If you are asking "why can't I just go to France and do it there", it is generally illegal [edit: my knowledge of this situation for end users--as opposed to those distributing tools--is apparently somewhat flawed; read the responses to this comment] to knowingly do something illegal in the US while traveling in another country so as to evade US law, so if you intend to return to the US you are still somewhat screwed. (Also, FWIW, many of the core people who do iPhone unlocking research are in the US, such as planetbeing and MuscleNerd.)
[edit: The main reason I left this comment was that the other person responding didn't directly address that Spooky23's question was more about why the US citizen can't just wait to unlock their phone until they arrive in France, rather than doing it before the leave. Maybe someone else who sees this, maybe someone who has experience dealing with international travel, can comment on why that is or is not sufficient, given that the extra-territorial illegality argument that I was making is flawed. Is it really that simple? ;P]
There are certainly some U.S. laws that claim jurisdiction over U.S. citizens, no matter where they are in the world.
* the U.S. expects U.S. citizens (and perm res) to report income anywhere in the world, and pay taxes on it
* the U.S. claims jurisdiction on underage sexual assault, no matter what country it occurs in
* the U.S. claims jurisdiction on bribery and corruption
There may be other examples. But in general, AFAIK, the U.S. does not claim jurisdiction on random behaviour in other countries.
Thanks! That's actually great to hear! What I normally end up seeing, however, are a bunch of cases where the US not only claims jurisdiction over their own citizens, but even demanding extradition of people from other countries for "helping or encouraging others" to violate the DMCA (one well-known example being Richard O'Dwyer).
Although, such cases that come to my mind were websites, which operate internationally, even if hosted entirely outside of the US. This is obviously a different situation than the seemingly commonly-cited "underage drinking" examples. For the people who build unlocks, though, like MuscleNerd, that is apropos, and those are the people who I mostly spend my time contemplating (although whether the DMCA exemptions actually help them much is another question).
(For individual users messing with their phones, of course, most of this is pointless: there is really no practical chance in hell that individual customers will be taken to court over things like this; it would be more a looming situation for people who offer this as a service at their store, which is quite common at phone repair shops.)
Regarding websites operating internationally, including tvshack.net and O'Dwyer, I think pretty much every country tries to regulate websites that server pages within their borders.
Consider "obscene" speech/media/etc. Consider hate speech. Or look up "google vividown lawsuit" (the defendants all live in the U.S., and no one cared about that fact). And let's not even get into national firewalls (e.g. China, half the Middle East, etc).
With respect to the phones... first of all, it sounds like we agree about the likely odds of individual phone users being taken to court. There's no way that anyone would be individually prosecuted for this, without there being an ulterior motive. Of course, that's a big "without"... the RIAA/MPAA seem to be utterly free of compunction, and there are so very many cases of prosecutors bullying people with obscure drug laws for various incomprehensible reasons. "3 felonies a day" and all that.
Second, yeah, if you run a business in France unlocking phones, and some of the phones you unlock happen to belong to U.S. citizens vacationing, it's not clear that the US would claim jurisdiction over you. IANAL!!! But if you run a business in NYC unlocking phones, yeah, you've got a problem.
Did I mention that I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice? 'Cos I'm not.
The law might not cover it, but prosecutors can always try to convict you for it, and it's up to you to fight it in court if you feel that US law should not have jurisdiction over $Something in $Elsewhere.
I doubt most US courts are likely to say, "well we don't have jurisdiction over __that__".
Right; Richard O'Dwyer is actually an example of exactly that (the US didn't even win in the end: the situation dragged out and was settled and the charges were dropped; they sadly, thereby, also did not clearly lose).
There are double taxation agreements in place with a very large number of countries so you never effectively have to pay double taxes, you generally have to pay the higher amount since you can deduct the tax already paid in the other country. Check what the regulations are for wherever you are.
While I would believe you over many other people because of who you are and what you do, there's something about your statement that doesn't feel quite right.
