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Comment by philippejara | Hacker News Reader

> A fair amount of “this is fine, governments enforce IP laws and that’s a public good” vibes in here, which is all a very reasonable perspective.

I'd say it would be a a reasonable perspective if his case was being tried where the offences actually took place and/or where he was a citizen of and not a country who refuses to give the same rights to non-citizens being tried there compared to citizens[1] and wasn't even where the offense took place. This is absolutely chilling for anyone who isn't an US citizen honestly.

[1]:https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c511y42z1p7o

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It's a mockery of jurisdiction. It's a joke that NZ would sell out its own citizens like that.

NZ is a member of 5 eyes IIRC, and so likely have various relations/cooperative agreements in place that make it easy(-ier) for justifying the handing of citizens over to another state.

I wonder if the same would have happened if the roles had been reversed. Somehow I doubt it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Dunn Pretty much.

It's not analogous. The person was being charged of a crime that happened in the UK and fled to the US, then was extradited back to the UK to be tried. In other words how extraditions usually work.

An applicable case would be someone being extradited from the US to the UK to be tried for a crime that happened while they were in a different country.

> It's a joke that NZ would sell out its own citizens like that.

DotCom is not a NZ citizen, he's a resident.

I mean, fine, but replace one word for the other in my sentence and it makes no difference, really.

It does, inasmuch as your sentenced described the NZ jurisdiction as a mockery on the basis that it "sells out" its citizens.

Considering the number of countries that extradite their own citizens, the bar for "selling out" and "mockery" must be quite low.

And most extradited people don't have the luxury of being able to delay their trial by 12 years.

>It does, inasmuch as your sentenced described the NZ jurisdiction as a mockery on the basis that it "sells out" its citizens.

No. What I said was that this is a mockery of jurisdiction. I seem to recall that DotCom lived in South Korea when what he's being accused of happened. Whether he's a citizen of NZ or not, this is a joke. The US has no legal right to demand his extradition just because the servers were in the US. It's just using political power to get its way. Like I said in a different sub-thread, what, it now has jurisdiction over the entire planet and can require anyone anywhere to follow its laws?

Note he's a permanent resident, which is a lot closer to citizen than most other resident class visas in NZ and forbids one from being spied on like the NZ government did.

It's a joke that we allowed him to buy residency. I hope it was worth it for him, and only hope similar things happen to Peter Thiel.

>> tried where the offences actually took place

The general rule is that a crime takes place where the victim stands. Where the perpetrator stand is a potential secondary location. The alleged victims here were "standing" in the US and so the US is proceeding with the case.

Trials in a third location are extraordinarily rare. Only things like the ICC or some admiralty proceedings involve trials in a third location.

So if someone robs your house while you're out of the country, the crime would have taken place in whatever country you happened to be in at that time, right? That's how that would play out. Because if that's not the case it would imply that the house itself would be the victim.

I also think it's odd to talk about this being the "general rule" when there's plenty of crimes/infractions with no victim.

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