I'm not sure about Canada, but in the US it is seen as contributory infringement and illegal. This is true in other countries as well. I would suspect that if this is not already the case in Canada that it will be.
Well seeing as how it's not illegal to actually upload the music itself in Canada, I doubt there should be much problems with linking to it. I know movies is a different story though.
I'm not sure if it is b/c they are an England-based website, but they just link to movies/videos, etc; the big companies have tried to shut them down, but no luck to date; tv-links.co.uk
Actually, it is downloading that is legal in Canada. Uploading is still illegal. What is confusing is that the Canadian courts have ruled that having a copyrighted file in a shared folder used by a P2P application is not a violation. This is different than uploading a file to a website. They ruled that copyright in Canada requires a positive act on the part of the "infringer". Uploading a file to a website, sending out the file (via email for example), or advertising the location of the file would be seen as a positive act. Simply having the file in a publicly available folder is not. And while the news reports call this uploading, it technically is not.
It is not blurry at all in the US. It is illegal. As far as I know, it has not gone to court in Canada, so it might go either way. However, the Canadian law makers are considering an ammendment to copyright law that may change that in the near future.
My servers are offshore in places the US will never have any jurisdiction. Asia is a big place. Any DMCA or MPAA mail i get is filed under the recycle bin. I am not subject to US law and neither is the data center hosting the boxes. Linking to a place such as rapidshare is not a crime, it never will be. Maybe in the US, but then you bow to the corporate world like no other country on earth. Uploading/hosting illegal content on the other hand... well that is rapidshare.com's problem. Not mine. Edit: I once hosted a huge warez forum for many years, located in a datacenter in... Iran. Are the americans going to invade to kill the server? that is the only way the plug would be pulled from under me. But anyway, they charged an arm and a leg for hosting, bye bye Iranian hosting.
As long as your offshore NOTHING will happen. Ac. some say u can be arrested for theft of data...i dunno...offshore is ur ans i wud say... USA? dont even THINK about it. Canada allows linking. Ac. I think all countries but US have no prob with linking. But if u want to be 100% legit, hey even uploading warez to RS is illegal.
Linking to copyrighted material is not legal everywhere except the US. In Dec. 2006 Australian courts ruled that linking to copyrighted material is infringement. (Case) I think that you will also find that having offshore servers is no bar to being sued (or arrested in extreme cases). While people that live in other countries do not have to abide by US law, they do need to abide by the laws of the country they live in. In fact, hosting such websites offshore could make it more likely that a person would face stiffer penalties if they ever were sued. Judges would see this as knowledge on the part of the website owner that what they were doing was illegal and tried to circumvent this by hosting in another country.
im sorry to say but there is nothing wrong about linking to rapidshare links if you are not hosting the files on your server there is nothing wrong with it and it is like having a rapidshare search engine we spider links across the web and index them on our site now if this was not aloud i think search engines that show rapidshare links they would be breaking the law also dont you becuse they are linking to warez
Especially in the US, but elsewhere as well, search engines are considered different than a site where the webmaster adds links. There are also cases where search engines have gotten in trouble for this. Search engines that are specifically designed to find infringing material (and nothing else) will be found guilty of contributory infringement in the US. That does not mean such sites don't exist. There are countries where this activity is legal, but the US is not one of them. Since the OP is in Canada, the laws are going to be different, but Canada is looking at strengthening its copyright laws.
The keynote was it reasonable for you to have knowledge that the content being linked to was "illegal"? It would be "reasonable" for you to know that a freely offered version of a blockbuster movie online is "illegal" because it is only available as "paid viewing". I'm sure though that an extremely gifted attorney could refute that and make that an "unreasonable" statement... but that likely costs $$$$$$ (6 figures).
THERE ARE NO IFsss about it. it is illegal, google mpaa movie sites law suit, sites are getting sued for millions and jail.
The area is still very sketchy. If you run a small stream site you should be ok, people like the MPAA have bigger fish to fry at the moment - like the hosts >> megavideo/youtube etc
linking to illegal content via Internet I'm not completely understanding this quotation or question if you knew the content was illegal hence why would you want to link to it? Probably to illegal content if you know that this could hurt you it is a commonsense issue. On the other hand intelligent content would be the gender so make sure you write good intelligent content and a link to good clean content over the Internet. Building your credibility as a Internet marketer or social business Web database via web designer could help your credibility online as far as a online Internet marketer via Internet Web database metadata tagging social bookmarking best of luck on your search for linking to good content not illegal content be smart be friendly the search engines love it lol
Granted this is the legal forum(loosely said), I am always amazed at the responses I see from folks on this sort of subject matter. Grow some berries and tell the copyright police to "get off your fukin lawn" We have seen this historically time and time again. For instance, we saw this same sort of mafia like legal wrangling when the movie industry saw the first vcr machine. They are the ones that need to adapt, not the consumer. I am getting quite sick of reading about the cronies for the movie and music industry suing little old ladies who have never to turned on their computer, to peoples printers. My point is... this topic is far more complicated than whether it is legal or not. Any lawsuit brought by the industry, based on evidence by the monkeys at media sentry..et al., is rooted in bullshit and lack of technological understanding, not to mention, discovery tactics that are far more illegal than downloading and or uploading a file of some sort.
It is illegal in a lot of countries such as the US. And you would properly lose all the money you would have made if you were caught. I sometimes think about doing this but never have and never will. To many warez sites anyway and its a very risky area