Last week, we wrote about how student Richard O'Dwyer cut a deal with the feds to end the extradition attempt and criminal charges against him for running TVShack.net, a links site similar to other UK sites that had already been deemed legal. We noted that as a part of this "deferred prosecution," O'Dwyer would need to come to the US and pay a "small sum." He's now done so, and the court has ordered that he pay £20,000. That's still a decent chunk of change, but not a crippling amount like what we've seen in cases like the Jammie Thomas or Joel Tenenbaum cases (which were very different types of cases, but arguably over much lesser charges -- civil vs. criminal for one thing...). It still seems ridiculous that he needed to pay anything at all, but getting the case over, for an amount that he can "afford," while avoiding jail seems like a pretty big victory for him -- especially given the language that the feds (and Hollywood) have used to describe O'Dwyer. In the meantime, guess how much of the £20,000 will be going to the artists O'Dwyer supposedly was harming?

It appears that the ridiculous saga of the US's baseless criminal case against Richard O'Dwyer is now ending, as O'Dwyer has effectively cut a deal to pay a small sum in exchange for avoiding extradition and trial in the US. If you don't recall, O'Dwyer, a computer science student, ran TVshack.net, one of the sites that ICE and the DOJ seized during one of their many questionable censorship days, in which they seize domain names, in direct conflict with what the law requires. Then they went the extra step of seeking to extradite O'Dwyer to face criminal charges in the US. In this case, it was doubly bizarre, because O'Dwyer, a UK citizen, was running a site that was nearly identical to some other sites that had been found to be perfectly legal in the UK -- and one of the pre-requisites for a criminal copyright charge is that the person needs to be willfully violating the law. Given that other comparable sites were found to be legal, it's difficult to see how US officials could meet that bar. There was also the fact that the US was, as it had attempted in the Rojadirecta case, trying to create a completely made up theory of criminal copyright liability for secondary infringement. In fact, as we noted in other cases, US courts have found that what TVshack was doing was not infringement.

The O'Dwyer case continued to get plenty of attention, with widespread protests in the UK, especially after UK officials approved his extradition to the US. Now, however, the case will be wrapped up under what's known as "deferred prosecution" in which O'Dwyer will pay a "small sum" and the case will be concluded. You can see why O'Dwyer would do this deal after a year and a half of fighting the extradition. It's also not too surprising that the DOJ would agree to such a deal, given how it ran from other similar cases once it realized that there was competent legal help absolutely decimating its ridiculous legal theories. The DOJ had to realize that it was likely to lose badly even if O'Dwyer was extradited -- so now they get to save face and pretend that O'Dwyer paying a small sum is a form of "victory."

It's good that the case is over and that O'Dwyer can get on with his life, though it's ridiculous that any part of this case ever happened.

Way back in 2002, Gary McKinnon made his Techdirt debut when he was caught hacking into NASA and Pentagon computers from the UK in an apparent attempt to find evidence that America was covering up evidence of UFOs. Since that story, subsequent stories were done on how he basically went on an appeal-losing-tour to avoid being extradited to the United States. But now, despite all those losses, it appears the United Kingdom's version of Fox Mulder will indeed be staying in the UK and not be trotted off to the States.

UK Home Secretary Theresa May has announced that McKinnon will not be extradited due to mental illness and a fear for his safety. McKinnon reportedly suffers from both depression and Asperger's Syndrome, and experts consulting with May believe that he is a significant suicide risk if extradited.

Mrs May said: "After careful consideration of all of the relevant material I have concluded that Mr McKinnon's extradition would give rise to such a high risk of him ending his life that a decision to extradite would be incompatible with Mr McKinnon's human rights. I have therefore withdrawn the extradition order against Mr McKinnon."

Mrs May also said measures would be taken to enable a UK court to decide whether a person should stand trial in the UK or abroad - a so-called forum bar.

This move is immensely significant, as it represents the first time an extradition was blocked by a Home Secretary under the Extradition Act of 2003. As extraditions over alleged computer and IP crimes have come into vogue, with the United States leading the charge, it's a welcome sign that the UK wants to be able to review cases in which their citizens would potentially be carted across the world to face massive prison sentences (or worse). One would hope similar scrutiny would be applied in the case of Richard O'Dwyer, though Theresa May has thus far failed to do so. Instead, she has so far bowed to the will of the United States and MPAA sock puppetry in extraditing him.

To be clear, none of this suggests that McKinnon will not face a trial at home. In fact, according to May, the UK will now decide whether to bring a case against him at home.

