File Storage And Piracy Issues?

Matt Tesch asks: "A couple of my friends and I thought it would be great to offer a free Web based file storage site built on Linux, MySQL and other open source software. Being able to offer it for free wouldn't be possible if we were confronted with licensing fees for our server software. The only problem is that our site, Globedesk.com quickly became home to a lot of software pirates. We now see one clear advantage of charging money for our service is that is would greatly reduce these abuses, as we would be able to verify names and addresses of our members. How can a business pass their savings on open source software on to the consumer and keep illegal abuse to a minimum?"

Comments

a few sugestions

[richie123]

I would say limiting logins per day would be a decent defense against piracy, a filtering system, or a tip off section. I don't think you can stop it completely, but you can surely cut it down.

Lawyer??

[nowindowz]

Simple have a good disclaimer. If you speak with a lawyer he should be able to you come up with one. That what is good practice anyways. Also, is your company Incorparated, this will also protect you. This will not stop the probmlem but it will protect you.

Also another good idea is to have a user aggenment that has to agreed something along the lines of

By useing this service I agree to be bound by these terms, if you disagree discontinue use Immeatly and contact us to have your account deactivated. Only data that you are the copyright owner of or have written permission from the copyright owner, by be stored on this service. If you are belived to be doing other wise your account will be deactivated and your inforation will be turned over to the proper athorites.

Althought with you will need someway to verify who is so that you will have the proper inforation to give to the proper authorites

Re:Look at existing services

[PooF]

All of those sites have lots of MP3's traded on them. They just shut them down once discovered.

It doesn't help the real problem of preventing users from doing this.

Aaron "PooF" Matthews

CC verification

[radja]

Not everybody has a credit card. From a dutch viewpoint nobody needs one, so not many people have one. Want to pay with plastic? you use either your normal bank-account, or the chipknip which is also hardly used by anyone. Much to the chagrin of the banks who lost millions on introducing it.

//rdj