Slashdot Mirror
US Government Seeks Extradition of UK Student For File-Sharing
Gimble writes "The BBC reports that UK student Richard O'Dwyer has lost a legal battle to block his extradition to the U.S., where he faces copyright infringement charges for running a file sharing site (ruling). O'Dwyer operated the site 'TV-Shack' from 2007 until 2010, which didn't offer any files itself, but posted links to streams and files hosted elsewhere. O'Dwyer was first arrested in June last year by British police acting on information from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The domestic investigation was subsequently dropped, but Mr. O'Dwyer was re-arrested in May on an extradition warrant to face charges in America."
A natural person extradited to the US, through the indirect urging and lobbying of the "media" industry. 'tis sad, 'tis sad... what have we become ?
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Just within the last hour and is pathetic.
All cows eat grass!
Boycott. Stop watching, stop buying, stop feeding these asshole media publishers. If you must buy, buy used.
who had just engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the pension plans of half of the country. He wouldn't be charged much less extradited. What a country!
More like an abusive one, the American government clearly thinks that we are weak and treat us as such. Maybe they're right. *sigh*
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
How can they legally extradite him, when he didn't commit a crime IN the US? He's not even a US citizen and isn't subject to US law!
WTF happened to the concept of jurisdiction? Why should the US be able to enforce its laws in the UK? This sets a VERY bad precedent; what if country A has some really stupid law that country B doesn't, and someone in country B breaks it? Should they be extradited to country A?
What's next; extraditing people to China for speaking badly of the communist regime over there?
capitalism happened. power of money transcends borders.
Read radical news here
The item stated that in order for extradition to be considered, O'Dwyer had to have been accused of committing a crime that was illegal in both the UK and the USA. As far as I am aware, no crime was committed in the UK, which is why the criminal investigation was originally dropped.
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
It's only happened once in the UK before as well, and then (TV-Links), the case was dismissed. Despite the web being around for some time now, it seems that the issue of linking is only just reaching courts, and unsurprisingly, there will be a few odd rulings until it settles down and precedent is established.
In this case, the US was arguing that providing the website (even merely linking to stuff) was "communicating [copyrighted stuff] to the public", and was "in the course of a business" due to the money being made from adverts (contrary to Section 107 (2A) of the CDPA). The counter-argument was that (as in the TV-Links case) his actions were protected by the 'mere conduit' defence (established by Article 12 of the Electronic Commerce Directive) which protects ISPs, website hosts etc. from the actions of their users. However, in this ruling, the judge seems to have found that because O'Dwyr (the defendant) was in control of the site, and those adding the links had to be "vetted". Imho (as a mere observer, not a lawyer) that's a very narrow interpretation of the Directive, which might be grounds for a successful appeal.
If he does appeal, we might get a "definitive" ruling on the legality of linking, and the scope of the EC Directive defences, which could be very useful (or terrifying, if they go the other way), so in some ways this is a good thing.
Of course, if he gets to the US, he then may face a completely different trial under US law, where he will be able to argue facts, not just points of law...
Write to your Congressman urging them to stop this. It's absolutely ridiculous that the US is going after this guy for sharing links. If the British courts found nothing to press charges then why is the US wasting money pursuing this, and we all know it's at the behest of the MPAA, RIAA or whomever. It's stupid to say the least. Here's an idea, put his name on a list and grab him if he ever tries to enter the country. If he never does then he never does, but hell. Part of me would like to see this play out and play out in his favor, he gets extradited, lengthy trial, he gets acquitted. Tax dollars wasted, but the bright side of that scenario would be there would be legal precedent for the next person.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Its funny when you think about it. The media moguls pushing these laws are the very people who's vast empires are supposed to be helping protect us from tyranny via the free press.
It was fun while it lasted I guess. At this point anyone running for office who would fix this mess is either demonized by the media, or just outright ignored.
That seems pretty sensible. The guy was making large sums of money by running a site that very clearly was designed for piracy. He wasn't some innocent middleman who was abused. He profited handsomely off piracy knowing full well copyright infringement was illegal, and is now being extradited for it.
I'm a Brit and think there are quite a few things wrong with the US/UK extradition treaties that are in place, but the judges ruling is easy to read and logically sound. What he did was an offence under UK law. It would not infringe his human rights to be tried abroad. So what's the big deal? My only concern with this is that the UK Govt didn't prosecute him itself.
