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Alleged KickassTorrents Owner Considers 'Voluntary Surrender' To the US (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Earlier this year a Polish court ruled that Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of the defunct torrent site KickassTorrents, can be extradited to the United States. The decision came as a disappointment to the defense team, which quickly announced an appeal. Vaulin has since been released on bail and currently resides in a Warsaw apartment. His release has made it easier to communicate with his attorneys in the United States, who have started negotiations with the U.S. Government. While the extradition appeal is still ongoing, it now appears that under the right conditions Vaulin might consider traveling to the United States voluntarily, so he can "resolve" the pending charges. This is what the defense team states in a motion for a status conference (pdf), which was submitted earlier this week.
While it may feel like the right thing to do is to admit guilt and take whatever punishment is given, it is much better to continuously say nothing and make the people of the legal system work when they destroy your life - hopefully with a good lawyer if you're the kind that can afford your rights. There are not usually any good outcomes of "manning up" and taking responsibility when you just make it easy for people with political motives to hammer your life to dust. One of my biggest regrets in life is not having representation at least twice in my life because I thought the outcome would be better if I handled things on my own - or just stayed quiet. Big mistakes. He should get a lawyer before he lands and should expect to be isolated for months upon arrival. The real terrorists are the people who bought Congress.
He lives in a country that has been partitioned, invaded, and raped blind by every one of its neighbors over the past 250 years or so.
Its only reliable ally is the United States.
If you were going to run a torrent site, I would have recommended living pretty much anywhere but Poland.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I still don't understand the legal theory that says that foreign citizens operating entirely outside of the US can be held accountable to US law.
We have seen this with gambling sites, file sharing sites, etc. I get applying US law if a foreign national defrauds a US citizen from their hideout in another country. Or going after the leadership of criminal conspiracies that operate inside the US but have their top people overseas - a buddy of mine investigates medical fraud cases that are run by an organized crime ring in Cuba of all places.
But this is different. A web site that hosts links to files hosted elsewhere and is itself hosted in another country by people who are subject to the laws of other nations? Can China come after the editors and owners of Slashdot for its users violating Chinese speech laws? They seem to take those more seriously than the US takes copyright law.
This whole thing is nuts. Or maybe I'm missing something.