Hacker News Reader

Comment by Atropos | Hacker News Reader

That concept is actually not that unusual or nonsensical - imagine if we had the opposite: As long as you and your servers are outside the US, you can not be charged under US criminal law. This would basically mean that the US would need to rely exclusively on the goodwill of foreign prosecutors to shut down things like e.g. securities fraud exclusively targetting US citizens or hackers attacking US companies etc. Obviously, in many cases foreign prosecutors would not care too much. Does this seem like justice?

View on HN

I'm going to say yes. If they and their business are completely outside of the US, then unless they are breaking a treaty (ex: war crimes), I would say that it is justice. To think otherwise would be to place the expectation that every person in the world be held to the expectation that they know and understand the laws of every other country in the world. That to me sounds unreasonable. For example, how many non-US censorship laws do you think are broken by Americans on a daily basis? Do you think it is right and just that all of those Americans be charged with a crime by other countries? And that they be extradited on request?

If a law is universal to the point that you think charging non-citizens residing outside of your country is just, then I would expect that declaration to be recognized via a treaty or an agreement by the United Nations. No matter what you think of Kim Dotcom and others like him, the charges and approach by the US government to me do not seem like justice in any sense of the word.

The difference is intent. Kim was intentionally violating American law to defraud American businesses and help American citizens commit crimes.

While I don't agree with the manner of his prosecution or extradition, let's all agree to the facts of the case. He didn't incidentally break US law, he fully intended to break US law to the detriment of US corporations and the benefit of US citizens.

Did I say intent in my reply? Did I even imply it anywhere? Because until I saw your response, intent didn't even cross my mind. Regardless of that, I still don't think intent changes my point of view when it comes to justice. Trying to take intent into account means treading into very very murky waters with regards to thought police and trying to determine what people think. And that is one very slippery slope. I for one would not want countries like China and North Korea claiming that I "intentionally" broke some censorship law in their country and asking for my extradition.

>Did I say intent in my reply? Did I even imply it anywhere?

You did not, which is why I brought it up. What you said was that people should not be responsible for breaking laws they were not aware of in countries they don't live in. Which is true and I agree with that, but Kim knew full well what he was doing. Intent is 90% of the law, and Kim knew exactly what he was doing. He fully intended to break US law to the detriment of US corporations for the benefit of US citizens.

>[that's assuming non-citizens] know and understand the laws of every other country in the world

is exactly what you said. There's no assumption needed here. You don't have to assume Kim knew the laws of other countries. He knew. Intent is a very important factor here, which is why I brought it up. It was something missing from your argument.

> As long as you and your servers are outside the US, you can not be charged under US criminal law

Thats exactly what the NSA said about spying. "Your Constitutional rights apply to you only on US soil. One step off US soil and the law doesn't apply anymore."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com