On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 18:33, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The servers are in the US and owned by a US
organisation which has
minimal overseas assets, which means US law is pretty much the only
one that applies. If you want people in Serbia to be able to re-use
the content, though, you need to make sure it satisfies Serbian law
too. That means you need to make sure it satisfies whichever is the
more restrictive in any given situation.
I agree that US copyright law is a mess, but we have no choice about
following it. If someone wanted to sue the WMF over copyright
infringement, they would do it in the US, since the US clearly has
jurisdiction and the WMF has lots of seizable assets there. Other
countries may also have jurisdiction, but there isn't much point suing
someone in a court that can't get hold of any of their assets.
My precise question is: Does US law follow local copyright laws in
relation to the works published locally and by authors with local
citizenship? Or not?