Man Who Sold $100 Million Worth of Pirated Software Gets 12 Years In Prison 304
An anonymous reader sends this quote from Bloomberg:
"A Chinese national was sentenced to 12 years in a U.S. prison for selling more than $100 million worth of software pirated from American companies, including Agilent Technologies Inc., from his home in China. Li and his wife, of Chengdu, China, were accused of running a website called 'Crack 99' that sold copies of software for which 'access-control mechanisms had been circumvented, the U.S. said in an unsealed 46-count indictment. The pair was charged with distributing more than 500 copyrighted works to more than 300 buyers in the U.S. and overseas from April 2008 to June 2011. The retail value of the products was more than $100 million, the government said. Li is the first Chinese citizen to be 'apprehended and prosecuted in the U.S. for cybercrimes he engaged in entirely from China,' prosecutors said in court filings."
His mistake is obvious (Score:5, Funny)
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Read the article.... (Score:5, Informative)
No Navy Seals or government conspiracies, just an old fashioned luring operation.
Re:His mistake is obvious (Score:4, Informative)
Incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_the_United_States#Countries_with_diplomatic_relations_but_no_extradition_treaty [wikipedia.org]
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it ?
I'm don't know about copyright laws in China, but unless you breach your country law, the US can fuck off.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
.... Although in this "new post-Megaupload Wikileaks kill people with drones NSA monitors all" world maybe the US government has no limits any longer as the US courts no longer are willing to rule that such limits exist.
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I think with all the drone strikes in the world you would realize the US has jurisdiction where ever it fucking feels like.
Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
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...and then there were no remaining AOL users.
What a beautiful dream.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
It won't be too much longer now before there is no one left who gets this joke.
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It won't be too much longer now before there is no one left who gets this joke.
What joke?
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I think he got disconnected before the punchline, bet it was good though...
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It won't be too much longer now before there is no one left who gets this joke.
Yes, nowadays it is a scream from another part of the house:"FRIGGING COMCAST IS DOWN AGAIN!"
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
I think with all the drone strikes in the world you would realize the US has jurisdiction where ever it fucking feels like.
The US has less legal constants outside the US than inside it. The US can imprison, torture, or kill without legal comeback in most of the world, but can't even detain people without trail in the US. That's the reason Gitmo is in Cuba not Texas.
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Speaking as an American citizen: Given the revelations of this past couple weeks, I have no confidence that our government would operate within those constraints if some random functionary decided it was more important to spirit an American citizen off to Gitmo than to observe that citizen's "inalienable" rights.
That's the thing about secret courts - there's no oversight. I'm sure they claim there is; but you're never going to see any proof that it exists or functions the way you'd want it to.
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
"The US... can't even detain people without trail in the US."
NDAA-2013, signed into law the first of this year, says otherwise.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/03/ndaa-obama-indefinite-detention_n_2402601.html [huffingtonpost.com]
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Hong Kong is not generally considered part of mainland China.
Hong Kong was returned to China after China told the UK to give it back or they will take it back. We can't be sure but it looked like China was quite serious about this. The normal story that Hong Kong was leased from China was only ever half true, the busiest part was given to the UK forever.
China is 'economically/geo-politically' invested in Hong Kong like torsmo says and given the US knows this direct military action by the US would be extremely reckless. Also given the population density of Hong Kong i
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
So if I sell to Chinese buyers I'm bound by Chinese law? You don't see how that might be a very bad thing?
Can't have it both ways. If Chinese citizens are bound by US law then US citizens must be bound by Chinese law. For China to agree to extradite without tit for tat would make them very stupid.
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Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
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Actually, there is a German version with the graphics "fixed".
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For China to agree to extradite without tit for tat would make them very stupid.
You mean just like the stupid UK ?
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless I'm thinking of the wrong person China didn't extradite. US agents lied about some huge deal to get the guy to go to a US territory of his own free will. Once there he was arrested.
