I see alot of anime download sites where they upload anime on free file hosts such as megaupload, rapidshare etc. How do these sites get protected from being sued?
Linking isn't illegal , so as long as your site has links it can't be sued. As far as I know. Lol your site is on my topsite :
Thats not true, linking is illegal. tv-links.co.uk just got taken down for linking. You can get sued for linking to anime, a shitload of them are licensed in the us.
http://tinyurl.com/2vcavj <-- Offline atm cos of some random DDOS attack. Erm quite a lot of sites do get Cease and desist letters from companies, I've heard NarutoFan.com & National-Anime [Off subject : they're probably ddos attacking me atm :|] get loads of them and completely ignore them, nothing is done I've gotten a C&D as well, I just complied and the problem was gone :/ , after all first they'll ask you to remove your content and if you don't do that then they'll take you to court. Japanese anime companies don't bother sueing or send C&D out, so the term 'unlicensed anime' is used for anime that hasn't come out outside Japan, of course now American companies licensed an anime, the American company goes and does that, E.g : ADV Films , Viz Media etc... How do you avoid getting sued ? Just comply. I may be wrong , but I've found that's been the easiest way, of course always check that an email is actually being sent via the said person, a lot of people like to imitate anime companies [competitors and stuff..] Well I hope i answered your question, I found out about TV links today, that's scary :|
how about sites like cruncyroll.com (youtube clone but for anime or asian videos) how do they do it without getting sued
If you look at crunchyroll, they have removed a lot of licensed videos. In the end all they have left are unlicensed anime. They have absolutely no problems, in the end the "dispute" about the legality of "Unlicensed anime" is fairly wide. It's unlikely that CrunchyRoll will have any problems, nearly all [or all] the anime they have is unlicensed and a if it needs to be removed, they just have to send a email and it would be done.
Nice you have clarified this. I been wanting to know this as well. Looks like moderators are mostly volunteers and work in their own time. There was an article on TechCrunch about cruncyroll and copyrighted videos. Traffic stats is amazing! Next youtube?