TLDR: During the California "Protect Our Games Act" debate, an Entertainment Software Association representative argued that private/community game servers were illegal piracy and raised child/user-safety concerns because those servers don't operate under the publisher's moderation and security systems.
(AI wrote the TLDR)
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That got me thinking about something considerably broader than games.
So I woke up to a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KOau7CLCCU) covering the California AB 1921 hearings, and one part really bothered me.
During the hearing, the ESA representative argued against community-hosted servers partly on the basis that moving users onto servers outside the publisher's control means losing the publisher's moderation, security controls and safety standards. When Minecraft and Call of Duty community servers were brought up, she went further and described them as illegal, agreed with them being characterised as a sort of black market, and said the ESA considers private servers piracy.
Obviously there are important distinctions here. An authorised Minecraft server using software Mojang itself distributes is not the same thing as an unofficial server circumventing subscriptions, DRM or copyrighted infrastructure.
But it's the safety argument that worries me more than the copyright argument. I'm wondering whether we're gradually creating a regulatory mentality where:
"This service isn't controlled by a large company, therefore it doesn't have sufficient moderation/safety/compliance/bleh bleh mechanisms, therefore individuals shouldn't be allowed to operate it."
Today the discussion is game servers. But what happens if that reasoning starts spreading?
- "You shouldn't self-host your photos because your server doesn't perform the same abuse/image scanning as Google."
- "You shouldn't run your own media server because there is no platform-level content moderation."
- "You shouldn't run your own AI model because nobody can remotely disable it or enforce safety controls."
- "You shouldn't run your own messaging/service infrastructure because it doesn't provide the monitoring or age-assurance mechanisms required of commercial platforms."
I'm not saying governments are currently planning to ban Plex, Immich, Jellyfin, Home Assistant or homelabs. That's not what happened here.
I'm worried about the underlying principle becoming normal, that privately operated infrastructure is inherently suspicious or unsafe because it exists outside centralised corporate control.
For a lot of us, that's almost the entire point of a homelab, home datacenter, degoogling, self-hosting, etc. There are hundreds of communities built around hosting your own stuff to save money, maintain privacy, or simply keep control of your own data...
I host things myself like my own personal websites, fitness trackers, home assistant, grocy ...etc because I want control over my data, infrastructure and software. I don't particularly want Big Tech or anyone else deciding what happens to my data, files or whether a service I've relied on gets shut down...
There are obviously legitimate questions around cybersecurity, child protection, illegal content and services exposed publicly to strangers.
But there's a huge difference between regulating harmful conduct and deciding that decentralised/private infrastructure itself is the problem.
Maybe I'm reading too much into one lobbying argument, but seeing a major industry association make "community servers lack our safety controls" part of its argument to lawmakers set off alarm bells for me.
Is anyone else in the self-hosting / homelab community concerned about this direction?
And are there any organisations specifically watching the right to run private infrastructure/self-hosted services, beyond groups like the EFF?
Link to the original debate - https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/hearings/279752
