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."
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.]
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.
...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.
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 =)
I think I saw a tape which clearly shows they smashed the hackers' head on the car hood, then punched him in the face until he gave them the password.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Fortunately history has shown that italians make really half assed fascists.
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........
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
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!"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
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?
-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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
How was it unauthorized?
Maybe in italy, it's OK to torture your own citizen until they give up a password. They didn't use jack the ripper to break in, the offender probably gave it up in liu of a shorter sentance (note without torture)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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?
because they know that their farce is metaphysically unenforceable and must use muscle and intimidation to keep good Catholics in line lest they realize one day the wool that is over their eyes.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
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
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?
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
-Craig
PS - Yes, I have no problem judging another culture.
Corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
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.
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.
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.
It's bad for Jim Conway the Spammer.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
Read the story before engaging in your knee jerk anti-americanism. They do remind the reader of the US's ill advised attempt to bag us a Russian programmer.
All told, you still have better odds of speaking your mind without ending up in jail here in the US than in most of the so called enlightened european countries. Not sure how much longer that will remain true with W and the Dems in lockstep agreement that the Constituition needs to be destroyed in order to preserve it....
Democrat delenda est
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.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
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.
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 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 data originated from italy and was promptly kidnapped and taken back, who gives a fuck really?
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!
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
I think that in a case like that, posession would rule: i.e. the machine is in synapseland so if they wanted to destroy the box, they would get first dibs (unless they had an extradition treaty with siliconland). On the other hand, siliconland would, at least, have the ability to make a copy of the hacked computer at NSCF lab for analysis. (or whatever it's possible to do remotely from siliconland)
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I have.
A countries law takes priority over any civil contract. Yet another simple thing to point out.
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 ___________________________________
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.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.