TVShack Founder Signs Deal Avoiding Extradition 147
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.
I'm not familiar with the case (Score:5, Informative)
But I personally wouldn't be travelling to "finalize a deal" in a foreign country, no you can just mail me the paper work.
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Step over this line and we can shoot you.
So if you just step over this line then we can finalise the agreement whereby I don't shoot you.
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Except el presidente gave himself the ability to shoot over the line with robots. ;)
Re:I'm not familiar with the case (Score:5, Funny)
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there's no guarantee, if this is signed by the UK only, that he won't be arrested by the US the second he arrives here.
Chances of that + being covered widely on the internet + not being covered on faux news/mainstream media at all? extremely high.
Re:I'm not familiar with the case (Score:4, Funny)
But they invited him to a party! Everyone loves a party.
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But they invited him to a party! Everyone loves a party.
Don't go! The cake is a lie!
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He isn't the one traveling:
> Different articles are reporting that his mother is the one traveling to the U.S. to finalize the deal.
She is better equipped to handle "backroom negotiations" than he is.
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She is better equipped to handle "backroom negotiations" than he is.
Just pick a different set of senators...
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitri_Skylarov [wikipedia.org]
.
So even if, ultiimately, you are let go or exonerated or allowed to leave, it may be after false imprisonment or after true imprisonment for charges different from what his plea bargain covers. Why tak
Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm fairly certain he was hosting the content himself. 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. The fact that Hollywood companies are rich, greedy assholes is irrelevant. Stealing content is stealing content and making money on someone else's work is wrong. If someone ripped off Libre Office and started selling copies for cash and violating the GPL, everyone on slashdot would be going apeshit over it. There is no difference.
Sigh. If he stole it, they wouldn't have it anymore.
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Nothing in the GPL prevents anyone from trying to sell Libre Office for cash.
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This is not a popular opinion so I am going to be downvoted for pointing this out, but the second definition of steal (at least according to dictionary.com, so apply what worth you will to that) is:
"2. to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment."
So, at least according to that definition, steal can be applied to cases of copyright infringement.
Other examples of the word steal being used without anything actually being physically taken from its owner:
"The player on first is a
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They still have the right, since the government certainly didn't stop enforcing it. That right was infringed upon, which is different from stealing.
Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
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It doesn't matter if you disagree, you cowardly moron. Words have meaning.
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He was definitely morally guilty as he's a chancer who thought he could make a bundle of cash by skirting the law. He made money with advertising by hosting links to pirated content, where he provided facilities for the people with the pirated content to provide and update the links, and took a more custodial role than a simple hands off search engine. He shouldn't be extradited, but he should be charged in the uk, and fined sufficiently that he hasn't made a profit out of this venture (which netted him h
Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
Except he hasn't done anything wrong under UK law. The police and music industry already tried that in the OiNK case and lost their case with the site owner walking free having been found not guilty of the fraud laws they tried to frame him with over it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tees/8461879.stm [bbc.co.uk]
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Except he hasn't done anything wrong under UK law. The police and music industry already tried that in the OiNK case and lost their case
One guy being found not guilty of a crime doesn't make the crime legal.
Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
Well of course it doesn't make fraud legal, it does however mean that what he was doing - running a website with links to copyright infringing material, even if making money from it - was deemed not to be the crime of fraud under the circumstances of the case.
There was another similar case where a guy was found guilty but it was largely because he made it a professional enterprise actually forming a company out of it making it a genuinely criminal case.
O'Dwyer's case is identical to the first case.
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if they were not guilty of breaking the law then by definition their activities were legal and therefor not a crime.
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You mean like how murder became legal when O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of murder?
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Except he hasn't done anything wrong under UK law. The police and music industry already tried that in the OiNK case and lost their case [..]
Counter-argument [technollama.co.uk]: Because the UK prosecutors chose fraud laws instead of copyright laws, the case was never tested in court using the laws most likely to apply:
"The problem seems to have been that prosecutors chose to charge Mr Ellis with conspiracy to defraud, instead of anything related to copyright infringement. This meant that they had to prove Mr Ellis was trying to defraud his customers, when it was clear that he was offering a service, and his clientele knew fully well what they were getting into.
Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
He was definitely morally guilty as he's a chancer who thought he could make a bundle of cash by skirting the law
Not all laws are rooted in morality. Copyright, for example, is not a moral imperative; it was created to promote a particular industry's financial interests, and it has always been about promoting industry interests.
He made money with advertising by hosting links to pirated content, where he provided facilities for the people with the pirated content to provide and update the links, and took a more custodial role than a simple hands off search engine
So what you are saying is that he created a system where anyone who was hosting video files could advertise their videos? Maybe the MPAA should have made use of this system, since it sounds like it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper than their current advertising strategy.
He shouldn't be extradited, but he should be charged in the uk, and fined sufficiently that he hasn't made a profit out of this venture
So he had a good idea that might threaten the financial interests of the movie industry; your solution is to drive him out of business?
Re:Insanity (Score:4, Informative)
Copyright, for example, is not a moral imperative; it was created to promote a particular industry's financial interests, and it has always been about promoting industry interests.
No, in the UK at least it was created to provide artists like Dickens with a way of earning money from their creations. Obviously, places like the US ignored our copyright laws, which makes the current RIAA/MAFIAA hysteria somewhat ironic, as the US economy was basically built on infringement of intellectual property laws.
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No, in the UK at least it was created to provide artists like Dickens with a way of earning money from their creations.
No it wasn't. In the UK, you started with the Licensing Act, which was designed to promote the interests of the book publishing industry.
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Obviously, places like the US ignored our copyright laws, which makes the current RIAA/MAFIAA hysteria somewhat ironic
Indeed. When the US was new, US copyright laws only applied to US works. The result was that US writers couldn't get published, since the publishers could get the British titles for free. Lack of US authors is why we started honoring British copyrights.
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It's worse than that. It's extreme hypocracy, as Hollywood moved to California to escape prosecution for violating copyright laws in New York. (Not sure why that worked, but apparently it did.) Perhaps at that point prosecution under copyright laws was handled by the states.
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No, you've lost me. He linked to content which was illegal (and nobody I believe is arguing that point) and made a pile of money from advertising (~£150k) by providing people easy access to this illegal content. Sorry, but if people want to make movies and charge money for it, you've a simple moral choice. Pay the money to watch a film you end up thinking is shit, or you don't.
Do you really think you have a moral right to access all content produced without charge? I'm not siding with the MPAA in
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Veering off the point bit... you do understand that copyright was, has been, and is all about granting all of society free access to that work... after copyright expires.
Your morals are not the same as everyone else's, but using those, the third choice is to wait for copyright to expire. This is important because you *should* also feel that YOU have a moral right to access all content produced without charge... after copyright expires.
In this case, none of that even matters. They're not going after him for
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Sticking with your drug analogy, I think in many ways you have a supplier and a dealer. The street dealers aren't who you care about most, but they're still up to no good. This guy wasn't providing random information he was provided targeted and tailored information about drugs, right up to the brink of providing them. He was deemed by a judge (not a jury) to have broken UK law.
The problem , as with drugs, if the suppliers are good enough, you still end up having to deal with the dealers as part of your
Re:Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
"I'm fairly certain he was hosting the content himself."
You can be as fairly certain as you want, but you'd still be completely and utterly wrong.
"If someone ripped off Libre Office and started selling copies for cash and violating the GPL, everyone on slashdot would be going apeshit over it."
Except the GPL allows you to do exactly that providing you also offer the source code for binaries, so no, I doubt they would be going apeshit over it, unless, like you, they knew not what the fuck they were on about. See here:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney [gnu.org]
As the rest of your post is based on your false starting assumptions it is all equally wrong.
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The words "and violating the GPL" mean something, in this case most likely not including the source or removing copyright notices or whatever else results in not being covered by the GPL.
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Yes, they mean that he doesn't understand that selling GPL'd software doesn't in fact violate the GPL.
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Yes, they mean that he doesn't understand that selling GPL'd software doesn't in fact violate the GPL.
