When should you register copyright for countries you don&#39;t live in? From what advice I've read, it's a very good idea to register a copyright for the country where you live. However, when should you also register a copyright with other countries?
That depends very much on the particular countries involved. Some countries do not have a system of copyright registration at all. Of those that do, the benefits vary. In the united-states, one cannot sue for infringement at all unless the copyright is first registered. One cannot obtain statutory damages, or legal fees as damages, unless the work is registered before the infringement starts, or no later than three months after publication. So if one thinks it is plausible that one will sue for infringement in a US court, it is a good idea to register early. In other countries, the benefits may be different and the value of registration not so clear. Note that a plaintiff (usually the copyright owner or claimant) can normally choose what jurisdiction to file an infringement suit in. Suit can usually be brought in any country where the work has been published or distributed. So one can limit registration to countries where one is likely to bring a suit.
In the USA, you are covered by the DMCA act, which you should most definitely read. I can't sue you and your website for copyright infringement unless I first send you a DMCA takedown notice. (Of course I can sue, but I will lose). In the DMCA notice I have to tell you who I am so that you can contact me, I have to tell you under perjury that I am the copyright holder or an agent of the copyright holder of some work, and that I believe your website is infringing on that copyright. You then have the choice to remove the material, which means I cannot sue you for copyright infringement because you acted on my DMCA notice, or you can refuse to remove it and I can include you in a copyright infringement lawsuit. By not acting on a DMCA notice you take full responsibility. If you remove the material, you should inform the person who uploaded it. That person can decide to be Ok with the removal (and hope they won't get sued for copyright infringement, and they usually will be fine), or they can send you a counter notice. That counter notice would tell you that the uploader believes he or she isn't infringing any copyright. After receiving a counter notice, you may reinstate the material, and you tell the sender of the DMCA notice. Again, you are now legally protected. The uploader can now be quite sure to be sued, unless the DMCA notice was sent in error.
A copyright notice like that could mean the authors are claiming copyright in different portions of the work, or claiming a joint copyright. With the former, standard copyright law applies with respect to each part, so I'm going to examine the joint copyright aspect. Broadly speaking, joint works tend to be an unclear and internationally inconsistent area of copyright law and you haven't specified jurisdiction. Since this is an English language site and the US and UK are polar opposites on most of these issues, those will be the jurisdictions I examine. US Definition: To qualify as a joint work, each author's individual contribution must be inseparable or interdependent, and the authors must intend to be joint authors (17 U.S.C. s 101, Childress v. Taylor, Erickson v. Trinity Theatre, Inc.). Rights of use: Joint authors can independently exploit and license a work without consent of other co-authors, but have a duty to account profits to co-authors (House Report No. 94-1476 (1976), Goodman v. Lee, Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, etc.). UK Definition: To qualify as a joint work, each author's individual contribution must not be distinct, they must work towards a common design, but no specific intention of joint authorship is required (Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Art. 10(1), an 11-factor test was articulated in Martin v. Kogan para. 53 by the E&amp;W Court of Appeal). Rights of use: Joint authors must seek consent of the co-authors in order to exploit and licence a work (Cescinsky v. George Routledge &amp; Sons, Ltd., Hodgens v. Beckingham). For further information, see this excellent paper by Elena Cooper comparing how US and UK law diverged on this point.
I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about having "jurisdiction" over an IP address, for the purposes you're discussing. If you wanted to sue the IP address itself--something that is possible under limited circumstances--then you might need to locate it for jurisdictional purposes. But I don't think that's what you're talking about. You're talking about taking civil or criminal action against the people who are using the IP address to commit crimes. What matters, in that case, is not a theoretical legal question about the location of an IP address. It's questions like: where do these people live? Where do the people downloading the illegal content live? Where are the physical servers located? ("In the cloud" is not an answer--there are physical servers somewhere making up that cloud). For jurisdictional purposes, the chair they're sitting in when they upload the illegal data, and the location of the AC power outlet the physical server is plugged into, are as important as, if not more important than, the metaphysical "location" of the IP address of the server.
No, CC does not replace copyright. A creative commons license is one way to use the copyright that you already have the moment you make an original creative work. Without a copyright, a creative commons license does nothing. You don't need to do anything to get a copyright. However if you plan to exploit a work commercially, or want to be sure that it is well protected, you can gain additional protection in the US and some other countries by registering the copyright. US registration can be done online at this page. The benefits of US registration are described on this page. Nor do you need to "file for" a Creative Commons license. by publishing or distributing a work with an indication that it is subject to a creative commons license, you have released it under that license and anyone may thereafter use it subject to the terms of that license. This is done with a statement such as "Released under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 license." Such a statement is often placed near the (optional but strongly recommended) copyright notice, but that is not required. if you wish to specify the form of attribution (for example to a specified pseudonym) or a URL to use in providing attribution, that should ideally be placed near the license statement. If the work carries a list of credits, those may be placed nearby as well, but need not be.
