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If I was Apple, I would be getting that torn down and suing immediately (or hiring their quasi-police force to tear it down with or without permission). I doubt Apple "allows" it. Apple probably even forbids it in their Terms of Service.

Just because Apple willingly avoids knowing what their users store on iCloud does not mean they are taking the active role of allowing illegal content to be stored.


There are lots of good reasons for Apple to avoid a defamation lawsuit about this.

(1) Streisand effect (mentioned by another commenter) - it would generate tons of free publicity for their opponents.

(2) Civil discovery - the defendant would get to demand access to Apple's internal e-mails about this issue in order to try to prove its case.

(3) Possibly losing - even though this feels obviously intended to make people believe false things about Apple, a court might accept that there is some interpretation of "allows" and "complicit" that are protected criticisms of the company under some jurisdiction's defamation standard.


> I doubt Apple "allows" it. Apple probably even forbids it in their Terms of Service.

Encrocrypt and Cyberbunker probably had terms saying not to do illegal things...

What matters is how they respond to problems as they are pointed out. If it would turn out that links to their hosting service keep popping up in child abuse cases, do they respond by deleting them piecemeal or do they put a system in place that tries to identify the content by fuzzy hash and flags it for proactive review? Do they actively cooperate with the countries' law enforcement where the picture got uploaded from? That sort of thing. That has infinitely more impact than "you wouldn't download a car" notices


Thats a striessand effect waiting to happen


Better to use your substantially larger ad budget to quietly outbid them on billboards in a way least likely to generate press on their billboard.




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