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Copyright wars heat up: US wins extradition of college kid from England

arstechnica.com

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Re: Copyright wars heat up: US wins extradition of college kid from England

#61

Post by voidr »

rickmb wrote: post #19

The current political and legal sell-out to the US makes me, and I believe many fellow-Europeans, increasingly angry in a way that is fundamentally different from any anti-American feelings for instance during the Bush-years. Disagreeing with US foreign policy is one thing, but being on the receiving end of US meddling through political and legal corruption in a way that undermines our civil rights cuts way deeper.

You mess with a US copyright maffia, your judge gets bribed you go to jail in the US where you have no means of defending yourself. Makes me think the US is no different from all those neo-communist governments in Europe.

Re: Copyright wars heat up: US wins extradition of college kid from England

#62

Post by mike-cardwell »

hastur wrote: post #54
mike-cardwell wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you're ignorant of the facts. http://london.usembassy.gov/gb140.html "The United States has not denied a single extradition request from the UK under the treaty. While the U.S. does send more extradition requests to the UK than it receives, this difference is largely due to the differences in the size of the respective populations. The panel report notes that the U.S. has a population about five times the siz…

The numbers are no excuse in case of a person that did not break UK law. How about your country signs an extradition treaty with Saudi Arabia and you get extradited and have your head chopped off for having a beer, since alcohol is illegal in SA? (Yes, an absurd stretch, but you get the point.)

Your statement is not contrary to anything I said, or think, so I feel no need to argue in response.

Re: Copyright wars heat up: US wins extradition of college kid from England

#63

Post by Tibbes »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #43
hastur wrote: post #8

LOL, the UK is a US colony now. I can hear History rolling on the floor with laughter.

Only if you're ignorant of the facts. http://london.usembassy.gov/gb140.html "The United States has not denied a single extradition request from the UK under the treaty. While the U.S. does send more extradition requests to the UK than it receives, this difference is largely due to the differences in the size of the respective populations. The panel report notes that the U.S. has a population about five times the siz…

"this difference is largely due to the differences in the size of the respective populations. The panel report notes that the U.S. has a population about five times the size of the UK, but there have been fewer than twice the number of people extradited to the U.S. than to the UK."

What? That seems extremely nonsensical to me.

Wouldn't one reasonably expect the number of extradition requests to a country to be proportional to the number of people in that country, not the number of people in the country doing the extraditing?

(edit: italics)

Re: Copyright wars heat up: US wins extradition of college kid from England

#64

Post by mike-cardwell »

rwmj wrote: post #49

This could be very serious for UK programmers. Are you sure that no code you've written infringes on US patents? Or is used on a website that encourages the wrong type of copyright infringement?

"Are you sure that no code you've written infringes on US patents? Or is used on a website that encourages the wrong type of copyright infringement?"

You seem to be implying that if a UK programmer writes some code, and then somebody goes and uses that code for copyright or patent infringement, they are at risk of being extradited to the US... Nothing like that has ever happened and it bares no resemblance to the article under discussion.

Re: Copyright wars heat up: US wins extradition of college kid from England

#65

Post by why-el »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #55
k-mcgrady wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure he made a lot of money doing it but he just posted links. How is this different from Google (or any other search engine)?

Are you actually asking or is it rhetorical? Search engines contain automatic references to, roughly speaking, the entire internet (minus explicitly blocked content). The search engine is used to obtain a vast amount of knowledge by a vast number of people. It will link copyright infringing material at a low percentage rate. TVShack on the other hand is used exclusively to link to copyright infringing material. It's…

So if he added a couple of links to free movies would that have saved him? I dont see your argument here.

Re: Copyright wars heat up: US wins extradition of college kid from England

#66

Post by grecy »

andylei wrote: post #56
dav-id wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I recall correctly he didnt break any laws in the UK.

that's not what the judge thought. from the article in the telegraph: > The defence believed its strongest argument against extradition was that Mr O'Dwyer had not committed an offence under British law > However, Judge Purdy rejected the argument

I read that to mean the judge is not saying he broke British laws, just that not breaking British laws is not a valid argument.

Re: Copyright wars heat up: US wins extradition of college kid from England

#67

Post by seanp2k2 »

jterce wrote: post #40
rickmb wrote: post #19

The current political and legal sell-out to the US makes me, and I believe many fellow-Europeans, increasingly angry in a way that is fundamentally different from any anti-American feelings for instance during the Bush-years. Disagreeing with US foreign policy is one thing, but being on the receiving end of US meddling through political and legal corruption in a way that undermines our civil rights cuts way deeper.

It makes many Americans increasingly angry as well.

USA acts like they own the world, and they must be stopped.

See also: USA prison industrial complex figures out how to break into the international market.

Re: Copyright wars heat up: US wins extradition of college kid from England

#68

Post by grecy »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #15

The kid made $230,000 by helping users view copyrighted material they did not pay for. That sounds pretty jail worthy to me. It is however strange that he's being extradited and I generally oppose individuals "being made an example of". I'd much prefer he go through the UK system than the US.

> The kid made $230,000 by helping users view copyrighted material they did not pay for. That sounds pretty jail worthy to me.

In your country.

FTFY.

Re: Copyright wars heat up: US wins extradition of college kid from England

#69

Post by joering2 »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #39
forrestthewoods wrote: post #15

The kid made $230,000 by helping users view copyrighted material they did not pay for. That sounds pretty jail worthy to me. It is however strange that he's being extradited and I generally oppose individuals "being made an example of". I'd much prefer he go through the UK system than the US.

Sure he made a lot of money doing it but he just posted links. How is this different from Google (or any other search engine)?

it is different in those ways:

* google has established business with presence in most countries where it does pay a huge tax. therefore this fact that they feed a government/police system alone makes them less vulnerable for through investigations

* google has tens of thousands employees and it would be very difficult to prosecute an individual. Given 150 engineers worked on google search engine to display links, would you want to see all of them behind bars? that would be bigger trial than Nurnberg's.

I dont agree with any of what I wrote. But unfortunately thats just the way it is -- to big to prosecute :( Basically there is no difference between Google and any other web to search and find links. Try to type any movie name using dot instead of space and add "torrent" [1]

[1] https://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=vanilla.sky+torrent&...

Re: Copyright wars heat up: US wins extradition of college kid from England

#70

Post by nextparadigms »

rlpb wrote: post #30

The trouble with this is that if the US has a legitimate claim on him, then so does every other country in the world, since they're all on the Internet too. And it isn't reasonable for me to be on the Internet and be expected to comply with the laws of all the countries in the world all at once. Or is there something specific apart from being on the Internet that gives the US some kind of special claim on him?

Only that US has this kind of extradition treaty with UK. But I assume US has it with many other countries, too.

Extradition should only happen for the most vicious of the crimes or for war crimes in my opinion, and it should go both ways. But extradition for copyright infringement? That's pretty ridiculous, especially when they have to extradite that country's own citizen.

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