Quote:
Originally Posted by handsome rob
You know, I'd like to hear from someone who runs an image host about what your legal exposure is if someone uploads illegal content and posts it elsewhere on the internet.
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Most laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) have provisions for service providers normally called 'safe harbor'. An image host would normally be defined as a transitory provider. Transitory providers (at least under the DMCA) are not expected to evaluate the uploaded content of every provider. Once an infraction has been brought to the provider's attention they can be held liable if action is not taken to cease access to the infringing content.
As long as you have a stated terms of service and a method of contact for copyright holders and law enforcement you should be alright.
And to answer the original poster’s question:
The biggest cost to an image host is the bandwidth being used by a popular image. Many porn sites will upload images to free image hosts to save on bandwidth expenses. Also a popular site might link to an image hosted by a free service creating a large bandwidth spike. You need a method to track the most poplar images and calculate if you are making money on hosting a specific intensive image.
Completely off topic:
I can’t open a hosting related business due to my work but I was always interested in doing content distribution for adult web sites. The single largest cost is the bandwidth being consumed by users viewing images and by rival adult sites attacking you. Building an entire geographically disperse network for the adult industry really wouldn’t be hard, and I think profitable. |