No, in this context since he stated both selling LibreOffice and violating the GPL, it means selling the binaries without distributing the source. If he said violating the GPL by selling Libre Office, you would be correct. As it is, you are wrong, sorry. It doesn't even matter if he knew selling GPL'd software was violating the GPL or not, the way he phrased it.
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That's a very generous reading of "and violating" seeing as that doesn't even make any sense.
If he'd said something like "If someone ripped off Libre Office and started selling copies for cash in a manner that was in violation of the GPL" you'd be right, as it stands you're merely applying your own interpretation of his nonsensical statement and asserting it as the only correct interpretation.
But if you're one of those people who likes to feel they're the grand dictator of what was meant by an ambiguity the
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It's hardly a generous reading. "He ran and jumped" - most people don't assume that there's any claim that running is the same as jumping. Yes "and" can has more than one meaning in English.
So it's an ambigious statement. But you are taking one interpretation and asserting that the poster is obviously an idiot and so you will ignore their comments rather than taking a just as valid interpretation in which the claim makes sense.
Yes it very well may be that the poster thinks that selling GPLed software violat
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You'll have to excuse me if when I saw him start with falsehoods such as:
"I'm fairly certain he was hosting the content himself."
Followed by rhetoric, like:
"stealing my viewers", "I'd fucking kill them." and "Stealing content is stealing content"
You'll have to excuse me if I read it as an uninformed, bile fuelled rant, and continued to read it that way throughout seeing as it was actually like that all the way through.
Maybe you're right though, maybe he suddenly gained an ounce of intelligence, and a slight
Occam's Razor (Score:2)
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I gave an example (though with the wrong software name) of why you might want to include that. You personally mightn't see any difference but "making money off it" sometimes pushes some people over their moral line.
And it doesn't matter what the correct intepretation, the statement stands on its own, and might as well be addressed under the only interpretation that makes the statement make sense.
Re:Insanity (Score:4, Insightful)
A few problems with your post:
I think part of the problem here is you know enough to be dangerous, but not enough to make an informed decision- just like the type of people in Goverment / Hollywood who start this crap. If TVShack hosted content, then prosecute. If not, then pass a law against linking to copyrighted content and prosecute if TVShack is still in business at that time.
Re:Insanity (Score:4, Informative)
>I'm fairly certain he was hosting the content himself
He wasn't. It's in the fucking article. He didn't even submit the links himself ! He merely provided a forum where users could submit 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.
Really ? You're aware that most people don't pay to watch your TV shows on TV right ? Advertisers pay. If somebody misses an episode and downloads it, how the hell did the studio lose any money ? The show was still aired, still showed ads and the advertisers still paid the network - who ALREADY paid you for the show !
You may have half a point when it comes to movies but for TV-shows your argument falls flat on it's arse. At best you could argue that maybe some of the people watching it online would have bought your DVD release later - but guess what, only hardcore fans of shows buy DVD releases to begin with (usually to re-watch) so that's a fairly small percentage of the income anyway.
>Stealing content is stealing content and making money on someone else's work is wrong.
You cannot "steal" content, copyright law is not property law. You can violate the monopoly granted to somebody under it. There's a huge difference.
> If someone ripped off Libre Office and started selling copies for cash and violating the GPL
Those two things don't go together - you can sell Libre Office for cash, people DO that all the time, and you can do so without violating the GPL. Of course we'd be up in arms if you violated the GPL but none of us would call it "stealing" and RMS (the guy who WROTE the GPL) is on record as saying that if software didn't HAVE copyright there wouldn't be any NEED for the GPL. The GPL does NOT support copyright. It deliberately subverts it, the fact that it uses the same copyright law to subvert it is just cleverness, not an endorsement.
>There is no difference
No, there isn't - but most of us GPL supporters believe there SHOULD be. What the GPL covers, we believe would be better of without copyright, or at least short-term copyright with a requirement for source-disclosure. Changing the law against such powerful foes is difficult. The GPL is a stop-gap intended to destroy their business model - when there is enough free software, nobody will be able to sell non-free software - and the outcome is the same as if the law didn't allow it (but without legal coercion - we achieve freedom using simple market forces).
