Is it illegal for someone in a foreign country to photocopy copyright-protected material without permission?
Not necessarily. Copyright law in other countries can vary greatly from U.S. copyright law. In some other countries, permission is not necessarily required from any rightsholder or creator to photocopy printed material. Under the principle of “national treatment,” as found in the Berne and Universal Copyright Conventions, each country’s Reproduction Rights Organization (RRO) collects and distributes royalties for foreign authors and publishers on the same basis as it does for its domestic authors and publishers, following their own countries’ copyright laws and practices, rather than U.S. contract law or U.S. copyright law. The RROs that have collected these photocopy license fees have done so with full legal authority in their own countries.
Related Questions
- I sent a package to a friend in a foreign country that contained things that are illegal in that country. Can I be prosecuted?
- Is it illegal for someone in a foreign country to photocopy copyright-protected material without permission?
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