From the article it seems that this guy ran a search engine which might or might nor be illegal in the United States. However, he is British, most of the visitors are British and the servers are not in the United States, yet the US wants him extradited and tried in an American court.
This of course begs the question: If an American is running a site hosted in America with mostly American visitors how would the US react if a foreign government wanted to extradite him and possibly put him in jail for many years?
> From the article it seems that this guy ran a search engine which might or might nor be illegal in the United States. However, he is British, most of the visitors are British and the servers are not in the United States, yet the US wants him extradited and tried in an American court.
The site was not a search engine.
It may have had a search function, but the links were added manually by contributors (who O'Dwyer selected), and O'Dwyer exerted a great deal of control over the content that was included on the site.
It was almost certainly illegal in the US (authorising copyright infringement). A UK judge has also ruled the allegations, if true, would also constitute an offence under UK law (O'Dwyer's editorial control over the site prevented him from using a "mere conduit" defence) and thus approved the extradition.
O'Dwyer is bang to rights as far as the law currently stands. At this point it's more a case of challenging the absurdity of the law (simply linking to infringing material being an offence) and the absurdity of extraditing a young man to be tried in a foreign court under a foreign jurisdiction for such an offence.
Whether or not what he did was a criminal or civil crime, he's not a US citizen, he didn't commit the crime within US boundaries (unless I've missed a memo), so he should not stand trial in a country that has nothing to do with the situation.
The very idea that you can effectively be transported to a country that you have nothing to do with and committed no crime in just purely because the big boys with the big wallets say so is sickening.
You missed the memo, but it still sucks. Juristiction depends on which country the "harm" occurred. For example, if I fire a rocket at another country, then I've certainly committed a crime within its boundaries, despite never having set foot there.
His website was accessible in the US by design (one could forbid US visitors in the ToS, and by geoip), and the "harm" from his supposed crime occurred, for those US users, in the US, not inside his server.
What sucks about this case is that it seems incredibly unlikely that linking constitutes a felony copyright infringement, because no copyrighted material is ever directly encountered. It seems much more likely that only a misdemeanor infringement occurred (if any), for which the UK does not extradite to the US.
This is shocking and as a UK citizen angers me greatly, however I have to say this guy doesn't seem too smart.
Firstly, building a website (presumably with the domain registered under his name) like this in the current legal climate is basically asking for trouble. Especially hosting it in Sweden (where the TBP was).
Secondly , in the interview he asked the Police if he should get a solicitor, and decided not to get one because he might have to wait a couple of hours? WTF?
If you are arrested by the police and possibly being charged with an imprison-able offence (or really any offence) of course you should get a solicitor , why would this even be a question?
Because he was a scared kid who wanted this to go away, and the police told him it would if he just answer their questions and not wait the "2 hours" for the lawyer.
He made a mistake. He should not be extradited and imprisoned in a foreign country for a decade for posting links on the internet.
In a perfect world, people starting communities like this would be smarter about it and use better software that conceals their identity and provides no central server to shut down. But unfortunately the Internet gained prime-time popularity with barely-adequate centralized object naming and transport technology (dns/http). So there are masses of people who understand its promise, but don't scrutinize the popular implementation nor take technical precautions to shield themselves - they instead blunder in while concocting legal theories as to why they're safe (as they fail to realize that laws are less like code and more like advertising).
This particular kid may have been dumb (and immature given his flaunting), but to focus on his failings is ignore the greater phenomenon that he's merely fodder to. I certainly don't think he deserves to be put into the meat grinder, but if he had been a bit smarter and avoided it, we'd merely be talking about a different stupid kid.
The really unfortunate thing is that these halfway-there worse-is-better technologies like napster/torrent/bitcoin only serve to immunize the existing power structures by alerting them to the phenomenon of revolutionary communication technologies and giving the state incremental practice at blocking protocols.
I'm completely guessing here, but isn't there some sort of law or regulation that the police are required to give you truthful information regarding your right to legal representation?
