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."

Comments

Re:Not really a law issue.

[bwt]

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.

Is this not a crime under US law? After all, unauthorized access was used to alter the site's contents.

Re:... and?

[inkswamp]

I bet if you were to ask an American they would say

[...blah blah...]

I love how non-Americans can get away with starting sentences like this about Americans and effectively generalize about 250+ million people, and yet if an American says something like that about Europeans or any other group we're accused of being ill-informed Ameri-centric assholes.

Curious and annoying double-standard.

We need to respect other countries extridition law

[t0qer]

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...

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 .02 cents anyways.

Re:David Farber

[Skyshadow]

"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?"

It's worth repeating that the originator of this technique was the United States with the Skarlov(sp?) case. The US, in effect, used legal pretense to abduct a visiting foreign national for breaking our laws while living and and a citizen of another country.

If another country, say Iran, had imprisoned a US citizen for speaking his mind while living in the US, the Marine Corps battle flag would be flying over the rubble of Teheran by now. But, of course, might makes right, so that will just have to remain one of life's little injustices.

As, then, will this concept of having your travel restricted by exercising your (US) rights.

You know what?

[mindstrm]

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.

Re:... and?

[jtdubs]

But true in a lot of cases.

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.

Unfortunately, we also have the muscle to back up these stupid claims.

Justin Dubs

Re:We need to respect other countries extridition

[SimplyCosmic]

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.

Re:... and?

[_Sprocket_]

If it's an American company making content in American and hosting it in France for a French audience, most slashdotters seem to feel that American laws should apply.

I'm guessing you are referring to the Yahoo case here. I might misunderstand the issue - but the way I remember it, the French government wanted Nazi items removed from Yahoo's US sites. The French claimed jurisdiction since Yahoo has a French site and has offices in France. The kicker is that the content in question was specific to Yahoo's US servers and, arguably, US audience and were not illegal in the US. In summery - an American company with American content on American servers for an American audience. And French legal action.

Or consider another case. If an American company make an online gambling website, markets it to Americans, but hosts it in the Cayman Islands, whose laws should apply?

Now THIS is an excellent point. The idealistic freedom of the Internet runs in to one ugly physical world fact - possession is 9/10s of the law. Content is only as free as the laws of the country where its server is located allow it to be - assuming it doesn't begin to play whack-a-mole and jump around locations. This is why data havens are so intriguing (and why Sealand gets casinos as a major customer). And it highlights just why governments get so bent out of shape over the Internet. Its hard to control what you can't put your hands on.

The answer to world government problems, of course, is the ability to get a friendly government to lend you a hand in nabbing that annoying server. And this is where the real problems of jurisdiction, laws, and citizen rights begin.

Jurisdictional issues

[dh003i]

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.

Re:Interesting twist..

[lionchild]

Can Italian law authorize the Italian Police to access a resource owned by a person in Italy (who is probably a citzen), when that resource is located outside the country?

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?

Re:Not really a law issue.

[Wavicle]

hatespeech against the Blessed Mother

Blessed Mother by whose opinion? Oh, that's right, by the opinion of your religion. What if other religions disagree? Oop, how dare they consider freedom of religious expression! There is only One True Church, right?

one does not have the right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater,

No, but you can write about yelling fire in a crowded theater all you want.

and you can make the case that this is exactly what the Web site was doing, from a theological point of view.

How does this put a group of people in a confined space in immediate peril of life and limb?

Damned AC's. I should know better than to reply to them.

It'll boil down to favor trading not points of law

[FreeUser]

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.