Hi.. I have a website related to mobile prices. I want to start a discussion forum to increase traffic. But I am afraid that if any member posts some copyrighted stuff like mobile s/w, wallpaper, ringtone or video. will google ban my website without notification for adsense? I just need to know how does google treats copyright stuff on forums & social networking websites where members can post any thing?
Generally responsibility on the site owner. But google's technician may contact you to remove those articles or content from your site. Or may not, simply ban.
Like atkins17 said, you will not get banned by adsense for copyrighted stuff on your forum, and they even will not ask you to remove those stuff as they won't have enough time to check everybody's sites or forums. But it's always a good idea to ask your members not to post these things, even if they do have to, do not paste all but certain sentences of them and give a link to the source. Thanks.
Some forums take a really hard stance on this. A good example are emulator forums for game sites. Typically the programs that run the emulators are legal and free, but the locations and whereabouts of where to get the games for the emulators is illegal. Like EC23 said chances are they won't catch you, but if your forum isn't focused on these somewhat questionable legal niches, then it's a safe bet to just delete those threads and go about your business...but if some slip by I wouldn't lose sleep over it.