Dear Wise and Wiser I just saw episode 5 of Prison Break Season 3 in a blog/site - offering the video from China (a youtube clone, etc). My questions are: - Does hosting companies in the USA ( Dreamhost, MediaTemple, HostMOnster ) have issues with me posting/hosting such videos ? The Millenium Copyright Act, does it include countries outside the USA ? If I run a server in Sweden and host the video-streaming server in it, will they hunt down my server in Sweden ? Please advice. The whole idea behind a Video Streaming site is very juicy ! (not from a revenue point of view, but fun and good traffic).
Excellent question there, I have the same interogation as you and hope someone will respond to this. Is there any restrictions posting videos/series on the web from other sources or from us? Does hosting the server in an other country change the situation?
In brief, the answers to all of your questions can be summed up in these few sentences: Does hosting the files elsewhere than your own server change things? -- No, you're still liable. What if I host them on a server in another country? -- Doesn't matter, you're still liable. What if I just link to a site that hosts them? -- Doesn't matter, you're still liable. What if I don't have movies on there at all and just scam the visitors? -- Then CPALead and other companies will ban you. What if I fake the whois information? -- ICANN prohibits this, so if your whois is deemed fake they can and will demand the registrar give up the info, especially in the case of a subpoena. What if I use a privacy guard on my whois? -- Read the terms of the company -- they always have a clause stating they'll give the information up in case of a legal dispute. What if somehow I get around the whois issue? -- Then the group you're infringing will look at the nameservers (which are publicly available, as otherwise your site wouldn't work) and demand that your host take down the sites. I hope this limits the questions in this thread and helps you guys. I speak as someone who has studied law, and in particular the law of Internet and e-commerce, at a very respectable institution.
Purchase a server and start your own hosting .Anyways Dreamhost doesn't allow you to stream videos on their shared hosting plan . I am not sure if they allow it with dedicated or virtual server packages .