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US, UK Targeting Piracy Websites Outside Their Borders
nk497 writes "The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is going after piracy websites even if they aren't hosted in the U.S., by targeting those with .net and .com domain names, which are managed by U.S. company Verisign. Meanwhile, a lawyer suggests even that [kind of connection] isn't needed to take a site to court in the UK, saying as long as the content is directed at UK users, that's connection enough to ensure jurisdiction."
I suggest that other countries start doing it too. Break any French law, face extradition. Break any Chinese law, face extradition. Break any North Korean law, face extradition. It doesn't matter that you have nothing to do with them. If US is doing it, why not others?
It really is sad to see US and UK companies playing this territorial-creep card ... oh well, maybe when their citizens start getting called for extradition to other countries they'll either explicitly acknowledge the double standard, or live with it and start making their citizens subject to laws from random places.
Mostly, I find it sad that copyright is the thing that these countries are most interested in protecting ... who needs liberty and democracy when we need to be sure nobody is ripping off some lame boy band that Sony has decided needs to be protected by the full brunt of the us DoJ.
And, I guess the UK only require that they "feel" they have jurisdiction ... that's a brilliant legal standard. Nice to know you can be extradited with a lower standard of proof for doing something which is entirely legal within your own country. The kid in question linked to stuff, and didn't even host it from what I read.
This is truly sad, and it means American laws have been totally taken over by corporate interests.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And why the internet is going to rapidly degrade into region specific websites where those areas with larger/richer populations will see excellent services and those with smaller/poorer populations will be severely under served.
Anonymity and freedom is what made the internet great; laws, fears, and corporations are what is destroying it.
And why the internet is going to rapidly degrade
I prefer the term "evolve", into something new and wonderful and decentralized that completely sidesteps political grandstanding. Politicians are always a few years behind. It really only takes one person to come up with a suitable interface, and within a week everything is different. Look at how fast twitter became a common site - not that there's anything great about twitter, but that is the speed at which new technology is adapted into our modern lives. Give enough people a need (avoid censorship) and they will have a reason to a) invent or b) adopt a new technology that steps around it. We're all connected now. You can't simply disconnect us.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Why in the world is the The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency going after piracy websites, how in the world does something on the internet fall into their jurisdiction? I'd like to know in who's mind their job has anything to do with Piracy websites located outside the USA. Anyone?
then any US corp needs face US labor law for China work.
So apple you better look out as the I-stuff factory does not comply.
It's mostly here in the US were corporations have corrupted the rule of law to the point where their interests come first. And unlike most other countries, we have laws now that have turned Civil cases into criminal cases.
If you or I had a copyright infringement case, we'd have to sue - it wouldn't be a criminal case. We'd have to find the person, sue in their courts, and cross our fingers if we can actually get any damages.
Someone infringes on Disney's (or any other large corporation) copyright, they can have the people with the badges and guns go after them.
Reductionist? Over simplification? I'm just an ordinary citizen and that's that way I see it.
We are not a Republic. We are not free. Today on July 4th our Independence Day, I'm going to treat it as any other day and feel the sadness for all of those young people who have died or been maimed fighting for the US corporate interests.
Then anyone can. So do you want your internet held to the same free speech standards that you'd find in China or, let's say, Libya? Do you want some Muslim cleric sentencing US or UK site-owners to death by stoning because of their depictions of women? Do you want China issuing arrest warrants on some guy in Minnesota because he was talking about Tibet? Do you want some totalitarian United States regime arresting Soviets and... Oh wait we already did that. Well anyway, that's where this is leading us.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
... makes the rules. America is set up purely so that the strong can prey on the weak. It's as American as guns and apple pie.
How better to demonstrate that (on the 4th of July), by showing that powerful moneyed corporate interests can reach out and grab you from the other side of the world, even on the flimsiest of pretexts, merely because their outdated and broken business models are threatened.
It's breathtaking how short-termist and self-interested this thinking is. Of course, Russia, China and Iran won't be allowed to extradite Westerners who 'injure' them in imaginary ways -- only US Big Media can, because they bribe and lobby US lawmakers and have good access to the Obama administration.
All they're really going to do is hasten the death of the centralised DNS system. Which isn't a bad thing.
Shame it's taken a bunch of law-breaking pirates to really demonstrate the flaws of such a system.
For those who don't know what the Berne Convention is, it's a treaty where the signatories treat the copyright of one country as if it is copyrighted in theirs. Most of the countries in the world have signed this convention.
So, regardless of what one may thing of pirating, the US and UK are well within their rights by doing this. So are many other countries, which either do not or are not making headlines.
I thought this was Slashdot, not Slanderdot?
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
Let's get this idea out so that it gets implemented and leads to the decentralization of the DNS process...
How about the U.S. starts seizing domains everywhere at the request of a U.S.-led cabal that has, as a condition of entry, the requirement that members agree to a U.S.-centric policy on copyright infringement?
After the inevitable collapse of the current centralized DNS process, a couple of browser plugins and people will go on doing what they were already doing.
If you want to be seen, stand up. If you want to be heard, speak up. If you want to be respected, sit down and shut up.
Doesn't the Immigrations and Customs department have better things to do than the bidding of corporate lobbyists?
It depends upon how you interpret copyright, mostly depending on whether you see copyright as a pragmatic tool or as an author's natural right. In the US, it's an agreement in which the public cedes a bit of liberty regarding copying to authors in hopes that giving authors this power results in more works being authored, putting the US deep within the 'pragmatic tool' group. Absent a voluntary international agreement for recognizing copyright of other countries, the citizens of another country have not taken part of that deal, so they have no obligations to not copy works of US authors.
Where a lot of the concern lies IMO is that much of the agreements that have been signed regarding copyright have strings attached, which makes calling them 'voluntary' questionable. If we see free trade as the norm, and restricted trade as a punishment, then Western nations are implicitly and sometimes explicitly threatening punishment for not doing something they have no obligation to do. That is imperialism/bullying/etc., and cannot be just.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
First page of piracy site: are you a citizen of the UK? Yes/No. If you click "yes", you will not get access. Wink wink...
Here's a link from an old website from 2006: http://humorix.org/10384
Out of curiosity, what if the US and the UK were targeting websites that were spreading computer viruses, or websites that were used as command-and-control points for viruses?
It would still be bad. Governments should not be filtering Internet communications, nor should they be enforcing their laws in other countries.
Palm trees and 8
My impression was that the Chinese had better labour laws than the US?
This is blinging