Need some minor legal advice

Sup BHW,


I run a hacksite, basically I just browse around on public hack forums and if I see a hack that looks decent I copy paste the description + download link and post it on my website. Some guy was complaining to me (by email) that ''I should remove the hack because he didn't gave premission'' and he asked me if I knew that ''i can actually sue you because of violationg copyright laws?'' . I'm not at all worried about this, after all this is the internet and people tend to say this a lot, but I would like to know if he got a point? I was under the premission that if something is posted on a public forum everyone was free to copy it?

Also isn't making hacks for various online videogames illegal as well?

Thanks in advance guys.

Legally, if he can prove that you stole the idea from him, which it sounds like he could if you just copy/pasted it to your site, then yes he could sue you to get it taken down. Of course he will never do it though, even if he had nothing better to do than hire a lawyer and just throw money at him, he still probably wouldn't do it.

Wait, did he post the source openly in a forum?

And you are just linking to that file with a description?

Is the file on your server?

As long as the file is on not on your server and you are merely linking to it and he posted it openly in a public forum. He can't really say much as long as you aren't selling it.

his lawyer will request $10K in retainer fees.
see if he'll pay that.

footfall99 said:

Wait, did he post the source openly in a forum?

And you are just linking to that file with a description?

Is the file on your server?

As long as the file is on not on your server and you are merely linking to it and he posted it openly in a public forum. He can't really say much as long as you aren't selling it.

Click to expand...

I just copy pasted the description from that forum, credits and everything intact, and posted the same download link he used (so nothing is hosted on my server).

And nope, not charging any money for it.

Is this hacking - as in tinkering with things, figuring out how stuff works - the real and original meaning of the word.

Or the media corrupted version which = doing illegal stuff - what was and is referred to as "cracking".

Just want to clear thing up, because if it's "cracking" I doubt any lawyer will take him on.

That guy is just a person with too much time on his hands making empty threats. Nothing to be afraid of.