Hey, I am guessing this is the place to post this, so here it goes. Lets say, someone from Australia wants to start a warez forum. So he/she rents his/her own dedicated server from a company in the USA. The forum only LINKS, but does not host material. Is this legal or illegal? Assuming the hosting company allows the actions of this individual, what laws apply here. AUS law, or USA law. And if it does apply, what is most likely to happen to the individual. I have been curious about this for a while, as I have seen this done before and the forums are still going. Cheers!
Do your research on well known warez domains and find out who their host are. If they been safe for the past years, chances are your new warez forum will be under the radar even if it was illegal.
You won't be able to get away if they're afert you. At some point you'll have to pay for a server or receive money from advertisers and that's where they can get you. Paying for a server anonymously and receiving money from a reputable advertiser without giving away your identity isn't easy. Good luck.
Legal doesn't matter so much as US hosting providers will dump you after your first DMCA complaint. Find some place that is more friendly to what you are doing. I am going to guess that it is probably illegal in Australia to take part in copyright infringement and even though your hosting is "offshore" what you are doing may still illegal where you live (probably depends on jurisdiction) and could potentially still be a crime.
No there is no loop hole, they haven't been caught yet. The day they start offering a $10 bounty to start turning in theses sites, we won't see anymore of these posts, over and over again.
I was just curious, I am not starting a warez site or anything, but I just wanted to know how different laws apply in different countries. The reason I ask is because I have an adult site and was asked to remove some content (which is fine), but the server is in USA and I am in Aus. I always delete the files they ask me to delete, but I can not police the entire image hosting site, so I am just worried I will go to jail for someone hosting a photo, and I figured it may fall into the Warez category. Cheers!
As long as you do not host any illegal files on your server, you should be fine. Discussing and linking to sites that do host the content is not illegal. It's up to the Rapidshares, Megauploads etc. to moderate their content
The hypertext links are file-sharing url services as described in, and proscribed by, Section 512(d) of Title 17, United States Code.