An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support - Fulton Sheen
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British student faces extradition to US over copyright infringement
A 23-YEAR-OLD BRITISH COMPUTER STUDENT faces possible extradition to the US for linking to copyrighted content on his website.
The student, Richard O'Dwyer, was accused of copyright infringement after setting up the website TV Shack, which had links to thousands of films and TV shows, but did not directly host them.
The website was seized by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. O'Dywer was arrested on 23 May, taken to Wandsworth prison and then released on a £3,000 bail paid by his aunt.
Now he faces extradition to the US, where he could get up to five years in prison if found guilty of infringing copyrighted material, according to the Metro newspaper.
He has vowed to fight the extradition attempt and his mother has pleaded with the UK government to "bring some common sense" to the entire affair and deny the extradition demand, which she called disproportionate, unnecessary and deeply truamatic.
She said that her son was foolish in not understanding the implications of copyright and said he was talented in web design, a skill he likely gained during his computer sciences studies at Sheffield Hallam University. Not properly understanding the law is unlikely an excuse that will wash with the courts, however.
O'Dywer's lawer is Ben Cooper, who is also defending alleged military hacker Gary McKinnon, who equally faces extradition to the US. This is a much less serious charge than McKinnon's and Cooper has prepared a number of defence arguments, including the fact that O'Dwyer never hosted the copyright content himself and that the server was not based in the US and therefore he should not be extradited there.
O'Dwyer is due in court again on 12 September. µ
Tags: Internet
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I believe information should know no frontiers, and be completly free for everyone that needs it. I really hope this
hellish system will crumble upon its own knees.
WTF? 5 years in a US prison for posting links to copyrighted material (the prisons where sexual assault is rampant yet prisoners are denied condoms because sex is illegal)?
The US I was born into is no more. We're living in a plutocracy and its getting worse by the year... the US Supreme Court a couple years ago said it was legal for large corporations to pay as much as they want to elected officials. We no longer have senate, house and judiciary. We have Sony, Micro$oft, and McDonalds. I wish the rest of the world would intervene... but I'm afraid that organizations like the MAFIAA are getting a toe-hold in most western countries.
Seriously. We're fucked.
All the guy did was aggregate a load of available links to copyright material.
Ok in the eyes of the law thats probably wrong. He should have twigged someone would be in touch about that.
But wouldnt it be better to send a cease and desist and then if not, he'd been shoved in to the local magistrates court for a reasonable fine?
Again the US wants to make sure the rest of the world knows that we are all subject to "their rules and laws".
Time for the rest of the world leaders to get together for a world conference entitled - "How do we solve a problem like America?"
"Facilitation of piracy is a prosecutable crime as The Pirate Bay clowns and others have learned the hard way."
First off, copyright infringement is not "piracy". Secondly, he didn't infringe copyright, which is what the article claims he is charged with, although the US regime obviously wants to be able to drag people into its own courts and have free rein seeing what charges can stick. Thirdly, if he did anything wrong it certainly didn't happen in the States. I guess if Saudi Arabia started to fish for blasphemy offenders in the US, you'd be singing a different tune.
"This dude knew exactly what he was doing and what the consequences of his actions were just like McKinnon. Mommy crying to a talking head politician does not change law or extradition. It's time to man-up for his crimes."
Man up? Do you pay people to dress up in uniform and administer your favourite flavour of "tough justice" until you utter the safety word? Wipe yourself off and clue up!
It's complete bull that US can seize these sites based on the domain name.
You build your site, invest hard work and money and your site is PERFECTLY LEGAL in your country, but if the site is under the .com domain and the US doesn't like it, you loose everything.
Some facts:
1. Site is not hosted on US servers
2. The owner is not a US resident
3. .com domains are under US control
So if he had an .uk domain the US could do nothing about it.
The .com domain should not be controlled by US, it is used throughout the world, they should control only the .us domain.
This does not seem fair balanced or right. I have a few pieces of logic to go through below.
