U.S. Government Fears End of Megaupload Case

http://torrentfreak.com/united-states-fears-end-of-megaupload-case-130505/

by Lightning • 13 years ago

103 106 13 years ago

X-Istence2• 13 years ago

The thing that scares me, is that even if I were to operate a company completely legal outside of the United States, as a non-citizen, I would still be required to follow US law because they claim they can prosecute anyone.

World police?

rayiner15• 13 years ago

The U.S. does not claim it can prosecute anyone. U.S. courts can and do dismiss suits for lack of personal jurisdiction over non-citizens. Like every country,[1] it reserves the right to prosecute people whose activities have effects in the U.S. A big part of megaupload's business was infringing property rights granted under U.S. law to Americans. If your actions are going to effect people in the U.S., obviously you should have to follow U.S. law.

[1] It's a basic principle of international law that countries can prosecute activity by non-citizens that has effects domestically. Not every country has the power toe exercise this principle, however.

pjbrunet4• 13 years ago

Maybe you're talking some sense here but remember they came at him with helicopters and automatic weapons. If you ask me, he's just some fat kid with a website who likes pretty girls and video games. I support copyrights as much as anyone and have criticized this "Mega" fool but the way he was treated was outrageous. If RIAA wants any sympathy they need to get with the program.

vy8vWJlco2• 13 years ago

> "A big part of megaupload's business was infringing property rights"

Objection. Hearsay, your Honor.

dangrossman2• 13 years ago

> A big part of megaupload's business was infringing property rights granted under U.S. law to Americans. If your actions are going to effect people in the U.S., obviously you should have to follow U.S. law.

That is a poor argument.

North Korea could decide to assign patent rights to "online shopping" to one of its citizens. This citizen now has an intellectual property right that every ecommerce website is infringing. Every site owner is failing to pay legally required royalties, depriving this citizen of those funds, using millions of copies of his invention without authorization.

According to your rule of thumb, all these website operators should be required to follow NK law, so it'd be reasonable for them to land a helicopter in your yard and arrest you for violating it.

What actually exists is a web of extradition treaties whereby nations have agreed to voluntarily transfer someone to another nation for prosecution in certain situations. There's almost always an absolute requirement for dual criminality -- that is, that the act is illegal in both nations. That's the test, and the treaties signed by both governments are the source of power, not "domestic effects" and whatever you think makes the US special. The case this article is about is an extradition hearing.

To your reply: No, substituting NK for US in your own proposed system does not make a straw man.

subsystem3• 13 years ago

"If your actions are going to effect people in the U.S., obviously you should have to follow U.S. law."

So I assume you also think youtube should follow pakistani law and anyone working at youtube should be held accountable if they ever find themself within their borders? How about pretty much anyone exercising free speech on HN from the US, should they face charges in Europe for hate speech or should YC itself?

shadowmint• 13 years ago

If it was that clear cut, the judge wouldn't have anything to worry about.

Let's preface our discussion with the assumption that the DOJ lawyers are 1) not totally incompetent, 2) not complete idiots. I think we can all agree on this, right?

Now, look at the legal limbo that the MU has been stuck in for absolutely ages now, where their lawyers continue to press for case dismissal and all kinds of other things.

Is not that the judge is just flipping them off is it?

You think, perhaps, the situation is a little bit more complicated than you give it credit for?

Or maybe the guys at the DOJ are actually just complete idiots? really?

Come on.

fnordfnordfnord5• 13 years ago

>A big part of megaupload's business was infringing property rights granted under U.S. law to Americans.

No, perhaps that's what MU's users were up to, but not MU. What if this case were about banking? Would you also argue that Swiss banks should ignore Swiss banking laws and rat out Americans who lie about their assets to avoid taxes?

>If your actions are going to effect people in the U.S., obviously you should have to follow U.S. law.

No, it isn't obvious at all, and it implies that we should all behave in ways that do not affect people in other countries lest we be extradited for prosecution in some foreign jurisdiction if we break some foreign law.

jmspring2• 13 years ago

The marionette's had it right, Team America, World Police --

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPBX47zSktc

cstross• 13 years ago

Ahem: the penultimate apostrophe denotes either a missing vowel, or ownership, in the singular, of the subsequent identified property. You're using "marionettes" as a plural. It doesn't require an apostrophe in that context.

stock_toaster2• 13 years ago

  > if I were to operate a company completely legal outside of the United States

...and if you were hosting on servers residing inside the United States?

LekkoscPiwa3• 13 years ago

and if not? I.e. I host in Canada.

