Comment by aestetix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aestetix | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not trying to move goalposts, I was simply looking for clarification.

A couple points.

First, wasn't there a huge issue where the data centers had money problems because the FBI (or some agency) was forcing them to retain all the data, as they didn't actually know for sure what was there? Or am I wrong and they had a list of specific files hosted on specific servers and were able to use that to demonstrate wrongdoing? Just because I say I'm going to hack the Gibson, doesn't mean I actually do it.

Second, there is a real jurisdiction issue here. Kim Dotcom is a German citizen based in New Zealand. The servers themselves are (or were) hosted in the US. Did Kim Dotcom himself upload anything to them? I can absolutely see the case for shutting down servers that might contain illegal data. I don't see the case for extraditing someone to the US for allegedly breaking a law that applies neither to his country of origin nor residence.

Also, I'm not sure why you're being so angry with me, I'm just looking at the facts. I do have a bias, but I'm not moving any goalposts, just making sure we discuss the actual issues at hand.

If we remove the digital aspect of it. What do you think the US would do if Kim let anonymous people send him DVDs and albums over snailmail and he would burn and mail them to anyone who requested it?

Personally I find safe harbour arguments very weak when the service provider allows anonymous sharing.

If you want to make a proper analogy, it would be more like living in NZ and owning a store in the US that receives DVDs and blindly mails out burnt copies as requested.

But we don't need to wonder what the US would do in such a scenario, since we already know. What's being discussed is not that the Internet being in the way somehow changes things, but that countries shouldn't be able to override jurisdictions like this. If other countries had balls, the most the US could do is ask for a person to be tried in the country they were in when the event in question happened, under that country's laws. What, the US now has jurisdiction over every living person? Anyone can be accused and tried in the US despite never having set foot there?

> What, the US now has jurisdiction over every living person? Anyone can be accused and tried in the US despite never having set foot there?

If they choose to operate in/through that country, yes. If he never illegally hosted anything on a server within US jurisdiction, they would never have an argument.

Your entire argument is akin to "oh, I hired someone to kill a guy in the Germany, but I'm in China so...too bad". They only care because someone was killed (pirated material was hosted) in Germany, breaking Germany's laws.

You're delusional if you think other countries wouldn't make the same claims. And it's on the recipient country to agree or not. Plenty of countries deny extradition to the US all the time, just look at Roman Polanski.

>Your entire argument is akin to "oh, I hired someone to kill a guy in the Germany, but I'm in China so...too bad". They only care because someone was killed (pirated material was hosted) in Germany, breaking Germany's laws.

What would normally happen in that case is that one country would present evidence to the other country, which would then prosecute under its own laws and court system, since hiring assassins is illegal everywhere. You're the one who's delusional if you think countries have free reign to impose their laws on people who are not physically there. It's called sovereignty. What NZ is doing here is saying that it's the US's bitch.

> It's called sovereignty. What NZ is doing here is saying that it's the US's bitch.

Oh, gotcha. You're a child.

You could have just lead with that.

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