So, I have an anime site, and I just put up a gallery on it. I figure that most people that will put images on the site won't be their images, but images of anime companies, or images that they have edited, but the stock is still from the anime company. Since I don't want to moderate every picture that people upload, i would like to know how i would go about not getting into legal trouble over this. Would a simple disclaimer work?
Nope. You're responsible for what is on your network. This was established in court many moons ago. Just think about it. If all you needed was a disclaimer, you could create an account and break laws to your heart's content.
ok, what about something like a warning for not putting up illegal content onto the gallery? Would that do it?
All that stuff will give you legal backing when you need to sue a user, but it doesn't protect you from outside legal action. Yes, maybe an outside content owner will work with you, but they don't have to. They can just sue you. And in turn, you can try to sue the user. But, you're the one holding the bag. Once you allow others to submit content openly, you've opened yourself up. YouTube would be a recent example of this. And now they work around the clock trying to stamp out copyrighted material. I'd consult a lawyer though if you plan to move forward. That's one thing a lot of people don't think about. Google has TONS of lawyers at its disposal. That's something you (I think) nor I have. So, it wouldn't make sense to copy that model.
Ok. I guess ill just have to moderate the content. Not like I will be getting hundreds of thousands of users like youtube or anything.
I don't even want to think about the mess over at youtube lol. Yeah, it's so much easier to let people just submit stuff and go, but the amount of crap you're opening yourself up to isn't worth it unless you have the worker power to police everything.
Well I got 3 people who got nothign to do over the summer cause school is over. So ill use that. Maybe Ill just close the gallery if it gets out of hand. Im sure most people would rather just send me a C&D instead of going to court, since it's not like im selling it. Oh btw, if I have it on my site, and the author is mentioned, is that ok?
put a statment in your site saying your not responcible for the showing of images that are from out side your site. you could also ask your users to display a url to the site they got the image from, its free advertising for that site so they should'nt care
That won't protect you at all. If it's copyrighted and you're publishing it- you're responsible. It doesn't matter if the tooth fairy appeared and uploaded it your server.
This reminds me of back in the day when "shady" sites would put a disclaimer saying that if you were a member of law enforcement you had to stop and if you entered the site, you couldn't prosecute. hahaha what stupidity
This is the same type of trouble that youtube is getting into. They ended up just having to police the content a lot more closely. It would also be a very good idea to provide a link on every page allowing anyone to report a infringing image to you. This shows your really trying to make things right. In this case people will be less likely to go ballistic if they see work of theirs they did not authorize for your site.
marketjunction and pc-monkey are right on target. I manage a site that is one of the most well trafficked on the Internet and is a well known user generated content site. The laws are very murky but there are still standards that must be followed to be in a "safe harbor" and even then it's unclear. I won't go into detail as to what YouTube, MySpace, Break, etc. are all doing in an attempt to avoid trouble but will say this: (1) The disclaimer route is laughable - is this any different than hosting a "warez site" and claiming it's for entertainment purposes only? If the sole purpose of your site is for "sharing" ala napster then you've got a problem. If you're making money off of a good amount of content that is clearly protected then you've got a problem and will likely attract more attention. (2) After reading posts here I think marketjunction probably has a very good understanding of the industry as do some others. Not only do you need people to reasonably police but you have to know how to police it. This means setting up a copyright agent, etc.
So i guess i should just delete the gallery. No reason keeping it if i have to put so much work into it. I woudln't be making money from it though, it's just there for the users to submit their artwork, or what they did to other artworks, ie; colorized manga, AMVs, stuff like that
I'm not giving you legal advice. If people are putting up their own artwork, it should be fine. If it's small and you're obviously not trying to make money riding off another's property, you should be fine. But if you're seeing dozens of Spiderman images going up, then be prepared to make users know and appreciate the fact that your site is not intended for them to share copyrighted content. Regarding other artworks... <sigh>... this is still a copyright issue. While I love freedom of expression, there are questions, questions, questions. If it's for display purposes that is one thing. If it is downloadable, e.g. like a background for your PC, then you've got the same problem all over again. If you're dealing with copyrighted content then colorizing it purple and adding a halo doesn't change the status of a copyrighted image - it's just called a "derivative" of the original copyrighted work. There is an unfortunate fine line here. Most fan sites nobody cares about. They do care when they grow large. This is the fun area between where law and reality reside.