Please do me a favour - Please copy and paste this message on your wall and encourage all your friends to do so: There is a message which has gone viral which quotes the Berner Convention and the Rome Statutes, concerning Facebook fiddling with your copyright! Its a load of old hogwash, to put it mildly. An individual owns the copyright for anything which that person creates, no matter what the content, and no statement or declaration made concerning your copyright will further enforce your rights. The Berne Convention (notice spelling) concerns itself with enforcing copyright across borders, and in signatory countries, and sets the life of copyright, after the death of the creator, generally 50 years after his or her death, but as an exception photography retains its copyright only 25 years after the death of the author. It also provides for rules concerning the publication of creative works on the internet and the effect of copyright laws in the country of origin being applicable across signatory countries. I would question whether your notification of Facebook actually has any lawful effect. All the material you upload to Facebook is published in some way or form, and it is perhaps other users of the network who are likely to breach your copyright, rather than Facebook. Naturally, if Facebook chose to uplift any of your creative works and sell them to a third party in breach of your copyright, you would have cause for action. I think you would find it difficult to establish the cyber trail, and you could never distinguish between the fact that the material was stolen by another networker or sold by Facebook. That is the risk you take by publishing your creative works on Facebook. The easy solution is not to publish your creative works on the internet! There is no punishment by law under the Rome Statute in relation to copyright infringement. The Rome Statute is an undertaking of the International Criminal Court which provides for the establishment of the courts functions, jurisdiction and structure. It has nothing to do with petty copyright infringement, but more robustly establishes the crimes over which it shall have international jurisdiction, such as genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. It is folly and untrue to suggest the Rome Statute will enforce your copyrights in criminal law. It is an absolute waste of your time to publish the spurious notice I speak of on your profile… and respectfully I would not encourage others to do so. It is absolutely incorrect to suggest that there is a tacit acceptance to relax in anyway your copyright on any creative works by not publishing this on you profile. One thing you may do, if you are so very concerned about people plagiarizing or stealing your creative works is to switch off your share button, which is not actually possible in Facebook. You can however limit sharing to just your Facebook friends or Friends of Friends. Best of all, as I have said, is just don’t publish your special creative works on Facebook! Please fee free to copy and paste this message whenever you see that stale old message quoting chapter and verse about the Berner (sip) Convention and Roman Statutes! Feel free to tag me in your repost too.by Andrew Field
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 17:05:06 +0000