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Some friends and I upload music to mixcloud and then stream it on our website

We do not own the copyright to any of the music.

What can we do to stay safe now that the US government is so close to introducing PIPA and SOPA? Are we in breach of any laws here?

We don't provide a downloadable mp3 but I understand that these new laws cover streaming too.

Would I be advised to shut this website down? What if we stopped streaming it on our site and sent listeners to our mixcloud page instead?

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Migrated from Webmasters as question content primarily concerns use of mixcloud; regarding whether these actions are advisable, can you confirm whether or not you have permission from the copyright holders to copy and distribute their content? – danlefree Jan 18 '12 at 23:53

migrated from webmasters.stackexchange.com Jan 18 '12 at 23:49

closed as off topic by phwd♦ Jan 19 '12 at 2:04

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1 Answer

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Even those of us who have been following the discussions about SOPA and PIPA have been having a hard time figuring out some of the exact details. First, SOPA and PIPA are different bills and have different specific provisions. Second, SOPA has not yet made it out of the House committee and amendments are still being debated on it. Third, since the last time Congress met to discuss either bill and the opposition has been growing, bill sponsors have declared that they will remove some hotly contested provisions from the law, but we have yet to see updated texts of the bills.

For these reasons it is very difficult to say specifically what kind of liability you might have under a specific scenario such as this one, until either bill has a final version that can be deeply analyzed and comes up for votes in both houses of Congress (assuming that the growing opposition does not succeed in completely stopping or at least greatly altering both bills).

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