But generally speaking the US considers US law to be global but everyone else's law to be local to them.
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Exactly. And pretty much everything is a crime somewhere.
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Depends where the servers were located, if they were in China, then the only one to blame are the US citizens that bought the goods.
It's the same if you go to a foreign country and buy drugs not allowed in your country. The seller there can't be persecuted.
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
Depends where the servers were located, if they were in China, then the only one to blame are the US citizens that bought the goods.
It's the same if you go to a foreign country and buy drugs not allowed in your country. The seller there can't be persecuted.
Your argument makes good logical sense. Unfortunately, it is not the approach courts have taken to deciding questions of this kind. The courts have instead asked where the was customer when he made the purchase, and used this as the basis of deciding what laws apply to the sale. The original reason for this was to make things easier for consumers, who shouldn't be expected to have to know the laws of the countries of sellers they deal with (particularly as they may not even have any way of knowing where the seller is), but it has been extended since then into areas where this justification makes no sense.
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He sold to US buyers establishing jurisdiction. If he did not sell to US buyers and to only -- as an example --- Chinese buyers, US courts would likely not have jurisdiction ....
By that argument, me saying "the Thai king is an ignorant malodorous halfbreed" to citizens of Thailand would grant Thailand jursidiction to prosecute me for lese majeste.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
There have been several arrested in China. The Chinese tend to limit these arrests to those you speak and write in a Chinese dialect though which is frequently expat's. I believe there is an American expat doing 10 years in hard labor right now for comments he posted while in America.
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An interesting parallel would be people in the US who allow seditious comments harmful to public order in China (or so they'll say) to be posted on their websites, which are then accessed by Chinese people. Will China now feel a whole lot happier about arresting Americans for this should they go anywhere where China has enough influence, or have their flights diverted? Or, indeed, just accuse Americans of stuff to keep them out or stop them selling stuff there.
For Americans this does not apply. EU citizens probably not as well. It will result in too much (international) political problems for the Chinese. But take an average Zambesian guy, and he might be not so lucky.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
I like how he got less than someone who *doesn't* sell what they pirate can get. There's a lesson there...
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He was on US soil, so he can be arrested for actions illegal under US law. This is a fairly common precedent when the law was broken in the US but they have since left. This is newsworthy because the crimes occurred outside the US but he was still considered to have broken US law.
Sorry, but there's nothing newsworthy about that!
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
He went to Saipan where he tried to sell software and data to US agents pretending to be business men. Isn't Saipan US territory? Perhaps you should try RTFA before sounding of like a dickhead.
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However, you need to have committed a crime in that country before you can lure them into your country.
You cannot, for example, lure someone on to your land then shoot them for trespassing.
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You have no idea what entrapment is, do you? Entrapment by nature cannot be performed by undercover police pretending to be something else.
Entrapment is when a police officer *who identifies themselves as a police officer* orders or asks someone to do something illegal and the person complies *because they are a police officer*. They then proceed to arrest the person for committing a crime they told them to do. THAT is entrapment.
Police have the authority to direct you to do something illegal such as drive
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
Not entirely correct. Your description matches one of two tests, but is narrower.
from Wiki
A non-uniformed government agent can indeed entrap someone. Asking if you'll sell them pot isn't entrapment. Haranguing them until the finally agree to sell you pot is.
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Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
You have no idea what entrapment is, do you? Entrapment by nature cannot be performed by undercover police pretending to be something else.
That is simply not true. Current definition of entrapment is greatly influenced by John DeLorean's case (where he agreed to deal drugs because undercover FBI officers threatened his life and his family).
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
You are mistaken.
