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? "
I thought that the usual rule was that you could not be extradited for an act that was not classified as a crime in your country of residence. This causes the IRS grief when someone moves to a country where tax evasion is not a crime.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Seems the AU government is going to great effort to ensure that the US/AU Free Trade Agreement gives Australia as little independance as possible from it's new monarch - the US.
Seems we wont be able to buy DVDs from the US soon to because of all this.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
I believe that fear of US sanctions have worked well to bring some countries to crack down.
But sometimes this is not enough. It is not a case of hijacking Australian law.
I am usually don't condone the strong arm techniques of the US government. And I do support open source. But Warez is a crime. And it should be punished.
Cross jurisdiction policing is the only way to fight spammers. It is the only way to stop intellectual property theft. But more importantly it is the only way to fight terrorism.
(I do understand that terrorism means different things to different people. But whatever the reasons terrorist have for doing what they do, KILLING INNOCENT CIVILIANS is immoral. Full stop.)
Nothing to see here
If a co-conspirator is a member of a conspiracy, what's a conspirator? (Hint: Don't use "co-conspirator". It only dilutes the word and makes you look like a moron!
I hate that word, (ir)regardless.
The fact that he's going to be charged in Australia anyway, which may very well be true, is not that relevant. The premise behind your excuse is that his situation wouldn't be any different on either side of the pacific. I would beg to differ. In the US, prison sentences are often longer than in other places, and prison conditions are atrocious to the point where violence, rape and murder between inmates are barely considered abnormal anymore. Trials are very heavily influenced by the amount of money you can spend on a lawyer. I have no particular knowledge of Australia, but I would imagine the guy's situation could be considerably different if he were tried at home.
/usr/share/morlock
Groups like PWA, RiSC, and DoD were Gods back in the day, and they still may be, but I left that scene long ago.
Back in 1997-98 I was a courier and used RiSC's bFTP daemon, which was Linux native (I still even have the source to it). Back then I would transfer 20+ gigs a week over my school's network before I finally got busted.
I got a slap on the wrist by my school, which cut off my network access for the rest of the semester. It's scary seeing people serving time in prison and getting huge fines.
I guess I'm glad I left the scene after all.
Since the competition is being wiped out, I think I'll start my own warez group ;) It's like with drugs you arrest one boss another gang takes over in no time. ;)
It all should be resolved in a different manner, instead of criminalising more and more actions, more things should be allowed. Think about it, nowadays nearly everyone is a criminal, either he shared some files, or unknowingly infringed some patents.
Like someone said: "According to our research P2P sharers are 500% more prone to commit another crime. In most cases it's file sharing"
The only reasonable solution is to allow it and to have it under some control, if for instance drugs were legal, there would be no mafia whatsoever. I don't know about long term effect of totally free software, but I suppose people would donate or sth like this, in worst case some software would not be developed and so what?
An analogue would be attempting to extradite a 419 scammer from Nigeria because they defrauded a North American.
By the look of the slashdot crowd's groupthink responses so far, applying the same formula to your above sample they should all want the victim to go to Nigeria to have the case heard.
Don't think so people. Wake up. The guy spread warez worldwide, most of his victims are in the US, he worked with US co-conspirators and he distributed warez from many servers in the US.
It doesn't make sense to extradite someone to another country for some act that isn't a crime in his home country.
Otherwise, Western women could be extradited to Saudi Arabia for not wearing a burka.
Of course, if they catch you *in* Saudi Arabia not wearing a burka, that's another story.
As it wasn't linked in the story, here is the link to the Slashdot interview:
Slashdot interview: Chris Tresco from DrinkOrDie
That said the issues are subtley but still substantially different. Libel is a civil issue, facilitation of piracy is criminal. International treaties handle these cases differently (and quite often not at all), it would have not been possible to sue that jornelist if his paper had no dealings in Australia as if I remember correctly Australian defamation laws are not recognised by America because of the differnces in laws and to a lesser extend the differences in culture. Only the Australian arm of that company could be sued.
But even if the crime was ruled to have been commited in America, as is possible extradition may not be possible. This is because nomatter where a crime was commited, if a sovereign nation does not recognise those crimes or recognises them to a lesser extent (as is the case here) then deportation may be conditional or even impossible.
