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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Imgur was showing ads (business) and collecting data (business) and operating a message platform (business) in the UK. They have stopped.
This seems fine?