Infringement of Internet and Copyright Laws: Where is the Burden of Proof?

The Internet is here to stay, we can all be sure of that. It is practically impossible to imagine our modern contactless world on the Internet, without the enormous wealth of information available, without all the blogs and forums and chat rooms that have sprung up in the last two decades. The constant discussion about what is acceptable on the internet is also here to stay, where national and international laws can be enforced and how they can be enforced, or who should be responsible, and this is especially relevant when it comes to rights laws. From author.

Copyright: the ownership of a work by a specific person or institution and the right to copy or disseminate, sell or give away. Copyright and intellectual property are hotly debated topics and they are also topics that have caused many personal and court battles over the years. Copyright theft, the taking of someone else’s work for personal gain or simply for non-private use, has been a problem since long before the Internet. Goethe had problems with the German booksellers, who were the original publishers of written and illustrative works in Germany before the dedicated publishers took over, as did Dickens, whose works, published in England, were copied in the United States without his permission, without being paid for it. your efforts. Times have not changed in this regard, only the means by which copyright can be infringed and the means by which works are stolen and reused by others.

In most societies it is accepted that a person is innocent until a court of law proves his guilt. It is incumbent on the prosecutor to present a case that convinces the judge and jury of the course of the events leading to a crime, and to convince them that the person prosecuted is the guilty party. On the Internet it is a completely different matter; there is no judge or jury as such, simply a group of people and companies that have vested interests in their businesses, in their prestige and good name. However, this lack of a judge and jury is not a sign that the Internet, and the many companies and individuals directly involved in it, are above or beyond the law. Several countries have begun the task of revising laws designed for normal everyday life to incorporate Internet transactions, international communications, and the like. Copyright and the methods by which a person enforces their rights fall into this area.

Indeed, the copyright claim and proof of ownership have not changed. When a copyright owner discovers your work elsewhere, taken and published without permission, they still have to prove that the work is theirs and that the person or site that reproduces it does not have the necessary permissions or authority. This fact has not changed with the advent of the Internet, only the means of proof have changed, the means of obtaining a satisfactory result of a claim.

Replacing the judge and jury in a copyright infringement claim, we now have the legal and abuse departments of ISPs, those companies that rent or sell storage space to individuals over whom they can create a presence on the web. Web. When claims for copyright infringement filed against companies or individuals in foreign countries were once destined to be lost, due to lack of judicial recognition between one country and another, or the inability of the copyright holder to travel and file charges in each respective country, there is now a system in place that clears the way for claims to be made, tried and resolved regardless of the country in which the claimant lives, regardless of where the offender is located. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has long been accepted by many countries as the means by which Internet-related copyright issues can be rectified quickly and with relative ease. Unfortunately, not all countries accept this international law, but for those that do, it is a boon to all copyright holders and is very easy to use. The complainant should contact the copyright infringer in the first instance. If a removal claim is unsuccessful at this level, a formal complaint is made to the service provider (ISP) to which, if it is a professional and transparent company, they will respond. Responses take the form of contacting the site user, blocking offensive material until the entire website or account is suspended until the matter is rectified.

However, as in a national court of law, the burden of proof rests entirely with the plaintiff. It is up to the copyright holder to prove ownership and show that permission for dissemination has not been granted. The person accused of copyright theft remains innocent until the prosecutor (the complainant or the copyright holder or representative) can adequately demonstrate that the material in question is subject to their copyright. If this fails, since the ISP being contacted does not react, the copyright holder has no choice but to go to court. At the time of writing, there is no international court covering the Internet.