To all my fellow UK /.ers, you can write to the Home Secretary about this matter, explaining politely why this is wrong:
Rt Hon Theresa May MP
Home Secretary
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF
public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
Telephone number: 020 7035 4848
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
It looks like this is actually worse than a treaty merely being one-sided in the requirements for proof. This is about someone who committed acts in the UK that were not illegal in the UK (let us assume, given that his equipment was taken by British police in November 2010 but no criminal charges followed). His actions might have been illegal in the US if they had been committed in the US, but as far as I can tell, they were not and this all happened entirely in the UK. But the US is apparently trying (and currently succeeding) to get him extradited anyway.
Extradition is supposed to be about not letting a criminal flee to another jurisdiction to escape justice. It is not supposed to be about making someone in one country guilty of any offence they commit according to the law in any other country with which an extradition treaty exists.
Just to be clear, I am utterly lacking in sympathy for this guy. I don't for an instant believe he was either ignorant of copyright law or doing this purely out of the kindness of his heart, and if he was making a significant amount of money off the back of helping people to break the law then throw the whole damn book at him. But it should be our book if he did this in our country. The legal principle that anyone can be extradited from a country when their actions committed in that country were not against the law in that country is very, very dangerous.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
According to the very well written judgement he can only be extradited if there is a proportional offence in the UK.
I think this stinks, but it seems perfectly legal.
If a square is really a rhombus, why aren't all triangles purple?
Google doesn't choose which links appear in Google Search. The provider of an unvetted service such as Google Search or YouTube can keep its safe harbor status by following the OCILLA takedown procedure (17 USC 512) or foreign counterparts. As I understand this comment, TV-Shack may have been too vetted to qualify for the OCILLA safe harbor.
It's worth keeping in mind that this decision was made in a Magistrates' Court. That is basically the lowest court in England: as the name suggests, most of the decisions are reached by magistrates, who are lay people offering their services rather than legally trained judges, and do not involve a jury. The penalties that can be handed down in such courts are also typically very limited compared to a Crown Court (to which more serious cases can be referred if the magistrates consider it necessary for the interests of justice because they cannot impose a sufficient penalty themselves).
It sounds like this wasn't a typical case for such a court, but the implication is still that this is only the first step down a long road. I imagine there are several rounds of appeals to go through before the guy in question is in any danger of actually leaving British soil. Those will involve a lot more people who are legally trained and who can spot the obvious (you would think) implication of allowing someone to be extradited for allegedly breaking a US law on British soil but not, apparently, a British one.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I appreciate the importance of copyright as the *right* level of IP protection, in contrast to patents
But the actions of the RIAA and all the rest are so mean spirited and personal even I am going to stop going to movies and buying RIAA music in protest
Sorry, but it seems to me you have a value / price problem, not a piracy problem.
You need to put your price and value proposition at a point where people are less inclined to steal .
People take things that they're barely interested in just to have them, then someone has something they didn't pay for - I get it.
But a business's concern is with making money from their product by meeting the market where it wants to be. If you're doing that, the people who casually rip second quality copies of stuff they're barely interested in are not a real problem.
No market is perfectly efficient. There's a low level drag coming form somewhere at all times- from bad legislation, from their own employees productivity , from dishonest middlemen, from a million different places.
By the same token, businesses get huge boosts from employees who have brilliant flashes of creativity and productivity, long-term-thinking lawmakers, new innovations in the distribution chain and a million other synergies the companies themselves expended nothing to obtain.
So just step back from your time-wasitng, money-wasting abacus on which you're keeping track of all the injustices and slights you think randomo people are dishing out to you and get back to doing the hard work of figuring out what the market is trying to tell you.
Here's a hint- 16.99-18.99 for a fucking CD is too much money. And that's why I buy all mine used online.
Here's another hint. 10-15 bucks to see a movie is too much, and that's why I go see one with my family three or four times a year, if that.
That is, I used to do that. This year, no more movies.
Sorry but you've got to realize that trying to kill the messenger and hanging the pickpockets is not a way to equitable and prosperous society.
The way to a society in which people buy music and see movies is by increasing your value proposition to those people so they want to buy your product.
People LOVE to buy and own things; acquisition possession and pride of ownership are an inherent part of the human character.
HOW could you have fucked that up:????
I don't understand the process.
Doesn't the US just send a team of navy seals to pick up people they are after? I know that this case came up BEFORE Obama had that power (legally), but he does now, so this story is no longer relevant.
