My 4shared

[cheshire]

I know that a lot of you use the stuff that I've got on my 4shared. So, I just wanted to make a brief announcement to everyone so that they are as fully aware of the situation as I am. Up until recently my 4shared had been operating normally, and anyone could download the files they wanted, and I had been in no way accused of any copyright wrongdoing.

However, I received an erroneous report that opened my eyes as to how the whole thing could go wrong very quickly. I had a file named "advantage and disadvantage.pdf" detailing some fan-made homebrew stats for character advantages and disadvantages. I have permission from the author to have it posted. However, the author of a basketball novel entitled "Advantage Disadvantage" made a broad abuse report to 4shared. 4shared took down every file that appeared to be this man's novel, and my file was listed among the abusive copyright violations.

Once the report was made, the burden of proof was on me to show that I was not engaged in any wrongdoing. Despite how obvious this should have been, it took me a couple of weeks to the mistake cleared up.

All of this is to say that so far, no one has cared about the fan-made postings of the LFL intellectual property posted on my 4shared. However, LFL could change their mind at any moment. Furthermore, if the SW RPG license is picked up by another company they could theoretically take exception to conversions, and all the home brew license-based material.

If you like what I have, make sure that you have a copy too, as clearing up abuse on something that should have been obvious was not at all easy. I don't want to know what it would be like if there was something that was a bit more foggy.

Of course, that being said, if there was a problem, I would do my best to make sure my most popular files were hosted more permanently elsewhere, under the condition that I am not going to get slapped with a lawsuit of some sort.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[vong]

one of these days I will have to get that FTP account setup properly to my Databank site so you can upload your files there
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The Vong have Arrived

PM me if you want user created content uploaded to my site: http://databank.yvong.com/index.php

[atgxtg]

chesire,
You got some protection under the DCMA. If someone claims that you are hosting copyrighted stuff, they must send you/the hosting site a cease and desist warning and give you time to take it down before pursing any legal action. The problem is, as a standard precaution, most hosting services just remove the file the moment someone challenges something (hits the report abuse button, etc.).

If someone just gets peeved at you they can report all your files and most services will remove them automatically!




I went through something similar a few years back. I followed a link from the BBC that led to a fan site with alternate covers or jackets for some Doctor Who DVDs. Some were nice, so I downloaded them.

Then I got a warning from my ISP that Warner Bros. were telling them to shut down my account for downloading "The Jacket", some movie that they had recently released. All this despite the fact that the file I DL'd was about 5 MB in size.

I had a chat with my ISP, and pointed out that if I could compress a movie down to 5 MB, I'd be so rich that I could have bought Warner Brothers let along a copy of their movie. After about 2 minutes the guy from my ISP was laughing and telling me not to worry about it.


So I didn't, but I did boycott WB products and started buying my Dr. Who DVDs from Amazon UK.