copyright intellectual-property international public-domain
How to determine which national copyright legislation applies if I put someone else&#39;s work online?
<p>Suppose there is a work by author A, whose copyright expires tomorrow (i.e. it goes into public domain) in their country of birth C1. I upload it (tomorrow) online on a blogging site by a company E based in country C2 with servers physically in country C3 (where it is possible that C2=C3, or even C1=C2=C3 but not necessarily). I live in country C4. In countries C2, C3, C4 the work's copyright has not necessarily expired. Can I get in trouble? I am particularly interested on whether I can get away with it if I make C1=C2 or C1=C2=C3.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>

<p>You can always get in trouble. Copyright is always protected by the laws of a particular nation, by the courts of that nation. Because of the Berne Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention, I can sue you outside of my country, and will be treated as a person of that country. The conventions don't say who has jurisdiction, that is where you have to sue, so you have to resort to conventional jurisdictional principles. If you are in Europe, under the Brussels Convention, that means I have to sue you in your country of domicile (if you reside in multiple European nations, I get to decide which country to sue you in). The English courts are slightly different in that they generally hold that you sue in the country where the act took place, but (Lucasfilm v Ainsworth) you can sue in UK courts for infringement that occurs in the US. As you can see, this can get complicated. I can't sue you in Mongolian courts (assuming neither of us has any connection at all to Mongolia), but I could sue you (being a hypothetical UK citizen) in UK courts if you did the infringing deed while in Mongolia.</p>
<p>Mongolian courts enforce Mongolian copyright law, US courts enforce US copyright law. Therefore you first have to decide what country you plan to sue in (from the plaintiff's perspective).</p>

<p>Each country has its own rules for what works are protected, and when a copyright infringement suit may be brought in that country. A suit may be brought in any country whose laws permit it. If the defendant has no assets in that country, collection of a judgement, if one is awarded, may be harder, than it would nbe in the defendant's country of residence.</p>
<p>In general, suit may be brought in any country where an act of infringement takes place, if the work is protected under that country's copyright laws. However, some countries do not allow suits to be brought against non-resident defendants.</p>
<p>If the copyright expires on different dates in different countries, posting it on the intenet may well be infringement in any country where the rights have not expired, and suit may well be possible in any such country.</p>
<p>Some countries follow the 'rule of the shorter term&quot; and end protection whenever the source country does. The US, for one, does not follow that rule. US copyright of a foreign work lats as long as it would if the same work had been created and published in the US.</p>
<p>Unless the work is PD in all of C1, C2, C3, <strong>and</strong> C4, it may be possible for the copyright owner to bring and win an infringement suit. Indeed it may be possible for a suit to be brought and won in C5, a country where the work was downloaded and further copies made, even though neither the host, the servers, nor the poster are located in C5.</p>
<p>Not also that the work's &quot;country of origin&quot; may include the country where it was first published, or the current residence of the author, as well as the author's birth country or country of citizenship. Thw works &quot;country of origin&quot; often matters in copyright cases.</p>
<p>Under the Berne Copyright Convention, a non-resident or non-0citizen must be granted at least the same rights to sue for infringement as a resident or citizen, and could be granted more rights in any country that adheres to the Berne convention. Countries that adhere to the WTO's TRIPS agreement must also treat foreigners at least as well as their own nationals. The UCC is effectively obsolete, but would have imposed similar requirements.</p>
