Judge Rules Against China In 'Green Dam' Suit 152
An anonymous reader writes "About a year after Cybersitter sued the Chinese government and several Asian OEMs for allegedly copying its code to create the 'Green Dam' software, a US federal judge has allowed the $2.3 billion suit to proceed. Judge Josephine Staton Tucker, a California district judge, entered a judgement of default against the People's Republic of China on Wednesday, after PRC officials failed to respond to the ruling. Although the PRC's embassy sent a letter to the US State Department protesting Cybersitter's suit, such a letter did not qualify as a formal response."
A drop in the pond... (Score:2)
Re:A drop in the pond... (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be hilarious if we reneged on our foreign debts by using RIAA math to value the IP "stolen" from the US in the trillions, and seize foreign capital as "compensation."
This does happen [nwsource.com] in the case of tangible assets such as oil, so I guess the fact we don't do the same for intellectual property is a tacit admission of some distinction between them vs other types of property.
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I don't know about that. China declared the software added and licensed to every new computer in the country, and their population is 1,331,460,000 according to The Google. So the suit is really a lot less than what China would pay if instead of copyrighted code, it was a pirated song.
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However that is the real problem, The alleged copyright infringement occurred in China not in the US. For the civil suit to proceed that US must now claim their laws take precedence over the China's laws within China.
For the judge to accept the case is stupid, as any attempt to claim money will result in a major legal dispute, which will inevitably be lost.
Any claims can only be made in the US for copyright infringement that occurs within the US. So the response by the government of China was the appro
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This does happen [nwsource.com] in the case of tangible assets such as oil, so I guess the fact we don't do the same for intellectual property is a tacit admission of some distinction between them vs other types of property.
I see it more as a tacit admission that we don't want to fuck with China. Given that they could basically tank our economy simply by refusing to buy our bonds, we probably don't want to do anything too aggressive towards them right now. Granted, we could do what you suggested to other countries and leave China alone, but then China would start lookin' at us all shifty-eyed, fearing that they would be next...
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Yeah, right, China doesn't get paid so it decides to commit suicide instead.
So, let me see if I understand you logic (Score:2)
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GP never said that America (or better, the US) would be to blame.
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The US has not been honoring ANY of their treaties. They have their money fixed to the RMB. They have trade barriers in place (especially agricultural ones, which disadvantage poor farmers in poor countries). They subsidize and dump on the market. They refuse to let Mickey Mouse onto the public domain, long after he should have been freed. They invade oil producing countries all over. They make software like Bittorent, Limewire, TOR, and Linux which are all just tools for piracy. Per their own legislation,
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Yeah. Right. Here is a clue. When all other moneys are in play against the dollar, and the Yuan does not move for several years, then I think that it is safe to assume that it is fixed against the dollar.
When the Yuan did not move for several years, it was officially fixed to the dollar. Since it has been officially unfixed, there has not been a period of "several years" in which it did not move against the dollar. FACT.
Now, maybe it hasn't been moving enough, and very likely it is still "secretly" fixed to the dollar for periods of 9 or 10 months with a brief controlled shift in between, but your "evidence" that it is fixed is false.
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Over the past 2 years the government printed off a trillion dollars and sold the debt to itself. If it really wanted to it could *buy* the 800 billion that China owns pretty easy. Not to mention the fact that if America goes into that big a depression the effect on the rest of the world will be extremely ugly. Food riots would be much more common, among other things
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Yes!!! People will not be able to find food because the next batch of iPhones will be dumped onto the ocean floor instead of being sold to Americans!
Morons.
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"It says 'one trillion dollars'. But what's this? It also says 'Bank of Zimbabwe'..."
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If a US court had any rights to judge over what happened on foreign soil, perhaps. It doesn't. It's a stupid case and a waste of money on the side of the plaintiff. China was kind enough to actually acknowledge it with a letter. It needn't have.
Always safer to file a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. If the Chinese government really believed what you say is true, it should have done that instead of complain to the State department.
