Online service provider law
Online service provider law is a summary and case law tracking page for laws, legal decisions and issues relating to online service providers, like the Wikipedia and ISPs, from the viewpoint of an OSP considering its liability and customer service issues. See Cyber law for broader coverage of the law of cyberspace.
When responding to copyright complaints it's helpful to know more about US copyright law to assist in deciding which viewpoint to accept. These are some issues to consider when deciding whether something might infringe copyright.
United States
The general liability risk within the US is low but it's necessary to review the laws and decisions of all other countries because the extra-territorial application of laws to content hosted in the US is a major issue.Libel, defamation
Even completely ignoring a complaint has been found not to garner liability, so protection appears to be very comprehensive, though it still doesn't stop people from trying.Patent, trade secret
The CDA again provides comprehensive protection.Copyright
Protection of the OSP is comprehensive, courtesy of the CDA and OCILLA. Copyright law protects creativity
It doesn't matter how much hard work was involved in building a directory or photographing items unless there is some creativity involved. No creativity and there's no copyright protection at all. Accurate mechanical reproductions (scans; photographs of artifacts or paintings, simple conversions from one image or sound sorage format to another) don't create a new copyright beyond that of what is being copied unless there was some creativity, perhaps in lighting. If the source is not copyrighted, the copy isn't either.
Sometimes there are only a few ways to do something
The scenes a faire principle covers situations where there is limited scope for doing things in different ways, in much the same way that the merger doctrine covers cases where there's only one way to express something. In those situations something can be almost identical and not be infringing. Web page layouts and designs are likely candidates.
Fair use isn't copyright infringement
If a use is fair use, the copyright holder was never granted any rights to control that particular use. The difficulty is in deciding what is fair use and what isn't.
Copyright is for a limited time
US works published before 1923 or before 1978 without a copyright notice are in the public domain. So are most US federal government works.
Security
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is the basic US criminal law covering this area.
Australia
Defamation
Gutnick v. Dow Jones US publisher, liable in Austalia under the relatively new lex loci delicti rule (where the harm happens).
On May 27 of 2002, so-called Provider Liability Limitation Law (プロバイダ責任法 or プロバイダ責任制限法) was enacted. It is said that the major purpose of the law is to limit the liability of ISPs, administrators and system operators of bulletin boards, hosting services, and others. The law covers copyright violation, defamation, and obscenity among other things. Regarding those contents that have to be removed, the law holds that the service providers cannot be held liable unless 1) they have the technological means to remove the content and either 2-a) they have the knowledge of the illegal content or 2-b) they could reasonably have gotten to know it. It also specifies circumstances under which service providers may offer personal information of a user to another.
Major cases preceding the law include Niftyserve Case, in which a system operator/ moderator of an online forum was found to be liable for not removing a series of defamatory postings. The system operator was noy requested by the defamed participant to remove the content, but had the knowledge of the content. The court found it to be an important ground for the liability.
Copyright
United Kingdom
Copyright
Crown copyright
Photographs created before 1 June 1957 have a 50 year copyright period, as do other works except engravings. Photographs published before August 1989 also have a 50 year copyright period.
Elsewhere
Copyright
copyright outside the UK has some guidance.Japan
External links