But since you can't tell the difference between felony theft and civil copyright-infringement I don't expect you to understand a word I wrote, I'm merely correcting your false facts for the sake of other readers.
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links are not content, fool.
Re:Insanity (Score:5, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org]
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 [wikipedia.org].
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.
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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.
Wouldn't just killing them be enough? Raping them first would be evil.
Actually, no, mere killing would be evil too.
By the way, unless your show were to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" (i.e., the advancement of knowledge and technique), it shouldn't be copyrightable at all to begin with. Too bad current US copyright law downplayed the original constitutional requirement for originality, so that every show that rips off other shows can be copyrighted too. Would yours be such a ripoff?
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making money on someone else's work is wrong
Every business in the world, large and small, make money off of their employees' work. How is this wrong?
If someone ripped off Libre Office and started selling copies for cash and violating the GPL, everyone on slashdot would be going apeshit over it.
You can sell as many copies of Liibre office as you want. The GPL doesn't prevent you from making money on free software.
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actually you can sell libre office you just have to offer/link to the source code. this is exactly what Redhat Oracle and Suse do yo buy a contact for use of their linux distro. you could always go with CentOS, Fedora, or OpenSuse or download the source code from them yourself and compile the whole thing from scratch but you would not get the technical support that comes with a support contract. the gpl specifically allows you to sell gpl software.
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If someone ripped off Libre Office and started selling copies for cash and violating the GPL, everyone on slashdot would be going apeshit over it./quote Not at all, most of us here would probably chuckle at the people that paid for what they legally can get for free.
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If someone ripped off Libre Office and started selling copies for cash and violating the GPL, everyone on slashdot would be going apeshit over it.
Not at all, most of us here would probably chuckle at the people that paid for what they legally can get for free.
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Seriously, flamebait? You really can't disagree with the freetards here!
ahhh! (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd have to be fool to go to the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Send a representative who isn't going to get arrested at the airport.
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For just piracy? They won't arrest you, they'll just charge you an absurd amount of money and steal your stuff.
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Yep, no arrest. They'll just be happy taking all the money you will make for the rest of your life....
Offtopic rant - "Another Random User" (Score:1)
Quit with the subtle disparaging of anonymous sources. The term for decades was "an anonymous reader". Who suddenly decided to call them "random users?"
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A modicum of context (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like Jimbo going to bat for him generated a bit of bad press.
Not being intimately familiar with the story, I wondered who the 'Jimbo' in the summary was. I should have guessed it was he of the 'please give Wikipedia money' banners, Jimmy Wales. In fairness, there have been a [slashdot.org] couple [slashdot.org] of stories on /. about it, and it is in one of TFAs; but some context in the summary from the editors or submitter would have been nice. While I'm at it, The Guardian has some coverage too [guardian.co.uk].
Here ends the obligatory grousing about the article summary.
This is a way of keeping him inactive (Score:5, Interesting)
As it was explained to me, deferred prosecution is like a pro-active parole. They don't bring you to trial, but if you do anything illegal and they catch you within the period of the deferment, they bring the old charges back with both barrels.
This is a crafty way of neutralizing an activist. You keep them out of the media circus of a trial, but then you've got a sword of Damocles to hold over their heads. If they continue their activism, they face old and new charges. If they do not continue, they become irrelevant and end up working in some back room, coding websites for dubious startups.
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Activism is generally not considered illegal in civilized countries.
Two types of activism. (Score:3)
There's using legitimate political means to agitate for change. I agree that this is usually legal in industrialized countries.
There's also pushing the limits by being a test case, which is usually neither legal or illegal. You're waiting for the courts to decide. In the meantime, you may be arrested and raped in jail.
It's a tough life, this activism stuff.
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The US is not a civilized country. Nor the UK it seems.
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"I think it would be a very good idea."
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Used it himself though when he needed it.
Creepy egomaniac if you ask me. You ever ask people to wash your feet?
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Activism is generally not considered illegal in civilized countries.
