Today the reddit staff censored some unpopular content purely because it was unpopular and made them look bad.
It's not that simple - look at all the responses in this thread. You've got plenty people here claiming that all of the content in all of those sub-reddits was clearly illegal, some people arguing that it was half and half, some arguing that it's all legit.
I don't even know what was in the sub-reddits, but I can tell you for sure that if there's this much disagreement over whether most of it is legal or not, that's a nasty legal minefield that I certainly would not want to make decisions about, especially given that I'd be risking both my company and my own freedom if I happened to make a mistake and let something prosecutable through. Not to mention that I'm sure there was a lot of work involved in deciding these things on a case-by-case basis.
Personally, I'd be much more comfortable with the situation if Reddit had decided early on to place a blanket ban on these types of sub-reddits under this justification, rather than waiting until the PR shitstorm started up, but even if it is just a face-saving move at this point, I think the logic is pretty sound. I think other user-submitted content sites would probably be wise to adopt this sort of policy, even if Reddit screwed up and was too lenient at the start.
It's irrelevant what the people here or elsewhere think -- as you say there are many dissenting opinions but very few professional legal opinions.
Rather than dally with opinions, let's stick to facts: The authorities will shut down sites with illegal activities and the authorities are aware of these subreddits. The authorities did not intervene.
Regarding your comfort with blanket bans, you may want to read this other article recently posted to HN which offers a much more insightful analysis: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3585997
It's not that simple - look at all the responses in this thread. You've got plenty people here claiming that all of the content in all of those sub-reddits was clearly illegal, some people arguing that it was half and half, some arguing that it's all legit.
I don't even know what was in the sub-reddits, but I can tell you for sure that if there's this much disagreement over whether most of it is legal or not, that's a nasty legal minefield that I certainly would not want to make decisions about, especially given that I'd be risking both my company and my own freedom if I happened to make a mistake and let something prosecutable through. Not to mention that I'm sure there was a lot of work involved in deciding these things on a case-by-case basis.
Personally, I'd be much more comfortable with the situation if Reddit had decided early on to place a blanket ban on these types of sub-reddits under this justification, rather than waiting until the PR shitstorm started up, but even if it is just a face-saving move at this point, I think the logic is pretty sound. I think other user-submitted content sites would probably be wise to adopt this sort of policy, even if Reddit screwed up and was too lenient at the start.