Andre Yoskowitz
17 Aug 2008 16:58
Mygazines.com, which launched only last month, and is still currently in beta, has drawn the ire of at least one media company, Time Warner which says it is already looking into ways to get the site shut down.
The site, whose tag line is "upload. share. archive." is a place where users can upload and share digital copies of magazines while others can read, comment and even create their own "custom" magazines using their favorite parts of other magazines.
The site is entirely free and does not even include advertisements meaning the owners are not making a profit on the sharing of copyrighted content.
Time Warner, owner of Time and many other high profile magazines, does not like seeing their magazines posted for free, especially with the ad pages stripped out. Because the site actively encourages its users to share copyrighted materials, it can be held liable in the US but therein lies Time's problem.
Mygazines is registered in Anguilla and hosted by the infamous host PRQ of Sweden. PRQ is owned by the founders of the The Pirate Bay, the public torrent tracker that remains in full strength despite years of American companies trying to get it shut down.
Has Mygazines found its way around the jurisdiction of U.S. copyright law? For the most part it seems it has and even if the company is sued in the US, there is no way that anyone would show up to court.
The only way the magazine publishers can get the site shut down is to get Sweden to intervene of have VeriSign, which maintains the master .com database to get the site shut down.
For now though, Time's latest announcement and the subsequent news will surely bring more users to the site which already counts 16,000 active users.