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I wonder if, given their broad reply, that project shouldn't just block everyone BUT the US, since they decided that US law is the only that applies to them. N
by darklajid 9y ago
I wonder if, given their broad reply, that project shouldn't just block everyone BUT the US, since they decided that US law is the only that applies to them.
Now, I don't like these laws one bit, but I also really don't like this (over)reaction. If your legal counsel argues that you should block a country to avoid being sued for different laws, shouldn't the same counsel point out that this is likely for most of the world?
Or is Germany the oddball here and the majority of the world doesn't have CP laws, or doesn't care or .. have laws that are literally one to one compatible with the US ones?
- cyphar 9y agoMost countries are signatories to the WIPO treaty that enshrines a global "standard" on copyright laws. However, each individual country's legislation is different -- though generally most countries have similar or looser copyright laws than America (since America was the source of the current insane variant of copyright we are experiencing, rather than the previously-sane British copyright system defined by the Statute of Anne). However, Europe has some really strange copyright directives that go even further than the US. For instance, architecture is copyrightable, and so taking and distributing photos of the outside of a building is not technically allowed without permission from the owner. So taking tourist photos within an EU country and posting them online could be seen as copyright infringement. Of course, this is just a general guideline, if you actually want to do business you need to ask lawyers familiar with the laws of all the countries you wish to do business with (though this is prohibitively expensive for volunteer efforts, which explains why they didn't do it).