Liability & Legality

**Tran** · 07-30-2006, 01:10 AM

Is it legal to open up a website that streams music videos?

**Hoang** · 07-30-2006, 02:13 AM

I think this is where performance royalties kick in.

Of course, you can run one until you get a C&D

**Tran** · 07-30-2006, 02:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hoang

I think this is where performance royalties kick in.

Of course, you can run one until you get a C&D

Haha, yeah that wouldn't be very good if I received that though it would be like

sama:

**IsMaR** · 07-30-2006, 02:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dave

Haha, yeah that wouldn't be very good if I received that though it would be like

sama:

You would crash a plane into RIAA (or whatever organization is video related) building?

**Tran** · 07-30-2006, 02:25 AM

No? RIAA = Music...

**imported_illusion** · 07-30-2006, 02:27 AM

I would like to know about the legal complications if you are just indexing music videos.

Like on my forum now there is a guy who is making this thread full of music videos, uploading them to uploading.com and then posting a description and a picture and the link to download it.

How legal is this and should I let him continue with the threads? They have garnered no replies so I don't think it would be a huge hassle whether I deleted them or not

**IsMaR** · 07-30-2006, 02:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dave

No? RIAA = Music...

um... I did say RIAA of video...

**Tran** · 07-30-2006, 02:29 AM

Well, I think that IMO even though I'm unsure is that if you are not distributing them and making a profit it is legal?

**IsMaR** · 07-30-2006, 02:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dave

Well, I think that IMO even though I'm unsure is that if you are not distributing them and making a profit it is legal?

mad sites do it... since it's streaming, they cant download to reproduce or nothing like that, so you're just promoting the artist IMO

**Lpspider** · 07-31-2006, 12:13 AM

I think in most cases you'll be fine, though it really depends on who owns the rights.

**imported_RudeDog** · 07-31-2006, 12:19 AM

How does Yahoo get away with it? Are they paying for it?

music.yahoo.com/musicvideos/

**Hoang** · 07-31-2006, 12:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RudeDog

How does Yahoo get away with it? Are they paying for it?

music.yahoo.com/musicvideos/

Yes, they pay royalties.

**imported_kel** · 07-31-2006, 07:05 AM

Nope, think it is not illegal as such. Where is the "act"? Not unless you "participate" in it via downloading. Don't think anything wrong with just looking at "something", be that anything!

**Karl89.co.uk** · 07-31-2006, 08:38 AM

I was told a while ago that as long as you don't make money from the website it's perfectly legal to run.

**Tran** · 07-31-2006, 10:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karl Evans

I was told a while ago that as long as you don't make money from the website it's perfectly legal to run.

Alright thanks for the advice from everyone.

Hopefully you all are right about this haha :stuart:

**kindsvater** · 08-01-2006, 04:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karl Evans

I was told a while ago that as long as you don't make money from the website it's perfectly legal to run.

You heard wrong - dead wrong.

Copyright is surprisingly complicated.

If you link to something, but don't host it, you could still have monetary liability if you know the 'something' is illegal to distribute.

There can still be liability even if you don't know about the violation. This would be in the form of an injunction to remove the content. The reasoning is that if you are innocent about what you are doing, the copyright owner still needs to be protected by forcing you to remove the infringing content.

Google won a copyright claim involving the pictures it shows in its search results. Since Google was not hosting or saving the pictures on its server, but instead merely framing /embedding etc., them from another site, it was not liable on a copyright infringement claim.

**gopher292** · 08-01-2006, 04:49 PM

About google's copyright claim suit, do you happen to know what the case name was or where I can get copy online? I have an arcade site that embeds/iframes games on other servers to avoid wasting time asking for permission to copy them. I think it would be a good thing to have as a reference.:yes:

**Atomm** · 08-01-2006, 10:48 PM

Yea, I would like to see this as well since I embed movies from Google on my site. :-)

**kindsvater** · 08-01-2006, 10:57 PM

Here you go:

(I'm sorry that these are not live links. This forum board is set up so that one cannot include links in a post until they have made 15 posts.)

Perfect 10 v. Google

eff.org/legal/cases/Perfect10_v_Google/perfect10_order.pdf

This decision is now on appeal. The lower court held that Google's creation of thumbnails could violate copyright. The bigger issue, for this thread, is the ruling that using in-line links, or frames, to display images from other websites is not a "direct" copyright infringement.

That is because the image is on the original website and then displayed on the web surfer's computer in their web browser. It is not stored on Google's site so there is no improper copying.

Note: As noted by the court this is not a license to try an commit copyright infringement. There are other ways to 'getcha' if this is abused.

Here is another case that relates to another thread:

Field v. Google

warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=71238

In this case the court held that Google' cache of your web pages does not violate copyright.