“Mygazines,” a magazine-sharing portal is at the center of a copyright infringement attack.  Like they didn’t see that coming.  The good news for “Mygazines” is that it isn’t located on U.S soil, meaning no charges can be brought under American copyright laws.  Magazine publishers are now forced to go after the source to remedy the situation, but will they do it?

Mygazines, which just launched in late July, allows users to upload and share magazines across a social network of sorts.  Digital copies of various magazines are made available on the site in an easy-to-read format, letting users comment on them, leave ratings, and use different articles to create their own “custom” magazines, according to CNet.  In its short existence, the site has already grew to more than 16,000 members.

So far, the site is free to join for anyone and still has no advertising.  It begs the question of what’s to gain out of this if it’s not being monetized.  Obviously the site owner had to realize the legal implications of launching something that freely shares copyrighted content in magazines.  The reason being most likely, is the fact that it’s protected from American law, and it’s a service that could become very popular.

Mygazines is registered in the Caribbean island of Anguilla and hosted in Sweden, by the notorious PRQ.  For those who aren’t aware, the Stockholm-based PRQ is owned by the founders of BitTorrent tracker site Pirate Bay and is known for hosting other dubious sites that seem to evade law.  Since the domain name is registered in another country and its servers are located beyond U.S. borders as well, Mygazines can easily evade the jurisdiction of U.S. copyright law.  Publishers could still bring legal action against the site for content distributed in the U.S., but there’d be no way to get representatives for the company to court or to collect damages, so it’s more or less a waste of time. 

Seems the only option left is to go after VeriSign which maintains the master “.com database” but that’s highly unlikely.  In my opinion, it falls in line with other file-sharing software and networks.  People are always going to find a way to share illegal material, it’s just the way it is.  People and organizations can try and thwart the efforts, but it’s an uphill battle most of the time. 

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Entry was posted on Saturday, August 16th, 2008 at 10:13 pm under Internet, Legal.

Read more entries by Justin Montgomery.
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