Student who ran file sharing site TVShack could face extradition to US

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

The mother of a British student who is facing extradition to the United States over alleged copyright offences online has spoken of her anguish that he could face a possible jail sentence.

In a case carrying echoes of that of Gary McKinnon, the computer hacker who has spent years fighting US extradition, 23-year-old undergraduate Richard O'Dwyer was arrested late last month at the request of the US immigration and customs enforcement department.

Until last year, when police and US officials first visited him at his student accommodation in Sheffield, O'Dwyer ran a website called TVShack which provided links to other sites where users could download pirated versions of films and television shows. He appeared before magistrates in the capital this week for a preliminary hearing into the planned extradition, which he is fighting.

The case seemed "beyond belief", said O'Dwyer's mother, Julia, from Chesterfield. "The first he knew about it was this visit from the police and the American officials in November," she said. "He shut the website down the very next day and I don't think he expected it to go this far. But then in May he even had to spend a night in Wandsworth prison as the court was too slow for us to sort out his passport and bail.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/jun/17/student-file-sharing-tvshack-extradition

[Hassin Bin Sober]

1. That's a fair cop.

:eyes: :sarcasm:

[truebrit71]

2. Well now that all of the really serious crime has been dealt with, it was inevitable that minor..

..shit like this would become the focus of attention...:eyes::sarcasm:

[Systematic Chaos]

3. Hey, I have an idea!

Let's keep shoveling all kinds of money into the protection of corporations' precious "intellectual property" rights, and let all the really important stuff slide!

Who needs reliable infrastructure or safe food, anyway, as long as people are rotting in jail for torrenting TV shows and boring-ass movies?

:think::woohoo::think::woohoo::think:

[gratuitous]

4. Here in the United States, we know what's important to prosecute

23-year-olds creating a website with links? DOJ coming down on you like a tonne of motherfucking bricks.

Allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other high crimes and misdemeanors? We can't even be bothered to investigate.

[Downwinder]

5. If all of their Copyrighted stuff is so valuable, put it on the tax rolls.

[Springer9]

6. Could you explain that?

Royalties received for copyrighted work would already be taxed as income. What are you proposing?

[Downwinder]

8. Righthaven says that one news story is worth $75,000. If it is

worth that amount, it should be on the personal property tax rolls the same as a plumber's tools.

[Confusious]

10. No effin shit!

If they want to say its worth that much, the next year they should be taxed as if they were worth that much.

not that it will ever happen, but f'in brilliant idea!

oh, and Sieg Heil Y'all. welcome to the corporate states of America. fuck.

[Angleae]

14. How are a plumber's tools taxable?

[Downwinder]

17. Depending on the state, they are appraised and he pays personal

property tax tax on the value. About like an inventory tax.

[joshcryer]

18. All business assessable property is taxable. A plumber would use their assessed insured value...

...and include it in the overall taxes for the given business.

[joshcryer]

20. That's a pretty awesome point, I will have to use that in the future.

So if Righthaven produces 1000 news stories a year (just for easy math) and each story is viewed by 1000 people, they have the assessed taxable value of $75,000,000,000, or would have to pay taxes (after all the loopholes and whatnot) of $750,000,000 every year. (Assuming a generous 1% property tax.)

[AsahinaKimi]

7. We can go to grab a 23 year old in the UK

but Bush/Cheney are off the table. We sure have great priorities. :sarcasm:

[trud]

9. If you think stealing copyrighted stuff isn't theft

I guess you give your own work away for nothing. Music theft has decimated the jobs of people in the music industry, one of whom is my niece.

[Confusious]

11. More like crap and the economy

have devastated the music industry. I haven't bought anything new in years, and I don't download music cause it's crap. Oh, and the f'in greedy corporations who always complained about file sharing saying it was devasting them, and then posted record profits.

Your statement also flies in the face of other artists, who put free stuff out and see their sales rise.

[trud]

12. nice excuse for people stealing, try again. n/t

[Lucinda]

13. What was he stealing?

He was a link site.

[joshcryer]

16. Yep, and he wasn't making money off of it, he just linked *others* uploads.

There are dozens of sites like this, all link sites. The actual infringers are the direct download sites who host the infringing works with impunity.

[joshcryer]

19. Copyrighted stuff is actually theft, because it requires violence to uphold copyright.

[Spider Jerusalem]

21. Hosting links to files and not the files themselves has been ruled to be not illegal under UK law.

The site was hosted in the UK by a UK resident. By any reasonable standard, quite honestly, the US government should be told to fuck off.

[joshcryer]

15. Corportations remain *free to infringe*. Again corporations having more rights than individuals.

The links TVShack provided were to direct download sites like RapidShare, Megaupload, etc. These corporations have pure immunity for hosting copyrighted content because they pretend to not know, yet their whole revenue stream is based upon copyright infringed works. It's disgusting.

[alp227]

22. now that networks have legal streaming it shouldn't be so hard to do that

but i guess that to evade geographical restrictions people will seek out sites like this one