
Pirate Bay Founder Arrested in Cambodia - denzil_correa
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-arrested-in-cambodia-120901/
======
jws
Since visiting Cambodia a few years ago I've always said it is my first choice
if I have to leave my home. Looks like I wasn't alone.

It's a lovely place with friendly people. I will never be able to distinguish
the Khmer consonant sounds enough to understand or speak it, but English is
common.

Unfortunately for fugitives, they do have extradition treaties.

~~~
netsmashers
I've been to Cambodia too and totally agree with you – people are friendly,
helpful and the country is a wonderful place to live.

~~~
shell0x
Do they have a _real_ health system? I doubt that the life in Cambodia is
better than in Sweden. Maybe it's ok if you to go the country as US-American,
but the Swedish living standard is much higher ;)

~~~
joeguilmette
i can tell you i walked into a clinic and saw a doctor within minutes, ran
bloodwork, got tested for dengue and yellow fever. in and out in 20 minutes,
had my results the next day. that cost $45. everything was clean and sterile,
needles came from packages, went into biohazard boxes.

also, i walked into a pharmacy and bought a round amoxicillin without the need
for a prescription. i had a note from the doctor to make sure i had the right
dosage. that cost me $4.

also, you can wear a t-shirt and shorts with sandals all year round. you can
eat all you can fit inside your body for less than $10 a day ($3 if you eat
local food). you can visit some of the world's largest and most amazing ruins
as well as some of the world's last undeveloped paradise islands.

how many gorgeous beaches are in Sweden? ;)

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alpeb
What about internet speed?

~~~
kristofferR
Their landline broadband connections are quite horrible actually, often below
2Mbps. However, funnily enough, their HSDPA coverage is quite good, fast and
not too expensive ($5 for each 2GB).

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knowaveragejoe
He would have had better luck hiding in the US, IMO. A white guy in a largely
non-white country sticks out like a sore thumb, especially a fugitive.
Rescinding use of his various online accounts, utilizing cash and public
transportation as well as altering his appearance and working on his accent,
he would've easily blended into the masses here. LE has a hard enough time
tracking down some serious domestic offenders as it is.

~~~
datasink
As mentioned in the article, he was living in an apartment above an expat bar,
on the very touristy riverside strip in Phnom Penh. It sounds like he wasn't
really trying to hide. Perhaps because he was chronically ill, and needed to
make frequent hospital visits anyway?

I think it's pretty unlikely, even if he did take various measures to hide,
that he'd be able to if influential foreign governments were putting pressure
on the Cambodian government to find him. Cambodia is a pretty tiny country.

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duked
I'm really surprised he was on an "international wanted list", I mean come on
you don't have to agree/disagree that piirate bay is good/bad but I'm sure
that if you kill your neighbor and leave the country you won't be on such list
and it would be able real people, here it's about digital good (but it also
affects real people) nevertheless I really think it's too much

~~~
dhughes
A farmer from my region had a red notice issued by INTERPOL, it sounds
impressive. What did he supposedly do? He is a potato farmer and was accused
of selling low quality potatoes to Algeria.

He spent more than a year in a jail in Lebanon waiting for the Canadian
government to sort it out, they took their sweet time.

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-
brunswick/story/2012/06/27...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-
brunswick/story/2012/06/27/nb-henk-tepper-farmer.html)

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joering2
In my opinion, it is shameful he ran away. C'mon -- it was only 12 months
jailtime; most likely he would be let go after 3-4 months for a good behavior.
Serving this time he would be, technically, off the LE charts. This way he is
just another "criminal on the run" and now sure prosecutor will be looking for
more jailtime.

~~~
sp332
He didn't "run away", he was already in Cambodia at the time of the trial &
appeal. [http://torrentfreak.com/jail-sentence-for-pirate-bay-co-
foun...](http://torrentfreak.com/jail-sentence-for-pirate-bay-co-founder-made-
final-111014/) (edited for correctness)

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mindjiver
And how is not coming to your trial not running away?

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batista
Because that would be running TOWARDS the trial.

Why should he go back to a country he has left just to have a trial?

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eli
Because if you don't show up they could send you to jail anyway without you
having had a chance to make full defense?

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rhizome
I was taught that trials in absentia are not really a great thing.

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tedunangst
The problem is evidence and particularly eyewitness testimony (unreliable to
begin with) decay with age. Banning absentia trials creates an incentive for
people to hang out for a few years, then come back and say "all this evidence
is too old, you should reasonably doubt its integrity".