She said it was now for the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, to decide whether he should face trial in the UK.

Where he can be tried without the added threat to his well-being. A foreign national, accused of computer crimes against the United States facing trial in his home country. How refreshing.

 

Honestly, the MPAA needs to hire someone who actually understands a modern media strategy -- rather than a media strategy from the last century. It seems like nearly everything they do or say is calculated to piss off the public, rather than convince them of anything reasonable. Every chance they have to say the right thing, they say the wrong thing. Every chance they have to take a step towards making a connection with the public, they go the other way. We've seen how they call their biggest fans criminals. We've seen how they attack the internet. The latest is their Quixotic campaign against Richard O'Dwyer.

TorrentFreak, which lately has been on a streak of finding and publishing leaked info from the legacy entertainment industry, has done it again, publishing the MPAA's talking points document for responding to press inquiries about O'Dwyer, the UK college student that the US government is trying to extradite from the UK for running TVShack.net. They also have the MPAA's plans to find sock puppets to attack O'Dwyer. The two documents are from July 19th, so it's quite recent, and they try to respond to Jimmy Wales' recent involvement in trying to stop the extradition process. As with any good propaganda, the MPAA appears to take comments out of context to twist them against O'Dwyer. For example, it quotes that the site reminded people of how much money they were saving by watching free videos, rather than paying for movies. But nothing in that statement says that the videos they were watching were infringing copies -- just substitutes for going to the theater.

The sock puppet document is the really telling one, in that they admit that that the "overall media coverage has been and will continue to be challenging." Now, when pretty much everyone sides with O'Dwyer and against the MPAA, a normal, sane organization might think that its strategy is (perhaps) a mistake. But the MPAA instead decides to double down by trying to find sock puppets to publish blog posts and editorials about why O'Dwyer is a dirty stinking criminal:

To counter these assertions, the MPAA and its allies need a coordinated effort to focus more on the criminal activity involved in the operation of TVShack and other similar linking sites. Ideally, this would be done through third parties – but finding third parties – especially in the United Kingdom – has been very difficult so far, so the MPAA must be prepared to respond to media requests on the issue and set the record straight to counter the misinformation campaign by our opponents.

The thing is, the only "misinformation campaign" is coming from the MPAA itself, with these talking points and "how can we get stooges to spin this" document. The folks supporting O'Dwyer have no such things. They just speak the truth.

Furthermore, the documents completely ignore the legal arguments that make the O'Dwyer case incredibly questionable. They, of course, highlight the recent surfthechannel.com ruling in the UK to support the argument that O'Dwyer was breaking the law in the UK and the US. But that ignores the many questions raised by that ruling, and the fact that multiple similar cases went the other way or that similar US cases also seem to be going the other way too (though, that last one came out after this document was written).

There are also some laughable claims about how the decision to go after O'Dwyer was made by Homeland Security and ICE. However, as documents in other cases have shown, ICE relied heavily on claims from the RIAA and MPAA, despite little evidence to support those claims.

Separately, the MPAA weakly tries to hit back on the claims about internet freedom by saying that "this case isn't about Internet freedom. It's about a man profiting from theft." Funny, he hasn't been charged with "theft" as far as I can tell. It seems that the MPAA has trouble with ever being truthful -- even when claiming its providing facts to counter misinformation. And, as the Posner ruling recently showed, being a third party site that has embeds of infringing videos isn't infringing itself -- so arguing that O'Dwyer is some sort of master criminal is pretty laughable.

Then there's this:

Copyright law is a tool to protect the work of creators and makers, not censorship

They should try to tell that to some of the many people whom copyright has been used to censor over the years. The fact that copyright was supposed to be a tool to protect creators does not mean it can't be used for censorship. It is, regularly. The two things are hardly mutually exclusive. And, if the MPAA were being honest (ha ha, I know...) it would note that it doesn't represent the interests of creators and makers at all. It represents the studios, who do whatever they can to rip off content creators... while keeping the copyright for themselves. If the MPAA wants to spew bogus "talking points," (and get sock puppets to do so for it) perhaps it should start by figuring out how to defend its regular actions that block artists from getting paid.

In the end, though, this just highlights how incredibly tone deaf the MPAA and its communications staff is to public perception. Attacking Richard O'Dwyer, who has strong public support behind him is not a winning strategy by any means. I'm trying to figure out what the MPAA thinks it's accomplishing here and I'm drawing a blank. The more the MPAA seeks to demonize O'Dwyer, the worse it looks. Even if he is extradited and convicted, all they're doing is creating another hero/martyr, and more people who think the MPAA is an old, out of touch, unwilling-to-adapt monster, locking up college students. At best, I'm thinking the MPAA thinks this will act as an "education campaign" targeted at other sites running forums like O'Dwyer's. But that seems doubtful at best. Similar sites are all over the internet and have been for years. All this effort is doing is helping the MPAA dig its own hole deeper and deeper. It's like a perfect case study in how not to do communications strategy today.

