Category Archives: Issues regarding US persons abroad

The case is the government’s most far-reaching effort so far to crack down on foreigners suspected of breaking American laws. It is unusual because it goes after a middleman, who the authorities say made a fair amount of money by pointing people to pirated content. Mr. O’Dwyer’s backers say the prosecution goes too far, squelching his free-speech right to publish links to other Web sites.

The relevant facts are as follows:

The U.S. government has brought criminal charges against a U.K. resident and are attempting to extradite him to face these charges in a U.S. court. The U.S. alleges that he ran a site that did NOT contain “pirated U.S. movies”, but rather linked to sites that DID contain pirated U.S. movies. According to the article in the Herald Tribune”, the U.S; initially asserted jurisdiction over a person in the U.K. because the domain name, TVShack.net, was registered in the U.S.

This strikes me as one more example of the U.S. (and the Obama administration in particular), infringing the sovereignty of other nations. I would be interested in your comments on this. I am also aware of the U.S., asserting jurisdiction over a citizen and resident of another country based on the use of one the many free U.S. email providers.

Here is the article that appeared in the New York Times (note that I am linking to it).

Here is some British commentary. This clearly questions the right of the U.S. to assert jurisdiction.

You may recall that the Isaac Brock Society has considered these issues related to this in relation to SOPA.