The legal definition of entrapment varies from country to country, but the basic definition is that entrapment occurs when a law enforcement agent induces a person to commit a crime that he or she otherwise would not have committed. Knowledge that the person is a law enforcement officer is not required. See, e.g. Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540 (1992). What is required is some form of but-for causation -- that but for the law enforcement officer's conduct, the defendant would not have committed the crime. Whether the defendant knows the officer is a law enforcement agent goes to objective / subjective state of mind standards regarding whether the defendant was likely to commit the crime -- i.e. inducement is harder to prove if the defendant did not know the facilitator was a figure of legal authority, because there is less of an indication of compulsion. In Jacobson, the government targeted the defendant with a child pornography mail subscription and arrested him upon his receipt and opening. The Supreme Court overturned his conviction on the grounds that the defendant did not have a predisposition towards purchasing child pornography (as no other child pornography was found in his home), and therefore but for the post office inspectors' actions, Jacobson would not have committed a crime.
What you may be referring to is entrapment by estoppel. That "applies when, acting with actual or apparent authority, a government official affirmatively assures the defendant that certain conduct is legal and the defendant reasonably believes that official." United States v. Howell 37 F.3d 1197, 1204 (7th Cir. 1994).
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
The US will arrest people on US territory or in international waters using whatever methods they can. For instance, in Operation Goldenrod [homestead.com] a suspect was lured onto a yacht, and then taken to international waters. He was interrogated aboard US Navy ships, and returned to the US via an aircraft carrier.
Additionally, under the Ker-Frisbie doctrine [wikipedia.org] people can be prosecuted regardless of the legality of the method of their extradition. For example, the DEA hired Trent Tompkins (a private citizen) to kidnap Alvarez-Machain [wikipedia.org] in Mexico and return him to the United States, where he was later tried over Mexico's objections.
Finally, state police can act outside of their home state to arrest someone and bring them to trial. In the case of Shirley Collins [historycommons.org], the accused was kidnapped in Chicago (illegally) by Michigan police, brought to trial and convicted.
Re:Good (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, he was entrapped in Saipan, and prosecuted for crimes he didn't commit while in the US.
2. Promptly escape through the Los Angeles underground.
3. Work as soldier of fortune.
4. Profit!
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
I really have trouble understanding your mindset and others like you that believe it is A-OK for someone to illegally acquire commercial software (or movies or music or books) and sell it. These "resellers" are not taking expensive software and giving it away in the spirit of communal sharing, they are taking that software and selling it to make a profit for themselves. They made no contributions to the development of the software, they have no stake in the company that hires staff and takes financial risk to produce said software. These people are parasites. It is disheartening that you believe it is worthwhile to defend them.
I defend them when the accusers claim that their retail value is $200,000 dollars a copy and the penalty for copying some CDs is 12 years. Rapists and murderers rarely get 12 years. If you can't see that the motivation behind this is pure greed - as opposed to actual justice - then I pity you.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
I really have trouble understanding your mindset and others like you that believe it is A-OK for someone to illegally acquire commercial software (or movies or music or books) and sell it. These "resellers" are not taking expensive software and giving it away in the spirit of communal sharing, they are taking that software and selling it to make a profit for themselves. They made no contributions to the development of the software, they have no stake in the company that hires staff and takes financial risk to produce said software. These people are parasites. It is disheartening that you believe it is worthwhile to defend them.
I defend them when the accusers claim that their retail value is $200,000 dollars a copy and the penalty for copying some CDs is 12 years. Rapists and murderers rarely get 12 years. If you can't see that the motivation behind this is pure greed - as opposed to actual justice - then I pity you.
That price tag has less to do with any real belief that a CD is worth 200 grand a copy and a lot more to do with the unshakable American belief in the effectiveness of the brand of 'come down on them like a ton-o-bricks' justice that has filled your jails with hoards of people doing rediculously long mandatory minimum sentences for things that are misdemeanours in most other countries.
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One of the interesting consequences of the "lock everyone up" (or more conveniently "lock up all the poor people") policy is that crime in the US is at record lows (as in recorded history). America is safer than it's ever been since industrialization.
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There is a simple explanation to this: 200k is worth more than a life.
