Slashdot Mirror
How Italian Police Shut Down U.S. Web Servers
gessel writes: "CNN has an article describing Italian police shutting down a U.S. hosted website deemed in Italy to be illegally blasphemous. The article goes on to describe the ramifications and U.S. efforts along the same lines."
That the "illegal" website showed americans how to make spaghetti. Italians don't want that leaking out.
CNN must have read about it on Slashdot.
Can we prosecute Italy as computer hackers? Terrorist computer hackers?
Looks like some Italian cops found someones password and shut things down. It's not like they forced the U.S. based ISP's to pull the content.
Looks like a non-story to me.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
... so long as important trading partners don't object. Such is the way of the world.
If the content was created in one country and hosted in another country which laws should apply?
I bet if you were to ask an American they would say their laws should apply no matter where the content is housed as long as they created it. So what is so different about the Italian authorities believing the same? Just because you can do things outside of the normal laws of your respective homeland doesn't suddenly give you freedom from prosecution for breaking them.
I don't agree with the laws in question here but that isn't for me to decide, it is for the local people, in this case the Italians to decide to change the laws or allow them to stay as they currently are.
--- I do not moderate.
If their webservers are anything like their football players they'll go down as soon as you even portscan them!
Does not use of someone elses password to get in and alter computer services in the US you do not own a criminal offence and under new US laws considered "Terrorism"?
Can US (and not like they would do it, but...) demand extradition of the Italian Police as a "terrorist organization" commiting a "terrorist act" on US soil?
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Let's all celebrate about this quote.
Jim Conway of the New York-based Direct Marketing Association worries that U.S. companies may have to scale back U.S. campaigns if they cannot assure that their mailing lists contain no European addresses.
From the article...
Blue Gravity's chief executive, Tom Krwawecz, said the company was never informed. And he believes U.S. laws -- not Italy's -- ought to apply.
Why? The 'perpetrators' were in Italy and were busted by the Italian polizia. Seems to me they (the perps) used off-shore hosting as an attempt to dodge local laws. Is Blue Gravity claiming ownership of the contents of the web-site? I sure hope not. Now there's a precedent we don't want to see anytime soon.
I may not agree with the laws of other countries but until we have one set of rules for all people, we have to let others govern themselves according to their own laws. Otherwise, we'll most likely end up fomenting even more terrorist groups.
"A revolution without dancing is... a revolution not worth having"
I see, if it is an individual that goes and changes images and text on a company web servers they are a hacker and a vandal, if it is the government it is considered what? Can't anyone, in particular the government, set limits on their behavior in relation to others. People are always talking about democracy when they pass a law, but I notice there always seem to be a certain amount of intolerance for the other persons behavior when that law is passed. --- Qoute from The Patriot "Why should a trade in 1 tyrant who is 3000 miles away, for 3000 tyrants who are 1 mile away?"
The article says they just logged in with the user's name and password... did they obtain it volutarily, or involuntarily (network sniffer, etc...)?
Anyone know? It doesn't seem that US authorities are involved in this whatsoever, though.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Guy was Italian Citizen, content was uploaded from a PC in Italy, and they used is Username + PW to shutdown the site.
/always/ been, the US has arrested people and shutdown sites that contain content that /we/ consider inoffensive even if the host is in some other country. Nothing new here.
They did not come over here with armed guards and confiscate the host computer, and they did not go around suing left and right.
What is the fuss? If they started going after US sites by US citizens then I would get a bit peeved but. . . . Yeesh. This is the same as it has
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
So... What's the big deal again?
Sure, it offends me that the Italian government discourages free discourse, but that's a matter for the government and the citizens of Italy to work out. Just because the site was hosted in the US does not extend legal protection to the person running the site. This would be as if I, say, obtained a copy of the Solaris source and kept it on a server in Iran, and the US forced me to delete it in order to avoid jail time. Regardless of if you think the laws involved are intelligent, I am still subject to the laws of my country.
If the Italian government had somehow forced the US hosting company to remove the speech in question, then we'd have a serious problem to discuss here. However, that now being the case, I don't see what the issue is.
Want something real to worry about? Try this: an American U student is charged with theft for taping a speech by Tipper Gore. They say he "stole" her intellectual property. I suppose from now on we'll need expressed written permission from Major League Baseball to describe what our political leaders are saying...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
This was already talked about in this story. The only news here is the cnn article.
To me the best way to respond to this kind of bullshit is to mirror the content as far and wide as possible, and advertise the existance of the mirrors. Let the pope put that in his corn cob pipe and smoke it!
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Be sad that personal rights will be infringed?
Be happy that the Direct Marketing Association (aka spammers) will have to cut down on marketing campaigns because of European laws?
I know I should care about the poor, marginalized neo-nazis who can't sell stuff on Yahoo, but all I can think is DIE SPAM DIE!!!!
It seems to me, that the twist here is that, for the US-based ISP, it seems that the users account has been effectively hacked. An unauthorized user (the Italian Police) have acquired the password and defaced the pages being hosted by the user. Simply because they did it from the proper uses own PC, doesn't mean it's not a hack, nonetheless, does it?
Does that mean that the US-based ISP can fire charges against, and request extradition of, the offending hacker from Italy?
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
The naughty pages constituted defamation of the Virgin Mary, to hear the police say it. Italian law, supposedly, includes strict restrictions of blasphemy against any religion, whatever that means. (I'm still wondering how they reacted to Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses.")
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
As I understand the US sales tax rules, if a customer in New Jersey buys my product, I must charge him NJ sales tax but I must charge the Californian customer California sales tax. In fact, I believe, I have to be even more local than that and work out the correct rate applicable to my customer's zip code.
In the UK, we have something similar with VAT which is charged at different rates (or not at all) depending on which country I'm selling to.
Why should the logic be any different when we're working out whose laws apply?
The physical location of internet servers is largely academic nowadays, I have no idea where google is physically located, I just know that it's the best search engine on the net so I use it.
If it is Italy's policy that police are allowed to access a computer and remove files they feel are inapropiate then I'm all for it... Not that I like the idea of police having that kind of control. But this may set some international president for non-crimilization of computer "hacking" from contries that have no laws against it, and could possibly end the US attempts to extridite people who have committed no crime in their own country.
It's one of those prices you pay for free data... if you don't like it then maybe it's time to rethink free data.
Your mammas flamebait.
...the illegal actions were committed in Italy, the police agents went after the person who committed them and imposed him to correct those actions (or corrected them themselves).
Nobody prevents somebody in the US to restore that site.
The irony is... the blasphemous words contained in the site are part of the url and are present in the page the police put up. I guess somebody in Italy should sue the police.
They brute forced his password (possibly physically from him) and without the permission of the US hosting site, gained unauthorized access pretending to be someone else.
When will the US courts have the balls to press hacking, theft of identity, and computer fraud charges against the Italian government?
I don't know if I'm joking or not.
Never confuse volume with power.
Yea, so the stupid guy left his password sitting around or something. That's his fault. I was thinking that the Italians did some legal or political manuvering here to shut down the site, which would be alarming. But it's simple a case of stupidity instead.
The ISP should restore from backup and tell the idiot to keep his password secret.
A little aside:
David Farber, the moderator of a popular online mailing list on technology with recipients all over the globe, envisions a time when he'll have to cut back on his postings for fear of lawsuits elsewhere.
Many countries do not value free speech the way the United States does, nor do they give speakers as much leeway in defending libel lawsuits. So mailing list mavens like Farber need to be concerned about whether items they post might violate a law somewhere.
"We live in a world where we communicate worldwide and we travel worldwide," Farber said. "If I violate some Australian law and then land in Sydney, do they throw me in jail?"
While the article makes no mention of it, David Farber is no mere ordinary citizen, he's the Chief Technologist of the FCC (yes, this is the same David Farber -- the photo in the CNN article is him)
Yes, the FCC does not regulate the Internet itself. Yet, if anyone is in a position to do something about such questionable tactics on a government policy level, it's Mr. Farber...
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
> Does not use of someone elses password to get in and alter computer services in the US you do not own a criminal offence and under new US laws considered "Terrorism"?
Not if the owner of the password told the police the password, say in exchange for reduced sentence or charges or some such.
The article doesn't say, but there's no reason to assume the suspect *didn't* cooperate with the police. Deals can and are made in such cases.
Let em rot in their oppressive countries not knowing what's really going on. See if Italy ( or the UAE ) can support financially with ad revinue the infrastructure to index the web.
Don't sell em anything. Why risk being sued.
Eat at Joe's.
And a globilized world cannot translate to widespread anarchy. There must be some rules as to what can be done, and of course means to uphold that.
And I don't mean just ways to censor, but also ways to protect our privacy, reduce spam, etc.
Whose laws apply on no man's net? Anarchy is good as long as it doesn't harm you. I believe in free speach and freedom, but also the fact that people should be accounted for their acts.
please excuse my apathy
In point of fact borderless media already exists, we call it radio and TV. Radio/TV signals are broadcast indescriminately and can be received all over the world and yet we don't see any nation trying to censor the broadcasts of other nations (I'm ignoring the eastern block countries efforts to jam radio signals from things like Radio Free Europe, that's a different issue).
Why can't we take the same international protections that are afforded to radio and TV and extend them to the internet?
