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Home Office To Ignore Wikipedia Founder's Petition Against O'Dwyer Extradition

Posted by Unknown on from the if-jimbo-can't-nobody-can dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Home Office has confirmed home secretary Theresa May will not block TVShack founder Richard O'Dwyer's U.S. extradition, despite widespread calls for her to do so." It would appear the fate of the tvshack founder is now sealed.

14 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Time and Place by Dan+B. · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So if you do something that is not a crime in your own country, but is in another, yet you never set foot in that country, you can now be extradited? Wouldn't that fall under persecution grounds for asylum? Maybe I should check with the Equadorian Embassy...

    --
    Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
    1. Re:Time and Place by kraut · · Score: 5, Funny

      > Only so long as the country the alleged crime was committed in is the USA.

      There. Fixed that for you.

      --
      no taxation without representation!
    2. Re:Time and Place by tehcyder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If I fire a gun from the England border into Scotland and kill someone, you can bet I'll be extradited to Scotland to stand trial for murder.

      Isn't the slight difference that murder is a crime in both countries, whereas copyright infringement isn't?

      I don't think I've ever heard of anyone being extradited for a civil matter before, although no doubt someone can prove me wrong.

      I have zero personal sympathy for this guy. I read an interview recently in which he said he had spent the GBP140K he had earned from his website on "normal student things" like going to the cinema and buying pizza. Which is such a load of bollocks it's a joke..

      However, he certainly shouldn't be extradited for this. If this had been the other way round, there is no way he would have been extradited from the US to the UK even if he had committed a real, serious crime.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    3. Re:Time and Place by Pseudonym · · Score: 5, Informative

      Interestingly, there have been test cases to this effect in Commonwealth countries. There was a famous test case to this effect in Australia, where someone fired a gun on one side of a state border (much of the decision was to decide precisely where the border was) and killed a person who was on the other side.

      The murder, it was ruled, happened in the state where the victim was shot.

      --
      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
    4. Re:Time and Place by Dan541 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wait until countries like Pakistan and Iran get in on this. All western women will need to be deported for stoning.

      --
      An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
    5. Re:Time and Place by wild_quinine · · Score: 5, Informative
      Here are the important facts.

      1) O'Dwyer never went to the US whilst running the site. He visited as a small child, but I don't think he has a stronger connection to the US than this.

      2) The servers on which his service were being run were not in the US.

      Most sensible people would therefore argue that he hasn't comitted a crime on US soil.

      But it gets worse. The existing case law in the UK suggests very strongly that the UK does not consider what O'Dwyer did to be a crime. A similar site (TV links) was accused in similar circumstances and let off the hook, because it was deemed to be a 'mere conduit' (Like a safe harbour defense, rather than that deciding that *linking to things is not a crime*, for example).

      Now a UK judge has said that O'Dwyer probably was criminal in this case, because he exerted considerable control over the site, and therefore cannot use the same defense.

      But that's smoke and mirrors, frankly. The way we figure out if that is a crime or not is to try him in court, not to push him off to some corrupt nation where it definitely is a crime.

  2. The War on Youth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ah, one more small battle in the War on Youth. Let's see: cameras in the streets, ASBOs, patents that kill new competition, laws against drugs, laws against sharing, laws against resisting arrest, student loans, sugar-laden foods, credit card debt, loss of permanent jobs, the list goes on. The UK and USA lead the world in the War on Youth, which pits the old against the young. Extraditing a couple of "pirates" is just consistent with this theme.

  3. Swap Richard for Bob Diamond by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bet they don't extradite Bob Diamond for overseeing the fraud of vast amounts of money that may actually have done real damage to US citizens, never mind the UK and the rest of the world.

  4. Re:Conservative party Minister: so pro USA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In America you have the the Republicans, who are the equivalent of our Conservative party, and the Democrats, who are the equivalent of our Conservative party....

  5. Absurd by xenobyte · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If a UK citizen can be extradited to the US for breaking US law outside the US while physically never setting foot on US soil, why don't we see people getting extradited to all sorts of countries for breaking their laws while sitting in our homes in our own countries?

    Second, extradition is for serious crimes only. Why wasn't the request squashed as it's only related to a civil matter of copyright infringement, not a criminal offense?

    --
    "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
    1. Re:Absurd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wait, that brings up a thought - why can't Greece extradite Jamie Dimon & Lloyd Blankfein to Greece for their "crimes" at defrauding the country into massive debt? After all, if the US can extradite someone for something as "horrible" as posting *links* to *other sites* that contain copyrighted material, *surely* outright financial fraud ought to be extraditable. :-)

  6. Scary by Coisiche · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As Dr. Ben Goldacre has just tweeted, "it's the little things like extradition at the behest of a corporation that make you worry the whole world is corrupt".

    I think that ship may have sailed.

  7. Re:I admit, I was wrong ! by CrackedButter · · Score: 5, Informative

    Nobody in our government gives a shit. They are a bunch of cunts.

    --
    Jonathanjk.com
  8. This story is false by jwales · · Score: 5, Informative

    Theresa May has not said "NO" and indeed has not responded at all. The report quotes a press release that was issued before my petition was even launched. There has been no response to me at all so far.

    Every signature counts as they are clearly feeling the pressure.

    Jimmy Wales

    --
    Wikia