@AC

>>"Why then can another country project its laws to the other side of the world and bring people to its own land for trial?"

That depends what extradition agreements might exist, and how much they might be stretched in a particular case.

If there's a 'dual criminality' clause, what's done needs to be sufficiently seriously illegal in both nations.

In some cases (murder, etc), that's a pretty trivial thing to evaluate.

The trickiest cases are where something might be /arguably/ illegal in the country someone is in, but might be rarely, if ever, prosecuted even if an activity is common. Or, if you like, where the local law really *should* be clarified, and either used or repealed.

It could be that someone does something that is (or *arguably* is) illegal where they are but which pretty much everyone tends to get away with. In that situation if a request for extradition is made, the country where they are might not have the same leeway with regard to extradition it would have if deciding whether to prosecute locally (ie deciding whether to enforce its own laws or not).

If a request is made properly, then "yes, but /we/ wouldn't normally prosecute someone here for doing that!" /might/ not be a valid reason for refusal.

So it's not necessarily a case of 'having to know US law', but of knowing local law well enough to be sure you're not breaking it even in ways which rarely attract local attention. If you're operating internationally in any meaningful (or even arguable) sense, you may require a better knowledge of local law than someone who's only being local.

>>"Is Russia the only real safe place left to live?"

Not, it seems, if you do stuff the government doesn't like.

Like opposition politics, or journalism.

Apparently because they knew that copyright was being infringed on their site and willfully resisted doing anything real against it.

Megaupload wasn't advertised as somewhere to store your data securely. As such anybody trying to take action against the US authorities for the loss of their data would be on a hiding to nothing. All the authorities would have to do is to point out that Megaupload did not advertise they would keep your data safe so the uploader had no reasonable expectation that their data would be protected. And anybody uploading important data to a site like this would be an idiot if they did not have secure backup copies.

As such I can't see there being any such lawsuits at all. Certainly not successful ones.

Yeah, let's ignore the real issue here, in favour of having a pop at the freeloaders. Let's not disucss the fact that Holywood's paramilitary wing ( sometimes called the FBI, I believe ) can stomp all over the planet demanding everyone else falls into line, regardless of local statutes and laws?

>>"Let's not disucss the fact that Holywood's paramilitary wing ( sometimes called the FBI, I believe ) can stomp all over the planet demanding everyone else falls into line, regardless of local statutes and laws?"

Well, the FBI can't *extradite* people 'regardless of local statutes and laws'.

That's why it might have to wait for someone to be in one place rather than another.

Whether you (or I, or anyone else) might think they *ought * to be able to extradite someone in a particular case is a very different question to whether they legally *can*.

>>"Maybe not the FBI, but American state organisations have previously carried out extreme rendition, kidnapping (in Italy), torture (both within their definition of torture and outside), illegal arms shipments (Iran Contra) etc.etc. So, I'm not sure that legality has an awful lot to do with it."

Legality has a lot to do with it.

Especially since the AC was effectively suggesting that the FBI was demanding that every other country should ignore their own laws when it came to copyright matters, which doesn't seem to be what is happening in this case, or in general.

It's poor logic to say that because some entity or a related one has engaged in some illegal acts that that has any bearing on whether a particular act, or acts in a particular 'cause' are legal.

It'd only be if someone was suggesting that the acts must be presumed legal because the entity was of impeccable character or presumed illegal because they were such a consistent lawbreaker that their other behaviour history might be relevant to making a guess, and even then, the guess would rapidly become irrelevant in the face of actual evidence.

As it is, illegal behaviour by the CIA et al doesn't *seem* to have been directed in any meaningful way at copyright infringers, so appears of even less relevance.

>>"If the political masters are paid enough by someone to want to do it, they simply order it done and deal with the minor issue of legality later."

Though in the examples you give, it's not obvious that many would likely have some external agent prepared to pay bribes to politicians for them to be done.

Many (if not most, or even all) seem to be fairly easily blameable on misguided politics rather than profit.

Who would conceivably pay US politicians or political appointees bribes to get the CIA to snatch someone suspected (rightly or wrongly) of terrorism offences from a foreign country, or to torture them?

Even if some other country wanted the supposed information very badly, they could likely get co-operation by mutual usefulness to the CIA, with no bribery needed, they way they would do if requiring some lawful assistance from the CIA.

@Mad Mike

>>"It is amazing how you are willing to defend organisations that have acted illegally so many times before."

I'm not saying that they're *right* in this case, or defending them as an organisation in general.

I am saying that concluding that the FBI *are* wrong or even *probably wrong* in this case because of some past wrong activity would be deeply retarded if someone is focussing on a cherry-picked fraction of their past activity and ignoring the rest.

FFS, the UK police break the law on occasion, some of which we hear about, and a dela of which we likely don't, but if someone claims that that means they must be or probably are breaking the law on some specific occasion when they're doing something the person doesn't approve of, that person would be being an idiot.

All it would mean is that they can't *automatically* be trusted, something which people who have grown up past black/white with-us-or-against-us reasoning would already know.

>>"So, now we've established that the FBI cares nothing of the law (except when it suits them),..."

