If you bought the rights, you can sue. You can be sued for $150,000. You can go to jail in extreme cases (copyright infringement can be criminal). The difference between youtube and this case would be that the site owner is uploading/and or hosting the copyrighted material. No one can say if you will be sued. It's a risk that anyone involved with copyright infringement must take. "free advertising" is not how most view it - and it certainly isn't a legal defense. Is it legal? Absolutely not.
Listen. Get an offshore server or something. Say if FUNimation email you about the anime then they will tell you to remove it if not sue you. Anime Eden got emailed about anime and they had to remove it and the did so nicely. I say you deserve to be sued if you charge people subscription for anime
There are many different copyright laws, and that's the problem here That particular copyright law doesn't matter here because it only goes in practice if the shows makers want it to, The Writers, The Illustrators etc A Shows makers sign an agreement with publishers to "own" the work and make money off of it The publishers are usually still Japanese countries, those publishers sell rights to it across different countries. Thats where the licenses are needed to show episodes on tv, or distribute in certain countries like stated before So if your server or you or better, both are in a country where the anime has no liscense, it's not illegal to "share" it If you sell it though, a totally different copyright law is in affect
i am from small island in the indian ocean.. hmmm i wanted to put up a site with fansubbed anime hosted on rapidshare and megaupload... thought it would be legal as these are nothing but fansubbed creation and there's no anime licensed in my country... EDIT: sorry just saw it was a very old thread.. sorry for bringing it out again...