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  1. #1
    Join Date
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    Audio Search Engine Legal ?

    Hi,

    One of our customers are asking if they could host an audio search engine. The script will search for external mp3 and present them to the user to download. No copyrighted content will be hosted on our servers.

    Is this considered legal in the US?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
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    Well google does that too. Search engines I believe, have the right to post up anything it finds as long as it's not AIMED to find illegal audio files.

  3. #3
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    but the files are being streamed through our servers, so isn't it a bit different?

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by arbet View Post
    The script will search for external mp3 and present them to the user to download.
    So wont the script just search and display the results in list ?
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  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by arbet View Post
    but the files are being streamed through our servers, so isn't it a bit different?
    Wow... just on moraility and fear of being served with an piece of paper from the RIIA (DMCA) I'd have a problem with that.
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  6. #6
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    Exactly^^

    I thought you meant it just links to the Audio then your consumer goes to that page and listens to it there. I wouldn't encourage streaming it from your own server honestly.

  7. #7
    Join Date
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    From what I understand it’s an audio search engine the user enters what they want it searches and then it returns the results to the end user, and then the user can listen to them or download them it isn’t actually on the server its pulled from another site / search engine so I don’t know what the problem could be or is? E.g http://iwanttracks.com/
    another e.g http://iwanttracks.com/index.php?search=BoNjovi
    Last edited by SecureGrid; 02-26-2008 at 11:13 AM.

  8. #8
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    That streaming thing is strange. Why would they want to essentially waste so much bandwidth? Are you sure they plan to do that?

    If it's an automated search engine, I don't really see it as a big risk. As said, google can be used for the same purpose. Its spider should, at the very least, follow robots.txt though.

  9. #9
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    thanks everyone!

    The script searches only for audio files, e.g. mp3, wma ...
    as for the streaming thing, I don't know why would they want to do it honestly. I will need to get some more info.

    If the script would be just pointing to external files, will the situation be different?

  10. #10
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    Berlin, Germany
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    it does point to external files not files on your server or anything like that, so you have nothing to worry about and it has nothing to do with streaming... it's just people is able to listen to them through the script, so its not "Streaming" from your server in anyway!

    Quote Originally Posted by arbet View Post
    thanks everyone!

    The script searches only for audio files, e.g. mp3, wma ...
    as for the streaming thing, I don't know why would they want to do it honestly. I will need to get some more info.

    If the script would be just pointing to external files, will the situation be different?

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by DocHost View Post
    it does point to external files not files on your server or anything like that, so you have nothing to worry about and it has nothing to do with streaming... it's just people is able to listen to them through the script, so its not "Streaming" from your server in anyway!
    so basically there is no problem with finding audio files on other servers and linking to them, even if those files violate copyright laws?

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
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    it's Legal for you though, maybe not for those actually hosting the files.

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