Comment by kimixa
7 months ago
The US has always claimed jurisdiction on foreign-hosted but US-accessible content.
Do people forget the owner of Megaupload being extradited? In many ways this is just catching up to the current US state.
And there's a lot of confusion here between basic consumer data protection laws and (IMHO massively overreaching) "Online Safety" laws. This isn't Imgur making a stand for free speech, this is Imgur wanting to track and sell user data - to which minors cannot consent. Putting on my tinfoil hat you could argue that many of these companies are trying to encourage this misunderstanding intentionally.
> The US has always claimed jurisdiction on foreign-hosted but US-accessible content.
Committing crimes remotely from another country was never a loophole to escape the laws of that country.
When a country requests extradition they’re not claiming jurisdiction over another country. They’re saying that a crime was committed in their country by the person and they’re asking the foreign country for cooperation in prosecuting that person.
The MegaUpload case is not equivalent to what the UK is doing. MegaUpload was operating as a business, taking payments, and exchanging money. Once you start doing explicit paid business in a country you can’t claim you’re not involved with that country.
If a country starts claiming that merely making content accessible globally is a crime in their country, that’s an entirely different issue. Not equivalent to the MegaUpload case.
> Do people forget the owner of Megaupload being extradited? In many ways this is just catching up to the current US state.
Again, false equivalence. MegaUpload was operating as a business with US customers. They also had some hosting in the United States if I recall correctly.
Once you start doing business in a country and have customers there, you’re involved with their laws.
> The MegaUpload case is not equivalent to what the UK is doing. MegaUpload was operating as a business, taking payments, and exchanging money. Once you start doing explicit paid business in a country you can’t claim you’re not involved with that country.
I’m not entirely sure the argument that the MegaUpload case and this Imgur case aren’t equivalent really holds up here. Imgur are collecting data from minors in the UK, and presumably selling that data (otherwise, why bother collecting it). Which is a crime in the UK (and the EU). You’re not allowed to collect people’s data and sell it without consent, and minors can’t provide consent (that’s basically what makes them minors).
Presumably Imgur sells adverts, and likely sells adverts to UK buyers. So for pretty much all the reasons you outline that the US should have jurisdiction over MegaUpload, the UK should have jurisdiction over Imgur.
I also take issue with the idea that being paid for something is the bar that we should be assessing a companies involvement in a country by. Obviously conducting monetary business transactions in a country is a very strong argument for jurisdiction. But it’s less obvious to me that breaking local laws, without making a profit, should somehow exempt a company from that countries laws. Particularly when the laws in question deal with how a company directly interacts with the citizens of that country.
And they certainly do have monetary transactions, just not with the people whose data is handled unlawfully. A sharper-toothed law might also prevent UK companies from using data sets fed by Imgur… but I doubt that will ever happen. I’m honestly pretty sick of surveillance capitalism entities just doing whatever they hell they want and pretending like the privacy policy is actual consent.
>They’re saying that a crime was committed in their country by the person and they’re asking the foreign country for cooperation in prosecuting that person.
Seems like a loophole for arbitrary criminal accusations of a people living abroad who are not affiliated with the country making the accusations. With this kind of logic, adult website operators should be extradited to some middle-eastern country for violating their sharia law online. It's wrong. Site operators living abroad should not be held accountable for not adhering to arbitrary local laws, unless they are conducting business directly in that country.
But that is exactly how it works.
Middle Eastern countries are not able to convince e.g. the US or any of the European Countries to extradite their citizens (or sometimes legal residents) for violating the moral codes of let's say Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.
Because these countries know that (and becaue of diplomatic consequences) the law and/or government there doesn't even try it. But if the CEO of a porn site travels there he can and most likely will be held accountable. Tha
If it's a crime in both jurisdiction prosecution is certainly a possibility and happens regularily (or both countries cooperate to convict people without extradition)
Ultimately the United States have a lot more diplomatic sway over the world than some random country and that's why they can and do ask for a lot more.
If you ever need an example of everday US soft power that it is.
> unless they are conducting business directly in that country
Imgur was showing ads (business) and collecting data (business) and operating a message platform (business) in the UK. They have stopped.
This seems fine?
Imgur offers services to UK-based customers, allowing them to view and host images in return for viewing ads. You used to be able to optionally pay for a pro account, though the vast majority of users use the free ad-supported option, and that is now the only option.
Megaupload's business model was pretty much exactly the same - but with "any" file instead of just images.
If the UK version didn't have ads, and UK-focused ads at that, they might have a point - but I don't see any "false equivalence" here.
