Applying US law internationally...

[Belmont31R]

Not talking about terrorism or acts of war but I guess we are going to put people on trial (and likely jail) in the US when these people are not US citizens and do not reside in the US. What makes them subject to US domestic laws? I thought extradition treaties were if a crime was committed here, the person fled, and then we could have them sent back.


This is absurd as the FBI showing up at your house one day, and informing you you're being sent to Germany to stand trial for violating Germany's firearms laws....:confused::rolleyes:


In this case charges were filed in VA and the people were arrested in New Zealand...



Four of the seven people, including the site’s founder Kim Dotcom, born Kim Schmitz, have been arrested in New Zealand, the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Thursday; the three others remain at large. The seven — who a grand jury indictment calls part of a “Mega Conspiracy” — have been charged with five counts of copyright infringement and conspiracy, the authorities said.



As part of the crackdown on Megaupload, 20 search warrants were executed in nine countries, including the United States. About $50 million in assets were also seized, as well as a number of servers and 18 domain names, the authorities said.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/technology/indictment-charges-megaupload-site-with-piracy.html


This one seems even more WTF. How are we charging people with crimes who live in a foreign country, and seemingly outside of our jurisdiction? Are we the world police for Hollywood now?



A British university student faces being extradited to the United States for hosting a website which provided links to downloadable pirated films and TV shows.

Undergraduate Richard O'Dwyer, a student at Sheffield Hallam University, was arrested late last month and is accused of criminal copyright infringement by U.S authorities.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2005079/Richard-ODwyer-facing-extradition-US-arrest-copyright-offences.html

[montanadave]

But the "crime" they are charged with allegedly occurred in the United States.

Enforcing laws against "cybercrimes" is going to get real messy before there is a sufficient volume of case law established to really flesh out how this is going to work. I suspect a lot of folks are going to get ground up in the gears as the wheels of justice slowly turn towards a fair resolution of these issues.

[SeriousStudent]

Dave is correct.

If you have a US-chartered bank that gets hacked *cough* Citibank *cough* and the evildoers reside in Romania, they certainly can be charged and arrested. The crime occurred on US soil, when they hacked US-based servers.

And the Romanians will probably send them here, after they finish their time there.

[Belmont31R]

Dave is correct.

If you have a US-chartered bank that gets hacked *cough* Citibank *cough* and the evildoers reside in Romania, they certainly can be charged and arrested. The crime occurred on US soil, when they hacked US-based servers.

And the Romanians will probably send them here, after they finish their time there.




Eh I see that the same thing as, say, buying something off of Amazon and every state Amazon has an office in charging you sales tax because the "sale" occurred in that state.


Internet traffic is routed all over the world. By this concept of arresting people overseas every country the traffic went through could charge these people?


The thing with web hosting, as I mentioned, is the traffic is routed all over and there servers all over the world. Seems like these types of laws could easily be abused and I don't like the idea of charging foreigners for these web based crimes when they never stepped foot here. You can pay for a web hosting service and do you really know where your stuff is being stored? Imagine the owners of M4C being charged with violating some firearms crime because part of the site is hosted in an anti gun country. A lot of these companies manage stuff all over.

[MarkG]

Delete

[MarkG]

DOJ, RIAA & MPAA are all offline due to massive DDOS attack...

[TAZ]

But the "crime" they are charged with allegedly occurred in the United States.

Enforcing laws against "cybercrimes" is going to get real messy before there is a sufficient volume of case law established to really flesh out how this is going to work. I suspect a lot of folks are going to get ground up in the gears as the wheels of justice slowly turn towards a fair resolution of these issues.

1+ to this. The legal system (we no longer have a justice system anywhere in the world IMO), is going to grind up a lot of people. This is doubly true in cases like this, where it's a sort of civil crime so to speak and there is lots of money to be made. This is basically a follow the money adventure that has nothing to do with stopping piracy, but rather intent on raiding bank accounts. To me this is the very same thing as arresting a bartender for serving a guy one too many drinks and then fining the bar for the same. Does absolutely nothing to curb drunk driving, but it does collect thrice the cash for the government coffers.

If they really wanted to stop the piracy they would have gone after the individual users who were posting the illegal content and gone after the hosting service if they refused to cooperate with investigators for obstruction or something. But that would have actually cost the government money cause J6P could have done jail time cause in all likelihood he doesn't have cash to cough up. Instead they hit the guys who have money and can pay huge fines and then be back in business in a year or two doing the same thing.

[TAZ]

Dave is correct.

If you have a US-chartered bank that gets hacked *cough* Citibank *cough* and the evildoers reside in Romania, they certainly can be charged and arrested. The crime occurred on US soil, when they hacked US-based servers.

And the Romanians will probably send them here, after they finish their time there.

Not quite the same. They didn't arrest the evil doers. They arrested the evil doers land lord. Kind of like arresting the librarian because some patron broke the law using a library computer. Unless there is proof that the guys at Mega what not encouraged, rewarded, officially sanctioned the stealing and were some kind of piracy mafia they will, much like the ever vigilant Eric Holder, claim ignorance.

[SeriousStudent]

And I am not advocating arresting landlords. I am pointing out that there can be reasonable charges made, when a crime is committed via international means. That's all.

Personally, I'd like to strap most of Congress into their seats, and subject them to a exceedingly boring 17-hour lecture on Wireshark traces and kernal dumps. They would stay the hell out of technology for the rest of their miserable lives, and twitch nervously whenever a cell phone rang.

[Belmont31R]

And I am not advocating arresting landlords. I am pointing out that there can be reasonable charges made, when a crime is committed via international means. That's all.

