Quote:
Originally Posted by Micah Foehammer
My understanding of this is as follows:
1) The Russian Federation is a signatory to the Berne Convention
2) According to the terms of that agreement, Russian copyright law only takes precedence if the copyrighted work originates in Russia. i.e. the author (or songwriter) is a citizen of the Russian Federation
3) According to Article 5, section 2, works originating outside any signatory to the convention are protected EXCUSIVELY by the copyright laws of the county they originate in, including the means to redress any copyright violation.
It seems to me that unless the site in question has an agreement with each of the songwriters in question that offering those songs for download is a violation of the author's copyright regardless of what the site may claim.
The convention terms can be found here:
http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/b...tml#P119_19081
Ignorance of the law is no excuse. |
Yes, it is an excuse. See Napster and the millions who downloaded songs from it back in the day and got away with it. Some were eventually "made an example of" but this was long after a public media campaign was released, informing people that this new internet thingy in fact, violates copywright. So those lawbreakers were given time, and facts, and presented with a show of the books. Even then, some people continued to use it and so a some cases were filed, and some examples were made.