What is personal jurisdiction and how can it allow someone to not respect the copyright of another individual? https://web.archive.org/web/20110713050011/http://blog.internetcases.com/2009/01/22/no-personal-jurisdiction-over-australian-defendant-in-flickr-right-of-publicity-case/ The court similarly found that any purported agreement with Wong via the Creative Commons license was not sufficient to establish personal jurisdiction. The Creative Commons license did not require Virgin to perform any of its obligations in Texas. Instead, the license permitted the photograph to be used anywhere in the world. Furthermore, Chang failed to show that Virgin performed any of its obligations in Texas. It used the photograph solely in Australia, the one place that, according to Virgin’s evidence, it was authorized to sell its products and services. Finally, because Virgin only used the photograph in Australia, the license that permitted its use was centered in Australia, not Texas. What is personal jurisdiction and how can it allow someone to not respect the copyright of another individual? Also, does that mean that Chang can sue Virgin in an Australian court?
A court must have both personal jurisdiction and subject-matter jurisdiction Personal jurisdiction is jurisdiction over the parties to the case, for example, a New York court does not have personal jurisdiction over a murder committed in California. Subject-matter jurisdiction is jurisdiction over the law, for example, a Small Claims court can only hear cases where the amount in dispute is below the small claims threshold. In the case you cite, the court held that it did not have personal jurisdiction because the alleged tort took place in Australia, not Texas. Or, more precisely, the connections to Texas were too insubstantial to enliven it’s jurisdiction. Importantly, this was not a breach of copyright case. It is undisputed that Virgin had a valid licence (the CC-BY 2.0 that the photographer had granted to Flickr) and complied with it. Chang was pursuing “a number of tort claims including misappropriation of Chang’s right of publicity”, not copyright infringement. Further, unless the photo was a selfie, Chang would not be the copyright owner; copyright in a photograph belongs to the photographer, not the subjects. Chang can sue in any or all of the states or territories in Australia where the ad was broadcast and the relevant court would probably decide that it did have personal jurisdiction. However, the case would fail because breach of the “right of publicity” is not a tort recognised under Australian law. That is, if Virgin had done what they did in Texas it might have been illegal but because they did it in Australia, it wasn’t.
There is ample reason to conclude that "non-commercial" would include a church, as well as advocating a political cause or candidate. The hard part of "personal". In the context of (Canadian) bankruptcy law, it can mean "non-business use"; in the context of "personal use property", it can be "A type of property that an individual does not use for business purposes or hold as an investment. In other words, property that an individual owns for personal enjoyment". US tax law takes "personal purposes" to refer to non-business purposes. But in the context of copyright (especially music downloading / copying), it is taken to refer to the use of or by an individual. Distributing free copies of a protected work does not get legally sanctioned due to the copying being non-commercial. The alternative term "private" is much clearer, in identifying "just you", but is probably avoided in this kind of context so as to avoid the wrong inference that you can only play Pokemon in the privacy of your own home. So the slightly less clear term "personal" is used instead of "private" especially in copyright-related contexts. "Personal" and "private" are not exactly the same, but when it's about use, I don't see any difference, and I think there is no question that use to attract to a church or political candidate is not "private", it is public. Since the license does not define "your own personal purposes" and there is not an existing crystal-clear definition of "personal purposes", the phrase could be given its "ordinary (plain) meaning". Of course, plain meaning has to give way to contractual intent, so we have to figure out what the parties intended. Except, you don't have a contract with Niantic, but still, plain meaning surely has some place in the law of licenses. At this point, in a lawsuit, both sides would hire an expert witness like a linguist or English teacher to make the case that a church or other non-commercial non-private use is / is not included in the meaning of "personal purpose". A silly argument could be made to the effect that if you personally have an interest in doing something then it is a personal purpose (if specifically commercial, it would be precluded by the term "noncommercial"). What makes this silly is that everybody does things for personal purposes (even acting in a way that benefits others, since you do so for the personal reason that you should do so), and thus "personal" would not mean anything. That is, "personal purposes" does not mean "whatever motivation or interest you personally have". You can also gain a certain understanding of what "personal purposes" means by looking at similar licenses. In the context of academic publishing, authors are typically granted license to copy "for personal, professional, or teaching purposes". Professional purposes and teaching purposes are things that the person has an interest in, so by mentioning these things separately, we must conclude that "teaching" is not a "personal purpose". And so: I would conclude that a court could find that using a product to support a political campaign, philosophy, or religion, is a "public" purpose, not a "personal" purpose. At the same time, at least as I understand it, a lure module is a thing that others besides yourself personally can see (I admit, I don't go), which implies that the purpose of the thing is not entirely private. In addition, there is a fair amount of buzz out there about how a lure could be good for business, which is (1) clearly in contradiction of the license terms and (2) clearly a golden opportunity for Niantic, perhaps in a few weeks after everybody gets hooked and then they will offer non-personal licenses. Their license terms also say that you will not "use the Services or Content, or any portion thereof, for any commercial purpose or for the benefit of any third party or in a manner not permitted by these Terms". I would say that that definitively says "No don't do it", and it also means that you can't be nice to a neighbor. So what they literally say and what they really intend are probably completely different things.
