Axis Arena (FULL VERSION) [MOST RECENT VERSION]

[BDUAres]

Actually barak it can now easily be considered criminally illegal, and the site owner could be held civilly liable in court, if it could be shown that in even just one instance that they were aware of the illegal activity posted in their forum and did not remove that link. As the YouTube court case has shown a site admin is not free to do as they please until a DMCA takedown notice is received. As a matter of fact the DMCA 'safe harbor' clause for site owners only applies if 4 separate conditions are met, and one of those conditions is not being "aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent".

Thus if 'infringing activity' is posted in a forum and the site admins see it and do nothing about it, they are culpable. When a post is made with the obvious piracy title of 'Axis Arena (FULL VERSION)' and links to the illegal software are not removed then there are potential legal issues.

This is the problem that has YouTube in such hot water this month. They tried to argue the 'safe harbor' clause of the DMCA that they were not liable for the illegal things their users were uploading and for which they had not yet received takedown notices from anyone. The court found that not only was that a load of crap, but documents (including dozens of Google's and YouTube's own internal emails) were presented proving that the site directors/owners were actively uploading their own illegal content and were making comments to each other about the illegal content that YouTube users had uploaded, which they did not remove and had previously stated they "did not know about" thinking the DMCA clause would cause them to be immune from prosecution. To make matters worse they also violated a 2nd part of the 'safe harbor' clause as they are turning a profit from the videos posted on their site via paid-for advertising. The court also said that it was not the responsibility of the copyright content owners to police other company's websites looking for copyright violations, and it put that onus directly on the site adminstrators themselves. From the court case:

"YouTube has deliberately chosen not to take reasonable precautions to deter the rampant infringement on its site. Because YouTube directly profits from the availability of popular infringing works on its site, it has decided to shift the burden entirely onto copyright owners to monitor the YouTube site on a daily or hourly basis to detect infringing videos.

YouTube's brazen disregard of the intellectual-property laws fundamentally threatens not just plaintiffs but the economic underpinnings of one of the most important sectors of the United States economy."

As of right now they stand to face criminal charges and have still ongoing civil court sessions, the evidence against them is concrete and overwhelming, and it remains to be seen whether YouTube, and it's parent company Google, will survive the aftermath of Viacom's $1 BILLION+ lawsuit that was filed October 6th in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, for more than 100,000 DMCA violations.

Here's a copy of Viacom's court complaint


Here's the legalese of the 'knowledge of infringement' part of the 4 part 'safe harbor' clause in the DMCA, designed to give online services a measure of protection from liability for infringing materials uploaded to their sites - as long as they meet a certain criteria, including:

A)(i) The services don't have actual knowledge that the material, or an activity using the material on the system or network, is infringing.

(ii) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or

(iii) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material.

Craigslist is a very bad example to compare this to as it was something very different but, even so, Craigslist got in enough trouble that their 'Erotic Services' section nationwide was removed, they created an 'Adult Section', and that must be manually monitored by live Craigslist staff. No ads may be now placed in the Adult Section without first being sceened by a live Craigslist employee, one at a time, just like a physical newspaper ad must be gone over by a live editor.

However the Craigslist situation and this forum are apples and oranges. The Craigslist scenario was them being sued by law enforcement for ads for 'adult dancing' and 'massage' that law enforcement officials said were really for prostitutes. The law enforcement agencies were incorrect to use the DMCA as the basis for their suits, which were subsequently thrown out of court with the reason being given that Craigslist was not liable for ads posted for one thing (legal) that turned out to be for another thing (illegal) and that the law enforcement agencies would have to prosecute the ad placers themselves if the 'dancing' or 'massage' ads actually turned out to be for prostitution service as the DCMA did not apply to this sort of thing. This scenario is completely different from any posts of illegal copyrighted materials, links to them, or even just lists of where they could be found - which is what got Pirate Bay busted.