Legal laws in uh.. zimbobwE

[scr0p]

Can anyone tell me how the law works in other countries, besides America? Like do they let you sue, what do they do if you commit an online crime, scan, etc.. I been to Syria last summer and.. eveything is pirated, everything, they have playstation but its called 'GameStation" and it looks the same, logo is copied too, games are pirated, music CD's, DVD's..etc

[honeybee]

Originally posted by scr0p
Can anyone tell me how the law works in other countries, besides America? Like do they let you sue, what do they do if you commit an online crime, scan, etc.. I been to Syria last summer and.. eveything is pirated, everything, they have playstation but its called 'GameStation" and it looks the same, logo is copied too, games are pirated, music CD's, DVD's..etc

Laws work??

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[axion_sa]

It's spelt Zimbabwe & you don't want to go there. FYI - they don't have computer laws per se, but the cops are mean bastards & don't give a flying f*** about them anyway.

<- Ex Zimbabwean

[mendhak]

Laws generally exist in theory. But that's about it.


Where in Syria did you go to?

[scr0p]

Damascus, I didnt want to go at all, I was forced. So in other countries you can I dont know, use your IP to scan for proxies and your ISP or the "fed's" wont do anything? won't or CAN't do anything?

[honeybee]

Originally posted by scr0p
Damascus, I didnt want to go at all, I was forced. So in other countries you can I dont know, use your IP to scan for proxies and your ISP or the "fed's" wont do anything? won't or CAN't do anything?

I doubt if the US can actually crack down on hackers in other countries, whatever be the US laws. All it may be able to do is bring in the UN and bully a country into either handing over a hacker to the US or prosecute him in the country. There are some countries, I think Phillipines is one, where there are no laws against hackers or cyber crimes. Or the laws are just different from those in the US. So in case of software piracies, you need to determine if copying a licensed software is against the local laws. If it's not against the local laws, because maybe the local laws don't talk about software copyrights or exclude software from existing copyright laws, you can get away with it.

There are many countries where software piracy is rampant. A while back there was a member here from one such country who said he couldn't get any licensed software there, nobody seemed to know there was anything called licensed software.

In India too, people are yet to get used to the concept of "buying" software. Big corporates have started using licensed softwares, but that's mainly because of the anti-piracy campaigns some software giants have been carrying out.

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[mendhak]

Originally posted by scr0p
Damascus, I didnt want to go at all, I was forced. So in other countries you can I dont know, use your IP to scan for proxies and your ISP or the "fed's" wont do anything? won't or CAN't do anything?

Damascus isn't so bad... did you get to see Allepo, Lataqia... tartous... and Palmyra? (There were many more).


So in other countries, usually, the case is a poor legal infrastructure for these things (tech-related) exists. And even if they do exist, they're not properly enforced. So the answer is both: they won't and they can't do much.

Depends from country to country really. as HB just described, phillipines is an example of a place lacking those laws. I believe there are a coupe E.European countries that lack these laws as well. That's why you can find all these P2P companies hosted there, like kazaa and morpheus. They're out of reach.

[honeybee]

Originally posted by mendhak
So in other countries, usually, the case is a poor legal infrastructure for these things (tech-related) exists.

I wouldn't call it exactly a poor legal infrastructure. In a country like Uganda (for e.g.) if you set up a piracy shop and start selling computers with pirated software to the natives there, I doubt for the next 10-15 years to come there'll be anything the local law can do about it. It's because the people there might never have seen a computer or software and the government simply doesn't know there exists something called an intellectual property right or whatever other things.

A more fitting example is the recent cloning row. Some Western countries might be contemplating a legal framework to either ban cloning or ensure it's closely monitored and controlled, while most other countries (take the African countries for an extreme comparison) have got much bigger problems to frame laws about than cloning. Many of them may not even know what cloning means.

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[mendhak]

Originally posted by honeybee
I wouldn't call it exactly a poor legal infrastructure. In a country like Uganda (for e.g.) if you set up a piracy shop and start selling computers with pirated software to the natives there, I doubt for the next 10-15 years to come there'll be anything the local law can do about it. It's because the people there might never have seen a computer or software and the government simply doesn't know there exists something called an intellectual property right or whatever other things.

