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DrinkOrDie Warez Trader to be Extradited to U.S.
femto writes "Hew Raymond Griffiths, alleged to be one of the leaders of the warez group DrinkOrDie, is to be extradited to the United States after losing an appeal. The case is of interest as the appeal was based on the fact that during the offences, alleged to have been committed in the US, the accused did not leave Australia."
In a legal dispute between a DrinkOrDie member and the United States Government, why link to a United States Government document on the group? It's a little biased.
Wikipedia, perhaps a more neutral source, has an article on DrinkOrDie
Give this article a shot.
.au law as a result. But the implications of the Griffiths' case are much more serious. "Bandido" never profited from his crimes - he was and still is, in fact, unemployed and living with his parents. He showed public disdain to those who would profit from the work of others. Nor does the American government contend this. They also don't contend a more obvious fact - Griffiths has never set foot in America in his life. Still, despite Australian law being more than equipped to deal with such a case, the DOJ under Ashcroft has decided to impose U.S. law on the world at large. Why is there a need for America to cast aside the Australian legal system like a weak little brother (then again, in 2004, it basically is the weak little brother, and John Howard personifies this to a T)?
http://www.chokedout.org/SPT--FullRecord.php?Res ou rceId=261
Description:
After a swift defeat last March, the American government has won an appeal in an Australian court to have Hew Raymond Griffiths extradited to America to face trial - on charges of copyright infringement. Griffiths is accused of being the ringleader of a "warez" group known as DOD (Drink or Die), using the alias Bandido. So-called warez groups reverse engineer software, freeing it of any copy protection, and spread it across the Internet free of charge. Don't be swayed by the US DOJ's propaganda about warez - its claim, for example, that it costs millions (per group) and billions (in sum total) to the software industry each year. These are the same erroneous, inflated figures pumped out by the BSA annually.
What's really at stake here is the legal sovereignty of Australia. Admittedly, they gave some of that up by accepting a recent trade pact with the US, and importing the DMCA into
Consider this another step in a downward spiral. It began with the No Electronic Theft Act - prior to the NET Act of 1997, actions such as Bandido's were permissible under United States law because he did not profit from them. The NET Act closed the loophole at the behest of Music Industry officials and others. It was the first major victory in a lobbying campaign that continues today, robbing consumers of their rights and industries of free competition. The PIRATE Act and INDUCE Act have this piece of legislation to thank for their consideration (and, most likely in one form or another, eventual passage).
Then came the DMCA, universally regarded as one of the worst technology laws ever. Implemented in 1998, it outlawed the work of professors, researchers, corporations, and has done nothing but stifle competition and criminalize actions that should be legal - such as backing up a copy of a DVD that a person has purchased. In 2000 came raids on another warez group, PWA - Pirates with Attitudes. At the time one of the oldest pirate groups on the net (dating back to the days of underground BBS's), the group found themselves at the mercy of the Department of Justice's new push into intellectual property crime and copyright infringement - areas that in the past had been regarded as civil matters. After originally fighting the charges, group members eventually pled guilty, but not before the government re-calculated its damages claim (to a considerably lower number), assuring themselves of relatively lenient sentences (the longest was 17 months in prison - still harsh if you want to picture millions of Americans facing this simply for using KaZaa to swap MP3s or Doom 3).
Papers such as the Wall Street Journal followed the case, setting off faint alarm bells - as Lee Gomes of the WSJ put it in a 2000 article, "This sort of naughtiness has been around the personal-computing world from the very beginning. The very first business of Apple co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs was selling the '70s-era "little blue boxes" that allowed people to make free long-distance phone calls." After that came the lesser takedown of a group known as Fastlane (who didn't crack software themselves but ra
see topic
Actually I think you'll find that John Howard is popular because during his tenure:
1. Interest rates fell. A lot. For a long time. He's 9 years in and only now are they rising.
2. Unemployment fell. A lot. It's still falling, to the point where Australia is seeing serious skills shortages.
3. Real Household Wealth rose. A lot.
On the downside:
1. Household debt is way up. A lot of this is easy peasy consumer credit and borrowing for investment property ("Negative Gearing"). When this bubble bursts, the Liberals' time in office will end.