An informal letter? (Score:1)
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"The Chinese side hereby expresses strong concern over it and firmly rejects it" Does that really work in China?
Umm...Ahem. The Chinese government, in this day and age, can "firmly reject" whatever the hell it wants.
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And also When suing china in some US court.
Get real, the chance of them paying a single penny is slim to none.
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Actually, what they can do is seize assets belonging to the Chinese government. I don't think it will take them too long to find assets that they can seize. Now, if China didn't have any investment or economic activity in the US, you'd be correct, but the court can order the Federal government to fork over the appropriate funds next time the Chinese government tries to redeem some bonds.
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But what would stop that from going the other way? The US seizes $2.3b of Chinese assets in the US; China seizes $2.3b worth of US assets in China (ditto for non-payment of bonds). Rinse, repeat, until one side has no assets left in the other's country?
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You are asserting that if the US government seizes Chinese government property, that the Chinese government seizing property owned by people in hundreds of countries with no direct tie
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Also, if I recall, foreign companies can't legally own land in Mainland China - they can just buy multi-decade leases.
That's because nobody can legally own land in Mainland China. Aside from the PRC government, of course. All anyone can buy in China is multi-decade (or shorter) leases.
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It's been a while since I studied that era, but as I remember, the last time Germany invaded Poland, the international community tolerated it rather well. I don't think anyone really got their panties in a twist until they ran through France.
Actually, Britain and France declared war on Germany immediately upon the invasion of Poland.
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There are effectively no US assets in China. Foreigners aren't allowed to own Chinese real estate, etc, etc.
Good grief... (Score:1)
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't be the PRC government that prevents them from getting money, it will be the USA government that stops them. The hostages held by Iran for 444 days tried to sue (there were substantial Iranian assets in the US that had been frozen and could be used to pay damages), but they lost their lawsuit not because of any defence put on by Iran but rather by the US government.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/01/national/main561274.shtml [cbsnews.com]
If the USA government does that to protect a state which it considers an enemy (Iran), imagine what they will do to protect the PRC to which they owe a trillion dollars or so.
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't be the PRC government that prevents them from getting money, it will be the USA government that stops them. The hostages held by Iran for 444 days tried to sue (there were substantial Iranian assets in the US that had been frozen and could be used to pay damages), but they lost their lawsuit not because of any defence put on by Iran but rather by the US government.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/01/national/main561274.shtml [cbsnews.com]
If the USA government does that to protect a state which it considers an enemy (Iran), imagine what they will do to protect the PRC to which they owe a trillion dollars or so.
Those hostages are alive and free today because of an agreement known as the Algiers Accords [wikipedia.org] (wikipedia). Part of the aggreement that freed them stated that they could not sue Iran. If we reneged after making the accord we would forever lose the option to recover hostages through such an aggreement. This type of action is down to protect US interests and its citizens abroad.
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Agreements signed while someone has a gun pointed to your head (or 52 of your citizens heads) are considered valid by the courts? A crime can be committed against your person but your government can retroactively declare that it wasn't a crime?
I guess I learned something new today.
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They are about as valid as every peace treaty signed since the beginning of mankind.
like the sound of all us gun nuts blowing them way (Score:1)
like the sound of all us gun nuts blowing them way.
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This comment seems to sum up the arrogant stupidity of so many posters here so well. I'll grant the poster below that probably the US army could nuke away the red army (though remember China has nukes too, and has been specifically targeting US military systems for a while, so we can assume they have at least some secret systems to do so effectively). The idea that a bunch of gun nuts interfering is going to do anything except slow down the bullets from mini-guns is so stupid that the only comparable stup
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The Chinese aren't buying US debt out of the goodness of the heart. They do this to keep the Yuan's value down. They want *that* to give Chinese exporters an edge. If the Chinese government dumps all their US T-bills, they will lose control of the Yuan. It's value will rise sharply and Chinese exports will fall almost as dramatically. And the much of the world's economy will also tank since we are all addicted to cheap Chinese manufactured goods. With their customers in deep crisis there will be even
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There is a deep bottom line that is only now becoming apparent:
The Chinese have had more than enough access to better technology. They've shown what they're capable of. That is, not much. China does not have competent engineers, and the minute they're off the US's tit they will being to shrink again. All their muscle is pure manufacturing muscle, not brainpower.
