The Conflict of Laws and Jurisdiction - An essay on the connection between Private International Law and Copyright in enforcing online

Abstract: Since the emergence of the Internet in the early 1990’s a lot has changed in the world and the area of law is no exception. Important for this essay is that the internet created a strong connection between the areas of Private International Law and Copyright, mainly since copyright infringements became transnational to a higher extent and happened more through ubiquitous medias. These two legal fields now work together to create rules on enforcement of copyright infringements. However it appears that the effectiveness of enforcement is lagging behind, mainly because of reluctance from the EU to change the rules to better fit the digital climate. These existing rules worked well when they were first introduced, but that was at a time when the nature of infringements was different from today. The issue lies in the rules’ dependence on the principle of territoriality, the issue being that it is difficult to regulate a non-territorial infringement with territorial rules. The new types of infringements cause issues in both the field of jurisdiction and applicable law. These are issues of major importance to solve to be able to effectively enforce infringements and catch infringers globally. But, as this essay will show, the existing rules are inadequate. To create an enforcement process that is not extremely expensive or overly time consuming the rules need to evolve to fit the nature of today’s copyright infringements. Copyrights provide rights for authors and artists in the creative industries, and an ineffective enforcement of those rights could make it hard for those protected to keep creating, leading to fewer artistic works being published. Should this happen it could have devastating consequences not only concerning the viability of businesses and the economy, but also ultimately for culture as a whole.