Is location important regarding online copyright infringement?

弁護士

I understand that your company is getting ready to broadcast works on the Internet without the prior consent and authorization from their regular author(s) or owner(s)…
Normally, lawsuits for copyright infringement are incurred in all countries (including A, B, C and D countries):
- Where works in question are protected by copyright law (lex loci protectionis), that is certainly the case here under multinational conventions of Berne (1886) and Geneva (1952 ) whose members include most countries in the world and also, under local private international rights,
- And where the said works are distributed without permission of their authors or ownesr and may be accessed by Internet by users to which they are especially destined .
The country of the authors our owners of the works are not necessarily decisive as such as infringement of the said works be sued wherever they are acknowledged protected by copyright and counterfeit.

In practice, the risk of legal action is incurred in the all the countries where the offense is physically detected (by a screen capture made by a bailiff or equivallent), ("locus delicti commissi") and where the damage is the most significant ("locus damni") which is often, indeed, the country of the author or owner of the works, especially if the infringer has also significant assets in the said countries.

For example, if the works in question are the property of a French company and are available without authorization on the Internet from Spain (A) where your provider (web host) is located, are uploaded by a user in Italy (B), and are searchable by French surfers (because they are in French, for example) from France (C), France (C) will be one of the countries of the protection (locus protectionis) and of the damage (locus damni).

If the company you operate is located in the United kingdom (D) for example, and if it is established that this one is in connection with the works broadcasted from your web host in Spain (A), then a judicial action for copyright infringement may be brought before a French court according to French copyright laws:

1 / mainly against your company (country D), because it is responsible for the organization of counterfeiting (World) over the Internet,

2 / and also against the web host of your company (country A), which is necessarily involved in the broadcast, as a professional,

3 / incidentally, against the downloader (country B).

The action from France will be facilitated if you own assets in France too (secondary érablissement for example) and in all cases, the judgment ultimately obtained in France will run against your company in the United Kingdom (D), under the European regulations (which replaced the Brussels Convention of 1968).

If your company is outside the EU, an exequatur procedure can be launched.

In any case, if you want "zero risk", I urge you to seek the permission of the authors or owners of the concerned works before broadcasting them on the Internet and not try to make a kind of "assembly" only with the view to avoid lawsuits, which are accompanied by heavy criminal penalties in most countries.

Sincerely yours
Simon