Comment by falien | Hacker News Reader

Comment by falien | Hacker News Reader

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I try to keep up with EU technology law, but I'm afraid I only keep up with specifics for individual countries when its widely covered. You can keep your hat on :P

Many things that our intelligence agencies do disturbs me as well, and in fact the policy on the NSA telecom cooperation case as well as other areas where I consider the government to be acting unconstitutionally are my biggest gripe with the Obama administration.

Back to marijuana betonsports: I still disagree. That type of betting is strictly prohibited, and while I think that law should be removed, it is a perfectly valid law to enforce, despite its being driven by a desire for tax revenue and a large dose of hypocrisy. The fact that the provider of the service is not in the US means that they generally will not be gone after as long as they remain outside the US (assuming they are not breaking their own country's laws) unless their own country agrees for some reason that they should be extradited. However once they set foot on US soil the US govt is well within its rights to arrest them. They did break a US law interacting with people under US jurisdiction. The appropriate marijuana comparison in my opinion, would be when a US citizen mail ordered marijuana from someone who is allowed to export it under their local laws. Ignoring any illegal actions taken by other people to get the drugs into the US, should the marijuana dealer be immune to arrest when they enter the US?

As far as the "must leave china" comments, I agree, and now I see why you made that comment. I sometimes tend to disconnect specific comments I want to respond to from the larger discussion, so please don't take any comments I made as implicit agreement with the people you're already arguing with. ;) And I'd tend to say that just about everywhere is much more towards the middle of the freedom spectrum than most people believe. Its just so much easier to think in black and white than all those greys that make up the real world.

> They did break a US law interacting with people under US jurisdiction.

I disagree with you there, it was the people in the US that were under US jurisdiction, betonsports was not an American company and so American jurisdiction does not apply to them. The fact that the guy was arrested on a sealed warrant is quite telling, if he was really in violation of the law in his jurisdiction they would have applied for his extradition instead. The US would like its law to extend to all the countries in the world, but in turn does not even allow its citizens to stand trial abroad when for instance accused of war crimes.

Incidentally, I feel the same about France trying to apply its laws to Yahoo! and Ebay, and Italy trying to apply its laws to Google (though, in both cases the company involved did have a presence on the soil of those countries, but said presences were absolutely not involved in the perceived transgressions).

I prefer to see the grays :)

Keeps me sane and stops me from going all out about 'how great' the place where I happen to live is, a bit of perspective is badly needed.

> They did break a US law interacting with people under US jurisdiction. The appropriate marijuana comparison in my opinion, would be when a US citizen mail ordered marijuana from someone who is allowed to export it under their local laws. Ignoring any illegal actions taken by other people to get the drugs into the US, should the marijuana dealer be immune to arrest when they enter the US?

Good question. My point of view would be 'absolutely not'.

And my main reason for feeling that way is that it should not be a requirement of a business abroad to even be aware of all the laws and statues of countries where they are not based when doing business over the internet. If the bets were legal in England it doesn't matter whether a US person visits in person or the transaction takes place online.

The drugs scenario you describe is being acted out every day by the way.

>The drugs scenario you describe is being acted out every day by the way.

Thats why I used it. And it makes those dealers criminals in the US. I didn't mean he was under US jurisdiction when he broke the law, I meant he broke a US law which had effect in the US where the law applies. The US acknowledges that he did not break the local law where he was at the time, but he was one half of an action (or actually I guess millions of actions) that was in violation of US law and took effect under US jurisdiction. I can't remember what it is called, but someone in a reddit or HN discussion a few weeks ago introduced me to the legal concept whereby being a party to such a transaction extends personal jurisdiction to include you. Since he was not breaking UK law he could not be extradited, but once he was on US soil he could be arrested for the crime he committed.

I was discussing at work the other day how I am what I described as an "internet libertarian" so I'm also opposed to all of those laws being enforced against actions on the internet, but I don't dispute the legal right they have to do it.

>it should not be a requirement of a business abroad to even be aware of all the laws and statues of countries where they are not based

Unfortunately, as with laws in most places (I'm not aware of any such places actually), ignorance is not a defense. While it may be taken into account while determining your punishment, it does not absolve you of guilt. The judge in that case specifically addressed, when a request for a lesser sentence was made, her belief that the defendant knew what he was doing was a violation of US law.

>My point of view would be 'absolutely not'.

From your explanation I take it you misread the question, and actually believe that this person should not be arrested (and should be immune). Lets take it to the extreme then, and suppose that I live in a country where hiring contract killers is legal and only the actually murderer can be punished. If I paid for someone in the US to be murdered, the US government should not be able to arrest me when I come to the funeral?

The internet does make it much easier to do business with people all over the world, and that should be taken into account when trying to apply local laws to foreign actors, but saying that a sovereign state should have no right to take action against people who violate their laws (in which part or all of the action takes place or has effect within their territorial jurisdiction) goes way too far.

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