Quote:
Originally Posted by wodin
I have seen disclaimers on works saying that they were in the public domain in one country but not in another, and if you live in that country don’t download them or you will be in violation of copyrights.
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That disclaimer was probably written by the hosting company or ISP, and isn't necessarily legally correct. They're telling the downloader that it's illegal in order to discourage them from doing it, but I don't think the answer of "who is responsible for any violation" is that simple.
This has only become a widespread problem since the internet has made it easy to transfer content across widely different areas. Copyright laws don't really take it into account. I would expect that we'll likely see treaties trying to bring the copyright status of different works into a more uniform state, such that it wouldn't be in the public domain in one country, but still under copyright in another.