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Warez Suspect To Be Extradited, After All
usefool writes "After the U.S.'s first extradition request against an Australian man was denied, the U.S. appealed that decision and has now won the right to try Hew Raymond Griffiths in the U.S."
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U.S. law now supersedes the written laws of all sovereign nations? Why should I bother voting at all, if the ultimate authority lays in the hands of arrogant foreigners that do not represent me....
Skype Me! username: john_allen_mohammed
What next? Will I be extradited for having had sex with a 16-year-old (illegal in the US)? How about drinking alcohol in public, which is illegal in many countries (Saudi Arabia for instance), or hell - buying alcohol at the tender age of 15 (illegal in the US)? How about having had sex before I was 18 (also illegal in the US)? Having had sex outside of marriage (probably illegal in Iran)? Having had anal sex while there was a third party in the sexual congress (illegal in the UK).
I'm sure I've done SOMETHING that is perfectly legal where I live, that would be sentenced very harshly in other countries. Of course the things I just mentioned are things that "hurt" other people as opposed to the almighty profit of US coorporations, so I suppose that I won't be extradited anytime soon.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Why should someone who commits crimes against someone in another country not be held liable for those crimes simply because of geographic boundaires?
I'm not going to touch the definition of crime bit with regards to warez, but I think if you commit a crime, you should be tried by the laws of the country you were in at the time you commited it.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
Sooner or later, the backlash against the USA will be enormous. And it will be unplesant to behold. After all, most of the world's manufacturing ain't done there... I certainly can't think of one DVD player, TV set, MP3 player (iPod included) that is made in the US. Their cars aren't the best (Dodge Neon, anyone). All that's left is a few billion dollars of entertainment industry (I'm ignoring their incredibly advanced arms industry for a sec...), and if that falls... whew. No Britney, no Ben Stiller, no ER, and no money to fund the next round of incredibly dangerous Plutonium Nyborg-tipped missiles. And, what do you know, the Chinese ones will be 10x more accurate, 100x cheaper, and available in a variety of pastels.
"Why should someone who commits crimes against someone in another country not be held liable for those crimes simply because of geographic boundaires?"
Sure. So an Brit who offends Robert Mugabe, apparently an offence in Zimbabwe, should be extradited to stand trial in Harare.
Right.
Under the UN charter, a person cannot be tried for an act which was not illegal at the time and place it was committed.
But then we are talking about the USA (in the article) and we all know how important respect for UN conventions and international treaties are for America...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Why are most of the posts here negatively directed at the US? After all, it was Austrailia that agreed to extradite this guy. Shouln't the negativity be directed there instead?
The reason this guy is under so much fire is simple: He violated copyright in a massive way ("US$50 million" worth) and corporations want to send a message that this is not okay. They're right: Australia respects US copyright law, and has extradiction treaties that can theoretically, and in this case demonstrably, be brought to bear on an offender.
So my question is, what country does not? Surely there is a country which simply doesn't care about western copyright, and does not have a system of laws and treaties under which the copyright of another country can cause extradition.
Now, here is the key to satiating my relentless craving for bits and bytes: the violation of copyright exists in the REPRODUCTION or DISTRIBUTION of material protected against such acts except where authorized. It says nothing about owning copyright materials.
Have you noticed that it doesn't matter how many pirate DVD's or videos you have, it is the houses with a thousand BURNERS churning out the pirate goods that get raided? THIS IS THE LAW.
So, I figure I can go to a government in which 100% of American bits and bytes are in the public domain, pay the government-owned publishing house a modest fee, and return with 100,000 pages of everything I'd ever want to read, for example, for pennies on the gram-square-meter.
This is the same as when I buy a jazz CD from 1942 sources that in France is in the public domain. (As I understand it.)
The consumer is NOT LIABLE.
Okay, comments?
According to the article, the ring of which he was allegedly a member made use of machines at MIT. If true, although he didn't physically set foot in the US, he did indeed commit crimes in the US. Moreover, copyright is protected in Australia and most other countries and by international agreements. This doesn't seem to be a case of unreasonably applying local laws to someone elsewhere who doesn't know about them or who has no reason to believe that they are relevant to him.
There are some kinds of net activity that present real jurisdictional problems, e.g. kinds of speech (such as insulting Islam) that are legal in some places but not in others, where an activity that is legal in one place spreads to a place where it is illegal by the normal operation of the internet. As far as I can see, this case doesn't fall into that category. If I sit at my terminal in the US and break into a computer in Australia and do mischief there, I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong and I have made an explicit decision to do it. It didn't just happen in the course of the normal operation of the net. Why shouldn't I be subject to prosecution in Australia?
It seems somewhat ironic that the US is so keen to extradite this fellow for what we hope is a fair trial, but are not prepared to return David Hicks or Mamdouh Habib to Autralia or to try them in a civilian court.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Excuse me, why should a new zealand citizen abide to US law especially if he's never been there? I am dutch and can smoke whatever I want. Does this mean the subpoena's will start showing up at my doorstep?
Is this a new form of colonialism? Do we all 6.3 billion have to abide to the law of a mere 300 million?