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Share Links, Become Extradited To the US

Posted by Soulskill on from the idle-mice-are-the-devil's-playthings dept.

castrox writes with an in-depth followup to a story we discussed in June: "Sharing links online, particularly links to copyrighted material, may render you extradited to the United States of America. 'In May, American law enforcement officials opened up yet another front in this war by seeking the extradition of Richard O'Dwyer. The 23-year-old British college student is currently working on his BS in interactive media and animation. Until last year, he ran a "link site" that helped users find free movies and TV shows, many of them infringing. American officials want to try him on charges of criminal copyright infringement and conspiracy.' The case is unique because the site, which the accused Englishman ran, was not located in the US in any way. Does this set a new precedent of things to come? The agency responsible for the extradition request is Immigrations and Customs Enforcement."

11 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Tax dollars by cjcela · · Score: 5, Insightful

    More tax dollars tossed to the trash to protect the interests of a few companies. And the guy was not even posting infringing content. This is getting so out of hand. Way to go, America!

    1. Re:Tax dollars by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Insightful

      More tax dollars tossed to the trash to protect the interests of a few companies.

      "Intellectual property" is one of the few things that the US produces these days and it employs a large amount of people in a country rife with joblessness. While the RIAA and MPAA are disgusting organizations and there's certainly outright corruption with the industry buying politicians, I wonder if some in the government are pushing for these stringent measures because they think it will save the country.

    2. Re:Tax dollars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Wow, a stupid country based on stupid things.

    3. Re:Tax dollars by airfoobar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Intellectual property" is one of the few things that the US produces these days and it employs a large amount of people in a country rife with joblessness.

      That's what the lobbyists say. But, of course, it's misleading. There are all sorts of "Intellectual Property" related jobs, the vast majority of which are not affected by file-sharing. The entertainment industries affected are actually quite tiny, and even they are overstating the damage, since they keep having record profits every year!

  2. jurisdiction? by green1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How does this work? if he broke the law in the UK, he should be tried in the UK. Under what grounds would extradition to the US make sense? he'd have to have committed a crime in US territory, and if the site wasn't there, and he wasn't there, then the answer to this seems pretty clear...
    If you want to try him for a crime allegedly committed in the UK, try him in the UK, not the US. And if the UK laws don't allow you to try him in the UK because what he did wasn't a crime there, then too bad for you!

    1. Re:jurisdiction? by bcmm · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's a stupid example. Smoking pot is not theft.

      Copyright infringment is not theft either. This is not intended as a statement about whether it should be a crime or not; it just isn't theft, in any legal, moral, or common-sense way.

      This would be more akin to a Canadian driving over the border, breaking into your house, stealing every valuable thing you have, and driving back over the border.

      The man is accused of telling people about the "theives", not of the "theft" itself.

      --
      # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
      Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  3. Jury Nulification by RingDev · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Scream it from the mountain tops since it can't even be wispered of in court.

    -Rick

    --
    "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
  4. The moral of the story: by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ICE's contention is that the site's use of an address within the .net TLD, administered by Verisign and within US jurisdiction, was the grounds on which their jurisdiction was established.

    That seems an unnervingly broad criterion for establishing jurisdiction(if the the state tourism board of $PICTURESQE_TROPICAL_COUNTRY buys some ads from ClearChannel, urging people to book vacations, does ICE acquire jurisdiction over them?); but the immediate practical punchline seems to be to Stay. The. Fuck. Away. from American registrars if doing something that pisses off the feds.

    I can see that using an American registrar would leave you open to having your domain name(which, effectively, is a 'property' that exists in the US as much as it is anything else) being seized; but leaving you open to extradition seems insane.

  5. ICE is out of control by anti-pop-frustration · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Extra judiciary domain seizures, extradition of foreign citizens for crimes not committed in the US... ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is either corrupt or completely out of control. They must be reigned in.

    In the mean time, it's great that they have the situation at the Mexican border under control, gives them more time to be innovative in the war against piracy (keep going guys, you're so close to winning that one).

  6. Re:This is the America you can expect under Obama by spidercoz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Drawing lines in the sand isn't helping. They are ALL criminally culpable, Democrat and Republican. Getting us to argue amongst ourselves is just one of the ways they distract us from the real issue at hand, the fact that they are working together to fuck us all.

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
  7. It's not about copyright - it's the NWO by 1800maxim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We keep reading about how crazed the USA has become with its DMCA, now the Homeland Security taking down domains, and ICE strongarming in areas where it would seem it should have no jurisdiction or business.

    The reason is that it's very convenient for the government to have extremely powerful accusatory tactics and means of getting to and punishing people. You keep complaining, asking why RIAA/MPAA has so much power, but it's simply because it's convenient for the gov't for this seemingly private entity to exercise such power.

    Under the guise of anything, the gov't can search your homes without a warrant, can pull over and fingerprint you/iris scan you, can confiscate your electronic equipment, etc, etc... without due process.

    All these organizations and laws (DMCA, PROTECT IP) are simply a tool, a back-door way into your homes and private lives.

    Once you understand that, you'll also understand why such organizations have such tremendous power. It's one and the same - they work in a symbiotic relationship with the gov't, which is working toward complete control.