Hello,
I live in the middle east where copyright laws are not so stringent as they are in the US or the EU countries. I am planning to travel to the US soon and want to know whether that would result in some sort of legal trouble for me if I do based on the scenarios below.
I used to store music and PDF files in my account at a website called 4shared. The website usually takes down files after they receive a complaint against them from some one claiming copyright violations and bars access to them by putting them in the abuse folder. For 4 of the files, I was informed by the administrative staff of numerous complaints even after I replaced them with different ones or used acronyms instead of the full name. I decided to investigate the origin of these complaints by writing back to 4shared and asking them about the person/organization that lodged the complaints. I was told that the complaints were received from Websherrif. I sent an email to WebSherrif to confirm whether they did in fact lodge such complains but did not get a reply back.
I also used to store some celebrity photos that I usually got from the website called Instyle in my account at PhotoBucket. I always took care to give the entire credit to photographers/organizations that took the photo while promoting my facebook group on the side. My facebook group has only two members (me and a black girl). Recently, I found out that the photos were being deleted and/or removed immediately on upload. I tried contacting PhotoBucket support to know if there was anything wrong or if I could get into any legal trouble because of the photos that I stored but did not get a response from them either.
In conclusion, I just want to know if I could possibly face a lawsuit over the music files and the photos if I come to the US. I have heard stories about people being slammed with law suits upon entering the US and am wondering if a similar fate could be waiting for me should I choose to travel to the US. If so, what are possible consequences for me?
I live in the middle east where copyright laws are not so stringent as they are in the US or the EU countries. I am planning to travel to the US soon and want to know whether that would result in some sort of legal trouble for me if I do based on the scenarios below.
I used to store music and PDF files in my account at a website called 4shared. The website usually takes down files after they receive a complaint against them from some one claiming copyright violations and bars access to them by putting them in the abuse folder. For 4 of the files, I was informed by the administrative staff of numerous complaints even after I replaced them with different ones or used acronyms instead of the full name. I decided to investigate the origin of these complaints by writing back to 4shared and asking them about the person/organization that lodged the complaints. I was told that the complaints were received from Websherrif. I sent an email to WebSherrif to confirm whether they did in fact lodge such complains but did not get a reply back.
I also used to store some celebrity photos that I usually got from the website called Instyle in my account at PhotoBucket. I always took care to give the entire credit to photographers/organizations that took the photo while promoting my facebook group on the side. My facebook group has only two members (me and a black girl). Recently, I found out that the photos were being deleted and/or removed immediately on upload. I tried contacting PhotoBucket support to know if there was anything wrong or if I could get into any legal trouble because of the photos that I stored but did not get a response from them either.
In conclusion, I just want to know if I could possibly face a lawsuit over the music files and the photos if I come to the US. I have heard stories about people being slammed with law suits upon entering the US and am wondering if a similar fate could be waiting for me should I choose to travel to the US. If so, what are possible consequences for me?
