But U.S. judges don't do this all the time. Meanwhile, a number of European countries (notably the U.K.) are famous for dragging foreigners into defamation cases for conduct that happened entirely outside the country. The U.S. tends to invoke jurisdiction only when you do something quite targeted at the U.S.
To be fair, U.S. judges often don't have the time.
How many time did I see "SUSPECTED Al-Quaida member and his family and some of his neighbors were killed in an explosion while a drone coincidentally flew over his house" in the news this month? I lost count.
A few points:
* French are fed up with US agencies, nothing against US judges.
* This was a civil deliberation, and will probably be nuked if said blogger make appeal.
* That regulator have no way to enforce their decision.
* Yes, this judgment is beyond ridiculous.
* Yes, the AMF should be disbanded (if they are as corrupt as they seem) or need a severe shake (in the case they are 'just' dangerously outdated).
> How many time did I see "SUSPECTED Al-Quaida member and his family and some of his neighbors were killed in an explosion while a drone coincidentally flew over his house" in the news this month? I lost count.
How does this relate? Bombing someone in a foreign country is not an exercise of legal jurisdiction. It's an exercise of a country's sovereign right to exercise military power abroad.
There are two ways to interact with a country. If you're within its legal jurisdiction, you act through legal process. This is where words like "suspected" versus "guilty" have meaning. The other way is the interactions in the state of nature. This is a state of war.
Aside from the fact that he made most of his money hosting infringing copies of American content, and serving ads to subscribers in the America, there was the more basic hook that he hosted some of the infringing content on servers in Virginia.
That's the problem most of the copyright infringement sites have. They deal primarily in content that is produced by Americans and considered a property right in America. The U.S. wouldn't give a shit if they were just trading foreign music and movies to each other. Even then, it was e.g. the Swedes that went after Pirate Bay (based on a criminal complaint filed by the MPAA in Sweden).
That seems essentially similar to the view of the French body here: if somebody somewhere harms somebody in our country, we can go after them, without regard to the law elsewhere.
