They would be able to sue the webhost in order to retrieve basically all the data if they have strong and reasonable suspicions that the website is hosting copyrighted material.
This really isnโt as foolproof in legal terms unfortunately. With torrent websites thereโs still some ambiguity as the website doesnโt host the copyrighted material, just the torrent files. But here the website itself is liable, painting a massive legal target on their backs.
hosting copyrighted material.
There are so many โmusic lockerโ and โcloud storageโ services out there, how come none of them are targeted like you say?
I think you are jumping from โhostingโ to โsharing publiclyโ, which to me seems like a really big jump and, quite frankly, FUD.
They would be able to sue the webhost
Seems like another marketing point for 1984.hosting .
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_music_lockers
Many were sued into oblivion, and of the big names, only Apple, which negotiated with the record labels before launching the feature, still has one going.
Music locker services are frequenly targeted and taken down, as GlitterInfection mentioned. Thereโs multiple cases on the Wikipedia page.
There is a jump between hosting and sharing, but that jump is very small. Share it with 1 other person, and you have made unauthorised copies of the licensed material, and are therefore acting against the law. Thatโs not FUD, thatโs been reality for the past few decades.
Whether or not the illegal sharing of licensed material is done via a generic website, a federated service of even carrier pidgeon doesnโt matter, an unlicensed copy is an illegal copy. Rightsholders have pleny of avenues to force a takedown against specific instances. And if they can successfully argue that the primary purpose of this software is piracy, they may even have enough legal arguments to force a takedown of the sourcecode.
Of course, the main question is whether rightsholders will bother with this as long as it remains small-scale. Legal costs would likely outweigh the missed income. But that doesnโt actually shield you from legal liability.