I'm pretty sure in France you have moral rights and copyrights. I am writing from New Zealand, but we have some similar intellectual property laws due to being member countries of the World Intellectual Property Organisation. We are also both member countries of the World Trade Organisation (WTO has the TRIPS agreement which relates to IP). So my answer may or may not be right &ndash; check what it says in France's copyright acts: you should be able to search for terms like first owner, and moral rights, films/videos, etc. The school isn't your employer, and so the basic rule is that you as the author are automatically the first owner. Since you're not really at school to create anything or research for the school, I don't think the court would enforce a blanket term that you had to agree to that the school owns intellectual property in what you create. You probably own the copyright. You also have moral rights in what you have created, which means even if the school does own the copyright in your work, you can request they attribute it to you if they show it in public (online). Not all works have moral rights. However, in NZ if you create a film/video you do have moral rights in it.
There's no "common law copyright" in the US. There's common law trademark, but copyrights and trademarks are different things. All copyright is based on federal copyright statutes, and an unregistered copyright is just called an unregistered copyright. What an unregistered copyright gives you is almost the same thing as a registered copyright: the exclusive right to exercise various rights (reproduction, distribution, public performance/display, etc.) Registration is required before you can actually file an infringement lawsuit, but it's OK if you only registered it after learning about the infringement. The main reason to register the work early is that you might be able to collect higher damages if it was registered before the infringement. If the work was unregistered when the infringement happened, you can only collect actual damages. If it was already registered, you can instead opt to collect statutory damages. Statutory damages don't require you to show actual loss; instead, the court awards between $750 and $30,000 per work based on what it considers fair. The lower limit can go down to $200 if the infringer had no reason to think they were infringing, and the upper limit can go up to $150,000 if the infringement was willful. You can also collect attorney's fees if it was already registered. In the comments, the question was raised of whether someone else might be able to register the copyright for your work before you and what would happen then. When I say "registration is required before filing a lawsuit," the requirement is that you submit the registration paperwork properly, pay the fee, and wait for the Copyright Office to act on the application. If they accept the registration, you're all set. Even if they refuse, though, you can still file an infringement claim -- you just have to also serve the head of the Copyright Office, who has the option of jumping into the case to argue about whether the work could legally be registered. You can also sue the Copyright Office to get judicial review of a denial under the Administrative Procedure Act (refusal still lets you file infringement lawsuits, but you can't get statutory damages or attorney's fees against an infringer unless the Copyright Office actually accepted the registration).
Copyright notice is not relevant to having a Copyright. 1 Copyright starts to exist the moment a work is created. When the pen touches the paper the first time or the hammer strikes the block to become a statue, the work is started to be created. At that moment 2, copyright is gained as it becomes a work, usually defined in the national laws. Publication for sure grants all the rights according to the Berne Convention rules - which are the absolute minimum standards. In the united-states the Berne Convention's agreement is for example codified as 17 USC §102 and uses the moment of creation to start rights: Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Similarly, the German Urheberrechtsgesetz does list what can be copyrighted and that the copyright is with the author, and presumes the act of creation creates the copyright for nationals, and publication for non-nationals: Section 1: The authors of works in the literary, scientific and artistic domain enjoy protection for their works in accordance with this Act. Section 2: (1) Protected works in the literary, scientific and artistic domain include, in particular: [List of items] Section 120: (1) German nationals shall enjoy copyright protection with respect to all of their works, whether or not they have been published and regardless of the place of publication. In the case of a work created by joint authors (Article 8), it shall be sufficient if one of the joint authors is a German national. Section 121: (1) Foreign nationals shall enjoy copyright protection with respect to their works published in the territory to which this Law applies, unless the work or a translation of the work has been published outside that territory more than 30 days prior to its publication within that territory. Subject to the same limitation, foreign nationals shall enjoy protection with respect to their works published in the territory to which this Law applies in translation only. There is no registration needed to have a copyright. However in the US you need to register a copyright to seek specific damages in the courts. 1 - Currently. In the past it had been very relevant, but laws have changed since then. 2 - Technically shortly after the moment that the first touch is done and the work gains some originality, but there already can be an artistic expression in a single brushstroke of a minimalistic piece or a single stroke calligraphy - and the absolute minimum originality needed is rather low: while putting ARD in a line in a specific font is not protectable under copyright (it's a trademark), a 6-tune jingle is enough to be deemed a protected work in itself! Under German law, this is the Kleine Münze