Don Dugger
"Censeo Toto nos in Kansa esse decisse." - D. Gale
It sound like a virtual version of the Inquisition to me. The next step is developing a way to torture the servers and make them change their contents =)
Blue Gravity's chief executive, Tom Krwawecz, said the company was never informed. And he believes U.S. laws -- not Italy's -- ought to apply.
.02 cents anyways.
I don't think so...
We do not have the right to interfere with the laws of other countries (unless it is flat out human rights violatations and the enslaved are being used to build a war machine against us) Being that the USA is a melting pot, we have been taught to respect the belief's and values of other cultures.
The content was created in italy, by an italian. Being Italian myself, the story sort of took a special note with me.
Let's say someone in the US was creating kiddie porn sites and hosting them offshore. Most states in the US make it illeagle to have nudes of anyone under 18. The laws in other countries differ, you can marry as young as 14 and still be legal. Should we exempt someone dealing in kiddie porn just because their site is offshore? No! Of course not.
So if that is the logic applied here, then why in gods name would we want to impose a double standard to our allied nations laws? It doesn't bode well with "keeping the peace"
my
I'm kind of curious what would happen if the web site's host just put the content back up again, and removed that user name and password. Does the Italian government have any recourse? If some foreign country tried to prosecute me for breaking their laws, I'd tell them to screw themselves. Since I'm not an Italian citizen, is there any reason I should have to obey their laws in the United States? Would the U.S. government let the Italians prosecute me? I would certainly hope not.
Looks like some hairy Italians found someone's sausage and greased things up. It's not like they forced the American exchange students to suck their dicks.
Looks like a non-boner to me.
Just kidding, I'm hard.
It's human nature to want control. This becomes real dicey in a global community and the US isn't innocent of applying its laws to non-citizens. Look at what the US did to poor Dmitry Sklyarov. That was totally outrageous!
Let's face it. When people get involved things get screwed up.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
On the other hand, the police seemed to act more like 15-year-old hackers than police. They "...used a suspect's computer and password to reach across the ocean and replace the offending images with the insignia of the special police unit that tracked him down." That really doesn't seem very professional to me.
Can someone with Italian legal experience/knowledge please explain the difference between "illegally blasphemous" and "legally blasphemous" speech?
The way I understood it, all blaspheme is illegal under Italian law.
Just wondering...
You would think Slashdot, of all "news" sites, would know the difference between a web server and a web site... but I guess slashdot editors like to go for those attention-grabbing (if innacurate) headlines.
He could promise to take his site down if the D/A ( or Italy's version ) lets him off scott free.
Eat at Joe's.
The reason people say this a lot is because, of all the nationalities in the world, it's the Americans who tend to think that the world should be doing things their way, and that everyone else is just backwards.
Yes, it's stereotyping, yes, it's wrong.
But there IS a reason you see it so often... and that's because many, many americans DO reflect this attitude.
http://abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s603070.htm0 3&mode=nested&tid=153
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/10/04502
People are stupid. Seriously, this really ticks me off, who ever said "I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it." was right on, and he's probably rolling over in his grave now. Dear world, GROW UP! People should be allowed to say whatever they want about you, your religion, your race, your gender, everything and you should have 0 rights to silence them.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
I love how non-Americans
Guess what? I am an American.
--- I do not moderate.
Tipper Gore / Intellectual property
Well, the way I would see it is that in your example, the person creating the content could be tried under the laws of his country of residence for creating the content, but the server itself and content on such could only be touched by the laws of the country in which it is being hosted.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/10/045020 3&mode=nested&tid=153
Ummmmm.... Hail Timothy, king of reposts?
I generally don't complain about the way things are run, but it always seems that Timothy and Michael NEVER check on what they are posting.
Are the Italian police sure the web site was talking about the Virgin Mary and not the Material Girl?
Since the US government accepted that it's legal to prosecute and convict the operators of a website hosted in state A under the pornography laws of state B, where someone viewed the pictures on their computer, then it seems to me that it's lost the right to object when the police in Italy enforce their laws on a website hosted in the US. If the law does not apply equally, then it's worthless.
While this is certainly not something I would advocate, will these actions start causing ISPs and content providers to start blocking particular countries from accessing their webservers?
.
For example, Yahoo could have chosen to block all traffic from French based ISPs and net ranges to their Auction site in response to the French courts. While we, as technical people, know this would not necessarily block French citizens from viewing the content, as has been proven by Napster, courts do have different interpretations of what works and what doesn't.
Some ISPs have already advocated this for blocking spam -- China is the first to get listed when people talk about who to block to protect mail servers against spam, and thus whole blocks of Chinese IP addresses get blocked from mail servers.
Will this start to happen to other services as well, simply to minimize risk due to laws in other countries.
I know I'd rather block IPs from other countries than risk being taken to court
Dave
Flying a jet into an italian ski-lift killing many people is not considered a crime.
it appears that the Italian police used the user's authentication credentials to alter the site. That's a computer crime, and the Italian police involved in the action should be immediately arrested if they set foot on U.S. soil. If it's good enough for Dmitri Sklyarov, it should be good enough for foreign law enforcement officials that steal computer access.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
...just *claimed* that they had shut down the offending sight and just post a story with a link to it on /.
That sucker would be down in no time.
why run from Vincenzo?
Fortunately history has shown that italians make really half assed fascists.
Your content offends us, the Government of Kumchatka. Therefore we have shut down your entire website and email, since it has been seen to carry non-Kumchatka supporting email.
Viva whoever!
</end oppression possibility>
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
This is, obviously, a jurisdictional question.
There are three factors at work here:
1. The country in which the material was physically produced. Itally.
2. The country in which the author resides. Itally.
3. The country in which the material was published. United States.
Note that 1 and 2 do not necessarily have to be the same, and may be complicated.
In order for a country to have complete jurisdiction, al three categories should take place within that country: the author should be there, it should be produced there, and it should be published there.
In cases where the material is produced in one country and published in another, the country where the material was published should have jurisdiction to regulate or not regulate that material: in the case of a web-site, to take it down or not, or to censor it or not. No other country than that of publication should have this power.
That's the easy question. The hard one is which country should have jurisdiction over the author -- i.e., punishing him or not, according to laws? It certainly should not necessarily be the country of publication. The question is, should it be the country where the author resides or the country where the material was produced. They can be different. I can, for example, log into a server in Taiwan and type up a document there. In that case, the author resides in the US, but the material was produced in Taiwan.
Though this seems like a difficult question, its actually very easy if you liken it to real-world scenaries. If I -- a US citizen -- leave the United States and go to another country (for vacation) which has different laws regulating, say, murder, I am accountable only to those laws, not US laws. The laws of one nation should stay within that nations borders; they should not follow that nations citizens around the world where-ever they may go. This would require that vacationing citizens would have to consider two different sets of laws to obey -- an unreasonable request. It may even require that citizens obey two contradictory laws -- an impossible request.
Thus, the nation where the material was produced should have governing authority over the person who produced it, *provided* that person is in that nation at the time. I.e., this does not mean that the US can prosecute someone in Taiwan because he logged into a US system from remote to produce some material. However, it does mean that Taiwan cannot prosecute that person. It also means that should the person come to the US, he can be prosecuted in the US because he produced the offending material in the US, remotely from Taiwan.
Lets apply this to the Dmitry Skylarov case. This means that the US has the jurisdiction to regulate that content within the US, but not the jurisdiction to prosecute anyone who wrote that content, as the content was produced in Russia.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Maybe I missed something. From what I can tell, the police obtained the account name and password, logged in, and removed the offending material from the user's account. No "servers" were shut down in the process, and the hosting company wasn't even aware of it.
I suppose if the account holder later calls back in to complain, there's something. But it WAS his account that was used. If the police were able to find out his password, he should have made better efforts to conceal it. As it stands, no legal action was taken against the hosting company, they weren't even burdened with a request to remove anything.
I guess I'm just not getting TOO excited about this.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
They did NO such thing, they did NOT I REPEAT NOT ! Shut down ANY web sites. They could have but they actually DIDNT.
.
What they did do, was CHANGE the content in question REMOTLEY. They made no effort to have the ISP or the US goverment TERMINATE the hosting of these sites, what they did was (probably with a rubber hose and blackjack) get the username and password and altered the site.
I hate when people say something other than happened, I read the damm headline an just about panicked that they somehow did this through LEGAL channels in the US , THEY DID NOT
What they did is no different than what a 12 year old script kiddie could have done with a username and password. they changed content, there is a HUGE difference betwwen CHANGING content and "Shutting Down" a website, if the fellow had US cronies that were willing to host it the Italians could do absolutley NOTHING about it. Im half tempted to get a cached copy and host it for the fellows. Let the meatballs try and shut it down.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
Well, it looks like Cisco will be getting _allot_ of business in the near future building more national firewalls. And IBM can even supply solutions to administrate exicutions/prision sentences of blasphemous/anti-government individuals and groups like they did in WW2. More money to the corporations yeah! :)
And there was me thinking that the human rights laws here in Europe would give me the rights to free speech.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Infringing on the freedom of speach is a human rights violation.
While I don't know what's so special about Swiss bank accounts (I'm just a poor college kid, not a money launderer), I do know they're famous for keeping money safe from your government/police/etc.
