Pretty weird how Hollywood corpos and lobbyists can convince the US government to prosecute a non-US citizen who's across the globe all while using illegally issued warrants to raid him.
TLDR: a judge in the pocket of Chevron let their lawyers keep the lawyer who won a judgement against Chevron keep him in house arrest. The who case is a misuse of the criminal justice system.
I'll never understand why people think being across the globe matters. Basically all internet crime can be done across the globe (plus tons of other types of crime like drug trafficking, money laundering, fraud, etc).
Being in a different country doesn't give you free reign to commit crime.
The problem is that it sort of does. It shouldn't, but laws are fundamentally based around physical locations and no one has really resolved what it means to commit a crime in a different jurisdiction than the one you're physically in. Sure there are extradition treaties, but those are far more malleable and operate at a much higher level, turning what would be a mundane crime into a nation state level concern.
I don't think there's a good solution here. Obviously the police of one country turning up and arresting people in another is a non-starter. The best option is probably just countries agreeing on the same important laws (e.g. it's rare for extradition for murder to be controversial), but copyright infringement is viewed very differently around the world, and the US has rightly struggled to exert its own opinions on this topic on other nation states.
Actually, jurisdiction is not solely based on physical location but fundamentally on the power and authority to enforce laws. While geographic boundaries are significant, they are not the only factor determining jurisdiction. Countries often assert extraterritorial jurisdiction, especially when crimes committed abroad have substantial effects within their own territory or involve their nationals.
This is my point, that asserting extraterritorial jurisdiction is up to agreements between countries, and not laws within one country. These agreements are fundamentally political and at the whim of both countries involved. They are not a simple police matter as they would be if the crime took place within one country.
> laws are fundamentally based around physical locations and no one has really resolved what it means to commit a crime in a different jurisdiction than the one you're physically in.
I don’t think this is accurate, wire fraud is literally named after reaching across jurisdictions to commit crimes via telegraph wire. What is t resolved is when there is no escalation path.
I think you might be thinking of US states, which is a bit of a special case. I believe wire fraud in the US is a federal crime because it can easily cross US-state boundaries.
Ignoring US peculiarity here, if you commit fraud online against someone from one country, when you're in a country where that is not fraud, that's something that would need to rely on extradition treaties. You haven't committed a crime at home where you were so police aren't going to come and arrest you unless the country you committed the crime against convinces them to do so.
This was a similar situation before US states figured out the federal escalation policy. And, with abortion access, it is also a front and center issue again. I’m unconvinced by your dismissal - how is it different, except lacking an escalation path to resolve it?
> wire fraud is literally named after reaching across jurisdictions to commit crimes via telegraph wire
The minor error here is that wire fraud isn't literally named after crossing jurisdictions; there's nothing stopping a wire from having both its endpoints in the same state.
The major error is that while you're correct that wire fraud has to cross jurisdictions because of certain legal boondoggles, it isn't a crime in any of the jurisdictions it crosses. Only in the ur-jurisdiction superior to both of them.
> Being in a different country doesn't give you free reign to commit crime.
"Crime" is something that means different things in different countries. Or rather, what is illegal differs between countries.
I think what parent is trying to call out unfair, is someone getting arrested in one country where something isn't necessarily proven to be illegal, then taken to a different country and prosecuted there, even if you're not actively involved with that country. Things like drug trafficking arrests are made by either the receiving/sending side (either way, local border control and/or anti-narcotics police) of that particular transaction, not by some other party half-way across the globe, because it isn't really their responsibility.
But then I'm sure you can make the argument that because somewhere, somehow, Kim Dotcom touched USD and/or US movie studios so the US has "right" to make whatever he did their business.
It's easy to just declare something "crime" and then claim justification for anything you do to prosecute it, but the strategy is also often a moral sewer of corrupt interests and mendacity.
If you think that the sort of "crime" that Dotcom committed justified all the measures taken against him, especially given the kind of reprehensible corporate interests working behind these measures for their own entirely self serving extremes, then maybe you should more closely examine how you define your morality on crime.
If an alleged crime affects someone or some company in another country, that country has the right to request extradition to force the accused to stand trial. That's the whole point of extradition treaties.
It has nothing to do with the US uniquely, nor is it about one country making laws for citizens of a different country.
