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The RIAA forced me to shut down a successful website/apps I built in high school

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Re: The RIAA forced me to shut down a successful website/apps I built in high school

#41

Post by rhino369 »

alextingle wrote: post #34
icebraining wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no such thing as "legit content". Licensing is not a characteristic of the content, it's a relationship between the content and the person distributing it. So give a crude example, the content on Netflix is "legit", in the sense that they have the right to distribute it, but that doesn't make it legal for you to record and retransmit the same content. If you don't know if you can distribute it, you should ass…

> If you don't know if you can distribute it, you should assume you can't That's 100% wrong. The default state of a work of art is to be in the public domain. Copyright law creates only a limited exception to that general rule.

Not really. Works are automatically copyrighted upon creation. It's not some limited exception. You cannot assume a work is public domain until proven otherwise. Otherwise you'll be getting a nastygram from the RIAA.

Re: The RIAA forced me to shut down a successful website/apps I built in high school

#43

Post by blauwbilgorgel »

btown wrote: post #32
driverdan wrote: post #2

IANAL. First of all a cease and desist doesn't require you to do anything. It's merely a threat. That said it seems pretty clear that you're violating copyright laws. The DMCA only applies to user generated content (UGC). You're not letting users input their own links to 3rd party content, you're finding the links yourself. It doesn't matter where you get them from. Not only that but you're not linking to this conten…

So then if Google happens to index and show a link to 3rd party content, it's also finding the links itself, and is similarly liable?

I am not a lawyer. I believe Google is exempt because it indexes all links it can find. It needs this to operate a general purpose search engine. As soon as Google became a specialized torrent search engine they could be similarly liable. Also Google has to comply with legit DMCA requests or they still risk being liable.

Re: The RIAA forced me to shut down a successful website/apps I built in high school

#44

Post by bluecalm »

btown wrote: post #32
driverdan wrote: post #2

IANAL. First of all a cease and desist doesn't require you to do anything. It's merely a threat. That said it seems pretty clear that you're violating copyright laws. The DMCA only applies to user generated content (UGC). You're not letting users input their own links to 3rd party content, you're finding the links yourself. It doesn't matter where you get them from. Not only that but you're not linking to this conten…

So then if Google happens to index and show a link to 3rd party content, it's also finding the links itself, and is similarly liable?

I think better analogy is Bing video search. Not only it finds links but also plays it without visiting a page the video is actually hosted on.

Re: The RIAA forced me to shut down a successful website/apps I built in high school

#45

Post by Nursie »

alextingle wrote: post #34
icebraining wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no such thing as "legit content". Licensing is not a characteristic of the content, it's a relationship between the content and the person distributing it. So give a crude example, the content on Netflix is "legit", in the sense that they have the right to distribute it, but that doesn't make it legal for you to record and retransmit the same content. If you don't know if you can distribute it, you should ass…

> If you don't know if you can distribute it, you should assume you can't That's 100% wrong. The default state of a work of art is to be in the public domain. Copyright law creates only a limited exception to that general rule.

Morally speaking you might be right, and on geological timescales, sure. But every work is under copyright the moment it is created until copyright expires unless the creator specifically gives it to the PD.

In the modern world, unfortunately, if there's no accompanying license with the material it's pretty likely that you don't have the legal right to distribute it.

Re: The RIAA forced me to shut down a successful website/apps I built in high school

#46

Post by snake_plissken »

Mehh the grey areas of the DCMA grind my gears. Aggregation services do not host and (for the most part) they do not upload the content.

Your situation is unfortunate kiddo. If you had a couple million or a high powered law firm on retainer, I doubt you'd have ever received this letter. But keep up the good work!

Re: The RIAA forced me to shut down a successful website/apps I built in high school

#47

Post by rhino369 »

adamnemecek wrote: post #8
jtome wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linking can be considered "dissemination" thanks to the DMCA, see http://www.chillingeffects.org/linking/faq.cgi#QID152

Yet somehow Google still operates. But to respond to OP, IANAL but I think that you might have folded too easily. But it's understandable that you probably want to avoid a lawsuit at any cost. Also, you might want to check this out http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi#QID862 and google around for 'wrongful dmca takedowns'.

How can you know what a DMCA Takedown is and not understand how Google can operate?

The DMCA gives you a "safe harbor" from accidental copyright infringement. But once you know it's copyrighted you have to take it down. AKA, the DMCA notice.

The DMCA won't protect you from knowingly linked to copyrighted material and waiting until someone sends a letter. That's how Megaupload is getting pwnd.

Re: The RIAA forced me to shut down a successful website/apps I built in high school

#48

Post by rhino369 »

_wp3r wrote: post #33

If HypedMusic had offered to provide a mechanism to remove the "infringing" links wouldn't HypedMusic have been in compliance with Safe Harbor?

Not if you know you are collecting a bunch of copyrighted material. Piratebay can't use the safe harbor because they are clearly running a sharing site.

Also, the author suggests he was getting the links manually and posting them. That's definitely not covered.

Re: The RIAA forced me to shut down a successful website/apps I built in high school

#49

Post by exDM69 »

lukezli wrote: post #12

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I think you learned a valuable lesson here, you should not try to create apps that work with the music industry if you don't have some sort of licensing agreement with them.

It doesn't really matter if it is strictly legal (under DMCA and other relevant legislation) or not, they can and will use lawyers to intimidate and/or sue you. It doesn't matter if you're linking to third party hosting or what the technicalities are, if your app can play back music or video that is "owned" by the big players (RIAA/MPAA/MAFIAA) you are under threat.

You made the right choice (thinking practically, not necessarily morally) in not trying your luck in court, you have very little chances of winning and could possibly ruin your future by having a nasty lawsuit on your records.

I don't think it is fair or approve of it but that's the way it works, unfortunately. Google and YouTube can get away with it, not because of DMCA and other laws but because they have (secret?) treaties with the copyright holding parties.

Re: The RIAA forced me to shut down a successful website/apps I built in high school

#50

Post by adamnemecek »

rhino369 wrote: post #47
adamnemecek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet somehow Google still operates. But to respond to OP, IANAL but I think that you might have folded too easily. But it's understandable that you probably want to avoid a lawsuit at any cost. Also, you might want to check this out http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi#QID862 and google around for 'wrongful dmca takedowns'.

How can you know what a DMCA Takedown is and not understand how Google can operate? The DMCA gives you a "safe harbor" from accidental copyright infringement. But once you know it's copyrighted you have to take it down. AKA, the DMCA notice. The DMCA won't protect you from knowingly linked to copyrighted material and waiting until someone sends a letter. That's how Megaupload is getting pwnd.

Maybe I know how it works. Maybe I said that to highlight exactly what you are talking about and to underscore the fact that he did not have to shutdown his service if he was compliant with DMCA takedowns, just like Google.
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