Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> THis one has got me pretty freaked. The DMCA is broken
> legislation to start with. But that isn't bad enough. Now we
> nab foreign nationals for supposedly violating its very loosely
> worded strictures.
The foreign national was in fact, in US territory when he was nabbed. I
do not know if he was employed by a US company or not, but if he has
violated US copyrights in the past, he can be detained when and if he
enters US jurisdictions.
> We grab them out of a conference and haul
> them off to a foreign federal prison with no apparent access to
> family, embassy or decent representation. In a couple of weeks
> the victim will reappear in SF so the court can decide whether
> he should have a public defender ?!
At which point, as is standard under diplomatic treaty, he can have a
Russian consular official present, who can participate in his defense if
he has not hired a lawyer.
>
> Is it just me or is this utter contemptible behavior on the part
> of the US? Am I just paranoid or does this mean that I can be
> nabbed at any time either in my own country or in some other
> country that happens to have laws on its books I never had a say
> in or agreed to in any way if I should attend any event in that
> country?
If you violate the laws of that country, and willfully place your body
under their jurisdiction by traveling there, the consequences are
obviously one that is deserved for individuals who act so stupidly. As
for being in your own country, stop being so silly and grow up.
>
> Has it come to the point that laws can be declared and people
> prosecuted without regard for nationality or what nation passed
> the laws and with no guarantees at all of reasonable process or
> room to address the merits of the case?
Being arrested has nothing to do with process or addressing the merits
of the case. Grow up. First he needs to be arraigned in the federal
court that has jurisdiction, i.e. the 9th district, since that is the
district in which the copyright holders whose works were violated are
located. Right now he is in transit from the location he was arrested to
the location he is being sent.
>
> What can be done to stop this madness? No one is safe if this
> is what the world has come to, and especially not if this is
> what the US has come to.
Its been that way for quite a while, Samantha. We gun owners have been
living under this sort of crap since 1934, in a far more severe manner,
than computer weenies have in the last 10 years. Gun law violators, if
they are not shot in SWAT raids, typically suffer from circumstances of
warrant secrecy, evidence suppression, and overwhelming government legal
investment to convict them, in which case, whether or not an actual
violent act was committed, any gun violation is treated as a violent
felony. If they are lucky enough to be found innocent or have their
cases dismissed due to the gestapo tactics of the government, their
lives are typically entirely ruined, and their property destroyed.
>
> - a smaller matter---
> Adobe is also now on my boycott list. Does anyone know of a
> good PDF reader on Windoze? I don't want to see their company
> logo for a good long while on any machine I am on. On Gnu/Linux
> I use xpdf. But it seems a bit of overkill to run an X server
> on windoze just to view pdf files at work.
GhostScript and GhostViewer. They are open source and available for
windows.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:39:50 MDT