5 ms·

For the record, he's talking about user-generated content so even if users upload unlicenced materials he's covered by DMCA protections. He won't have to worry

For the record, he's talking about user-generated content so even if users upload unlicenced materials he's covered by DMCA protections. He won't have to worry about licencing content, since he won't knowingly use copyrighted content beyond what freebies are offered to CPA partners. I think everything you're saying makes sense for a Paysite, but he's not a paysite---just an affiliate and traffic producer which is a bit more downstream. As for dealing with the major players to have traffic funnelled through him, he won't be able to do that initially because (a) traffic trades require that you have traffic to trade and (b) you're going to want to have your traffic stream through organic links and SEM since you likely can't afford to pay for traffic for a non-paysite: the ROI just isn't there in advertising.

revelation 14y ago
As megaupload shows, it doesn't even matter if you are protected from DMCA safe harbor. If a prosecutor thinks you are not, they will destroy your business without recourse.
- true_religion 14y ago
  In terms of risk, I think its far less likely that a prosecutor will go after an adult site than say a music sharing site. The adult market has no one with the clout of the RIAA to lobby congress.
  - indiecore 14y ago
    Porn is a multi-tens of billion dollar business, to think they don't have people in government is silly.
    - true_religion 14y ago
      Please don't stretch my words to the point of hyberbole. I said the adult industry doesn't have an organization with clout comparative to the RIAA. That's true as far as I know. Do you know of such a broad-based lobbying group for the adult market?
  - rdl 14y ago
    Indeed, the only real protection the "legit" porn industry has is to wave the 2257 around and try to use the thread of child pornography to get other sites shut down.
- mfjordvald 14y ago
  It's a bad example to use because the prosecutor claims to have Skype chat logs of Megaupload assisting in the upload of illegal material as well as uploading their own illegal material. This would instantly remove their DMCA safe harbor protections as it relies on Megaupload not being aware of illegal material on their platform. Further it also requires that Megaupload have no financial gain directly attributable to the illegal material. So basically if the Skype logs are real and the prosecutor can prove this then Megaupload was rightly indicted and should be prosecuted without the protection of DMCA safe harbor. As a final note, though, I do note necessarily believe they should have the power to take down the business until after they've proven the illegal activity. Just in case anybody got away with that impression.
  - belorn 14y ago
    If governments and by extension, courts gets pushed enough, laws about safe harbor means nothing. Laws in general means little in this case. The pirate bay case in Sweden is the best example of this. The by law required impartial police investigator was hired by one of the parties the day after he finished his work. A several order higher paying job. the exact day after he finished his report on the pirate bay. When the police was asked about it, they said it was "common" practice. Later during the trial, the lawyers requested the investigator as witness (to ask about all this), and the investigator refused to return to Sweden when the court agree to the request. This however had no impact whatsoever on the judgment. The court judgment is also hilarious funny to read, as it include some golden nuggets of complete unknown laws, not written in the actually law books (reason being, work towards a law counts too in Europe, not just what is written). For example, if you produce a service, you might get hanged for it even if you produce it with perfect fine intentions. What counts is the primary usage of said service, so if you produce a tool, and the prosecutor claims that the primary usage of that tool is crime, you can go down for it as facilitator of crime (generic). Its facts like this, that really would have me worried if I created a program like nmap. Hopefully, prosecutors won't realize this law actually exist.
    - mfjordvald 14y ago
      I'm not sure what the pirate bay has to do with Megaupload. I'm not arguing anything in general here, I'm just saying in the specific case of Megaupload there really wasn't foul play outside of procedural errors, if the claims of the prosecutor are true then Megaupload were indeed breaking the law and the DMCA safe harbor protection meant nothing. The Pirate Bay is entirely unrelated.
- tptacek 14y ago
  It very much does matter if you're protected by the "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA. The problem is that Kim Schmitz and his team did things, including paying contributors to upload copyrighted material, that forfeited their protections. Prosecutors didn't make this stuff up; the requirements for claiming service provider protections are right there in the law. The prosecution has Schmitz and associates in their own words conspiring to break the law; they left it all in plaintext email. This is one of the most virulent misconceptions about copyright law on HN. The DMCA does not say that you are protected as long as you honor takedown notices. In addition to honoring them, you must not have any specific knowledge of infringing use of your service that you fail to act on. If any idiot can hit the front page of your site and see that it's used mostly for piracy, law enforcement will take an interest in you once you get big. If, during discovery, they find email messages showing you conspiring to keep copyrighted material on your site, they'll charge you criminally.
  - revelation 14y ago
    That is for a court to establish in what we call due process. But what happened instead was that a prosecutor found they were not protected under safe harbor. With the stroke of a pen, that turned the business into a criminal racket. Overly general mafia and drug war laws then allow the prosecutor to confiscate property and freeze funds, killing the business. Of course a judge still has to sign off, but there are no provisions for the accused to defend themself or even be informed of the process.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      I can't make enough sense out of this comment to fully reply to it. The DoJ obtained enough probable cause evidence to support discovery of Mega's emails. The emails showed the owners and operators of the company conspiring, in black and white plaintext email, to further the use of MegaUpload as a vehicle for making money via piracy. The DoJ initiated a prosecution, which is now working its way through the court. If you don't believe commercial piracy on an industrial scale should be criminalized, then naturally you'd believe that there aren't enough due process constraints on the DoJ to pursue those cases. But if you accept the fact that creating hugely profitable high-volume piracy applications is a crime under US law, it's hard to see the "due process" problem here.
kysol 14y ago
True, I wasn't sure how DMCA would work with Tube sites since they were awfully heavy handed back in the day when tracking down unlicensed content. -- I've been out for too long, it's all behind me these days. It was fun, met some nice, really smart guys.
rayiner 14y ago
Most "user generated" porn sites have almost exclusively unlicensed content. You're using "user submission" here as a cheap trick to get free content.

