The Internet and the Law: British extremists who fled to US jailed for inciting racial hatred online & Russians jailed in the USA

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[Here are some really interesting court cases, especially that of the two British guys. These court cases will show you that location is everything. National Law is all that matters. These court cases involved the Internet and location. Two of these cases are of Russians committing crimes in America from Russia. In one case, one of the Russians happened to go to America and he was arrested when he got into America. In the other case, the FBI lured the Russians to America and then nabbed them. It did not matter that they lived in Russia. They had committed crimes in America and were nailed by the Americans once they got them on American soil. Now the really interesting story is about one of two British guys, Sheppard and Whittle. They were basically engaging in antisemitism, and in Britain this is seen as a very serious crime, questioning the Jewish holocaust, etc. A bunch of factors come into play here. They had a website hosted in the USA, but that does not matter. What matters is where do the owners live, and they live in Britain. The location of the servers doesn't count for anything. Once they were on trial, these two guys decided to flee to America and to ask for asylum. The problem here is the close linkage between America and Britain, so the US Government extradited them. Now they have even bigger problems because they skipped bail and fled. The key issue in legal stuff and Internet stuff is the location where people are. It is that law which applies. But if you commit a crime in another country and you land in that country, then they can nab you there. If those Russians never went to the USA, it is very likely that the Russian Government would NEVER have extradited them and they would have been safe in Russia. There are some things that most courts will uphold and those are things like copyright and trademarks. That is mostly upheld in the West. So that tends to cross borders. There was a court case of a South African Company infringing a McDonald's TradeMark in the 1990s, and the South African court nailed the local company. Jan]

U.S. v. Ivanov:
Case: Vladimir Levin and Alexei Ivanov were involved in a case where they were accused of hacking into U.S. banks from Russia. Ivanov used a VPN to hide his location.

Outcome: Ivanov was arrested during a visit to the U.S. and subsequently tried there. The case highlighted jurisdictional issues because his crimes were committed while he was in Russia. If Ivanov had never left Russia, the case against him would have faced significant jurisdictional challenges. His physical presence in the U.S. at the time of arrest was crucial for the case proceeding in the U.S. courts.

U.S. v. Gorshkov:
Case: In this case, two Russian hackers, Alexei Ivanov (involved in multiple cases) and Vasiliy Gorshkov, were lured to the U.S. by the FBI under the guise of a job interview and then arrested.

Outcome: The U.S. courts ruled that since the hackers were on U.S. soil at the time of their arrest, they could be prosecuted under U.S. law. However, the case involved controversy over jurisdiction and the legality of the methods used to apprehend the suspects.
R v. Sheppard and Whittle (2008):

Case: Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle were prosecuted in the UK for publishing racist and anti-Semitic material on the internet, hosted on servers in the U.S.

Outcome: The jurisdictional issues were complex because the material was published online and hosted outside the UK. The UK courts asserted jurisdiction because the material was accessible from the UK, and its impact was felt there. However, the case underscored the challenges of prosecuting internet-based offenses across borders.

Here’s the full story of the two British guys:

British extremists who fled to US jailed for inciting racial hatred

This article is more than 14 years old

Fri 10 Jul 2009 20.06 BST

Two British racists who fled to the US were jailedtoday following what is believed to be the UK’s first conviction for inciting racial hatred online.

Simon Sheppard, 52, and Stephen Whittle, 42, were sentenced at Leeds crown court for a number of race-hate crimes.

The court heard the pair had published grotesque images of murdered Jewish people alongside cartoons and articles ridiculing other ethnic groups.

During their first trial the pair skipped bail and fled to California where they sought asylum claiming they were being persecuted for their rightwing views. They were locked up before being deported back to the UK.

Judge Rodney Grant told the pair the material that was used on leaflets and online was abusive and insulting and had the potential to cause grave social harm. He said: "These are serious offences. I can say without any hesitation that I have rarely seen, or had to read or consider, material which is so abusive and insulting … towards racial groups within our own society."

The court heard the investigation began when a complaint about a leaflet called Tales of the Holohoax was reported to the police in 2004. It was traced back to a post office box registered to Sheppard in Hull, and police later found a website featuring racially inflammatory material.

Prosecutors said one article suggested that Auschwitz was a holiday camp for Jews provided by the Nazis. Jonathan Sandiford, prosecuting, said: "The general theme of the article was that Auschwitz-Birkenau was in fact a holiday camp provided by the Nazi regime. A constant theme was that the Jewish people had made up the story of the Holocaust as a slur on the German people."

Referring to another article by Whittle, the prosecutor added: "He returned to what appears to be a favourite theme: the notion that black people are not as equal as whites. They are sex-crazed, bloodthirsty savages."

Sheppard, from Selby, North Yorkshire, who has a previous race-hate conviction, was found guilty of 16 offences and sentenced to four years and 10 months. Whittle, from Preston, was found guilty of five offences and sentenced to two years and four months.

Adil Khan, head of diversity and community cohesion at Humberside police, described the successful prosecution as groundbreaking.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/10/first-racial-hatred-online-conviction