American Movie Execs Could Face Aussie Jails For Hacking

pegacat points to a story in the Melbourne Age which says that "American movie, recording and software executives could be arrested if they travel to Australia, could be prohibited from entering Australia, or could be extradited to face criminal charges if Californian Democrat congressman Howard Berman's copyright protection bill, which allows cracking of computers, passes into law." That's because "Under section 9a of the Victorian Summary Offences Act (1966), 'a person must not gain access to, or enter, a computer system or part of a computer system without lawful authority to do so'. The penalty if convicted is up to six months' jail."

Comments

Re:Amendment

[spongman]

yeah, like the chief of staff needs a vote in congress (a law) anymore to go to war. the constitution has long gone out the window...

Lawful authority, but only in the US

[Saint Fnordius]

The way I see it, the Australians are calling the game right. What the law is essentialy allowing is vigilante vandalism within the US. It's the same as if the MPAA/RIAA sent goons over to whack your home entertainment system with baseball bats.

Now even if this were allowed in the USA, it ain't allowed in Australia*. Even if the target is an American, as soon as the goons start vandalising Australian property, they're subject to Australian jurisdiction. Their corporate masters could aso be charged for giving the orders ("taking out a contract").

Re:Maybe I need to RTFA

[Xaoswolf]

I thought that this went for any country other than Australia. I mean, if you commit a crime in another country, you can be charged there if you ever go there. Is Australia the only country speaking up, or are there other countries talking too?

Re:go aussies go!!!

[adamjaskie]

Another big reason is the scenery. In NZ i have heard that there is great varaity of scenery. I.E. it goes from grassy plains -> forest -> rocky etc very quickly. Good for making a movie that has many different environments. Also, much of the land looks very "ancient" so it is ideal for movies such as LOTR.

EULA

[Jacer]

What if the P2P hackers (coders) were to include a clause into the EULA about no profit organization can use the software, make it a license violation if the mpaa or the riaa use the software. I'm not saying it's a solution, however, it may buy some time. That or we can pay the kids at their isp to null route them into an intranet

Re:EULA

[HiThere]

Well, if that's the license, and you suspect them of copyright violation, it would be your right to check, by breaking in to their computers.

Perhaps some kind of public corporation could be formed, with membership limited to, say, humans who could be identified with a physical body. And stock could be purchased by submitting a work of GPL software for ownership by the corporation (so that there would be a large number of pieces of copyright stuff to check for). (I didn't say it had to be good software. Perhaps a variation of "Hello, World." would suffice.) Then all owners of the corporation would be entitled to check for the presence of copyrighted works on suspect computers. (Bet'cha they've got something substantially similar of one of the thousands of variations of "Hello, World." that would be owned by the corporation.)

Re:Amendment

[tomhudson]

They also can face up to 5 years in jail and up to $1,000,000 in fines per incident in Canada under existing laws regarding destruction of other peoples' data, which (your data) is protected under copyright law.

Unlike mafiaboy, these are supposedly adults. They won't get the benefit of going through the juvenile court system.

Re:Lawful authority?

[ruhk]

Then again, Australia has a long and distinguished record of being a penal colony for the British...

One thing I hate about the American educational system is the way in which we cover history. America was used more extensively by Britain as a penal dumping ground than any other Crown colony bar none. Further, Australia was barely used as a penal colony. The vast majority of colonists in Australia were neither indentured nor criminal. They chose to go. Of course, teaching history in such a way that we don't paint ourselves as The Greatest Country In The World (Now With Extra Freedom!) (tm) would be unpatriotic.