If a crime happens between two parties in different countries over the internet, what laws apply? Lets say, for the sake of example, it's a severe crime (punishable by jail time) in the United States to say that someone stinks. Person A is from Brazil where no such law exists Person B is from the United States Person A says &quot;You stink&quot; publicly to Person B on Twitter. What would happen? Would Person A get away with it or would they be extradited and judged under US law?
The UN has a copy of the extradition treaty between the US and Brazil, the short version of it is that the treaty lays out in Article II an exhaustive list of crimes that are extraditable, skimming the list I don't see defamation (since of course in real life it's not a federal crime). As a general principle, Country A won't extradite someone to Country B if the conduct they are accused of in Country B is not a crime in Country A, if Country A does not think Country B would provide a fair trial, or if the person is convicted if the punishment likely to be imposed by Country B would be illegal under the laws of Country A (this comes up a lot with extradition from Europe to the US if a possible punishment for the crime is death). So in your hypothetical Brazil would probably be unwilling to extradite its own citizen for the crime the US accuses them of. I think another part of your question is whether the US or Brazil would have jurisdiction over this defamation. In theory, both could claim jurisdiction over it. In practice most criminal conduct is criminal relatively universally, especially among similarly geolocated countries, so the rest of this paragraph is assuming both countries did consider the defamation criminal and extraditable. As a matter of judicial effectiveness an Internet crime would probably be prosecuted in the country where the person resides. There would likely be a language barrier too, if the US court would have to employ a Portuguese translator. However, this is all largely a political question more than a legal one, if the US really wanted to make an example of this person in their own country the US could try to use political leverage to get Brazil to extradite them. The US could also wait until the person travelled abroad and petition the third country to imprison and extradite them. That's something that happens more commonly for citizens of a country that the US does not have an extradition treaty with.
Countries can prosecute people for their actions in any part of the world, but generally only do so for certain crimes. In other words, whether the country is likely to assert extraterritorial jurisdiction depends a lot on what "action A" is. For example, many countries reserve the right to prosecute crimes against humanity and similar violations of international law in their national courts. The accused need not be a citizen of that country. The US can prosecute its citizens for having sex with children anywhere in the world. On the other hand, a US citizen doesn't need to worry about being prosecuted in the US for a relatively minor crime if the action occurs in a foreign jurisdiction, such as for possessing a controlled substance.
The general answer is "yes." Who ever said that only one set of laws applied? Jurisdiction isn't a matter of "one country's laws matter here, let's find out which one it is." All jurisdiction means is that your laws apply to the conduct, not that no one else's can as well. Broadly, there are a few sources of jurisdiction that are generally considered legitimate (to at least some degree) in international law: Territoriality: You have jurisdiction over actions performed in your territory. You also have jurisdiction over crimes where just one part of the crime happens in your jurisdiction (e.g. standing in country A and shooting someone in country B), or even if it just has a significant effect in your territory. Nationality: You have jurisdiction over crimes committed by your citizens anywhere in the world, regardless of whether or not they were breaking the law of wherever they were. Passive personality: You have jurisdiction over crimes committed against your citizens anywhere in the world. Protective: You have jurisdiction over crimes directly harming core state interests, like counterfeiting your passports or sabotaging your warship. Universal: A handful of crimes (like piracy or genocide) are so serious that every country in the world can exercise jurisdiction. If you catch a pirate, you can punish them. These are accepted to different degrees. Passive personality and protective jurisdiction tend to be iffier; territorial jurisdiction is unquestioned (although if it's just based on effects in your territory, it becomes a bit iffier as well). But any of them can be a basis for jurisdiction. If multiple countries have jurisdiction, whoever actually has the offender decides who will try them (jurisdiction to make an arrest is limited to the country in which the arrest is made). So: If you're located in a country, you have to comply with their laws, and they can regulate just about whatever they want, including what you're doing to foreign computers. The foreign country can also generally regulate what you're doing, because part of what you're doing is happening on their territory. Even if both you and the computer are in a foreign country, you may have to answer to the courts of your country of citizenship. Depending on what exactly you're doing, the protective principle may come into play. For instance, if you hack into a computer on a foreign military base, the foreign country could prosecute you for endangering their security. If you're coordinating a genocide, universality applies and anyone can prosecute you. If you hack the computer of a foreigner, passive personality may apply, although this tends to be controversial.