Personally I don't see a deportation happening, the backlash that would occur when an Australian is sent to a foreign land that he has never set foot on before, to stand before a foreign jury to answer to foreign crimes for an action that was alledged to occur in the man's own home, in his own country would be sickening to most Australians or anyone with a sence of national identity, even if they are not Australian. There is a strong undercurrent of hostility towards the US flowing around Australia's youth and left wing. No judge would be willing to make this man a martr to Australian nationalism. Australia is one of the only countrys never to have had any wars or bloody revolutions, nobody would risk making this sacrifice to appease a foreign power if it meant a remote possibilty that thousends of angry young people with a newfound nationalistic furver could be storming the high court, parlement house, the US embassy and pine gap.
One also has to consider that a legal system that would entitle a foreign power to snatch away citizens for breaking laws of another nation into a distant land where they have never been is harldy soverign. Even if he is not crushed by homocidal revolutionarys, any judge that allows this extradition will surely be relinquising his own power to those overseas. This is completely contrary to human nature, let alone the nature of one ambitious enough to become a high court justice.
But let me say this. If this extradition is allowed, whosoever allows this man has commited nothing wrong in his own country to be taken to a foreign land as a prisoner, shall have fire and chaos thown down on him or her by either their power being snatched away by the American judituary or their life being snatched away by hostile revolutionarys. If they act in the wrong way, their own actions shall not go unlamented.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
I would like to add that in Singapore getting a BJ is illegal. Let's hope they don't start trying to extradite some of us.
Those caneings really smart!!
Considering that most spam comes from the USA, I don't see how this would help.
it's legal to smoke pot here in Canada
I think you may have smoked one too many, my friend. The law hasn't changed quite yet, and when it does, posession of 15g or less of marijuana will unfortunately only be decriminalised, not legalised. You are right in a sense though. Pot is basically defacto legal here in that there is almost no enforcement of simple posession. You can pretty much light up in the middle of downtown without anyone blinking an eye.
On a side note, it's annoying that although recent polls show that more than 50% of the country support full legalisation of pot possession and use, the government is only willing to take push a decriminalisation bill. So technically police could still issue you the legal equivalent of a parking fine for smoking marijuana.
As long as he has a US statement to the effect that the UN Declaration of Human Rights will prevail over all domestic laws then I shouldn't imagine too many problems. If not then I don't see why someone whould risk their life, liberty and wellbeing in the US legal system.
Ask yourself - would you want and open ended journey through, say the Saudi courts, with appeal after appeal in a legal language you don't understand, represented by people you don't know and endevouring to understand the never ending interpretations of eseoteric legal theory while you are languishing in some prison ?. After all , unlikely that you would be out on bail given you would be a foreign national.
I imagine not.
I can understand it if he'd committed a crime in the US on US territory but no crime was committed where he lives. Extradition can only take place if the crime committed is also a crime in the destination country.
This is what stops foreign countries trying to extradite US citizens for what may be considered rights or freedoms protected by the constitution to countries that don't respect the same rights.
The reverse applies too. It'll set a dangerous precedent for US citizens.
Interesting how we see strong-arm tactics against some aussie warez-puppy, but we don't see them waltzing into Moscow to shut down the mass-piracy of the Russian mafia groups, or the cd-r markets throughout Asia.
It fits with the idea of "bullies tend to be cowards"...
I guess this is to be expected from a government that will storm into a crippled-to-the-level-of-impotence Iraq to stop them from developing, err, "weapons of mass destruction", but will just cautiously sidestep any country of real WMD threat (China, NK, Israel).
Ditto, except for Israel where there is something far more complex (and apparently a lot darker) going on. To the extent that most of the US Government looks to be putting the interests of a foreign country before their own.
Not exactly. Vinegar hill was not particularly bloody, or very long. I think the Aboriginals would have a thing or two to say about bloody wars as well. I think this quote from Cam on Kuro5hin sums it up nicely. Especially the second to last sentence.
I hope that you are correct in that Australians won't stand for this extradition. The above quote supports your argument. However, I am not optomistic. I believe Australia's involment in Iraq has a lot to do with the trade negotiations. If the Australian government is willing to pay for a trade agreement with blood, what is one more?
I don't care about "Right and Wrong" semantics. Fact is, the web would have a lot fewer graphics today without warez pirates. I even bet some of the graphics on Slashdot were originally made on illegal copies of PS. Tell me I'm wrong.
Hehe, I've got at least one guy that feels I made him what he is today, his words, not mine. About 10-12 years ago, I gave him a warezed version of 3D studio max - this was back in the days of slow modems, swapping floppies and data parties, even before we got on Internet. Finding the apps you wanted was no easy task - not like today where you'll have any app you want within 24 hrs. We were barely teens and sure didn't have the money on our allowance.
