The RIAA forced me to shut down a successful website/apps I built in high school
blog.appgrounds.com
blog.appgrounds.com
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.
> 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-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
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.
That's not how the reasonable person standard works. "Reasonable person" is a term of art. A reasonable person is a sort of thought experiment that's used often in law. We imagine a hypothetical person who is in most respects like the average person, and who makes sound judgments based on the information available to him or her. We then hold real legal entities, such as website proprietors in DMCA cases, to the standard of this hypothetical reasonable person. For example, we say that a reasonable person running such and such website would have noticed copyright infringement, and thus the website's proprietor was obligated to remediate the infringement.
The fact that YouTube has maintained its safe harbor means YouTube is successful in that regard. It doesn't tell us anything about the legal definition of a "reasonable person."
If you're running a website where DMCA safe harbor protection is important, you'll want to discuss a compliance plan with your company lawyer.
I'm not asking "is it mathematically possible?" I'm asking "do you really think Madonna, or Madonna's agent, uploaded that video?"
The court system very rarely works on the concept of "well, it could have been legit." If you buy a bunch of speakers 90% off out of the back of a van in an alley with their serial numbers scratched off, "well, it could have been legit" will not fly very far.
I'm not asking "is it mathematically possible?" I'm asking "do you really think Madonna, or Madonna's agent, uploaded that video?""
Isn't that what record companies do these days? I thought that was the idea behind the Vevo stuff. Between that and Youtube's audio fingerprinting, it seems reasonable to assume that if a pop star's song is on youtube, it is because their record company put it there.
EDIT: Also, it's "safe harbor" not "fair use"--the article gets it wrong. One more reason to have a lawyer explain your obligations to you before you get into something like this.
This is ignoring jurisdiction, too. IIRC, AllOfMp3 operated for a while since in Russia they could buy a blanket copyright licensed and successfully used that to legally make sales until Visa illegally turned off payment and finally the Russian government got them to acquiesce. Yet the site was legal, despite everyone else accusing it of infringement.
Edit: Also, yes, perhaps the law is saying "well if you really knew" and leaving it to the courts. But there's also cases of where Viacom uploaded content, then sued over it, not knowing they themselves had uploaded (and hence licensed it) to YouTube.
By advertising he is kind of making your argument invalid. "This is the kind of music you can get" should involve some level of analysis to ensure you aren't accidentally listing copyrighted content if you truly want to live under the safe harbor laws.
For instance Youtube makes a best effort in all of its advertising to only show content that is legitimate. If some gets through that is fine, but you should at least spend a bit of time making sure you aren't accidently listing a well known band.
No, but the fact that the site owner is using these screenshots to advertise his service obligates him to do due diligence on the copyright status of those tracks. Coincidentally picking one of the most popular artists of the last quarter-century to promote your site rings a little hollow.
Your jurisdictional argument also doesn't hold water. First of all, the site owner was operating in the USA, so he's bound by US law. Second, buying a "blanket copyright" in Russia doesn't confer rights to sell content in other countries.
A reasonable* person would have heard of Madonna and would respond to such evidence of infringement in a timely fashion.
* The definition of 'a reasonable person' is a vexed one. While it's popularly understood to mean something like 'a regular Joe/Jill,' and that's good enough for many purposes, it might be more helpful to think of it as 'someone whose behavior could be reasoned ahead of time by a third party.' So if you're running a site dedicated to music, and given that Madonna is one of the most famous music performers in the world, it's logical (reasonable) to assume you would know who she is. OTOH if you were running some antiquarian maps hosting site and someone uploaded a Madonna video there, you might be excused for not appreciating the significance of same in any action for damages.
/NAL
> What I did was simply store links to music files hosted elsewhere on the internet and acted as a conduit for these music files, allowing people to search songs by title/artist and play/create playlists using my interface.
That's exactly why a lot music are not playable on the old turntable.fm. They are blocked even though they are searchable (which talks to various APIs as well?)
For someone who co-ran a popular BBS forum in the past with millions of Chinese users, I and my other admins got a lot of notices and threats to arrest us. I was also in my high school year as well. Just a few years ago. We didn't shut down the site, it still exists and is still pretty popular. We changed our domain name because it was somehow conflicting with another television company's name and we took down certain torrent files at their requests. We still allow people to upload these illegal contents but we just play nice. I guess we weren't the top players like PirateBay so we haven't been told that we must shut down. We just receive notices. But do play nice.
> I spent a lot of time building HypedMusic. I’ve learned a lot of really cool stuff along the way
You should talk to them. You should inform your users about this and think about future plans. Maybe instead of allowing them to search for illegal contents you can play a demo and link to iTune, soundcloud for purchase? If you have a lot of users you should look for partnership. With users, you should come up with new model. It will be tough, but think about it for a moment. Otherwise you have learned a lot by developing an app yourself. That's a plus already.