Just as we store money in foreign contries to keep it safe from our local policies, the Italians in question stored their (publicly available) information in our country to keep it safe from theirs.
no comment
A "Law of the Net" would be a Bad Thing. For example, if there is an international law regulating net speach, what standard is used? American? Saudi? The law applied must the law of the country in which the server is based.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
This headline is slightly skewed. US Web Servers were never shut down by the Italian police - only content was disabled.
Also, this article is about much more than what the Italian police did. Five sentences mention the Italian police incident, and over twenty times that content in the article are either not specific to the Italian police incident, or are about different incidents.
Presenting the situation in this manner is dishonest. If Slashdot wants to revive the Italian police censoring incident, then make the headline adjust accordingly. Don't grandstand five sentences with the same force as if the New York Times did a page one expose on the event. Mainstream media is bad enough with their slant, I was hoping we could avoid it here.
Is Blue Gravity claiming ownership of the contents of the web-site?
Doubt it, that's copyright the author, under international law. But if the Italian police have violated US law, then, bearing in mind the Italian police have admitted they hacked the account, are Blue Gravity going to be restoring the web pages from backup tape? ;-)
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"An Italian citizen, in Italy, claims that the Italian government violated rights given to him by the US constitution because his website was hosted on an American server.
Question 1 : which US court would hear a case brought by an Italian citizen (living in Italy) against the Italian government?
Question 2 : Whose taxes, Americans' or Italians', would pay for the case?
Do Italy and the USA have extradition laws setup up for between the countries? Because it seems to be the same as if they went into the US, and took the information themselves, which would have been looked down upon. (Think if they Italians didn't like something in the Pentagon and just went and wanted to take it down).
To further this idea, if they 'happened' to have an FBI password that they obtained, and went in and deleted files that they thought were 'illegal' to them, wouldn't that be seen as another county trying to hack the US?
Just a thought, but I am really apalled by this whole turn of events. It's really sad that those who are religous, aren't even strong enough in their faith to be able to deal with other views. They can only deal with their own and must irradicate all others.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
I mean, without US "muscle", we could have had such wonderful things as all of the Pacific rim being part of some "Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" and the Italian Politburo would be enacting another five-year plan to rescue their economy from the last five-year plan (the last one had a bad interpretation of Marx...) while the French Parliament would be about to take a holiday to celebrate the birthday of Adolf Hitler - or would it be Kaiser Wilhelm?
No, people in the United States should not have to respect the laws of Italy, if they are in the United States. I would think a better course of action would have been for the Italian government to prosecute the person who created the offensive and illegal material (since he is an Italian citizen), and ask the server to take the offensive material down. They have absolutely no right to take material off of a server hosted in the United States. The same applies to kiddie porn. If kiddie porn is created by someone in the United States, that person should be prosecuted. If someone in the United States views kiddie porn, they should be prosecuted. The United States should have no authority to take that information off of a server hosted in another country though. Request it be removed, yes. It is a disturbing trend when other countries start to enforce their laws across international borders. I sure as hell can't keep track of 160 (I think) different sets of laws.
The problem is that the article doesn't specify if it was with the user's consent or not. And, if it was (for example, if consent was obtained through plea-bargaining), then it can't be considered a hack.
/. beloved case, for example.
The article brings up several more interesting points, referring to a
The United States, too, is guilty of trying to extend its reach.
A U.S. copyright law was used to jail a Russian programmer in California for writing software that was legal in his country. He was later freed, but charges remain against his Russian employer.
They also talk about how they had to wait for him to attend a conference in Las Vegas before they could do anything. It seems like the laws of jurisdiction are beginning to show holes of inadequacy: just how do you deal with the global village?
But guess what -- there's even more. I double-checked this next bit when I first read it, just to make sure.
And because a large part of Internet traffic goes through the United States -- even if both sender and recipient live elsewhere -- last fall's anti-terrorism bill lets the Justice Department prosecute foreign hackers when they attack computers anywhere in the world.
Leaving aside cracks about UUNET for the moment, can you imagine the complexities of trying to enforce something like this if you are dealing with an unfriendly country that doesn't like to extradite to the U.S.? And while other countries may not be in quite the same boat as the U.S. with regards to Internet traffic hosting, let's not forget it's all going somewhere -- depending on where you're sending your traffic, it can go through several different countries before reaching its final destination. And each of those countries has its own complex legal system.
This is already a big problem (several other points mentioned in the article indicate this: e.g. the Yahoo Auctions/Nazi memoribilia difficulty), and will only get worse. Wait for the big ruckus to ensue when it's decided a world court is needed to supervise these issues and the U.S. is only one amongst many countries that refuse to accept any exterior jurisdiction (a la the World Crimes Court). The thing is that most of the world can actually agree on what constitutes a war crime against humanity -- but how do you cope with deciding if a page in cyberspace constitutes a crime when you've got as many options on what's legal and illegal as you do countries in the world?
Can't moderate you say? What did you do, participate in the great slashdot troll discussion? Metamod a funny post (modded as troll) as unfair?
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Being that the USA is a melting pot, we have been taught to respect the belief's and values of other cultures.
You are kidding, right? The USA has only respect for its own culture (if one can call it that). Britain, France and most other European countries prohibited slavery, racism et al. at least 150 years ago. The USA was still in a state of racial segregation in the fifties!
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Nobody Expects the Spanish^H^H^H^H^H^H^HItalian Inquisition!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
What in the hell does anything in the article have to do with shutting down a web server?
How would haven co handle such an event? would they bend to the law of italy?
/. interview - i would love to see what they would say about these types of cases....
this is the perfect test of such a "country"
Hey malda - how about getting a havenco rep on a
American's are, in general, Ameri-centric assholes.
I should know. I live here. I have since birth.
We believe atleast as strongly, if not more strongly than most nations, that our ways are the correct ones and we have the right to make others live by those same beliefs. Whatever we want is good. Whatever opposes us is bad.
We are always right. It just happens that every other nationality is always wrong.
This is the Internet. You can say "fuck" here. - AC
The world isn't a fair place, and none of us get out of here alive.
What exactly do you want them to do? They can't get rid of the mafia so they had to show the world that they still actually exist and that they're not sitting on their lazy ass all day.
Both will have an opportunity, whether that's fair or not. The country of residence simply needs to draft a "thought crime" law. The USA is full of them already-- many states have laws that make it an offense for residents to leave the state for the purposes of acquiring products (alcohol) or services (sex) that are illegal in the resident's home state.
Umm, whatever! 5% of the world's population uses 50% of it's natural resources. Not US-Centric! What a joke. People have that opinion because it's true. Stop being so patriotic and face it. If you would stop and think about the reasons people have this opinion it wouldn't tke you long to realize it's cause. A bad foriegn policy that is driven by greed and only servers corporate interests...probably the main reason. Stop complaining and start demanding that your government become more accountable for it's foriegn policy.
Who's with me? Everytime some jack@$$ tries to sue US for breaking laws in their country, let's sue them for breaking laws in ours. For starters, they're driving on the wrong side of the street - that's a 100 dollar fine here, buddy. And their using electricity, that's fifty hail mary's and a horse-whipping in the Amish communities of Pennsylvania. And after they've served their penalty, we pass them off to Saudi Arabia, who can sentence them to death because saying those Hail Mary's was blasphemous against Islam.
Seriously, there's is no way countries can both use an International electronic network, AND impose national laws on other people who use it. So we either have the "International Law of the Internet" (which just *ain't* gonna happen); or we have the "American Law which claims to be International Law of the Internet" (which hopefully won't, but still might happen); or whichever tiny little country on the planet decides to legalize internet gambling, porn, hacking information, and file swapping first - is going to generate 99.999% of it's GNP by hosting everyone else's websites.
So that's it. If countries are dumb enough to follow this line of thinking, I'm getting a lawyer, converting to Amish, and registering "www.InBelgiumYouCanDoAnything.com". And all Slashdot readers are formally invited to our IPO party.
Quoting from the CNN story:
Consider a privacy law recently passed by the European Parliament requiring companies anywhere in the world to obtain permission before sending marketing e-mail to Europeans.
Jim Conway of the New York-based Direct Marketing Association worries that U.S. companies may have to scale back U.S. campaigns if they cannot assure that their mailing lists contain no European addresses. (Emphasis mine...)
Er...this is a bad thing?
Joe Dougherty, Florida, USA
The words I thought I brought, I left behind. So, never mind.
Britain, France and most other European countries prohibited slavery, racism et al. at least 150 years ago
Please. So the US outlawed slavery 10 years after Britain did. But it wasn't the US that murdered 7 million people because of their race in the 1940's.
But it was an Italian, in Italy. they didn't force the removal of the sacred information like CoS would do.
I don't think that the Italian police should have that power, but getting up in arms about *how* they did it isn't the problem. that they did it at all is what you should be yibbering on about.
Consider a privacy law recently passed by the European Parliament requiring companies anywhere in the world to obtain permission before sending marketing e-mail to Europeans.
:)
Jim Conway of the New York-based Direct Marketing Association worries that U.S. companies may have to scale back U.S. campaigns if they cannot assure that their mailing lists contain no European addresses.
