Questions made unanswerable by copyright assertions

Question

I recently saw this post:

How to get rid of the horizontal bar from website

Whilst far from being the most perfect of questions [sigh], within seconds, it was made invalid and unanswerable due to an edited(removed) link stating "copyright violation". Whilst I understand that copyrighted material is potentially an issue, the link/site in question included embedded youtube content that cannot directly be judged as having potential copyright infringement.

An editing user (unless reasonably qualified) can't possibly know if the site in question contains copyrighted material unless he/she has direct knowledge of MOU's/contracts that may exist between parties.

Furthermore, many posts contain links to live/working examples - sometimes (wishfully) in addition to pasted code and JSfiddles etc. Are such links to live example to be treated the same?

To what extend should users/editor's ideally treat such links or the content that exists within?

Answer 1

Our usual guidance is that while we do not in any way condone copyright infringement, we have a process that copyright holders must follow in order to get their stuff removed from our sites. It is described in our Terms of Service, section 15.

I'm not a lawyer, so take the rest of what I'm about to say with a huge grain of salt. This specific case isn't even an issue of a copyright violation on our sites. We are not responsible for anybody else's content. With that in mind, I reverted the edit that removed the link.

(Aside: if you're going to remove a link or anything else, just remove it. Don't replace it with a placeholder that only attracts attention to the thing you wanted to receive less attention.)

The question itself also happens to be too vague without the link (obviously) and even with it. With that in mind, I closed the question. It can be reopened if/when the OP edits it to provide a better description of the problem; hopefully one that doesn't rely on linking to the site that will eventually be fixed and therefore invalidate the question.