The kid will be taken to Gitmo and waterboarded until he confesses. After which he will just lay about in an orange jump suit until the end of time.
It could be worse, the Mossad could just take him out on the street in front of his house.
Nope - same goes for about 20 other countries, and then an even lower standard applies for EU countries. The theory is that the US authorities need to have sufficient evidence back in the US to get their arrest warrant (i.e. satisfying probable cause) that asking them to prove the same in the UK is redundant.
It's kind of like when flying, and taking a connection, not having to go through security twice; if the second flight trusts the first flight, they can assume that you've already been sufficiently checked.
look, how many times do we have to go thru this.
'writing to your congressman' is an exercise in 2 things:
- getting your name on a 'watch list' of some kind, at some level
- wasting your time
unless writing the letter also includes a healthy sized check, your letter is less than useless. don't people KNOW this by now?
the connection between the people and the law-creating class is cut. has been cut for decades (maybe even a century or more, in fact). why we keep teaching this myth is beyond me. oh right, its in the law-creating class' *best interest* to keep this myth going. keeps people under the illusion that they have some say in their government.
writing to congress does no good. voting does no good as all parties want this kind of power. you won't get fixes from within the system, that's what I'm saying. to expect the system to fix itself is beyond absurd.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Loz Kaye — Pirate Party UK Leader:
By supporting the baseless US extradition case against Richard O'Dwyer today at Westminster Magistrates Court the judge Judge Quentin Purdy has failed to inject the much needed shot of rationality into the insanity of the UK-US extradition arrangements we had all hoped for. The Sheffield student is accused of infringing copyright by setting up the popular UK-based website TV Shack.
TV shack provided a catalogue of links to other sites, with no illegal material available from it at any time. As the server was based in the UK, Richard's lawyer has pointed out that there is simply no valid reason to send a young British citizen to face a court in the US.
[...]
This outcome is a failure on the part of our British justice system to act in a sensible and reasonable way. This case is the perfect example of what enforcing copyright is; excessive, overblown and aimed at easy targets innocent or not whilst ignoring the human.
So, this is what protecting your copyright has come to mean. Accepting unacceptable human collateral like Richard O'Dwyer."
http://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/ofabu/tv_shack_creators_extradition_hearing_is/
How can he have a trial by his peers? All his peers are in Britain...
The problem now is even if everyone stops watching movies and listening to music RIAA and MPAA wil simply claim that it is because of the piracy and we need a media tax. Say 20% of your total income. Or 50%. That sounds fair. And if you don't like it, there is nowhere you can go, as US is expanding their policies bought by RIAA and MPAA and paid for by your money to other countries as well.
An earlier interview with him on BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16546471
Worse, he'll get free healthcare courtesy of the US government. Granted he'd get it in the UK, but none-the-less
Well, the pres and the PM always insist on everyone being healthy before they're broken. And no one withstands The Machine.
Yeah they may in fact want to enslave everyone or at least get all our money or whatever it is that drives these types to such extreme measures but no one is going to facilitate that.
Don't copy their crap. Do something else. Make your own crap. Download Creative Commons crap. Support artists who aren't down with the RIAA.
They don't have any power if enough people stop don't buying their shit. Stop liking their shit more than you like justice. Get involved with other people online who create stuff outside of this greedy octopus.
THAT is what REALLY keeps them up at night. People just walking away.
Frankly the law in the UK is irrelevant. If he's broken it he should be charged and given a fair trial.
If he hasn't broken it then he shouldn't be persecuted.
I continue to completely fail to understand why the UK government thinks that operating a website from the UK, hosted in the UK, run by someone in the UK should come under US law and be a cause for extradition.
Ignorance of the law is no defence, but apparently this now extends to ignorance of the law of 217 countries.
It's utterly out of fucking order and sadly when I wrote to my MP he completely failed to get the point and replied with a comment on the fairness of the extradition treaty, and not the jurisdiction of the law alleged to have been transgressed. I'd write to him again but frankly he's a cunt. Yes Ken Clarke, I mean you. You're a cunt.
Historians of the future are going to have a field day with present day USA. Hollywood, that dinky little movie making town, part of the city of Los Angeles, bought the US gov't to the point Hollywood could compel the extradition of web link posters from England, its former masters?!? What's next, the moon really is made of cheese? I thought 20th Century Prohibition was a stretch, but this is truly audacious.
