Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy
I don't think intent matters.
Given how short most of them are, I can easily see it. There just aren't that many ways to say the same thing over and over, without eventual duplication. You've never read a post in the plethora of pro/anti copyright discussions on here over the years and had deja-vu?
Have you seen what the civil penalties are for copyright infringement? Not to mention that many forums don't draw revenue from comments directly, but can be argued to do so indirectly via ad space, etc. That's how the pirate bay made their revenue, wasn't it?
If things "progress" to where the hosting site can be held liable, do you think sites would be willing to take the risk?
The only point I'm trying to make is this. If you really think about it, is there really all that much difference between sites that allow users to upload files and sites that allow users to post comments? Both are potentially at risk for the content they host to infringe on copyright.
The only obvious distinction I can find is that files (music/movies/ebooks) are much larger than comments. However, I'm not aware of any difference outlined in copyright law based on the size of the copyrighted work in question, is there?
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You could probably dig through case law and copyright law and figure out just how large a written work needs to be to be considered copyright. One other thing to consider though is that public comments don't necessarily fall under copyright automatically (and might not be copyrightable). So something posted to a website as a "public" comment may also not necessarily automatically fall under copyright protection.
That aside, even if it did fall under copyright protection, you then get in to the various issues of fair use and copyright law for how the posts/comments are being used and how profit is being derived from them (newspapers make a profit, or at least they used to, and they use copyrighted materials all the time...just in an editorial or news making manner so it is fair use, but they are making money off copyrighted materials).
Next you also have the issue of, do the forum operators KNOW that the copyright infringing activity is occuring and are doing nothing about it and/or don't do anything if notified.
In the case of Megaupload, apparently in the inditement, it specifically mentions several cases where Megaupload employees (documented in emails) used their own internal search engines to find copyrighted materials that had been uploaded to their file locker site for personal use (In a specific case mentioning if one employee could use the search engine to find episodes of Seinfield for the other employee to watch). That would be a good example of knowing that they were hosting copyrighted materials uploaded by users and doing nothing about it.