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

Not really a law issue.

[captain_craptacular]

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.

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:Not really a law issue.

[captain_craptacular]

It's only a crime if they were unauthorized. My guess is he gave up the password in an attempt to cooperate with the authorities in exchange for "a kind word at sentencing"...

Even if the access was unathorized it seems to me that the original post made it sound like the Italians somehow forced the ISP to pull protected speech off the net, which didn't happen at all. Whether some affected U.S. citizen has a case against the Italians is another matter.

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.

Re:Not really a law issue.

[Nutello]

And nobody seems to be remembering the whole issue that set this off in the first place: hatespeech against the Blessed Mother.

For the umpteenth time: it's not just that. Since the end of 1999, Italian law has depenalised blasphemy. And in 1995 the Italian Supreme Court ruled that cursing at the "Blessed Mother" or saints does not constitute blasphemy. Only cursing at any deity (God, Allah, Buddha, etc.) does.

The Italian government itself actually funded in large part with a grant a highly blasphemous movie.

Again, this is making the news only because it seems picturesque to "journalists" worldwide. If you want to know why the Italian Police bothered with the site, follow the money - i.e. tax fraud and what not, which of course is nothing new or glamourous. Alleged blasphemy alone wouldn't have been enough to trigger the operation: witness all blasphemous Italian sites still around.

One a more important note...

[ghotiboy]

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.

Interesting twist..

[lionchild]

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?

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:... 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.

BULLS*** , Sensationalism and Slash

[CDWert]

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.

Even more interesting twist..

[kiwimate]

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.

The article brings up several more interesting points, referring to a /. beloved case, for example.

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?

Spam quote the coolest

[freeweed]

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 :)

Amnesty

[PatientZero]

It's like claiming amnesty for your ideas rather than your person. You know your ideas will be censored in China, so you host them in a country with laws permitting such ideas.

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.

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.

US threatening my website

[m00nun1t]

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.

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 /.ers understand that (even if they don't agree with my actions).