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Just googled "average sentence murder". Google says,
http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/timeserv/annual/section2.html#murder [state.fl.us]
"Offenders who have been sentenced to prison for murder or manslaughter will serve an average of 19.1 years...."
You know what bugs me about slashdot? Just about every third comment makes stuff up in the hope that noone will call them on it, just so they can sound knowledgeable. Scratch that, thats what bothers me about most people who enter into a discussion-- their inability to shut up w
Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
You don't know the meaning of the word "entrap", you stupid fuck.
And you obviously lack few slaps from your parents which would tech you good manners.
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That is why I put a question mark in my sentence and I used a hypothetical situation.
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I suggest you read up on US citizen Gary Lauck and see how Europeans handle something similar........
"Lauck was arrested in Denmark in 1995, leading to a far right campaign in the USA against plans to extradite him to Germany, where he was wanted for distributing neo-Nazi propaganda. Nevertheless Lauck was deported to Hamburg where he was tried and found guilty of distributing neo-Nazi pamphlets. He was sentenced to four years imprisonment."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Lauck [wikipedia.org]
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Is it ?
I'm don't know about copyright laws in China, but unless you breach your country law, the US can fuck off.
This Chinese man was silly enough to enter a US territory of his own free will. US agents lied to him about a business deal but even so he should have had some idea that maybe the US wanted him.
Re:It is, however, definitely appropriate. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you made $100M (really that, not RIAA funny-math $100M, mind) then that is $100M that the original owners could have made.
Except when you consider that the prices official sources charge are usually much more. People most likely bought software from him because he was selling it at a cheaper price. Would they have bought it otherwise? Who knows? But why should we assume they would have?
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'm sure there's a lot of people who think so. It is the premise of folk-hero Robin Hood, after all...
That Robin Hood "stole from the rich and gave to the poor" is right up there with "Columbus proved to people that the world wasn't flat" among popularized misconception.
What Robin Hood actually did was to steal back money from the Sheriff, the extant government of the region, which had been extorted from the people at a terribly unjust rate.
Nuber not that impressive (Score:5, Informative)
500 copyrighted works to more than 300 buyers in the U.S. and overseas
The retail value of the products was more than $100 million, the government said.
In other words... on average ~$200,000 per product, and ~$333 thousand per buyer
This makes sense, when you are talking about companies like Agilent that sell overpriced products, that retail for probably approximately $500,000
That's why the "pirated $100 million in software" is neither impressive, nor indicating a particularly outrageous pirate.
The outrage, should be the pricing of Enterprise software, not the" inflated retail price " as some sort of metric of the pirate's activity.
Obviously, the buyers weren't willing to pay the price the maker wanted to sell the software at. Therefore, those sales by definition were not worth the retail price.
In simple economic terms... the high price places their product out of demand.
By definition, they're worth what the buyer was willing to pay the pirate for the procureent.
If you're selling a $500,000 software product; going after pirates is not a winning business strategy -- it's figuring out, why the heck you can't pitch your product to legal buyers, and make your desired revenue there. Either the pricing is all wrong, or your marketing or product targetting is all wrong.
Re:Nuber not that impressive (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nuber not that impressive (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nuber not that impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
I wanted to make this point, but more so. The guy sold copyrighted material to 300 people. Let's say $100 a pop, which sounds high for someone to fork over for known pirated material. That's $30,000 which is by my reckoning about 4 months salary for the typical person in the US. But this was actually over a 3 year period.
Piracy is bad, and I don't agree with it, and even more so because my livelihood comes from software development of things that are typical targets of piracy, but the punishment here seems massively out of proportion to the crime. 12 years in prison is in the same ballpark as a murder.
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I don't know where you're living, but I'd like to live there if the typical personal income is 90k.
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I don't know where you're living, but I'd like to live there if the typical personal income is 90k.
Maybe he lives in Manhattan or Silicon Valley. With typical rents being $3k/month and up, someone making $43k would never be able to afford to live there.