Someone let me know if this DOES happen.. I'll be wanting a European email address the minute it occurs
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
from the article:
"We live in a world where we communicate worldwide and we travel worldwide," Farber said. "If I violate some Australian law and then land in Sydney, do they throw me in jail?"
Skylarov
what i enjoy is how non (north) americans push this, then get all pissed off when (north) americans don't care about them trying to upset (north) americans.
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
If the hosting company really thought what was done, was wrong, they could have just restored the site from backups, and changed the ftp password. The site would have been back on line and the Italian Polize would not have been able to do anything about it.
In the case of amnesty, you need to be accepted by the country from whom you seek help. Should it work the same for ideas? If you are afraid your ideas will be censored by your home country, get someone in the hosting country to help you by maintaining your site. This way the police would have to act in the hosting company to censor the content.
So in this case, the Italian citizen should have contacted a U.S. citizen before being caught. The U.S. citizen could then maintain the site, and when the Italian police struck, would have simply fixed the site and changed the password. Then the Italians would have had to fight the case here in the U.S. where our laws would likely protect the content.
As I understand it, this is exactly what FreeNet is supposed to do without having to formalize a relationship with others to host your content. They host it merely by viewing it a few times without having to stick their own necks out.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
Does the name Dmitri Skylarov ring a bell? The U.S. government thinks it is entitled to prosecute a non-U.S. citizen for acts committed outside the U.S. Why would they not support the same far-reaching power for the Italian government? The U.S. opened a _BIG_ can of worms with the Skylarov prosecution... I've even begun to wonder if I should avoid travel to France, since under French law a website must provide a French version and my employer does not...
- mark
OK, from the flip side of the coin.
Italy is predominantly Roman Catholic... check it out. [CIA]
and the Roman Catholic lawbook is the Bible...
and the Bible says all sin and blasphemy is forgivable, except blasphemy against God... check it out. [Bible]
So from that end, it makes perfect sense to block a website that carries blasphemy against God, instead of say, child porn.
Does this mean anyone connected with pron can be arrested if travels to a country where it is illegal?
Will the US government support such an action? Or will we send commandos to rescue them?
All your favorite sites in one place!
The point is that the Italian police committed UNAUTHORIZED access on US servers.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
I don't say that awful things did not happened in Europe in the 40's, but in the USA racism was still legal until the 50's, and the original poster grossly exagerated the melting pot that the USA is supposed to be.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
IIRC: They don't have to report interest and everything else to anyone. Thus, you don't have to pay taxes on your interest, and you don't have to report the money. They may also be insured higher, but I am not certain about that.
What?
Jackass.
The joke, which obviously went over yours and also the moderator's head, was that by posting "The Pope Sucks", i.e. something blasphemous, on Slashdot, the police would try to shut them down.
Think of it this way:
Imagine a book sitting in the U.S. that had print so large that the people in Italy could read it. It would be a call to war if Italy didn't like the book and replaced its text with something else. What if the book contained kiddie porn? Well, its up to the U.S. to deal with what's in the book, since this is where it is stored.
The murky area is whether or not to go after the author. I would say that if a law is broken on a country's soil (a server housed there), then the server should get taken down, as well as the author if their country permits deportation. So: the soil the server is on should determine jurisdiction for the server, and the soil the author is on should determine his fate. In that case, kiddie porn servers in a kiddie porn condoning area would be legal throughout the globe. BUT... if someone accessed the kiddie porn servers in a non-kiddie porn condoning society they would be subject to the applicable punishment.
feel free to replace bold text with whatever pisses you off
eh
Crystal Meth: Would you ingest somthing made from a poisonous gas and an explosive metal? You do it every day -- Salt!
AmericanS not American's.
If you're going to be critical, don't look like a fool.
hypocrisy, too.
The Italians obviously have jurisdiction over one of their own citizens. But what if a US citizen (for instance) hosts a mirror of the site in question (in the US), can he/she be arrested if they set foot in Italy? Should we all be more cautious with our online comments and websites to avoid future travel problems?
Is this true?
Under pressure from their citizens, governments around the world are increasingly abandoning the hands-off attitude they initially had toward the Internet.
I mean the part about the citizens pressuring the government for a hands-on policy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As usual, another news story on there caught my eye and was far more interesting: 60 foot squid washes up on Tamsmanian beach!
I mean, blah blah fascists police the internet and make their laws up as they go along. Blah blah, but Giant Squid! 60 feet long! That's like, 18 metres!
graspee
AC's will be around 4eva!!!
Haha, we got the first two posts.
Eh?
Still though it doesn't matter WHERE it's hosted. What matters is who created and uploaded the content from where, and what local laws they've broken.
In italy there is hardly and seperation between church and state, the vatican pretty much runs it all. The catholic religion is a very HUGE part of italian culture and to the italians desecrating the virgin is a VERY serious thing. I know this because my family is VERY italian and despite living in the USA we still hold strong to our belief system.
The thing is, the guy was in his own country when he did the offense. He probably TOLD them his password for a lighter sentance. How is that unauthorized access? It isn't! Shit if I was facing 10 years in the slag vs. 1 year for giving up my password, well then here! **********
You really gotta understand the culture, we have extridition treaties with italy for a reason. Nothing was extridited though, it italy it's probably leagle to search someones computer. There might be a law giving the state the right to do it, we just don't know because we don't live there. If there is a law like that, it's just a part of living in italy, and being a citizen.
If american hosting companies are afraid of foriegn goverments doing this to their citizens then they shouldn't do business with them. Simple as that. They should have a big ass bold lettering in their TOS like this..
We do not provide service to accounts from Italy, Cuba, China, Russia because we do not agree with thier censorship laws"
Thing is, we're so strapped for cash right now, I think many companies are more willing to make a buck than to fight for some censorship issue.
my take on it.
Deal with it.
No we do NOT "respect" other country's laws if they are more restrictive than ours. In ALL cases, our US Constitution trumps all other possible laws. No foreign power can negate US citizen Constitutional Rights. Period. We have the right to free speech, get it? That means that I can say "Allah sucks goat dick" or "the 'virgin' Mary (right!) took it in both ends in a threesome many times" and ya know what? Ya cannot prevent me or punish me for saying it because I am in the USofA where even offensive speech is protected. Your laws terminate where my Constitutional Rights start. The LEAST restrictive laws should apply, not the most.
For all you know, English could not be his native tongue.
Is everybody on this thread in generalization mode today? (Irony in that question noted.)
Well, I think they're welcome to use his cached password to login and remove the site if it's available. Of course, trying to hack the server just isn't right, and neither is demanding its removal.
SIG: HUP
Unfortunately, Google translation and Internet Archive link adjustment don't interact well, but with some work, you can read it in English, more or less. It doesn't translate well.
Hey, like I said.
#1 The Italian police action was probably legal in italy.
#2 By living in italy, the guy automatically is under italian law and his rights are dicted by that goverment
#3 I wouldn't put it past him to have given his consent to access the system in liu of a lighter sentance
#4 How is this disrespecting any american law?
#5 If american hosting companies don't like these coutries laws, why don't they turn away their business?
If they essentially hacked a website to remove content that is illegal in their country, perhaps someone should remind the Pope that hacking is illegal in the US. In fact, doesn't it now carry a life sentence here? Because John Ashcroft sez, "hackers = terrorists". Opps. How does the Bu$h administration decide between "protecting the homeland" by jailing hackers, and mandatory religion when it's the church doing the hacking? Perhaps he should just eat another banana, and go back to ruin the US economy...
Blue Gravity's chief executive, Tom Krwawecz, said the company was never informed. And he believes U.S. laws -- not Italy's -- ought to apply.
I don't think so...
If he really feels that way, he should just put the site back up, eat the hosting fee, and vote with his resources.
Its ridiculous to assume that one porn site getting changed is going to cause the US to throw a political molotav at Italy. But, I *would* be willing to bet there are going to be dozens of sites springi8ng up shortly that feature "madonna porn" (like the "sex" book, right? When she had the hairy armpits? and the fake mole?)
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
I think this can be solved easily: no person may be prosecuted by a country for (non-physical) crimes committed against the laws of that country while not within it's borders. Of course, if you stand at the Canadian side of the border and shoot a US guard - well that's a whole other story (hence the "non-physical" clause, where physical can be defined as an action that does not leave 'meat-space' :)
SIG: HUP
How did this get modded up? Yes, you disagree with how the Italians do things, and their laws. We all know that Italian law is different than American law. The only real issue is if Amarican law or Italian law applies.
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
What occurs when there are conflicts between the laws of the two countries?
Let us say, for example, Siliconland requires that all hacked computers be sent to the National Siliconland Computer Forensics lab for analysis. However, Synapseland requries that all hacked computers be destroyed immediately in the interests of national Synapseland security. If a webserver in Synapseland was hosting data of a Siliconlander, and the webserver had its data hacked, whose laws would apply?
Using the Italy/US scenario of cross-border situations, whose laws take precedence? The country hosting the content or the country that produced the content? (Country being short for country of the individual.)
We need to define a territory of jurisdiction for computers. They are increasingly more intelligent, and I imagine a set of laws more convoluted than god being enacted to control them.