You haven't established that at all, though given your apparent limited grasp of logic, and the way you seem to mix it with hyperbole, I can see why you might *think* you have.

What you've established is that at some points in time, some people in the FBI ignored some laws, and you're trying to conclude that that means that it as a body, (and/or the people within it as individuals) don't feel obliged to obey the law in general, except where obeying it is no real inconvenience.

I think you're conveniently forgetting what organisations *really* look like when they pay no real regard to the law.

For a start, they seem to generally end up with a death rate among people who don't agree with them rather higher than the FBI seems to achieve.

>>"I can pretty much guess your next attempt to justify Americas laughable action will be to claim the communist witchhunts were years ago and everything is different now etc.etc. "

Then you guess wrong.

McCarthyism was a shameful episode in history for a country which likes to claim 'freedom' as a founding principle, just as the various interventions in South America were the height of hypocrisy for a country claiming to be a bastion of democracy.

But just as it's not at all obvious what those behaviours would have had to do with an extradition case at the time they were happening if that case wasn't meaningfully related to Communist or similar politics, it's not immediately obvious what they, or any of the other things mentioned (or not yet mentioned) necessarily have to do with the merits of a specific current extradition case, where the legal arguments will be put forward in court, and people will have the opportunity to see if they agree with the eventual decision or not,having learned more than they probably currently know about the relevant laws

Though it seems highly likely that many people would be likely to agree or disagree not really based on any legal case, but on what they wish the law was in one or both countries, rather than what the law actually is.

If faced with 20 US extradition requests they personally didn't want to happen, if 10 were approved and 10 refused, there are *some* people who would conclude that the 10 refusals were down to a country having a 'brave independent legal system', and the 10 approvals down to 'corruption or undue influence'.

That'd basically be the arrogance of the conspiracy nut - "I'm such a bleeding genius and so obviously in the Right that anyone who disagrees with me must be being *paid* to disagree with me!"

>>"Whether a company is paying them to do it directly or through politicians is irrelevant. Many politicians and companies have made a fortune out of the Iraq and Afghan wars...."

So, you're backtracking on your previous claims about 'political masters being paid' to order things like the kidnapping of [rightly or wrongly suspected] terrorism suspects, or torture, and trying to change it to a far weaker (and blindingly obvious) argument about companies making money out of the Iraq war, while not having the decency to admit your previous claim was one you couldn't really defend as it was?

>>"If you really believe they aren't making money out of everything politicians do, the same applies."

So who's making money out of the CIA waterboarding innocent (*or* guilty) people?

A conspiracy of bucket and towel manufacturers?

Please don't try the pathetic tactic of making a stupid point, and then trying to pretend while failing to defend it that I claimed something I never claimed.

I never even came close to suggesting that companies don't make money as a result of *some* political decisions, or that they don't try to influence decisions.

I merely asked who would pay for the decisions in the cases which you chose and suggested (rendition, torture, etc).

The fact that *you* chose a crap set of examples is your problem, not mine.

>>"This action is a great over reaction to a problem they will never defeat (which makes it pointless, whether morally right or wrong) "

So you think it would *necessarily* be pointless to do something even if it was morally justified, if it was thought unlikely to make a great practical difference?

>>"Why don't we simply enact a law in this country making it illegal to have ginger hair. Pop over to America, find a ginger and try to extradite them. Any luck? Thought not. I'm sure Iran has laws against people defaming Mohammed and Islam. I'm sure they could find plenty of people in America (and elsewhere) to extradite. "

So by that attempt at making an analogy, you're making the assumption that in this case:

a) there's no NZ law equivalent to the US ones which are alleged to have been broken

and

b) none of the alleged offences took place meaningfully in the USA despite that being where a lot of the business mentioned in the indictment actually happened?

Or are you just no chuffing good at making up relevant analogies?

>>"Americans (and I assume you are one) need to grow up."

Then you guess wrong (again), and I guess you probably haven't meaningfully read much of what I have written.

"I always thought the FBI operated within the US and the CIA outside the US."

You are lost.

Roughly speaking, the CIA are the spies (Central Intelligence Agency) and the FBI are the more conventional police (Federal Bureau of Investigations). While the CIA isn't supposed to target citizens (and thus generally not domestically), the FBI can operate domestically, or with the cooperation of local authorities, abroad.

-d

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I'm not sure that the general public thinks a hacker is a criminal and not far from a terrorist. I think the publics perception of hackers is mostly determined by who they attack and given the targets of these attacks, probably think hackers are Robin Hood. The rights and wrongs of the action don't come into it. They simply 'like' which ever side is considered 'least bad'. Both sides could be bad, but they would side with the least bad one. In this case, I suspect most people hate RIAA etc. more and therefore the hackers are the 'good' guys.

Large elements of the public are becoming very disillusioned with anything that even smells of big business or politics. Politicians are at an all time low in public perception largely due to Iraq, Afghanistan and matters such as this where they are deemed to have lied or used dubious means. Media companies and their representatives have made themselves some of the most hated companies on the earth with their actions, such as Crossley prosecutions in the UK etc.

So, compared to these two groups, hackers seem almost morally righteous and clean.