ALAI Country of Origin Report (2012)

In 2012, the  Country of Origin Study Group of the International Literary and Artistic Association (ALAI) released its report.  The report is titled "Determination of Country of Origin When a Work is First Publicly Disclosed Over the Internet." Rather than considering the Internet connection or server where the work is stored on (and location of that piece of hardware), is there a way to connect the work with a specific country based on the author?  The Study Group provided recommendations in its eight-page report to do just that.  Those recommendations are:

• If the work has multiple co-authors, the country of origin will be one co-author’s country of  nationality, as designated by the co-authors 
• In the absence of such a designation, the country of origin will be that of the nationality of a majority of the known authors at the time of the work’s creation
• If none of the authors is known, but a person or entity has assembled and made the work available, that person shall be deemed to represent the authors under Berne art. 15(3), and the country of that person’s nationality or seat shall be the country of origin
• In the case of a work created by multiple authors, particularly one to which multiple authors contribute successively, and in the absence of a collective designation of a country of origin, then even if some or all of the contributors are known,the person or entity who has assembled and made the work available may, for purposes of interpretation of Berne art. 5(4), be deemed the author of the work as a whole -without prejudice to the authorship of individual contributions, if separately identifiable - and the country of that person’s nationality or seat shall be deemed the country of origin.

This is an important and fascinating topic, so you might want to read the entire report.