As such, and while this wouldn't take away from the stupidity of not getting a solicitor involved, maybe he asked the question not because he wanted an answer, but because he thought there was a chance the policeman might say "no, you don't need one of those" and create a problem for the prosecution?
This is particularly stupid because apparently the site only had links to copyright infringement.
This is just hollywood abusing their position to fight the advancement of tech and society simply because it disagrees with their business.
I do not believe there is anything inherently unethical about copyright infringement in pirating movies or tv shows. It's only technically illegal (and unethical in the sense that it's against the law) because copyright protections were put in artificially as a regulation to control for a certain outcome, like tariffs, taxes, or a dam. Hollywood simply won't admit the dam isn't working and trying to antagonize and criminalize those who go against the flow directed by regulation.
Calling pirating movies or tv shows unethical is only justifiable if pirating is akin to stealing in the physical sense, but it's not, and so it's not unethical. If someone were to project a copyrighted movie on to a giant wall, it's like saying all unauthorized onlookers are doing something unethical, when really it doesn't matter how many illegal onlookers there are as it won't affect the creator. If the content creator can't feed himself because everyone is "stealing" his work then he should a) find a new line of work or b) find a way to properly monetize it. Anything of value can be converted to money.
That being said I do think the content creators provide something valuable, and this should be protected. The issue here is that it's only going to get more expensive to enforce the current business models of content creators. The expense not only comes in the form of cost to gov't and the businesses themselves, but also in the form of DRM and other side effects of enforcement that really degrades the whole product chain. In the worst case scenario we never find a way to adequately support a film and tv industry. It's cultural benefits will be missed but we'll just shift our attention to something else. Life goes on. It's existence was probably arbitrary in the first place. Copyright laws didn't enable the TV & film industry. Enforceability of those laws did that, and the enforceability is eroding way whether they like it or not.
Summary: It's unethical to break the law (assuming the law was instated ethically), which, in theory, is a set of rules everyone agrees to play by. However pirating movies and tv shows is not inherently unethical as it is just an arbitrary law we put in place to control for an outcome. Linking to copyright infringement should be neither of these.
> It's unethical to break the law (assuming the law was instated ethically), which, in theory, is a set of rules everyone agrees to play by. However pirating movies and tv shows is not inherently unethical as it is just an arbitrary law we put in place to control for an outcome.
I can't following your reasoning on this. Is your point that copyright laws have been instated unethically?
Why does it matter that they are arbitrary if people generally agree that copyright is good?
> If the content creator can't feed himself because everyone is "stealing" his work then he should a) find a new line of work or b) find a way to properly monetize it
Seriously? So, if people choose to consume someone's work, yet avoid paying for it, then it's the content creators fault?
>This is particularly stupid because apparently the site only had links to copyright infringement
I'm not convinced that there's a difference, legally or ethically, though it would be interesting to see it play out in a court of law.
>I do not believe there is anything inherently unethical about copyright infringement in pirating movies or tv shows
Y'see, the problem is that following up a defence of "this isn't quite illegal" with a defence of "this shouldn't be illegal" tends to weaken both cases.
I'd listen to the opinions of internet-people on the subject of copyright a lot more often if they didn't always seem to boil down to "Anything that I personally think I should be allowed to get away with ought to be legal"
A Home Office spokesman said: "We have effective, fair and balanced extradition arrangements with the US [...] People who have committed serious offences such as murder, rape, other sex crimes and fraud [...]
Good to know. Running a search engine can be compared to murder, rape, etc...
Of course that's fine until the other country starts repackaging all crimes as "serious", which is arguably what's happening here - copyright after all, is usually civil and not criminal until huge scale is reached (and actually involves handling copyrighted material).
This could set a major precedent, and MUST be stopped. People of UK, please do everything you can to stop this. Call your MP's, send them mails, make noise, something!
"People who have committed serious offences such as murder, rape, other sex crimes and fraud, have been successfully extradited to the UK and convicted."
That is just crazy, comparing the allegations of copyright infringement, with murder and rape? Are we in in that society already?
So what's next? UK asking to extradite Sergey and Larry for the same allegations? Crazy.
