UK Student Extradited to US for Copyright Infringement

[SnowyCheetah]

To make a long story short, a UK student is going to be taken from the UK to the US so that he can be put on trial for creating the website TV Shack, which linked to copyrighted material.

Here are some key issues:

• What the student did was not illegal in his own country.
• The student only linked to copyrighted material, rather than hosting it on his own website.
• He is losing his rights to US big media companies in effect.

Here is a video explaining the case and why this is important:



This is happening even in a pre-SOPA world. We already have the twisted allowances for this to happen. And this is most likely only the start. If this can happen to a UK student, it can happen to virtually anyone who ends up being targeted like he has.

How would you like to spend time in jail for telling people where to find material, perhaps even being shipped out of your own country in order for it to happen? This isn't right. Copyright infringement is wrong, but this is worse.

[KingKivuli]

WTF who the hell do the american government think they are? and the British government.. hello wtf are they doing about this to one of their own seriously no wander this planet is going to hell. and why target a college student... at least target the ones who started it all the 4 big companies he mentioned

i honestly think the kid will be fine. how can they take down 1 person not from their own country when so many major companies from the US are giving it the thumbs up

[SnowyCheetah]

As I said on Facebook I'm starting to become ashamed to live in the US. This is honestly an outrage and for once I think the US is being downright arrogant in behaving like this. Thumbs up to the guy paying for the student's legal protection, he's going to need it.

One thing that really hit home for me is that until a month ago when I cancelled my plans, I was working on a MLP:FiM site that would have included a page serving as a directory for all of the episodes, constantly updated to link to the highest quality copies. It would have been, on a smaller scale, the same as what this student is getting in deep s*** for.

[Noah]

I hate to be the devil's advocate here (and before I get yelled at, I do agree that extraditing him is wrong) but the boy isn't a innocent butterfly. He made £15,000 a month from advertising on his website. The difference between him and Snowy's MLP website (along with millions of other people) is the fact that he made a profit off of something illegal. I doubt both countries would have gone to these extremes if he hadn't been getting paid.

[FlipMode]

the fact that he made a profit off of something illegal.

Except what he did was not illegal. So it does not really matter if he got ad revenue from it or not.

Its the same reason websites like beemp3 still exist. They LINK to the files, which are hosted on different servers, if you download from them, Beemp3 are in the clear, it is YOU and the hosting servers that get the sharp end of the stick and that is why this is wrong... Do not even get me started on how garbage them sending him out of the UK is. You cant even do that, the trail has to be done in the country of crime origin. Unless he did have ties with US somehow... But I bet you would not see any other government pulling this stuff, ohh no - leave that to the ones who think pizza is a vegetable.

The problem here is that the governments are making an example out of him, I mean its no coincidence that they only people to have really got in noticeable trouble thus far in the past have nearly always been people hosting content rather than downloading the odd song, film or even game.

[Woeler]

As far as I remember it is illegal to link to illegal content, but it's not in the UK nor in any other European country. It's really sad that some idiots in this world do really think they can stop online piracy. Our freedom is at risk, luckily the world does not tolerate this. If they send this guy to the US I would like to see the actions anonymous will take.

This is something interesting:

The results of two recent court cases in the U.K. suggest that linking to but not hosting copyrighted content isn’t illegal, at least in Europe. Both TV-Links and the music-oriented OiNK have been cleared in the last month of the charges brought against them.
Linking Vs. Hosting

Hosting copyrighted content is illegal. That is an accepted part of the legal system. However, things get a little murkier and confused when a site is acting as a third-party, a go-between matching those hosting the content and those seeking it.

This has been tested in court a number of times, and the results have been mixed to say the least. In the U.S. it would appear linking is illegal, and sites such as Google only get away with it because of their Web directory nature, and even they have to remove links if asked to.

However, in the U.K., and potentially all countries in the European Union, linking to copyrighted material is not illegal.

TV-Links

TV-Links was a UK-based site which linked to movies and TV shows hosted on the likes of YouTube, MySpace Video, DailyMotion etc. in the days before those sites were so quick to take down infringing content as they are now.

But in 2007 TV-Links was closed down after the police and FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) claimed it was “facilitating” copyright infringement.

It’s taken over two years for the case to reach court, but as TorrentFreak reports, it ended with the admins David Rock and David Overton winning.

The judge referred to Section 17 of the European Commerce Directive 2000, which gives sites a full defense if on trial in England and Wales for merely linking to another site’s content. In effect, it cannot be illegal to act as a conduit rather than the deliverer.
OiNK

The TV-Links win follows on from Alan Ellis, the creator of OiNK.cd, last month being cleared of conspiracy to defraud for supposedly making money from the sharing of music files.

Interestingly, Ellis used the Google defense (a similar defense was argued unsuccessfully by The Pirate Bay), stating, “All I do is really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of the music is on my Web site.”

And it worked.
Conclusions

This doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily OK to link to copyrighted material without permission. However, the TV-Links case in particular could set a precedent for similar cases in the future, at least in the U.K. and possibly other E.U. countries.

[FlipMode]

As far as I remember it is illegal to link to illegal content, but it's not in the UK nor in any other European country.

Yeah just to clarify, my post was based on EU regulations and laws, cause that is where the dude was from.

[Woeler]

As far as I remember it is illegal to link to illegal content, but it's not in the UK nor in any other European country.

Yeah just to clarify, my post was based on EU regulations and laws, cause that is where the dude was from.

I know he's from the UK xd, I watched the video.

[SnowyCheetah]

Since he is in the UK, the US has zero business doing anything to him. That's where this story gets f***ed up.

[Regulus]

This doesn't make any sense. Why are we trying to send this kid to prison, when people within our own country drive 20+ MPH over the speed limit every day, and are only occasionally fined a few hundred dollars? Linking to pirated content isn't going to kill anyone.

Not to mention, the material he linked to was TV shows. Who cares about that? TV is free. DVRs aren't illegal, so why is it illegal to share recorded TV shows? I doubt the people who produce the shows even care. It's the people who advertise on the shows. But how many people actually watch the commercials anyway?

I just don't get it. Recording a song off the radio is legal. But uploading it to the internet isn't?