Just display or make available a clear disclaimer. You should be protected so long as you act in good faith (but always check with a lawyer if you're that scared).

Matt

I have a disclaimer now; I'm not fully sure if it covers everything up. It goes kind of like this: "All trademarks and images belong to respective owners. Images are sent by responsibility of the sender.", freely translated into english. Do I need to add more?

Thanks again.

Always check with a lawyer on matters like this.

I would take your disclaimer a step further, by offering a very visible means of allowing complaints to be sent to you. It will show good faith on your part.

Great, thanks :).

I think you've got a problem.

Unless your users are mostly photographers, cartoon artists, etc. just about any image they might upload is likely a copyright violation.

Displaying a disclaimer, when you KNOW that most of the material is copyrighted, does not get you off the hook.

YouTube at least has the excuse that much of the material on their site is, indeed, produced by their users. The other material - well, they HAD a problem, which was fixed by being bought by Google.

Now, you think your site is going to be bought by Google?

If the focus of your site is pictures that your users have taken themselves - no problem. I would make sure your terms and conditions prohibit uploading pictures that they haven't taken themselves, and make sure that you make this clear elsewhere as well.

State the purpose on the home page, put it in your T&C, and have them reaffirm it when they do the upload.

I'm not sure really. Almost all images are coming from other imageboards such as 4chan etc.

'm not sure really. Almost all images are coming from other imageboards such as 4chan etc.

Not sure?

How can you be not sure?

The material these boards host are almost 100% copyright violations.

I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot Ethernet cable.

Host in another country, make sure they can't find you. There's no disclaimer that is going to protect you.

I suggest you read the Wikipedia entry on the site you mentioned, and on imageboards in general, and decide if you want to invite the same sort of legal, financial, and hosting troubles that seem to be associated with this sort of site.

(Boards of the type mentioned host anime and manga images and clips, as well as discussions of same. Of course, this is nearly all copyrighted material, and the copyright holders generally vigoriously protect their rights.)

Don't get me wrong - there's a certain coolness about these sites that make them an important part of Internet culture. I have nothing against the sites myself - just pointing-out that they operate outside of the legal system and you can EXPECT trouble if you do this. There is a certain creativity to it, and perhaps there should be some way to do this legally, but there isn't.

It seems to me you've come here giving an abstract description of what you had in mind, hoping to get a "free pass" from other webmasters to rationalize this to yourself.

If you want to do this, I suggest you get a good attorney, collect lots of cash into a legal defense fund in advance, incorporate if you have any assets to protect, and do it in the name of challenging the legal system, freedom (to waste one's time as one sees fit...), creativity, etc., rather than expecting a profit.

Well, let me clearify.

The images are not manga or any of those categories, it's only pictures of cats, doing funny stuff.

The images are not manga or any of those categories, it's only pictures of cats, doing funny stuff.

My apologies, but you sure picked a poor example (4chan).

LOL, I doubt you will have the same sort of troubles that they have had...

The problems with boards like that is that almost all of the pictures are copyrighted, and the board owner has to know that.

Cat pictures!= manga.

I'd make sure you make it easy to make a removal request, and be careful to avoid obvious commercial images. (Morris will probably get you in trouble, as will that annoying "hang in kitty" poster).

It might be useful to have users indicate whether they took the picture themselves or not. There should be plenty of users that take their own cat pictures, and, as well, you are probably better-off with unique images anyway.

I still find the non user-shot pictures troubling - it's still likely to be a copyright violation. But I think cat-picture copyright holders are probably less agressive about prosecution than manga copyright holders.