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US-Australia Agreements Create Opportunities for Privacy Violation, Extradition
TheGift73 writes with a link to (and this excerpt from the beginning of) a brief description at TorrentFreak of recently signed agreements between the U.S. and Australia: "Figures.... File-sharing was firmly on the agenda when the head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security touched down in the Australian capital last week. The four new agreements – promptly signed before Secretary Janet Napolitano flew back out of Canberra – were less about sharing season two of Game of Thrones and more about sharing the private, government held information of Australian citizens with U.S. authorities."
Frankly, I'm going to be frank: you need to calm down, take a breather, and smash your ass down on Gamemakerdom.
That's right. You need to return to Gamemakerdom. Your entire life is meaningless unless you do so.
Torrent Freak seems highly pro-piracy and against paying for anything. They refer to Kim Dotcom as a "celebrity hacker and internet entrepreneur". He was a career criminal who made a living by deliberately charging for access to content that he didn't own, and didn't create, nor have any license or agreement in place to distribute. Hardly an entrepreneur. Just a guy who figured out that it was easy to distribute copies of games, shows, albums, and films, without paying any of the artists or companies involved and get rich quickly off of it. If a country has a career criminal operating a warez empire and they want to crack down on him then good for them. Kim Dotcom is no hero, he's an insider trader, and embezzler, who moved onto his next scam.
What exactly are copyright holders supposed to do about people like Kim Dotcom? Let him make millions off of other people's work? Allow him to continually ignore their requests to remove their work from his site? The fact is that we live in a world that is much smaller and connected through the internet. Information is connected worldwide so why not have some laws, international laws on the books, that are connected as well. To help spread the flow of information while also protecting copyright holders who want their works protected.
"We have reached a point in Australia where citizens can be arrested and extradited to the United States based on information supplied by Australian spies for breaches of US law on Australian soil. Australia has effectively signed away its right to govern its own in matters of copyright infringement when those matters overlap the interests of the United States".
Australia has determined that if someone breaks a specific law that they can be tried in the United States. That's how they've chosen to govern that particular offense. If this is how the Australian government wants it then that's how it is. As long as they aren't flying high school students to the U.S. for downloading a few songs and are actually going after career criminals then I don't see why anyone (other than pirates who want free stuff) would have a problem.
Is it stupid to arrest someone for downloading music or movies? Yes. Is it ridiculously absurd to assert that downloading a few songs is worth millions or billions in damages? Obviously. Is it wasteful to extradite someone to another country for downloading music or games or whatever? Of course. But it is hardly a waste to arrest the guys who run criminal empires that make millions of dollars off of illegally distributed works and extradite them to the U.S. to answer for their willing participation in an organized criminal business.
I don't really have a problem with the Kim Dotcoms of the world being held accountable for their criminal empires. If they live in a country that will extradite them to the U.S. then they run a risk for operating an illegal business.