Historic:On the old Is it Legal question

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Appalbarry: Hi everyone, since this has come up a few times, here's what I've been trying to get across.

Regardless of whether you're talking Fair Use, or Copyright, or liability for what people post to the site, it's not enough to just say (with or without IANAL) that you believe that it is legal, or that you're not liable.

None of those things matter unless you can pay for the lawyers to fight for you.

Many years ago I (and the organization that I managed) was sued for libel. We were in the right, and the suit was dropped long, long before it went to court.

Despite that the legal bills ran to something like $50,000. For a frivolous suit that was abandoned.

We were lucky. We had insurance to pay the lawyers. If we didn't we would have had no choice but to bend over, take it up the butt, and apologize to a seriously slimey evil idiot.

I'll repeat, this is not a movie, and Matt Damon isn't going to handle the case for free for you like he does in the movies. If we wind up being sued we will need to either get a real lawyer or grovel and hope that that will be enough to make the problem go away.

Which is why it's really good business to be careful, err on the side of caution, and work very hard to not do stuff that could potentially get us into expensive trouble.

Again, it's not just a question of "Is it legal?" It's a question of "Can we afford the lawyers to fight the fight?"

Right now, and for the foreseeable future the answer is "No, we can't."

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Gaaark: I agree with this... are we ready if we got hit with a Cease & Desist? Do we have a plan? A backup plan?

If we start hurting Dice, will we have to fold if they send a letter/lawyer?