I was pretty much his last hope, if I didn't have it he'd probably given up. But that sparked his interest - he's today a 3D designer, and has done 3D graphics for our country's biggest commercial TV station, among other things. After that school we went our separate ways, and I had no idea until I met him again a few years ago, and it was almost embarrasing how glad he was to thank me.
To me, it was just a few floppies I copied in minutes, long ago forgotten. I barely remember even having the program. To him, it was something that had changed the path of his life. It is a most remarkable feeling, because most of your life you don't see what could have been, even with the big things - how would the life of those around have been without you? Better? Worse? Do I even make a difference? Hard to say. That gave me a little glimpse of it - I was there, at the right place, at the right time and helped a friend - and it mattered. And that makes life worth living.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"" Here's a few boosts to get your clue train back on track:
2) Anyone with more than a week's experience in software piracy knows not to go to a warez website to get anything. Noobs will try it at first, get sick of the porn ads, redirects, dirty tricks, etc., and then gravitate to where the real distribution takes places: IRC, Usenet, or P2P, including your beloved BitTorrent. Or do you think that BT is used to only distribute Linux distros?""
Heh. Only newbies/lamers use P2P, IRC or Usenet. Granted, they are the most widely used methods of 'distribution' to end users, but most real warez groups only want the respect from their peers, not from the leecher masses. They couldn't care less what happens outside their small circle. There are plenty of parasites who work below them to get the stuff to all the (semi-)public distribution channels, but they usually have little to do with the crackers and the initial distributors.
Sufficiently secured IRC networks are fine for chatting, but the stuff is moved using secure/encrypted FTP.
What does this say to the citizens of a country when your government will deliver you into the hands of a foreign power when you've not broken the laws of your own nation?
The civil war in Columbia started as a question of National Sovereignty over the extradition (to the United States) of a cocaine producer, which was not against the law in Columbia at the time. This extradition led to the increasing popularity of the FARC, and their accompyaning (Stalinist) socialist platform, increased cocain production and exportation (to the United States) in order to finance both right wing and left wing paramilitaries, and increased hardships for the poorest of Columbias people, who were already suffering due to ecconomic hardships and a lack of basic civil rights for the majority of Columbias people.
Actions such as these cause increased mistrust of a nations government, lend credence to dangerous or misguided political movements, (rightfully) increases anti-American sentiment, leads to internal social conflict, and increase crime in the nation that would extradite for an offense that is not illegal in that country.
Given that Australia is not a third-world country, is not a narcotics exporting country, and has a stable and (I assume) fair form of government, it is unlikely that the repecussions will be as unsettling or as harmful as has occurred in Columbia.
Still, demanding extradition for an offense that is not illegal in the offenders country, and was not committed in the requesters country, does not serve a nations national interest, as it will weaken it's ability to (ethically and effectively) influence the other nations policies, creates mistrust among the citizens and governments of other nations, and makes traveling abroad more dangerous for the nations citizens due to misguided attacts against it's citizens.
I a company is doing business in a foreign land, then they must be willing to deal with the law (or lack of law) and culture as it exists there. If the company wishes to have that law changed, they should follow the tradition and procedure of that countrynot lobby their own government to have its law enforced on foreign soil.
If this man has broken Australian law, he should be prosecuted under Australian law, or if it is a civil offense there, the harmed American parties should sue in Australian courts.
The US pressing for extradition in this case may seem like a "win" to the companies who produced the software, but for everyone else, and for US relations with Australia, this could be a big loss in the long run.
Read, L
There is a town literally called Hell in Michigan. Don't believe me? Google it.
How ya like dat?
There is the possibility of this case creating an undesirable precedent. However, in the US courts two conditions must be met for a court to intervene. One the court must have subject matter jurisdiction, which, very simply, means that an act must have been committed that falls within subject matter the particular court can review. For example, you can't generally sue someone for trespass in bankruptcy court. Second, the court must have jurisdiction over the person. This "personal jurisdiction" can often be a murky area. In my opinion, simply connecting via the internet to sites, or computers in the US should not provide the basis for personal jurisdiction. However, this may not be the basis being relied upon in this matter. I haven't kept up much with developing precedent, but perhaps the Australian gentleman connected himself to the US by other means, say using the postal system, entering into separate agreements, etc. Unfortunately, many of these so-called "long arm" personal jurisdiction precedents are created in loathsome circumstance like child pornography or the sort. These loathsome cases then provide a small opening for the self righteous to exploit.