If he had link to these sites then he most likely got them from search engines then if you do quick search with gathered info from his site you will be given a link to these web sites, I do not see all of those in Google, Bing, yahoo, altavista and other search engines being taken to court and remember a lot of those responsible parties are already in the US. Is this approach loigcal, fair, does anyone who has power really care? I don't think so.
(I believe a search engine is nothing more than a web site with a large database of links to the rest of the world, I guess they all had a link to his sight too)
Extradition to US, is unfortunately a one sided affair, out politicians sign up to these things without a reciprocal agreement in place, and one never seems to come, also they use legislation created to help defend against terrorism for predominantly commercial reason and in some cases it seems just so they can exercise their power. Who can that be logical fight or fair?
There also never seems to be a balance, as we in the UK allow many in our country to get away with fraud, violence and other major crimes, on nothing more than technicalities and sometimes unbelievable ones at that. At the same time cow-towing to other countries and handing over people for something minor that we would almost certainly not take to court.
How many links constitutes illegal, as many people might have had links to his sight on theirs, as it probably was a very good resource, have they been arrested, follow that logic, if I was linked to a site that was linked to a sight that was linked to his, then should I be arrested.
Please someone needs to start applying logic balance and fairness to the application of the law in the country we live in.
I still believe we live in the best country in the world for many reasons, we just sometimes get it wrong, i believe this sort of thing is one of those.
Regards
Fangtus
JohnL, I presume the URL used by the site was a .com or .org hosted in the UK and hence the domain itself is subject to US jurisdiction.
There's a legal procedure in the US where a domain can be seized by the Feds. See this Wired article for some examples: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/eight-domains-seized/
It is high time this darn government here in the UK got a grip (and it's not just the present bunch they all the same) and told the USA to go take a running jump over this so called copyright rubbish .
If someone wants to remain in control of something then it is simple keep it locked away air it on TV you no longer have claims of copyright like it or lump it it is already in the wild .
Kill copyright and patents .
When the americans tired of being subject to British law, they knew what to do. It's time to throw off the shackles of the unjust tyrant. Rise up, stand proud and let the US know that they are not our masters.
If as other commenters have metioned this is not actually against the law in either country and since the terms of extradition have not been met then we have a case of false imprisonment.
Who is going to take the police and the judge to court as they have both broken the law.
This is very very wrong and they should go to prison for pandering to this type of behaviour.
The UK Extradition Act was written by the US govt.
It is obscene because British citizens lose their right to a fair trial as soon as some wacky US prosecutor wants their butt. US "justice" is a cruel joke.
Surely this case is so over the top that Britains will demand (finally) changes to extradition procedures.
You seem to have misunderstanding as to why he is being requested for extradition. In the UK, the courts have already ruled that what he has done is not a crime under UK Law. The US rightsholders are trying to make an example of him by extraditing him to a place where what he did is potentially an offense that can be prosecuted. Even in the US, linking is not currently a criminal offense, but they have a better chance of making a show of it on that side of the pond. If he goes to trial in the UK he will be found not guilty, plain and simple, and there is precedence to support that.
Here is the original article with more details: http://torrentfreak.com/tvshack-admin-fights-extradition-to-u-s-on-movie-piracy-charges-110615/
Here's the relevant bit:
"According to David Cook, a lawyer who successfully defended an alleged uploader to the now-defunct music tracker OiNK and an administrator of the BitTorrent forum FileSoup, the answer to that question may be found in a case which came to its conclusion last year.
“In 2010, the rights-holder groups attempted the prosecution of the TV-Links website. As the name suggests, this site was effectively a directory to TV programmes that sourced programmes uploaded to other video websites, such as YouTube. The users of the site would find a TV show they liked, and then placed a link on TV-Links to other sites which were hosting episodes of that show,” Cook told TorrentFreak in a comment.
