a few months after, should they be shut down due to some government’s regulation?
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The question is not what the IC community thinks of US law, rather do we want to have node providers in the US. If yes, the network must protect those node providers from credible legal threats.
I imagine the NNS will put up with US copyright law if that is what it takes to use US data centers. However I can see other scenarios where the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. For instance if China jailed node providers for hosting anti-CCP content, I bet the IC would still refuse to censor and accept not having nodes in China.
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The infinite number of emulators that are on web 2.0 are accepted by Nintendo?? C’mon…
I voted NO for this one
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Nintendo should hold ICP to engage in this vote, making their sound in a DAO & IC way.
But on the other hand, what if the contents are about child abuse, sex, denying history or something like that? We should set up a series of content rules to give it a consensus standard by IC proposals like what a DAO will do.
I agree that we should vote no and postpone the vote. We need more information about this, as others are calling for.
Can we see the DMCA notice? Which node operator was contacted and why? Does Nintendo understand that asking a single node operator to take down content does not solve their problem?
Explaining to them the NNS and encouraging them to get involved in governance seems like a good thing to do, though I’m not sure how keen they will be to do something outside of the normal legal process they probably often go through.
Let’s postpone this, we simply don’t have enough information nor a solid process in place and we’re overreacting far too quickly.
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I’ve honestly never heard of Nintendo being accepting of any N64 emulator so this doesn’t surprise me
The developer has removed the Super Mario 64 game: https://culg2-qyaaa-aaaai-qa7sa-cai.raw.ic0.app/
Should DFINITY vote no to put an end to the proposal?
I think it’s time to regroup and prepare for a future event.
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I would argue it isn’t about what we want but what we have. If I just go off of the visual appearance of the node map it would seem like we have half our nodes in the U.S and the other half in Europe.
Wow! Perhaps in the future we could have a dedicated announcement channel where these types of notices can be posted for a period of time before any proposals are submitted.
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