Richard O'Dwyer is a 23 year old computer student and citizen of the United Kingdom. He set up and ran the wildly successful TVshack website from his bedroom. His site provided links to copyrighted material. It is reported that he did not himself host any of the material on any servers. His website is not illegal in England. But he was arrested anyways on November 9, 2010. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement folks were apparently the ones to file the charges. A judge over there last week approved the extradition. Richard O'Dwyer's lawyer is planning to appeal the decision.
Richard faces extradition via a reciprocal agreement between Britain and the United States which was designed with terrorists in mind. There is also a rather weird claim that the United States somehow owns or is intimately tied to all domains ending in dot com or dot net (as the original TVshack site did) because they are registered through (I believe is) VeriSign Global Registry Services.
There is also an allegation that CBS through it's very own C/Net website made available downloaders and search tools used for such sites as the BitTorrents, Limewire, and others. And I remember C/Net offering those. The video below talks about a lawsuit being brought by a bunch of artists against CBS for being the main distributor of these tools. Basically, an entertainment mogul is accused of popularizing the P2P (Peer to Peer) websites and now the entertainment moguls via Big Hollywood and the RIAA are crying, "Omgz, you bad pirates are cutting into our profit margin." And thus we have Richard O'Dwyer who is wanted to stand trial for linking to material being offered on the P2P sites that Big Hollywood popularized.
Folks, don't forget Black March 2012. A battle needs to be fought on all fronts. Boycott buying books, vids, and songs during March 2012. And don't go to the movies either.
radical sapphoq says: This is so very very wrong. I am appalled and disgusted that this sort of thing is happening. Twice now in a few weeks. First it was Kim DotCom in New Zealand. And now Richard O'Dwyer.
Folks, we are in serious trouble. Whether you agree or not, please take the time to copy paste some of the links I used in researching this blog post into your browser.
I will be watching for further news on Richard O'Dwyer and if he does indeed land on American soil, I will endeavor to attend his trial if at all possible.
http://www.deadline.com/tag/richard-odwyer/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/clegg-is-silent-over-computer-student-facing-deportation-to-us-6289846.html
http://tek-bull.com/2012/01/richard-odwyer-loses-us-extradition-battle-over-copyright-infringement.html
http://escapeesblog.wordpress.com/category/courts/ <--- scroll down to Jan 20
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=extradition
http://youtu.be/PU4unZKNp6k
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115273-British-Student-Loses-Extradition-Battle-Over-Copyright-Violation
http://the-tap.blogspot.com/2012/01/odwyer-loses-extradition-case.html
http://juliasblog-the-fight-of-our-lives.blogspot.com/2012/01/epidode-2-full-of-evidence-from-mike.html?showComment=1327816153913#c2010952248793974574
http://www.friends-extradited.org/
http://www.fairtrials.net/
http://www.filmon.com/cbsyousuck/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087135/Richard-ODwyer-US-extradition-pact-misused-says-Sir-Menzies-Campbell.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
http://infowebstorm.com/category/personal-liberty/libertarian-issues/ <--- jan 14 scroll down to
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2087120/Richard-ODwyer-Gary-McKinnon-Blatant-misuse-extradition-laws.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2087574/Richard-ODwyer-extradition-A-naive-British-student-facing-10-years-chains.html
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/tvshack-richard-odwyer-copyright-pirate-281455
http://www.blockaid.me/2012/01/bad-news-for-richard-odwyer/
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