I will soon be adding a message board to my web site, which deals with several British bands. Because of that, I would also like to have a "Multimedia" area on my forums, where members would be able to share download links - of course, nothing would be hosted on my server.

However, that's where I encounter certain problems. I could swear that nothing like that was legal, but I might be wrong. I have found numerous big forums (and when I say big, I mean over 20,000 members) that also have this. Now, if it were illegal, somebody would have stopped them by now, right? Which brings me to the question I have:

According to the law, what are we allowed to share, when it comes to download links only? I know songs from the albums are out of the question, but what about live recordings, b-sides and so on?

Not sure about your location, but I think even sharing live recordings and b-sides are not legal. Live recordings might have two sides to it but I know some performances that are released on DVDs after a short while, so that means they will be making money out of it. Anything that interferes with these guys making a buck out of it seems to call for legal action.

I saw some sites that just provide links to these downloads and they were issued some kind of summons. These were BitTorrent links from what I remember too...

Live-recordings, b-sides, etc are still copyright. It's actually illegal to record music at concerts for purposes other than personal use. The same with recording movies in the cinema.

Providing links to downloads is a grey area. Although you are not giving the pirated data directly, you are 'endorsing' it. I would be careful when going into this area.

You can probably find a legal group in your area that would be able to provide the answer for you, or hit up one of the bigger non-profit organizations that work in technology legal fields and ask them. As twitch said, the legalities around providing links are a gray area but there are tonnes of sites that do this. On the other hand providing any music created and owned by other artists is probably going too far.

OK, so there is a slight possibility that sharing links to a certain extent is allowed. Also, which country's laws do apply to a web site? Where the server is hosted, where I am from, or something else?

The country of origin. However, there are certain laws that affect the user.

I think it would be much better if you didn't bother. Unless the directory is aimed at open-source/royalty free music or otherwise agreeably free-share.

Alternatively, make sure all links point to a site that requires payment for the song, instead of direct download.

Well, it's not of such great importance, but would certainly help attract visitors. I'll do some more research on how other sites do it, and I'll post if I find something useful.

Other sites often run the risk of their ISP shutting them down to linking/affiliating with warez/illegal music/video transfer.

There are better ways of attracting the visitors pyost. Remember, it's like a business. You need to plan and forecast. Evaluate current systems and adapt.

Well now youve fallen down the rabbit hole but just how far does it go down?

This is the biggest grey area on the net atm..

Its soo hard to say about links to content posted by others, by doing this you are hiding behind the statement "i didnt upload it and I didnt rip it"

Your ISP or hoster will hide behind the statement "we provide the access to the net..not what the customer does with it." and the hoster will say " by providing links the user has not broken our TOS because thier is no copywrite material on our servers"

Let me explain a recent case in the UK..
A guy has a soccer blog, really great site with loads or orginal content all about the UK Premiership football.
He has a section on site for funny videos and great goals scored this week as well as an archive of these.
These are links to Google Video, YouTube etc and its content he has searched for and NOT uploaded himself.

In the UK ALL showing of the Premiership is owned by SKY who in turn is owned by FOX who in turn is owned by My Burns himself!! Rupert Murdoch (boo hiss!!) and you have to have a SKY package to view any football.
BBC and other chans do show football but its not live and also its a deal made with SKY to broadcast this.

So Google, Youtube, whatever is breaking the deal that SKY have with the Premiership.So its THEM that are breaking copyright law NOT the owner or HOSTER of the site and ofc not the ISP.

A couple of weeks ago the guy writing the site got a really heavy letter from SKY and FOX's lawyers giving him a STOP now order-this means they give you 24 hours to take down ANY content they are not happy with from the website.They also threatened I think it was 25K UK pounds fine if he didnt comply.
The same letter went to his ISP and to Google and Youtube.

The guy fought back and put them straight that HYPERLINKS are not content!
Youtube buckled and tore down SOOO many posts to do with the Premiership (think it was about 5000 posts) and targetted the links from this guys site especially.

I guess this tells the story about music also, in a way you are NOT breaking the rules by linking to pages within someone elses site, but say if you embedd the videos or link to mp3 in a player on YOUR site then you are breaking the rules directly, because the content is coming from somewhere else but is accessed on YOUR site.

I would say to you Pyost..make sure the stuff is NOT here but elsewhere Linking to stuff is NOT against the Asta and Trap TOS.
Say if Opaque got an email from a music company complaining about you then this section of the TOS could come into force against you..

This is from the Asta TOS..



Its a good TOS cos it leaves Asta and Trap to decide what they deem illeagle and if they got a letter from a company complaining or forcing liability then they could I guess suspend you untill you removed the mentioned articles.


I hope this helps clear this up and GOOD LUCK with your site mate

Marky!

Phew.. Complicated stuff, so many "security holes"



That was never an option, since I would not risk that much no matter what.

By the way, I never said the site is on Astahost
But it is.. I really don't want to do anything stupid, at least not while I'm hosting it here. When/If I move..

By the way, here's an extract from the biggest Radiohead site concerning various multimedia:



Frankly, I didn't quite understand what they are saying, but nobody's causing them trouble, and they've being doing this for years!