Seriously. See a lawyer.
People on the internet are not lawyers; if they are lawyers, their main advice is go see a lawyer.
Law is a profession of tiny details with huge consequences. Those tiny details vary from place to place and from subject to subject. Even lawyers have lawyers.
If I learnt one and only one important lesson from my time in law school, it's this: If you have a question of law, go see a lawyer.
I mean it.
There is nothing wrong with asking about the experiences of others who may have asked lawyers similar questions, as long as we understand that we should directly seek a lawyer's advice in proportion to what is at stake.
By sharing our legal experiences, we'd all become better at understanding the specific questions we should ask a lawyer, should the need arise.
As I said, law varies by place and subject. Those differences matter. Some subjects are generally consistent across jurisdictions. Some are not.
Who knows which is which? The professionals.
Who has the knowledge and experience to correctly interpret different experiences in different circumstances? The professionals.
Intelligent people frequently form entirely inaccurate views of subjects in which they are not experts. We mock TV shows for having VB GUIs that track IP addresses. Lawyers feel a bit like this when non-lawyers begin swapping legal advice.
> By sharing our legal experiences, we'd all become better at understanding the specific questions we should ask a lawyer, should the need arise.
Lawyers are not unapproachable gods. They are service professionals like any other. You ring, make an appointment, and talk to them. It's really very simple. They will ask some questions and take some notes. If it's a simple matter they will give a simple answer. If it's more complicated they will ask to get back to you.
Self-help and Stack Overflow is fine for writing most low-risk software, where bugs can be patched. It is a risky strategy with law. Some actions cannot be undone. You can't just revert to the "before I made that legal blunder" branch.
We cannot possibly achieve a broad understanding of the law if the only knowledge we have about how the law works comes directly from our own personal conversations with a lawyer.
I'm thinking of purchasing a 50 euro piece of software from a company in Germany. Do I need to obtain customs authorization to purchase software from countries other than the US? Perhaps I need a permit to run German software? Maybe it's against the law to even visit a site in Germany unless I'm an EU citizen? Perhaps I need to start paying some of my income and corporation taxes to Germany if my business uses any German software?
If we are completely clueless about what is legal and what is not, the costs of running all of these questions past a lawyer would bring the economy to a halt.
As I noted elsewhere, most legal relationships, transactions, events and conditions exist without ever being noticed or cared about. That is as it should be.
But in cases of high risk or uncertainty, go see a lawyer.
The OP would be insane to act solely based on the comments he reads here, but there is value for everyone in having the discussion, even if people give bad advice and then other people set the matter right. All the better if the OP comes back and tells us later how it all worked out. I just sounds to me like you're trying to shut down an interesting discussion. I say "go ask a lawyer, but still go ahead and ask us too!"
The only correct advice is "see a lawyer".
The simple fact that we have to tell people to go see a lawyer for protecting themselves just shows how wrong the society is (in the USA in particular) regarding laws.
But more than that, people should at least be able to get an educated answer on what to do, other that "go pay money to that guy, he knows AND this will shield you from legal issues that could ruin your life."
I mean, seriously.
The law almost always goes on without anybody having to notice or take additional action. We are always moving through and interacting with the invisible web of the law. It works so well that we only notice it when something goes awry or something unusual happens (like OP's situation -- if it were normal, people would have a better idea of what to do).
Yesterday I entered into several legal contracts. We went through all the legal formalities under common and statue law, created mutually binding obligations, discharged our legal requirements and then went on our respective ways. These variously took the form of buying groceries, hailing a cab, buying dinner, picking up laundry (with the added bonus of bailee-bailor relationship) and getting a haircut.
Because nothing unusual happened, I didn't think about the law. At all. But it was there.
Law is a sufficiently large field (remember, the problem domain is "all interactions between humans") that it requires specialisation and so, in fact, lawyers must frequently consult with other lawyers. OP may get an answer from a general practice solicitor. Or that lawyer may need to consult another lawyer. Until he or she sees a lawyer it's not clear to us lay folk.
Does this ever annoy you?
You're good with computers, can you make a poster for me?
This reminds me of tax filling.
> Even lawyers have lawyers.
Do accountants have accountants too?