~~~
rhizome
Was the Pirate Bay trial(s) subject to any of those weaknesses?

~~~
tedunangst
Dunno. I thought the thread had wandered away from a specific case and was
making a general comment. But yes, I believe that's something considered
before proceeding in absentia.

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benologist
It's fascinating the way torrentfreak can play this audience.

~~~
mcantelon
How is reporting news "playing an audience"?

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jusben1369
It sounds to me like spending time getting 1st world healthcare and staying
put in one location for a while might be a blessing in disguise.

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denzil_correa
Interesting that he seems to be arrested in an apartment where he has stayed
in the past.

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dale-cooper
Some more information (or gossip..)

[http://www.khmer440.com/chat_forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2...](http://www.khmer440.com/chat_forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=25144)

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doktrin
Frankly, were I in his shoes I would be very tempted to simply serve my
sentence in Sweden. The prison system and amenities are (by American
standards) very modern, and I would think the healthcare is superior to that
in Cambodia as well.

This of course becomes moot if there's any real risk whatsoever of him being
extradited to the US as some posters have pointed out. Is there any basis for
this claim, or is it purely speculative?

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ommunist
This is just great. Instead of creating service that would be more attractive
for users than PB, that greedy cats jail and rob you with giv arms. One should
work more on kids minds to make them free from silly wish of watching that
movie instead of doing some math for fun, or using MS wares instead of emacs
:-) In this case there will be no need for PB, MS and WB alltogether.

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Kiro
I'm pretty sure this has nothing to do with The Pirate Bay at all.

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mcantelon
Based on what?

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w1ntermute
Well that sucks. The US govt probably bribed the Cambodian govt into arresting
him on a trumped up charge.

~~~
briandear
Right. Blame America for Sweeden. Besides the guy's entire MO was distributing
stolen files. In the article, the guy's t-shirt says it all. Anyway you slice
it, he's no better than the Russian mobsters that steal credit card numbers.
If you think everything should be free, then please leave your address so I
can help myself to your stuff.

~~~
EliRivers
"Anyway you slice it, he's no better than the Russian mobsters that steal
credit card numbers."

That's incorrect. He is better than the Russian mobsters that steal credit
card numbers. I have presented as much evidence and analysis for my conclusion
as you did, so they must be equally valid.

"If you think everything should be free, then please leave your address so I
can help myself to your stuff."

I am happy to describe to you something I own so that you can make a copy of
it. Gosh, it's almost as if copying something isn't actually the same as
taking a physical object from someone.

~~~
archgrove
"I am happy to describe to you something I own so that you can make a copy of
it"

Fantastic - your comment history indicates you're a programmer of some kind,
running a company. I'm sure you've got some interesting insights into this
field. If you could just write them up into a decent book, edit it properly so
I can understand it, make it pithy, smart and worth reading so I can get the
most of your "description", pay someone to draw some decent diagrams, etc, and
then ship it over, that'd be great.

But because it's just "information", and can be replicated freely, I'm not
going to pay you to do any of that. I just want the "information" - the
production costs are all up to you. So noone's out anything, any this is a
perfectly reasoning thing to expect, right?

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atlassic
Publishing a book has been on my bucket list for a while. And I have no plans
to bitch about it being "stolen".

Name recognition and being able to say "I wrote the book on X" is far more
valuable than the royalties most authors make these days.

So please, steal my book, and ask your friends to steal it too. Your free
marketing on my behalf will be most welcome.

~~~
GHFigs
You're confusing your own choice to give away your own work with the choice of
many to take work of others not freely given. It's unreasonable to assume that
everybody would make the same choice as you, which is why a creator's right to
make that choice is important.

Would you, for example, feel the same way about publishing a book if you had
no right to keep other people from putting their name on it and claiming it as
their own? Or would you rather not have that choice at all?

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vidarh
> Would you, for example, feel the same way about publishing a book if you had
> no right to keep other people from putting their name on it and claiming it
> as their own? Or would you rather not have that choice at all?

I'd like to point out here that in most countries, copyrights and moral rights
are legally entirely separate.

Moral rights (the right to be recognized as the creator of a work, and in
certain circumstances the right to dis-avow your involvement with a work, if
it has been modified in certain ways for example) are generally non-
transferable, for example.

Trying to conflate the two to argue against someone's belief that reproduction
/ copying a work is ok is thus rather meaningless - we can easily enough have
one without the other.

~~~
GHFigs
I'm not conflating the two at all. The point is that having rights over your
own work implies other people have rights over theirs, too.

~~~
icebraining
But defending attribution rights doesn't mean you have to defend copyright.

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catfish
Apple = Big Brother