X-Istence2• 13 years ago

The US government can take those away, they can go after the company I am purchasing services from, but they shouldn't be allowed to freeze my assets in other countries.

pjbrunet4• 13 years ago

As a U.S. citizen I fear clicking the link ;-)

chankey_pathak• 13 years ago

haha nice one

belorn4• 13 years ago

I share the fear, and is why I use tor for browsing political sensitive subjects. While its unknown if each individual data package sent over the wire is stored, logs about who visiting what website has clearly been marked in laws/bills as vital for signals intelligence services.

pjbrunet4• 13 years ago

Curiosity killed the cat or something like that. I'm not into anything controversial but if I was, I'd probably leave the country before playing Cloak & Dagger with my computer. I'm currently reading Spook Country and there's a character who "never sleeps in the same grid square." I enjoy William Gibson's distillation of our crazy world. What I do think is interesting, your credit score can drop for shopping in the wrong neighborhood. William Gibson also has a book about a data analyst that is interesting, I think Pattern Recognition is the book but I'm not sure.

Semaphor• 13 years ago

TorrentFreak has become a somewhat respected, if obviously biased (at least with them it actually is obvious), news source. They often have exclusive information and more often than not seem to have no problems getting soundbites from anti-p2p groups.

officemonkey• 13 years ago

Filesharing is not (yet) against the law.

downandout2• 13 years ago

These so-called "Rule 4" issues are a symptom of the DOJ's quest to become the world's police force. But the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure exist for precisely this reason. It is in the very nature of the mindless beast that is the DOJ to try to escape from its cage; it is the job of the judge to ensure that the cage door is never left open by enforcing the rules. Hopefully the judge will do his job in this case.

derleth• 13 years ago

> It is in the very nature of the mindless beast that is the DOJ to try to escape from its cage; it is the job of the judge to ensure that the cage door is never left open by enforcing the rules.

And this cuts to the heart of the adversarial system, where both sides are out to win and the judge is meant to be an impartial referee. So it isn't just the DOJ that judges have to keep caged to some extent.

downandout2• 13 years ago

True, although I think that the DOJ is by far the worst offender when it comes to what most people would describe as ridiculous and even nefarious attempts at legal overreach.

Yaa101• 13 years ago

This was called imperialism in the old days.

Fizzadar• 13 years ago

"Among other things the Government claimed that federal rules shouldn’t be interpreted so narrowly" - does that give the public the ability to 'interpret' laws as they feel they should be applied, rather than as they are written? Shocking moves from the US Govt, desperately hoping the case is dismissed.

And this gem "When a person located abroad violates the laws of the United States, that person may be held criminally liable despite the fact that the person has never set foot in the United States." - US != world police.

urza• 13 years ago

"When a person located abroad violates the laws of the United States, that person may be held criminally liable despite the fact that the person has never set foot in the United States."

Americans, you really need to do something about your goverment and laws. The sooner the better.

sp332• 13 years ago

They claim that MU violated US laws on US soil without physically being here, over the internet. That makes sense to me.

jydarche• 13 years ago

In this case, can they take actions for blocking the website? It seems like a more logical solution to me.

nwh3• 13 years ago

Possibly the most distressing quote I've read in a long time.

Should I be following Irish law too? Indian? Israeli? I don't have anything to do with them, but I'm probably breaking their law in one way or another.

rayiner15• 13 years ago

Are you targeting your activities in Ireland or India or Israel?

You can't just read out the "target people in the country/have a major impact on people in the country." If you're operating say a financial services website, and specifically allow users from Ireland to sign up, or advertise to users in Ireland, should you be surprised if you have to abide by Irish banking laws?

gsnedders• 13 years ago

This isn't new. If I fire a gun near the English/Scottish border and kill someone on the other side, I will be tried under the laws of the other side, as although I fired the gun in, say, England, the murder is considered to be a Scottish matter. (Of course, in this example, I'll have also committed a firearms offence in England, so could be tried for that under English law!)

belorn4• 13 years ago

This is because:

#The crime of murder is an offense in both countries.

#legal jurisdictions can be lawfully transfered. England can thus give legal jurisdictions of the case over to Scotland even if the shot was made inside English border.

#International law (pre-EU) puts some legal weight on which nationality the victim comes from when dealing with murders.

#EU law has similar international laws as above.

#A murder weight much heavier than copyright infringement, and allows for more legal actions on an international level.

So to sum up, the reason why a murder at the border of England/Scotland has no similarities to the case of Megaupload, can be seen through the years of legal history and jurisdictions law, common sense, and the fact that Australia and U.S. is not part of one large International body like EU.

mcintyre19942• 13 years ago

There really must be context for this. They can't be claiming that every country needs to follow every other country's laws, or even that that holds on the internet. At the same time, they can't be claiming that every country should respect their laws, right?

I don't understand how I should interpret this without context, but at the same time I can't imagine the context that wouldn't make it horrifying.

rayiner15• 13 years ago

It's a basic principle of international law that a country can hold someone criminally liable for violating laws in that country, even if they did so from abroad, so long as the activity was specifically targeted at the country or had a major impact on that country. E.g. if you run a service that defrauds people from a country with lax fraud laws, but specifically advertise to people in the U.K., the U.K. is within its rights to hold you criminally liable under their fraud laws. This is most visible with financial crimes, which aren't uniform between countries.

youngerdryas2• 13 years ago

He was arrested in New Zealand under NZ law by NZ police. Should we do something about their government and laws?

sophacles• 13 years ago

This is disingenuous. Just because other actors outside the US were involved, does not mean that US citizens shouldn't take action and hold their own government accountable for it's actions.

