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From a tech perspective, I do find myself occasionally having interesting discussions with co-founders about what it means to be operating our business in a leg
by nerdsniper 9mo ago
From a tech perspective, I do find myself occasionally having interesting discussions with co-founders about what it means to be operating our business in a legal environment where the rule of law is diminished. Startups have often had to contend with variance in enforcement and interpretation.
Some of my favorite historical examples of startups who had to worry about uncertain rule of law are:
- Aereo[0]: Who tried their very best to follow the law diligently but got slapped down anyways.
- Uber[1]: Who blatantly broke the law so callously that they relied on gaps in the rule of law to enable their business model.
- Kim Dotcom[2]: A German-born citizen who had never set foot inside USA's jurisdiction found himself arrested by the FBI in helicopters storming his home in New Zealand. This emphasized that any founder needs to follow US law, no matter where they are operating.
In each case, it seemed that whoever had more money tended to win, rather than who had the letter of the law on their side.
0: https://archive.md/PJHhD https://archive.md/PJHhD
1: https://archive.md/tqk3W https://archive.md/tqk3W
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom
- metalcrow 9mo agoI agree with your overall point, but for Kim's case, it seems it was actually NZ police who arrested him, no? NZ just decided to enforce US law because of mutual treaties.
- nerdsniper 9mo agoAh, you’re right. The reporting[0] at the time seemed to imply that a handful of FBI agents were present among the NZ officers during what was reported to be a "US-led raid". FBI agents evidently[1] left the country with physical evidence from the raid that NZ was supposed to keep custody of. 0: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/96384/fbi-agents-continue-to-aid-nz-police-over-internet-case https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/96384/fbi-agents-continu... 1: https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/fbi-committed-illegal-act-dotcom https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/fbi-committed-illegal-ac...
- spwa4 9mo agoSo it was NZ choosing to violate it's own laws under pressure, just not quite as dramatically as reported? Doesn't NZ have laws about not having a death penalty, and therefore it is impossible to extradite anyone that has 0.01% chance to get the death penalty?
- nmfisher 9mo agoTo clarify, Kim Dotcom was arrested by NZ police and is making his way through the NZ court system. It wasn't a Maduro situation. I'm not sure he's even been extradited yet (though that's the most likely outcome).
- Bender 9mo agoKim was operating a large amount of servers in the US at Equinix in Ashburn, VA. Apparently he had a presence in multiple countries that had legal relationships with the USA. Perhaps he could have chosen hosting in countries that do not cooperate with the USA but I don't know which those would have been for that scale of operation.