Must Read: Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet: Beating the iPad mini (review)

Topic: Browser

'Guinea pig' extradition case sets dangerous precedent for pirating Britons

Summary: British citizens can now be extradited to the United States based on a 'guinea pig' case regarding the alleged infringement of copyrighted works.

Zack Whittaker

By for London Calling |

British student Richard O'Dwyer, who created the TV-Shack website, will be extradited to the United States to face copyright infringement allegations, a UK court ruled today.

The 23-year-old student set up and ran the aggregator website, which offered links to unlicensed streams of television programmes and films that were available elsewhere on the web.

O'Dwyer faces five years in a U.S. prison should he be convicted. An appeal is expected to be lodged. The UK's home secretary would make the final decision as to whether the student is extradited.

The British citizen set up a server thought to be in Sweden, and the domain name belongs to the Keeling Islands in Australian territory. There is no obvious connection to the United States.

But lawyers representing the U.S. government claimed that the victims in this case, the film and television studios, are based in the United States and that "access to the website took place in the U.S."

This case sets a dangerous precedent that others can be extradited to the United States, or other countries, even if a crime had not been committed there.

It also poses a problem for sites that include or offer links to copyrighted material. Google falls within this scope, as does Bing, or any other search engine for that matter.

According to the U.S. authorities, O'Dwyer received more than $230,000 in advertising revenue since January 2008. But when one objectively looks at this site, though its purpose was to provide access to copyrighted content, a stark comparison can be made between any other search engine.

While Google and Bing and others are seemingly neutral in their search results, and do not seek to promote infringing copyright, they nevertheless provide links to illegally downloadable content.

ZDNet's Stephen Chapman explained this last year concerning how many U.S. universities are falling foul of copyright laws, by allowing their web servers to contain copyrighted material. A few simple queries can show how easy it is to search Google for specific filetypes and names of movies, music content, software.

Google was criticised for removing torrent sites from its predictive search, but still displays a link to such sites including The Pirate Bay when the term is entered.

In theory, should a British citizen tweet a link to a a torrent of a copyrighted film or television programme, for example, under this case they could also face extradition.

O'Dwyer's lawyer Ben Cooper said that his client would effectively become a "guinea pig" for copyright infringement laws in the U.S., as the student is the first British citizen to be extradited for such an offence.

Under British law, the site is not illegal. A UK court last year dismissed a case in which TV-Links, a similar link-aggregating site, was ruled to not have committed any offence. The site was deemed to be "no different to Google or Yahoo".

Image credit: CrunchBase.

Related:

Topics: Browser, Hardware, Mobility, Software Development

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily email newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

Talkback

11 comments
Log in or register to join the discussion

  • So the U.S. is now ...

    ... having people extradited around the world for copyright violations? Apart from the insanity of the extreme measure, what is the end goal? So that the world will hate us more? Everyone with at least half a brain knows that law passing will not stop pirating - because it hasn't done so so far. The content industry is quickly moving towards passing Islamic type laws, where peoples' hands are chopped off for stealing apples. The thing is that these guys are too stupid to realize that you craft laws and build business models around peoples' natural behaviors - not pass laws to alter peoples' behaviors to unnatural ones, which are to your liking. The content industry's crusade to stop pirating, is as likely to work, as Prohibition's past attempt to stop drinking. It's is not going to work, will turn more and more people into law breakers, and will likely invite serious criminal elements into content pirating - leading to a large black market.

    Of course Big Content will not hear this. Nothing can shake old Ahab from his focus on his white whale. Things are gearing up to be one big mess. .

    [b]Update:[/b] changed [i]'extraditing people'[/i] to [i]'having people extradited'[/i]
    P. Douglas
    Reply Vote

    • The U.S. is not extraditing anyone. The U.S. is REQUESTING

      the U.K. extradite the perp. The U.K. can refuse. So, spew your venom on the U.K. At least the blog author gets that much.
      baggins_z
      Reply Vote

      • Thanks for pointing out my ...

        @baggins_z,

        ... error.
        P. Douglas
        Reply Vote

      • RE: 'Guinea pig' extradition case sets dangerous precedent for pirating Britons

        @baggins_z

        When it is the UNITED STATES asking for this dangerous precedent to be set? Yeah, the venom should be spewed at both sides.

        The United States who are so.... you know the word as to request this and the Britons who are insane to even consider this and should have laughed this out of the courts.
        Lerianis10
        Reply Vote

      • And this is supposed to make people feel better?

        @baggins_z
        Since the U.S. government are only asking, they aren't responsible?
        John L. Ries
        Reply Vote

  • Sorry. The perp here was NOT providing links to copyrighted material. He

    was aggregating links to pirated material. The courts get the difference and so does anyone else with a sense of morality. He was basically a fence, hooking you up with stolen goods.
    baggins_z
    Reply Vote

    • RE: 'Guinea pig' extradition case sets dangerous precedent for pirating Britons

      @baggins_z

      No, he isn't and Google/Bing do the same freaking thing.

      It's time to realize that this is trying to say that a third party who knows that someone is a thief is therefore a thief themselves for just knowing about it.
      Lerianis10
      Reply Vote

  • Worse than that

    We don't serve fish 'n' chips stateside, and as for tea, nah don't even go there.<br><br>We do, however, offer excellent workout equipment in most of our facilities along with cable TV, and in O'Dwyer's situation, the Aryan Brotherhood for protection.
    klumper
    Reply Vote

  • RE: 'Guinea pig' extradition case sets dangerous precedent for pirating Britons

    The U.K., a wholy owned subsidiary of the U.S, which is a wholy owned subsidiary of the RIAA, which does not honor or respect the Constitution.
    GreyGeek77
    Reply Vote

    • RE: 'Guinea pig' extradition case sets dangerous precedent for pirating Britons

      @GreyGeek77 Ha. Funny one.
      zwhittaker
      Reply Vote

  • RE: 'Guinea pig' extradition case sets dangerous precedent for pirating Britons

    this is just plain stupid...i would imagine with SOAP approved, US prisons will be filled with millions of foreigners extradite from their country.
    fadihu
    Reply Vote
CNET Join | Log In | Privacy | Cookies Close