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Comment by shmageggy | Hacker News Reader

These laws seem so arcane in a modern, globalized world. I'm assuming that one's jurisdiction is determined by citizenship? Or is it geographical location? If I'm a US citizen visiting Canada, can I legally download it there? What if I've lived there for years, or my whole life? What if I'm a hold a dual citizenship? What if I'm Canadian and visiting the US? If I legally download it in Canada, can I bring it across the border? What if I use a backup service that has servers in the US? What if it's a Canadian company that is managing them? What if the servers are in Canada but it's a US corporation that manages them? What if I'm a dual citizen who is physically straddling the border? What if I copy the file onto a flash drive that's taped to a boomerang and hurl it across the border before it comes back?

You know you have shitty laws when you can apply a reductio ad absurdum.

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In my limited understanding jurisdiction is generally determined based on where the act takes place. So if a US citizen kills another US citizen in New Zealand, New Zealand has jurisdiction.

In this case we are talking about the act of copying a document. So if you download a book in Canada from a Canadian server Canadian copyright applies. Imo, that is regardless of where that book was written or if you later take that copy over the border or not.

However, I also think this is just a "rule of thumb" and can be overwritten by any country as it pleases, e.g. US tax law applies to all income of US citizen around the world, subject only to international treaties.

Ok interesting. So if this interpretation is correct, what happens if I'm in the US, but I log into a Canadian server and download the document remotely? I've initiated the act of copying in the US but the bits never enter the US (Or do they? What if the IP route goes through US internet backbones? And what if they get cached somewhere along the way, in the US? Is the ISP infringing?)

If that's ok, what if I then view the Canadian server's downloaded document on my local machine without explicitly downloading it (via remote desktop or even cat'ing a text file in an SSH session). I've not explicitly copied anything, but the very act of interacting with it remotely necessarily copies it to local memory.

What about the reverse situation, where a Canadian downloads Gatsby while logged into a US server?

(Note I'm not trying to heckle you or demean your answer. I actually very much appreciate the info, but I'm just trying to point out that even simple notions such as "copying a document" aren't necessarily coherent in a modern, digital context)

Laws are not rules written in a programming language. Exploiting logic errors and corner cases does not work the same way. Don't make this mistake.

Whether a court will let your clever workaround pass or not is up to them. If what you do is not in their interest (or there are other forces present, like the government or lobbyists), you may find that the law is _very_ flexible in its application.

This is one of hthose thorny edges of copyright, where plaintiffs have successfully argued that the act of moving the data from disk to memory constitutes a 'copy'.

In my limited understanding jurisdiction is generally determined based on where the act takes place

Which is generally how it has to be. Otherwise the USA could legalize murder, thus allowing US citizens to legally murder New Zealanders in New Zealand with impunity.

Naturally an extreme example, but the understanding here is as old as time. "My roof, my rules".

> In my limited understanding jurisdiction is generally determined based on where the act takes place. So if a US citizen kills another US citizen in New Zealand, New Zealand has jurisdiction.

We've seen the US happily grab jurisdiction for many things that have at best a tenuous connection to the US. (.com tld? That's US, even if nothing is hosted or served in the US or used by US citizens)

There are important exceptions for some sex crimes. If it's a crime in the US then it doesn't matter if a man commits that crime abroad, he'll be arrested and brought back to the US and tried as if he had committed that offence in the US.

(England has similar laws too.)

"There are important exceptions for some sex crimes. If it's a crime in the US then it doesn't matter if a man commits that crime abroad, he'll be arrested and brought back to the US and tried as if he had committed that offence in the US."

Even if it happened in Sweden, between a Swedish citizen and an Australian, and it probably wasn't even a crime, and the "perpetrator" is in London.

Somehow out of the countries Sweden, The UK, The US, Australia, and Ecuador - only Ecuador seems to have a sane grasp on reality...

No, that's completely unrelated. In that case, the alleged crime took place in Sweden, so the Swedish courts are attempting to prosecute him. London's involvement is merely that countries have international extradition agreements, to prevent all criminals from being able to avoid the law by moving country. The US' involvement in purely speculation - maybe they're pulling the strings, but they're not officially involved.

So unless you think all extradition should be avoided (and whatever you think about the Assange case, would you be happy if somebody who lived near you murdered your family, moved to a neighboring country and you were told "well we can't do anything any more"?), the case has been handled perfectly from the point of view of which countries should do what.

But usually crime must be crime in both countries for extradition. The problem is that it is not required for extradition between member states of EU in case of rape, but definition of rape is still very different between countries.

What if a Turkish citizen says bad words (swears) to Turkish people while he is abroad? Then the penalty increases 2 times. The interesting part here is that the laws of Turkey work even if you are not in Turkey.

Please just answer all of those questions above for us on the form, sir.

If you answer correctly, we will grant you access to the internet.

-SOPA/CISPA/ETC

I've made a point of never looking up what an "act of moral turpitude" is, which is something the US always asks me to attest that I've never committed every time I fill out their visa waiver form.

Moral turpitude is a legal concept in the United States and some other countries that refers to "conduct that is considered contrary to community standards of justice, honesty or good morals." -Wikipedia

Looks like they don't want anything but "good american boys" entering the country.

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