You've tagged this as both united-states and european-union, so this answer is about the United States. Before you can &quot;license&quot; someone to do something, you must first have the legal right to prevent them from doing it. Otherwise, your purported &quot;license&quot; is just a worthless piece of paper (technically, you might be able to sell those pieces of paper notwithstanding their lack of validity, so I suppose they wouldn't be completely worthless). If we imagine that the subject of a biography or autobiography wants to control the publication of that biography, there are a number of legal grounds that might be cited, depending on the circumstances: Copyright: The person who actually wrote the biography (who may or may not be the subject!) can prevent others from making copies or derivative works of it, as well as several other rights enumerated in 17 USC 106. Most publication agreements involve signing an exclusive license with the publisher. If the author has not signed such a license, then the biography is not going to be published in the first place. Regardless, copyright only exists once the work is &quot;fixed in a tangible medium&quot; (e.g. saved to a hard drive, written down on a piece of paper, etc.). If it's still &quot;in your head,&quot; then you don't own anything. If the subject and author are different people, then the subject does not have any rights here at all; copyright belongs exclusively to the author. Furthermore, copyright only protects the individual work. It does not prevent someone else from writing a different biography from scratch, so long as this second biography is original and does not reuse any content from the first biography. The underlying facts belong to no one. Privacy rights are generally handled as a tort under state law. If the subject is a public figure (i.e. the sort of person who's likely to have a biography written about them) then privacy rights tend to be rather limited. However, they are not nonexistent, and invasion-of-privacy claims are occasionally raised, usually in cases where highly personal, sensitive information is disclosed against the will of the subject. This may also become relevant if the author of the biography obtains information in an illegal fashion such as by hacking or physical trespass. However, in most cases, the content would need to be pretty far beyond the pale before this would have a realistic chance of succeeding. Personality rights are usually considered an extension or variety of privacy rights. In general, they allow the subject to prevent their name from being associated with a commercial endeavor without their permission. However, it is likely that the First Amendment would bar the application of personality rights to a biography, unless the publisher tried to misrepresent a ghostwritten work as an autobiography without the consent of the subject. Libel is a tort under state law. Libel laws in the US are extremely limited, and the subject would need to establish at least all of the following in order to succeed (or else the claim is barred by the First Amendment): The defendant published a statement. A reasonable person would interpret that statement as factual (and not an opinion, puffery, etc.). The statement is materially false (i.e. the &quot;gist or sting&quot; of the statement is false, regardless of whether it is technically 100% accurate). The statement harmed the reputation of the plaintiff. The defendant knew the statement was false, or made no serious effort to verify it (&quot;actual malice&quot;). Not required unless the plaintiff is a public figure, but the subject of a biography probably will be a public figure. There may be additional requirements depending on the state, and the defendant will probably try to file an anti-SLAPP motion if state law allows for it. Of these four rights, copyright is by far the most commonly &quot;licensed,&quot; followed by personality rights. Nobody gives out licenses to commit libel or invade their privacy. That leaves us with two ways of licensing your (auto)biography: Actually write it yourself, and sell it to a publishing company. You will give them a copyright license as part of the process (in exchange for royalties and an advance). Convince a publishing company to hire a ghostwriter for you, and then license your likeness to them. The public will be told that you &quot;wrote&quot; the book, and you will promote it in exactly the same way as if you did write it. Neither of these options will prevent someone else from coming along and writing their own biography about you, of course.
