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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."
If there is no record of him entering the U.S., how could he possibly have commited the crimes in the U.S.?
No, I don't think the court would get it, either.
It was common throughought ancient Europe for the citizens of Rome's provinces or client states to be subject to its laws and legal process - often above and beyond those of their own state or tribe. But at least the Romans had enough decency to openly call it an Empire!
All Hail the great USA ... this is just BS
The Australian government does whatever the US tells it to do these days.
This case is yet another reason why the rest of the world needs to band together to curb the lawlessness of the current US administration.
You have to love how they demonize everyone by using labels like "gang of internet pirates". Let's use a little less hyperbole and say "copyright infringement groups" - which is far more accurate and descriptive.
Also, I can see extradition for somethin glike murder or rape - but copyright infringement?!
I thought (most) countries don't extradite their own citizens, no matter what. At the very least not for relatively minor offenses like this.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
The rest of the world (the west and Asia, the parts that count and aren't running around beheading eachother for diamonds and splinters of land) is very close to the US. This isn't the US bullying, this is what normal countries do. If you want to steal from us, you'll be punished by us. If you don't like it, leave and live in war ridden Africa.
yeah... wikipedia may be MORE neutral than the US government, but wikipedia is hardly unbiased. The articles about stuff like this only get written if someone has an agenda.
oh wait... I implied that I may not be FOR piracy on slashdot. I better go hide before the lynch mob gets here.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
As an American I've been wondering for a while why your government pretty much does whatever we tell them to do, without any sort of problems with resentment, national pride, or even seemingly rational thought. I can never see an American being extridited to Australia for an alleged crime, who has never actually been to Australia. I know that Howard is an ass (the opinion of most aussies I meet). But being a total neo-conservative prick doesn't really explain it, especially in cases like this. What do you really think the Australian government gets for being our lapdog?
Hey, I bet the US wasn't the only place he committed these offences. He probably uploaded and infringed on software products all over the world.
Why should the US have sole custody of the guy? Why not visit Japan and England as well on a government sponsored world tour? If he is lucky, there may be a few Eastern Bloc countries as well.
That's using more hyperbole though. "Handicapped people" correctly labels handicapped people, whereas "specially enabled people" could be a mutant superhero or anyone in a position of large wealth or power.
The copyright to something like Adobe Photoshop is worth more than a human life, so why are you surprised?
I agree with the tone of that article. I think this ruling is very bad, for some very good reasons:
I would have demanded my money back for several software packages if a warez version didn't fix the problems with copy protection. The software industry should be kissing this guy's ass, not putting him in jail.
MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
Well, it's not like the guy was a casual copier. He was part of an organization that infringed the copyrights of hundreds if not thousands (or more) software titles. You make it sound like he only copied a few games or something when in reality he was providing copies of hundreds or thousands of titles to basically anybody who could find them. Granted this is not even close to murder, but the software companies potentially lost millions of dollars. I said potentially, so don't bother playing semantics.
This to me doesnt seem like the huge abuse people are alledging, and I'm not feeling a slippery slope here either.
Because you are a fucktard.
If he broke Australian law, he should be punished by Australia. If he never set foot in the US or sent someone to act on his behalf to the US, the US has no claim on him. I really hope he gets a jury trial, and I really hope that people with a sense of national pride are on his jury.
This creates a precedent for extraditing Americans to other countries that they never set foot in to answer for crimes that they couldn't have possibly committed.
Remember about 10 years ago those guys in the camo BDUs who were talking about a New World Order? This is precisely the kind of thing that they ranted about.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I good example would be that Pornography in Australia has a minimum age of 16 whereas in America is 18, therefore sites like hushhush.com are illegal in the states. Should the webmasters be extrodited as child pornographers?
so in other words, you're open to extraditing americans to saudi arabia because they violated saudi religious heresy laws?
how about extraditing salman rushdie to iran? they have a long standing death sentence on him for violating iranian law. he _is_ guilty as all hell, after all.
And equally, should American pornographers like Hefner be extradited to Saudi Arabia?
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
Innocent until proved guilty doesn't exist anymore.
Nodays someone calls either terrorist or copywrite infringer and you're guilty no matter what.
People assume this guy is guilty. He may well be, but not of any laws in Australia, and no court in US has proved his guilt.
It's a ruination of the legal system as we know it.
Hint: You are assumed innocent until proven otherwise.
But people will forget, and be fucked. We warned you..
They're real crime is disabling or circumventing the copy protection of applications; and then making those modified versions, key generators, etc available to others, resulting in a spread without need for their direct support. Taken in isolation as purely a program solving hobby, it does resemble recreational mathematics.
I believe the charges are also in reference to acts committed a number of years ago. In the time that has passed, I'd expect that with: the growth and development of the Internet, the increasingly effective methods distribution, the general level of awareness of piracy, and level of adoption by increasingly average people, that acts piracy today quickly outstrip that of 5-10 years ago.
The difference is that it is illegal in BOTH countries. So stop acting like Australia is merely caving to the whims of America.
Slashdot is so full of conspiracy theorists...
[ Well, it's not like the guy was a casual copier. ]
and it is not like he has been convicted yet either so he is an innocent man. He was not in the US so I for one am shocked that his own country would throw him to the wolves rather than deal with it themselves. If he has broken the law then he should face that in the country where he broke the law. I am severely disapointed with Oz over this one. I thought they had more balls than to be bullied like this.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
The term 'hacker' and the term 'pirate' are both wrong even though they have entered into common usage and were introduced as a deliberate ploy. To call someone a pirate indicates theft even though none took place. They want to demonise people that the public do not see as criminals. Everyone would copy tapes 10 years ago but now the ??AA want to make people that do such things sound evil so they use the media (who love a little spin) to quote them saying 'pirate' and next thing you know everyone is saying that. Hacker sounds so much more criminal than someone circumventing security measures.
It is the norm in Pakistan to beat your wife and children but that does not make it right. Just because it is the norm for the plebs to think of people that infringe copyright, with no intention to permenantly deprive anyone of anything, as pirate does not make it correct.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
No.
Generally, all extradition treaties have provision where country A will not extradite a person to country B unless the offense with which he is charged is a crime in country A.
For AU to extradite him to the US, the act he is charged with must be considered a crime by AU.
your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
You're equating a copyright violation to an act of war.
You work for the RIAA/MPAA/BSA right?
Unless someone coerced you into using it, you were not forced to do anything.
The rest of the market sends you complex formatted Microsoft Word documents and expects you to send complex formatted Word documents in return, and the market can withhold your paycheck if you refuse to use Word. So it's use Word or starve to death. How is this not coercion?
"Bullied?" It's more like a case of treating others the way you'd like to be treated.
Clearly Australia would like more power to extradite suspects from the U.S., and they'll probably get it.
A nation can peacefully work with the United States for mutual ends -- it's not automatically kowtowing. Those who jump to that conclusion have an inferiority complex, I suspect.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
"Crime is Crime"
Just exactly what the hell does that mean? I hear that quite a bit. Are you saying that all crimes are equivalent? Obvious nonsense. If not, just what are you saying?
"just because it is IT based has no mitigating (nor magnifying--agreed) effect."
Sure it does, unless you attach the same (or less) value to human life as you do money and property --- which appears to be a growing trend.
I would doubt that the US would extradite anyone to another country unless they had commited a crime in that country. To hand someone over to a foreign government to answer to accusations of crimes that were commited in ones own country is kowtowing. If the US did this I would be even more shocked and I doubt that the US would reciprocate. That is not any form of inferiority complex and I cannot see how you would think it is, I can only assume that the final comment was a troll.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.