Putting rapidshare links on website is leagal or not

Putting the rapidshare links on the site.Which are pointing to Zip files which may contain some copy right material .is it leagal?

Because we never no what could be in zip files...More over we just providing links to someother site...

 

Research contributory infringement - or use search to read the other 50 other threads that discuss this.

 

Thanks mjewel! But i am confused if so many torent sites are distributing the copy right material why they are not taking any action against them....

 

The failure to enforce your rights when it comes to intellectual property is not equal to waiving them. And just because you don't hear about it doesn't mean its not happening. Do you want to be that guy they choose to take action against? Are you willing to loose your house over it? If so, then go ahead and do it. But if you like your things and having a roof over your head, I'd steer clear. I have a feeling that sometime in the future there is going to be a large sweep against these people, organized by some of the larger players in the software industry, EA, Microsoft, Adobe, etc., them working together. Kind of like, they decide, ok, I'll go after these guys, you go after these guys, and you go after these guys, and sooner or later we can put a dampner on this thing. They have the money to do it, they're just buying their time.

 

yeah, just because 2/3 sites do it doesn't make it right. 99.9% illegal, the ones that do are hosted offshore, are domain registered w/ no address listed and make sure they aren't found or are in countries that allow it.

 

What pamon says is correct. However, if you are living in a country that doesn't allow it, you can still be held liable, even if you are hosted off shore.

 

yes, if you are offshore, and have domain privacy, its no big deal to track you down. Your registrar and host are most likely to cooperate with the law if they can keep business running. Only very few offshore hosts are good. And it will be even harder to find somewhere to register your domain. You will need TOTAL privacy (hidden ip) when registering, then doing it in a fraud name and stuff, however, no matter how much you hide your IP, it wont take 5 min. for police to track you down.
I would recommend NOT starting that stuff up. Trust me, those illegal sites are getting sued alot without you knowing it.

 

Is anybody gone thru dis?

http://thepiratebay.org/legal

Code (markup):

How dey are dealing ?

 

They have got to have some private investor there that is funneling them money (if they are really doing what they say they are). Either that, or their servers are on a floating barge 12 miles off the coast.

 

check it with your host provider but its 100% illegal !!!

 

Pirate Bay has had plenty of legal problems:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_raid

They keep bouncing back, but that's probably because they have a good legal team at their disposal.

 

The Pirate Bay gets away with it because of the quirks of Swedish laws. Sweden has specific case law on the books dealing with the issue of torrents. Because the torrent files that they link to do not specifically contain copyrighted material (just point to it), Swedish law allows that use.

Sweden is part of the international copyright treaty, but they interpret it a little differently than others. Since one would have to sue the owners in Sweden, they get protected. This is not surprising as Sweden has a lot of socialist views (universal health care, large welfare programs, high tax rates...). - not saying that is a bad thing

 

I absolutely would not put any links to files on any of my sites if the files were PIRATED stuff...

However, Rapidshare CAN be used for so many good (legal) and useful things, so... the answer is yes and no
Cool stuff to link to
home vids
family photo sharing
geneology stuff (sp?)

 

DMCA Says Linking is too illegal

 

I have seen serveral websites doing it. Their homepage says something else but under some sections there is a massive warez linking...

Surprisingly they are also using Google Adsense...

 

alot of places get shout down for linking to downloads happends everday to smaller sites but as it has been said one day you'll see people go offline in one big bust.

 

Yeah, and I get disapproved for having a Bingo Advantage banner on my site. *sigh*

 

Really.If you host rapidshare links it is illegal.But rapidshare is legal.Talk me about it.

Have you even heard of rapidshare.
Or maybe mininova
piratebay.

Were they taken down.No really.Microsoft or Adobe suckes cannot do anything against them.

You can feel free to have forum or comunity where you says that content was generated by user not by you and that you have no responsibility what users di but your privacy policy of site is to keep users personal details such as IP hidden.

 

If it was illegal then many big sites like Youtube, Rapidshare, Megavideo.... I mean all the Video hosting sites, torrents and file hosting sites should be shut down already. All of them take advantage of the loopholes of Copyright act (DMCA) and continue their business.

Many web hosting companies are against to linking to piracy stuff, first check it out if your hosting provider is one of them. If they are against it and you did it, probably they would terminate your hosting account and offer no backups of your site.

Next thing is it's always better to stay away from any kind of "shady" things. You may be able to make some ("a lot of" should be the word) quick money. But later it might bring some headaches to you legally. So, my advise is STAY AWAY from such practices.

@Aragorn: If they don't contain any Pirated Stuff, Then it is legal worldwide. But the OP here is implying that the files may contain copyrighted stuff and you should understand what he was talking about.

Many people take the short cut to earn money quick even though it is illegal, thinking who would catch them and hold them responsible for their acts. Their way of thinking goes like this "I am just one of the millions of people who do this". But It's not worth taking chances.

 

From what I understand (which could be completely wrong), it linking to another site is fully legal in some countries, as long as you don't host any illegal items on your site.

There are hundreds of pirated videos on youtube and youtube allows embedding them on your site. And I don't think that you will get sued because of putting a youtube video (As I said before, I could be completely wrong here too). Rapidshare is not getting sued because, they have a terms of service that forbids its users from uploading illegal materials. But their users are breaking (?) their TOS by uploading illegal content. Rapidshare does not support this and remove the content immediately, if a complaint is received.