Australian Extradited For Breaking US Law At Home 777
An anonymous reader sends us a link to a report in The Age about an Australian resident, who had never set foot in the US and broke US intellectual-property laws in Australia, being extradited to the US to face trial. Hew Raymond Griffiths pleaded guilty in Virginia to overseeing all aspects of the operation of the group Drink Or Die, which cracked copy-protected software and media products and distributed them for free. He faces up to 10 years in a US jail and half a million dollars in fines.
Sad (Score:4, Informative)
Needs to be said (Score:5, Informative)
But yet nothing is done to catch the 419 scammers and all the spammers selling (often fake) pharmaceuticals.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Glad to be German (Score:5, Informative)
(This is specified in Art. 16 (2) GG: http://www.datenschutz-berlin.de/recht/de/gg/gg1_
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Informative)
This is entirely unacceptable. (Score:5, Informative)
(a) the person engages in conduct; and
(b) the conduct results in one or more infringements of the copyright in a work or other subjectmatter; and
(c) the infringement or infringements have a substantial prejudicial impact on the owner of the copyright; and
(d) the infringement or infringements occur on a commercial scale.
(2) An offence against subsection (1) is punishable on conviction by a fine of not more than 550 penalty units or imprisonment for not more than 5 years, or both.
(3) A person commits an offence if:
(a) the person engages in conduct; and
(b) the conduct results in one or more infringements of the copyright in a work or other subjectmatter; and
(c) the infringement or infringements have a substantial prejudicial impact on the owner of the copyright and the person is negligent as to that fact; and
(d) the infringement or infringements occur on a commercial scale and the person is negligent as to that fact.
Penalty: 120 penalty units or imprisonment for 2 years, or both.
If equivalent offences were not in existence in Australia, then perhaps I might be more willing to accept it (although even then I would have drastic reservations). As it stands, I cannot accept this.
Re:Looks like he violated... (Score:5, Informative)
If you break a law in a country you get tried IN THAT COUNTRY. Extradition works to preserve that - if you break the law then leave the country, you can be extradited BACK to that country to stand trial.
Re:Vice versa (Score:5, Informative)
I also have another one of a foreigner being sent to the US [bbc.co.uk] -- so it's not just Australia -- not that that's a good thing.
Some conjecture that I can't back up follows: I've read that the US rarely agrees to send their citizens overseas, rather just denying the extradition requests when they are in the courts.
Re:Women must be 2nd class here (Score:3, Informative)
No, the average rape sentence is less than the maximum copyright infringement sentence. To compare properly, you have to compare maximum to maximum or average to average. The maximum rape sentence is probably life in prison (or maybe death in some states); the average copyright infringement is probably considerably less than 10 (or even 6) years.
Still sound as unreasonable as it did before?
Re:Sad (Score:4, Informative)
Well, we had about 80 Australian tourists blown up in Bali by fanatics who wanted to protest against American policies, and thought we were close enough. Unfortunatley, while they were actually correct in that, the Americans themselves hardly noticed.
USA - Australia Free Trade Agreement (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/negotiations/us_fta/
Re:Vice versa (Score:4, Informative)
Whereas this case is about an Australian guy who commited a crime *in* Australia and the gringos want to fsck him just because
Re:Vice versa (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Glad to be German (Score:5, Informative)
First? (Score:4, Informative)
Honestly, is that what they teach you in America? The word democracy is an ancient Greek word. Why would the ancient Greeks have a word for something that didn't exist until 1776? Because democracy existed long before the United States did. India was a democracy 8000 years ago, Afghanistan and Pakistan 6000 years ago. The Iroquois Confederacy, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Althing in Iceland, early medieval Ireland, the Veche in Slavic countries... all democracies, all before the US came into being.
Re:He most certainly IS under US jurisdiction (Score:5, Informative)
Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00
Hope is very pleasant and all but once a nation starts down a road it can be hard to reverse course. Things can get _much_ worse. Empire is incompatible with democracy.
Re:He most certainly IS under US jurisdiction (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, our current government has decided that it is not in fact a limited government and has repeatedly ignored the Constitution. Even the courts have noted this. Hopefully, hopefully we will be able to steer things back on course before it's too late. But that hope strikes me as dim, given the fact that Congress, for instance, has so much it can impeach the president for -- Gitmo, Warrantless searches, authorizing torture, denying habeus corpus, etc -- but has done nothing.
--sabre86
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Informative)
I go into slightly more detail here. [slashdot.org]
I am also not a lawyer, although years ago I dated one from South Florida who happened to deal with extraditions, mainly South American stuff, so I heard a lot about it. Regarding your speculative question, generally extradition laws also require that the punishment guidelines in both jurisdictions be reasonably similar.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Informative)
From what I remember about rankings last time I looked at various world surveys:
one of the most disliked nations on the planet
about 130th in citizen happiness
53rd in literacy
45th in press freedom
lower 30s in math and science literacy
high teens in longevity
About seventh in social mobility
Gross Domestic Product: http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2007/01/the_d
The South African constitution explicitly protects gays and they are one of several countries with gay marriage
one of the greatest income disparities in the world
one of a couple of the 35 industrialized nations that still executes citizens
one of a couple of the top 7 industrialized nations without national health care
highest per capita imprisonment in the world
Are most new democracies choosing a republican government or a parliamentarian government? And why?
And Switzerland might have a word to say about the "world's first democracy".
Sociology and Political Science grad here. Just saying.
Re:Women must be 2nd class here (Score:1, Informative)
Re:First? (Score:3, Informative)
Really, learning wasn't enjoyable to me at all until after I got out of school. Then I started making up for all the stuff they never taught me. I had it better than the kids now do, a month or two ago kids I know from two different school districts in two different states both told me they spent everyday studying for the upcoming standardized school exams. They teachers now literally throw aside the normal studies and focus for an entire month on gaming the school rankings tests. These kids know the test is coming up and that's all they do until it's over with. Really sad that they don't focus on educating people and teaching them how to think, instead they focus on rote memorization and repeating what you heard. Mighty convenient that.
Re:voting for the other guy (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_voting [wikipedia.org]
Whilst this system of counting is not the best, statistically speaking (the best are Condorcet methods, though they also have their weaknesses) it is simple to understand (and count), and in the vast majority of cases results in the candidate who is most preferred by the most number of people being elected.
The US method of "plurality" voting is statistically the *worst* method available.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system [wikipedia.org]