I think that the framers of the Constitution should have spent less time worrying about the power of gov't, and a lot more on the power of lawyers.
USA: I commend your restraint. That you can watch this batshit craziness go on and still not implode is damned near amazing.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Getting as many people on the watchlist creates the fine-grained control the government appears to want. Seems that the powers-that-wanna-be took lessions from Lavrentiy Beria.
Comrade Beria was 'Uncle Joe' Stalin's hatchetman in the NKVD, precourser to the KGB. He came up through the Party ranks in the original 'Cheka' by reputedly setting up his superiors in some kind of scandal, usually coming up with evidence of sexual scandals, either real or manufactured. When his boss resigned in disgrace, Comrade Beria was standing there ready to go to work in his new job, usually purging possibly disloyal 'coworkers' in the process.
When 'Uncle Joe' died, Beria was the frontrunner to become the 'big boss' of the Soviet Union, until Nikita Khrushchev, Gregori Malenkov, and Vyacheslav Molotov (of 'Molotov Cocktail' fame) had him arrested on over 150 counts of rape, sodomy, child molestation, and abuse of office. In the 'investigation' that followed, he was tried for high treason and reputedly executed in December 1953, although apocryphal evidence claims he was actually shot and killed during his arrest in July '53.
Whether Beria did what they say he did is immaterial. The lession we garner from the events is, it just don't matter what you do, at the end of the day, if the powers-that-wanna-be want you bad enough, they'll find a way.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
That may be true, but they also have to recognize the fact that there are always going to be people for whom there is no reasonable value/price ratio they are willing to pay--and simply ignore them because they are an entirely lost cause. It may be who they are or it may be a transient circumstance that will change in the future; if it's the latter, these companies should want to ensure that when circumstances change, these people return as customers. The people who never were and never will be customers aren't worth the resources.
As a simple example, me without a job: Pirated things. Me with a job, have not pirated anything since that point; just got through spending a bit over $100 during the Steam holiday sales; bought Battlefield 3 (even though I don't particularly like the franchise!) on Black Friday or Cyber Monday or one of those just because the price was good; bought MW3, Skyrim and SW:TOR; plus a handful of purchases on sites like Vudu that don't amount to too much. That's somewhere in the vicinity of $250 since the beginning of November (so 2.5 months, roughly).
Unemployed Me wasn't going to pay for anything. What money I did have was needed to pay for bills and I could not point my finger to a time where I would have a job again, so I wasn't going to appropriate any of that money to games, movies or music. Employed Me is what I would have to assume they consider to be a very good customer.
They could punish Unemployed Me with a lawsuit. I wouldn't be able to pay it, meaning doing so would earn them $0 and cost them whatever their lawyers charge. What's more, it would very likely have cost them that future income -- I am not inclined to do business with a company who just sued me. Worst case, I would make sure to buy everything used so they don't see a dime of it. I'd have to forego things like MW3 I guess, since multiplayer was the crux of it, but Skyrim would still be an option. It would be a small price to pay (and, hm, let's see: 100 hours in Skyrim versus about 13 in MW3 -- am I missing out that much?).
Now granted, there is still room to improve even for Employed Me, as you rightly point out. Music is still overpriced. So are video games, particularly with as many as I end up not liking (including ones in series' that I have previously liked; what were you thinking, Dragon Age 2?!). I have an impulse buy range for games <$10, with a slightly more stringent buy range <$20. Anything else has to be something I am deliberately looking forward to, which mostly means sequels to games I enjoyed. If they brought their prices down, I'm sure I would end up spending more money overall even at times when I am spending. They don't want to consider that, of course. For some reason they're willing to take a 33% chance of getting $60 instead of a 100% chance of getting $20, hoping to play the chance lottery and win the jackpot. It wouldn't stamp out piracy, by any means, but it would certainly reduce it. Piracy is a supply/demand problem like any other.
Instead, they would rather litigate their "lost sale," as if that is ever going to bring people back to being their customer.
Saying that 12 people owned the economy 100 years ago is just silly. The market is a wildly complex and dynamic creature made up of the interactions of all who particpate, basically the entire citizenry.
your proposition and assessment is too light hearted and devoid of reality. even it contrast what contemporaries of those times have been saying.
it was not a 'wildly complex and dynamic creature' as you so galvanize. it was basically owned by 12 people. people driveling in mud at the bottom, has not made a middle class.