Anyway, what if the server was co-owned by an American? Say the guy in Italy bargained his way out of a long sentence by revealing their password. In the process he also bargained away what was the other guy's right as an American to post that stuff. The Italian police then decide to use Italian laws on the American's half-owned property by defacing the site. Once the Italian is in jail, the American reposts the stuff. What have the Italian police accomplished on the net? Nothing at all. What if the guy didn't change the password and the Italian police deface it again in accordance with the precedent?
eh
Crystal Meth: Would you ingest somthing made from a poisonous gas and an explosive metal? You do it every day -- Salt!
If people REALLY wanna see Porn featuring the Madonna, they can just hit amazon and pick up that awful coffee table book she put out a few years ago!
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Without intending any personal offence, what you say about Italy could be said about Ireland also (well, except the Vatican stuff). But as a "zeroth-generation" Irishman living in the U.S., I've noticed that Irish-Americans tend on the whole to be much more conservative and old-fashioned than people actually *living* in Ireland. That's a broad, sweeping statement, but decendents of emigrants get nostalgic about "the homeland".
So *if* your family has been in the U.S. for a generation or more, you may find their beliefs and attitudes not very representative of Italians.
Apart from that, I'm with you 100%.
"Under pressure from their citizens, governments around the world are increasingly abandoning the hands-off attitude they initially had toward the Internet. They are now applying their laws far beyond their borders -- thanks to the borderless medium."
It is not for the US or any other nation to dictate to another country or culture what is right and what is wrong. If the people of Italy do not want these web-sites inside their border, then they have EVERY right to shut them down.
No matter if a US site is protected by the US Constitution. The US Constitutions DOES NOT apply in Italy. It is their inherent RIGHT to exercise their rights.
Just because something is legal here in the US, doesn't mean it is legal, or RIGHT everywhere else.
Racism is, and always will be, legal in the United States. The government can't control how people think, the most they can do is try to influence it through public policy. Acting on that racism in a discriminatory manner is for the most part illegal though.
I say for the most part because it is still, and will probably always be legal, to turn away someone at your door asking to use the bathroom, phone, etc., based on their race, eye color, whatever the hell you want.
And if you want to continue to pick on the U.S. about this, just look at South Africa and apartheid for a much more recent example.
The crime wasn't just perpetrated against the original creator of the website (whom the Itallian government, unfortunatly, may have the ability to censor), it was perpetrated against the hosting company. Last I checked they still owned their equipment, ne? Last I checked most contracts for hosting are rather clear about who is authorised to login and make changes and the extent to which they are authorised to make changes. So, a crime was perpatrated against a US company and it's computer assets by members of the Itallian police. Those crimes have both civil and criminal remadies, I urge the hosting company to look into persuing a case against the Itallian police (I also urge other countries to do the same against the US government when it assaults their citizens and companies).
Now I guess I better go email the hosting company.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
Thanks so much, I had been totally unable to find the URL. This will be going into the archive ASAP. Check my sig for the link.
The Italian police ("Guardia di Finanza - COMANDO UNITÁ SPECIALI") has forcibly changed the contents of the site www.porcamadonna.com. While this is not the usual kind of defacement, I think it should count as such, since the site is in the USA and the change has been done by the Italian police from Italy, without following the due procedure of the laws of the USA.
As an illustrative example, suppose the site www.duetorrivolley.it, which you mention in your defacement mirror, has been defaced by someone in a country without any laws regarding the subject. Would the fact that the act of defacement were not illegal stop it from being a defacement?
Let's change the data in the scenerio. Let's say that the files in question belonged to a company, or even a political group. Would it be legal for the Italian Police to change/move/delete files from another organization, because they consider it a violation of their laws?
Let's make it even more interesting.
The Vatican is recognized by the UN as its own country, has its own police force, etc.
If I put up a site detailing the sex crimes of Catholic priests, along with pictures, name, and addresses of the perpetrators (and their governing Bishops who are covering up these crimes), and the Vatican decides doing such is against their law, can they break into my machine (hosted in the United States) and vandalize my content?
How about if, instead of an American citizen, I'm a catholic priest with Vatican 'citizenship', with the content hosted on the exact same machine (in America). Does an illegal break-in become legal simply because the citizenship of the data's owner happens to be non-American. Somehow, I think not.
I suspect the decision not to extradite the Italian police officer in question will have for more to do with politics (and favor-trading in this 'war against terror' hysteria we're in) than it will any points of law, fine or otherwise.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
"We live in a world where we communicate worldwide and we travel worldwide," Farber said. "If I violate some Australian law and then land in Sydney, do they throw me in jail?"
Ask dimitri, I believe he would have an interesting commentary on this, or the russian government which has issued a moratorium on travel from russia to the united states for programmers due to fears of similar breaches of freedom.
a bit more about me http://www.advogato.org/person/trelane/ or my private page http://trelane.net
Fuck the pope in the ass do dah do dah
Fuck the pope in the ass oh do dah day.
Cmdrtaco sucks his dick do dah do dah.
Cmdrtaco sucks his dick oh do dah dah.
Pope John Paul is gay
He is so Gay!!!
Cmdrtaco and Pope John Paul doing the 69 today.
If I don't burn in catholic hell for that then there is no god.
If I thought otherwise, I would alter my beliefs.
If challenged, I will try to convince others that I am right. I also fully expect others to do the same. It's not that I think there is no chance that I could be wrong, it's just that I have reasons for thinking the way I do. If an opposing view has rational arguments that refute the foundations of what I believe, then I will alter my way of thinking.
I am an American, and although I cannot speak for all of my fellow countrymen, the vast majority of the Americans I know feel the same way. Oddly, some of these same people hold the same belief as you.
I agree that many Americans think the way you described. But so do many French, Brits, Indians, Russians, Chinese, and Australians.
The difference is not so much in the thought processes, but the actions that follow. Americans talk. If we think a certain way, we say so. Other people just think "God, what a thick headed moron". Americans say "God, you're a thick headed moron." Insensitive, yes. Patently offensive, most likely. It's just as offensive as the other method (smile & nod) is deceitful.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
Form to contact the police, can anyone dig up a list of real email or fax numbers for police in Italy?
pope's email
If some nice troll could come up with a nice "form letter" I'm sure more people would participate.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
it's no wonder they didn't get any of the other images on the site (which can all be reached by doing a google search).
if they had access why not just rm -f * the web directory??
Those fuckin greasy guido's will pay!
Being that the USA is a melting pot, we have been taught to respect the belief's and values of other cultures.
That is also why we get walked on, such as here, too much.
In this case, why can't THEY respect OUR laws as well? What should have been done was the ISP contacted, not the account used without permission.
This is horseshit. Time for some respect BOTH ways.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Yes but because the USA has extridition treaties, we must allow italy to uphold the law on their citizens when they commit a crime either on, or from their own soil.
Until there is some sort of ammendment that states otherwise, a vote, whatever then this will be the policy in these post 911 times. Last time I checked, we have a ton of air bases over in Italy, not to mention it's not too far off from those 747 hijacking, world trade center destroying, cocksucking terrorist.
It's politics. Sometimes you have to choose the lesser of two evils to accomplish a task. In this case, I think it's in USA's best interest not to put up a stink about it. We need Italy for it's intellegence, location, and natural resources as much as they need us for our technology.
Think about the Church/State goverment they have over there with the vatican for a second. How many people in the world are catholic? How many would tell their priest during confession something that might help catch osama bin laden? Maybe they have some ancient book on alien technology that we use today, who knows? Point the vatican is a HUGE intellegence gathering device.
There's a big picture in all this, and that's if it really makes you unhappy, go out, lobby, change stuff. Me for the most part, knowing what an assett Italian air bases are to USA soil, and my catholic religion, I can really care less about this guy.
Speaking of which, which is politically correct? Your view? Mine? Italies? It's all a matter of perspective really. Each one is entitled to that. This was an italian citizen, not an american where you ARE entitled to our privelidges and freedoms. He tried to circumvent the law to break it in his own country, what makes you think he's going to have a better respect for our laws here?
Blam +5x2 today w00t w00t
--toq
As a free speech advocate in general, I don't believe that kiddie porn, explosives recipies, blasphemy or much of anything else should be censored.
Do I like all these things? No. But I do believe that the proponents of censoring them are both missing the complexity of the problem itself and its implications for the internet as a whole.
After all, if the Catholic church (via the Italian constabulary, or even using Vatican rules (after all the Vatican does claim to be an independent state)) can censor what it wants, anyone who disagrees with Catholic doctrine should be able to censor the Catholic church.
The notion of a contentless internet - sending only informationless messages around (probably all
one bits) is intriguing in its own way.
exempt them no, but hack their server? There is a thing called due process and most nations have some variant of this. It basically says, if you are doing something wrong, we will take you through the appropriate legal channells to let you prove otherwise or make you stop. What they did was throw this concept out the window and take vigilante action.
Free speech means I can say fuck the police, the pope, jesus christ, and the motherfucking easter bunny. Are all Italians this brainwashed?
Sklyarov's case was something entirely different. He didn't commit any crime, he only sold a tool that could be used to commit a crime. Arresting Sklyarov was like arresting someone for selling a kitchen knife.
