hi guys.. just started a file hosting service specific for music files, think of new muscians or home dj's. I give these people the oppotunity to store and share their tracks/sounds/mixtapes/live-sets, but a common problem is lawsuits. Our purpose is not to help the piracy growing, but give musicians the opportunity to let them hear to the world. Positive intention in my opinion. But I was wondering how i can protect myself and my clients with lawsuits etc? How do a big big file hoster protect theirself against lawsuits, because it's well known they have hosted many illegal files though. Thank you for attention.
Well, you are responsible for whatever is on your network, so there's no ironclad way to protect yourself from legal action. Some like AOL, for instance, are served hundreds of legal documents each week. The best thing you can do is contact a lawyer. The next best thing would be to put a disclaimer up on top of every page in plain sight that lets visitors know you aren't the owner. The disclaimer should have your business address and phone number and inform people to contact you immediately if there's something wrong. Still, that only helps for the nice owners your network violates. Just make sure you have enough money for a good defense and make sure you talk to a lawyer first.
Myspace has started filtering uploaded music to try to prevent copyright infringement. http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3641076 If you read the Myspace forums, though, it sounds like their filtering blocks even non-infringing music.