On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 12:09 PM, Alan B. Pearce wrote: >>- I have a webshop based in the Netherlands. Which countries' law >>applies when I sell something to someone in, let's say, Japan? If >>that seems easy (a lawyer I asked said it is definitely not) add >>the complication that we might use paypal (which used to be US >>based) to do the payment. > Yeah, but if Wouter sells from the Netherlands to Japan, and the object is illegal in Japan, the Japanese authorities don't go after Wouter and expect him to follow Japanese law. They go after the person who imported the item. So the parallels to this case are actually quite interesting. > I have seen contracts where there is a specific clause to the effect that > "This contract shall use the legal definitions and rights of the law of xxx > country" to define such a problem. I suspect it would be sufficient to have > a suitably worded statement on your web pages, probably suitably prominent > on the check out page. The contracts are not much more than boilerplate. They may not be enforcable, but companies will try to require that jurisdiction be brought into a court that favors them - this is why so many US companies are incorporated in Delaware - it's laws regarding corporations are very favorable to the corporation. So a company and a customer may live elsewhere, but if they don't challenge jurisdiction they may have their case dealt with in the Delaware court system. But if the contract was broken elsewhere, the clause may or may not have legal effect depending on a lot of other factors. Unfortunately that's really only for contracts. A more relevant disclaimer might be one of liability - "By purchasing from us the customer agrees to accept all liability regarding their local laws and statutes, and agrees to hold harmless ThisCompany from any issues arrising from the product above and beyond the cost of the product itself." If you read the Google Terms of Service for both viewers and content providers, I'm sure it says something similar. However, lots of contracts and terms of service have completely unenforcable clauses that are put in there in the 1) hope that they may be effective in some cases and 2) expectation that it will affect user behavior so they don't have as many problems. -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist