[saaaaaam]

Your legal advisor is incorrect I’m afraid.

You are charging for access to copyright material. You can try to dress this up as “we are providing a service and we are charging for that service and it just so happens that part of the service offering is access to copyright material” but this is quite literally the argument that music file sharing services attempted - and which bankrupted them. Look at the history of mp3.com and Napster - they tried the argument of “we are a technology platform and if people happen to infringe copyright by accessing copyright protected material then that’s not our fault”. Because they kept a database of copyright protected content and their service provided the means to locate that content they were found to have facilitated copyright infringement. It put them out of business.

You don’t even have the safe harbor defence of UGC companies - because you are apparently selling access to copyright protected material directly. You’ve located these files, downloaded them, created copies and are selling those copies from your own site.

You could argue that Spotify or Apple Music is a technology platform that happens to offer a lot of value and that this is what you’re paying for when you subscribe to a service like this.

In fact, that’s absolutely true. A big part of the value proposition of a service like Spotify is their technology. However the other - far more significant element - is the complex and commercially valuable licensing deals that Spotify has done with copyright owners to allow access to their content as part of a paid service.

If your “lawyer” is advising you that you can charge for access to material protected by copyright then they are very likely wrong.

The only way you can avoid infringing copyright in this situation is to make all the decks available before your paywall, not after it. Putting them behind your paywall and “saying that they are owned by their respective owners” does not change anything.

[fleetwoodsnack]

Agreed on virtually all points. Based on my research this is a bald misappropriation of copyrighted material that is likely to persist due to the fact that the jurisdiction that these individuals operate-from is largely outside the practical reach of United States law.

They’re able to deliver these seemingly bizarre and largely incorrect legal opinions because they’re practically immune to lawsuits originating overseas (which for most of us means the United States).

This is strikingly similar to foreign bootleggers who once ran amok with American and British intellectual property in the form of copied PC games and DVDs. They were arguably simply copying and selling “access” too. The wares are simply being hawked online rather than on the sides of streets this time around.