hypothetical situation
Let’s say I have a simple website, let’s call it the mothership-website (for no particular reason). On this website, I allow anyone to download some program that I wrote myself and licensed under a public license. This program could be used to emulate a game server for a game I like to play, and include detailed instructions for the setup, but wouldn’t include any client files as those are owned by the game company and redistributing them would be copyright infringement.
Now, let’s say there was a second website, let’s call it the shadow-website (also for no particular reason), and this website (which is not controlled by me but by some mysterious unknown individual) was using my publicly available server-emulator to host a game server and was offering the download of a matching version of the copyrighted game files owned by the game company, thereby engaging in copyright infringement. And let’s say, even though the shadow-website receives DMCA takedowns, it keeps popping up under a different domain.
If that were the case, I would like to spread awareness of the shadow-website and the project behind it (to protect users and to combat copyright infringement of course, just like r/piracy does with its megathread). I would like to add a list such as this one to the front page of the website:
| Projects |
|---|
| Awesome Community Server |
my question
What exactly would I have to do to be legally allowed to include this list on the mothership-website? I wouldn’t want to risk the mothership-website becoming subject to DMCA takedown requests, as this would harm my intentions of building a community around it.
In other words; what exactly is it that makes it legal for r/piracy to list various copyright infringing resources in its megathread, and how could I do the same on my website?
PS: I am posting this here, because reddit told me I didn’t have enough “Karma” to post on r/Piracy
That’s a good idea. I think it’s a bit problematic under these circumstances since OP wants to host game files which are probably some larger binaries. And that’s going to show a different usage pattern and more traffic than the usual code. I don’t know if they monitor things like that and remove these repos. But I have to remember that idea.
And an idea regarding the links: I’ve tried some emulators and do some retrogaming every now and the. Usually these projects take some care to not list the sites with the ROM collections on their official pages. As a user you usually go to archive.org and download things from there or scroll through their forum or subreddit and that kind of info pops up pretty quickly. So once they have an active community it spreads via word of mouth. Maybe you can also post a sticky you’re not affiliated with websites like X and Y, but you’d have to ask a lawyer if that’s alright.
Despite me referring to the server program as an “emulator”, I never thought about designing the project in the same way as what people typically associate with the word “emulator” in the context of gaming. I feel a bit stupid now, because this would not only be a solid alternative, but actually the perfect solution, solving many other problems that I did not discuss here. I am still curious about how r/piracy is pulling off their megathread, despite me reading in many places that what they are doing is illegal, but getting an answer to this question is no longer necessary. Thank you so much for suggesting this solution to me.