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Originally Posted by TheMaster
couple of problems with that for a lot, if not most affiliates:
1. too many are (still) too small, to have an attorney on retainer
2. a lot of people are not living in the US (wouldn't even know who would have this knowledge in CZ, even Europe)
3. not many countries have this easy going approach of going to court as in the US, (especially since almost everything in European courts takes forever)
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1) i hear ya, surprising number aren't even incorporated. which means if some biz deal goes bad and the affiliate gets sued and loses, personal assets (home, car, etc) are on the line. back in the acacia crazy days, i talked to alot of affiliate webmasters, and so many were not incorporated. i can't stress enough for people to get themselves incorporated.
2) true...but in this case of the copyright holder targeting the website via google.. no need for a court of law. it appears that the waiving of a DMCA notice to google can get your website banned. that's pretty broad powers, since if the webmaster is in Europe, it's harder for them to come to the US to sue P10.. and probably their only recourse is to submit to Google the evidence that the DMCA notice was fraudently filed against them...and hope that google feels that it's compelling enough to re-list, or google may tell the webmaster to deal with P10 directly.. and now back to the first problem of not being in the US.
3) in UK, canada, and probably rest of Europe, loser pays and some require you to put up money like a bond before going into court to discourage frivilous lawsuits.
Many webmasters felt themselves exempt from 2257 because they were based overseas.. this kind of "protection" is only at the US government level.
Private businesses can affect your business across borders, as in this google case, they can ban a EU website from the google listings and country jurisdiction means nothing when dealing with a business TOS.
It might also be an interesting coicidence that if most of P10's targets via google are non-USA-based, which would normally feel they were exempt from copyright infringement issues or US laws (of celebrity photos, of content, etc).
Fight the banned in the USA!