Darkson wrote:Maybe, maybe not, I'm not a lawyer (thank god!), I'm not talking about a certain "lapdog", and with the problem this site has had in the past, I'm not taking any chances.
It's not as if it's difficult to find anyway.
That's how lawyers, people who HAVE lawyers, and people who can barely spell lawyers, try to bully you. People are so afraid that they'll trip over a legal landmine that they just fall into line when someone shouts about the law or lawsuits - hell, it's a favourite tactic of lawyers themselves. The fact of the matter is, though, that the laws typically make sense, and they're not enforced in strange and random ways.
Does it make sense to you that having a link to a website on your forum could result in a surprise lawsuit? No? That's because it can't.
The closest thing to that is the USA's DMCA which says that if someone links to another site that itself is violating copyright, and then REFUSES to remove that link when presented with a properly formate DMCA notification letter (which, I might add, opens the sender of the letter to legal problems if they haven't done their homework and aren't 100% legitimate) then the total immunity to liability is forfeit. That said, you can count on zero fingers the number of times anyone has successfully sued someone who refused, too.
You can obviously be as cautious as you want to be, but don't let your life be ruled by fear of the unknown.