Actually, under the DCMA, he did commit a crime. It is a crime to sell or even distribute a program that can be used to circumvent any type of copy protection. What we got up in arms about is not that Sklyarov was a Russian who was arrested in the US because of something he did in Russia. What we got up in arms about was how messed up the DCMA is. It criminalized selling the kitchen knife.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
When the catholic church was "divided" and "split", there was really no split that occured, but rather they sent there own people out to preach the same "justified by works" messages to all the other churches.
5. Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. 6. And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.
TOS Abuse: abuse@bluegravity.com
Billing: billing@bluegravity.com
Domain Additions/Changes: domains@bluegravity.com
Domain Registrations: domainreg@bluegravity.com
Sales: sales@bluegravity.com
Customer Support: support@bluegravity.com
Webmaster: webmaster@bluegravity.com
Any Bible scholars out there?
This is news because, in spite of the PC drivel about the USA being a multicultural country, the dominant culture (GW and his poodles, CEOs, University deans) is without doubt Protestant.
Like the silly English show very often, Protestants will do what they can to belittle Catholics. It so happen that illiterate {US literacy being lower than in the European Union] TV-brainwashed Amerikans think Italy a backward Catholic country where everybody goes to church and eats a bit of corn at the farm while singing "O sole mio". The poor sods would be shocked to know that Italians have by now overcome the Catholic Church domination and enjoy a standard of living far superior to Americans, if measured not by GNP, but by how many people live below the poverty line. In most Sicilian towns there are far less murders than in Houston...In Texas hordes of religious fanatics go to church every Sunday [and I have seen it with my own eyes], not in Italy...
Notice GW usage of the words: God, bless, etc.
No European head of state would dare to make these religious references, precisely because in all EU countries there is a separation [my spelling of this word is right, most of the Americans in this thread got it, however, wrong] between State and Church.
2. On the issue of jurisdiction, there is at present no consensus on what can or cannot be done in many cases, so much so that authoritative voices in the US (e.g. Prof. Goodman at GeorgiaTech) have stated clearly that without a new international treaty there is no way we can effectively fight cybercrime.
To sum it up: Italy is not what CNN/Fox/The NY Times masters of deceit make of it and as to the legal issue, there is at present lots of fog.
Thufir Hawat
Part-time Mentat
I'm facing a similar situation. I run a web site (been live since Feb 96) which has a bunch of games, primarily aimed at small kids. It's hugely popular (1000's of unique users/day), I pay for the hosting myself and I just keep it up to bring a little happiness into the world. I live in Australia.
/.ers understand that (even if they don't agree with my actions).
Recently, I've been contacted by the FTC in the USA saying my site is not compliant with some new legislation called COPPA - the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act. I replied to them, pointing out that I was resident in Australia and this was reflected in the WHOIS record for my domain. I got a personal (ie. not form letter) response from one of their lawyers, basically saying they don't care where I live, and the legislation explicitly mentions non-resident sites (with some fairly vague caveats: http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.htm point 20).
They have since started sending me snail mail (based on my whois record) with friendly messages encouraging compliance, but making it very clear they are watching me.
While I applaud COPPA and support its principles, I do resent being legally threatened by another countries government.
At this point, I have chosen to remain non-compliant. I don't do anything explicitly "wrong" under the act, I don't sell kids email addresses (from an e-card page), etc. But I haven't complied to their privacy policy requirements. I want to see what they do and how far they take this. At the end of the day, compliance is a trivial task and if they get really nasty, I can become compliant in 30 minutes. But it's the principle - I'm Australian and I'm not interested in the laws of another country. I'm sure
Read reviews of shopping cart software
A major theme of Christian - particularly Catholic - religious art over the centuries is the sexualization of the Infant Jesus. Why do you think so many of the priests are getting into young boys. There may be no clearer case of a link between the contents of artistic expression and truly repulsive, criminal behavior.
The sexualization of Infant Jesus occurs as a displacement of the sexuality of Mary. The site that was defaced by the Italian police, by resexualizing Mary, was bring sexuality back to its healthy focus and helping save future generations of young boys from priestly predation. This good work must be continued. Government repression of the resexualization of Mary leads indirectly to child rape.
But then, considering the state of most state schools, whether in Italy or here, that's what government, at least metaphorically, is largely about anyway. We must reclaim Eden, reject the cannibal rites of Rome, and cease devouring our young in the name of a Mary robbed of a sexuality which shone even to God - that being her triumph.
___
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
If I put up a site detailing the sex crimes of Catholic priests, along with pictures, name, and addresses of the perpetrators (and their governing Bishops who are covering up these crimes), and the Vatican decides doing such is against their law, can they break into my machine (hosted in the United States) and vandalize my content?
Do you live in Vatican City? If not, then the Vatican powers and police have no jurisdiction over you. If your computer is hosted in Vatican City, then maybe they would be allowed to shut it down - but they couldn't stop you hosting your own site on US soil, as a US citizen.
How about if, instead of an American citizen, I'm a catholic priest with Vatican 'citizenship', with the content hosted on the exact same machine (in America). Does an illegal break-in become legal simply because the citizenship of the data's owner happens to be non-American. Somehow, I think not.
It's not 'legal because you happen to be non-American', it's legal because you're under Vatican jurisdiction. If you lived in Taiwan with your Boybanging-tracker site hosted on a US machine, the Vatican couldn't do a damned thing to you or your site.
Well, legally... perhaps the vatican will begin employing dodgy 16 year olds to break in a deface websites with the word of God.
Slashdot: News for Nerds, and God loves you!
I want some of that shit!
It seems a clear case of criminal prosecution. The criminal was caught and his possessions seized by the local authorities. Including access to the criminal web site which was, in the eyes of the local authorities, de-criminalised.
Perhaps its another sign that a single world law needs to be crafted. Maybe even a single world government. Conflict exists when there are two sides after all. And this world could do with a little less of that right about now.
Yeah I totally agree with you...
Being 4th generation here, there is a level of "detatchment" I feel from my older relatives. I do sometimes try and really overplay the whole italian thing, sort of a machismo if you will to fit in with them.
Funny how humans act to fit in with their families isn't it? Actually though, because i'm a techie and not a farmer or a tradesman i've managed to even further detatch myself from them.
You've obviously never actually been to the United States. When I travel to Europe, I am completely astonished at how openly bigoted so many people are -- things you would never hear even the most backwards redneck in Appalachia say are de rigeur in many European towns.
Oh, and as for the "if one can call it that" remark, do you realize how bigoted that makes you sound? Only on Slashdot is ignorance modded up depending on the nationality of the poster.
The world may not be fair, but I for one plan to leave it alive.
Mars, here I come.
Leave this to lawyers to deal with
Were you even born in 1950? I wasn't, shit I wasn't born till 1973, in San Jose california of all places.
I know some of my elders are pretty racist. I have a Great Uncle (grandpa's brother) who's nicknamed "Crazy Horse" for good reasons, I.E. everyone thinks he's crazy.
I went to our fruit stand one day to visit, we were standing out front watching the cars pass back and forth into and out of the community college drinkin a soda. Year was 1988 I think.
"Look at all these god damn gooks coming over here!!! The goverment is paying for them to get educated, they're going to take over!!" and "You worthless peice of shit, you better get in school if you don't want San Jose turning into gookland!" He went on berating me for not going into a trade and how it would be my fault for letting the gooks take over.
Well, neither me nor my father or uncles share that view. Point is, maybe SOME people from the 1950's and before were are that way. In my family, we only had 1 jackass like that, maybe a few secretly racist and the rest didn't give a shit. The ones that kept it secret didn't pass it to their kids, the ones that didn't give a shit didn't pass it to their kids, and the 1 member that was actively and openly racist alienated himself from his own kid, she couldn't fit in with the rest of the family when nobody wanted her or her parents around. She rebelled, she's not a racist, nor is her 1/2 mexican son.
Yes some people in USA were pretty bad, but it's not like that anymore. There is still some racism, but people now have a recourse against it which is a good thing.
Why doesn't the admin simply replace the site content with the original (he does have a backup?) and announce that the site was subject to unauthorized breakin, that the original content is replaced, and unless he gets a request from the owner in person at the ISP to take it down, to insure that the owner is doing this of his uncoerced free will, that it's staying up for the rest of the time in the original service agreement.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Sooo, do you really think US laws should be exclusively applied to the internet? How far did the US govt go shutting down decss? The US govt will bend over and grease up for the corporations, so whats so surprising about the Italian govt playing alter boy for the church? I can guarantee you that the Catholic church will be here alot longer than the RIAA or M$ or any other corporate entity, after all they are one of the most successful & long lived organizations in (modern & less than modern) history. It's sort of like democrats and republicans arguing who's more corrupt, the answer is d. All of the above.
...but isn't saying that you can't force your morality on someone else saying that forcing your morality on someone else is WRONG, which is a moral judgement? So, if you tell me that I *must* do that, aren't you forcing your morality on me? Isn't the goverment forcing it morality on me by telling me I can't kill people? Or is it actually objectively wrong to kill people? But what about the Aztecs? They had human sacrifice as part of their culuture. What it wrong for them to do that? Or is morality just what the goverment says is wrong? In which case, isn't every country's morality right? Which means that it may be wrong for you to kidnap and kill children in the US, but not Sealand. Which means that acting morally depends upon your X,Y coords on the globe. That makes sense...
