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Comment by meowface | Hacker News Reader

Previous thread on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27891005

Actual quote, including full-on "it would be a shame if something happened to him" villain line:

>Upon further investigation, it became clear that [author] is a Chinese national, but not resident in China. As a guest in his current country, his residency status is predicated on a number of conditions, one of which is not violating the law.

>If found in violation of laws, residency may be revoked and he may be deported to his home country.

>This becomes even further complicated given another repo of his - Fuck 学习强国, which is highly critical of the Chinese government. Were he deported to China, who knows how he may be received.

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The situation seems significantly more nuanced than the villain-line sounds, and I would suggest people read the following article before coming to any conclusions: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/audacitys-new-owner-...

For those who don't wish to, in summary:

The problem is that they can't DMCA the downloader repo (as it doesn't contain any copyrighted content), but the downloader violates their service's TOS and specifically costs them licensing fees, as the rights holders extract payment for each download.

Their only recourse, in this instance, is to sue... But if they sue, they risk outsized impact on the life of the github author, something that it appears they have no desire to do.

But what do they do, stuck between the rock of "this guy is costing us money and effecting our business" and the hard place of "if we sue this guy he may end up a political prisoner in China"?

So they say that awful sounding line. The guy is an bumbling idiot when it comes to optics, clearly, with no understanding of how what he was saying was going to be read, but I don't think he's as villainous as the quote makes him out to be.

I did look into the full context and nuance and wrote a fuller response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27927878. I'm not looking to pillory anyone.

Essentially, I argue that - perhaps counter-intuitively - the actually empathetic and good faith thing to do would've been to just file the lawsuit rather than post what he posted, despite the claim that they're doing all this out of empathy.

Maybe I'll change my stance on it in the future, but those are my current feelings on it. At the very least, it's indeed one of the worst and least self-aware ways anyone could handle this situation.

That link just points to whole thread.

You're entitled to your opinion and so do they. I don't really see how there's basis for bad faith accusations. Their stance and actions seems reasonable and consistent, even if other people would have acted differently.

Sorry, fixed the link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27927878

What does a copyright lawsuit have to do with someone's residency status? It's a civil issue.

In his original GitHub issue comment (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E6p_DcrUcAMWFtB?format=jpg&name=...), he seems to imply that the author may be criminally liable, though he doesn't actually explain how or why. Seems like it may just be a way to bolster the intimidation attempt.

Criminal copyright infringement is a thing, but I strongly doubt it would apply here:

>There are four essential elements to a charge of criminal copyright infringement. In order to sustain a conviction under section 506(a), the government must demonstrate: (1) that a valid copyright; (2) was infringed by the defendant; (3) willfully; and (4) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain.

Even if one assumes for the sake of argument that (1), (2), and even (3) are actually met, (4) clearly doesn't apply. And based on all of the author's statements, I think it's unlikely (3) would be met, either.

Right, I don't see how there's anything but innuendo to the idea of criminal liability here. I don't think the statement we're talking about is in any way defensible.

It's not entirely obvious to me that it would remain nothing but a civil issue. It may certainly start that way, but the RIAA have gone for blood for less.

The only thing that matters is that the relevant parties believe it would possibly result in a criminal copyright case, or form some other grounds for deportation.

And again if they did believe that (and the Ars article mentions that they at least seem earnest) they're still idiots, but they're not moustache twirling cartoon bad guys, either.

No. The RIAA can neither invent new crimes nor can they prosecute anyone for a non-made-up crime. We don't generally deport people over tort claims. This is mustache-twirling cartoon bad guy behavior.

Meh, that's not a death threat, they're just looking for extra-judicial settlement.

I get the activism aspect and I agree that copyright laws are outdated, but how entitled do you need to be to expect preferential treatment because of your political beliefs? If you're in a foreign country and hasn't settled yet, just create a fake persona and disassociate from controversial activities.

World problems are here to stay, they'll still be around for you to solve once you get a citizenship.

Yeah, China doesn't engage in organ harvesting, just non-consensual organ arbitrage.

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