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ElcomSoft Lawyer Says Internet Outside U.S. Law

Posted by michael on from the trying-hard dept.

NetRanger writes: "ElcomSoft, the company that employed Dmitry Sklyarov, has fired its opening shot, asking the court to dismiss the charges. Their argument: since the Russian company is based on the Internet, it is outside the jurisdiction of the DMCA. This is rather interesting if it holds up, because it would set a precedent which would allow other countries to tell the DMCA to just go away. If not, ElcomSoft could be out $2.25 million dollars, and the USA could find itself cold-shouldered by a lot of countries with less draconian copyright laws." Wired has another story.

1 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Re:DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR HOSTING SERVICE IS? by Novus · · Score: 5, Informative
    Anyone know what's a good country to use for web & email hosting? Some desirable traits:
    • Not have anything like DMCA or WIPO treaty (sorry, USA)
    • Strong crypto is legal (sorry, France)
    • Not have pro-censorship laws (sorry, Germany, Australia, USA)
    • Not have weird libel laws (sorry, UK)
    • Searches and siezures only done with a warrant (sorry, USA)
    • Not take Scientologists and their kind seriously (sorry, USA)
    • etc
    ...Yet still be fairly well-connected. Is there any such place?

    Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is based on my interpretation of Finnish law, based on published cases and sites like this.

    • Finnish copyright law is kind of nice; it has lots of free use provisions (e.g. the right to copy and convert copyrighted material that you have bought the right to use as necessary to use it (irrespective of license agreements)).
    • The EU in general seems not to recognise software patents, AFAIK.
    • Strong crypto is completely legal in Finland; I regularly use military-grade PGP at school to send in assignments.
    • Censorship in Finland is mostly limited to broadcast media (e.g. TV).
    The rest of your points I'm not too sure about, but I have not heard of any nasty cases regarding them.

    Finland is quite nicely connected, especially in urban areas (and university campuses). Consumer broadband is a bit on the expensive site but becoming widely available.