Quote:
Originally Posted by Quentin
The short answer is that a company does not have to be U.S.-based (nor do its owners/principals) in order for a U.S. court to assert jurisdiction over that entity. If the company transacts business in the U.S., has content on servers within the U.S., etc., such things are a sufficient 'nexus' for the court to assert jurisdiction.
The long answer is too complicated for satisfactory explanation on a webmaster message board.... and way too nuanced to be addressed by a layman like myself, anyway. ;-)
- Q.
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Hey Q, long time no talk buddy. How've you been?
Yeah, I have no doubt what you say about US hosting, and doing business in the US is true. I guess what I'm wondering is what new avenues for the defense open up because of the internation interaction.
For instance, and this is just a made up example, what if a tube site hosting in the US but doing business as a Canadian company were to be sued for infringment? Now if a US court wants to assert jurisdiction in the matter, then surely the defendants are granted other rights associated with US law? In this particular case, would the company not be able to make a DMCA defense, assuming they had been compliant under the DMCA (Can a foreign company even register a DMCA agent in the US?)?
You would then expect the plaintiff to argue that it was NOT user uploaded but rather uploaded by the site owner. Here's where I think it might get tricky. First off, does a Canadian company have to respect a US court order? Can a US judge force records to be turned over? I would expect they would first need a Canadian Judge to issue the order or subpoenas. The whole situation would then be muddied by things like Canada's Privacy Laws which happen to be some of the strongest in the World. It might not even be legal, in Canada, for a hosting company to turn over server logs or other things that could violate the privacy of Canadians.
Anyway, yeah tricky stuff for sure. Be curious to see what the outcome is here.