For a while now, we've been following the ridiculous story of Richard O'Dwyer, the student in the UK who the US is trying to extradite to face criminal charges, all because he created a website where people linked to streaming TV shows (some legal, some not). At no time did he host illegal content. He just built the site. While the public has spoken out against the extradition, the Home Office, led by Home Secretary Theresa May, has so far held fast to sending O'Dwyer across the Atlantic.

Given all that, it's interesting to see this story, sent over by PressurCookrTheatr, highlighting the kinds of folks that Theresa May and the UK Home Office have refused to extradite over the last few years. It turns out it's a large and growing number, and even includes some terrorists. In those cases, however, May has magically decided that there are "human rights" reasons to keep them in the UK.

• In 2011, at least one terrorist – and possibly up to four – was allowed to stay, as well as up to eight killers and rapists. Also among the total were 20 robbers and up to eight paedophiles, plus as many as four people convicted of firearms offences.
• In 2010, the Home Office conceded in the cases of up to four murderers and up to four people convicted of manslaughter, as well as up to four rapists, up to eight paedophiles and 43 people convicted of violent crime or robbery.

That's from The Telegraph, which found out that and much more via a Freedom of Information Act request. The article has a lot more detail, but it seems pretty clear that May and the UK government have rejected extradition on all sorts of cases involving people accused of all sorts of horrible things. But when it comes to O'Dwyer? Well, you know, the MPAA is upset with him, so he's gotta go...

Apparently many of these decisions were made to avoid violating the Human Rights Act. For example, one guy, a Ukrainian accused of running "Britain's biggest sham marriage racket," has avoided extradition because he has two kids in the UK. What O'Dwyer should have been doing, instead of fighting extradition through legal means, was knocking someone up so he had a kid in the UK to convince Theresa May that he should stay.

A poll conducted in the UK has found that only 9% of those surveyed agreed that student Richard O'Dwyer should be extradited to face criminal charges in the US for creating TVShack, a site that let people link to videos hosted elsewhere. So far, the government has been ignoring public cries not to allow the extradition, but this poll really seems to suggest that the public is not too keen on shipping O'Dwyer overseas.

Only 9% of the British public believe he should face trial in the US for his actions, according to the YouGov research. The largest group, 46%, said O'Dwyer should not be prosecuted at all, while 26% felt he should be tried in the UK.

At some point, something has to give. The UK Home Office can't keep pretending that this is a minor issue that it can brush under the rug to keep the American government (and Hollywood) happy.

We mentioned, recently, that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had started a petition to try to stop the extradition of Richard O'Dwyer, the UK student who set up a site for users to point others to online sources for TV shows (some of which were legit, some of which were infringing) -- and is now facing extradition and criminal charges in the US for daring to help people find video online. Since then the petition has received well over 200,000 signatures, including UK politicians from all three parties. You might think that the UK government would take notice.

Not yet, it seems.

The UK Home Office is apparently ignoring the petition and sticking with the party (i.e., Hollywood lobbyist) line. The site V3 (linked in the last sentence) reached out to the Home Office who said that they were aware of the petition, but didn't seem to care:

"Richard O'Dwyer is wanted in the US for offences related to copyright infringement," a Home Office spokesman told V3.

"The UK courts found there were no statutory bars to his surrender under the Extradition Act 2003 and on 9 March the Home Secretary, having carefully considered all relevant matters, signed an order for his extradition to the US."

That said, Jimmy Wales insists that the "low level" spokesperson "is wrong" and he fully expects that the Home Office will, in fact, respond after meeting with him about this issue. Let's hope that's true. Given the large public outcries about other related copyright issues (SOPA, ACTA...) you would think that the UK government would at least be paying attention when a rather large group of the public speaks out on an issue related to copyright. Hopefully, the answer given to V3 was just a spokesperson stalling until the Home Office is ready to officially address the matter.

Given the renewed attention in the Richard O'Dwyer case, it's good to see UK MP Tom Watson speak out eloquently against the extradition. Watson hits on a bunch of good points, starting with the fact that O'Dwyer was "hung out to dry" by UK politicians who don't seem to even care about the details here. He notes that the response is clearly disproportionate and then gets to the heart of the matter:

"Somewhere behind this case lie the powerful vested interests of the content industry. If they succeed in exercising their lobbying might by forcing the extradition of an able student to face trial in America, it will further undermine public confidence in an important treaty designed to combat terrorism.