What part of this situation implies one jurisdiction is above another? This is happening because New Zealand has an extradition treaty with the US that they mutually agreed to.
fairly soon it will be illegal to stream pornography in the United States, wanna be arrested for looking at PH for 20 seconds while in some free country like China? :)
it already is in some states and soon it will be federal thing. In Virginia for instance, while technically not illegal, no major pornography website operates. soon there will be prison sentences if you do and NZ will be extrading people for looking at boobs :) cause you know - jurisdiction and all that jazz…
NZ isn't some 3rd world country where someone who broke the law can flee. There are plenty of cases where a non-citizen breaks US Law (ex: Sanctions) and is arrested outside of the USA.
The United States and New Zealand have a number of agreements in place to fight crime and are both are members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.
A legend. I’m still amazed by how ahead of the time MEGA was with full in browser file encryption when the other players weren’t ever starting on that.
Probably because of the cultural goods available for free? I watched ton of Japanese animes back in the day that were not published in my country, or when it was very out of price (I bought manga tho, which were cheaper).
> I feel like the people protesting the Vietnam war would be regarded by the current online zeitgeist as “pro-Mao”.
Many of them were extremely strong supporters of Ho Chi Minh (they used to call him the Vietnamese George Washington), the Viet Cong and — yes — even Mao. Mao’s ‘little red book’ was a popular accessory for anti-war protesters of the time.
More akin to WWII.. not vietnam. The US was reluctant to join, and was home to millions who were quite happy with Hitler. [1][2]
"In 1940, a group of Yale University students founded the America First Committee to oppose US intervention in the European war." [1]
"In its various expressions, the pro-Nazi stance during those years was mostly focused not on creating an active military alliance with Germany or bringing the U.S. under Nazi control (something Hitler himself thought wouldn’t be possible) but rather on keeping the U.S. out of war in Europe." [2]
"During the Russo-Ukrainian War, Dotcom has repeatedly spread anti-Ukrainian falsehoods, and Russian government propaganda. Critics accuse him of spreading Russian Federation propaganda such as: claims of Nazism in Ukraine, Ukrainian attacks on Russian-speaking minority, claims of American "biolaboratories" in Ukraine, and accusing the US of causing the Russian Federation's invasion of Ukraine."
As with all Wikipedia refs, review their sources yourself.
> Critics accuse him of spreading Russian Federation propaganda such as: claims of Nazism in Ukraine, Ukrainian attacks on Russian-speaking minority, claims of American "biolaboratories" in Ukraine, and accusing the US of causing the Russian Federation's invasion of Ukraine."
At least the claim regarding nazism is very valid. Heck, Ukraine has a whole bataillon using that emblem[1], featuring a rune-like SS symbol and the freaking black sun! People having been accused of nazism in the US or Europe for way less than that.
The implication of US in the Maiden Revolution, which is one root of the problem, is also documented in serious newspapers[2].
The claim is that Ukraine is controlled by nazis and therefore Russian intervention is needed to free the Ukrainian people from nazi control, not that there are nazis in Ukraine (which is obviously true, the same way it's true that there are nazis in Russia, Germany, the US and many other places).
— Alexey Milchakov, field commander of the Rusich neo-Nazi paramilitary group in russia.
The war was never about Nazism. The russians use the word “Nazi” to describe anyone who opposes russia. The official russian position on WWII is that it started in 1941 (when Operation Barbarossa started, and not the invasion of Poland), and russia’s official position is that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact never existed.
Russia is full of Nazis, and the russians were allied with Nazi Germany in WWII.
So what? First of all, was that even a Russian disinformation campaign? Second, and more importantly, so what? Imagine you're fighting the government of a powerful country that's trying to imprison you because they said you committed some crimes when you never even visited that country. Wouldn't you do anything you could to try and discredit them? Kim is fighting for his life.
Yeah...it's pretty hilarious how the American left is now the pro-war side and being against it and not wanting more war after over 2 decades of it means you're a Russian asset.
That is not what is happening here with Dotcom though.
Kim Dotcom spreads misinformation and in doing so provides justification for russia’s invasion and genocide in Ukraine. It’s no different from someone saying about WWII that the Jews had it coming.
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