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Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
I think we ought to be really careful about where this is all going. What we have here is a set of cases where people around the world are being arrested and held on behalf of the United States for violating American law - even though they are not Americans, have never set foot in the U.S., and have done things that are not crimes where they live (and might not be in the U.S. either). The crimes, of course, have to do with copyright infringement - nothing else (save perhaps the crime of being Afghani) seems to be worthy of such worldwide prosecution. Moreover, the putative 'crimes' are things like 'linking to files in an index' and 'inducement to copyright infringement'. Like I say, the content industry should be very careful about what it wishes for. Because it's not a great leap from this to a future in which a film producer in Britain is held and extradited to Beijing for the crime of criticizing the central leadership.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Dec 25, 2024 08:42 a.m.

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