Australian Extradited For Breaking US Law At Home

An anonymous reader sends us a link to a report in The Age about an Australian resident, who had never set foot in the US and broke US intellectual-property laws in Australia, being extradited to the US to face trial. Hew Raymond Griffiths pleaded guilty in Virginia to overseeing all aspects of the operation of the group Drink Or Die, which cracked copy-protected software and media products and distributed them for free. He faces up to 10 years in a US jail and half a million dollars in fines.

Comments

Glad to be German

[Nahooda]

I'm a bit stunned that Australian law obviously allows extraditing their citizens to other countries. Here in Germany such action is _strictly_ prohibited by the German Constitution.

Re:Glad to be German

[Xonea]

That is no longer true; the german constitution has been changed recently and now allows extraditions of germans to other countries of the european union or to an international court. You can't be extradited to the USA though :)

(This is specified in Art. 16 (2) GG: http://www.datenschutz-berlin.de/recht/de/gg/gg1_d e.htm#art16 )

Re:Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the fact that he isn't under US jurisdiction? He ran an organization which operated in the US. This is no different than drug lords in Columbia being wanted by US authorities. It's also the same as legitimate companies being liable for what their company does in every country they operate.

This is entirely unacceptable.

[NickHydroxide]

This is horrendous. I don't condone what he has done, but I contend that this should fall squarely and solely within the sovereign boundaries of Australia. We have a perfectly acceptable method of pursuing him for the same offence - either s 132AC(1) or s 132AC(2) of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), which provide respectively:

(1) A person commits an offence if:

                                          (a) the person engages in conduct; and

                                          (b) the conduct results in one or more infringements of the copyright in a work or other subjectmatter; and

                                          (c) the infringement or infringements have a substantial prejudicial impact on the owner of the copyright; and

                                          (d) the infringement or infringements occur on a commercial scale.

(2) An offence against subsection (1) is punishable on conviction by a fine of not more than 550 penalty units or imprisonment for not more than 5 years, or both.

                          (3) A person commits an offence if:

                                          (a) the person engages in conduct; and

                                          (b) the conduct results in one or more infringements of the copyright in a work or other subjectmatter; and

                                          (c) the infringement or infringements have a substantial prejudicial impact on the owner of the copyright and the person is negligent as to that fact; and

                                          (d) the infringement or infringements occur on a commercial scale and the person is negligent as to that fact.

Penalty: 120 penalty units or imprisonment for 2 years, or both. There is absolutely no reason to extradite him except for political convenience or expediency, which should NEVER be a basis for depriving someone so severely of their status as a citizen. As Justice Young noted, we should beware allowing (and effecting) foreign prosecutions where the conduct is almost entirely referential to Australia.

If equivalent offences were not in existence in Australia, then perhaps I might be more willing to accept it (although even then I would have drastic reservations). As it stands, I cannot accept this.

Re:Vice versa

[lime_red]

A quick search turned up a story on Duane "Dog" Chapman, a supposed bounty hunter who was wanted in Mexico. I hadn't heard of this until I looked it up so I can't guarantee any facts. He was arrested by US marshals and held pending being extradited to Mexico (some TV show's coverage). It looks like they'll extradite him unless his supporters can convince the Mexican government to drop the charges (resolution here).

I also have another one of a foreigner being sent to the US -- so it's not just Australia -- not that that's a good thing.

Some conjecture that I can't back up follows: I've read that the US rarely agrees to send their citizens overseas, rather just denying the extradition requests when they are in the courts.

Re:He most certainly IS under US jurisdiction

[sabre86]

US laws -- and constitutional rights -- apply to US citizens. Wrong. Well, not wrong as a statement, but too limited in scope. The U.S. Constitution doesn't create the rights it talks about, it specifically excludes the U.S. government from infringing on them, and not just for U.S. citizens, but for everybody. The Bill of Rights is a set of Limitations on the government power, not an instantiation of Rights. Those rights already exist. The underlying assumption, as expressed in Declaration of Independence and other works, is that those rights are inherent to each and every human being, and that governments are only just and legitimate when they respect those rights. It never refers to "citizens," but always to "people." Thus, the protections in the Constitution apply to everyone the U.S. government interacts with. To argue otherwise, that Constitutional protections apply only to Citizens, destroys the whole idea of democracy by creating the ruling class and allows for fun things like slavery -- "of course slavery is legal, the Constitution applies only to citizens and the slaves aren't!"

Unfortunately, our current government has decided that it is not in fact a limited government and has repeatedly ignored the Constitution. Even the courts have noted this. Hopefully, hopefully we will be able to steer things back on course before it's too late. But that hope strikes me as dim, given the fact that Congress, for instance, has so much it can impeach the president for -- Gitmo, Warrantless searches, authorizing torture, denying habeus corpus, etc -- but has done nothing.

--sabre86