09-29-2012, 12:05 AM
I know I'm bumping this somewhat, but since the subject has been touched on I figured I'd clear a few things up from a general perspective rather than based on site specific rules.
When it comes to linking to places from a forum or website there's a specific way to handle it, if you want to post a link to torrents, roms or other questionable material you should only ever link to the page where the file can be downloaded.
This is actually really important, legally speaking if you link directly to a file, which also includes hotlinking images or embedding flash files or ever iframes, you are then legally responsible for providing that content even if it isn't hosted by you at all, this also goes for hotlinking images or embedding videos or flash files.
The distinction is that if you link to the page hosting the file, anyone clicking your link doesn't necessarily have to download it and it's clear to anyone clicking the link that they are now on a different website, but if you link directly to it then the only possible reason to click that link is to access the file(s) (note: this doesn't apply to file sharing sites, because the only reason to go there is to download the file through their system), it's a little convoluted but that's the legal position, all community sites have their own specific rules of course but it obviously goes without saying that the law overrides all of them.
Oh, and naturally if you upload or download clearly copyrighted work yourself that's just straight up copyright infringement, the fun fact of it is that in reality the only reason most rom sites don't get shut down is because the copyright holders don't know about them, don't care enough to send a cease and desist, or if it's not clear who the copyright holder is anymore. (for example if a company went into liquidation and the copyright stayed with the now defunct company)
tl;dr: if you link to a website where people can optionally choose to download things you're probably not breaking the law, everything else is pretty much illegal to some degree. These days I'm probably even breaking the law by saying that.
When it comes to linking to places from a forum or website there's a specific way to handle it, if you want to post a link to torrents, roms or other questionable material you should only ever link to the page where the file can be downloaded.
This is actually really important, legally speaking if you link directly to a file, which also includes hotlinking images or embedding flash files or ever iframes, you are then legally responsible for providing that content even if it isn't hosted by you at all, this also goes for hotlinking images or embedding videos or flash files.
The distinction is that if you link to the page hosting the file, anyone clicking your link doesn't necessarily have to download it and it's clear to anyone clicking the link that they are now on a different website, but if you link directly to it then the only possible reason to click that link is to access the file(s) (note: this doesn't apply to file sharing sites, because the only reason to go there is to download the file through their system), it's a little convoluted but that's the legal position, all community sites have their own specific rules of course but it obviously goes without saying that the law overrides all of them.
Oh, and naturally if you upload or download clearly copyrighted work yourself that's just straight up copyright infringement, the fun fact of it is that in reality the only reason most rom sites don't get shut down is because the copyright holders don't know about them, don't care enough to send a cease and desist, or if it's not clear who the copyright holder is anymore. (for example if a company went into liquidation and the copyright stayed with the now defunct company)
tl;dr: if you link to a website where people can optionally choose to download things you're probably not breaking the law, everything else is pretty much illegal to some degree. These days I'm probably even breaking the law by saying that.