#freeGary – #Mckinnon has already served 10 years – will #Richardo ? Time to #Reboot the SYSTEM
#TVSHACK – Website in extradition row ‘no different to Google’ – “If people are committing a crime in England, they should be tried in this country. Is extradition proportional to the alleged crime? I don’t think it is.”
The words of Julia , mother of Richard (aged 23) who is now facing the threat of being removed from his family and incarcerated in the USA for doing exactly what the world-wide-web was invented for. Richard was sharing links to downloads of the Top Ten ‘US Movies’ – download sites – which anyone on the planet could find right now via U.S. Search Giant – Google. (Click the link and see)
I guess that makes those people Criminals too?
And just why exactly are the admins at Google NOT BEING TERRORISED for ‘copywrite reasons – for their ‘complicity’ in sharing links to any top ten movie of any year or any copy of an operating system like Windows etc – all available through the worlds most used search engine?
Did I mention Bing and Yahoo also have search engines which serve up torrents of just about anything which is digitally created in nature.
Extradited for ‘copywrite reasons‘ is what Richards case reads as – because he is to be extradited for being a type of ‘knock-off Nigel who sells bent DVD’s’ ….
For freaks sake – lock down the whitehouse because National Security is at risk, why don’t you?
It really is , in my one vocal opinion, all wrong.
I am just a mere keen observant of how the Terrorism law’s of the US are being ‘adopted worldwide’ and also of how such law is being applied to network misdemeanours by US Authorities and upheld by the Governments of the whole world.
Where does the jurisdiction start and begin when the law is being ‘dressed up’ by compliant leaders of the worlds Governments to assist in a program of what amount to ‘Renditions’.
It seems that for the USA – one fifth of the whole worlds prison population is not enough for you – but now you want to import others (here in my world we call this SLAVERY).
Here in the UK, Gary Mckinnon has been fighting the ludicrous use of a law designed for Terrorism and Murderers, for what is almost a decade now. His most vocal supporter is his mother Janis, who has campaigned and lobbied to the point of mere exhaustion – not only on Gary’s behalf, – but also on behalf of ALL U.K. Citizens.
I was delighted recently to see Gary’s mom being nominated for an Award for all her work by Liberty UK.
I can’t fathom what the past 10 years have done to her and her closest ..She inspires me …that’s all I have got to say about that. And now I see the whole debarcle about to inflict itself on the O’Dwyer family.
Let me try and paint a quick picture.
Suppose for a moment you are walking down the street – and a car pulls over and they ask about an address. As luck has it – you walk past the house often and you give the driver very detailed directions.
What you don’t know is that the burglar is smiling as he drives away to knock-over the joint.
Richard provided links to download links – and these download links held all the ‘copyrighted’ movies.
Richard is not the burglar – he is the guy who gave directions – and nothing more than that.
Richard ran TVShack, which enabled people to find copies of files which are readily available online in any case.
The US authorities say the films which he linked to were ‘pirate’ copies and they want to try him for breaching copyright.
A ‘civil’ matter is suddenly coming under the jurisdiction of some American Law which has very obvious symptoms of being of HIGH SEVERITY – is contagious and like a bad virus should be wiped from the System.
The UK Government and the Home Office need to reboot on this whole Operating System and run a complete analysis for anomolies.
But at an extradition hearing this week his lawyer Ben Cooper said: “His website linked to other websites in the same way Google and Yahoo operate. You were not able to view a film from TVShack directly. TVShack did not charge a subscription in the same way Google and Yahoo don’t. It generated income from advertising, just as Google does.”
In true ‘You can’t handle the truth’ manner – John Jones, for the US government – “TVShack had the top films listed on the home page so it wasn’t merely a search engine.”
Erm, no Mr Jones – it was a website – a page with links – not a search engine – Mr Cooper was merely stating that it simply ‘cut out’ the search engine element and led to sites (pages with links again Mr Jones) – and that it was ON THESE OTHER sites – that any material resided.
Richard has broken NO Law here in the UK – and indeed – because he was not ‘in posession of’ or ‘Hosting’ the actual copyrighted movies – their Copyright Argument does not hold water.
The case has now been adjourned until November 22 for a further hearing at the same court, and Richard was released on conditional bail.
In the Yorkshire Post – ” O’Dwyer’s case draws parallels with that of Gary McKinnon, who is also fighting extradition to the United States.
McKinnon, from Wood Green, north London, faces allegations that he hacked into US military computers.
He faces 60 years behind bars if convicted of hacking into Pentagon and Nasa computers between February 2001 and March 2002.
The US-UK extradition treaty, once branded “lopsided” in favour of US citizens by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, was the subject of a recent review by retired Judge Sir Scott Baker.
Sir Scott found the treaty to be “balanced and fair” and said it was not biased against Britons.
He decided against introducing measures to allow a judge to refuse extradition where the alleged offence took place wholly or largely in the UK.
Mr Clegg, when Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said British people do not understand why there was such an imbalance between the information required to extradite a UK citizen compared to the justification required to extradite US citizens to the UK. “
For a bit more background– here’s last Septembers Blog post about Richards Arrest ….