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Mind you (as we drift further and further off the topic), that's /household/ income, versus personal income (versus personal salaries). Roughly 40% of all reported household income includes 2 wage-earners. And income often includes more than salaries. Your numbers aren't an accurate comparison.
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Median salary in Norway is closer to 50K, much further off.
Median != Avg.
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A typical person in the US makes $90,000 a year? What?
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On the Upper East Side of Manhattan, per capita income is over $90,000/year, and well over $100K/household on average.
But yes, in most other parts of the country, he's way off. Perhaps he lives in Manhattan and has a skewed sense of what people make.
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The corporations that build and operate our prisons demand a minimum occupancy, and by god, they're gonna get it, if we have to lock up the whole country.
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Legal trade embargoes obviously cast aside for a moment, I'd say you truly don't understand how difficult it might be to price certain types of software. A product used in engineering and design that costs $100,000 and $10,000 per person per year to maintain sounds like it might be priced fairly when talking about using it to design our next-generation communication satellites or Mars space rover. That investment in design might make you the preferred vendor generating millions in revenue.
But the instant
Re:Nuber not that impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
500 copyrighted works to more than 300 buyers in the U.S. and overseas
The retail value of the products was more than $100 million, the government said.
In other words... on average ~$200,000 per product, and ~$333 thousand per buyer
This makes sense, when you are talking about companies like Agilent that sell overpriced products, that retail for probably approximately $500,000
That's why the "pirated $100 million in software" is neither impressive, nor indicating a particularly outrageous pirate.
The outrage, should be the pricing of Enterprise software, not the" inflated retail price " as some sort of metric of the pirate's activity.
Obviously, the buyers weren't willing to pay the price the maker wanted to sell the software at. Therefore, those sales by definition were not worth the retail price.
In simple economic terms... the high price places their product out of demand.
By definition, they're worth what the buyer was willing to pay the pirate for the procureent.
If you're selling a $500,000 software product; going after pirates is not a winning business strategy -- it's figuring out, why the heck you can't pitch your product to legal buyers, and make your desired revenue there. Either the pricing is all wrong, or your marketing or product targetting is all wrong.
Not really. While i you are correct about pricing a d demand your conclusions aren't. The software vendors chose to forgo more sales in favor of higher prices; probably figuring the margins were better since there would be fewer users to support and the higher price justified the required level of support. That's their choice and does not mean someone else has the right to pirate and sell at a lower price point. The buyers were simply not target customers despite their desire to have the software.
Re:Nuber not that impressive (Score:4, Funny)
I'm not saying this is right, but I know too many photoshop thieves
If you know a lot of people who steal other people's copies of photoshop, you're probably hanging out with the wrong crowd.
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If you know a lot of people who steal other people's copies of photoshop, you're probably hanging out with the wrong crowd.
Because of the stealing, or because they use photoshop?
Anyway - if Adobe had "per use" licensing, they would get my money. I'm not going to buy their product outright, and I'm not going to pay their huge monthly rental license. I'm sure for a lot of people it's a reasonable cost, but for me (which need to do very casual, and trivial, editing) it makes no sense.
But let me pay $5 per photo I edit, and I'm in. It's still expensive, of course, but I can afford to pay that the 2-3 times I year I actually nee
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Personally, I steal only pirate copies of photoshop. That's not as bad, because the people I took it from had no right to have it in the first place.
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Wouldn't you have to take and/or mess around with their physical property before you could do that, though?
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but the sw was floating around.. released as warez.
saying that it equated to 500k of lost sales is a joke tough. the buyer never had that much money to begin with.
So, an action only in one country is a crime ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's pretend I host a website that allows you to download hundreds of novels and other works. These are all still under copyright in the USA. But I, and my website, are located in a place where all these works are in the public domain (e.g. Australia, and Russia).
If I then (perhaps I'm a masochist) visit the USA, can I be arrested and charged? Probably not actually.
