Business Ideas in Romania

Liveblogging from Blogoree Workshop

• Posted by Sara on October 24th, 2007 filed in IT & Telecommunications

Bogdan Manolea does a Q&A type of presentation, so I’ll blog in the same structure from tonight’s Blogoree Workshop.

• Q: What law is applicable on the internet?
• A: All laws are applicable on the internet as well. Special laws - 365 / 2002 - under the name of “Servicii ale societatii informationale”.

• Q: What national legislation?
• A: As a Romanian citizen, Romanian legislation applies. The owner of the domain name is responsible for everything that happens.

• Q: How to obtain copyright?
• A: Coyright is obtained as soon as the creation is completed, it has copyright per se. Any type of content benefits from this. ORDA gave a law saying that if you intend to sell software in physical stores, you should register with them. This, however, is not necessary to have copyright.

• Q: What if my copyright is infringed?
• A: You have two options: penal or civil law. However, if you use penal law, it needs to have a certain degree of “social danger” for the police to take action. At the moment, in Romania, they are not attacking unless people are multiplying for profit. Once this is initiated, there is no legal way to stop it. The civil law - you hire a lawyer to obtain evidence and sue. The ORDA requirement is specific to Romania, and was imposed by Microsoft in 2000. The intent is not to protect small developers. To prove something online, Bogdan says that you should require the judge to do a “cercetare la fata locului”.

• Q: Practically, other than going to the police, how can you convince someone to take infringing content down?
• A: Using a “cease and desist” letter. However, it is useful to ask a lawyer to help with phrasing the letter. You can send such a letter with an “executor judecatoresc”. The first step, however, is to send an email.

• Q: How to find out the contact details of the owner?
• A: If the domain is registered to a false person, you can make a complaint to ICAN and they should take care of it (send an email to get in contact, after 30 days suspend the domain, after 15 days block, after 15 days more delete).

• Q: What type of proof can you use?
• A: Bogdan says that you can use SEO as proof (a copied content will have poorer indexing). Bobby, however, says that an SEO can very easily work around this.

• Q: What to do?
• A: Determine if the content actually has monetary value for me. If not… take the minimum action (email, etc.) and that’s all. Even if you do win, you will receive very little anyway. The best thing is probably to create a strong negative publicity on the web.

• Q: What about copyright for user-generated content?
• A: Your sign-up form can have a checkform where users give up their copyright. You should use a different check than the usual Terms and Conditions.

• Q: Liability for copyright-infringing content that you only link to?
• A: Varies. Generally, you are liable. However, a recent ruling in Spain said there is no liability if the content is only linked to AND not used to obtain profit.

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Written by Sara