The US asked/pressured/coerced (depending on viewpoint) the NZ government into doing it. The action US citizens can take is to get our government to not do such things on the world stage - particularly w.r.t. enforcing US laws outside of US jurisdictions.

wmf• 13 years ago

Here's an idea: If SOPA had passed maybe they would have just blocked MegaUpload at the border instead of going through with this lawsuit.

TheCapn• 13 years ago

Fallacies. Fallacies everywhere!

Fact of the matter is, with the internet becoming such an important part of our lives so quickly laws haven't had a chance to catch up. For the most part, DOJ and other countries interpret the laws as "if you are effecting people/business on our soil then you are accountable to our laws". Is that right? Probably not, but it isn't 100% wrong either. America is quickly converting its livelihood such that its chief export will be intellectual property. They, rightfully, should be defending themselves in any legal way they can. Until we correct the way laws are written they'll continue to interpret them to the way they see fit.

But then we have everyone here taking things to the extreme. What if I break some obscure law in some backwater land unknown to the majority of the world? Do you think they have jurisdiction granted to them by your government? Usually these things are part of a deal of friendship between governments as US and Australia would make deals with each other as there are mutual advantages to it. Would America cut deals with North Korea to hand you over for some obscure law? I'm betting no. Don't forget, there are people behind these decisions and although they may seem asinine at times they are still logical beings capable of rational thought.

It just pains me to see the article and want to discuss it intellectually on HN but all I find is fear mongering, straw men and countless other fallacies that don't really strengthen their point. I don't care whether you agree/disagree with the ruling/courts as written, I care to have a discussion or see good points on either side of the debate, not hogwash vomited forth for emotionally charged arguments.

jetti3• 13 years ago

The problem I see with this is that one doesn't need to agree to be bound by the social contract of an individual government to be prosecuted.

In the physical world, if you don't agree to the laws of a country, don't live there. It is that simple. In our digital world, people from all over the world can connect to my website even if that isn't my intention. It would be incredibly hard to block all users from a certain country from accessing my website or using my service, especially if I don't require any payments.

Also, what extent does "effecting people/business on our soil then you are accountable to our laws" pertain to somebody. If I have information that is legal in my country but then somebody uses that information to harm somebody in their country, am I accountable? After all, without the information from my site, perhaps this individual wouldn't have harmed anybody.

I wonder if other countries could start using the US's liberal interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act against the US citizens/residents to protect their site. If a website puts in their Terms of Service that the site is only for non-United States residents only, would that rid them of this responsibility? If somebody from the US visits the site and the DoJ believes that the site is effecting the people/business on their soil and that the company should be held accountable then the company could have the DoJ prosecute the user based on the Terms of Use violation.

mrgoldenbrown• 13 years ago

"Don't live there" is NOT that simple in the real world. How many people in North Korea want to live there? China? Germany during WW2? I'd guess that the majority of the world's population does not have a realistic chance to change what country they live in.

ahallock• 13 years ago

> In the physical world, if you don't agree to the laws of a country, don't live there. It is that simple.

No, it's not that simple. Your statement shows no empathy and lacks context. Is it that simple to leave North Korea? If I tried to leave the US now, they'd shoot me. I'd need to have arrangement with the country I'm immigrating to, pay a bunch of fees, etc. And why should I, a peaceful human being, have to leave when a single entity claims such vast areas of land? It's unfair and people's blind (probably tribalistic) acceptance of that idea is sad.

rayiner15• 13 years ago

> Also, what extent does "effecting people/business on our soil then you are accountable to our laws" pertain to somebody. If I have information that is legal in my country but then somebody uses that information to harm somebody in their country, am I accountable? After all, without the information from my site, perhaps this individual wouldn't have harmed anybody.

The example you give ("without the information from my site...") is what's called a "but for" test. That is not the test for effects in this context. The test has an intent element. Not only must your actions have some effect in a different jurisdiction, but you must have at some level intended them to.

rz2k• 13 years ago

Unfortunately this case serves as a proxy for so many other issues that it is difficult to discuss the challenges of geography and jurisdiction on their own.

It can go the other way, too. Recently, the Supreme Court uncharacteristically upheld state protectionism in the case of Virginia's Freedom of Information Act only requiring the release of information to Virginia residents.[1] The arguments include obtuse statements by the usual suspects, but an interesting part of the law includes an exception for journalism that circulate Virginia.[2]

The law did not address whether that includes every news source that publishes online.

[1] https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/sjs/a-reivew-of-oral-argu... [2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-says-st...

U.S. Government Fears End of Megaupload Case

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