The problem is that you might not get to walk away scot-free from this even when you want to.
One thing I can gaurantee will help you: make no attempt whatsoever to profit from this. Don't put up any ads. Don't have any affiliate links. Profiting from a (potential) crime or infringement makes it 100x more dangerous.
If that is all you are doing, even if it were not legal, I do not think anyone would have any worry, but you mention that you might want to take away the annoying ads from the content, which, changes everything completely and probably makes it illegal.
The main protection is that it's really hard to get people to pay you money if you don't have evidence of substance. It's harder to make paybait than clickbait.
That said, it is definitely an issue we will have to navigate carefully.
Just like StreetLend, most likely nothing, and it's just a fear, but again you need to realize that this is a site run purely as a hobby. I'm sorry but reading through legalese and combing my website's code to make sure it's compliant isn't part of my hobby. I'm not a company, I don't have millions of users, I just run a small tool that a few people use. Yet apparently I run the risk of being fined $20m...
As far as stopping purchases: you can just disallow suspicious origins from purchasing. E.g. if you know it's Amazon IPs, ban those, very few people will legitimately do that.
Using any kind of legal routes is probably a complete dead end.
The real problem here is the advertisers and the revenue that comes from it. It's disgraceful that YouTube and Google have these show up so high on the list when it's so clearly fraud. Facebook is no better.
On the face of it, it's pure copyright infringement. I have no idea how the site intends to stay alive once it's big enough to make money. As soon as it attracts a decent user base, it'll be a great target for a lawsuit. Moreover, copyright infringement also carries criminal liability.
People rarely do anything for free, especially when it comes at a cost to them. Therefore, there is a significant likelihood something nefarious is happening.
On the other hand, there is a high probability the owner of the website would get caught eventually in a sting operation.
The only scenario I can imagine is the website is ad supported. At any rate, I have always avoided these websites out of a fear of the first possibility.
Leaving aside the obvious ethical issue here, what's the solution? Don't do mashups? Or, do mashups in a moderate way so that you are only providing limited quotes of the originating site and providing attribution? Or, say to hell with it, I'll do what I want and only worry about legal problems if I get big enough that someone comes after me?
Not saying its the route I would take but you could share your story and the site name here and at other social sites like digg, reddit, etc and internet vigilantes might just do their thing to drive them away.
I have seen it happen before with design / logo theft etc.
I'm not so sure the morality is as black and white as you paint. If someone builds something and wants to be paid for their work, taking it for free against their wishes hardly seems ethical.
The purely ethical solution here is just not using sites that have ads if you're opposed.
Nothing you do, aside maybe from putting it behind a login, will prevent your content from being ripped off. Its just a sad part of what we have to live with.
Note that if you advertise a service like this you will almost certainly face charges of obstructing justice. I'm not qualified to say if you could defend against them but your legal bills would be potentially infinite.
I've once spotted a (Latin American) slave trader on a image sharing platform during a technical due diligence. They were pretty shameless about it too, uploading the photos of the girls from their own IP. All the easier for the authorities to go after them.
Please take careful note: If you do not do proper risk analysis of your platform you WILL be used to perpetrate crime and if you find that you did not do what you could have done to stop it you may end up being an accessory to that crime. More so if you ignore warnings or flags by other users of the platform. This goes for anything that allows the uploading and further distribution of user generated content (especially 1-1) and for anything that deals with money.
Your nifty platform or weekend project could easily become the vehicle for someone else's crimes.
They are equally bad because in both cases the user is taken to a place that they did not intend to go. They are not bad because something is getting "stolen", they are bad because the user is no longer in control. That is a significantly more concerning aspect than someone not receiving affiliate revenue, which to be completely honest, I couldn't care less about.
One thing I can gaurantee will help you: make no attempt whatsoever to profit from this. Don't put up any ads. Don't have any affiliate links. Profiting from a (potential) crime or infringement makes it 100x more dangerous.
reply