revelation 14y ago

As megaupload shows, it doesn't even matter if you are protected from DMCA safe harbor. If a prosecutor thinks you are not, they will destroy your business without recourse.

true_religion 14y ago
In terms of risk, I think its far less likely that a prosecutor will go after an adult site than say a music sharing site. The adult market has no one with the clout of the RIAA to lobby congress.
- indiecore 14y ago
  Porn is a multi-tens of billion dollar business, to think they don't have people in government is silly.
  - true_religion 14y ago
    Please don't stretch my words to the point of hyberbole. I said the adult industry doesn't have an organization with clout comparative to the RIAA. That's true as far as I know. Do you know of such a broad-based lobbying group for the adult market?
- rdl 14y ago
  Indeed, the only real protection the "legit" porn industry has is to wave the 2257 around and try to use the thread of child pornography to get other sites shut down.
mfjordvald 14y ago
It's a bad example to use because the prosecutor claims to have Skype chat logs of Megaupload assisting in the upload of illegal material as well as uploading their own illegal material. This would instantly remove their DMCA safe harbor protections as it relies on Megaupload not being aware of illegal material on their platform. Further it also requires that Megaupload have no financial gain directly attributable to the illegal material. So basically if the Skype logs are real and the prosecutor can prove this then Megaupload was rightly indicted and should be prosecuted without the protection of DMCA safe harbor. As a final note, though, I do note necessarily believe they should have the power to take down the business until after they've proven the illegal activity. Just in case anybody got away with that impression.
- belorn 14y ago
  If governments and by extension, courts gets pushed enough, laws about safe harbor means nothing. Laws in general means little in this case. The pirate bay case in Sweden is the best example of this. The by law required impartial police investigator was hired by one of the parties the day after he finished his work. A several order higher paying job. the exact day after he finished his report on the pirate bay. When the police was asked about it, they said it was "common" practice. Later during the trial, the lawyers requested the investigator as witness (to ask about all this), and the investigator refused to return to Sweden when the court agree to the request. This however had no impact whatsoever on the judgment. The court judgment is also hilarious funny to read, as it include some golden nuggets of complete unknown laws, not written in the actually law books (reason being, work towards a law counts too in Europe, not just what is written). For example, if you produce a service, you might get hanged for it even if you produce it with perfect fine intentions. What counts is the primary usage of said service, so if you produce a tool, and the prosecutor claims that the primary usage of that tool is crime, you can go down for it as facilitator of crime (generic). Its facts like this, that really would have me worried if I created a program like nmap. Hopefully, prosecutors won't realize this law actually exist.
  - mfjordvald 14y ago
    I'm not sure what the pirate bay has to do with Megaupload. I'm not arguing anything in general here, I'm just saying in the specific case of Megaupload there really wasn't foul play outside of procedural errors, if the claims of the prosecutor are true then Megaupload were indeed breaking the law and the DMCA safe harbor protection meant nothing. The Pirate Bay is entirely unrelated.
tptacek 14y ago
It very much does matter if you're protected by the "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA. The problem is that Kim Schmitz and his team did things, including paying contributors to upload copyrighted material, that forfeited their protections. Prosecutors didn't make this stuff up; the requirements for claiming service provider protections are right there in the law. The prosecution has Schmitz and associates in their own words conspiring to break the law; they left it all in plaintext email. This is one of the most virulent misconceptions about copyright law on HN. The DMCA does not say that you are protected as long as you honor takedown notices. In addition to honoring them, you must not have any specific knowledge of infringing use of your service that you fail to act on. If any idiot can hit the front page of your site and see that it's used mostly for piracy, law enforcement will take an interest in you once you get big. If, during discovery, they find email messages showing you conspiring to keep copyrighted material on your site, they'll charge you criminally.
- revelation 14y ago
  That is for a court to establish in what we call due process. But what happened instead was that a prosecutor found they were not protected under safe harbor. With the stroke of a pen, that turned the business into a criminal racket. Overly general mafia and drug war laws then allow the prosecutor to confiscate property and freeze funds, killing the business. Of course a judge still has to sign off, but there are no provisions for the accused to defend themself or even be informed of the process.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I can't make enough sense out of this comment to fully reply to it. The DoJ obtained enough probable cause evidence to support discovery of Mega's emails. The emails showed the owners and operators of the company conspiring, in black and white plaintext email, to further the use of MegaUpload as a vehicle for making money via piracy. The DoJ initiated a prosecution, which is now working its way through the court. If you don't believe commercial piracy on an industrial scale should be criminalized, then naturally you'd believe that there aren't enough due process constraints on the DoJ to pursue those cases. But if you accept the fact that creating hugely profitable high-volume piracy applications is a crime under US law, it's hard to see the "due process" problem here.

kysol 14y ago

True, I wasn't sure how DMCA would work with Tube sites since they were awfully heavy handed back in the day when tracking down unlicensed content. -- I've been out for too long, it's all behind me these days. It was fun, met some nice, really smart guys.

rayiner 14y ago

Most "user generated" porn sites have almost exclusively unlicensed content. You're using "user submission" here as a cheap trick to get free content.