Personally, I'd like to strap most of Congress into their seats, and subject them to a exceedingly boring 17-hour lecture on Wireshark traces and kernal dumps. They would stay the hell out of technology for the rest of their miserable lives, and twitch nervously whenever a cell phone rang.



That sounds like a good plan. I doubt any of the people considering bills like SOPA have the tech background to make a qualified opinion of the technical aspects of what the bill affects.


I mean if we are going to imprison the owners the companies who simply host storage space and the users of the site are posting IP of others then there won't be any online hosting anymore, and especially when we are extraditing college students in England when the person has never even been here....:rolleyes:


I guess when you donate millions of dollars to Congress you can get your very own little law to protect your business and circumvent the Constitution in doing so.

[SeriousStudent]

.......

I mean if we are going to imprison the owners the companies who simply host storage space and the users of the site are posting IP of others then there won't be any online hosting anymore, and especially when we are extraditing college students in England when the person has never even been here....:rolleyes:


.......

This is a very real issue that you identified. About a year ago, FBI agents in Dallas raided a hosting company, and seized a large number of physical servers.

Guess what? There were virtual web servers of completely innocent companies hosted there. Pow - knocked off the web. Guess how long they stayed down?

It's yet another reason the organization I work for has not gone to external cloud-based hosting.

And let me ask you this: If a third party host receives a discovery motion, are they going to comply as broadly as possible, so they only have to "handle the issue" one time? Or will they treat the request as narrowly as possible, and protect your interests?

You want to bet your company on that?

The terms risk analysis and threat modeling apply to more than just firearms.

Belmont31R, I do appreciate you making folks aware of these things. I always make a point of reading your and Irish's posts.

[Belmont31R]

This is a very real issue that you identified. About a year ago, FBI agents in Dallas raided a hosting company, and seized a large number of physical servers.

Guess what? There were virtual web servers of completely innocent companies hosted there. Pow - knocked off the web. Guess how long they stayed down?

It's yet another reason the organization I work for has not gone to external cloud-based hosting.

And let me ask you this: If a third party host receives a discovery motion, are they going to comply as broadly as possible, so they only have to "handle the issue" one time? Or will they treat the request as narrowly as possible, and protect your interests?

You want to bet your company on that?

The terms risk analysis and threat modeling apply to more than just firearms.

Belmont31R, I do appreciate you making folks aware of these things. I always make a point of reading your and Irish's posts.



Yeah Im not advocating stealing someones work or denying them a profit off their product I just think this business is getting out of hand and is going to do more harm than good.


They should be going after the people who upload this stuff not the guy who starts a 'hosting' company, and then people use his services illegally. Lots of people use Megaupload for other things. I never did but its a tool.


Thanks. I try to bring issues to light and get people talking. Internet is a great thing and I want the government the hell out of it.

[SeriousStudent]

....... Internet is a great thing and I want the government the hell out of it.


I agree, my friend. Every time I listen to someone talk about how the government needs to put more regulations in, I remind them of the wonderful job they did with the other information delivery service they regulate.

That would be the US Post Office. ;)

[chadbag]

Dave is correct.

If you have a US-chartered bank that gets hacked *cough* Citibank *cough* and the evildoers reside in Romania, they certainly can be charged and arrested. The crime occurred on US soil, when they hacked US-based servers.


The difference is that these servers were NOT in the US. If US citizens accessed them, the "crime" occurred where the servers were (in terms of the server provider). The US citizens at home accessing them may have been committing another crime in the US.

This is pure BS.

[Belmont31R]

Along the lines of this thread a non PC SSID will get you investigated by the police: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/wifi-signal-racist-anti-semitic-slur-teaneck-nj-sparks-police-probe-signal-rec-center-router-article-1.1008135?localLinksEnabled=false

[glocktogo]

I'll throw in another angle here. The MPAA, RIAA, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, et al have spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying politicians for special dispensation regarding their products. How many of us could get the U.S. DoJ. to pursue a copyright infringement case against someone in another country regarding our product worth, say, $10,000? The odds are absolutely zero. Yet they can get the DoJ to be their private "enforcers" because of the money they spend?

I would contend that the DoJ has FAR more important things to do than chase money for the wealthy, particularly when the wealthy have the means to protect their own property. What these Pro-SOPA/PIPA groups have in common is a terrible PR reputation, poor to nonexistent attempts to work with their legitimate customers and a "**** You!" attitude towards anyone that doesn't agree with them. They want the widest possible dissemination of their intellectual property, but they want the taxpayers to foot the bill for security of their product.

In this latest "corporate rendition" of foreign nationals, they shut out 150 MILLION users, many if not most of which may be legitimate users. Will the DoJ or these various groups be reimbursing these legitimate users for lost revenues and unconstitutional 1st Amendment infringements? The answer of course is "**** You! I got mine!"

Seriously, this has got to stop. Someone needs to tell these people to fix their own damned problems, stop draining our law enforcement and legal system resources for your personal problems and DO YOUR OWN DAMNED DIRTY WORK, if you so desperately want every last dime your far flung empire can squeeze out of people! :mad:

[ChicagoTex]

Ars Technica: Why The Feds Smashed Megaupload (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/why-the-feds-smashed-megaupload.ars)

They had servers in the US and paid top contributing US Citizens US dollars through US services for illegal US copyright protected content. They also made a considerable amount of revenue from US Advertising agencies.

To be clear, I'm not saying whether or not these people should've been arrested, I'm simply pointing out that a substantial portion of the alleged criminal activity took place in US Territory, and that is the basis for this shutdown/prosecution.