A more fitting example is the recent cloning row. Some Western countries might be contemplating a legal framework to either ban cloning or ensure it's closely monitored and controlled, while most other countries (take the African countries for an extreme comparison) have got much bigger problems to frame laws about than cloning. Many of them may not even know what cloning means.

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Then, we can take the case of the in-between countries. In the wake of their development, they may start to recognize the need of such laws, but their previous apathy towards it may still persist for a while.

I can give you the example of Iran, where we have shops openly selling pirated software (there's even a company registered for this ), even though laws have been passed against it. The laws are such that even if someone is presecuted, the penalty is vague, not so severe.

The local authorities may be aware of the law, but they could care less about it, because it's so 'lenient' (the poor legal infrastructure)

Now how many in-between countries are there? A lot, I'm sure.

[honeybee]

Or because they don't lose anything if there's piracy.

In India, patent laws are based on the process and not the product, while in the US the laws are based on product. Thus in the US if somebody patents salt, nobody else can produce salt, while in India you cannot patent salt but you can only patent a method of producing salt. So if you patented the production of salt from seawater, another guy can patent a chemical process of mixing Na and Cl to produce salt. Maybe such differences exist in case of software laws too ...

We have had cyberlaws only recently, I think a couple of years at the most. And there have been cases where the police seized monitors from the people, thinking they were the whole and soul of the computer.

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[mendhak]

Originally posted by honeybee

And there have been cases where the police seized monitors from the people, thinking they were the whole and soul of the computer.

LOL!!!

[honeybee]

Originally posted by mendhak
LOL!!!

LOL

Since then, however, the Mumbai Police at least have shown great awareness. They have appointed some real software gurus (Mr. Vijay Mukhi, if you have heard the name, is heading the cyber crime cell here) to work with the police in such cases. If it were not for this, I wouldn't give hits to the cyberlaw. Even with my limited knowledge I could fool the cops easily

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[sql_lall]

Hey, this is a great resource for international views on Copyright.
What i was wondering was, is there anyone from countries not mentioned here who can post what it is like in their country?

Thanks

[snakeeyes1000]

ukraine: don't ask, don't tell, don't get caught or you're done

[honeybee]

Originally posted by snakeeyes1000
ukraine: don't ask, don't tell, don't get caught or you're done

That sums up India too, and most other East Asian countries in my opinion. My brother, who visited Malaysia twice, tells us there are shops with huge stacks of pirated software CDs. You could get almost any software on earth there, with everything except originality. Even the covers and the CDs contain images like the original. And I don't think Malaysia doesn't have anti-piracy laws. He tells us the shops get advance notice of any raids, and they are closed that day

India too doesn't have any active anti-piracy campaign. Police take action only on filing of a complaint by Microsoft or AutoDesk or Oracle or some such software manufacturer. Never a "pre-emptive" strike Also it's much hard to target individual users. If Microsoft, for e.g., decides to target home users of Windoes, of which I am sure 99% use pirated licenses, it will effectively hand over this huge market to Linux and other open-source and free OSes. Even the computer vendors (assemblers) will start endorsing Linux-based systems. So the anti-piracy campaign may actually backfire. So far I can say this campaign has been targetted at corporates, computer vendors and software training institutes.

The most rampant piracy in India is of software games. The game manufacturers and authorized distributors are not keen on tapping the potential in the Indian market, as I have so far not heard any piracy cases about games. And B2B websites have listings of pirated games being sold for a song. I reported this matter to the website owners, in case of one particular website, but I can see that they either are helpless, or don't want to take any action against the vendors for some reason or another. Games like Max Payne which would normally cost Rs. 400/- officially, are sold for as little as Rs. 50/- All you need is a CD Writer and you can start your own business.

Maybe this is because there're other problems of law-enforcement. For e.g. the police are not properly educated about the software laws, nor are the users aware of it. Prices of software are high, so people cannot afford it most of the times, and if someone does purchase a licensed version, he cannot afford the support cost in case there are problems, and he has to call some support person to his home. An assembler, who supplies pirated software, is available at a phone call, doesn't charge you anything or some nominal amount, and fixes the problem efficiently. That's the same reason households generally prefer an assembled computer from a known person than a branded system from a company. The company won't bother for after-sales support, but the assembler does!

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