Share Links, Become Extradited To the US

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."

Comments

I'm in trouble...

[grub]

If they ever demand extradition for sharing goatse links, I'd be on death row.

Tax dollars

[cjcela]

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!

Re:Tax dollars

[CRCulver]

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.

Re:Tax dollars

[airfoobar]

"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!

Extradition is All the Rage!

[Lance Dearnis]

First Cisco trying it from Canada, now the MPAA through Britain. An important thing to note through the article is that copyright laws exist in both countries - but that so far, it seems in Britain that link-sharing alone is not as damning as it is in the US. Mainly, it looks like TVShack was much more commercialized than Hotfile, and that's always something that results in a bigger hammer coming down the line. An important thing to note as well is the previous experience British judges have had with copyright litigation - I remember ACS Law and Crossley being torn into, as seen here (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/amounts-to-blackmail-inside-a-p2p-settlement-letter-factory.ars) Really, I don't think he's getting extradited. Britain is markedly hostile to US-style copyright infringement proceedings, and I doubt they failed to figure out where Crossley got his tactics from. Unless if they get someone to play rubber stamp and not examine the case, I'd lay my money on O'Dwyer staying right where he is.

jurisdiction?

[green1]

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!

Re:jurisdiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article said the theory of jurisdiction is that the US is claiming jurisdiction over all top-level domains based in the us, so all .com, .net, .org, etc.

Re:jurisdiction?

[badfish99]

Unfortunately, the previous, very pro-US, government in the UK signed a treaty that allows the US to extradite anyone from the UK, more or less on demand, with no requirement to prove that any crime has been committed.

Of course "terrorism" was used as an excuse, but the treaty is being invoked in many cases where the person concerned seems to have committed only a trivial offence, or in some cases to have done something that was perfectly legal in the UK.

The treaty is very controversial here in the UK: many people feel that the US is using the mere process of extradition as a form of punishment in itself. Sadly, there is a public perception here that the US legal system is vindictive and heavily biased.

Re:jurisdiction?

[bcmm]

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.

The moral of the story:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

ICE is out of control

[anti-pop-frustration]

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).

Re:This is the America you can expect under Obama

[spidercoz]

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.

Re:Free?

[green1]

The article used the correct term, infringement. Piracy is a term that has been co-opted to try to make the act seem worse than it is by equating it to murder and theft on the high seas instead of what it truly is, the unauthorized copying of someone else's published works, an act properly known as copyright infringement.

They aren't "dancing around it", they are one of the very few places actually using the correct term. The only one saying something "obviously false" is you by equating copyright infringement with theft (a completely different act) and criticizing the correct use of the term while suggesting one that is meant more to inflame emotions than to correct identify the act.

Note, I'm not taking a position on what is "right" or "wrong" in relation to copyright, only that the original article used the correct term, without comparing it to something completely unrelated.

It's not about copyright - it's the NWO

[1800maxim]

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.