This VentureBeat piece with Reddit CEO Yishan Wong brings up a number of interesting facts concerning Reddit in the wake of its receiving an additional $50 million funding round. One of those pieces of interesting information concerns Reddit’s decision to take down a subreddit devoted to the sharing of recently-leaked celebrity nude photos.
Says Wong:
If there’s any confusion: [Reddit] did not shut down /r/TheFappening due to content linking to nude celebrity photos. The subreddit was shut down because users were reposting content already taken down due to valid DMCA requests, and because spammers began posting links to the images hosted on their own pay-per-click sites, or sites intended to spread malware.
We can’t read too much from this comment, but it does implicate that the dignitary interests of the celebrities involved did not motivate Reddit to do the right thing. Instead, the risk of copyright liability (or, more precisely, the risk that DMCA safe harbor protection may be eliminated) was a stronger motivation.
Evan Brown is an attorney in Chicago advising clients on matters dealing with technology, the internet and new media.