Under which country&#39;s jurisdiction does a website fall? My site is hosted in the US. The domain was bought from an Indian vendor, and is being developed in India by an individual. There is no registered office or anything of that sort. The site's content might be illegal in India, but is completely legal in the USA. Is this website under USA or Indian jurisdiction, and how could it be moved from one to the other?
Websites are not ships that can choose a flag of convenience to govern which country's laws govern them. Generally speaking an analysis of which jurisdiction's law applies (which is strictly speaking a "choice of law" question as much as it is a jurisdiction question) isn't undertaken on a website by website, or business by business basis. Instead, jurisdiction and choice of law are evaluated on a claim by claim basis. The owners of a website may be subject to some claims in India, to some in Bhutan, and to others in the United States, depending upon the claim. Without knowing who is trying to sue for what, you can't know. Generally speaking, a business that operates in multiple jurisdictions, like a website, will be subject to the laws of all of the jurisdictions in which it does business in regard to claims with a connection to those jurisdictions. Of course, as a practical matter, only claims that can be enforced against the owners of the website are relevant, which usually means that only claims brought where the owners reside or own assets are relevant. If the website owners own property or have amounts payable to them in India, there is a very good chance that India can, as a practical matter, assert jurisdiction over them. And, it is likely, as a practical matter, that Saudi Arabia or China would not be able to assert jurisdiction over them in a meaningful way. The fact that businesses can be conducted through legal entities further complicates the analysis. But, at any rate, the place to begin is to realize that the question "Under which country's jurisdiction does a website fall?" is basically a category error. You need to ask "Under which country's jurisdiction does a website fall when it is sued or prosecuted for X kind of matter by someone who lives in Y?" So, really, this one question is actually dozens or hundreds of questions that each have to be analyzed individually.
It might possibly be illegal. For criminal law, usually you need to obey the laws of three countries: The country you are a national of (by personality principle) The country from where you make the sale (by territoriality principle) The country that hosts the attacked interest (by territoriality principle) Then it depends on the jurisdiction (and other factors) whether the sale is legal or not. I'll use the example of my country, Czech Republic. There is a crime called "Unauthorized access to a computer system or data storage device". For example, you commit this crime by exploiting a vulnerability in a web application and copying the web owner's data on your computer. It is also codified that whoever wilfully facilitates the committing of a crime by providing the criminal with resources (such as the exploit) is considered to have also committed the crime. For this to apply, you must have known or expected that the exploit will be used to commit a crime. The courts would decide this.
You've really got two questions here: 1) "Is it an invasion of privacy to know that I'm using an ad blocker?", and 2) "Is it discrimination to refuse service based on what software I'm running?". Taking them in order: Because of how HTTP/HTML works, there are essentially two ways for a server operator to know what software you are running. Your browser announces that it's running something. This usually takes the form of a modified User-Agent header. I'm not aware of any privacy laws that consider "Person A told me something" to be an invasion of Person A's privacy. They guess it based on the actions your browser takes. For example, if the website gets a request for a page, and the site's ad network does not get a matching request for an ad, the server deduces that the user is running an ad blocker. Since this is based on things that the server operator could reasonably be expected to be informed of, it isn't an invasion of privacy under any law I'm aware of. Is it discrimination? Yes. But not all discrimination is illegal. In general, only discrimination based on protected categories (race, sex, etc.) is prohibited, and I can't imagine a jurisdiction making "choice of browser add-ons" to be one of those categories, not least because it's something the person being discriminated against can easily change.
united-states Facts are not copyrightable. Assuming Scrapehero collected these facts in a legal manner and assuming the source of these facts does not contain copyrighted (protected) material, then selling such a collection may be legal. Of particular relevance is Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co.. Here, Feist Publications copied Rural's phone directory into Feist's own phone directory. The supreme court found that Rural's phone directory was not copyrightable and thus not protected. Of course, this cuts both ways. Assuming Scrapehero did not inject creativity into the data, nothing stops a recipient of such data from distributing it themselves. In practice, this probably isn't a concern for Scrapehero. This answer is US-specific. Some countries recognize Database Rights, which may prevent such activity.
Use of SE is subject to the terms and conditions specified here. Section 3 says "You agree that all Subscriber Content that You contribute to the Network is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license." That means that your contributions can be used forever. That means the stuff is there, end of story. Section 11 on Termination says "Stack Exchange may also terminate, block, or suspend any and all Services and access to the Network immediately, without prior notice or liability, in its sole discretion, for any reason or no reason at all, including but not limited to any Subscriber breaches of any of the terms or conditions of this Agreement". That means you can be banned. So, yes, what they did is legal.
