Yes, if I am running a scam on US users, using US services to do so, and hiring US employees to run the scam, then I am operating in the US, even if I never set foot there. You can argue any kind of racketeering is immune to foreign prosecution if you argue against Dotcom's extradition, and those arguments are no more valid.

You shouldn't be subject to US law as a non us citizen regardless or would you like US citizens hauled off to saudi arabia to answer decency charges?

Or US 'contractors' to Iraq.

The US has many citizens that rightly should stand trial for crimes a whole lot more serious than facilitating copyright violation, and none ever will. Reciprocity in situations like these would be very much appreciated and the US is very very reluctant to let any of its citizens be extradited. It happens, but the frequency is dis-proportional to the point of being comical.

Are there any stats about this? Military contractors have a bit of a special situation ( not to say its valid...), but if I'm wanted for murder in France I'm pretty sure I'll be put on the first plane out if I were in Virginia

One area of unbalance:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16041824

> A critical test set out in the treaty is that the British request must include "such information as would provide a reasonable basis to believe that the person sought committed the offence for which extradition is requested."

> This requirement does not apply to requests submitted by the US to the UK.

Amanda Knox. You made her a celebrity. Us tried hard to prevent her being tried.

What about What about the What about the ex CEO of Union Carbide who still has a warrant out for his arrest in India for the Bhopal incident. Basically this is a power game. If your little the US system screws you. If your big like China and ripping off Nike sneakers you can thumb your nose at the US legal system.

Would you care to point out some US companies that have hosted servers and hired employees in Saudi Arabia where those servers and employees were flaunting Saudi law?

Further, New Zealand made their own choice to extradite him. They could have refused, they instead chose to. The alternative might have been an international incident, but they decided to aid the US and turn him over. The US is not so all-powerful that it can compel governments to act against their own best interest, only powerful enough to align interests, by hook or crook.

> The US is not so all-powerful that it can compel governments to act against their own best interest, only powerful enough to align interests, by hook or crook.

What world do you live in? The United States often compels governments to act against their own interests. The 1973 US backed coup leading to the death of 11,000 civilians. The Iranian-Contras. The School of the Americas, which literally trained terrorists in South America, Iraq!

Thirty years from now, declassified information will show the US caused the rebellion in Libya and that the US directly funded ISIS.

Granted New Zealand is a Commonwealth State and it'd be much more difficult to go to war with a developed English speaking nation, but they are still under the thumb of the US/UK empire. They ruled the spying on Kim Dotcom was illegal, then changed the laws to make it retroactively legal...and also allow the GCHB to spy on anyone they want.

I wish I could base my arguments on things that are going to happen 30 years from now.

for NZ, the USA based companies signed a deal to film several multi million dollars movies there on the same week the NZ feds agreed to press charges and arrest Kim Dotcom. including the hobbit, which also donated a renovated international airport to the country (hobbit themed no less)

if you want to think the US industry most interested in the copyright law there moving all that money at the right time is just a coincidence, suit yourself.

To be fair the landscape of NZ was highly suitable to the filming of a Movie like the Hobbit. There were far better reasons for them to be filming there than the Dotcom case. Enough better reasons that it's reasonable to conclude the timing in the case was coincidental.

I suspect that it's also not unusual for Hollywood to sweeten the pot when they want to film somewhere with donations of various types.

The connection between the case and those films is extremely tenuous.

It is a bit unusual for Hollywood to get laws passed in their favour in foreign countries - http://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/oct/31/warner-bros-...

my employer has a data center there and neighboring countries, and i can guess we don't pay much attention if out edge servers are hosting any entertainment news pictures that are death offenses there.

same with China. i bet right now our edge servers are pumping out lots of state censored topics that are also possible treason death sentences.

Indecency isn't a crime in the US, so you couldn't get extradited for it.

If you had committed a crime in Saudi Arabia that is also illegal in the US and the US courts have ruled that the extradition is legal, I don't see what's wrong with being extradited.

If you're a gay man you face much more serious consequences from that extradition.

Copyright infringement isn't a crime in NZ...

It is if you do it as part of a business. Downloading a movie isn't a crime (but is illegal), but burning it to dvd and selling it turns it into a crime.

OK, let's shift to another scenario then.

It's illegal in the US to make and distribute adult films without the proper permits and paperwork and health checks.

Let's say someone made a website that had Saudi girls, now living in the US, make adult films (without the proper permitting and everything so they were violating a US law as well) and advertised those films in Saudi Arabia. And let's say there are Saudi customers.

To speed things up, maybe they had a CDN server in Saudi Arabia.

When the authorities in Saudi Arabia discover this and charge the film makers, would the US grant extradition?

* The film makers / business operators in this scenario would be 100% American. * The product of their creation and the service itself wouldn't be illegal in the US. What was illegal was some business decisions they made. * Their CDN helped facilitate optimal data transmission but was not required for business operations * The Saudi court in this scenario wishes to charge them for the service itself and the product created

Similarly, * Kim is not an american citizen and his company wasn't American * His business was legal in the country it was incorporated in, although he arguably made some business decisions that were not entirely above board * He had leased equipment in the US to help serve people in that geographic region * The US wishes to jail him for the actual operation of the service

Would the US extradite the US citizen to Saudi Arabia for punishment? If not, why should NZ extradite Kim to the US?

*edit - Somehow didn't see that michaelmrose made this argument too in this exact same thread

In general something has to be a crime in both countries for an extradition to happen.

This has meant that the US has introduced extra sex crime law so that Americans who travel overseas to take advantages of different age of consent laws can be tried as if they had committed the crime in the US.

Except that it is (someone posted a link to the law above).

They also don't have Google in New Zealand.

am i missing something at google.co.nz?

We also need to prevent double trials. If an individual were judged and sentenced for a crime in one country, he should not be judged on the same grounds in another.

Is there any concept of international double jeopardy? I understand why we want to avoid this within the same country, but if someone commits a crime against both Country A and Country B simultaneously (one act) and they are sentenced to N months in prison or a $Y fine in Country A, I don't immediately see any reason why Country B shouldn't be allowed to pursue a case against them as well.

If Jaywalking is a crime in country 200 countries you don't want someone to be liable 200 times for a single case.

Note, we are charging people for crimes committed in other countries so the president is independent of crime type.

This is a poor example since a single case of Jaywalking can only be commited in a single country. If you were to Jaywalk across a country border on the other hand, you'd could be charged with 2 instances of Jaywalking. Once in the first country covering only the distance you Jaywalked while in that country and once in the second country to cover the distance you Jaywalked in that country. Even in that case you might only be tried in a single country since the other country would have to extradite you and they may not want to. That's the whole point of the extradition process, it allows one country to deny or allow another country the ability to prosecute someone.

An example of crime which can be punished twice: Use of prostitution in a foreign country is illegal for an Australian. However, the law was created with international compatibility in mind.

Ahh, but we are charging people for crimes they commit outside of a given country.

If twenty country's all make blasphemy illegal, then a single speech in a single country would be breaking the law in each of them.

As to jaywalking, that might not be the root cause. Selective enforcement means people often get charge for reasons other than the direct action.

I won't repeat what blktiger said. A better example would be child pornography hosted on multiple servers in multiple countries. I'm sure there is a less emotionally charged offense where you could come up with a single act violating the same (or very similar) laws in multiple jurisdictions simultaneously.

In your example each separate server would involve separate incidents and thus be separate crimes. What about one person uploading one file to one server in a persons home country?