The idea that you can be extradited to a country you don't live in for something that isn't even a crime which was committed somewhere else is, as they say, completely fucked.
Going after Google wouldn't work because they actually have a legal department. These baseless charges are always brought against legally weak young people and the intent is fear mongering.
This kind of stuff has been going on for too long.
Your link doesn't seem to provide whole episodes, so might well fall under fair use.
Also, the law understands intent. Google will take down links when requested. This guy purposefully ignored take-down requests, and was clearly purposefully organising his website to pirate copyrighted material.
Now, if he should be taken to the US is another question, but in my opinion you shouldn't lower the debate by claiming what he did is particularly similar to Google's video search.
Starting a petition counts as help these days? Lets start a million petitions declaring hunger and poverty to be a bad thing, that'll have the problems cracked in no time.
This is outrageous and another example revealing the bad state of democracy in these two countries. The government does the exact opposite of what vast majority of citizens want. I would never vote again political parties that are in government and don't do anything to stop this.
I am not a lawyer nor do I understand the legal aspects, but if this fella's site only offers links to songs, then it strikes me that search companies like Google, Bing etc may be on same murky legal grounds. Do a search for the mp3 from your favourite artist, and some warez sites will pop up offering links to your artists' songs.
Is this just a case of a bully picking on someone who has little hope of defending himself?
And in regards to the argument that the intent of the site was to encourage copyright infringement, as a thought experiment, what is the legality of a site which provides links to copyright material claiming the intent to be helping copyright holders find infringing material?
The difference is that Bing and Google follow the DMCA, so although they may commit the same "crime" under international law they are effectively pardoned by the US.
It seems to me that the people behind this extradition attempt see that the value is not in the actual punishment for this unfortunate guy. It's in the publicity it gets and the ability to change people's actions worldwide in terms of piracy. Either way, its ethically wrong and deserves to fail. I have signed the petition.
Now that they are extraditing British citizens to US for crimes committed on British soil, I hope they would finally stop shadow boxing and declare UK as copyright colony of US and let British citizens vote in upcoming US elections.
I think that those agitating for meaningful copyright reform and against silly copyright infringement cases aren't doing themselves a favour when they start agitating in favour of the actual, honest-to-god, in-it-for-the-money large-scale pirates who make hundreds of thousands of pounds off infringing on other peoples' copyright. This guy is scum.
This person is an example of an entrepreneur in UK that is being extradited for a non-serious crime. I'm not sure how the advocates are portrayed badly when the case appears unjust, no matter how many links the person allowed on their website. What about extraditing a person who did not do it for the money, would that still be acceptable for you?
I have to say I have noticed a trend with these type of articles. They skyrocket to the top at first, but when valid arguments come up, they are flagged into oblivion. I assume this is done by the same people that upvoted it in the first place.
Would Jimmy Wales have taken up this cause if Richard O'Dwyer wasn't a put-together specimen?
You know if he was a socially-awkward, not-sure-of-himself, social-grace-lacking and all around clumsy-looking hacker.
If the answer to this was manifestly in the affirmative, the question wouldn't be begging to be asked.
This is a no-lose proposition for Jimmy. Whether the guy is actually extradited or worse convicted, this low hanging PR fruit is already in Jimmy's satchel.
This is not to cast a doubt on JW's intentions.
However, holding all details of the alleged crime constant, I bet he wouldn't touch this case with a 10 foot pole if the guy didn't fit the archetype that wouldn't soil JW's image.
These accusations in the form of hypothesis are disgusting. Do you have any evidence to believe Wales decided to help based on the guy's "social grace"?
[+] [-] mixmax|13 years ago|reply
This of course begs the question: If an American is running a site hosted in America with mostly American visitors how would the US react if a foreign government wanted to extradite him and possibly put him in jail for many years?
Probably not well.
[+] [-] aes256|13 years ago|reply
The site was not a search engine.
It may have had a search function, but the links were added manually by contributors (who O'Dwyer selected), and O'Dwyer exerted a great deal of control over the content that was included on the site.
