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."

Comments

Someone explain...

[BannedfrompostingAC]

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.

Re:Someone explain...

[QuantumG]

Hiring a hitman, and hell, murder, are criminal acts just about anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement isn't a criminal act in Australia. Now if we want to make stupid analogies, lets suppose that I was to send some beer to my American friends. I might do this because Australian beer is far superior to US beer in many ways. If the people drinking it in the US were 19 it would be rediculous for me to be extradited because the legal drinking age is 18 in Australia, not 21. Besides which, it's just such a trivial act that the US government would indeed be wasting everyone's time to pursue it. Just like this case.

Re:Someone explain...

[Yokaze]

How about being prosecuted in Canada? I understand, that I will prosecuted according to the laws of the country I currently reside and to the laws of the country I am citizen of, as it is my duty to be acquainted with both.

However, I cannot possibly be held responsible for the effects of my actions in every possible country of the world and their respective laws.

To take an extreme example: In China, distributing pornography is a crime, which can be punished with death penalty. Should one maintain a pornographic page, one certainly could affect the Chinese populace. Does that mean one should be extradited to China?

When in Rome

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

No real surprise here

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:No real surprise here

[killjoe]

"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."

The most effective (actually the only) way to do this is by a worldwide boycott of all American products and brands. Yes that means not watching American movies, listening to american songs, not drinking coke or pepsi, not wearing nike or addidas even if you favorite soccer player or movie star tells you to.

More people protested George Bush then any figure in history. There were organized worldwide efforts where millions of people took to the streets. Did GW give a rat's ass? No he did not.

Do you know what would make him give a rat's ass? The CEO of nike calling him up and giving him the riot act because worldwide sales have fallen by 10% that's what.

GW does not care what the rest of the world thinks, hell he doesn't care what half of america thinks. He does care about his donors and he sure as hell will change his actions and words if he thinks the money flow into the republican party will slow down.

As a bonus if the boycott is successful you can cause lasting damage to the US economy which *might* cause them to spend a little less on military misadventures.

Re:According to US Customs

[Seumas]

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?!

Weird.

[Rolo Tomasi]

I thought (most) countries don't extradite their own citizens, no matter what. At the very least not for relatively minor offenses like this.

To those in Australia

[johnnywheeze]

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?

Re:To those in Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

without any sort of problems with resentment, national pride, or even seemingly rational thought.

Sorry...are you suggesting that this happens without any resentment from the Australian people? "Resentment" and "United States of America" are practically the same word in Australia.

Pirates go international!

[Kaorimoch]

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.

Re:That article has almost no information in it.

[dilvie]

I agree with the tone of that article. I think this ruling is very bad, for some very good reasons:

• A person living outside the United States should not need to worry about US laws -- just as citizens of the United States don't have to worry about China's laws. This sort of thing sets a very scary precident for international law in general.
• The warez industry provides a very valuable service. I certainly would never shell out cash for expensive software I have never tried. I have never purchased a piece of software I didn't try first -- from Comander Keen, to Photoshop -- try before you buy rules.
• Some software comes with really annoying copy protection that seems to punish people who purchase a license. I HATE dongles. They often don't work correctly and the copy protection causes weird problems. Warez versions have come to my rescue on numerous occaisions. In short, cracking should not be a crime.

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.

Re:According to US Customs

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:So if I launch a missle....

[Frogbert]

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?

Re:All up in arms

[bani]

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.

Re:So if I launch a missle....

[Ralph Yarro]

And equally, should American pornographers like Hefner be extradited to Saudi Arabia?

Re:According to US Customs

[Zemran]

[ 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.

Re:According to US Customs

[Zemran]

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.

Re:According to US Customs

[Zemran]

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.