Alleged KickassTorrents Owner Considers 'Voluntary Surrender' To the US (torrentfreak.com) 59
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Earlier this year a Polish court ruled that Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of the defunct torrent site KickassTorrents, can be extradited to the United States. The decision came as a disappointment to the defense team, which quickly announced an appeal. Vaulin has since been released on bail and currently resides in a Warsaw apartment. His release has made it easier to communicate with his attorneys in the United States, who have started negotiations with the U.S. Government. While the extradition appeal is still ongoing, it now appears that under the right conditions Vaulin might consider traveling to the United States voluntarily, so he can "resolve" the pending charges. This is what the defense team states in a motion for a status conference (pdf), which was submitted earlier this week.
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Nah, that's what Dmitry Sklyarov was for.
Extradition (Score:3, Interesting)
Why the fuck would a sovereign nation extradite someone to the US over something as victimless as hosting a website?
Oh right. The corporations own the US and the US owns the world.
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Re: Extradition (Score:1)
I would fucking run, Russia is only a few hundred miles from Warsaw.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: Extradition (Score:3, Informative)
First, copyright law was imposed on the world largely because Europeans wanted that, so don't blame US corporations for that.
Now, the guy violated laws that both the US and European nations agreed to by treaty; what exactly do you want to happen?
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Why should politicians care to understand something they can destroy with a signature on a piece of paper? That is power. Real power. None of your beloved computers can do anything against the ability of an official to say "be not" and have his will enforced by very determined and merciless scary men with big guns and an unlimited budget taken by force from the pockets of a populace that cannot refuse to fund them. Think about it next time you feel so smug and uppity about your "tech savvy" crap.
Re: Extradition (Score:2)
Clearly you don't understand the intent or purpose of copyright law if you think that it doesn't apply because of the technical details of how torrents are implemented.
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Exactly. Has he even been to the US? It's the same as the Kim Dotcom bullshit.
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Imagine if insulting the president was against the law, similar to the lese majeste law in Thailand...
Thanks, I'd rather not.
And I think I'd prefer if you didn't go giving anyone any ideas, either.
Re: F the US (Score:2)
Copyright law is governed by international treaties that are binding on every nation. European publishers were some of the biggest lobbyists for that, and European copyright law is draconian. Why do you blame Americans for that?
Might makes right, and money BUYS might. (Score:2)
Having dealt with the government myself, I would urge Mr. Vaulin to do his utmost to disappear. Trusting the US to honor a deal would be extremely unwise, and I speak from experience which was both very unpleasant and very costly in the terms which matter most : years of a human life taken away for what in my case was a trivial offense. The adversarial nature of the US court system makes a result which is very perverted indeed all too possible. The court system is not about justice, it is about power, and t
Re: Might makes right, and money BUYS might. (Score:1)
"...situation that is utterly insignificant to 99.9% of the American people."
This right here is why they get away with it. If it were more significant and people held it as a priority come voting time things would be different. All in all our political system is working fine in this respect. We voted representatives in who passed laws and appointed judges that uphold them. If you don't like it then you can vote for someone that will pass different laws and if enough people agree with you, the system will ch
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The court system is not about justice, it is about power, and that's the sad truth.
The lawyers I know are the first to admit that the court system is not about justice, but conflict resolution. I've heard the same thing so often I strongly suspect that's the first thing they are taught in law school.
That being said, if this guy is seriously considering voluntary surrender to the US I would be genuinely astonished.
Re: Might makes right, and money BUYS might. (Score:2)
His choice may come down to bring tried in the US or being tried in Europe. It's not obvious which is better. In the US he may actually be able to strike a deal, in Europe, he might face a mandatory prison sentence depending on the circumstances.
So, who is running... (Score:2)
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Shit man, don't use those sites. Or any of the extratorrent sites either. Every single one is fake and absolutely full of every exploit known to Man. If you have visited one of those sites without massive precautions then you've probably already been hacked.
You may also get recommendations for katcr.co but good hell does that site suck! They put recaptcha on every single search you do and even if you get past that the search results don't even include the terms you put in, plus you can't sort anything. What
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This one works pretty well, too [unblocktpb.com]... or so I've heard...
I still don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
I still don't understand the legal theory that says that foreign citizens operating entirely outside of the US can be held accountable to US law.
We have seen this with gambling sites, file sharing sites, etc. I get applying US law if a foreign national defrauds a US citizen from their hideout in another country. Or going after the leadership of criminal conspiracies that operate inside the US but have their top people overseas - a buddy of mine investigates medical fraud cases that are run by an organized crime ring in Cuba of all places.
But this is different. A web site that hosts links to files hosted elsewhere and is itself hosted in another country by people who are subject to the laws of other nations? Can China come after the editors and owners of Slashdot for its users violating Chinese speech laws? They seem to take those more seriously than the US takes copyright law.
This whole thing is nuts. Or maybe I'm missing something.
Re: I still don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
"I still don't understand the legal theory that says that foreign citizens operating entirely outside of the US can be held accountable to US law"
If a citizen of country X harms a citizen or entity of country Y while in territory Z, any of X, Y, and Z might have or claim jurisdiction. Who actually handles the case is usually determined by treaties, foremost extradition treaties. This is hardly unique to the US. Europe claims extraterritorial jurisdiction all the time as well.
The US/Europe distinction you're
Re: I still don't get it (Score:2)
As far as the US is concerned, yes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
However, European copyright holders prefer to bring lawsuits in the US, simply because it is the country where they can get the biggest copyright awards, so this rarely happens.
It's really fscking annoying that European corporations and governments massively lobby, pressure, and corrupt US politics and then on top of that Americans have to listen to anti American innuendo from people like you.
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Yeah, but that link here is pretty tenuous. Isn't "kickass torrents" a site that provides a place for 3rd parties to post links to files that are hosted by 3rd parties via torrents?
In the case of gambling sites the link was "people from the US visit the site for the purpose of gambling", which seems pretty thin. I mean, if you travel to a country where gambling is legal then you can gamble there legally, even if you are a US citizen. But travelling there via electronic communication somehow not only fails
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Can China come after the editors and owners of Slashdot for its users violating Chinese speech laws?
I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding here is that in order to get an extradition the law that the person broke must also be illegal in the country you're extraditing from (and have a treaty with). So no, China could not do that.
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That would actually clear up a lot of the strange distinctions. Except for the gambling sites that got shut down by the US government because US citizens were gambling there. In that case, online gambling was not illegal in the host nation. But they still issued indictments and shut down the websites and seized assets held in foreign bank accounts. If I recall, the lever they used was a law making it illegal to send money to those companies from the US. But once again, not illegal in Ireland or wherever
one condition (Score:1)
If I would voluntarily travel to the US after being accused of something, One condition would be that I received US citizenship before getting on the plan. Without it foreigners have no right to a fair trail.