Choosing Law in Cyberspace: Copyright Conflicts on Global Networks

This article contends that in the digital era, the current system of national, territorially limited copyright laws requires a flexible copyright choice of law regime. To promote certainty and predictability in the choosing of the copyright law applicable to acts of exploitation, choice of law rules should use the location of a user as the principal factor to determine the applicable copyright law. In appropriate circumstances, the choice of law rules should allow the application of a multitude of national copyright laws to single acts of use on digital networks. This article also argues that a broad application of flexible contract choice of law rules that respect agreements about the allocation of rights as much as possible is of preeminent importance in the digital era.