This article from today's Mail on Sunday ...
A billionaire has offered to pay the legal costs of a student facing extradition to the U.S. on charges of copyright theft. Richard O’Dwyer, 23, is accused of running a website which directed users to other sites where they can download films illegally.
Alki David, who is worth £1.5 billion, has told the Sheffield student's family he will pay for Mr O’Dwyer's defence if Home Secretary Theresa May signs papers to force him to stand trial in the U.S. If found guilty, Mr O'Dwyer could go to jail for up to ten years, despite his alleged crimes not being an offence in Britain. He is alleged to have made nearly £150,000 from his site.
Nigerian-born Mr David, who lives in London and has homes abroad, said: 'It is not acceptable to steal copyrighted material. But I do not necessarily believe Richard was acting illegally. I will support all legal costs if he is extradited.'
He said he sympathised with Mr O'Dwyer after being charged with copyright infringement over an internet TV service in his business empire that allows subscribers to watch global television channels.
Mr O’Dwyer’s mother, Julia, 55, said: 'We are extremely grateful for Mr David’s generous offer but we must keep the pressure on the Government to not send Richard to trial in America under a law that was created to keep our country safe from terrorists, not young men running sites from their bedroom.'
Campaigners have seized on Mr O’Dwyer's case with similarities being drawn with the plight of computer hacker Gary McKinnon. The U.S. is also attempting to extradite Asperger’s sufferer Mr McKinnon, who hacked into Pentagon computers from his north London bedroom. Instead of putting the men on trial in the country where their alleged offences took place, the British legal system is permitting them to be bundled on a plane to America.
Last month, Mr O’Dwyer’s mother Julia, a paediatric nurse from Chesterfield, wept outside Westminster magistrates’ court after a judge ruled there was no legal bar to sending her son for trial. She said the ‘rotten’ U.S./UK extradition treaty needed ‘fixing fast’ and warned: ‘If they can come for Richard they can come for anyone.’ Her husband Dr Peter O’Dwyer said his son was ‘quiet, introverted and vulnerable’. The retired family doctor said he feared the ordeal of being sent to the U.S. could damage his son’s emotional health. The couple said Mr O’Dwyer, who is studying software programming at Sheffield Hallam university, is being used as a ‘guinea pig’ as no one has ever been extradited on similar charges.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency wants to prosecute him on two counts of breaching copyright, each carrying a maximum five-year sentence. The court heard that his website, TVShack.net, was earning £15,000 a month from advertising revenue.
Mr O’Dwyer was arrested in November 2010 when police and U.S. officials turned up at his hall of residence. He pulled the plug on the site immediately. His lawyer Ben Cooper argued that it did not store copyright material itself and merely pointed users to other sites, in the same way that Google and Yahoo operate.
But District Judge Quentin Purdy said the extradition could go ahead, saying there were ‘said to be direct consequences of criminal activity by Richard O’Dwyer in the U.S. albeit by him never leaving the North of England’.
Mrs May is currently considering a review into the extradition laws by retired judge Sir Scott Baker. She is also examining new medical evidence that Mr McKinnon should remain in Britain.
Julia O’Dwyer said that the treaty had ‘opened the floodgates to America to come and seize British citizens without even having set foot out of this country. ‘David Cameron and Nick Clegg both promised to sort out the extradition mess before the election. They need to pull their fingers out. There are no safeguards here for British citizens. I am disgusted at the court’s decision. How can the U.S. government be allowed to ruin a young student’s life when similar cases brought in English courts show that what they allege is not illegal here?’
The huge controversy over yesterday’s verdict will heighten demands for the UK’s extradition laws to be changed. MPs have demanded that the Government should insist a person must normally be tried in the country where the offence took place. They also want urgent reform to the lopsided 2003 Extradition Act – which gives far greater protection to Americans than it does to their British counterparts. The U.S. requires ‘sufficient evidence to establish probable cause’ before agreeing to extradite anyone to the UK, while Britons going in the opposite direction are not afforded the same protection.
Since 2004, 29 UK nationals or dual nationals have been extradited from Britain to the U.S. Only five Americans were extradited from the U.S. to Britain. The U.S. Embassy has been fiercely resisting any change. But in December, a debate calling for action was unanimously passed by MPs at Westminster.
Tory MP Dominic Raab, who led the campaign for a vote in Parliament on Britain’s extradition arrangements, said the O’Dwyer case ‘makes a mockery of British justice’. He added: ‘A young student accused of internet offences that are not even crimes in Britain is being treated like a mafia boss.’ Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: ‘This climate of uncertainty should not be allowed to persist and I hope the Home Secretary will act soon to clarify the Government’s position on extradition.’
Well, more power to Alki David and to the parliamentarians who are leading the campaign against this outrageous bullying behaviour by the US.
But the GOS sees something even more sinister in this particular case – a gross and wicked ignorance (or possibly deliberate misunderstanding) of the way the internet works, and of common-or-garden logic.
Gary McKinnon freely admits that he hacked into foreign computers – he was searching for evidence of UFOs. But O'Dwyer was simply publicising addresses. There's no suggestion that his website contained any bootleg material, or that he had accessed any of that material himself. Nor is there any suggestion that the money he had made from the website was dishonestly obtained. He simply carried legitimate advertising from legitimate businesses, just as this site does (though we've never made £150,000 or anything like it. £150 a year if we're lucky!)
All he did was say “here is the address of a website that is acting illegally under US law”.
Suppose you knew that the people in a house down the road were growing cannabis in their greenhouse? What would you do? If you decided to (a) phone up the local newspaper and tell them about it, or (b) report it to the police, or (c) just post a comment on Twitter that the house two doors away was a pot farm, would you expect to be arrested?
Or imagine you knew an address where paedophiles were taking underage girls? Does knowing the address make you responsible for their crimes? Because that's all O'Dwyer did – he gave an address. OK, maybe you would be culpable if you knew where crimes were being committed and kept quiet about it. But O'Dwyer didn't keep quiet about it – he exposed those addresses. Never mind being arrested and imprisoned, he probably ought to get a medal.
The fact that he made some money from advertising is neither here nor there. We make money from advertising. Does that mean we are responsible for every stupid, illegal activity we write about?
Of course not. That wouldn't be sensible. Still, “America” and “sensible” aren't words that sit very cosily together, are they?
Incidentally, we know a website where you can, if you know how, download into your computer quite a lot of copyright material. The address is YouTube.com.
There – we'll just go and make a cup of tea while we wait for the FBI to call ...
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
Copyright © 2012 The GOS