[freehaven-dev] data banned in one place, not in another?

[dmolnar <dmolnar@hcs.harvard.edu>]

Roger just asked me about the assumption that
 "data which is banned in one place may not be banned in others." 

Here are some possible categories of bad data, and examples in 
which this principle worked/didn't work where possible. More examples or
law surveys appreciated. More categories of bad data also appreciated.

Categories:
* Child pornography
* Copyright infringements
* Patent infringements
* Gag Orders

Here's some

* Child pornography 

Laws against child pornography seem to be very strict throughout most
of Europe and North America. The age of consent, and so the definition of
what is a "child", can change from place to place. 

Still open for me :
	- laws in non-European countries
	- exact ages of consent in a range of countries

A paper on U.S. laws :
http://grove.ufl.edu/~techlaw/4-2/cox.html

An overview of UK laws is here :
http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/internet/97_1akdz/akdeniz.htm

A paper on European Convention laws :
http://www.stop-childpornog.at/pa_eu.html


* Copyright material

The "Berne Convention" seems to be the most popular international
copyright regime. Supposedly if a work is copyright in one participating
nation, then the copyright transfers to all participating nations.
 
"Supposedly" because some signatories (such as China) are less
vigilant about enforcement than others. In the past this has
allowed people to set up operations for distributing pirated 
software; this is supposedly changing because of US pressure.

Complete text of the Berne Convention :
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/global/TheBerneUniversalCopyrightConvention/toc.html

Overview :
http://www.alpeda.com/fr_2086.htm

A list of signatories is part of the Copyright FAQ (about 100 of them):
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/law/copyright/faq/part4/

(This list may be a few years old)

The possible problem I see is that infringing material probably
should be stored on servnet nodes in nations which have not signed the
convention. It's not clear that those nations will have enough
access to run servers. 

The alternative is to store infringing material in countries which
have signed the convention. This may open the nodes with this
material to some liability. 

The above also assumes that infringing material can be identified in the
first place, which isn't clear at all. 

* Patent-infringing material 

The law for patents seems to be different, since there exist patents
which are valid in the U.S., but not in Europe and vice versa.
I'm not sure what the differences are yet. 

The RSA patent is an example of such a patent, and PGP versions
up until 2.5 an example of material which was legal in one place,
but infringing in another.

* Gag Orders 

Sometimes a court will issue a gag order which prevents news media from
reporting certain facts about something. If the court has limited
jurisdiction, news media outside the jurisdiction are not bound.
So they can print anything they want.

Example :
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/canada/karla.html

This was a case in which a murder occured in Canada. The Canadian
court issued a gag order. U.S. papers continued to print news
concerning the case anyway. The NYT editorial linked to from
the page mentions that trucks full of U.S. papers were stopped
at the border, because they violated the order.

Thanks, 
-David Molnar