It was almost certainly illegal in the US (authorising copyright infringement). A UK judge has also ruled the allegations, if true, would also constitute an offence under UK law (O'Dwyer's editorial control over the site prevented him from using a "mere conduit" defence) and thus approved the extradition.
O'Dwyer is bang to rights as far as the law currently stands. At this point it's more a case of challenging the absurdity of the law (simply linking to infringing material being an offence) and the absurdity of extraditing a young man to be tried in a foreign court under a foreign jurisdiction for such an offence.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nicholassmith|13 years ago|reply
The very idea that you can effectively be transported to a country that you have nothing to do with and committed no crime in just purely because the big boys with the big wallets say so is sickening.
[+] [-] jahewson|13 years ago|reply
His website was accessible in the US by design (one could forbid US visitors in the ToS, and by geoip), and the "harm" from his supposed crime occurred, for those US users, in the US, not inside his server.
What sucks about this case is that it seems incredibly unlikely that linking constitutes a felony copyright infringement, because no copyrighted material is ever directly encountered. It seems much more likely that only a misdemeanor infringement occurred (if any), for which the UK does not extradite to the US.
[+] [-] jiggy2011|13 years ago|reply
Does anybody have any legal specifics here? I wonder if this is something that could happen to just random bittorrent users?
[+] [-] jiggy2011|13 years ago|reply
Firstly, building a website (presumably with the domain registered under his name) like this in the current legal climate is basically asking for trouble. Especially hosting it in Sweden (where the TBP was).
Secondly , in the interview he asked the Police if he should get a solicitor, and decided not to get one because he might have to wait a couple of hours? WTF?
If you are arrested by the police and possibly being charged with an imprison-able offence (or really any offence) of course you should get a solicitor , why would this even be a question?
[+] [-] Evernoob|13 years ago|reply
He made a mistake. He should not be extradited and imprisoned in a foreign country for a decade for posting links on the internet.
[+] [-] mindslight|13 years ago|reply
This particular kid may have been dumb (and immature given his flaunting), but to focus on his failings is ignore the greater phenomenon that he's merely fodder to. I certainly don't think he deserves to be put into the meat grinder, but if he had been a bit smarter and avoided it, we'd merely be talking about a different stupid kid.
The really unfortunate thing is that these halfway-there worse-is-better technologies like napster/torrent/bitcoin only serve to immunize the existing power structures by alerting them to the phenomenon of revolutionary communication technologies and giving the state incremental practice at blocking protocols.
[+] [-] sandollars|13 years ago|reply
His website has been in existence since 2007.
[+] [-] corin_|13 years ago|reply
As such, and while this wouldn't take away from the stupidity of not getting a solicitor involved, maybe he asked the question not because he wanted an answer, but because he thought there was a chance the policeman might say "no, you don't need one of those" and create a problem for the prosecution?
[+] [-] chrischen|13 years ago|reply
This is just hollywood abusing their position to fight the advancement of tech and society simply because it disagrees with their business.
I do not believe there is anything inherently unethical about copyright infringement in pirating movies or tv shows. It's only technically illegal (and unethical in the sense that it's against the law) because copyright protections were put in artificially as a regulation to control for a certain outcome, like tariffs, taxes, or a dam. Hollywood simply won't admit the dam isn't working and trying to antagonize and criminalize those who go against the flow directed by regulation.
Calling pirating movies or tv shows unethical is only justifiable if pirating is akin to stealing in the physical sense, but it's not, and so it's not unethical. If someone were to project a copyrighted movie on to a giant wall, it's like saying all unauthorized onlookers are doing something unethical, when really it doesn't matter how many illegal onlookers there are as it won't affect the creator. If the content creator can't feed himself because everyone is "stealing" his work then he should a) find a new line of work or b) find a way to properly monetize it. Anything of value can be converted to money.