The wealth gap was pretty stable
seeing that you have no knowledge of history. otherwise there wouldnt be an offensive and stupid statement like this regarding those times. the people who you are telling to have 'a stable wealth gap' was driveling in mud, and it was worse than the current 85% poor at this point in time.
http://www.ralphmag.org/FL/poverty-america.html
stable it was. and it was despicable.
you come up as a BELIEVER in your speech. i dont discuss with believers. there is no end. you see things to your perspective and twist picture to your own desire - just like you have beautifully portrayed a horrible poverty as 'a stable wealth gap' (as if it was something good).
ill mark you as foe, in order to have a red dot when i see your posts, so i can refrain from discussing with you again - no hard feelings ; i have done too many discussions with 'believer' type people, be them religious, be they from the holy church of market economics. and i dont see any point in doing that anymore.
BR. audieu.
Read radical news here
Actually, the US backed out of their side of the deal. Now UK has extradition obligations to the US, but none the other way around.
That's s107 (2), which isn't in play here, but yes, "article" in that context hasn't been defined , which is why prosecutors in the UK have been able to use s107(1)(e) to go after non-commercial file-sharers before (despite s107(2A)(b) being added specifically for that purpose), claiming that an .mp3 file etc. is an "article". I don't have access to all my legalish resources at the moment, but I imagine that "article" in this context merely means "thing" - but I don't think s107(2) has ever been used against software specifically.
However, the CDPA is rather badly-written in some places and a real mess - much of it being written on behalf of the legacy publishers in the 80s, so it doesn't really know about computer stuff, and the rest has been cobbled together following subsequent lobbying and EU legislation. The UK really could do with a new Copyright Act, but hopefully we're currently at the high point in the scope of copyright, so it might be worth struggling on for a few more years until copyright law is a bit more reasonable.
Just who is this "law-creating class" of whom you speak (they apparently aren't people)?
Your whole post is a cop-out. Everything is blamed on "the man", "the system", "the law-creating class". Well, these people are put in place by our votes, and their counterparts in business are made wealthy by our purchases.
Now, I'm not so naive as to believe that our politicians spend their time studying "The Federalist", Montesquieu, Locke, and Mill so they can become the most perfect expression of representative government possible. They spend their time trying to get re-elected. And a single letter to a congressman won't do anything, but a large number of such letters, accompanied by a substantial drop in the polls, will most definitely get their attention.
The problem isn't politicians per se. It is apathy and ignorance on the part of the public. If people cared about issues like this like they cared about their local sports team, the politicians would act accordingly, because otherwise they would lose their jobs.
That you can watch this batshit craziness go on and still not implode is damned near amazing.
Just wait another 5 years.
The IP war in the U.S. and other first world countries is this generation's equivalent to the space race of the former U.S.S.R. and (much of) the second world.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Not to brag about sanity, but up here in Canada we just had a court decision in the last year about the legality of suing someone for linking something.
The short version is that its not.
It might be going to appeal, but currently sanity is holding out against the powers of stupid.
I think that the framers of the Constitution should have spent less time worrying about the power of gov't, and a lot more on the power of lawyers.
The framers did a good job in many respects, but they left a huge bug in the system of checks and balances: there is no penalty for legislators who propose and pass laws that are later declared unconstitutional. People like the SOPA/PIPA sponsors have no reason not to keep throwing crap at the wall, knowing that eventually outrage fatigue will set in and something will stick.
What's needed is to amend the Constitution to provide a way to slam the Overton Window shut on our legislators' fingers. If there were any sort of professional or personal sanction involved in authoring an unconstitutional bill, things would change in a hurry. (They might actually read what they're voting on, for one thing.)
Great ideas. Here's what's wrong with them, worst case scenario.
There are only a finite combination of notes playable on a scale, only so many ways they can be combined. Case in point, Vanilla Ice ripping off Queen, but I digress. There are also only so many stories to be told. Ever notice how all the 'high school kid' movies are all alike? It's the same story told over and over.
Disney has looted everybody's childhood all over the globe and made cartoons of their favorite legends and bedtime stories, all in the public domain. They then proceded to copyright everything they could to 'secure' what they considered to be 'their' intellectual property. They tend to have fairly litigious and agressive attorneys. How long until every concept, every plot idea, every characterisation is is locked away in a Disney vault guarded by rabid lawyers? And even if you come up with what you think is an original idea, can you afford an attorney to prove it against what Disney et al can field against you?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.