Yeah, I see your point. I rue the thought of having to face possible extradition for breaking into foreign banks, attacks on the infrastructure of other countries, and stock manipulation schemes on other continents. I mean, really, what's the world coming to? As long as it's not a local crime, why should I have to be concerned with consequences?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Most of the "Prisioners" as you call them, were tax evaders. People who could not grow enough crop for their landowner. "Real" criminals were executed.
Sorry, as a historian, I have to step in here.
The above his historically innacurate. While there were many capital crimes in the 18th and early 19th centuries, a whole host of others carried the sentence of transportation or, after 1857, penal servitude 'beyond the seas'.
A common example of an offence punished by transportation was theft under one shilling.
For Americans: you might be interested to know that, prior to the American Revolution, many convicts were 'transported' to serve out their sentences in Virginia. So parts of the United States also have a facinating convict history.
yes, but which is which?
Have you ever seen a guy/girl having a "nic fit"?
I personally don't even drink alcohol, let alone smoke anything, but I fail to see the rationale behind keeping pot illegal whilst having alcohol legal (or tobacco).
My brother told me once that tobacco was the most addictive drug he had ever tried (including marijuana). While the claims that the big T is more addictive than cocaine are dubious, I don't doubt that it is HIGHLY addictive.
To post On Topic, let me just say that the practice of extradition is dangerous in general. The ONLY time I think it is justified is if the criminal in question is either a) a citizen of the country whose laws they broke or b) broke a countries laws *while in that country*.
The idea that you *might* be responsible for breaking laws of a country in which you do not reside, and are not visiting, nor are you a citizen of (heck, though if you aren't there, I don't think you should be responsible for those laws while out of the country), is frightening in the extreme.
To make this political (and no I'm not karma whoring, my karma is good enough), this is the one legitimate complaint against Bush, IMNSHO: the patriot act (and similar drek). Laws that decrease freedom are bad laws.
By saying this, I feel obliged to state that I do believe that there are a number of laws that actually increase freedom. One example of this would be harsh laws against rape--by making rape illegal, women are made more free to live as they want without fear. Granted, this is not the "perfect" example, but it serves to illustrate the point--some laws do increase freedom. But laws that do not increase freedom, but instead restrict it, are bad laws, and should be unconstitutional. Certainly nothing about copyright rights protect freedom. (I am aware of the IP rights argument, but I think it's vain).
If you write a book, yes you should be allowed to make money off it--the same with anything else, but I think copyrights should be limited to 10 years, no more. This would actually INCREASE the amount of innovation, literary work, etc, because if you want to make money for more than 10 years, you must write a new book (or song, or what have you).
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
If the application for extradition is granted, I'd be quite disappointed. I really thought that the Australian government was tougher than this.
0 112timor .html
As far as US foreign policy goes, they will do whatever it takes to maintain the status quo. If that means backing foreign leaders or inciting border wars, so be it.
Here's one example from the '70's:
http://www.selfdetermine.org/crisiswatch/
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
technically (as I understand it) the Consitution doesn't grant those rights to the non-Americans.
Some rights in the Constitution are considered to have a prerequisite of "must be a free citizen in good standing", yes. For instance, if you're convicted of a felony you can have your rights to firearms, your right to vote, your right to associate taken away from you. (The government will let a paroled felon go to church, but not join the Crips. That's an example of how the government restricts the associations of criminals.) Other rights are inherent to the person, such as the right to an attorney, and must be granted to everyone.
The dodge used in Guantanamo is this: the Constitution only applies within the United States. Guantanamo is Cuban soil, and thus it's governed under Cuban law...
(True, by the by: the US doesn't own Gitmo. We've just got it on a very long-term lease from Cuba. It's annoyed Fidel Castro for decades.)
Personally, I think Gitmo is a pathetic way to try and dodge the Constitution. But the logic Gitmo's defenders use is basically what I outlined above.