That being said I do think the content creators provide something valuable, and this should be protected. The issue here is that it's only going to get more expensive to enforce the current business models of content creators. The expense not only comes in the form of cost to gov't and the businesses themselves, but also in the form of DRM and other side effects of enforcement that really degrades the whole product chain. In the worst case scenario we never find a way to adequately support a film and tv industry. It's cultural benefits will be missed but we'll just shift our attention to something else. Life goes on. It's existence was probably arbitrary in the first place. Copyright laws didn't enable the TV & film industry. Enforceability of those laws did that, and the enforceability is eroding way whether they like it or not.
Summary: It's unethical to break the law (assuming the law was instated ethically), which, in theory, is a set of rules everyone agrees to play by. However pirating movies and tv shows is not inherently unethical as it is just an arbitrary law we put in place to control for an outcome. Linking to copyright infringement should be neither of these.
[+] [-] henrikeh|13 years ago|reply
I can't following your reasoning on this. Is your point that copyright laws have been instated unethically?
Why does it matter that they are arbitrary if people generally agree that copyright is good?
> If the content creator can't feed himself because everyone is "stealing" his work then he should a) find a new line of work or b) find a way to properly monetize it
Seriously? So, if people choose to consume someone's work, yet avoid paying for it, then it's the content creators fault?
[+] [-] planetguy|13 years ago|reply
I'm not convinced that there's a difference, legally or ethically, though it would be interesting to see it play out in a court of law.
>I do not believe there is anything inherently unethical about copyright infringement in pirating movies or tv shows
Y'see, the problem is that following up a defence of "this isn't quite illegal" with a defence of "this shouldn't be illegal" tends to weaken both cases.
I'd listen to the opinions of internet-people on the subject of copyright a lot more often if they didn't always seem to boil down to "Anything that I personally think I should be allowed to get away with ought to be legal"
[+] [-] rytis|13 years ago|reply
Good to know. Running a search engine can be compared to murder, rape, etc...
[+] [-] cjrp|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knotty66|13 years ago|reply
I'm sorry, what? These extradition arrangements are completely lopsided and need to be reformed.
[+] [-] jahewson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] molmalo|13 years ago|reply
"People who have committed serious offences such as murder, rape, other sex crimes and fraud, have been successfully extradited to the UK and convicted." That is just crazy, comparing the allegations of copyright infringement, with murder and rape? Are we in in that society already?
So what's next? UK asking to extradite Sergey and Larry for the same allegations? Crazy.
[+] [-] slavak|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ColinWright|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] junto|13 years ago|reply
https://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbm=vid&q=the+sopranos
Since I am secondary linking to copyrighted content via Google, does that make the owners of this website liable to prosecution?
[+] [-] readme|13 years ago|reply
This kind of stuff has been going on for too long.
[+] [-] CJefferson|13 years ago|reply
Also, the law understands intent. Google will take down links when requested. This guy purposefully ignored take-down requests, and was clearly purposefully organising his website to pirate copyrighted material.
Now, if he should be taken to the US is another question, but in my opinion you shouldn't lower the debate by claiming what he did is particularly similar to Google's video search.
[+] [-] epo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RivieraKid|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yitchelle|13 years ago|reply
Is this just a case of a bully picking on someone who has little hope of defending himself?
[+] [-] minikomi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jahewson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rplnt|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] damian2000|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] option_greek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] planetguy|13 years ago|reply
Also, how is this guy a "hacker"?
[+] [-] Joakal|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] J3L2404|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spitx|13 years ago|reply
Would Jimmy Wales have taken up this cause if Richard O'Dwyer wasn't a put-together specimen? You know if he was a socially-awkward, not-sure-of-himself, social-grace-lacking and all around clumsy-looking hacker. If the answer to this was manifestly in the affirmative, the question wouldn't be begging to be asked.
This is a no-lose proposition for Jimmy. Whether the guy is actually extradited or worse convicted, this low hanging PR fruit is already in Jimmy's satchel.
This is not to cast a doubt on JW's intentions.
However, holding all details of the alleged crime constant, I bet he wouldn't touch this case with a 10 foot pole if the guy didn't fit the archetype that wouldn't soil JW's image.
[+] [-] icebraining|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp332|13 years ago|reply