Student Richard O’Dwyer may face jail for copyright infringement as the owner and operator of the Web site TVShack, which gave links to other sites that offered pirated downloads of TV shows and films.
Now O’Dwyer may face extradition to the US, which will likely end in a significant amount of jail time. O’Dwyer’s mother has been making the rounds to express her fear and anguish over her son’s possible jail sentence.
O’Dwyer was arrested at the end of last month at the request of the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement department (ICE).
O’Dwyer ran the Web site until last year when he was first visited by police and US officials. He recently appeared before magistrates for a preliminary hearing into the extradition that’s fighting.
O’Dwyer may make it to the US under a 2003 agreement with the UK that has become heavily criticized because it contains no provision for a “forum,” which in legalese is a process that would allow a UK judge to determine if the case would be best heard in the UK or abroad.
“The (computer) server was not based in the US at all,” O’Dwyer’s barrister, Ben Cooper, said at the hearing at Westminster magistrate’s court. “Mr O’Dwyer did not have copyrighted material on his Web site; he simply provided a link. The essential contention is that the correct forum for this trial is in fact here in Britain, where he was at all times.”
The push for extradition likely comes from worries that there may be no case in the UK. Since the site did not host content and simply linked to other sites and served as a bit of a ferry between content and consumers there is a chance that the actions don’t constitute an offense in the UK.
A fraud and copyright case against a similar service, TV-Links, was dismissed last year as the judge determined that linking to content alone was not illegal.
“If it’s an offense under UK law, then it has to be prosecuted and tested under UK law,” James Firth of the Open Digital Policy Organization think-tank told the Guardian. “If there is no offence under UK law, then there is no ‘victim’ to copyright infringement and no case for extradition.”
If the countries can remove O’Dwyer without addressing this concern it may send more of a message against such services than finding a way to slap him on the wrist under existing law.
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