Hi, I have an article website and publish many articles from freelancers. What i need to know is that if i write a line in my disclaimer that any copyright issues are with the author...and if the author has indeed copied from some other source...will i be free of any legal problems? Regards
You are responsible for all the content you put on your site. If you put an article or image on your site that turns out to be infringement, you can be held financially responsible even with a disclaimer. If this happened, you could then go after the person who provided you with the material, but that wouldn't get you off the hook with the true owner of the material.
There are measures you can take in the US to limit or even avoid any liability. Your statement comes no where close to meeting the requirements for this purpose. The DMCA has regulations for setting up a safe harbor for online service providers. These are the rules that protect places like YouTube. The basic rules for having "safe harbor" status can be seen here: Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act
no it's the author responsibilities , u only have to quote copyrighted work try to cover this in your disclaimer section good luck
1) If the content is submitted by the users, how would one know what needed to be quoted? 2) Simply quoting copyrighted works does not prevent one from violating copyright law. There are several rules that regulate how this is done, from the context in which the material is quoted to the amount of the material that is quoted. 3) No disclaimer by itself is enough to prevent liability. There are several measures one has to take, including registering somebody with the copyright office as the contact person to answer complaints made through their office.
- - - many websites just don't handle any responsibility of copyrighted work. They say it in their Disclaimer Section , or term of Use , or even PP .. i wounder how many website owners do what you wrote under 3)
I'm sure that many small websites don't do it. They look at it as a numbers game. What are the chances that the person that content was taken from will find it? What are the chances that they will start off by reporting me properly and not just send me a cease and desist letter? Any site with large traffic has done this already. From my point of view, the process of gaining safe harbor is so easy and the $80 fee to register the copyright agent is so much less than one successful complaint could cost that it would be worth it to do so. Especially with all the new technology being developed to find copied content on the web. When it comes down to it, each website owner has to make their own decision. All I am saying is that no matter what you put in a TOS, disclaimer, site policies, a web site owner is liable for content posted on their system by other people unless they follow the steps outlined by the DMCA. Here is a list of sites that have registered a copyright agent: Agent List While most large sites are on there, I noticed a trend for adult sites to have adopted this. It is probably because they know they have notoriously questionable tactics when it comes to content....
The ones that loose when they eventually get sued. As this happens more and more, that will be something people look for when buying "used" web sites.