He's not an activist, he's a student who managed to make a fair whack of money (GBP 15,000 a month which he allegedly just spent on normal student things like pizza and beer) from his twist on copyright infringement.
He's just lucky that a lot of people in the UK hate the US (mainly since Iraq) and so he got a lot of public sympathy and so his supporters could bring up the whole Guantanamo Bay/disproportionately long potential prison sentence thing.
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He's just lucky that a lot of people in the UK hate the US (mainly since Iraq) and so he got a lot of public sympathy and so his supporters could bring up the whole Guantanamo Bay/disproportionately long potential prison sentence thing.
That and the fact that he doesn't seem to have actually done anything illegal under UK law.
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Why what he did is in the grey area, and many people think it shouldn't be illegal, calling the guy an 'activist' is a big stretch.
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i agree more like opportunist or entrepreneur depending on you view of his actions
Re:This is a way of keeping him inactive (Score:4, Insightful)
He should've just called their bluff. America wouldn't have got him over this. Public outcry was enough about the McKinnon case, but this guy hadn't actually done anything illegal under UK law so the noise would've only got strong regarding this.
There is already a massive amount of pressure to reform our extradition agreement with the US as is, the US has done this in the hope that avoiding another embarassing turn-around by our government in deciding not to extradite because it would be politically impossible to do so due to the uproar which would've been the final nail in the coffin for what is an already struggling extradition treaty.
I hope this means America is finally realising that if they want to retain an extradition treaty with the UK where they feel it matters, i.e. with terrorism suspects - in other words, what the treaty was generally intended for - then they need to stop abusing it for, and taking the piss with other things.
This is their way of saving face, and simultaneously hoping they don't lose a valuable tool. It's a shame he didn't call their bluff though and become the guy who forced the final nail into the coffin for the extradition treaty, though I do sympathise with him making the decision he has - I imagine it's tough to be willing to put your life on the line for the greater good when your opponent is the most powerful nation and government in the world.
A popular notion that may not be true (Score:3)
I found an interesting assessment of this US-UK extradition pact:
It could be that what you're seeing is that the US, at five times bigger, is merely making more requests becaus
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This has been discussed here (and many places) before.
The issue exists because when the UK requests extradition it's asking to extradite someone whose actually committed a crime worth extraditing over - things like murder and so forth.
In contrast, US requests are sometimes for the most pathetically petty of things, such as in this case.
As such it's perfectly sensible that the US extradites in the majority of cases because the seriousness warrants it, but it doesn't make so much sense that the UK extradites
No subjective picking of which laws to enforce (Score:2)
You're applying your own moral judgment to which laws are important. That's not how the law works.
Among other things, extraditing him here would allow the court battle to rage and a decision be reached on what behavior is or is
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You're reading my suggestion out of context, you're absolutely right that the example I gave was my own moral judgement, but it was also just an example of a possible option should a new treaty be agreed to replace this one.
However, if your implication is that the original treaty was meant to be for all and any laws then you are wrong. The original treaty was sold by citizens on both sides of the pond as being entirely about extradition of terror suspects, many of us complained at the time that the proposed
The internet erased borders (Score:2)
This part struck me as particularly interesting:
I can't agree here. The internet and global trade mean that we have to find ways to collaborate on standards between countries.
And someone just walked into my office, so I have to address the rest of this later (sigh
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>> "when the UK requests extradition it's asking to extradite someone whose actually committed a crime worth extraditing over - things like murder and so forth" //
>"You're applying your own moral judgment to which laws are important. That's not how the law works."
Copyright infringement is a tort, a civil wrong. It's not even a crime.
The UK shouldn't extradite Her Majesties subjects to the USA to decide if he committed an act which the USA finds criminal when the act happened on UK soil and is known
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Public outcry was enough about the McKinnon case, but this guy hadn't actually done anything illegal under UK law so the noise would've only got strong regarding this.
McKinnon had only broken the law in a minor way in the UK. It was the talk of the US imprisoning him for 40 or 60 years that outraged the UK public, when his crime here would have got him a fine and a suspended sentence.
Time to bust out my (Score:2)
DO NOT TRUST! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously DO NOT TRUST THIS!