Caveats Obviously, I can't know the law of every jurisdiction and based my answer below on U.S. law. I have seen cases over the last few years on all of these points, but don't have all of the relevant references immediately at hand and I am instead working from memory. It is also a new and rapidly developing area of the law. People are always coming up with new kinds of conduct that were never thought of before which when analyzed appear to violate some kind of legal duty. A good rule of thumb is that if something novel seems intuitively wrongful it is usually possible to come up with a legal theory to impose liability for doing it by framing the situation in a way that analogizes it to more old school wrongful conduct. Overview All of these forms of liability require proof of more than the link alone, even though the link establishes one necessary part of the liability claim. There must also be some sort of contract or implied-in-fact agreement of people affected by the link, rather than arising purely from posting the link alone under a statute or tort law (tort law is the law of legal liability enforceable in lawsuits by a person harmed by wrongful conduct on grounds other than a contract or statute). Generally, that agreement is either an abuse of an otherwise legitimate contractual relationship by one of the parties to the contract (or an affiliate of one of the parties to the contract), or is agreement to work together to further someone else's tortious or criminal conduct. (Tortious conduct is wrongful conduct that gives rise to civil liability that can be enforced in a lawsuit, whether or not it is a crime). Generally speaking a link that was legitimate at the time and became illegitimate after the fact wouldn't sufficient for third-party beneficiary liability in this way. This is because most kinds of liability require intent to do something, knowledge that you are doing something, recklessness, willful and wanton conduct, negligence or some other threshold of liability greater than mere strict liability after the fact. Put another way, I have never seen a case where there is a legal duty to police links that have gone bad after they are posted in circumstances where the person who let the link go bad did expressly undertake an obligation to keep the links valid and to regularly monitor them, which almost no one does. An example that would be the exception to the rule would be a third-party website provider to a business that has a contract to regularly update and monitor the firm's website, for a firm like a grocery store or retail vendor that doesn't want stale coupons or discounts to be advertised, where this might be a breach of contract by the active third-party firm website operator. For most purposes, there is no liability Linking to a website does not, under U.S. law, constitute a copyright violation or a basis, in and of itself, for a defamation claim or trademark violation, related to the content of the destination site. I am not comfortable that this would be true in all jurisdictions. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if a country that adopted Islamic law as its supreme law would impose criminal or quasi-criminal liability upon someone linking to a website that violated that country's blasphemy laws, even the the linked site is legitimate in the place where it is made. TOS Violations Some links that exist for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes to a legitimate website can violate a terms of service (TOS) agreement at the website where the link is placed or of the Internet service provider (ISP) involved, with the usual consequence being that the website or Internet service provider can drop you and cease to provide service to you, even if you paid a subscription fee for that website or ISP that is not refundable in the case of a TOS violation. Strictly speaking, this isn't really &quot;legal liability&quot; but it would provide a justification for a self-help remedy that causes economic harm to the person engaged in violating the TOS with SEO conduct. Conceivably, a TOS violation could establish a duty that could provide a basis for someone other than the firm with whom the TOS violator agreed to the TOS, if the TOS violation caused harm to a third-party beneficiary of the TOS, but I've never actually seen a case brought successfully on that theory. And, generally speaking, a link to a legitimate website wouldn't cause legally recognized harm to a third-party who clicked on it. One situation where a TOS violation might give rise to liability to a third-party, however, would be a link designed to facilitate a denial of service attack that causes economic harm to the victim by preventing it from doing economically beneficial business with actual customers. Conspiracy liability Conceivably, if someone is directly to a website that is being used to conduct securities fraud or some other kind of fraud, or child pornography, there could be liability on a civil conspiracy or a criminal conspiracy to commit the crime at the linked site, but the link in and of itself wouldn't suffice to prove that case. Instead, one would have to show that there was an overt coordination with the primary violators at the destination website by the person linking to them, as part of an intentional effort to further the conspiracy and that the link was one overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy (generally also including other overt acts and generally in a case where the plaintiff or criminal prosecutor can show some motive to advance the conspiracy such as a sharing of profits from the conspiracy, or a family relationship to the primary offender, or reason to want to seek revenge against the victim(s) of the primary offense). The last sentence of the question, however, seems to not apply to this particular situation when it says: The hyperlink is to legitimate websites atleast at time of hyperlinking ok. Click Fraud SEO type links can also give rise to liability if you have a contract with a service that compensates you based upon the number of times that a web address is viewed (a.k.a. per &quot;click&quot;), for example, a Spotify song or a Webtoon comic or a streaming video service or an online marketing contract where you are being paid for sending traffic to a site that is marketing to third-parties. These cases are often called &quot;click fraud&quot; cases even when the theory of liability is not common law fraud. The theory of liability in these case is that you have (1) breached the duty of good faith and fair dealing, or (2) breached a specific contractual term to that effect, or (3) engaged in fraud (both civil and potentially criminal wire and mail fraud), or (4) engaged in