Supposing I'm Fred The Fed and I want to shut down Hexbear.net
Show
What if I try to make a case that admins tolerate sharing copyrighted material in violation of Statute XYZ, so the site is illegal and should be seized.
You might say, "Copyright laws are dumb, man! Who cares!" but that doesn't matter. Tell that to the law.
Should we get a lawyer's advice on this? What steps does the site need to take to avoid heat?
Sharing links isn't illegal, it's hosting files that is illegal. Subreddits having rules against links is a personal choice they make.
This is my point: we can't rely on dodgy internet lawyers saying sus things like "sharing links isn't illegal".... admins need to get actual advice
piracy isn't even close to a priority on here, ive seldom seen a link to pirated content. HexBear has no advertising and no revenue outside of donations. links get shared on reddit in some places because it's a big website and things go unnoticed. The /r/roms reddit has a megathread telling you where to get roms for every system. I think you're worried about nothing. I even tried looking up some cases where someone got nailed for this and main issue is the people/sites that got in trouble were in some way profiting from the sharing of links, whether through ad revenue or charging people for access.
We did have a Hextube site for watching movies with others, that would probably be the worst thing that has happened here but i think that might be inactive now.