A novel idea indeed, and I'm quite sure that you feel warm and fuzzy inside reaching that
conclusion. However, life is rather more complicated then the "If ya don't like it, stick it"
retorics. You conviniantly tend look past the fact that the US is in the habit of offering
international "aid" to non-democratically elected leaders, which gladly sign away their
fellow inhabitants human rights in a heart-beat when they can monetize on it. If there are
a democratically elected leader non-sympathetic to US foreign policy (think Allende), thats
just a slight obstacle since they are easily overthrown as was the case in Chile. If people
subjected to these types of policies then have the bad taste of protesting, they have a nasty
tendency of ending up in red-cross statistics over disappeared dissidents.
When it becomes time to collect, the US gladly extends its humane arms with kindness and
reclaim the loan with a fat interest leaving the population in extreme poverty which in
rare cases might briefly be mentioned on CNN. Even when US policies results in atrocities
which in many cases compare to, or is in par to, Hitlers genocidal deeds, the US public is
partly oblivious to that fact due to the "free press Americas" self-proclaimed patriotic
feelings which makes them put the lid on it, as was the case of Suharto which I'm guessing
less the 10% of the American population even heard of.
The media on the other hand is quite responsive to critique of the US, which is illustrated
quite clearly by the tendency to portraits the rest of the world as blasphemous "ragheads" or
unappreciative bastards as in the case of France's critique over the Iraq issue.
This makes it easy enough for policy makers to use the "everyone hates us" argument for
every deed known to man. Invade a country? "Well, they hate us anyhow.. 9/11 is quite
indicative of that,, lets go!" When in fact the worldly opinion of the American people is
quite good. Hell, Some of my best friends are American. The rest of the world hates US
foreign policy, not the people. But that fact seems to be distorted enough by media to
become an invalid thought in the minds of the American public.
This have lead to the point that critique of US foreign policy will never reach the US
public cause it will be shoot down in flames from day one with the argument of misdirected
hate toward US. I pointed out to a US friend once, which i regret, an ironic claim i once
read that the, to use a insensitive word, "body-count" of 9/11 was almost smack on the nose,
to that of the slain people, during the US forces "arrest" of Manual Noriega. Indeed a quite
insensitive statement but quite illustrative. One case is considered terrorism and the
other is deemed intervention.
Anyhow, i kinda drifted OT there but my point is:
Why does America need to drum up support for their exclusion from international laws by
simple extortion? The answer is quite obvious to me and the rest of the world. You don't seek
amnesty if you ain't done anything wrong. To claim righteousness while committing atrocities
is logical somersault worthy of ample ironic applauds..
Ohh, BTW. This post could also be used as an educational tool for illustrating "instant
karma kill".
Have you read the Constitution?
... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. That's from the Preamble right there: the people established the Constitution, and the Constitution gives structure to the United States Government. There is no judiciary except that established in Article III. There is no Presidency except that established in Article II. There is no Congress except that established in Article I. For the government to have preceeded the Constitution--and to be superior to it--it would have to dominate the Constitution. Instead, the Constitution dominates it.
Yes. You apparently have not, not even the part of it which you're attempting to cite to me:
and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States
How can Congress and/or the Executive Branch enter into a treaty which violates the Constitution, given the Constitution does not grant Congress and/or the Executive Branch the authority to violate the Constitution? An unconstitutional treaty is not one made under the authority of the United States; and thus it's no law at all.
Now in Reid v. Covert the Supreme Court said that treaties had to be constitutional, but we made it 150 years without that decision
Yes, because for 150 years it was considered so self-evident the Supreme Court didn't see the need to remind people of "hey, the Constitution says you can't do this particular thing..."
it could be reversed one day
So could Marbury v Madison. If you want me to take the "Reid could be reversed one day" line seriously, you're going to have to explain to me why, under what theory of law, and what currently existing circumstances make it likely, that Reid will be overturned.
Finally, this merely prohibits treaties that explicitly violate one or more Constitutional provisions
Such as the ICC's failure to guarantee the right to a jury trial and the right to a grand jury presentment.
The Supremes have repreatedly ruled that in fact, the US government preceded the Constitution, not the other way around
Case law, please. The last time I spoke with the Chief Judge of the local Circuit Court, he was quite crystal clear that the Constitution establishes the government, not vice-versa.
We the people of the United States
Therefore, unless you can point me to crystal-clear case law, I'm going to write you off as someone who knows just enough Con Law to be really dangerous.
We already extradite to countries without the protections of the US Constitution
Yes. But we aren't a signed party to their legal system, which is what happens as soon as we sign on the dotted line of the ICC. As soon as we sign on the dotted line, Congress is committing itself to violating the Constitutional rights of Americans.
And as the Constitution makes clear, that is not allowed.