Such works may be considered as copyright infringements under US law. The US does not apply the &quot;rule of the shorter term&quot;, and so the PD status of the parent work in some other country,. including the source country, is not relevant. There are, however, other ways for a work to have lost copyright protection under US law, and one of them might apply in a particular case. Also, whether a work is legally a derivative work of another is a fact-based legal question, and the answer is not always as obvious as one might think. The copyright holder of the parent work could file a copyright infringement suit, seeking damages and other relief in a US Federal court. Note that one of the rights that make up copyright is the right to make or authorize the making of derivative works. This ism spelled out in 17 USC 106 item (2) &quot;to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;&quot; I am not sure of the rules for customs seizure of allegedly infringing works. I thin k that only works already adjudged to be infringing are seized, pursuant to a court order, but I am not sure of that. II do not see how the customs service would determine the disputable issues mentioned above. For the matter of that, any such work could be authorized by permission from the copyright holder, and I don't see how customs would know if there had been such permission granted. Added citations: 17 USC 503 says: (a)(1) At any time while an action under this title is pending, the court may order the impounding, on such terms as it may deem reasonable (A) of all copies or phonorecords claimed to have been made or used in violation of the exclusive right of the copyright owner; ... (b) As part of a final judgment or decree, the court may order the destruction or other reasonable disposition of all copies or phonorecords found to have been made or used in violation of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights, ... 17 USC 602 provides that: (a) (2) Importation or exportation of infringing items.—Importation into the United States or exportation from the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords, the making of which either constituted an infringement of copyright, or which would have constituted an infringement of copyright if this title had been applicable, is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under sections 501 and 506. ... (b) Import Prohibition.—In a case where the making of the copies or phonorecords would have constituted an infringement of copyright if this title had been applicable, their importation is prohibited. In a case where the copies or phonorecords were lawfully made, the United States Customs and Border Protection Service has no authority to prevent their importation. In either case, the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to prescribe, by regulation, a procedure under which any person claiming an interest in the copyright in a particular work may, upon payment of a specified fee, be entitled to notification by the United States Customs and Border Protection Service of the importation of articles that appear to be copies or phonorecords of the work. It appears that copies of an infringing work may be seized. but only by court order. It appears that import of an allegedly infringing work may be prohibited, but not when copies were lawfully made. But such imports may be reported to the claimant, who can then take appropriate legal action.
Am I correct to infer that content/data created by a US city have an open license (public domain if created by US city employees or open license if created by a contractor)? No. For example, Larimer County, Colorado created election administration software in-house rather than using an outside contractor to do so, and it would be lawful for it to license that software to other governments in a manner that helps recover its development costs. There is an issue over whether a city or state can copyright its municipal ordinances or statutes or regulations in a legally enforceable way when people have a legal duty to comply with them. Some courts have held that state statutes that are binding upon people can't be protected in that manner. Efforts of the West Corporation to protect its page numbering system that was widely used by courts to refer to public domain case opinions were mostly invalidated in litigation. An open question is that most municipal governments incorporate by reference in their ordinances Uniform Building Codes that are subject to private copyrights and are not terribly cheap to obtain copies of. Yet, every person doing construction work is bound to follow the enacted ordinance including the parts incorporated by reference.
There are several official and unofficial sources that say that the public domain status of works of the US Federal Government only applies within the US. Specifically: &quot;Government Works&quot; on USA.GOV According to &quot;Copyright Exceptions for U.S. Government Works&quot;: U.S. copyright laws may not protect U.S. government works outside the country. But the work may be protected under the copyright laws of other jurisdictions when used in these jurisdictions. The U.S. government may assert copyright outside of the United States for U.S. government works. Government Copyright FAQ on cendi.gov According to Frequently Asked Questions about Copyright: Issues Affecting the U.S. Government (CENDI/2008-1) (Revised December 2017) FAQ Item 3.1.7: 3.1.7 Does the Government have copyright protection in U.S. Government works in other countries? Yes, the copyright exclusion for works of the U.S. Government is not intended to have any impact on protection of these works abroad (S. REP. NO. 473, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. 56 (1976)). Therefore, the U.S. Government may obtain protection in other countries depending on the treatment of government works by the national copyright law of the particular country. Copyright is sometimes asserted by U.S. Government agencies outside the United States. US House report on the 1976 Copyright Act According to that part of the &quot;House report no. 94–1476&quot; included as &quot;Historical and Revision Notes&quot; to the test of 17 USC 105 in the version of &quot;TITLE 17—COPYRIGHTS&quot; on Govinfo The prohibition on copyright protection for United States Government works is not intended to have any effect on protection of these works abroad. Works of the governments of most other countries are copyrighted. There are no valid policy reasons for denying such protection to United States Government works in foreign countries, or for precluding the Government from making licenses for the use of its works abroad. Public Domain Sherpa According to &quot;Public Domain Sherpa&quot;: US government agencies may claim copyright abroad While US government works generally are in the public domain in the US, they may be protected by copyright abroad. The feds may claim copyright protection for US government works in other countries depending on how those countries treat their own government works. So just be aware that US government agencies sometimes claim copyright in their works outside the US. Protecting Government Works According to the section &quot;Copyright Protection Abroad For Government Works&quot; of &quot;Protecting Government Works: The Copyright Issue&quot; by Paul C. Manz, Michael J. Zelenka, Raymond S. Wittig, and Sally A. Smit in ... If another signatory to the Berne Convention, however, allows copyright protection of its government works (i.e., Crown Copyright of the United Kingdom31 or Canadian Copyright Act32), it is clear that that country’s courts must afford protection to similar works of the U.S. Government, despite the fact that the work could not be protected in the United States. Congressional legislative history supports this position. [The document goes on to quote the same passage of the house report notes to 17 USC 105 quoted above.] ... For a work to be eligible in a foreign country for copyright protection, it must qualify under the particular laws and requirements specific to that country (i.e., in the United Kingdom copyright requirements are provided in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988). Other countries and their laws may differ from the requirements for copyright protection as set forth in the United States Copyright Act. ... Berne Article 5 Paragraph 2 of the Berne Copyright Convention specifies that (emphasis added): ... such enjoyment and such exercise shall be independent of the existence of protection in the country of origin of the work. Consequently, apart from the provisions of this Convention, the extent of protection, as well as the means of redress afforded to the author to protect his rights, shall be governed exclusively by the laws of the country where protection is claimed.