You know, the kind of work we build machines to do here.
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What we see is
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We have know way of knowing what the internals of Chinese markets actually look like. The real estate bubble in the US is probably small potatoes compared to the one forming in China though.
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China does not try to feed its economy through gigantic loans to consumers and real estate speculation.
If it tried to do so, it would immediately lose any need to export anything, and for a while economy would grow much faster than it does -- however no one in China is stupid enough to do it because it's obvious what the consequences of such moves are.
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They should have been smarter (Score:1)
and write an update that simply disables/uninstall the software on any machine that requests updates from China (Green dam asks for updates to Cybersitter website).
That could have been really interesting to see...
IANAL but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:IANAL but... (Score:5, Informative)
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act [slashdot.org] is the US federal law that regulates suits in US courts (federal or state) against foreign governments. It lists exceptions to the general rule that foreign states are immune to suit because of sovereign immunity. The exception that this suit is probably based on is the one that says a foreign state can be sued when it is engaged in “commercial activity”.
Assuming the plaintiff wins the suit, damages would be collected by seizing assets of the foreign state under US jurisdiction. Since US Treasury bonds owned by China are essentially promises by the US Treasury to pay a certain amount of money when the bond comes due, transferring ownership of those bonds to the plaintiff would seem to be a way of collecting damages. Of course, that might have diplomatic consequences.
IANAL either.
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The posting system mangled the link. I'll try again: Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act [wikipedia.org].
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Take 3: Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act [wikipedia.org]
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Diplomatic consequences are just a polite way of saying pissing off someone that can hurt you.
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Useless for purchasing things from overseas, but far more useful for companies wanting to export. There's a reason why China undervalues their currency on purpose. I've heard suggestions that one of the reasons China is so interested in US treasury bonds is that they want to pump up the Dollar's value relative to their own.
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What will US export? Promises not to sue if someone will try to sell something in US (a.k.a. most of "IP")?
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What will US export? Promises not to sue if someone will try to sell something in US (a.k.a. most of "IP")?
Given recent activities by big content, this might actually be a very valuable commodity...
Hang on... (Score:2)
... you mean it's possible to sue other countries in a U.S. federal court? Is there anyone you can't sue in the U.S.?
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Look, if we admitted they weren't a pretend country we'd have to admit them into our election processes. This would have decidedly deleterious effects.
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You can if they're doing certain things in the US. See the references to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act elsewhere in this thread.
Note, by the way, that a similar question can be raised about the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, etc.
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Indeed, which is why every once in a while a suit gets filed against God or some other mythological character. The courts usually dismiss such cases more or less immediately when nobody is able to figure out how to serve a warrant to Santa Clause or similar.
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Yes, apparently you can't successfully sue your own president [wikipedia.org] ...
Only if the remedy you're seeking is his removal from office. Otherwise [wikipedia.org]...
China called (Score:2)
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And there's probably at least 2.3b worth of US government assets on PRC soil
Really? What kind assets do you think the US government holds in China? Bases? Embassies? What else?
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you are talking about a pathetic amount of 2.5 b worth of prc assets .
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/02/chinas-deb [washingtontimes.com]
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The best assets to seize are these US govt bonds you refer to. They most likely are not physical printed bonds but rather digital records, but in the event that they are they will have serial numbers and can simply be declared void and reissued to the winner of the suit. Of course since they have not matured, they aren't worth as much yet, so a higher value may have to be transferred...
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Our debt to china is not a US asset held in China. It is a Chinese asset held by the US...
