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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

#71

Post by danielweber »

parham wrote: post #66
tptacek wrote: post #61

There are two major components to DMCA safe-harbor compliance. The first is that you honor takedown requests; unfortunately for software entrepreneurs, this seems to be the only DMCA component that is widely understood. The second major component is that you not operate your service with direct knowledge of infringement. A simple way to illustrate this is that if you have a screenshot of your application being used t…

I doubt it's illegal to embed a track that's been uploaded by the copyright owner, as they can just disable embedding. I'm assuming it becomes illegal if the uploader didn't own the copyright and was uploading the track illegally. This is impossible to verify unless the owner of the copyright gives a notice, YouTube does all it can, if they can't catch this then how can a normal user do so.

Do you think Madonna uploaded those videos?

I'm not asking "is it mathematically possible?" I'm asking "do you really think Madonna, or Madonna's agent, uploaded that video?"

The court system very rarely works on the concept of "well, it could have been legit." If you buy a bunch of speakers 90% off out of the back of a van in an alley with their serial numbers scratched off, "well, it could have been legit" will not fly very far.

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

#72

Post by rayiner »

> The website/apps I’m talking about was called HypedMusic, which provided an interface to listen to free, unlimited music, create playlists, and share said playlists with your friends on the website or Android and iPhone apps.

Rephrased to be more accurate:

"I built a website where 99.9% of the value provided came from someone else's investment and work which I used without compensating them."

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

#73

Post by dragontamer »

An important note here, is that if you don't have a lawyer, people can threaten to sue you for anything. In this case, he had no lawyer, he had no legal counsel at all.

Granted, part of his legal counsel would be to determine whether or not what he was doing was legal or not. Obviously, he didn't want to test that out in front of a judge (who could blame him?), or against the RIAA's well paid lawyers.

But if you are going to build a business, even on what you believe is on firm legal grounds... you should have a legal team ready to back you up. Anyone can threaten you with anything in the US due to how tort law works. Only if you are willing to have your cases tested in actual courts will you have any protection at all.

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

#74

Post by Natsu »

tptacek wrote: post #61

There are two major components to DMCA safe-harbor compliance. The first is that you honor takedown requests; unfortunately for software entrepreneurs, this seems to be the only DMCA component that is widely understood. The second major component is that you not operate your service with direct knowledge of infringement. A simple way to illustrate this is that if you have a screenshot of your application being used t…

There are a few other formalities that can trip you up, like having a registered DMCA contact. If you're going into a business like this, you probably want to get a lawyer to explain it all to you. There are just too many gotchas out there and you'll be a magnet for legal threats.

EDIT: Also, it's "safe harbor" not "fair use"--the article gets it wrong. One more reason to have a lawyer explain your obligations to you before you get into something like this.

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

#76

Post by voxic11 »

adamnemecek wrote: post #50
rhino369 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

His app store page had a screenshot of his app playing a Madonna song...

"Finally, the service provider must not have knowledge that the material or activity is infringing or of the fact that the infringing material exists on its network. [512(c)(1)(A)], [512(d)(1)(A)]. If it does discover such material before being contacted by the copyright owners, it is instructed to remove, or disable access to, the material itself. [512(c)(1)(A)(iii)], [512(d)(1)(C)]. "

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

#77

Post by parham »

jarrett wrote: post #70
parham wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it's illegal to embed a track that's been uploaded by the copyright owner, as they can just disable embedding. I'm assuming it becomes illegal if the uploader didn't own the copyright and was uploading the track illegally. This is impossible to verify unless the owner of the copyright gives a notice, YouTube does all it can, if they can't catch this then how can a normal user do so.

I haven't seen the case law, but from the following commentary, I'd say the issue isn't so clear-cut: > However, if the service provider becomes aware of a "red flag" from which infringing activity is apparent, it will lose the limitation of liability if it takes no action. The "red flag" test has both a subjective and an objective element. In determining whether the service provider was aware of a "red flag," the su…

You could argue that, YouTube has maintained their safe harbour, and hence they're a reasonable entity. It wasn't apparent to them that copyright was being breached so the "red flag" is not apparent to a reasonable entity, i.e. if the embeder is liable so is YouTube. This makes sense but I don't if it would be convincing elsewhere.

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

#78

Post by mjn »

Natsu wrote: post #74
tptacek wrote: post #61

There are two major components to DMCA safe-harbor compliance. The first is that you honor takedown requests; unfortunately for software entrepreneurs, this seems to be the only DMCA component that is widely understood. The second major component is that you not operate your service with direct knowledge of infringement. A simple way to illustrate this is that if you have a screenshot of your application being used t…

There are a few other formalities that can trip you up, like having a registered DMCA contact. If you're going into a business like this, you probably want to get a lawyer to explain it all to you. There are just too many gotchas out there and you'll be a magnet for legal threats. EDIT: Also, it's "safe harbor" not "fair use"--the article gets it wrong. One more reason to have a lawyer explain your obligations to you…

Fwiw, it's also possible for any third party to check if you've complied with that particular formality, since the U.S. Copyright Office provides a directory of all companies that have registered a DMCA agent: http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/a_agents.html

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

#79

Post by Natsu »

mjn wrote: post #78
Natsu wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few other formalities that can trip you up, like having a registered DMCA contact. If you're going into a business like this, you probably want to get a lawyer to explain it all to you. There are just too many gotchas out there and you'll be a magnet for legal threats. EDIT: Also, it's "safe harbor" not "fair use"--the article gets it wrong. One more reason to have a lawyer explain your obligations to you…

Fwiw, it's also possible for any third party to check if you've complied with that particular formality, since the U.S. Copyright Office provides a directory of all companies that have registered a DMCA agent: http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/a_agents.html

One thing that really stands out is how many people don't appear to comply with that. The big sites seem to, but not too many others.

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

#80

Post by [deleted] »

danielweber wrote: post #71
parham wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it's illegal to embed a track that's been uploaded by the copyright owner, as they can just disable embedding. I'm assuming it becomes illegal if the uploader didn't own the copyright and was uploading the track illegally. This is impossible to verify unless the owner of the copyright gives a notice, YouTube does all it can, if they can't catch this then how can a normal user do so.

Do you think Madonna uploaded those videos? I'm not asking "is it mathematically possible?" I'm asking "do you really think Madonna, or Madonna's agent, uploaded that video?" The court system very rarely works on the concept of "well, it could have been legit." If you buy a bunch of speakers 90% off out of the back of a van in an alley with their serial numbers scratched off, "well, it could have been legit" will not…

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