"But let's also be honest about what is going on at the heart of this case: a generation for whom the net is not a 'new' technology are being hung out by an older generation of lawmakers who do not understand the new reality of the connected digital planet.

"Mr O'Dwyer's situation can be sorted out with common sense at the top of the UK government and US administration. But how many more bright youngsters will have their lives turned upside down because we haven't reached a new copyright settlement that understands the internet is here to stay?"

Of course, it won't just undermine confidence in the extradition treaty, but also in copyright law. After all, O'Dwyer linked to content all over the web, rather than hosting it himself -- and a nearly identical site was already found legal in the UK (which certainly suggests a lack of "willful" infringement, which is necessary for a criminal copyright infringement charge in the US). Either way, it's good to see more high profile people -- especially those in government, realize that the attempt to extradite O'Dwyer is a travesty.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is speaking out against the attempt to extradite Richard O'Dwyer from the UK to the US. As we've been detailing over the past year, O'Dwyer ran a site called TVShack.net, that was a search engine for TV shows. It pointed people to the results, some of which were authorized -- and some of which were infringing. But, of course, a search engine should not reasonably be blamed for the results in points to. In fact, the admin of an extremely similar site in the UK, TV-Links, had faced criminal charges in the UK, but was found not guilty, because just linking to infringing content is not a crime. And yet... the US has pushed really hard to extradite O'Dwyer, and tragically, the UK has approved this charade.

Wales recently met with O'Dwyer and learned the details of the story, and was quite reasonably horrified:

Given the thin case against him, it is an outrage that he is being extradited to the US to face felony charges. No US citizen has ever been brought to the UK for alleged criminal activity on US soil. There is a disparity here that ought to raise concerns at the highest levels of government in both the US and UK.

From the beginning of the internet, we have seen a struggle between the interests of the "content industry" and the general public. Due to heavy lobbying and much money lavished on politicians, until very recently the content industry has won every battle. Internet users handed the industry its first major defeat earlier this year with the epic Sopa-Pipa protests over planned copyright laws that culminated in a widespread internet blackout and 10 million people contacting the US Congress to voice their opposition.

O'Dwyer is the human face of that battle, and if he's extradited and convicted, he will bear the human cost.

Wales has set up an online petition addressed to the UK government seeking to stop the extradition of O'Dwyer. Who knows if it will actually have any impact, but getting more people to speak out about this ridiculous overreach by ICE and the Justice Department would be a good thing.

Well, this is unfortunate, though Facebook does have a history of somewhat arbitrarily deciding what you can and can't talk about. A few years ago, we noted that it had blocked any link to The Pirate Bay -- even if it had nothing to do with infringing material. A year later, we discovered an even more unfortunate situation, in that it wouldn't allow any mention of Power.com -- a company it was in a legal dispute with. However, it keeps getting worse. We've written multiple times about Richard O'Dwyer's fight to prevent being extradited to the US for running a site, TVshack.net, which links to TV shows -- some of which were infringing. As we noted, there are all sorts of important questions being discussed around this case, both about copyright law and the US's influence over UK courts.

Apparently, Facebook doesn't want you discussing any of that.

The Guardian's James Ball wrote an interesting article about how some UK politicians are fighting to stop the extradition. It's a good article. But, you won't find out about it on Facebook apparently. The story details how Tim Farron, president of the LibDems, in the UK has called the extradition approval "ludicrous" and has asked the government to reconsider.

However, as James Losey discovered, Facebook won't let you post about it -- calling the article "spammy or unsafe." Specifically, it appears that (as with TPB) Facebook is blocking any and all mention of TVShack.net. However, Facebook's spam implementation is so stupidly programmed that it can't figure out that this is a story about TVShack.net in the well-respected Guardian newspaper, and not a direct link to TVShack.net. And, of course, merely linking to TVShack.net isn't against the law, so it's bizarre, obnoxious and stupid for Facebook to be blocking all such links in the first place. Finally, since the US government seized TVshack.net nearly two years ago, I don't think the site is really that unsafe any more, unless you don't trust the government to keep its server clean (which, actually, might be reasonable). Either way, shame on Facebook for hamfisted "filtering" which blocks important and legitimate discussions. Update: Facebook has fixed this particular issue, and now lets people post that story, but it's unclear what the overall rules are.