Is that Free Software issue? (Re: [free-sklyarov] What did he do IN THE US that was 'wrong'?)

[Hynek "0A4h" Hanke]

 > Columbian drug lords sell cocaine to middle men who bring it to the US
and
> because of extradition laws, we drag the kingpins here and try them in
> American courts (when we can catch them!).  The fact that they were in
> Columbia when they broke American law was irrelevent.  They did something
> that affected Americans.
 ...
>If the FBI had no right to arrest him, then this wouldn't be a programming
>issue.  It wouldn't be a free speech issue.  It wouldn't even be a DMCA
>issue.  If the FBI had no right to arrest him, then any decent lawyer would
>simply stand in front of the judge and say, "I have tons of precedent
>showing that Russians aren't subject to American laws, you have to let him
>go."  And the judge would.

However, there are precedents on both sides.

 Well, what about patents? Does that mean all US patents are
valuable in e.g. Europe? Does that mean I can't make a software
(I live in Europe) that breaks some US patent (ok, that nearly means
I can't do *any* software at all)? As you know, in Europe it is
*not* possible to patent idea's, mathematical algorithms,
methods in computer programs. So I'm free (in Europe)
to make any program I wan't without paying big companies
for their patents.

Now, if I make this program comercial, that means I require
money from users, it's OK, because I can simply prevent
US citizens from paying for it so that it's not avaible in USA
and I can't break US patents.

But if my program is Free Software (e.g. GPL'd software)
and I make it avaible on Internet, what does it mean?
Every US citizen is free to download and I simply can't
make it unavaible for him.

I know about one german man who was forced to take
out his Free Software program from internet
due to US patent.

More information:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/daa-07.06.01-002/
http://www.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch
http://www.cityscope.de/pp3n/index.html
http://listserv.fh-furtwangen.de/cgi-bin/lwgate/cgi/lwgate-en-proj.cgi/PROJ-
IMIM/archives/proj-imim.archive.0106/date/article-21.html

And there are other cases (like an Australian man,
who was arrested in Germany for nazi propaganda
uploaded to his australian website in Australia
-- and I don't think it is clear that this was nazi
propaganda)

I don't know about other cases, but surely they exist...
These two are only a little I was told about in patents at aful.org
conference.

Now that's obvious that Dmitry's case is a big
issue about how to judge things in Internet as
well as a free-speech issue and DMCA issue.

I mean that it's absurd to arrest him even if he
broke DMCA, because he broke it in Russia,
and then it's absurd to arrest him
because he is programmer, not seller of AEBPR,
and last, DMCA is absurd.

There is a trend to judge people's act on internet by
the country of download, not upload. It seems nonsencial
to me!

Dmitry's case is definitly one of these issues,
but it's not only this one. There is much more controversy
than only that he comited it in Russia and now he is judged
by US law.

One of the points of the complaint was that Adobe
managed to buy AEBPR from USA. But what
if AEBPR was free software? Than the programmer
has no chance of defending against various
laws of all these countries in this world.

 This is one of the parts of this problem.

 Hynek Hanke