I plan to make a website where users can post links to other sites which offer free content. Is it legal? The linked sites may contain movies (rips), mp3s etc. Please help Regards.
Check with local laws. Pirate bay did the same thing, but they got into trouble for it, but since the laws can't do much they're safe.
It is illegal ( no two ways about it), but this being the internet, not every thief gets sent to jail. Merely saying that you post links will not be enough in your defence if the case ever goes to court. Host it offshore if you want to be more safe.
yes... its hosted offshore... but me being the owner of the website will be based in my country itself.
This is a very VERY gray area. But, at least in the US, the way the case law is being made is you are looking at loosing a civil suit. Real quickly. And the thing about off shore hosting is this: People fail to realize that it doesn't matter where their files are stored. It matters where they are from as well. You go offshore, about the only thing that's going to work your way is when a DMCA is sent, the host will ignore it and not shut you down. However, you can still look at having your day in court, on the defense side. A civil suit only requires that I prove 51% to the jury that you are infringing no my copyright. And receiving links is not going to be a good defense. You may get lucky once or twice if you can finangle the whole "it's a dynamic site and I didn't know it was going on" thing, however, you're still the webmaster and site owner, and as such, you are overall responsible for the content posted.
By clicking the link. Don't run a website if you're not willing to pay the consequences of it and do the work required to maintain it.
Simple your required to copy with the DCMA request and take down the material. Now if you decide to brush it off, your not going to have a leg to stand on if it does turn into a case where you are sued. Whereas, if you complied with all DCMA requests, you may be construed as a hosting provider and not personally responsible for your users activities. Again all of these situations, if your have questions it's going to be best to contact a IP lawyer.
well i have started a blogspot blog, with the download links, i have not uploaded any stuff, but i collected the links that are found in the social bookmarking sites and posted them in my blog. is it legal or not ????
You can stop right there. If you had bothered to read the blogspots Terms of Service (TOS) you would have noticed this section Copyright: It is our policy to respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement. More information about our copyright procedures can be found here. Also, please don't provide links to sites where your readers can illegally download other people's content. The bottom line is they will cancel your account if they receive notices that you are linking to sites with copyrighted content.
This is certainly a borderline thing, best thing to do is to not continue with it if you are not willing to riskit.
You will still be liable because you are the owner of the website. That is, the website is controlled by you. That said, if you use offshore hosting, pretty much nobody bothers coming after you, and at the first instance of DMCA notice you can take down the offending parts..
Since it appears that you have done apsolutely NO research into this matter. I will ONLY be answering part of your question, for the second part I would direct you to Google to research what DCMA is so that you fully understand it. Moving on, you and often times your hosting provider will receive DCMA notices from artists/programers/lawyers regarding content that you have on your site or are linking to that violates their copyright. In simple common english, they are giving you notice that "hey there is a file/link on your website that belongs to the songwriter/company and they have not licensed you to distribute it nor do you have their permission to do so AND MOST IMPORTANTLY THEY ARE REQUESTING YOU REMOVE IT". Now I would highly encourage you to research what DCMA is and how it would pertain to you and what you are attempting to do. I don't mean to sound rude by not answering your full question, but I am quite frankly sick of people posting questions without doing any research into the matter on their own. The bottom line is, if you don't want to do research into it and just wing everything I won't be surprised if you have a lot of problems in your future. Simply put, do the research find out how it relates (if at all) to what your attempting to do and go from there.
thx for the lead, but i think when i ask what something is, am i not actually researchin about it? t's not that i'm up with the website and later asking what DCMA is... anyways thx for the info. Regards.