ralphpnj wrote: > I am not lawyer nor am I familiar with all the details of copyright laws > but I do know that copyright laws differ greatly from country to > country. The Berne Convention, to which Mr. Zombie refers, is used for > international issues and is not the same as the copyright law of an > individual country, which as you implied, can be quite different from > those outlined by Zombie. Best to check one' country's own laws when in > doubt.
The Berne Convention is an international agreement which is binding on those countries which are signatories to it. The US by treaty is bound by the Convention. Basically the Convention requires a country to acknowledge and provide copyright protection to foreign nationals in the same fashion as its own citizens. There are other international treaties relating to copyright protection in addition to the Convention and the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a direct result of one such treaty, the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty. The treaties allow Fair Use in accordance with the laws of each of the respective signatory states, but no country has ever enacted legislation or determined by judicial decision that it is Fair Use to copy and thereafter distribute such copies of copyrighted works to friends, family or third parties. The Berne Convention makes no such allowance either. The same goes for legislation or judicial decisions related to the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted works via the internet. Most countries do allow the sale of a lawfully purchased copyrighted work. The US by virtue of the first sale doctrine allows one to lend, sell or otherwise dispose of a copyrighted work provided that person legally owns the physical item. Ownership of the item itself (basically the right to use it such as read a book, play a CD, etc.) is not the same as ownership of the copyrighted material and thus one may not duplicate and distribute the item, use it for a public performance or do anything else with the item because such rights are reserved to the holder of the copyright. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jeff52's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=103 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=97950 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