the deceptive trade practice of false advertising (potentially a third-party or attorney-general could do this too, but the damages cases would be very weak). This is because either (1) you are being paid for third-party clicks intended to reach the destination in question, but are artificially inflating that count with links that you or (2) your confederates generate, or by links that mislead third-parties into going to a site that they will react negatively too, tarnishing the reputation of the person paying for the clicks pursuant to the contract. Usually lawsuits of this type a brought by the party paying for the clicks against a person who was overpaid until a click based compensation contract to recover an overpayment under that contract arising due to this misconduct. But Wikipedia identifies some circumstances in which there can be suits involving non-contracting party: A secondary source of click fraud is non-contracting parties, who are not part of any pay-per-click agreement. This type of fraud is even harder to police, because perpetrators generally cannot be sued for breach of contract or charged criminally with fraud. Examples of non-contracting parties are: Competitors of advertisers: These parties may wish to harm a competitor who advertises in the same market by clicking on their ads. The perpetrators do not profit directly but force the advertiser to pay for irrelevant clicks, thus weakening or eliminating a source of competition. Competitors of publishers: These persons may wish to frame a publisher. It is made to look as if the publisher is clicking on its own ads. The advertising network may then terminate the relationship. Many publishers rely exclusively on revenue from advertising and could be put out of business by such an attack. Other malicious intent: As with vandalism, there are many motives for wishing to cause harm to either an advertiser or a publisher, even by people who have nothing to gain financially. Motives include political and personal vendettas. These cases are often the hardest to deal with, since it is difficult to track down the culprit, and if found, there is little legal action that can be taken against them. Friends of the publisher: Sometimes upon learning a publisher profits from ads being clicked, a supporter of the publisher (like a fan, family member, political party supporter, charity patron or personal friend) will click on the ads to help. This can be considered patronage. However, this can backfire when the publisher (not the friend) is accused of click fraud. This link identifies and describes in some detail five leading click fraud cases: Motogolf.com vs Top Shelf (2020) – sporting goods, ongoing case TriMax Media vs Wickfire (2017) - digital advertising, $2.3 million Satmodo vs Whenever Communications (2017) - satellite phones, dismissed RootZoo vs Facebook (2012) - ruling denying motion for class certification Lane’s Gifts and Collectibles vs Google (2006) - $96 million settlement
There’s some truth in it When a matter, particularly a criminal matter, is before a court or sub judice, public comment is forbidden and may be contempt of court unless they are “a fair and accurate report of legal proceedings held in public, published contemporaneously and in good faith.” Technically, it only applies to media reporting (probably including social media) and only while the proceedings are active. Proceedings become active when there is an arrest, oral charge, issue of a warrant, or a summons. Notwithstanding, there is nothing preventing an organisation having a “no comment” policy on any matter once there is police involvement.
Yes When you enter the jurisdiction of a country, you are subject to its laws. You are not, in general, subject to punishment for things you did before you entered its jurisdiction but if possession of bitcoin (or anything else) is illegal in that country, then possessing that thing makes you subject to prosecution.
Strictly speaking, that principle isn't even true everywhere in the US. The maxim "nulla poena sine lege" (i.e. "no punishment without a prior penal statute") was historically applicable to civil law systems, such as are found in continental Europe. In common-law systems, there was never a tradition in which a crime wasn't a crime unless it violated a penal law, because crimes themselves were traditionally defined by court precedent instead of by statute. In US federal court, the only allowable common-law offense is contempt of court. This is due to a court decision (United States v. Hudson), in which the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts do not have the constitutional authority to hear a case in which someone is accused of committing a common-law crime. Even so, and even though there is a federal contempt statute, the Supreme Court has ruled that contempt is an inherent power of any court, and statutes around it only regulate the power (but the power would be there even without a statute). At the state level, some states have explicitly passed laws saying something is not a crime if it doesn't violate the penal code (although this doesn't necessarily apply to contempt); see section 6 of the California Penal Code for an example. In other states, like Florida, common-law crimes still exist; Florida has a statute saying that any common-law offense is still a crime unless a statute has explicitly covered that same subject matter (section 775.01), and specifies a generic penalty for anything which is an offense at common law and not addressed by any Florida penal statute (section 775.02). While this is sort of statutory (as it's a statute giving the penal provision), it's also basically not (as no statute has to say "X is illegal," because it's enough that English common law makes X illegal).
Not the same way as there's protection against double jeopardy in the criminal system. If Person A and Person B both have claims against Person C, even if it's for the same act or omission, each of them can independently pursue those claims. Imagine what would happen if that weren't the rule: Whoever filed first would functionally be preventing the other one from recovering their claim. What's worse, Person A and Person C could collude (say, by presenting a bad case on Person A's side) and prevent person B from accessing relief that they're entitled to. The way that the courts prevent abuse of the system by people who want to keep re-litigating the same issue is a principle called res judicata. But that's a principle that only applies when it's the same parties – say, Person A sued Person C and lost, and so sued Person C again for the same claim. This limitation protects Person B against any collusion or just bad lawyering on the part of Person A.