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I said "probably" because I don't know, but purely speculatively, US assets might include some or all of the following:
US official reserve assets, Gold, Foreign Currency, Securities, Bond, Corporate Stocks, Physical Assets (Buildings, Land, Motor Vehicles, Storage Facilities), and probably a load of stuff I haven't thought of.
Not that I'd be surprised if US Gov assets in PRC don't total 2.8 billion but . . . probably.
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Any attempt to take assets from diplomatic soil would be construed as an act of war.
What I want to know is what the U.S. are going to do when china says to the U.S., Ch sh jí mújù
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plenty of things may be construed as an act of war - doesn't mean it's in the 'victim's interest to start an all-out war about them. The US can claim that seizing an embassy is an act of war, but it's unlikely to get a lot of international sympathy from other countries who are equally uneasy about US courts just ignoring their own sovereign immunity (although they would probably be equally uneasy about China ignoring the sovereignty of their own embassies), or that there would be any chance of getting a sec
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What I want to know is what the U.S. are going to do when china says to the U.S., Ch sh jí mújù
I strongly doubt China will ever say that without adding at least two more vowels first.
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and there's probably at least $2.3b worth of US assets on Chinese soil which could be siezed in compensation for an illegal seizure. Where does it end?
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Re:China called (Score:4, Insightful)
It ends when the US wins because it owes trillions of dollars to China..
To paraphrase Donald Trump: "When you owe someone a billion dollars, they have power over you. When you owe someone a trillion dollars, you have power over them!"
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Despite recent government reports that China’s holdings of U.S. Treasury debt declined during the second half of last year, the Asian economic giant almost certainly owns far more Treasury securities than official statistics indicate. After peaking at $801.5 billion, China’s holdings of U.S. Treasury securities declined to $755.4 billion at the year’s end, dropping the communist power into the position of second-largest holder of Treasury debt after Japan’s $768.8 billion, official government data reveal.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/02/chinas-debt-to-us-treasury-more-than-indicated/ [washingtontimes.com]
lolwut (Score:3)
The full title of this software is actually GREEN DAM YOUTH ESCORT.
For guarding of the youth, to making safe and happy social harmony. Great and capable software for glorious ten thousand year nation. Code is not stolen; developed by brilliant engineers at November 23 People's Collective Software Refinery.
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Best case scenario? (Score:2)
Candidly speaking, say the judge rules in favor of the plaintiff, what then? What possible outcome could occur such that PRC is forced to pay any or all of the suit?
If anyone is versed in international law (if that is what this is called), I am genuinely interested what the possible (albeit unlikely) outcomes could be.
Re:Best case scenario? (Score:4, Interesting)
Almost all of the US Treasury debt owned by China (and in general) is in the form of book-entry securities [wikipedia.org]. This means there is no physical document for the treasury bill, note or bond. It exists as an entry in the database of a broker or the US Treasury. The court could simply order ownership of an appropriate value of those securities to be transferred from the Chinese government to the successful plaintiff.
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With all due respect (Score:2)
The Chinese gov. will not recognize this coming from a) a small state court, maybe and MAYBE only supreme court.
b) they would not recognize allegations against them from a nation that is guilty itself of doing the same, and also of a country
that when confronted with the truth about its invasion of iraq, was neglecting to show any proper information of WMDs.
This would be like being brought to court by a crack whore who says you broke into her house and stole something, the credibility is just not there...for
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Yeah, that's gonna work. If China doesn't honor US patents, the US can sue them. If the US doesn't honor Chinese patents, the Chinese will... oh I dunno... cut off exports to the US?
Except, really, who else is going to buy their exports? Most of the country is dedicated to supplying stores like Wal-mart, or for their own consumption. Think how much money firms like Apple bring in to China? And all those other tech companies that buy components made in China? They might not all be US owned, but a lot of their products are sold in the US. If China stops exporting to the US, we can revive our industrial capability. It will be hard and expensive, but beneficial in the long run. But then who's going to buy all those Chinese-made goods? China can't sustain its own growth and production internally. We might be tied to them, but they are as equally tied to us.
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Except, really, who else is going to buy their exports?
