Slashdot Mirror
World's First Warez Extradition Decided Soon
An anonymous reader writes "An Australian Court will soon determine whether US Law should reign supreme in copyright infringement cases that occur online. According to this article, a decision will be made in two weeks as to whether Hew Raymond Griffiths, also known as "Bandido", will be extradited from Australia to the US for running the warez group DOD. Slashdot has in the past interviewed one of Bandido's co-conspirators in the US, who was sentenced to hard time - but the question is, if Griffiths committed no crime in his home country, should the US be allowed to hijack .au laws? "
like switzerland...
and we don't give any help in such cases
stop supporting microsoft with pirating their software!!!!!
I can't really say I care for the precedent being set here.
Wouldn't you like to find out what precedent is in fact set before deciding whether you like it? The decision hasn't been made yet.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
He doesn't have to have commited crimes in Australia. If the US consider him to have, and assuming they've followed the procedures by making him a suspect internationally, by passing his name on to Interpol, the Aussies have to pick him up.
And then it's up to the Australian judicial authority (judge/panel/court I don't know) to extradite, or not, based on what the extradition request and the arrest warrant ask for.
At least, that's how things should be working in theory.
/. Where the truth
If the server he is using is located in the US, then maybe things are different.
Ding-ding
"The indictment alleged Mr Griffiths controlled access to a drop site for pirated software at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer network."
The ratio of people to cake is too big
NO!!!! it is NOT legal to smoke pot in canada, but since you have been smoking so much you have obviously missed the (not so) recent news. It was de facto decriminalized starting early last summer, when the supereme court said the laws RE weed were bad (to put it simply), leaving it to the feds to redo them. The feds did. It was recriminalized last fall. Jean Chretien tried to pass legislation in the winter to LEGITAMITELY decriminalize, but didn't get it to the table before he retired, and I think that now, Prime Minister Paul Martin has more important things to worry about.
here's one reference
"So in order to protect our citizens, we are in the process of negotiating bilateral agreements with the largest possible number of states, including non-Parties. These Article 98 agreements, as they are called, provide American citizens with essential protection against the Court's purported jurisdiction claims, and allow us to remain engaged internationally with our friends and allies. To date, 14 countries have signed Article 98 agreements with us."
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
The problem isn't that the Administration isn't respecting international law; in fact, there is no problem at all. The reason why the U.S. Government has historically been so averse to foreign trials for U.S. citizens is because of the United States Constitution.
The Constitution is not the creation of our government. The Constitution creates our government. As a consequence of this, the government cannot enact any law or enter into any treaty which goes against the Constitution. How can it? The government, being inferior to the Constitution, has zero authority to violate the Constitution.
So now take a look at the United States Constitituion and its several guarantees to criminal defendants. American defendants have the most and the best safeguards of any nation in the world. The various proposals for International Courts of Justice lack these safeguards. For instance, the last I saw, the proposal for the International Criminal Court did not guarantee the defendant the right to a jury trial, nor did it guarantee that no indictment would issue except upon presentment of a grand jury.
If ICC doesn't guarantee the right to a jury trial or the right to a grand jury, then the U.S. Government cannot become party to it. Why? Because that'd be Congress saying "well, in some cases, yes, we agree that American citizens can be denied the right to a jury trial and the right to a grand jury..."
And the Constitution--which establishes our government--announces to the world, clear and cold, this is not allowed.
I don't fault you for saying "It doesn't look like precedent to me, it looks more like the US is doing it because they can". It does look that way to Europeans, whose governments can typically do anything they want subject to the will of the voters. The American government is sharply limited in contrast with European ones. We see this time and time again, where some European power asks Bush to spare the life of one of their nationals who's been convicted and sentenced to die. Bush then has to say "err, he was convicted and sentenced to die in California. I have no authority to pardon criminals convicted in state courts. I can call up Governor Schwarzenegger if you really want, but I don't think he'll pay me much attention. In fact, he'll probably hold a press conference to say he hung up on me, which is a, exactly what Ronald Reagan would've done if Nixon had called then-Governor Reagan up begging for a pardon for someone, and b, given how popular I am in California, it'd guarantee him re-election..."
Most Americans don't really understand the Constitutional issues behind the ICC, nor the Federal/State dichotomy in government. I hardly expect the rest of the world to understand it any better.
Extracted from the US to:
Ireland
Hong Kong
Yugoslavia
I am by no means an expert on this, these are just some google results.
Actually, if I recall correctly, the US is refusing to recognize the ICC because the court doesn't meet certain criteria put forth in the US Constitution, namely, it lacks a trial by jury. So the US can't legally let it's citizens be tried there. At least that's what my law professor said, though IAANL (just went to an austrian law school for a lil while...)
-ikoL
Bullshit. Warez is a crime IN THE US, but not in Australia.
Correct. Copyright violation is a civil offence here (AU), not a criminal offence.
Correct. Copyright violation is a civil offence here (AU), not a criminal offence.
You don't go to jail for civil offenses, you pay a fine, restitution or both. You don't extradite someone for a civil offense. So, if he broke a civil law in AU, he should face AU justice. If the "victims" of that offense were in the US, they only have the redress of the AU legal system.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano