Hi fellas, I have been wondering lately if it is illegal for a website like 1channel.ch to exist in the States or anywhere else in the world, since they are not hosting anything, but only linking to the material. Obviously, hosting is illegal if it is not for only personal use, but how are the laws about linking to this kind of material? I could not find anything useful online. Some say it is fine, others disagree. I am not talking about the moral aspect here. Chris
Typically only hosting the actual offending content is illegal. Linking to a site which contains copyrighted material is not illegal, and news websites and Wikipedia do it all the time. However, if you are linking to illegal material, and the pages which are providing those links are being indexed by search engines you can expect the search engines to censor those requests eventually.
So, basically, it would be legal to be hosted in the States, but just be safe the webmasters move it offshore? What I understand from this http://gizmodo.com/5900992/mpaa-says-embedding-illegal-video-is-copyright-infringement is that it is considered to be illegal? edit they say embedding is illegal, but is that any different from linking?
The MPAA likes to bully people, they could well claim that it is illegal -- even when technically it is not. However, ultimately, you should contact a legal professional if you are worried.
Well I think that if Google sees you're liking to bad sites that have been flagged by them as offensive or illegal, then you'll be flagged too by association. They might not come after you legally but your SEO will be bad.