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The RIAA forced me to shut down a successful website/apps I built in high school
- driverdan 13y agoIANAL. First of all a cease and desist doesn't require you to do anything. It's merely a threat. That said it seems pretty clear that you're violating copyright laws. The DMCA only applies to user generated content (UGC). You're not letting users input their own links to 3rd party content, you're finding the links yourself. It doesn't matter where you get them from. Not only that but you're not linking to this content on other sites, you're actively playing it for users within your app. It's very cool you built this in HS. Let the whole thing be a good lesson in building apps and dealing with the law.
- langarto 13y agoI wonder how can he be violating any law with respect to distribution of copyrighted content when he is not distributing anything. He is just pointing to other sources doing the actual distribution (which may be legal). He is just providing links, although with a nice interface.
- wernercd 13y agoThe same way ThePirateBay is guilty of infringement when all the host is "links". They host "nothing" and yet are the scourge of the interwebs.
- jtome 13y agoLinking can be considered "dissemination" thanks to the DMCA, see http://www.chillingeffects.org/linking/faq.cgi#QID152 http://www.chillingeffects.org/linking/faq.cgi#QID152
- adamnemecek 13y agoYet somehow Google still operates. But to respond to OP, IANAL but I think that you might have folded too easily. But it's understandable that you probably want to avoid a lawsuit at any cost. Also, you might want to check this out http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi#QID862 http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi#QID862 and google around for 'wrongful dmca takedowns'.
- brohee 13y agoGoogle actively removes links to infringing content once notified. E.g. look at the bottom of https://www.google.com/search?q=rihanna+diamond+mp3 https://www.google.com/search?q=rihanna+diamond+mp3
- adamnemecek 13y agoI'm aware of that. That still implies that at some point Google linked to illegal material yet when requested, they removed it. Presumably HypedMusic could have had a similar deal.
- lambda 13y agoYes, a provider can follow the DMCA safe harbor procedures to facilitate the filing of DMCA takedown notices, and comply with those promptly. The details are outlined here: http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi Basically, a provider needs to provide contact information for a designated agent for DMCA takedown notices. Had Luke done so, and complied with legal DMCA takedown requests (as well as counter-notifications), he could have continued operating his service; however, that may have become considerably more work than he wanted to put into running the service.
- MWil 13y agoHis app actually played the media though and not for personal use. The copyright holders have exclusive rights to determine how their content gets played/broadcast.
- seiji 13y agoDon't become this guy: http://www.zdnet.com/student-richard-odwyer-spared-us-extradition-and-jail-time-over-tv-shack-copyright-charges-7000008025/ http://www.zdnet.com/student-richard-odwyer-spared-us-extrad... Sadly, the Internet isn't our playground anymore. You have to watch what you do even if it's just curating links to things you can download for free.
- lonture 13y agoHe won his case and is suing the US now I believe.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- SEMW 13y ago> I wonder how can he be violating any law with respect to distribution of copyrighted content when he is not distributing anything Anton Vickerman didn't host anything either. His site (surfthechannel) was also just a collection of links. And, sure enough, he was held not to have committed any copyright-related offence. So they got him on conspiracy to defraud [the record companies] instead. He's now serving a four year prison term after a private prosecution by FACT, a copyright industry trade organisation - an extraordinary move, initiated after the CPS (state prosecutors) refused to prosecute him. (Note: this is in the UK, not the US). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Vickerman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Vickerman http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/private-justice-how-hollywood-money-put-a-brit-behind-bars/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/private-justice-h...
- ds9 13y agoIt's not at all clear that he's violating any laws. There is no infringement in providing access in a good-faith belief that the content is legit. And it's a fair assumption that the people actually publishing the music files on their websites wouldn't be doing so without authorization from the rights holders. Further, downloading in general (as opposed to publishing) is expressly legal in some countries (e.g., reportedly Germany). RIAA's best argument would be "contributory infringement", but findings of CI have succeeded only when the actors had some reason to think the files in question were published without authorization. Further, the RIAA offers no evidence for its claim that many of the files were unauthorized, and its implication that you have some way of knowing their licensing status is pure fantasy or lies. So, I disagree with the "give up, it's illegal" assessment. The real problem here is that success in civil litigation is directly related to wealth, such that we have a two-tier court system which is a travesty of justice for the have-nots and an unregulated weapon for the "haves". So yes, you have to capitulate, but not for the reason the above poster suggests.