But, if I suddenly allow you to download novels etc. that are not in the public domain in the country I operate in, I suddenly can be charged in the USA? Even though I never visited that country, nor had any dealings there?
Why the fuck do countries have laws that allow them to prosecute people who are did their criminal activity in another jurisdiction?
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Obviously because so many crimes cross international borders. He sold illegal product to US citizens over the internet, and was then dumb enough to make a delivery on US soil. There's no room for outrage here unless you're the kind of edgy guy that thinks anarchy would be cool.
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Yeah. I am kinda of edgy. I do kinda think that a bit of anarchy and fucking freedom would be sweet. You know, no fucking laws and shit holding us down! Fuck the man!
Also, we have enough production capability in the world that we could easily be living in a post-scarcity communist society by now. No state, no classes, no government. Just good old fashioned help your neighbor and take only what you need. Don't want to work? Hell if I care, come smoke a joint with me. There's enough to go around even if we al
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Why the fuck do countries have laws that allow them to prosecute people who are did their criminal activity in another jurisdiction?
Because they want to, and because they can. Why wouldn't they want to do so? If you're allowing US residents to download novels from your Russian website, you're causing the US publishers to lose money. Since the US government is a government by the corporations, and for the corporations, obviously they're going to be very interested in shutting you down.
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Because they would probably never get prosecuted there, sometimes because there are no laws, other times because there is no effective system to apply the law, (even international law).
Whilst this tactic is of course open to abuse, and recently has been, it's also good for cases of war crimes etc.
Anyway, I think you're missing the point here; if you are party to/enable a 'crime' to be committed in a certain country, then they can go after you.
Seems fair enough. Remember, ignorance of the law is no defense.
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Why the fuck do countries have laws that allow them to prosecute people who are did their criminal activity in another jurisdiction?
Many EU countries have such laws. Your post is mostly anti-US, but many EU countries assert legal authority over actions that never happened in their countries. I hate to resort to Godwin's Law but it does provide a great example. For instance, in the USA it is quite legal to own and sell Nazi memorabilia. Such violates French law. In fact, if it were up to the French they would prevent everybody in the world from doing this. They've sued Ebay in the past and other companies to force them to not show
Moral of the story... (Score:5, Informative)
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Did you actually read TFA? He went to Saipan for the express purpose of making a deal...it wasn't like he went on a vacation, landed on US soil and was immediately arrested, they caught him on US soil engaging in the crime. Moral of this comment: RTFA.(Though I guess the summary is partially incorrect in that regard, it wasn't "entirely from China" if he traveled to Saipan to sell stuff)
The real moral: You can't fix stupid
"Worth"? (Score:2)
Was this software "worth" $100M in the same way a single MP3 you could buy for $0.99 is "worth" tens of thousands of dollars when it comes to copyright claims?
That. Stop Doing That. (Score:2, Insightful)
Stop calling it piracy, damn it. Did he sail the high seas then rape and pillage? No, he sold cracked software. It's called "commercial copyright infringement," but that doesn't sound so sexy, does it?
Every time you call it piracy, you let the corporatists win.
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Piracy is correct. The term goes back 400 years regarding copyright violation. Know the history of what you speak before bitching about it.
To be clear: In this matter, you are wrong.
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Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
100 million for 12 years in prison... Might be worth it...
This is exactly (Score:2)
what copyright law is supposed to do.
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well they sell high margin electronics analysis equipment and apparently software.
that's how they got the 100 000 000 figure. it's pulled out of a hat, completely.
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THIS is the danger! Maybe it is less so because technically this theft is illegal in China, too, and he did step onto US soil. But the danger is that things we in the US think of as perfectly legal, like putting up web sites about Tibet's political struggles, or insult the royal family in Thailand, or trade in historical Nazi artifacts, we run the risk of being arrested in one or more countries. And to the extent that the US government demands extradition for things that are illegal here, for acts done i
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