TVShack Founder Signs Deal Avoiding Extradition

another random user writes with news that the founder of TVShack probably won't be thrown into a U.S. prison for life. From the article: "Richard O'Dwyer, from Sheffield, is accused of breaking copyright laws. The US authorities claimed the 24-year-old's TVShack website hosted links to pirated films and TV programs. The High Court was told Mr O'Dwyer had signed a 'deferred prosecution' agreement which would require him paying a small sum of compensation. Mr O'Dwyer will travel to the US voluntarily in the next few weeks for the deal to be formally ratified, it is understood." Looks like Jimbo going to bat for him generated a bit of bad press. As usual, the MPAA is not enthused. Different articles are reporting that his mother is the one traveling to the U.S. to finalize the deal.

Comments

I'm not familiar with the case

[koan]

But I personally wouldn't be travelling to "finalize a deal" in a foreign country, no you can just mail me the paper work.

Re:Insanity

[betterunixthanunix]

I'm fairly certain he was hosting the content himself.

You are fairly incorrect then; he hosted links.

If I spent all my money to make an expensive show and then someone ripped it off and started streaming it for free and stealing my viewers and making money off my work that they paid nothing for, I'd fucking kill them

Then you are a psychopath.

The fact that Hollywood companies are rich, greedy assholes is irrelevant

Except when they use their wealth to buy off politicians and create a situation where the US government tries to use an extradition treaty over a website with links to other websites that supposedly infringed on copyrights (whether or not a particular use of a copyrighted work is actually copyright infringement needs to be decided in court; only judges can decide if the fair use doctrine applies, even if the entire work was copied, and even if it seems "obvious" that it was no fair use).

Stealing content

Nothing was stolen. Hollywood had as much access to and benefit from their movies and TV shows before TVShack as they did afterwards.

making money on someone else's work is wrong

Oh, is it now? Let's get the assholes who are doing it then:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

If someone ripped off Libre Office and started selling copies for cash

That person would be entirely within their rights, as the GPL allows the sale or commercial use of covered works. In fact, there is a multi-billion dollar software company that routinely sells LibreOffice:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat,_Inc.

There is no difference.

Sure there is: the GPL allows people to sell copies covered works without having to ask permission, so nobody will face extradition over doing so. Hollywood thinks that every time you copy a movie, you are committing copyright infringement, regardless of whether or not that has been settled in court, and has been trying to hijack the government to keep their business in the black (while simultaneously claiming they are losing money). That is the difference. This is not about the legality of hosting links to possibly illegal videos, it is about the hijacking of a major world power's government.