How to prevent getting sued for hosting "Fake" Creative Commons image?

Question

Say if I own a blog site for multiple users like wordpress, say blogsss.com, and every user hosts their blog under a subdomain *.blogsss.com.

UserA post a JPEG that UserA claims it is under Creative Commons, but actually it isn't.

Then UserB, C, and D use that JPEG, without knowing it is actually not under Creative Commons.

A few months later, the rightful owner sues my site for copyright infringement, and asks me to remove the image and pays a hefty penalty fee!

What should I do to ensure that my site and I won't get sued?

Answer 1

1. Verify that their claim is legit
2. Take it off of your servers (if it's on your servers)
3. Tell UserA to be more careful

Answer 2

I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. Furthermore, this is not a very good forum for asking for legal advice; it is for programming advice. You should talk to a lawyer for legal advice. That said...

See the Frequently Asked Questions about DMCA Safe Harbor Provisions.

Basically, you should be reasonably safe as long as you have a designated agent to whom DMCA takedown notices should go, and respond promptly to reasonable takedown requests.

Answer 3

As with all questions tagged "ask-a-lawyer", I recommend you should ask a lawyer. Also, check out the wikipedia section on copyright tags. The content is not owned by wikipedia, the person who uploads it indicates the copyright status of the work. You can't reasonably get sued as long as you do not assert ownership, and you are responsive to takedown requests.

Answer 4

The best way to avoid getting sued in most situations is to pay lawyers upfront for contracts, terms of use, etc. rather than paying them later, after you stumble across a legal problem.

Answer 5

I would make sure that you have something in your terms of service and EULA that holds individual bloggers responsible for the content that they post.

Once you do that, any copyright violations that your bloggers make also break your terms of service and they can be held responsible.

What you're concerned about is called secondary liability... See here

There are two types, contributory and vicarious. Vicarious is generally for employer/employee (agent/principle relationship technically) which doesn't apply here. There are two prongs to contributory liability: (1) the defendant's knowledge of the infringing activity, and (2) the defendant's contribution to, or participation in, the infringing activity.

A TOS or EULA that restricts the posting of copyrighted material will go a long way towards rebutting contributory liability.

If you're looking for a lawyer to help you right a strong TOS and EULA, see this thread: How do you find a lawyer...

Answer 6

It's OK, you didn't upload the content, so you're not liable.

Just like The Pirate Bay....