Rred
Contributor
Most of the major nations are signatories to the "Berne Convention", an international agreement about how copyrights shall be handled. The US was actually a notable holdout for many years. India IS a signatory, so an Indian web site would be governed by the Berne Convention, although the site owners might say "Right, who's going to come to Bangalore to file charges against us?"
Whether the DCMA is or isn't good or valid law, is still under discussion. It represents a rather poor attempt to extend copyright laws IN THE US into the electronic age. And that's problematic, since every time you VIEW a web site, youir computer is actually executing code that creates a literal NEW COPY of the author's work. And there's only a presumption that you have permission to make that copy.
But there's also a lot of confusion about copyrights. The Chairman is right and wrong to say thie forum has "copyrights" to the things published here. As a *publisher* rather than a creator, they have no copyrights except "compilation copyrights", unless the author has knowingly granted/transferred more. They also are protected, as a publisher, from violations that members may commit. Except, if the forum actively changes anything...they can lose the protected "publisher" status.
If it wasn't complicated enough, DCMA is still bouncing through the courts, mainly because it was ramrodded through by the music industry and the software industry and it really isn't polished or considered law.
Whether the DCMA is or isn't good or valid law, is still under discussion. It represents a rather poor attempt to extend copyright laws IN THE US into the electronic age. And that's problematic, since every time you VIEW a web site, youir computer is actually executing code that creates a literal NEW COPY of the author's work. And there's only a presumption that you have permission to make that copy.
But there's also a lot of confusion about copyrights. The Chairman is right and wrong to say thie forum has "copyrights" to the things published here. As a *publisher* rather than a creator, they have no copyrights except "compilation copyrights", unless the author has knowingly granted/transferred more. They also are protected, as a publisher, from violations that members may commit. Except, if the forum actively changes anything...they can lose the protected "publisher" status.
If it wasn't complicated enough, DCMA is still bouncing through the courts, mainly because it was ramrodded through by the music industry and the software industry and it really isn't polished or considered law.