- seanalltogether 13y ago"There is no infringement in providing access in a good-faith belief that the content is legit." I don't believe that is true. Content distribution is a complicated affair. Redistribution of content is not as easy as saying "well if site xyz has the right to distribute it, so do I"
- maxerickson 13y agoThe argument also hinges on the idea that the operator has "good-faith belief that the content is legit". Stating that you have this good faith belief is not actually the same thing as having it.
- coldtea 13y agoNot to mention that even having it doesn't mean anything at all. Or, well, it make not make it "willingly infringement", but it still makes it infringement.
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- btown 13y agoSo then if Google happens to index and show a link to 3rd party content, it's also finding the links itself, and is similarly liable?
- wehadfun 13y agoYes but Google has plenty of money so it is ok.
- blauwbilgorgel 13y agoI am not a lawyer. I believe Google is exempt because it indexes all links it can find. It needs this to operate a general purpose search engine. As soon as Google became a specialized torrent search engine they could be similarly liable. Also Google has to comply with legit DMCA requests or they still risk being liable.
- bluecalm 13y agoI think better analogy is Bing video search. Not only it finds links but also plays it without visiting a page the video is actually hosted on.
- tptacek 13y agoIf Google becomes aware of such a link, for any reason, it is obliged by law to deindex.
- MichaelGG 13y agoHow is Google supposed to determine copyright status of arbitrary sites/"links"?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Kiro 13y agoTheir reply looks like a template so I'm not sure they even read your email.
- lukezli 13y agoSince I'm lucky enough to be on the front page of HN (thanks a lot!) I'd just like to shamelessly self promote and say 1) I'm looking for an internship this summer at a startup- please let me know if any of you have open positions! Please email me at lukezli[at]yahoo.com. 2) Check out my new project, catchyurl.co, a url shortener that creates memorable shortened urls like catchyurl.co/EskimoHill Let me know if you have any questions for me- hope the blog doesn't crash!
- odonnellryan 13y agocatchyurl.co/EskimoHill returns a 404. I would suggest making your example link back to your page. But awesome website and good luck!
- synctext 13y agoas 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 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_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,_Ltd http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster.... For my courtroom CV, google: "borderline incompetent" :-)
- darkarmani 13y agoYour 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,_Ltd. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster....
- exDM69 13y agoI think you learned a valuable lesson here, you should not try to create apps that work with the music industry if you don't have some sort of licensing agreement with them. It doesn't really matter if it is strictly legal (under DMCA and other relevant legislation) or not, they can and will use lawyers to intimidate and/or sue you. It doesn't matter if you're linking to third party hosting or what the technicalities are, if your app can play back music or video that is "owned" by the big players (RIAA/MPAA/MAFIAA) you are under threat. You made the right choice (thinking practically, not necessarily morally) in not trying your luck in court, you have very little chances of winning and could possibly ruin your future by having a nasty lawsuit on your records. I don't think it is fair or approve of it but that's the way it works, unfortunately. Google and YouTube can get away with it, not because of DMCA and other laws but because they have (secret?) treaties with the copyright holding parties.
- mathrawka 13y agoAnd 17 years ago an indie emo record label in NY (that should be enough to identify them/him) forced me to shut down a website I built. That was when I left emo and went to mathrock.
- shiftpgdn 13y agoIt's a shame you shut it down. You could have easily gotten a sizeable sum of money for something like that on Flippa.
- daemonk 13y agoI am not a fan of aggressive, litigious companies. And the morality of physical vs intellectual property is a whole another issue that warrants more discussion. However, all that baggage aside, you kinda did create this website so people can share copyright infringing files. Did you really expect people to only share personal, non-copyrighted music? Come on. Anyways. You should be proud of the work you've done though. It's not easy to follow through with an idea.
- nitin1213 13y agoWhy's that your username in a different colour?:)
- citricsquid 13y agoThe green username indicates that the user is new.
- nitin1213 13y agoOh i did not know that sorry.
- frankydp 13y agoIf HypedMusic had offered to provide a mechanism to remove the "infringing" links wouldn't HypedMusic have been in compliance with Safe Harbor?
- rhino369 13y agoNot if you know you are collecting a bunch of copyrighted material. Piratebay can't use the safe harbor because they are clearly running a sharing site. Also, the author suggests he was getting the links manually and posting them. That's definitely not covered.
- lukezli 13y agoHey, just wanted to clarify- I was not manually getting links and posting them. When someone posted a search query on my website, I would use 3rd party APIs and run the same search query on those APIs, then return results from those APIs to the users. All done programmatically.
- poopsintub 13y agoI wonder how tumbler got away with its shady activity when it first started out.