That the Italian government interfered with data on a server in this country, and put their official insignia, without permission, on a U.S. website is just that - an invasion on our soil and an attack upon one of our most protected civil liberties. I shake with rage when I see this site and the blatant invasion of our soverignty.
Glad I'm not President, or else I would have bombed Rome upon first mention of this incident.
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
so that sounds alot like a web defacement to me, isnt that what we're calling cyber terrorism these days...
so is the Italian government now sponsoring terrorism?...
This world has to start thinking like one earth! National boundaries are made by MAN not god! Radio signals don't stop at them. Water doesn't stop flowing natually by them. Same thing for air, sound, and 1001 other things...one being the Internet. Most problems that our earth has today are GLOBAL in nature. The concept of nation states is a throwback to an earlier time before the discovery of radio and other instant means of communication and before airline flight made our earth so tiny. The whole concept is obsolete and should be scrapped. Alas, we all know that that simply won't happen unless and until something threatens the entire earth on a global scale.
Being that the USA is a melting pot, we have been taught to respect the belief's and values of other cultures.
and
The laws in other countries differ, you can marry as young as 14 and still be legal. Should we exempt someone dealing in kiddie porn just because their site is offshore? No! Of course not.
sound contradictory to me.
Maybe I'm being naive but it seems that we Americans are quick to challenge the cultural sensibilities of other nations based on our own. But yet at the same time we embrace difference we enforce a defacto cultural intolerance for discrimination. For example I know I can be fired at work for any discriminitory speech or action towards any group (and I'm guessing, though I haven't seen it, that the things that were on that web site would get me fired). In the end there seems to be no difference. I guess that it just doesn't bother me. He, as an Italian citizen, broke the law in Italy. His "intellectual property" was confiscated (just like you'd confiscate any illegal information in the US) from the country in which the crime was commited even though it actually resided in another country. I guess I just disagree that there are additional dangling social implications.
Well DUH if you cut and paste like that. Maybe if thats all I said. My comment was a little more detailed than that!
There are certain laws in the states to protect people, they just aren't in place in italy. Italy as an ally we have treaties with, is respected. They are allowed to run their own country how they want it. You don't see USA invading their soil do you?
There are gross GIF animations, mostly from other sites. There's some "gay pride" stuff. There's some tacky porno. There are little stories and poems. Babelfish translations don't help much; it's colloquial Italian with sexual content, like this:
-
Arrived E' the day that the angels wait for for all the year, the day of derby the Paradise-Eden. The gremito stage e', all the nuvolette occupied. The goleador they are S.Pietro from a part and S.Paolo from the other. God, sees all, it knows all, and therefore ago the arbitrator. I hiss of beginning, after a quarter of hour of study, S.Pietro is unmarked in front of the door avversaria,tira... GOOOL! The stage e' in delirium. Paradise 1 - Eden 0 After 10 S.Paolo minuteren from the other part marks of head. 1 to 1. It is gone to the rest on this result. The squares re-enter and after 20 minuteren and she is arrived to 2 minuteren from the end without great emotions. To the last minute of S.Pietro game it takes the ball centrocampo, one unmarks to all the adversaries, e' only in front of the door, pulls... POLE!! S.Pietro watches the ball that blinks on the pole and urla: "and PORCODIOOOOOOOO" Hush of ices a cove in the stage. God knows all, has seen all and it calls it to se' with urgent voice: "Peter, you come" Peter here begins to farfugliare something in order to justify itself: "But, Getlteman, I did not want, I know, the foga agonistica.." "PETER, YOU COME" "Getlteman HERE, I I did not know neanche that a word existed of the sort, I do not know what e' capitato to me..." "PIETRO;VIENI QUIIIIIIIII!!!!" Peter tuona God Then approaches itself low head, and when e' arrived God he says to it: "Peter, but PORCAMADONNA(.com), but like makes itself to mistake a shooting similar????"
I think this implies St. Peter doing something sexual, but it's hard to tell.and account right off the user's computer.
Serves him right, if you ask me, but that is
all intra-Italian. His web service provider
can only know the user by password and id.
If, OTOH, they ran some sort of cracking routine
against the web site here in US, then it would
be a whole different matter. Would they run
afoul of the Patriot Act? Would they claim
immunity like the RIAA wants for hacking anyones machine?
Would US administration and justice dept have
the skills and inclination to take it up? Get
real, they'd take the side of the Italian police,
and make up some nonsense here, enough to
pull the plug on the ISP if he whimpers. That
takes just about nothing now.
>>American's are, in general, Ameri-centric assholes.
:>
>>I should know. I live here. I have since birth.
and to of all people, Europeans!!!
When the Daily Rotten ran this story last week or so, they had a link to the site and the site seemed to be a pr0n linkage site. It might have been illegal for other reasons.
.... not - perhaps i should check back when i learn italian :)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Imagine G-D getting a woman pregnant! And sending down a messiah so lame that he didn't get it right and a "second coming" was needed!
Not to mention the idol-worship, and the deification of human beings.
You said
Britain, France and most other European countries prohibited slavery, racism et al. at least 150 years ago
When in fact, they committed horrible acts of racial genocide less than 60 years ago.
the original poster grossly exagerated the melting pot that the USA is supposed to be.
And you greatly exagerate the purity of Europe. In Northern Ireland, people are killed over thier ancestory and religion. Many European nations have citizenship by blood; it's not good enough to born and raised in the country, if your parents were immigrants. Germany and Scandinavia fight continuing wars against neo-nazis. In France, synagogues have been burned. A quote from The Washington Times: The rest of that article is eyeopening, too.
....thatza offensive website *and* a spicy meatball!
For the Italian police to use someone else's identity? While the content may have been illegal in Italy, it was located in the U.S. The Italian police apparently took someone else's identity and used it to remove information they did not legally own or control from servers located in the United States. The FBI should go after them as hackers (crakcers? whatever they call them. Electronic terrorists?); essentially they did the exact same thing as many hackers have been arrested for. They stole someone's identity and used it to alter webistes that did not belong to them. The fact that they were Italian law officers is immaterial, as their jurisdiction does not extend to the United States where the material was hosted. I mean, it is fine if they remove all material from the guy's computer and destroy it, but once they change stuff on a server in the U.S, they are basically hacking that companies website.
On another note, blasphemy is a crime in Italy? Remind me not to go to that backwards, theocratic state. I'm surprised they even allow people to use the internet, what with all the anti-Madonna websites out there.
It's quite funny that people still look at the elimination of the sites as an act against free speech.
First of all, if any US citizen wants to mirror the old contents, he is quite free to do it, and the Italian police could not do anything to him, since he is not subject to Italian law.
Pity that things are a bit different. I had a look at the Google cache of one of the sites. The revealing lines are those at the bottom, which I try to translate below. (Well, I am a bit at a loss, I do not know the English form for a lot of those terms)
Connections are really speedy... so you'll quickly download a tonful of good stuff... ... what fucking else do you want?
11 PORN sites + videochat with online bad chicks+ access to the BIG BROTHEL (!!) + 2000 headlines with cellular phone number
Well, the links are to a URL, "sesso.exe", which seems suspiciously like a dialer (don't know if you call it so - it's a program which closes the connection to your ISP, and opens another one to a premium number). So the site was actually hosting a scam, and this matches the closing from "Guardia di Finanza" (the Italian police corps more or less like the SEC).
It could even be that the allegations of "the Church had the sites closed!" are a cover up from the owners of the sites, so that the real reason is not shown.
ciao, .mau.
It's becoming a trend to do things you want, just if you can get away with it..
Just look at USA/UK on Iraq.
Things are getting OK, simply if you can do them without beeing punished..
Stay tuned for this becoming the norm in all aspects of society..
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
The point is NOT that someone broke a law involving speech. The point is that the Itallian government tresspassed on the equipment of a third party in an illegal manner. They committed terrorist acts (per the PATRIOT act, bleh) against a US corporation on US soil. I don't give a damn why they did it or weather they had the right to do it to an Italian citizen in Italy. They attacked a US entity on US soil, they assaulted the property of our citizens and broke our laws while said property was on our soil.
They are no better than vigilantes and should be treated as such.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
"Being that the USA is a melting pot, we have been taught to respect the belief's and values of other cultures."
You are joking, right ?
Please dont' be fooled by those people ... the censored sites contain mainly the infamous porn-dialer.
You need to download and exe file (disable any securyty setting on your pc, please) and then bingo! access to "free" porn and blasphemy via 166-number (really expensive)
Go to http://punto-informatico.it/p.asp?i=40880 (italian)
Only the index.html page was modified so you can still see the original site http://www.porcodio.com/index3.html
The data originated from italy and was promptly kidnapped and taken back, who gives a fuck really?
"... Under pressure from their citizens, governments around the world are increasingly abandoning the hands-off attitude they initially had toward the Internet..."
I think this is the scary part, because it is not true; I have never seen or heard a person ask for this kind of action. As far as I can tell, governements are doing this on their own account.
I'm guessing you didn't bother to read the article, or you skipped down to the part about the old French move against Yahoo. To summarize, two Italian men created a site illegal by Italian standards and hosted it with an ISP in the U.S. The police managed to get the password to the site content and replaced the images.
