Bootleg/bastard-pop database : Good/bad idea?

In some ways, there's no arguments really that can be made against this from a legal standpoint in that a) you're not making money off someone's work (nor are the bootleggers themselves), b) no artist or label is losing money because there's no sales that are being cut into (said product doesn't in fact exist offline--there's nothing to buy). (Though on the second point it could perhaps be argued that the remixes you'll be flaunting could destroy certain careers in the long because some of the remixers have better ideas about how to handle so- and-so's voice or guitars than so-and-so themselves do...but that's *their* fault not yours.)

even without links to relevant sites/download sorces, a database is a great idea. even if the download sites are yanked away, future Audiogalaxy substitute-users will benefit from having titles and artist names at hand.

Legally ... the music industry can get what they want made illegal. A lot of the debate about Napster et al was about whether *linking* was contributory to piracy. And that's what I believe was succesfully pinned on them.

If you aren't making money I don't think they can claim damages off you ... the worst you'll face personally is some kind of cease and desist letter ...

Will you be helping them track down perpetrators? One thing you might try is to have a license agreement to *use* the service. Part of which will ask the user to give up the right to use any information they find in your database for the purposes of bringing legal cases against individuals. I don't know if this would stand up legally ... but it's worth a try. (It can probably be made to work if you superficially encrypt the info, then ask that they only use the decrypting viewer under these conditions.)

It would be interesting to try, and if it worked, they couldn't use your database to chase perps. OTOH I guess they could always subpoena (?) your database as evidence against a particular bootlegger.

phil

Of course "I Am Not A Lawyer" so all opinion here is probably valueless and certainly not actionable.

What's the bootlegger's best legal defense? I assume it would be that the tracks are concocted for non-commercial personal/education fair- use purposes, but then the odd part is they'd have to claim all widespread distribution of the material wasn't their doing but the fault of the same peer-to-peer "pirates" the industrys is already up against. The problem with this is that I'm pretty sure you'd be in violation if it could be demonstrated that widespread distribution was a part of your intent from the beginning (which, let's face it, is the point).

Of course, any sort of suit over such a thing would be massively boneheaded: having your track worked into a bootleg only helps you, pure and simple.

Put it this way: Boom Selection hasn't had any trouble so far, and you can't really get less publicised than Boom Selection, can you?

I haven't been able to get to Boomselection for about a week now, I assumed it had gone down.

If I go to: http://boomselection.n3.net/

I get this: http://www.dhs.org/redirect/error.shtml

Can anyone give me an alternate URL or comfirm whether or not this is just a problem on my side.

boomselection.info should do it.

Cheers! Works perfectly. Someone needs to change the link in NYLPM though.

www.bastardpop.co.uk has a good database of bootlegs..