I am a host, using a reseller account. Two people, who would not identify themselves, approached me telling me that one of my clients has copyrighted art on his website. I checked and this is true. Is this illegal, bearing in mind that the site is non commercial? And do these two have any legal power to demand it be removed? Who is responsible for the content, me? My client? My host? And does anyone except the artist have the right to ask for the content to be removed? Thanks.
Your client is responsible for the content of his site, generally, although if users of his can post content he usually gets a little more leeway. The two are within their legal rights to demand its removal if they are the owners of the copyrighted material in question or if they are representing the people who are. If you are sure that the copyrighted material is in fact copyrighted and not by the person who owns the website it is on, the smart thing to do might be to remove it and contact the owner telling them you did so because it was copyrighted and not to do it again. I mean, if these two people are the ones who own the copyrighted material, then if you do nothing they will probably just go up the chain by complaining to YOUR host about YOU. Then you'd be in a much worse negotiating position, no? Like Rick from Casablanca, I stick my neck out for nobody. But that's just me.
Actually I found out that he's hosting all the images offsite and linking them into the content he hosts on mine.