While I disagree with the Italian laws, this case is not a matter of some foreign government trampling the free speech rights of a U.S. citizen.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
If this is the case (probably is), then the site owner was in no position to sign up to a contract on those terms. He's Italian. He know's he's subject to Italian law. If Italian law permits the police to use his saved userid & password, then he's either negligent in leaving that information around, or he signed a contract he couldn't keep to under the laws of his home country.
As I see it, that's the site owner's fault for agreeing the contract without checking if it was enforceable, not the Italian police's fault for doing their job. In which case, the hosting company might be expected to pull the site entirely due to the invalidation of the hosting contract.
Just an opinion
TomV
Consider a privacy law recently passed by the European Parliament requiring companies anywhere in the world to obtain permission before sending marketing e-mail to Europeans.
:)
.
0 01 8_en_1.htm
Jim Conway of the New York-based Direct Marketing Association worries that U.S. companies may have to scale back U.S. campaigns if they cannot assure that their mailing lists contain no European addresses.
Someone let me know if this DOES happen.. I'll be wanting a European email address the minute it occurs
IANAL. However.
In the UK, under section 1 of the 'The Computer Misuse Act 1990', it is illegal to 'causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program ' if that access is unauthorised.
To my mind any email, that is not opt-in is illegal, since an SMTP connection is causing my Computer to perform a function, and I have not authorised
'The Computer Misuse Act 1990' Section 1;
1.--(1) A person is guilty of an offence if--
(a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer;
(b) the access he intends to secure is unauthorised; and
(c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case.
(2) The intent a person has to have to commit an offence under this section need not be directed at--
(a) any particular program or data;
(b) a program or data of any particular kind; or
(c) a program or data held in any particular computer.
(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or to both.
http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1990/Ukpga_1990
Not really; although the consequences might have been the same. Let's examine Yahoo's options:
Implement technical measures to make such content unavailable to French citizens, since it is illegal to hawk such wares in France. As you pointed out, this is probably close to impossible.
Comply (which they did as I recall)
Showing the middle finger to the judge accompagnied by a loud Fuckez vous, Monsieur
Option three would have been absolutely legit since no US court would shut down Yahoos US servers based on a French ruling.
But if Yahoo choses to ignore the verdict then they can't do any business in France. It's as simple as that.
Actually (assuming that you are US-American) the US is a lot worse in this respect, since they try to outlaw actions that doesn't even involve them directly. That is: threatening to seize assets of a foreign company in the US just because they do business with another sovereign foreign country.
Those that sit in glass houses...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
The point isn't that the contract was violated it is that the contract is the only thing giving anyone other than the hosting company the right to do anything with an acount on their computers. The Italian government has no such contract. Under Italian law it may be permissable to break into a third parties system to do things. Under US law, (which are the ones that matters as thats where the servers are and where the third party that is being attacked is) it is a criminal offense and allows for civil redress.
This is especially true if the contract with the original site maintainer is void as then he doesn't even have the right to use the hosting companies computers, never mind the Italian police!
Realities just a bunch of bits.
This is another story that calls for an international cyber law. Before you start modding me down, you have to realize that unfortunately free speech is not every country's value. It means that if a country's laws do not grant free speech, there is nothing the U.S. can do about it. Since the information on the Internet is very liquid we need some laws that can govern it. I am not saying that we should enslave the information and control all the web sites. All I am saying is that the countries should agree on some things. Although there are many possible solutions, I think that the best way would be for countries to agree that sanctions against web sites should not be taken by any means. It implies that no matter how offensive a government finds a site, it should not be taken down like in the case described by an article. Instead, countries should do what China has done: control the access to those sites, if you please. Why? I think this way everybody's better off. The sites that relate to things that might not acceptable will be blocked by a government that doesn't like it. Plain and simple. Countries that do not want to share our ideas don't need to be exposed to them and we do not force the people of those countries to browse the sites. I do admit that this sounds really bad, because the United States will benefit the most, since we protect the freedom of speech. But if we don't try to agree on simple things like 'to browse or not to browse', our web masters will end up in more trouble. Thanks,
The vatican Police/Military is actually the Swiss Guard. The Swiss have provided them for a long time (google upfor the exact amount of time). Their uniforms are DeVinci Jumpsuits.
I mod down any one who says "I'm sure I will get modded down for this"
Using his cached password IS hacking the server. They don't have permission to accsess the hosting companies computers in that way, which is unauthorised accsess, which, thanks to the PATRIOT act (damned draconian piece of crap), can end up being life in prison. Now, there may be dificulties in extradition but that doesn't stop them (either the department or the individuals) being tried in absentia and make dealing with US entities VERY difficult.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
This may be redundant, I haven't read all of the posts yet.
If you look at Blue Gravity's webpage (www.bluegravity.com, it's framed, so a link is useless) in their section 5 of the terms ad agreements, the first sentence is:
"Client agrees to use the service in a manner consistent with all applicable laws and regulations of the United States of America, the State of New Jersey, and the Client's locality."
When the client signed onto this service, they agreed that their website must agree with not only US law, but their own local law, which is, of course, italian law. If they break italian law, then they and their webpage are at the mercy of italian law. It's right there in the terms of agreement. That being the case, what is the issue at hand?
JoeRobe
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
- what content is allowed;
- how much it costs to use the service;
- how to connect, upload data,...
...
But they do not forbid you to give your access rights to someone else and have her add/remove content (as long as the new content is deemed legal).So what happened here, an italian guy, living in Italy, has an account on a US based server. The italian police goes after him, ask him his username/password, he gives them and then the police connects to the server and changes the content of the site as would/could have done a friend of the guy. Where do you see anything illegal under US laws here?
For me the question is: was the italian police allowed UNDER ITALIAN LAWS to act as it did? I don't kown the answer. If it is yes, you may not like it but all can be done is having the italian people change their laws if they want to.
Saying the the italian police has no right, under US laws, to erase the web site that is ouside Italy is saying that the guy does not own the content of his site which now belongs to the US based compagny.
Subject says it all.
Any country has a laws that authorise authorities (how) to deal with certain aspects of a suspects' properties.
This contract was one of his properties and subject to italian law, as an italian citizen from italian ground agreed to it.
Italian law may well give authorisation to deal with the relevant property, in this case the contract. If this is so, then the italian authorities are legally authorised to change the contents of the site.
No buts, ifs, etc. When the US ISP signed an agreement with an italian citizen from italian ground, that agreement became subject to italian law. Simple. Clear.
Ease of enforcement may be a different matter, but the legality isn't that murky.
You're a terrorist :)
I have.
A countries law takes priority over any civil contract. Yet another simple thing to point out.
First of and for the record I would like quote a favorite band of mine, The Clash: "I'm so bored with the U.S.A., but what can I do?"
... unless, of course, we qualify for the 2004 European Championships in Portugal (and the 2006 WC in Germany, I can only dream).
Then to actual post and, hopefully, some substance.
I read the previous replies to this posts parent. Some funny comments were made and I started thinking about which country, in my view, actually is the best. I naturally concluded that my native country, Finland, is the greatest country in existence. That seemed slightly suspicious, after all, probably 98% of the world's population would agree with me, everybody's native country is the best country in the world.
After a moment of inner contemplation I concluded that the problem was not that I had limited knowledge or too negative view of other countries, the problem was that my view of Finland and Finns was too positive. I was more or less equaling my lifestyle and friends with Finland and Finns. Naturally, I like my lifestyle quite a bit and my friends are my friends for a reason.
Wasn't really hard to think about things I don't like about Finland, especially the rural areas. After thinging about this a while I am quite comfortable in saying that every coutry in the world sucks. Big time.
I have much more in common with young urban professionals of Europe and USA/Canada then with my fellow coutrymen of the Backwoods.
I still do feel that our un-glamorous and painfully honest politicians are something to write home about, but it really doesn't go very much further. You know, like, countries and nationalities aren't really anything to get excited about
--Flam,
slightly drunk and too busy to get totally wasted to spell-check.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
The solution is so very obvious and simple it will never be done- the internet should only allow national domains to exist, the laws of that nation extend to sites within that domain, US laws cannot affect .UK or .RU unless there is a treaty with Britain or Russia or vice-versa, entire nations can cut themselves off or cut off other nations at the telecom border, and in all respects national sovereignty is extended into cyberspace.
There. Now shush.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
its a touchy subject... say if i as a canadian made a painting that offended all canadians and was of content that was against canadian law, could canadian authorities then break into the U.S. museum where i had placed it in order to deface/destroy it?
i know a webpage isnt a painting, but in most ways it can be an expression of someone's feelings and thus be art in a way.
I was under the impression that you had to be present at the trial to be tried in the US.
SIG: HUP
You're right on otherwise, but the word you are looking for is not amnesty. It's asylum.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
And this from the same organization whose head just apologized for the Inquisition. Maybe the Italian police haven't gotten the word yet. "Hello, Luigi? The Popa says you gotta stopa pickin' on da nona-catholics. Yah, dats a right. No puttin' yo stupid polica insignia ona da webba site. Yah, dis is officialista. Directa froma da maina man himself. No notta dah mafia. Dah holy fadda."
Moderate this....
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.