2. Government spending is way up. Particularly through the GST. Americans: heed the lesson that consumption taxes don't replace income tax; they just get spent together.
3. Blossoming trade deficits. For those who care, though we've run deficits essentially uninterrupted for over a hundred years and we're doing OK so far.
For most Australians, the defence of Australia against Indonesia is far from their minds. In truth, we'll do more for our security by being honest with Indonesia (rather than sucking up), and by trading with them. Both of these are pretty much stock standard Howard policy.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
Copyright infringement isn't a criminal act in Australia
Additional sections exist for nondigital distribution, other modes of violation, etc. Source: Australian Copyright Act of 1968, as amended.
Well, then he should be charged in Australia, not the USA. If the Australian courts can't sentence him for anything under Australian Law then he should go free.
This isn't anything like extraditing people for war-crimes or similar stuff.
Just more evidence that Australia is the southernmost state of the US.
As I've posted about here in the past, Australia's extradition treaty is a reciprocal treaty with the US; Australia is allowed to extradite people from the US for anything that would be considered both a crime in the US and Australia, and vice versa.
:)
see my previous post.
Such terms are typical for reciprocal extradition treaties between countries with friendly relations.
Of course, your ignorance about international law provides you a good excuse to wave your arms in hysteria. I wouldn't want to take that away from you.
It's always amusing to watch somebody not from Australia pull out the "settled by convicts" line, with the expectation that it will make Australians uncomfortable. It hasn't for about 30 years or more.
;-)
Seriously, which sorts of people do you think got transported to Australia?
a) murderers and rapists
b) political prisoners
c) small-time theives and vandals
d) bankrupts
If you answered a), and you are an American, you have a most astoundingly interesting view of the British justice system at the turn of the 19th century - especially in light of the fact that such people could be executed today if they were US citizens.
Seeing as b), c) and d) were all transportable offences, which practically anybody's point of view - let alone an Australian's - is a little on the harsh side, why should anybody give a damn?
Today, it's considered a small matter of pride if you can prove that one of your ancestors was transported to Australia because of their part in an Irish rebellion, their theft of a loaf of bread, or their fall on hard times. Most of those offences practically scream "underdog" - a status that Australian politicians and sporting coaches scramble after to this day.
And my (Australian) government is happy to hand people over to the Americans who have broken no laws in Australia
What this guy did was breaking the law in Australia - you guys have copyright laws too - The issue here is not whether or not he broke the law, but why he's been extradited for such a relatively minor crime.
I can accept this guy is guilty and that warezers on this sort of scale are the kind of people the law should be going after, but I can't for the life of me see why America can't let the guy be tried under Australian law for crimes he committed while in Australia. That's the issue under scrutiny here, not whether or not he broke the law.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
And Reebok is British AFAIK
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/553/
So... what are you arguing against, if you don't like semantic games? Let's look...(from parent):
You have to love how they demonize everyone by using labels like "gang of internet pirates"
"Gang" and "pirate" both have specific, rather loaded meanings. Teh intarnet just makes it sound current, edgy and like consumer-consumer communication is new and stuff, and must be suppressed for the good of buggy-whip makers everywhere.
If you want to defend attacks on copyright infringers, a great place to start would be comparing them to other white-collar crime (because that's what this is), and explain how defrauding thousands for millions is less bad than copying music. Really, go compare punishments (and by this I mean civil settlements as well as penalties - compare the reparations with the putative deprivation from interested parties). After all, we have a rational legal system, right?
I realize that is a digression, but I don't think it is a herring, red or otherwise. Liquidating the company's retirement plan to prop up quarterly profit wins you a slap, and distributing music should bankrupt you instead?
Oh, wait - bankruptcy is now only for the rich.
I forget what 8 was for.
Murder, yes. Rape, no. Roman Polanski has been in France for over 20 years.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.