The US buys 25% or so of Chinese exports, and that number is falling. So who else will buy their exports? The rest of the world.
Most of the country is dedicated to supplying stores like Wal-mart, or for their own consumption.
Just because the US couldn't survive without China doesn't mean China couldn't survive without the US.
If China stops exporting to the US, we can revive our industrial capability. It will be hard and expensive, but beneficial in the long run.
When we had the money, we chose to shut down our industries. When we are broke, we will not be able to revive them. The expensive part will prevent it from happening, as when we stop trade with China, the US dollar will drop like a rock and won't be able to buy anything interna
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China is one massive real estate and banking bubble plus they are in the midst of an inflationary spiral they are barely able to contain.
Add anything to disturb that, like revaluation of the Yuan will cause the Mother of All Crashes.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8182605/Chinas-credit-bubble-on-borrowed-time-as-inflation-bites.html [telegraph.co.uk]
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If anything at all will happen what can bring US economy down permanently, US will have no allies left.
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Sorry, but the NATO mutual defense doctrine doesn't apply to economic wars, nor wars provoked by a member of the alliance.
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I mean if US companies did pull out of china
A frustrated China could not be reached for comment.
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I mean if US companies did pull out of china
A frustrated China could not be reached for comment...
...but will be out of the bathroom "real soon."
Good. We're all dying to know if the US companies pulled out in time.
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I would suggest that in the absence of cheap imported goods a way would be found to produce those goods here in the west. America has a large workforce
lol
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I think it's that the Chinese people are people that's the problem. People are inherently hypocritical, even those of us that spend lots of time minimizing it. More likely it's because they are an authoritarian regime that they expect to be able to behave like that without consequences, at least at the party level.
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I'm pretty sure the Chinese people don't want Green Dam and would happily agree to a C&D, but I'm pretty sure they don't care enough about it to stop the government that put it there. Similarly to how the US doesn't particularly like how we're sending our research, development and manufacturing overseas, but doesn't care enough to actually stop the corporate interests that bought the government that facilitate it.
The fact is that Americans and Chinese are similar: we're more or less content and won't ro
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I'm pretty sure the Chinese people don't want Green Dam...
I'm pretty sure that *SOME* of the Chinese people don't want the Green Dam (and quite frankly, the name sounds like a STD device), but how do you know that the MAJORITY don't like it? Just because we Westerners cotton to ideas of Democracy and the freedoms therein, doesn't mean that all people do.
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The Chinese are like Muslims: If it benefits them, it is the will of their God(s).
So much so, that many of them are Muslims. By which I mean tens of millions of them.
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tl;dr version: hurr :), durr :), derp :)
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They will stop laughing when Cybersitter will get court permit to seize Air China aircraft on US grounds. If you think this is far fetched, think again. In 2001 Russian fighter jets fled from Paris Air show because of property dispute between Swiss trading company Noga and Russian government. Russia eventually settled with Noga by paying in full.
http://articles.cnn.com/2001-06-22/world/france.planes_1_paris-air-show-noga-jet-fighters?_s=PM:WORLD [cnn.com]
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How do I type with a South African accent...?
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From the article:
In July 2000, Noga managed to have a renowned Russian sailing ship impounded when it came to France to take part in an international regatta. The "Sedov" was finally allowed to sail from the northwestern port of Brest after a court ruled it could not be held.
Last May, a court froze the accounts of Russia's embassy in Paris, its trade representation and its delegation to UNESCO at Noga's request. The move left the embassy struggling to pay its bills for three months.
Russia successfully appealed, arguing that the freeze violated treaties on diplomatic rights and immunity.
Noga has been pulling these stunts for years. They once convinced a Swiss court to illegally seize artwork which belonged to Russia (which was also chucked out). You imply that a country's stuff can be seized when in a foreign country, but the result is that 20 years later, and after actually having Russia's stuff in its posession Noga has not actually managed to realise anything from grabbing Russian assets because it always has to give them back.
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