- dragontamer 13y agoThey probably had a lawyer advice them on which threats were substantial, and which ones weren't. The RIAA is famous for sending out threats on anyone or anything that remotely does anything they disagree with. They don't necessarily even have a legal argument to win the case. But they have their lawyers write up nasty letters and emails to coerce you into doing what they want. Without a lawyer of your own, who can sift through these C&D letters... you're pretty much defenseless. -------------- More realistically... the Youtube / Tumbler approach was most likely "Ignore the Letters, and hope for the best". These kinds of letters aren't necessarily threatening legal action.
- snake_plissken 13y agoMehh the grey areas of the DCMA grind my gears. Aggregation services do not host and (for the most part) they do not upload the content. Your situation is unfortunate kiddo. If you had a couple million or a high powered law firm on retainer, I doubt you'd have ever received this letter. But keep up the good work!
- relaxitup 13y ago@lukezli any thoughts on opening or providing the source for catchyurl? Looks great!
- raldi 13y ago> I was under the impression that what I was doing was legal, protected under DMCA’s fair use policy, which by practice is what makes sites like Youtube legal: although they host millions of illegal content uploaded by users, as long as they agree to take down said videos when requested by copyright owners, they are in the clear because it is difficult/impossible to monitor what gets uploaded to their sites. Actually, YouTube doesn't just passively sit around waiting for copyright holders to whack each mole one at a time; it has an incredibly sophisticated and powerful content-matching engine that does monitor what's being uploaded, and automatically checks new videos against a giant corpus of known copyrighted works. There's a cool video about it here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370?hl=en
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sfall 13y agokeep in mind that youtube was around for 2+ years before content id was first introduced
- morrad 13y ago> it has an incredibly sophisticated and powerful content-matching engine that does monitor what's being uploaded, and automatically checks new videos against a giant corpus of known copyrighted works This is above and beyond the requirements of the DMCA though. Doing this isn't what makes Youtube legal, it just attempts to appease copyright holders.
- raldi 13y agoThat'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.
- horseapples 13y agoLawsuit came before DMCA. Lawsuit was filled in 97 and 98 was when DMCA was passed.
- tptacek 13y agoThere 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 to play Madonna tracks, you are obligated to hunt down those tracks and remove them yourself. If it can be shown that you purposefully don't do that, you can end up forfeiting safe-harbor. You are probably happier in the long run for shutting this project down. While you clearly want to believe that you aren't infringing copyright, which is an admirable sentiment, you obviously aren't taking advantage of "fair use" by giving your users direct access to copyrighted music under your own branding.
- parham 13y agoI 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.
- jarrett 13y agoI 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 subjective awareness of the service provider of the facts or circumstances in question must be determined. However, in deciding whether those facts or circumstances constitute a "red flag"—in other words, whether infringing activity would have been apparent to a reasonable person operating under the same or similar circumstances— an objective standard should be used. Source: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt551/pdf/CRPT-105hrpt551-pt2.pdf http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt551/pdf/CRPT-105hrp... So, the defense that infringement is "impossible to verify unless the owner of the copyright gives a notice" probably doesn't apply. If the site owner reasonably should have known of the infringement, safe harbor protection is forfeited. The moral is that you need to be proactive about removing infringing content. Yes, it's true that YouTube doesn't take down every offending video. But they (at least claim to) actively monitor for infringement to the best of their abilities: http://www.youtube.com/t/video_id_about http://www.youtube.com/t/video_id_about Disclaimer: Don't take my advice here as a comprehensive guide to DMCA compliance. My comments are a far cry from that. Edit: I should add that I'm not offering an opinion as to whether the OP's site violated the DMCA, or whether the RIAA's takedown was valid. My comments were meant to apply generally, not to the OP's specific case.
- justhw 13y agoGreat 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.
- eugeneross 13y agoGreat idea! I'd too would be interested in testing it as well.
- TylerE 13y agoI wonder if that could be considered contributory infringement...
- justhw 13y agoWhy? I have the right to the audio.
- rayiner 13y ago> 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."
- logfromblammo 13y agoWhen you put it that way, it seems clear that this kid should be working on Wall Street.
- dragontamer 13y agoAn 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.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> An important note here, is that if you don't have a lawyer, people can threaten to sue you for anything. People can threaten to sue you for anything if you do have a lawyer, too. A lawyer obviously helps evaluate the threats.
