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Canadian Court Reverses Net Publication Ruling
An anonymous reader writes "A Canadian appellate court has reversed
an earlier ruling that had media companies worldwide fearing an
Internet publication chill. A lower court had asserted
jurisdiction over the Washington Post based solely on an article
published years earlier that was available on the Post's website. That decision attracted the attention of companies such as Reuters and Yahoo!, who appealed what was viewed as a dangerous Internet jurisdiction case."
complex question - no simple answer - It depends on the offense / the jurisdiction of the parties etc etc - some legislation EU "hate crimes" have wider nets - the worrying trend is to limit speech and to recognise national laws as having Universal jurisdiction - this is a matter widely dealt with in many articles on the net.
Not even if your webhost is there. I think just the fact that someone in Germany can access your article was the problem here.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Just ask Dmitry Sklyarov. He did something in Russia that was perfectly legal in Russia, but got arrested when he visited the U.S. because it was claimed he broke the U.S. DMCA.
If you do something that is illegal in another jurisdiction, then it's a really good idea to stay out of that other jurisdiction. If you're in a jurisdiction that has an extradition agreement the that other jurisdiction, you may be SOL.
*joke*
Seriously, if you don't hold US citizenship and don't mind being banned from the good ol' USA, try anti-American countries like Cuba and countries that couldn't give a rats ass what Washington thinks, like China or sometimes France. Obviously not France for certain trademark-violating or pro-Nazi sites of course. On the other hand I hear Germany and a few other European countries are great places to post anti-Church-of-Scientology stuff that's (c) by them in the USA.
Actually, what you want is a country whose laws protect the very activity you want to engage in, like the CoS example above. Unfortunately, I'm not the right person to ask.
I'm pretty sure that if you are an American or have assets in the USA, if the companies track you down they will find a way to make your life miserable nonetheless, corporate veil or no corporate veil.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
IIRC, ThePirateBay, probably the biggest Bittorrent "dark grey" tracker network, is hosted in Sweeden, and, well, they openly mock US companies that send them threatening letters.
0 a.htm
http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php
Also, IIRC, Sealand, which is a floating fortress that was abandoned in international waters, apparently has a hosting company. They make it a point to host things that might be illegal in other countries (the exception being child pornogrpahy and spam).
http://thewhir.com/marketwatch/sealand.cfm
http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa08110
> perfectly legal in Russia, but got arrested when he visited the U.S.
> because it was claimed he broke the U.S. DMCA.
By offering ebook-cracking software for sale to Americans in America, he was breaking American law[1]. That someone who was breaking American law was arrested when he came to America is not entirely surprising.
Now, I'll grant you that it's not a good law, but at the time of his arrest, selling this kind of circumvention software was a crime in the US, and offering it for sale to Americans inside America---regardless of whether that selling was over the web or not---meant that he was breaking an American law.
Sklyarov's case isn't about over-reaching jurisdiction---he was arrested in the US for breaking a US law in the US---it's about bad laws . Muddying the waters by confusing the two just helps divert attention away from (possible or real) problems due to each of these (different) phenomena.
[1] It's questionable whether Dmitry was actually in violation of any US laws, since it is claimed that he had nothing to do with the distribution of the program inside the US. Nevertheless, that is what he was arrested for and charged with, so he was indeed arrested for and charged with committing a crime (distribution of circumvention software) against US law in the US (Washington State-based server, US clients). That he may well have been innocent of those charges does not make them "overreaching their jurisdiction" any more than any other innocent man in the US being charged with a crime involves overreaching jurisdiction.
I have no idea if Canada follows the process we do, but here in the US, we have judicial recall votes.
Basically, in this hideously long section on each ballot, we can vote against whichever judges we feel like, and if they get enough recall votes, they get the boot.
Granted, 99% of the public seems to ignore this section or vote yes to all or to just vote randomly, but if you organize enough, and if Canada has a similar process, you can always work to recall the guy.
Even if you don't get a recall vote through, enough interest or campaigning over it might at least raise a few eyebrows and draw attention to this important issue.