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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

#131

Post by farginay »

horseapples wrote: post #109
raldi wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a dangerous oversimplification. Read about the billion-dollar Viacom / YouTube lawsuit, and how it was anything but a sure thing that YouTube would win, despite their DMCA protections.

Lawsuit came before DMCA. Lawsuit was filled in 97 and 98 was when DMCA was passed.

I believe there was a copyright safe harbor for content on the internet before DMCA. However, it may have been just through case law. BBS and USENet operators took advantage of it back in the day.

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

#132

Post by horseapples »

dangrossman wrote: post #110
horseapples wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawsuit came before DMCA. Lawsuit was filled in 97 and 98 was when DMCA was passed.

Viacom v YouTube was filed in 2007. YouTube didn't exist in 1997; it was founded in 2005. 1997 was before Napster even.

My bad, no ideas what I was thinking.

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

#133

Post by alextingle »

Nursie wrote: post #45
alextingle wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I am aware of that. However, it doesn't invalidate my point.

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

#134

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dpe82 wrote: post #125
Natsu wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which is bad, because without registering an agent, you have NO safe harbor protection.

The interesting thing is that what happens without the safe harbor is not a known quantity. The safe harbor is like immunity, but lack of immunity isn't the same as liability. But in order to find out, somebody has to take it to court, and the entities small enough to have not registered a DMCA agent will tend to settle or be bankrupted by the litigation costs before the issue makes it to an appellate court.

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

#135

Post by Natsu »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #134
dpe82 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is bad, because without registering an agent, you have NO safe harbor protection.

The interesting thing is that what happens without the safe harbor is not a known quantity. The safe harbor is like immunity, but lack of immunity isn't the same as liability. But in order to find out, somebody has to take it to court, and the entities small enough to have not registered a DMCA agent will tend to settle or be bankrupted by the litigation costs before the issue makes it to an appellate court.

Yeah, it's not something we're likely to see put to the test, as if you can afford the legal bills to fight a copyright action in federal court, you surely can afford the small filing fee to register a DMCA contact in the first place in order to fend off the likelihood of much larger fees later.

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

#136

Post by darkarmani »

synctext wrote: post #27
odonnellryan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

catchyurl.co/EskimoHill returns a 404. I would suggest making your example link back to your page. But awesome website and good luck!

as an expert witness who served in several of these cases I would say you are very lucky. No fine even! You have a screenshot of your app with a big-time RIAA artist, big time fail. Even helping people on your forum streaming a link like http://innocent.org/madonna.mp3 can bring down all your efforts. Lawyers will eat you for it. See the landmark work on the new inducement doctrine: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM…

Your link is broken. The period is getting removed from the URL. It looks like adding a second period preserves the first one: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster....

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

#137

Post by justhw »

TylerE wrote: post #124
justhw wrote: post #64

Great read Luke! Any chance you could opensource the project? I've got music that I've the right to and would love to test it.

I wonder if that could be considered contributory infringement...

Why? I have the right to the audio.
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