- dragontamer 13y agoThey can threaten to sue you, but only a lawyer is really qualified to tell you whether or not the threats are proper. In this case, the original poster is clearly toeing the legal line. IANAL, but it sounds like what he's doing is perfectly legal. Either way, if he cares about his website, he should seek legal counsel.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> In this case, the original poster is clearly toeing the legal line. If he was clearly toeing the legal line, he would have no legal risk. (Toeing the line means "conforming to the rules".)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- vonskippy 13y agoNever take legal threats via email. If they can't have a lawyer, send via certified mail (yes, snail mail) specifying the actual complaint, and the legal justification behind said complain, then just ignore them.
- NathanKP 13y agoFirst of all I'm sorry to hear that you have to shut down your app, but I'm confident that things are going to work out just fine for you. I actually had a very similar experience when I was 18 as well. I decided to make a book search engine that would aggregate reviews from different sources across the web and provide a high quality, clean interface to quickly see information about a book and links to buy it on Amazon. The problem my service solved is that the Amazon interface is extremely ugly, and while I'm sure it is fine tuned for maximum sales it is definitely highly lacking in aesthetics and is cluttered with a lot of garbage. My goal was to create the cleanest, most minimal but extremely useful book search engine. In retrospect my service was breaking many TOS because of the way it worked. When someone entered a book title or author name it would utilize Amazon API's to get information about relevant books that matched the query, then it would scrape book information from Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes and Nobles, and the New York Times sunday book review among other sources, then it would cache that scraped information in my own database for future reference. I justified this to myself by thinking it was okay because I was remixing the information to generate my own summary pages that were cleaner and more useful, but the reality is that I was pretty much parasitizing these other services to build my own database. At its peak my service had many GB's of scraped data from other sites and was getting about 5000 searches a day which was netting me about $500-$700 a month from commission on Amazon referrals sales. But after I started getting some press coverage in The Next Web, etc all the services that I was utilizing started sending me cease and desist notices. People used my site because it was cleaner and nicer than Amazon but Amazon didn't appreciate that I was scraping their content to build my own site so they cut off my API access and closed my Amazon Associate account. In the end it was a wild six month ride in which I made a few thousand dollars but more importantly got tons of experience in coding a scalable site, and best of all I started getting a lot of job offers. At one point I was getting three or four job offers a month from different startups from the HN community. Eventually I decided to settle down at one of them where I could continue developing my coding skills. Things turned out very well, and the ride of personal growth and discovery isn't over for me yet. Every day I get to code interesting things for my current startup company and this time its a legitimate business that isn't going to get shut down for stealing content. Even though you probably feel very disappointed about having to shut down your service like I did when I had to shut down mine, you can be confident that with your skills things will turn out just fine for you, and a lot of interesting startup companies will probably be eager to employ you.
- gedrap 13y agoI had a bit similar experience. When I was 16 (so around 2008), I had a poker blog, just translating stuff from wikipedia and posting some random 'news'. It was in Lithuania (EU). A small blog, with about 300 daily visitors. A few months later, I got a letter from the government telling me that I was infringing some ambiguously worded gambling law. And they were requesting an official explanation what was I doing (I guess they just reworded testimony). The idea was that you can blog about poker only if you are a licensed gambling company, and I was facing a fine of $2500-7000 (the blog had $0.00 income, and for the contrast, my parents were earning $1000/mo combined). It felt extremely unfair. It scared the shit out of me. I had to go to the police station, didn't contact any lawyer, and wrote my 'explanation' telling that I was not making any money and did publish publicly available information and I am sorry. After a month of sleepless nights, I got a letter saying that they decided not to take any further action and that's a warning. Well, it fucking warned me big time.
- eyeareque 13y agoSure, he had to kill his project but I can only imagine the experience will help him land new opportunities.
- tootie 13y agoDid you not consider hiring a lawyer? I know they cost money, but this sounds like it was a major investment of time for you. If you want it to ever be a successful business, you'd eventually have to put money into it. How did you pay for hosting?
- dangrossman 13y agoThere's a big difference between a 15 year old coming up with $3/month for hosting, and coming up with $300/hour to be told you misunderstood the DMCA and aren't protected.
- belluchan 13y agoI really liked using your app and am sorry to see it go. :(
- vaadu 13y agoMove or sell the apps into a country not bound by the DMCA.
- CassieTFC 13y agoThe music industry as we know it is dead. As someone with a history in the industry, it is time to discover and embrace the new music model...whatever that may be. And there are many things it might be. Streaming, yes. The end of downloads? I don't think so but maybe. The ability for deserving artists without the backing of the major-label machine to have a measurable amount of success. Stay tuned ;)
- yason 13y agoSo, how many levels of indirection are allowed until a "link" becomes legal and not infringing? This is just crazy.