Why can't this simply be carried out at the US embassy in London?
Why do they want him to be physically present in the USA?
Also, this is the most disgusting use of the extradition "agreement" so far, much more so than the McKinnon case. The reason being is that what he did isn't even a crime in the UK. Well, perhas/probably not. The CPS decided not to bring a case because noone is sure. Apparently a "test case" is needed.
So apparently here not only do yu have to know the local law in more detail than even the government, you also have to know that even if you're not comitting a crime here you also have to know all the USA laws too just in case the government decides to hang you out to dry and try to extradite you for a crime that doesn't even exist!
At what point does ignorance of laws of a country you've never visited and never dones business in become a valid excuse?
At least this madness is possibly over.
But I certainly would not trust the USA authorities if I was him. If he can pay, then he can mail a cheque to the embassy. Anything else is way beyond the boundaries of trust.
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There's a standard clause in most extradition treaties that you cannot be extradited unless your action is ALSO illegal in your home country.
In this case - since the UK doesn't know, I suppose they filed him under "Gray area" and when the US said "we do know" nobody thought to give the accused the benefit of the doubt (isn't that what's SUPPOSED to happen with legal gray areas ?)
Not between US and UK (Score:2, Informative)
Blair sold us to Murdoch, he sold us to Bush, he connived at the deaths of many Iraqis.We really cannot point the finger at the US political system; we elected him all by ourselves.
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Blair sold us to Murdoch, he sold us to Bush, he connived at the deaths of many Iraqis.We really cannot point the finger at the US political system; we elected him all by ourselves.
Who's we?
About 25% of Britons voted for the Labour party, and a majority of those in England who voted voted for the Tories. So you can really blame Blair on a small minority of Scots.
Re:DO NOT TRUST! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Of course the 'no questions asked' extradition treaty between the UK and USA is a one-way deal. You don't think the US government would agree to anything so insane, do you?
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Of course the 'no questions asked' extradition treaty between the UK and USA is a one-way deal.
Another poster [slashdot.org] mentioned this [thenational.ae], perhaps it'll cause you to reevaluate your understanding of the law, and your opinion stated as fact.
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You'd fail miserably unless you targeted Kennesaw, GA. Most US citizens don't actually use the 2nd amendment. They just blather about it endlessly.
Kennesaw, GA, however, has a mandatory gun ownership law. It's mostly unenforced and has enough loopholes to let everyone out of it, but by the basics of that law, every citizen of that city has to own a gun. They did it as an experiment in reducing crime by making criminals fear for their own safety. It seems to have worked. Their crime rate remains far below th
Re: (Score:3)
As my friend said, we should attempt extraditing a large, random sample of US population on possession of handgun charges (Illegal under UK law.)
Ooh, I like this. A nice little earner. We'll send each adult US citizen a letter asking for a thousand quid and no more questions asked. 250 million (guess) times a thousand quid should sort out our financial worries for a while.
Re: (Score:2)
Taxpayer here... (Score:5, Interesting)
...can someone please remind me how much of my money is being wasted on this shit?
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on whether you're from the US or UK. They're both wasting money, but the US is probably wasting more money.
Also, the MPAA is wasting money on this as well, which will have a negative impact on movie-theater and DVD/Bluray prices in the US.
Who the hell is Jimbo? (answer within) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
You're not from around here, are you, son. Glad to oblige. Here is a citation for going 31 mph in a 30 mph zone. Let's go have a talk with the judge.
Woosh! (Score:2)
I wonder what the minimum body size is with standard text. The title really says it all.
Layover (Score:2)
it's a trap (Score:2)
-- a different prosecuting branch will arrest and try on the same charges
-- the same branch with which he thinks he's made an agreement will arrest him on a different set of charges with a slight variation, using the old "we gave you immunity for X, but not for Y" trick.
I agree, there's no reason he s
Linking is illegal? (Score:2)
.
Doesn't the fact that Google searches the web and provides links to copyright infringing material that is hosted on Youtube show that Google is performing contributory copyright infringement by providing links to material which infringes copyright? Should Google be facing the same charges?