First of all, thanks for taking the time to read through all that and give good answers. I expected some of those things I think.
I recommend ZBBlock because, among other things, it triggers before wp-config.php loads. Standard plugins trigger after. (There is no alternative.)
Yeah, I actually scanned through a number of your threads this afternoon after your name came up. I saw you encouraging people to use ZBBlock. I will have to give it a shot. I hadn't heard of that before so that's valuable information.
Among other things, they need to prove to the judge (not just themselves) that you did infringe. The reason it's difficult to give examples of what is sufficient is this could vary a bit by judge. The big question to ask yourself is if you were a third party, and heard the argument and counter argument would you consider it proof.
I think I had read in articles about movie and music piracy that judges tend to be at the very far end of the technical spectrum and most don't understand what they are being presented. That is kind of what worries me a little bit. To me, I feel like I would be in the clear if I were a judge listening to evidence. But I work with computers every day so I expect that it wouldn't seem so clear to the average person.
I can tell you if I was the third party, I would not consider a printed screen shot sufficient to show proof. The reason I would not is one cannot tell any of the following:
1) How the screenshot came into being.
2) Even if we figured out how it came into being, you can't tell whether the image is hosted on the server or hotlinked.
That's one of the things I was getting at. I know for certain that I could easily rip the html of page, add in an infringing image, open the local page in a browser, then type in the url I wanted it to appear the infringing image came from, and then take a screen shot of the whole setup. It would show no alteration by Photoshop or anything when checking the image. For that reason alone, I hope a screen shot never counts as sufficient evidence.
That said: if you get sued, any trial will be preceeded by 'discovery' and you would also be asked what you know about the image. If Getty has the screenshot, and when asked your answer is that yes, your site displayed that image and yes you hosted it and yes, you personally uploaded it, that might be proof of infringement. One reason is that the facts would not be disputed. And bear in mind: Lieing is perjury. Refusing to provide information to the judge tends to look like you did display the image and so on. So, if you did host the image and so on, recognize that this is likely to be known to the judge.
I have no intent to lie or do anything illegal. I did not upload the image personally and was honestly not even aware of it. I would honestly answer what I am able.
But beyond that: remember that what Getty shows you may not be all the evidence they have. They have a 'template' letter. That letter does not show the uri of the image, it does not show html of the page and it does not name any human being who viewed the page and who might testify that he took the screenshot and saw the display with his own eyes. But this doesn't mean Getty does not have such evidence. It only means they didn't reveal it to you in their letter. (Mind you, they may not have it. And if they don't they would likely be reluctant to file because they don't know whether you hotlinked or not and so on.)
Since this is BWP, and not Getty, I have no idea what they might be using. I honestly don't know much about the image scouring technologies that these companies use so I am a little apprehensive about that part of the situation.
Human testimony added to teh bot info could be considered authoritative.
How effective is HTML or a URL when presented by them? I feel that much like a screen shot, those things could be falsified. I'm not saying that they ever do that or have intent to, I'm just saying that it doesn't seem like reliable evidence. Anybody could whip up a bot that seeks pages with relevant keywords and then inserts copyrighted image links into the html it scraped. A person witnessing such a bot at work would be no more reliable than the bot itself.
Internet archive could be used. One again, evidence can be ambiguous especially with images.
So far I have only received one very uninformative DMCA. I don't know if there will be more. The Archive has no record of that date because I must have blocked it about three or four months prior without even knowing it.
When you say that evidence can be ambiguous, is that in favor of the accuser?
Depends what exists at the time of any subpoena, right? They can't demand something that does not exist be re-created. But bear in mind: They may have evidence they need. You don't know.
That was my thought. Every day longer it goes, the more likely it is that evidence will be destroyed. That is also why I'm trying to figure out what they might have.
My guess is they don't keep logs any longer than you do. Storing that data is a nuisance and business cost for them. The real issue is what BWP has already collected and/or what you might reveal or be forced to admit.
Again, what I was thinking. What types of things do you think someone might be forced to admit?
If it's off your server, don't worry about future discoveries. Only worry about whether they saved html and so on. Bear in mind: These companies tend to be very slap dash and count on scaring people. That said, we don't know with BWP. There are a shit was of cases in the pipeline, but we don't know what ultimately happened.
It's not really future discoveries that I'm worried about. This situation is changing the whole policy and purpose of the site, should I even decide to continue forward with it. I believe I received a notice from the Randy Taylor that everyone has talked about here. It seems his work hasn't always been top notch in the past. Then I read elsewhere online that it looks like a number of these are actually going to trial. So I don't really know what to make of the situation. It's odd that so many are filed and some are going to court because that doesn't seem to fit the usual troll model.
Honestly, I think as long as you don't have a stored version of the old database, you are fine. Hostgator isn't going to be set up to sift through a mountain of data and they might pushback if asked to do so.
Also what I was thinking again. HostGator is a budget host. They are set up to do the minimum and take on a ton of people on each server. Seems it would be too much of a pain to keep that much info. I think I also read somewhere a few months ago that they had not been quick to turn over information in some case when subpoenaed.
Are you set up multi-author? With each registered person having their own login/email/password? If yes, you must have a roster or registered authors or contributors. Blog posts would be filed under the authors who wrote them. It's true WP won't keep the IP they used when the wrote that post, but it does keep track of the author of a particular post. (At least my WP does.). Also comments are listed under the commenter. IPs are saved for comments.
It is multi-author. Each does have a separate account. There are also about 2,000 registered subscribers.