Yes, but ... You can bring a suit in an Australian court of competent jurisdiction. You would then need to find and serve the defendant in compliance with both Australian law and the law of the jurisdiction they are in. They can then raise a jurisdictional challenge that the Australian court is not the appropriate forum - they might be right depending on where the substance of the contract happened, whether the contract has a nomination of venue clause and if the contract is subject to an arbitration agreement. If the Australian court decides it does have jurisdiction it would have to decide which law applies - this is likely to be a mix of law because some laws in both jurisdictions are likely not excludable by contract. If you win, you would then have to get the judgement enforced somewhere the defendant has assets. Not paying a judgement is not a crime so the defendant will be of no interest to law enforcement - getting money from them is your problem. tl;dr Cross-national litigation is way more expensive in time and money and way less certain in outcome beyond the inherent uncertainty in any lawsuit. This is not something you can expect to succeed at without lawyers in both countries so you will be spending tens of thousands for an uncertain outcome. If you are chasing millions this may be worth it but if you are - don’t do million dollar deals by email in the future.
In the US, the author would be able to wind an infringement lawsuit against the re-publisher. Title 17, the US copyright law codified, grants the author the exclusive right to authorize republication, and does not require that a person use their real name. The argument "It was on the internet, it's in the public domain" is utterly without legal merit. The same goes for the assertion that a person loses his rights if he is uncontactable. The author has stated the terms of the license, so there isn't even a reasonable argument that the infringement is innocent (unknowing: "I thought it was with permission). There is no requirement that you have to allow a potential user to hassle you about the license terms. The one thing that is special regarding anonymous and pseudonymous works is that under 17 USC 302, "copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication, or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first". For a work whose author is identified, copyright "endures for a term consisting of the life of the author and 70 years after the author’s death". This assumes that the host site has not preempted author's license: Stack Exchange, for example, preempts an author's exclusive right, so you can copy stuff from here accorting to the SE terms of usage.
Their code, their rules A copyright holder is free to offer their work under none, one or many licences. They can, at the same time, use their own work however they see fit without regard to the licences they have given/sold to others (except, they can only give one person an exclusive licence). As an analogy, let’s say I own a fleet of cars. I can drive my cars anytime I want. I can let Jim drive my cars anytime he wants for free. I can let Mary drive a specific car on Thursdays and only within 10km of the depot. I can let Joe drive my cars providing he pays me $50 a day. And I’m not going to let Fred drive them at all because Fred’s a jerk. Each of those is a different licence.
You may want to select a state where you have some sort of presence. According to this article, personal jurisdiction can be waived, but subject matter jurisdiction can not, and "for pragmatic reasons some states deny subject-matter jurisdiction to specific claims, such as those arising in other states". In other words, if nothing about you, the other party, or the case has any relation to the state, the court doesn't necessarily have to listen to the case. And if that happens, the provision about them submitting to the jurisdiction is worthless. Beyond that, are you OK with going to court in the location you select? Do you know whether all your terms and conditions are valid in that location? Do you know whether one place or another has more favorable interpretations of the laws, or more favorable local rules, when it comes to the types of disputes you are likely to have? You probably want a lawyer to help you decide.
All the CC licenses permit anyone to use the licensed content, and to make copies of it for others. Some of them permit using it for commercial purposes, others (the ones including the -NC- clause) do not. Some CC licenses permit creating modified versions of the original work (derivative works), others (the ones including the -ND- clause) do not. I do not know of any standard license which allows users to create and distribute derivative works, but not to distribute the original. The license used by Project Gutenberg permits re-use and re-distribution, but if a fee is charged beyond recouping expenses requires the removal of the PG name and logo. One problem is that if derivative works are allowed, this would include works which are only trivial modifications to the original, which would have the effect of allowing distribution of the original. If the main concern is about commercial sales, possibly a CC-NC-SA license would effectively serve the purpose? That allows redistribution, including of derivative works, but forbids commercial reuse or distribution without separate permission, and requires all redistribution to be under the same license. Otherwise a new license for this situation might have to be created. It is often a good idea to have the assistance of a lawyer with IP expertise in creating a new license, or the wording chosen may have unexpected effects or include unintended contradictions. Or one could simply place a basic copyright notice along with text such as "Modified versions may be created only with permission from the author. Request permission at work-permisisons@example.com". However, if the work proves popular, there might be a large volume of requests.