Music and Video Licensing

Hi All,

I would like to know from people running Dolphin sites in North America , what the legalities are of having Non-licensed music or video's on my site. Am I as a site owner liable because I did not take reasonable care to monitor the situation, especially if sharing is allowed.

I know there is a disclaimer that the user has to click on before upload but am I totally obsolved of all

responsibility because of that.

I know in the US of at least 2 cases that were in the news where a woman was found guilty of sharing a few songs on

a website and she had a judgement of a huge sum of money. The same with a male university student some months ago.

I am most interested in hearing from people who have delved into this problem and who are knowledgeable about the

right way for a Web site owner to protect themselves.

Thanks in advance

Read this:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act


Basically, it protects online service providers from being liable for copyrighted material uploaded by their users.  There are a few catches.

You wil not be held liable if:

• You register an agent with the US Copyright Office, to which infringement notices may be sent
• You remove infringing material when your agent is notified of it.
• You did not benefit financially from the material
• You were not aware of the infringing material

There's a lot more to it, but that's the basic idea.  You may also be required to disclose idenifying information about the person that uploaded the infringing material, but probably only in extreme cases.

Here's the form you need to fill out and send to the copyright office: http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agent.pdf

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Thanks for the very useful information houstonlively