And playing games about "indirectly" monetizing people (through ads or similar) doesn't mean they aren't /customers/. Otherwise every consumer law would be trivially worked around.
Not showing ads and not collecting data are two completely different things. If I could choose between annoying banner ads and being tracked and followed and linked and spied on, I’d take ads every time. I’ve never paid for a freemium where they just stopped all of their creepy telemetry as soon as I started paying them.
Megaupload is a weird one. He hosted in it the USA, giving USA jurisidction. Also it's still going through the courts in New Zeland and USA and hasn't been proven hes guilty. And if I recall he did alledge he followed the DMCA, which if he ever is extradited might save him if it is in fact true.
> And if I recall he did alledge he followed the DMCA,
They didn’t even completely follow the DMCA, though. They had active features to detect duplicate uploads via file hash and link them together via deduplication, but a DMCA takedown request would only remove one link to the file rather than actually remove the content.
They claimed a lot of things and tried to ride a wave of internet populism, but their case wasn’t really as controversial as they tried to make it.
The DMCA doesn't require you do take down more than requested whether you have the means to easily do so or not. And it doesn't necessarily make sense to do so for services like Megaupload where the URL is a kind of authorization mechanism - one publicly shared URL pointing to copyrighted content might be infringing while one not shared publicly but pointing to identical data might be OK legally.
> And if I recall he did alledge he followed the DMCA, which if he ever is extradited might save him if it is in fact true.
It 100% won’t; there is no DMCA safe harbor for criminal conduct, only for a narrow category of civil liability.
You are misapropriating. Copyright infrigment can become criminal if you willfully violate it. If you then take earnings from the willful infrigment and launder them, it becomes other crimes. But if you follow the DMCA and qualify for safe harbor, what copyright crime have you commited that would go to criminal?
Or to give you another example in backpage the founders where aquitted since the judge could not trace that the money came from a "criminal source" https://www.courthousenews.com/backpage-executives-acquitted...
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> The US has always claimed jurisdiction on foreign-hosted but US-accessible content.
There’s been multiple cases where non-US gambling websites have had their domains confiscated by the American government because they have American users, going back about 20 years.
US can only confiscate US domains, right?
Claiming jurisdiction is one thing, ensuring cooperation of the host state is another, and requires either kowtowing to the US or similar legislation, even if there is an extradition treaty.
Doing business in the United States (by having customers there and examining money) will subject you to their laws.
And imgur has users in the UK, and is showing them ads and collecting their data (both things of monetary value). Consequently the UK claims they are subject to their laws
The arguments are very similar. You could claim that only accepting fiat currency should count, but that would open a massive loophole that would be trivial to exploit
Don't nations have some right to enforce their copyright laws (civil and criminal) outside their own territory, via treaty?
If you’re an author from a Berne country, you get the same rights in every other Berne country as the nationals of that country.
Example: If you’re from Mexico and your work is infringed in France, French law protects you like a French author. So you could sue where the infrigment is happening, ie france.
The notion that a 17 year old cannot consent to user tracking is absurd
But the notion that a five-year-old is able to consent to anything is absurd. So we have to draw the line somewhere. The UK has chosen to draw the line at 18, which for some kids will be absurd, yes. But for others it will be appropriate. And yet others will still not be emotionally mature at 18 and capable of making that kind of decision properly.
UK's age of consent is 16. So yes, the idea that a 16 year old can consent to sex but not to cookies is indeed absurd.
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No, what is absurd is everyone having their data tracked and sold, including minors.
And the notion that if you reject all tracking, these scummy companies will not actually track you
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That’s because you’re looking at this ass backwards. The law determines an age at which a person is considered capable of making legally binding agreements, like providing consent. In the UK that’s 18, with some exceptions.
It would be absurd for the UK to create a special exception to allow underage youths to consent to user tracking at an age lower than the standard age for legal consent in any other context.
The UK is considering making a special exception for underage youths. A pretty big one at that: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c628ep4j5kno
As far as I can tell, here in Scotland it is 16?
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1991/50
its more complex than that. There are many agreements you can make younger than that. Kids can, for example, buy services such as transport (e.g. the monthly bus tickets my daughter bought at 18) that are subject to legally binding agreements. They can buy things in general, on and offline. You can enter into employment contracts in general at 16, and for some limited exceptions even younger.
Why is it absurd?
IMO, the law should establish some parental rights over their children, I don't think this is controversial. You can argue with what the limits of the rights are, how they interact with the rights of the child, and how that changes as the child ages, but the basic ideas is pretty sound.
And then given that, it is the role of an elected government to determine all these factors, subject to review of the courts. That all seems to be working here.