"Sia hosts have always had questionable liability over what they store as hosts. These concerns are likely to amplify with Skynet, where a host may hold a whole unencrypted file and serve it to a portal or public users, exposing the host as being the one that holds a file that may infringe copyright or be illegal in some other way."
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but most jurisdictions have strong protections for providers hosting third party content so long as the providers are not aware that the content is problematic. If a provider is notified that there is problematic content on their machine, they have an obligation to take it down in a reasonable timeframe.
Sia hosts already have tooling for complying with DCMAs and abuse notices. To the best of my knowledge, no Sia host has yet received one, but we are prepared for when that moment happens.
Most of the rest of the issues in that letter are overstated and ungenerous. Sia/Skynet is an early project, with a small team and a limited budget. Of course it is not as polished as its centralized alternatives, but if you compare to better funded projects like Storj and Filecoin, I believe it's very difficult to say in good faith that our team is not up for the task.
> I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but most jurisdictions have strong protections for providers hosting third party content so long as the providers are not aware that the content is problematic.
We cannot rely on that continuing to be the case. Neither Trump nor Biden want Section 230 to keep going as it is.
Portals and hosts manage abuse reports. It is their responsibility to filter content. Of course, anyone can spin up their own portal and pin content that is being censored. However, that is their private business.
No low size limitation on files is a feature, not a bug. Files on public portals are currently kept for 90 days on a best effort basis. If you want to make sure your files stay pinned, you will soon be able to sign up for a paid account.
We're just finishing up the database code to handle this, but most Skynet portals intend to operate on a freemium model. If you use Skynet for free, you get a certain amount of storage and a ratelimit on your usage of the platform, and if you upgrade to a flat monthly fee you get more storage and better access speeds.
