Interesting Jurisdiction Issue

[Todd]

CNN has a story on how police in Italy removed a sites content even though that server was located in the USA.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/07/22/borderless.internet.ap/index.html

Question being, do you think they should have the authority to do such?

Typically any legal issues have to be brought up in the country where the servers are located. I think most people will say no so I don't expect much of a debate but I thought I'd share the story.

 

[Rick]

As they used his computer and password to delete the account, and that computer was located within the Italian border, they were (it seems to me) acting within their jurisdiction... The servers were located in the US, and they had no jurisdiction to order the host to close the site, but as they acted entirely inside of their country, the US constitutional protections don't apply.
However on the second case, I don't believe that the Australian legal system has the jurisdiction to pursue a lawsuit against a foreign company for an article published on a foreign server as none of the incidents occured on Australian soil.
Likewise with the French suit against Yahoo... They may prohibit the shipment of the items to France, and possibly go as far as blocking all access to yahoo.com from French pipelines, but they lack the jurisdiction to proscribe items offered for sale on foreign soil.
The internet is an international medium, and (in my opinion) the national or local laws regarding content may be applied to content placed on servers within the governing legal authority, and the posting of content by citizens or residents of that jurisdiction, may be regulated by the laws of that location. But their jurisdiction must end at their national borders. If this is not true, then any and all local laws and regulations are subject to interpretation by any other location, which would make every netizen subject to prosecution under the laws of every petty feifdom world wide.