Does that mean that if someone from the US that's under 21 travels to a country where the drinking age is lower (or non-existent?), legally drinking alcohol there would be illegal?
Yes. Although obviously, there would most likely not be any consequence from doing so.
This occurs more frequently in cases of sex tourism (most particularly in countries like Thailand), and online gambling.
A few years ago at a previous employer, we had a client in Costa Rica who made online gambling applications who hired us to do an application assessment (preventing cheating and things like that); and it was only after we had started performing the assessment that I happened to inquire in a meeting with our legal department as to whether this was actually legal for us to do.
As a result of that meeting, we had to stop work on the assessment immediately, and not do any invoicing, as our lawyer thought that charging for that assessment would be a pretty clear violation of the law.
Were you doing this work in Costa Rica? Because if not, your example is completely different. You were doing work in the US that the US deems illegal.
And actually, I'm not certain that your lawyers were correct in stating that the work was illegal. It's illegal to operate an online casino in the US. That's not the same as it being illegal to develop software that can be used by an online casino. If the casino in question was serving US customers, then you might be considered an accomplice in a crime. If they were only serving customers outside the US, I seriously doubt you'd be guilty of any crime.
The work was being done in Costa Rica, onsite. And the software was used for their own online gambling site (we were testing the production site, not software that they provided to other people).
I concur that it was probably a more complicated legal matter, but our counsel was pretty confident that this would have been problematic.
Were they allowing US customers to use their site? If so, you were might have been in a gray area. I agree with your legal dept that it could have been problematic either way. Not necessarily illegal, but not worth the hassle.
Some laws are explicitly applied extraterritorially; for example, the U.S. has in recent years been prosecuting Americans who travel to other countries to pay for sex with minors, even if legal in the destination country. Drinking when under 21 isn't in that category, though. I have no idea if jailbreaking a phone is. Although, even without extraterritorial application, there might be some kind of U.S. contract violation if the person returns to the U.S. and continues to use the phone.
Perhaps minorly important: I don't believe the '21 to drink' thing is federal, but rather something the federal government pressures all states into adopting themselves.
Interesting! Given that the US has even been attempting to extradite people who aren't even US citizens on DMCA matters (although not with entire success) I am not certain if the powers that be entirely agree on where their rights are (nor arguably will anyone know until they conclusively win or lose such a case).
Internet-related stuff uses a different theory I think, that someone making stuff available over the internet to Americans is basically acting in the U.S. for the purposes of jurisdiction. Same way people who've never been to the UK get sued under UK libel law, because someone in the UK read their article on the internet. The internet makes a big mess of jurisdiction...
> While I would believe you over many other people because of who you are and what you do...
Thanks for the sentiment, but on legal grounds for end users I'm quite often not the most knowledgable ;P. In particular, I don't like travelling internationally, and I now actively avoid it, so I also tend to know less about how things work in other countries than more reasonable people. I work with some people here, however (who are asleep currently) that have spent a bunch of time researching the landscape of international law with regards to jailbreaking, but they probably themselves only focussed on "citizen of that country in that country".
What I will say I tend to know more about than average is "stuff that affects myself and my friends", but the reality is that as an end user of these tools, you really aren't ever going to be prosecuted: I thereby would tend to care more about "what if someone took a trip to a conference in Germany, built an unlocking tool with some friends there, and released it while abroad?", and for that situation I can dig up enough to make it sound sketch (although the extent to which DMCA exemptions help people who provide tools is at least in question).
[edit: The main reason I left this comment was that the other person responding didn't directly address that Spooky23's question was more about why the US citizen can't just wait to unlock their phone until they arrive in France, rather than doing it before the leave. Maybe someone else who sees this, maybe someone who has experience dealing with international travel, can comment on why that is or is not sufficient, given that the extra-territorial illegality argument that I was making is flawed. Is it really that simple? ;P]