“It was argued that TV-Links was operating as a ‘mere conduit’ and that an EC based defence was open to them. Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament defines an ‘Information Society Services’ as one that offers a service normally provided for remuneration, at a distance, by means of electronic equipment and for the processing and the storage of data, and at the individual request of a recipient of a service.”
“This is a definition so dense as to be almost impenetrable,” Cook adds. “It was held in TV-Links that this definition covered their site.”
The ruling by Judge Ticehurst in favor of TV-Links meant that its operators had a complete defense in criminal proceedings in England and Wales for their linking to other web sites. They walked free."
He has committed no crime in his country of residence.
What he did is not yet a criminal offense in the US.
Extradition only provides the industry with another trial all for show.
Also, a basic understanding of extradition rules will show that this request is not valid and cannot be honored.
Much like the recent superinjunction fiasco:
step 1 - publish names of naughty sites.
step 2 - get everyone on twitter in the UK to tweet links to them.
step 3 - everyone on twitter in UK gets extradited to the US.
They probably seized the "DNS" entry for the website, effectively shutting it down at it's known url. If it was hosted outside the US then the "site" itself probably wasn't seized. (meaning the website was probably still accessible by it's IP address).
Enough of this kind of stuff will backfire on the US gov.. Enough irritation and people will stop using US controlled root DNS servers..
Then there will be collisions and confusion among the web populace as other DNS providers fork and do not enforce changes and do not respect "seizures" and maintain their own references.. effectively fracturing the web as we know it today unfortunately.
There are a lot of good comments here, and Britain should uphold its own laws and protect its citizens from the harassment of foreign entities. It's an essential part of peaceful life, that your government makes your borders secure. If something is bad, make it illegal, and decide on that yourselves. If something is not illegal, don't let another country reach into your back yard and screw with your citizens. Even if it all goes away, think about the emotional and experience costs this would have on an individual.
If you want to see how Americans treat themselves on copyright, why not choose an American company that is breaking licenses to make money all over the world... D-Link and Boxee. Read it here http://infinityoverzero.com/bbox/
@Greg
You must be American as you seem oblivious to Sovereign status of non-US citizens.
The Pirate Bay were dealt with under Swedish Law in Sweden, why were they not extradited? (perhaps Sweden understands it's citizens are members of a Sovereign state and have not capitulated completely unlike the UK.gov)
I would agree with your comment on he knew what he was doing, but he should be dealt with in a UK court, after all under UK law you are innocent until proven guilty, a small inconvenience for American corporations.
BTW do you have a strong opinion on these same corporations who pay little tax but expect protection through the use of the public purse
Thanks to your government passing the ACTA law, you're now all the B-------s of The USA now! All your copyrights are belong to us!
Given that this article essentially points to the website that points to the video, isn't this article also facilitating copyright violation?
Facilitation of piracy is a prosecutable crime as The Pirate Bay clowns and others have learned the hard way. This dude knew exactly what he was doing and what the consequences of his actions were just like McKinnon. Mommy crying to a talking head politician does not change law or extradition. It's time to man-up for his crimes.
If the website wasn't hosted in the US, then how was it .."siezed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement" ?
How do you sieze a website anyway?
If a site with just links to tv shows or movies can be seized how come they don't do the same thing to search engines.
The RIAA too chicken to go after sites like megavideo thatmake a profit from what users upload.
Can someone please explain how the U.S. has any legitimate claim to jurisdiction here? If the lad doesn't live in the U.S. and the content wasn't produced in the U.S. and wasn't published or hosted in the U.S. how do their laws apply?
On the flip side - if they DO somehow apply, surely we may as well stop bothering with any laws in the U.K. which apply to the internet, as clearly the U.S. laws apply here so we don't need our own. If I'm 18 years old, and I buy some alcohol online, from a U.K. based etailer, for delivery to a U.K. address, do U.S. laws apply to that too? If so, is the sale illegal?
Her Majesty's Govt need to sort this out. We're supposed to be a sovereign country.