from Hacker News

Wikipedia founder steps in to help UK hacker

by sparknlaunch on 6/25/12, 8:53 AM with 99 comments

• by mixmax on 6/25/12, 10:39 AM

  From the article it seems that this guy ran a search engine which might or might nor be illegal in the United States. However, he is British, most of the visitors are British and the servers are not in the United States, yet the US wants him extradited and tried in an American court.

  This of course begs the question: If an American is running a site hosted in America with mostly American visitors how would the US react if a foreign government wanted to extradite him and possibly put him in jail for many years?

  Probably not well.

• by nicholassmith on 6/25/12, 10:18 AM

  Whether or not what he did was a criminal or civil crime, he's not a US citizen, he didn't commit the crime within US boundaries (unless I've missed a memo), so he should not stand trial in a country that has nothing to do with the situation.

  The very idea that you can effectively be transported to a country that you have nothing to do with and committed no crime in just purely because the big boys with the big wallets say so is sickening.

• by jiggy2011 on 6/25/12, 9:55 AM

  This is shocking and as a UK citizen angers me greatly, however I have to say this guy doesn't seem too smart.

  Firstly, building a website (presumably with the domain registered under his name) like this in the current legal climate is basically asking for trouble. Especially hosting it in Sweden (where the TBP was).

  Secondly , in the interview he asked the Police if he should get a solicitor, and decided not to get one because he might have to wait a couple of hours? WTF?

  If you are arrested by the police and possibly being charged with an imprison-able offence (or really any offence) of course you should get a solicitor , why would this even be a question?

• by chrischen on 6/25/12, 11:02 AM

  This is particularly stupid because apparently the site only had links to copyright infringement.

  This is just hollywood abusing their position to fight the advancement of tech and society simply because it disagrees with their business.

  I do not believe there is anything inherently unethical about copyright infringement in pirating movies or tv shows. It's only technically illegal (and unethical in the sense that it's against the law) because copyright protections were put in artificially as a regulation to control for a certain outcome, like tariffs, taxes, or a dam. Hollywood simply won't admit the dam isn't working and trying to antagonize and criminalize those who go against the flow directed by regulation.

  Calling pirating movies or tv shows unethical is only justifiable if pirating is akin to stealing in the physical sense, but it's not, and so it's not unethical. If someone were to project a copyrighted movie on to a giant wall, it's like saying all unauthorized onlookers are doing something unethical, when really it doesn't matter how many illegal onlookers there are as it won't affect the creator. If the content creator can't feed himself because everyone is "stealing" his work then he should a) find a new line of work or b) find a way to properly monetize it. Anything of value can be converted to money.

  That being said I do think the content creators provide something valuable, and this should be protected. The issue here is that it's only going to get more expensive to enforce the current business models of content creators. The expense not only comes in the form of cost to gov't and the businesses themselves, but also in the form of DRM and other side effects of enforcement that really degrades the whole product chain. In the worst case scenario we never find a way to adequately support a film and tv industry. It's cultural benefits will be missed but we'll just shift our attention to something else. Life goes on. It's existence was probably arbitrary in the first place. Copyright laws didn't enable the TV & film industry. Enforceability of those laws did that, and the enforceability is eroding way whether they like it or not.

  Summary: It's unethical to break the law (assuming the law was instated ethically), which, in theory, is a set of rules everyone agrees to play by. However pirating movies and tv shows is not inherently unethical as it is just an arbitrary law we put in place to control for an outcome. Linking to copyright infringement should be neither of these.

• by rytis on 6/25/12, 9:44 AM

  A Home Office spokesman said: "We have effective, fair and balanced extradition arrangements with the US [...] People who have committed serious offences such as murder, rape, other sex crimes and fraud [...]

  Good to know. Running a search engine can be compared to murder, rape, etc...

• by molmalo on 6/25/12, 10:12 AM

  This could set a major precedent, and MUST be stopped. People of UK, please do everything you can to stop this. Call your MP's, send them mails, make noise, something!

  "People who have committed serious offences such as murder, rape, other sex crimes and fraud, have been successfully extradited to the UK and convicted." That is just crazy, comparing the allegations of copyright infringement, with murder and rape? Are we in in that society already?

  So what's next? UK asking to extradite Sergey and Larry for the same allegations? Crazy.

• by slavak on 6/25/12, 11:22 AM

  The idea that you can be extradited to a country you don't live in for something that isn't even a crime which was committed somewhere else is, as they say, completely fucked.

• by ColinWright on 6/25/12, 9:10 AM

  Interview with Richard O'Dwyer here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4155627

• by junto on 6/25/12, 10:06 AM

  So he built a crowd-sourced version of Google's video search?

  https://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbm=vid&q=the+sopranos

  Since I am secondary linking to copyrighted content via Google, does that make the owners of this website liable to prosecution?

• by epo on 6/25/12, 12:51 PM

  Starting a petition counts as help these days? Lets start a million petitions declaring hunger and poverty to be a bad thing, that'll have the problems cracked in no time.

• by RivieraKid on 6/25/12, 11:39 AM

  This is outrageous and another example revealing the bad state of democracy in these two countries. The government does the exact opposite of what vast majority of citizens want. I would never vote again political parties that are in government and don't do anything to stop this.

• by yitchelle on 6/25/12, 11:31 AM

  I am not a lawyer nor do I understand the legal aspects, but if this fella's site only offers links to songs, then it strikes me that search companies like Google, Bing etc may be on same murky legal grounds. Do a search for the mp3 from your favourite artist, and some warez sites will pop up offering links to your artists' songs.

  Is this just a case of a bully picking on someone who has little hope of defending himself?

• by damian2000 on 6/25/12, 11:08 AM

  It seems to me that the people behind this extradition attempt see that the value is not in the actual punishment for this unfortunate guy. It's in the publicity it gets and the ability to change people's actions worldwide in terms of piracy. Either way, its ethically wrong and deserves to fail. I have signed the petition.

• by option_greek on 6/25/12, 2:13 PM

  Now that they are extraditing British citizens to US for crimes committed on British soil, I hope they would finally stop shadow boxing and declare UK as copyright colony of US and let British citizens vote in upcoming US elections.

• by planetguy on 6/25/12, 1:46 PM

  I think that those agitating for meaningful copyright reform and against silly copyright infringement cases aren't doing themselves a favour when they start agitating in favour of the actual, honest-to-god, in-it-for-the-money large-scale pirates who make hundreds of thousands of pounds off infringing on other peoples' copyright. This guy is scum.

  Also, how is this guy a "hacker"?

• by J3L2404 on 6/25/12, 2:44 PM

  I have to say I have noticed a trend with these type of articles. They skyrocket to the top at first, but when valid arguments come up, they are flagged into oblivion. I assume this is done by the same people that upvoted it in the first place.

• by spitx on 6/25/12, 11:41 AM

  A not-so entirely tangential thought:

  Would Jimmy Wales have taken up this cause if Richard O'Dwyer wasn't a put-together specimen? You know if he was a socially-awkward, not-sure-of-himself, social-grace-lacking and all around clumsy-looking hacker. If the answer to this was manifestly in the affirmative, the question wouldn't be begging to be asked.

  This is a no-lose proposition for Jimmy. Whether the guy is actually extradited or worse convicted, this low hanging PR fruit is already in Jimmy's satchel.

  This is not to cast a doubt on JW's intentions.

  However, holding all details of the alleged crime constant, I bet he wouldn't touch this case with a 10 foot pole if the guy didn't fit the archetype that wouldn't soil JW's image.