Let me know if you have any questions for me- hope the blog doesn't crash!
But awesome website and good luck!
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 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....
For my courtroom CV, google: "borderline incompetent" :-)
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.
There was no need for any more words. Where would the music industry be today without any of the apps that currently have a licensing agreement? No music in Youtube videos. No Pandoras or Spotify or iTunes even. What would that internet even look like?
I just find it really odd that an entire industry seems to live to bite the hands that feed it. I may be entirely wrong in my assessment, so I'll take whatever licks may come.
As a developer first and a hopeful musician second, one who deeply wishes those roles were reversed, I have to always stop myself when I think of a clever idea revolving around music. It has to have such a rigid constraint that it is almost worthless to continue any endeavor.
Do you know if this is being used by http://gfycat.com/?
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.
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
and google around for 'wrongful dmca takedowns'.
E.g. look at the bottom of https://www.google.com/search?q=rihanna+diamond+mp3
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.
The DMCA gives you a "safe harbor" from accidental copyright infringement. But once you know it's copyrighted you have to take it down. AKA, the DMCA notice.
The DMCA won't protect you from knowingly linked to copyrighted material and waiting until someone sends a letter. That's how Megaupload is getting pwnd.
"Finally, the service provider must not have knowledge that the material or activity is infringing or of the fact that the infringing material exists on its network. [512(c)(1)(A)], [512(d)(1)(A)]. If it does discover such material before being contacted by the copyright owners, it is instructed to remove, or disable access to, the material itself. [512(c)(1)(A)(iii)], [512(d)(1)(C)]. "
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.
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://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/private-justice-h...
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.
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"
Stating that you have this good faith belief is not actually the same thing as having it.
Or, well, it make not make it "willingly infringement", but it still makes it infringement.
Since operating in good faith is apparently untenable, there is no particular reason for anyone to operate in good faith with respect to the RIAA. Thus copyright piracy proliferates.
I'm sure that there are plenty of software writers that would be happy to help the RIAA connect their members with potential new fans and paying customers over the Internet. It's a crying shame that the RIAA consistently turns them away by acting like total dicks.
While I also disagree that it's illegal, I do concur with the decision to fold. If you don't have a big gun behind you to back you up, like the EFF or ACLU, you lose against the RIAA. Even if you "win" in court by the judges' decisions, you already lost time, money, and reputation by the time you get there, with no way of ever getting that back.
The only way to win is not to play.
He's young enough and clearly sharp enough to get some promotion out of his ordeal (front page HN isn't too bad) and will move on to certainly bigger and better things. No reason to start out your dev career in the hole a few hundred grand to lawyers and the RIAA and get nothing out of it.
Like Kenny used to say, "You gotta know when to hold them and know when to fold them."
Let's be real here. You're not operating in good faith when you link to a bunch of major-label content free on the internet. It's implausible that you actually believe that content to be legitimate. Rather, you're looking to profit from a loophole.
How about a nice game of chess?
So give a crude example, the content on Netflix is "legit", in the sense that they have the right to distribute it, but that doesn't make it legal for you to record and retransmit the same content.
If you don't know if you can distribute it, you should assume you can't, because that's the default position in the law. You need to have some kind of license to override it.
That's 100% wrong. The default state of a work of art is to be in the public domain. Copyright law creates only a limited exception to that general rule.
These rights have to be waived for it to become public domain.
In the modern world, unfortunately, if there's no accompanying license with the material it's pretty likely that you don't have the legal right to distribute it.
The clear purpose and/or design of this application is to encourage, _facilitate_, and/or cause its users to stream and/or download popular sound recordings, the vast majority of which are owned or controlled by RIAA Member companies and are not authorized for distribution in this manner, while at the same time providing you/your company with _certain financial or related benefits_.
This is how a lot of Dutch sharing websites were closed: Facilitating copyright infringement with monetary gain. They got TV links (a site very similar to OP's site, only crawling for and posting links and embeds) for trademark infringement. Later on some Dutch ISP's were forced to block The Pirate Bay, because by allowing access to the site they facilitated copyright infringement(or so the court ruled). A Dutch blog was charged with republishing copyrighted material by placing a link. This later was overturned and became a fine for "facilitating".
Placing some links as facilitating copyright infringement sets a dangerous precedent for net neutrality.
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:
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.
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.
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."
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.
That was when I left emo and went to mathrock.
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.
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.
People can threaten to sue you for anything if you do have a lawyer, too.
A lawyer obviously helps evaluate the threats.
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.
If he was clearly toeing the legal line, he would have no legal risk. (Toeing the line means "conforming to the rules".)
Also, the author suggests he was getting the links manually and posting them. That's definitely not covered.
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.
Glad you made some money off the dev time you put in!
again very nice, I applaud.
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!
This is just crazy.
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.
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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.